Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 30, 1993 TAG: 9312300105
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SHREVEPORT, LA. LENGTH: Long
There are, however, occasional events that overwhelm that talent.
In 1983, Bustle - who this year led the most productive offense in Hokies history - was a running backs coach with the Arizona Wranglers of the short-lived United States Football League.
He planned to buy a home in Phoenix after the season. One day, he was on the road scouting NFL camps to pick up castoffs. It was how USFL teams filled their rosters.
"I'm at Chicago airport, gettin' my shoes shined," Bustle said Tuesday, his native South Carolinian twang still intact. "Open up the newspaper, you know, `Arizona Wranglers to be sold.' I go running to the pay phone; I got wax on one shoe, and one shoe's shinin'.
"I'm calling the office [saying], `What the hell's going on?' They said, `Yeah, I think we're going to sell the team.' After about three weeks, [they told us], `We're not going to sell the team; it's all over with.' So I went ahead and bought my house.
"Three days before [he moved in], the lady [with the team] came in and said, `It's sold.' I wouldn't even let my wife put up a damn picture on the wall. We had bare walls everywhere, trying to sell it."
Bustle found a taker for his coaching ability, too: Northeast Louisiana, where he coached quarterback Stan Humphries, now with the San Diego Chargers. Three seasons later, Frank Beamer hired him as quarterbacks and receivers coach on Beamer's first staff at Virginia Tech.
He's just finished his first year as Tech's offensive coordinator; he got the promotion when former coordinator Steve Marshall joined Tennessee's staff last year. Friday at the Poulan/Weed Eater Independence Bowl, Tech finishes a season in which it has set school records for total offense, points, touchdowns and passing touchdowns.
And Bustle greets all this with the same shrug-your-shoulders, ain't-no-big-thing attitude he wears like a baggy, comfortable pair of sweats.
He says it wasn't until he carried a list of Tech's offensive records into a team meeting after the season and saw the players' awed reaction that he realized what Tech had accomplished.
Of course, Bustle's offense is no dictatorship.
"I can express my opinions behind doors," quarterback Maurice DeShazo said. "He'll let me tell him what I want to tell him."
That grows from Bustle's personal relationships with his quarterbacks. He had it with Will Furrer when Furrer set several Tech passing records from 1988-91, and DeShazo calls his and Bustle's relationship "buddy-buddy" at times.
"I just be myself," Bustle said. "I want these kids to come to me when they have problems. I want to be able to say what I'm going to say, and I don't have a problem with them saying what they want to say.
"I don't try to separate myself. I try to keep up with the new lingo, and words and things all those guys have. I have to tell 'em to explain it to me once in a while, so they know I'm tryin'."
Communication lines never sizzled more than after the West Virginia game, a 14-13 Tech loss in which several Hokies criticized a conservative game plan.
Bustle listened then, too.
"Those kids, like [Antonio] Freeman and Maurice, they make good sense sometimes," Bustle said. "Sometimes they don't understand the whole picture.
"They can say what they want to say, and talk about it, and let's go. It's a therapy thing, if nothing else."
Bustle's football diploma makes him a competent analyst whether it's offense or defense on the counselor's couch. When he finished his playing career as a Clemson receiver and joined the staff there as a graduate assistant, Charley Pell put him on defense to work with then-defensive backfield coach Mickey Andrews, who now is Florida State's defensive coordinator.
Pell told Bustle he needed to be well-rounded to grow up as a coach.
Bustle says Pell was right. His first post-Clemson job was as Gardner-Webb's defensive coordinator, and he spent two seasons at East Carolina as defensive backfield coach.
Clemson gave Bustle his roots in the option, which Tech put in last year as DeShazo became the starter.
He switched to receivers coach in his third year at East Carolina before joining the Wranglers. He wanted to stay on offense, though; in his third year at Northeast Louisiana, he said, he interviewed and felt he would be offered the defensive-backs position on Dick Sheridan's staff at North Carolina State.
Instead, he became offensive coordinator at Division I-AA Northeast Louisiana.
"There's no comparison of the two jobs. It was just a career decision that I made," Bustle said.
He joined Tech in 1987 but didn't have control of the offense. That hurt sometimes, he said, but mostly hurt the quarterbacks.
Although Bustle called some plays, Marshall - also the offensive line coach - was the offensive coordinator. When Marshall left, Bustle was Beamer's obvious, and eager, choice.
"I wanted it badly personally, for my career," he said, "but I thought it was what was right for our offense, too."
He knew he and DeShazo got along, and DeShazo often says it's much easier to communicate with his position coach about play-calling than it was with Marshall, who also was eyeing the offensive linemen.
"There's a lot of trust," Bustle said. "There's a special relationship between your quarterback and your quarterback coach. He knows you're not going to put him in situations that aren't good.
"That's the thing that frustrated them in years earlier: `Why'd you call that?' Then you're defending something else. Now, we talk about every play so much, and I know what [Maurice] can do and can't do, and when he can do it. And if I ask him to do something that's hard for him, he knows I'm doing it for a reason."
by CNB