Early Life
Smith was a native of Van Wert, Ohio, where he was a three-sport star at Van Wert High School, graduating in 1957. He earned an appointment to West Point, but transferred to Bowling Green State University a year later to pursue coaching. He played two-way end at for the Falcons, playing on a small-college national championship team as a sophomore in 1959; he won all-league honors as a junior and was team captain as a senior. Smith graduated from Bowling Green in 1962 with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, and later earned a Master of Education from Bowling Green in 1967.
Known as a defense-oriented, no-nonsense coach, Smith began coaching as an assistant with Shawnee High School in Lima, Ohio for two seasons (1962–63) and then head coach the next three years (1964–66). In 1967 he joined Bo Schembechler's staff at Miami University, serving as defensive end coach for two seasons. He moved with Schembechler to Michigan, serving as offensive line coach for four seasons (1969–72). When fellow assistant coach Jim Young (Also a native of Van Wert, OH and high school football teammate) was hired as head coach at Arizona, Smith moved with him and served as the assistant head coach/defensive coordinator there for three years (1973–75).
Read more about this topic: Larry Smith (American Football Coach)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“They circumcised women, little girls, in Jesus’s time. Did he know? Did the subject anger or embarrass him? Did the early church erase the record? Jesus himself was circumcised; perhaps he thought only the cutting done to him was done to women, and therefore, since he survived, it was all right.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)