Larry Scott is a Florida native and former University of South Florida offensive lineman who spent a decade as a college football assistant in the Sunshine State.
Tennessee’s new offensive coordinator took his first job outside Florida last year when he accepted the tight ends coaching position in Knoxville after a stint as interim head coach at Miami.
His offseason promotion to offensive coordinator came in tandem with Tennessee’s hiring of Mike Canales as quarterbacks coach. It was no coincidence. The duo’s relationship provides a life lesson for teachers and coaches.
Treat your students and players with respect.
Larry Scott is offensive coordinator/tight ends for the Vols. The annual Spring Orange and White Football game was held at Neyland Stadium on April 22, 2017.Scott, 40, is a rung above Canales, 56, on Tennessee’s coaching hierarchy this year, but that not always has been the dynamic of their relationship.
Canales was a first-year offensive coordinator at South Florida in 1996 when Scott was a freshman offensive lineman taking orders from the fiery Californian and former Utah State quarterback.
There were few similarities in their background, but a bond developed – and persisted.
“Every young person, especially in sports, was touched by someone or somebody left an impression on them, not only as a coach but as a person,” Scott said. “Chico, as I call him, has always left that impression on me.”
The two reunited from 2007 to ’09, when Canales returned to USF as an assistant to work alongside Scott, who turned a 2006 graduate assistant gig into a job coaching tight ends at his alma mater. After three years on the same staff, Canales departed for North Texas, where he worked until 2015.
Canales spent last season as an assistant head coach at Utah State, but Scott and Tennessee head coach Butch Jones used their pre-existing relationships with Canales to lure him away from his alma mater to coach the Volunteers’ quarterbacks.
“That relationship has always stayed intact,” Scott said. “Having Coach Canales work with the quarterbacks, obviously it means a lot to me. There’s a personal relationship there. It’s one where we’ve always kept in touch through the years. He coached me, went off and did some other things, then we worked on the same staff as assistants together, to again be separated.”
When former Tennessee offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Mike Bajakian departed to the NFL after the 2014 season, the Vols did not have a full-time coach working exclusively with quarterbacks. With Joshua Dobbs graduated and the Vols breaking in a new quarterback this year, Jones and Scott decided a quarterbacks coach was needed.
“To have someone you trust and someone you know is a really good coach and leader of men is really important to me,” Scott said, “especially at that position with where we were here at Tennessee, which is going in a new direction with that position, rebuilding the focus of it, the integrity of it and all those type of things, restoring what great Tennessee quarterbacks are all about. I thought he would bring that element to it.”
Redshirt freshman Jarrett Guarantano and junior Quinten Dormady have been battling for the starting quarterback job. The Vols coaches don’t know exactly what they’ll get from either player when the season begins against Georgia Tech at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Sept. 4.
They know what they’re getting from the man who coaches them, however. Jones and Canales are on a staff together for the first-time, but they also have a shared history that includes attending coaches conventions and using hotel-room mirrors to diagram plays.
“It’s all about relationships,” Jones said. “We talk about obviously our players and being a family. But it’s the same as coaches. Those individuals (Scott and Canales) go back a long period of time. And I still remember making many trips as a young coach to the University of South Florida and spending time with Mike Canales. Then obviously Larry Scott as well and talking a lot of football.
“Those two individuals work very well together, and I think any time you can add individuals that have been coordinators in your room and they get along as they do and respect each other, that really helps.”