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www.panews.com Former QBs hail Thompson -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Todd Dodge, coach of the No. 1-ranked high school football team in the country, Southlake Carroll, says his old high school coach in Port Arthur had a special way of communicating with his quarterbacks and receivers. So he wasn't surprised Friday when he got the news that Ronnie Thompson had been hired again by Port Arthur -- this time to be head football coach and athletic director for Memorial High. "I got a little wind of it last week," Dodge said from Chicago, where he was speaking at a football clinic. He explained he and Thompson regularly visit via phone. "I just think it's tremendous. I think it's great for the town of Port Arthur. I just think it's great for Ronnie. If anybody had a love for that town, it's Ronnie. It reminds me of 25 years ago when he coached all of us. He loves the town of Port Arthur." Dodge, national coach of the year in 2004, was just one of two Parade All-American quarterbacks Thompson coached at Thomas Jefferson from 1978 to 1981. Both went on to play major college football -- Dodge at the University of Texas and Craig Stump at Texas A&M -- and become high school head coaches who share in Thompson's love for wide-open offensive attacks. Both hailed Thompson's return to coach in Port Arthur as a great bit of news for their old stomping ground. Dodge thinks Port Arthur can recapture the excitement it had in 1980 and 1981, when the Yellow Jackets went 24-1-1. "There's no doubt," he said. "I think the talent level at Port Arthur Memorial is greater than it was at TJ back when he took the job with all of us. I think he's still one of the great offensive minds and organizers of a program in the state of Texas." It's easy for Dodge to get excited for Thompson. He says he wouldn't be a coach today if not for the influence of his former coach. Thompson was an assistant at UT when Dodge was there and the two have remained close, both coaching in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex most of the past two decades. Stump finished up at A&M and went into college coaching for 15 years. His father, Ron Stump, was his coaching inspiration. "I'm happy for him," Craig Stump said of Thompson. "I think he's a good coach and I think he's going to do a good job there. I know the kids that want to play for their school are going to want to play for him and the kids that are in it for themselves won't be around too long. "I think kids that want to play will respond to the way that he's coaching. They should be glad to have him." As much as for his innovative offense, Stump remembers Thompson for stressing discipline and teamwork, two values he credits for much of his team's success last fall as Stump led his first-year West Brook team to a six-game turnaround (from 2-8 to 8-2) and the third round of the playoffs. "The team comes first," he says. "That's why all our guys have "TEAM" on their shirt. No one person's bigger than the team. All you've got to do is watch the Super Bowl. What did the Steelers say? 'We're a team.' " Dodge, Stump and Thompson all have featured wide-open, four- and five-wide receiver "spread" offenses as head coaches, a natural extension of Thompson's approach back in his TJ days. "Back at TJ, most of the time, we had two or three wide receivers, but we used our running backs as receivers, too," Stump said. "Back then, not many people threw the ball, period, and we threw more than other people. "We sprinted out a lot. We probably threw on first down more than most people did. We were more willing to move the football with the pass. Back then, more people were trying to do it with the option and the run." Dodge, the first Texas high schooler to pass for 3,000 yards in a season, liked the way Thompson spread out his attack. "One of the best things Ronnie ever did," Dodge said, "was he put together an offense that was very hard to defend by personnel. He had a lot of different people involved when it came to moving the football. "A lot of people remember Dodge and (wide receiver Brent) Duhon. But there was (wide receiver) Rick Wyble, there was (wide receiver) Shea Walker, there was (running back) Bruce Miller, there was (fullback) Don Holloway, there was (flanker) Robert Smothers. "There were a lot of people he trained to be a factor within his offenses. That's one of the things I've tried to model my offenses on, wherever I've been: to make sure we were very hard to defend by stopping one person, that there was not just one guy getting it done." Thompson calls his offense "multiple," and a "Star Wars kind of thing" he developed over the years. He says that after leaving TJ, he spent a good deal of time with and incorporated many ideas from former Houston Gamblers offensive coordinator Mouse Davis, inventor of the "run-and-shoot" offense that helped Andre Ware of win the Heisman Trophy for the University of Houston. But wide-open offenses are nothing new these days. Every team Memorial played last season ran some kind of a spread offense. Still, Stump expects Thompson's return to Southeast Texas football stadiums to create sleepless nights for defensive coaches just like he did a quarter of a century ago. "He's stayed up with the game," the Bruin coach says of the four years Thompson spent away from the sidelines after retiring in 2001. "He knows the concepts very well." "I don't think that's a factor at all," Dodge says. "Ronnie was so far ahead of his time offensively, I don't think it's going to affect him at all. "Ronnie's always had a great way of communicating with a lot of different athletes. I think those kids are going to love him." And it will make for one interesting Friday night when Thompson's Memorial team faces off with Stump's West Brook Bruins in next fall's District 21-5A. "I know he's going to try to win and so am I," Stump says. "He's going to compete just like I will. "It'll be a little bit different, just like this past year when we played Nederland." Nederland head coach Larry Neumann and Bulldog assistant Phil Pate were assistant coaches under Thompson at TJ. "Those guys coached me," Stump said. "It was like competing against your brother, it was fun. I think it makes it more interesting when it's somebody you know well."