Coaxum going to school on NFL mentors

Army cornerbacks coach Tony Coaxum is leaving Monday for another short NFL stint, but the Black Knights' sixth-year assistant will be back in time for Army's fall camp with a little more football knowledge under his coaching cap.

Coaxum, a former Army player, will start the week working with Tampa Bay Buccaneers' coaches as they prepare for training camp and then remain with the Bucs to work on the field with the players during the opening days of training camp. To take advantage of the learning opportunity, though, Coaxum won't have any days off between Tampa Bay and the opening of Army's fall camp. But don't feel sorry for him.

"Every day I've gone to work since I started coaching, it doesn't feel like work," Coaxum said. "I sometimes feel guilty calling it work. They say if you're doing something you love, you don't have to call it work. I can vouch for that. That's the way it's been for me the last six years."

This is actually Coaxum's second summer in the NFL minority intern program. After his first year at West Point in 2007 under former Army head coach Stan Brock, Coaxum spent time with the New York Giants' staff. He said the experience gave him validation as a former player who can now teach the game.

"When you're working with a team that just came off winning the Super Bowl, you feel you're at the highest level of your profession," Coaxum said. "You make sure you pay attention. It taught me I know a lot more about football than I was giving myself credit for and that increased my confidence coming into my second year of coaching at Army."

Coaxum spent the first two years at Army under Brock and then current head coach Rich Ellerson retained him when he took over the Black Knights in 2009.

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At Tampa Bay, Coaxum will be reunited with a pair of coordinators he considers mentors, even though he doesn't know new Tampa Bay head coach Greg Schiano, Rutgers' former head coach, much beyond "handshakes on the field" after Army-Rutgers games. But his association with Tampa offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan and Tampa defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan dates back to their days at West Point.

Coaxum, a 2000 West Point grad, was a two-year starter and three-year letterman for the Black Knights. Sheridan was an Army assistant from 1992 to 1997, including serving as Coaxum's position coach. Sullivan, a 1990 West Point grad who lettered for the Black Knights in 1989 and is a former Army Ranger, was an Army assistant coach early in his coaching career.

No matter what profession you're in, you want to be surrounded with people who will help you better yourself.

- Army CB Coach, Tony Coaxum

"This is another opportunity to be around some of the best coaches in the business, but this time I'll also be with a couple of coaches I know," Coaxum said. "Bill Sheridan is the guy who is responsible for me playing in the secondary at Army. I came to Army as a receiver and he moved me to defense after my freshman year. Bill saw some things in me and he said in a coaches meeting he'd like to coach me. If it wasn't for him, I don't know where I'd be football-wise. Everything I learned about playing defensive back I learned from him."

Coaxum said working with another group of coaches, similar to any profession, including his days as an Army officer, will help him continue to mature as a coach.

"No matter what profession you're in, you want to be surrounded with people who will help you better yourself," Coaxum said. "It was the same thing when I was in the Army. I looked at my peers and my commanders and thought, 'Those are the type of things I want to do if I'm in that role and I wouldn't do that type of thing if I was in the same role. It's a continued growth process. There a lot of ways to get the job done, and I want to continue to learn and get the job of coaching down and go from there."

Coaxum, also will have the opportunity to spend time with Tampa Bay assistant coach Jimmy Raye, who has been an African American pioneer throughout his college playing career and college and NFL coaching careers.

Raye, Tampa's senior offensive assistant, was one of major college football's first black quarterbacks when he played at Michigan State, including a two-year stint as Spartans' starter that featured the 1966 "Game of the Century" against Notre Dame. Raye had left the segregated South in 1964 when he was recruited out of historic E.E. Smith High in Fayetteville, N.C., to play at Michigan State from 1965-67.

As a coach, he was among the first black college assistants when he started his coaching career at Michigan State (1971-75) after a brief NFL playing career. When he moved on to the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers in 1977 -- long before the league established its minority intern coaching program -- there were only a handful of black NFL assistant coaches. He then became one of the first black NFL coordinators when the Los Angeles Rams promoted him to offensive coordinator in 1983.

"I'm looking forward to meeting him," Coaxum said. "I've heard a lot about him. I know he's been all over the league. He's forgotten more football than guys like me, or a lot of guys in the league, will ever know."

Some of that coaching knowledge will be part of Coaxum by the time he returns to West Point in August.

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