State of the Hogs: Former Arkansas coach finds success in Germany

Larry Dixon is shown with former players during a reunion party.

FAYETTEVILLE — Larry Dixon carried his iPad to the bottom row of the press box in Reynolds Razorback Stadium. He had the notebook camera set to record 20 minutes of the pregame warmups.

“I’m going to take this back to my players,” said Dixon, beaming like a kid in a candy store.

There was no candy, just a cane hooked over his right elbow. Dixon struggles to get around, but he had a pep in his step for his two days in Fayetteville that included a tour of facilities from Dean Weber, the longtime Arkansas trainer. He was smiling when he saw the band form the “A” and the Razorbacks come streaming through it.

Dixon was on a trip home that included a family reunion in Morrilton, the Arkansas-Mississippi State football game, and then visits to his heart doctor and dentist in the Dallas area. The end goal was to haul all of his medical records back to what probably will be his last home, the Bavarian Alps.

More specifically, Dixon lives in Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany. It’s a short train ride from Munich. He coaches the junior team for the Fursty Razorbacks, content to work with youth after a stint with the senior team that landed him Bavarian Coach of the Year honors two seasons back.

“It’s about as beautiful a place as you could ever live,” he said, comparing it favorably to Vail or Aspen in Colorado.

Dixon, 72, sent a message through Facebook about his trip “home” before the Mississippi State game. He wanted to visit in the press box. It was decided that it would be more than that. An interview the Friday before the game that would take place at Herman’s Rib House.

“I can’t eat the steaks I remember there,” he said. “I’m going to have some dental work done before the game.”

So we did Herman’s famous garlic chicken, with ribs as an appetizer.

“This is wonderful,” Dixon said.

Over and over, Dixon said that. That’s nothing new. I’ve known him for 40 years, with visits in press boxes and practice fields all over the country.

That’s really what he’s said for the last 52 years, mostly spent as a coach or administrator, crossing paths with legend after legend. The stories are rich.

There were some secrets revealed from his time as one of the first “compliance” officers at NCAA schools. He had good training, dating back to his days in UA law school, taught by Al Witte.

It could be that Dixon was the first compliance officer anywhere to have something like that in his title when Frank Broyles and Lon Farrell decided he needed to stay in Fayetteville when Lou Holtz was fired after the 1983 season.

“No one had heard of a title with compliance in it when Frank and Lon came up with it for me,” he said.

“Lon was Frank’s right-hand man. He did about everything. I learned a lot from Lon. I remember going through the stadium the day before games checking every bathroom, every light in the stadium.”

Farrell was the detail man in the Broyles administration, and some of the details were unique.

“I don’t know that I’ve heard of anyone doing this anywhere, but Lon kept a notebook for Frank,” Dixon said. “I’m not sure how many people even knew that notebook existed.”

It was a 10-year history of Arkansas recruiting, listing coaches and who they signed and how many years they lettered or started. There were details on who was in trouble, quit or flunked out.

Farrell detailed “every penny that coach had spent on recruiting trips … even had it broken down to cost per recruit. It was eye-opening.”

Dixon spent time on the field coaching for Holtz, then later with Ken Hatfield. He also worked in compliance for Holtz at Notre Dame, a short-lived experience that proved he was a southern boy at heart.

That still goes today. Fursty is in extreme southern Germany, with day trip opportunities to all the great cities in Europe. He sent pictures from his phone ahead of his trip to Arkansas on a visit to Prague.

While looking at the big Razorback on the turf ahead of the game with Mississippi State, Dixon recalled the day before a nationally televised game with Texas when Broyles came up with a big idea.

“There had never been anything painted on the field,” Dixon said. “Frank had seen someone’s logo on a field on TV. I think it was ’81 before we played Texas. So our grounds crew was told to put a Razorback on the 50-yard line.

“The only problem, they didn’t have the right paint. About the time they finished painting it on the field Friday morning, it started raining. All the red and black paint washed to the sideline. It was a mess Saturday morning.”

The Fayetteville Fire Department was called.

“They brought in a pumper truck and hosed all of the red paint off the field,” Dixon said. “Our grounds crew got it repainted that morning.”

Dixon’s path to Bavaria includes two stops with the Dallas Cowboys. He owes that to Little Rock Catholic principal George Tribou.

“Father Tribou hired me to coach,” Dixon said. “My safety was Stephen Jones.”

Jerry Jones, then in the oil and gas business, encouraged Dixon to continue his coaching with the Razorbacks and made the call to Holtz and Broyles to make it happen.

There was a life-changing conversation with Jerry Jones that made him believe that he was in the right profession. Jones reminded Dixon that he’d played for some legends when the Razorbacks won the national championship in 1964.

Jones watched the Rockets practice almost daily from his office several floors up, on a hill just to the south of the high school. Dixon will never forget his words.

“Some of what he said I can’t repeat,” Dixon said, “but what I will tell you he said was important and went something like this: You are as smart as they are; you are as good a coach as the ones who coached me when I was there. Go work your tail off. Be the first one they see in the morning and the last one they see at night — no job is too small — study, listen, learn and just be yourself, and that will be good enough.”

Dixon asked Jones for a job twice, although he never worked as a coach.

“Jerry told me that Jimmy Johnson hired all of the coaches,” Dixon said. “So I worked in other areas.”

Dixon worked in the front office for a couple of seasons before jumping back into compliance at Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Notre Dame. He went to work in the Cowboys’ scouting department again in 1989.

There were 15 years with the Cowboys, mostly underneath Larry Lacewell. He scouted pro personnel for 10 years. It was during that time that he began to make trips to scout NFL Europe teams. A relationship with NFL executive John Beake eventually led to a job with the Fursty club and back to coaching on the field.

“At first, I was doing clinics, coaching coaches,” he said. “I just loved Fursty, and when they offered me a job, I just thought it was great.

“You just can’t believe how beautiful it is — no trash and no crime. I think nothing of taking a train ride by myself in the middle of the night to go to Munich, or anywhere.”

A decade later, he’s got hundreds of players who call him “Coach Opa.” That’s “Grandpa” in German.

“We’ve got good players, some of them Division I players,” he said. “We’ve sent quite a few to Division II (American) teams.”

The senior team is semi-pro and has moved to the German first division after dominating lower levels for the last 20 years.

“It got to where no one in our division would schedule us anymore,” Dixon said. “We moved up the last two years.”

The playbook Dixon uses is based off the “50 defense” he learned from Don Lindsey, the defensive coordinator for Holtz from 1981-83.

“The defense we are running now is parts of everything I learned from every coach, but a lot of it came from what I learned from Don,” Dixon said. “I call it my 4-4, but it’s the same stuff that people are calling 4-2-5 now.

“I taught it to Spike Dykes when I was at Texas Tech (in compliance). I left there to go to the Cowboys just ahead of the spring when he put it in. I gave him that playbook. That was the defense they used at Tech (in 1995) to win their only SWC championship.”

There are parts of that scheme that were in place in 1982 that the Hogs -- with Keith Burns as a rover/outside linebacker -- used to thump Bill Yoeman's veer team at Houston, 38-3. It was the same sort of stuff that Dixon ran in '85 with Burns at Pacific as the two defensive assistants to head coach Bob Cope as in a great upset at Minnesota.

That victory at Minnesota was considered 1985's biggest upset of college football. Dixon said, "Keith and I pretty much coached the defense. Bob Cope was the head coach and he traveled around. Pete Carroll was on our sideline between jobs and when I came down from the press box, he almost broke my ribs with a hug. We had 35 players. We flew commercial out there and it took us two days to get home between lay overs."

About the only place Dixon said he didn’t fit was in South Bend, Ind., during his short stay with at Notre Dame. He said it was a mistake to take the job.

“They didn’t get my strong southern accent,” he said. “I was miserable there. I will say that I made friends there, including Barry Alvarez. He was one of Lou’s defensive coaches. Barry knew I wasn’t having any fun, and he tried to make things better. He’s a good guy.

“I guess I just had to go see what Notre Dame was all about, Touchdown Jesus and the whole thing. Father Tribou would have never forgiven me had I not gone.”

There’s no doubt he’s at home now.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it, to be coaching the Razorbacks with my background at Arkansas?” he said. “There are three teams in Germany with the nickname Razorbacks.”

The logo is a bit of a throwback, not anything like the one Arkansas uses now.

“My players all want to hear about American football, these Razorbacks,” Dixon said. “They want to know everything I can tell them. They are sponges. They watch NFL and NCAA teams.”

There are legends his players have heard about like Jerry Jones and Lou Holtz. There are others that they wouldn’t know.

“One of my great thrills was working in the administration (at Arkansas) with Wilson Matthews,” Dixon said. “Our offices on the third floor of the Broyles Center were across the hall from each other. He was from Atkins, me from Morrilton. We knew the same families.”

His players wouldn’t know about Father Tribou.

“He was one of the greatest men I was ever around,” Dixon said. “I learned so much from him.

“Spike Dykes was like that, too, just a wonderful person. I drove to Shreveport to watch his practices in a bowl game and told him I’d drive to Lubbock and work for free. I wrote him a letter, and he called me and asked me to come work for him.

“John David Crow hired me away to Texas A&M and doubled my salary. I probably should have stayed in Lubbock and kept working for Spike. Who knows where I’d be now, though? It’s worked out.

“When I left John David to go to Notre Dame, he said he’d double my salary and that the Aggies needed me and Notre Dame didn’t need me. Stay.

“I might should have stayed. I don’t know. But all those forks in the road, you just take one. It’s like what Yogi (Berra) said, ‘I know some of the wrong turns happened when my guardian angel was on a break.’”

One of Dixon’s messages on the Internet was a good summary. He wrote, “Life is good in Bavaria.” But he wrote it in German.

There is one American phrase that Dixon hasn’t had to teach his players. Dixon said it’s the same worldwide.

Woo Pig Sooie.