My View/Your View: Coach (and scout) Adams is simply one ‘bear’ of a man

Tim Adams is a big man. He stands 6 feet, 2 inches, and weighs in at more than 300 pounds. Some folks might even say he looks a little intimidating. He looks like he might have some Grizzly Adams in him. Hell, he even looks like he could wrestle a bear.

Tim Adams, who’s actually an easy-going, mild-mannered gent, just laughs about the Grizzly Adams comparison. Then, about as quick as a bear can take a swipe at its prey, Adams responds somewhat proudly, one eyebrow seemingly a little higher than the other, “Well, actually, I have wrestled a bear.”

You have . . . what?

Adams, who now spends most of his time wrestling with the evaluations of Indiana high school football players for Scout.com, an online scouting service owned by Fox Sports, just laughs while explaining his daring episode in 1978 in Fort Myers, Fla.

“It was at a mall, somewhat of a carnival atmosphere. I thought I was mean and lean, certainly much more back then than I am nowadays, so I wrestled Victor, The Wrestling Bear, on a dare, with about 200 people watching me,” he said. “I guess I wanted to impress everyone.’’

Adams said the bear was muzzled, so he didn’t have to worry about getting his fingers caught in those powerful jaws, and he said the techniques he learned while wrestling in college helped him avoid any swipes from the bear’s sharp claws.

“I knew how to do wrestling spins to get around the bear,’’ said Adams, a graduate of Lincoln (Ill.) Christian College. “Plus I was the bear’s third match that day, so I figured he’d surely be tired. I stood between him and his trainer, so Victor could not see any hand signals. I put a bear hug, if you will, the best I could on Victor, got him down on his side, then promptly jumped off and got away from him.”

Adams said he pretty much held his own. His wife, Mary, told him that he really smelled.

“You can’t believe what kind of a smell comes from rolling around with a bear. I mean, it stayed with me a long, long time,’’ Adams said, as if reliving his experience.

Mary referred to her husband as being “young and dumb and a fool.’’

Adams said she pretty much told him he was still dumb and a fool when he took early retirement in 2006 from teaching social studies and coaching football at Mt. Vernon, where he served as defensive coordinator for 17 years in Hancock County.

For Tim Adams, bear stories aside, life is even more fun nowadays. Really fun.

You may not know him, but if you are connected with Indiana high school football as a coach or a player, there’s a pretty good chance he knows you. He’s been roaming the sidelines on Friday nights for years, and you can count on him showing up somewhere this weekend for the start of the 37th Indiana high school football tournament, which begins with sectionals throughout the state.

Adams was doing many other things before Scout.com came into his life. He had a full plate, and it’s still plenty full.

Adams, an assistant coach on the 1985 Class A Eastern Hancock High School state-champion football team prior to taking the job at Mt. Vernon, started Gridiron Digest 10 years ago. It remains a popular online site where he writes and talks about football and its players in a weekly forum. He basically oversees it on a daily basis.

“I started out by linking stories on the Internet from everywhere about high school football. Next to Texas and Ohio, we are the third-largest site in the country,’’ he said, proudly. “On Friday nights, about 10,000 people come online to read stories, get scores or just to check us out.’’

Adams and Andrew Smith, a former newspaper sports editor in Greenfield who also teaches at New Palestine High School and coaches the freshman girls basketball team, also continues to combine their talents to provide online broadcasts of a Hancock County Football Game of the Week.

Adams formed Crossroads Communications, but pretty much lets Smith, who is also president of the Indiana Sportswriters-Sportscasters Association, handle the online broadcasts.

“Our goal is to expand to the Hoosier Heritage Conference and do other games like we do the Hancock County Game of the Week. What we’re doing is something we love. Andrew is very professional, and he has a degree in broadcasting from Indiana University. He’s very, very good at what he does. I just provide some analyst work and try and stay out of his way,’’ Adams said.

Adams said his original plan was to work with South Bend’s Paul Conroy on his northern Indiana digital sports magazine after retirement. Part-time, that is. That was short lived. He said he’s gone from retirement to a full-time job since he joined Scout.com in January 2009.

“When Fox Sports approached me, I realized this would be as steady as it would be rewarding, and it’s all about promoting the best players in Indiana. That was appealing to me. I get to see the best players … I’m really enjoying promoting players. It’s a fun job,’’ he said.

And just when you think he’s found his labor of love, he mentions the fact he’s also an Ordained Christian Minister. “If you could ask my daddy, who’s now deceased, what my real labor of love is, he’d probably tell you that it’s ‘church . . . and football.’ ’’

Adams said he preaches on weekends in Orange, Ind., a rural town located between Connersville and Rushville, where 65-70 people come to worship.

“I’m guessing a lot of people in Indiana have not heard of Orange. It’s a pretty small community, but it’s so big to me,’’ said the McCordsville resident.

Adams is pretty humble about what he does in life. He said he feels truly blessed. Yet, he’s also proud of how far high school football has come in Indiana over the past 10 years, and he loves to spread the word about the popularity of the game.

“It’s just amazing how much football has grown. I really think we’re becoming a football state. The biggest high school basketball site, I think, in Indiana is Hickory Husker. They don’t even come close to our digest in number of daily hits and volume. And this is supposed to be a basketball state, they tell us,” he said with a smile.

One thing he’s quick to admit, though, is that he’s not a writer, even though his job with Scout.com requires him to do some writing.

He said, jokingly, that he likes to tell people “I was a media mogul.’’

It’s his coaching background, he says, that enables him to do what he does. Quite simply, Adams knows the game. He knows the X’s and O’s. He watches a great deal of film, something he’s done for most of his life, and then breaks down what he sees and provides information, like the strengths and weaknesses of players.

Adams said he’s planning to bring a football combine from Princeton, Ind., to Indianapolis in 2010. It will be held sometime in May at Pike High School. He’ll invite Scout.com's top 200 players, and they will be evaluated at the combine.

He also said he’s been asked to take all of the recruits for 2010 from Notre Dame and write evaluations on them and give them to the Notre Dame online site.

Adams said Scout.com is one of just two huge national football scouting services. The other is Rivals.com, which doesn’t really cover Indiana.

Adams has made a lot of acquaintances and friends through the years. He likes people. And people seem to genuinely like him. Once you meet him, you are no longer a stranger.

“There are few things more enjoyable for me than sitting next to coach Adams as he describes what's going on during a football game. He puts the complex parts of football in layman's terms, yet he has a lot of fun while doing it. That shows on our broadcasts. My knowledge of the game has increased many times over during the last four years because I've been able to have him explain what's going on so well,’’ said Smith.

Smith said Adams really believes deeply in promoting high school football in Indiana, and that he was willing to combine his interest in the nascent Internet with his love of football. “He does it – and he does what he does for Scout and everything else along the way – because he loves football,’’ Smith said.

Then Smith paused, trying to recall a few stories he and Adams have shared. “I hope he's told you about his state championship ring from Eastern Hancock?’’ he asked me. “He lost it, but it was discovered by someone at EHHS last year (possibly when cleaning).’’

Not one of Adams’ more enjoyable moments, for sure. That is, until the ring turned up. It meant and still means a lot to him.

Smith said Adams is real good about telling stories and filling air time, such as when they had a two-hour halftime delay because of a monsoon two years ago at Carmel where they stayed on the air the entire time.

Adams also is good about keeping a conversation going no matter who stops by to chat, and he always makes time for you, such as he did at the Sept. 4 game between Center Grove and Carmel. Several acquaintances walked up to him to shake his hand and chat on the Carmel side of the field, where he was seated on a bench, far away from the team.

As neat as that seemed to me, a bystander who had only just met him, it actually got better. Shortly after Center Grove concluded its pregame warm-ups and headed to the dressing room, coach Eric Moore went out of his way to walk across the field to shake Adams’ hand and exchange a few pleasantries. That was pretty cool, especially considering the magnitude leading up to the Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference game where defending state-champion Center Grove entered the game unbeaten and ranked No. 1 in the Class 5A.

“We go back a long way,’’ said Adams, who also did some play-by-play taped-delayed television of Center Grove games last year. “Eric is a great guy. He coaches a Wing-T offense. That’s how we actually met because Doug Peacock coaches the same offense at Mt. Vernon. And, of course, I enjoyed working with him when I did TV for his games.”

Adams got up from the bench and all but gave Moore a big hug. But, really, would you expect much less from a man who once wrestled a bear?

Mark Morrow is an online columnist for VYPE High School Sports Magazine, Central Indiana. He can be reached at mediamarko@sbcglobal.net or by leaving a comment.