NORMAN — I’ve spent the last few weeks reporting on a big profile of Oklahoma special teams quality control coach Chip Viney, who was recently promoted to that full-time spot after nearly three years as a graduate assistant.
That story ran in the Sunday newspaper and you can read it at this link.
But, as is the case with many big stories, I had to leave out a hefty amount of great information. I’m going to try and squeeze as much of that as possible into this blog post, because Viney is a fascinating guy and a very important — if often behind-the-scenes — part of the OU football machine.
THE DB GURU
Tony Perry is known around Fresno, Calif., as the “DB Guru,” and with his record of producing Division I defensive backs, who can argue with that nickname?
The 52-year old Perry has sent dozens of his players to schools around the country. His entire 2008 Edison High School secondary, for example, went Division I — Robert Golden to Arizona, T.J. McDonald to USC, Brandon Leslie to Georgia Tech and Cliff Harris to Oregon.
Perry also runs camps and trains Fresno high school players privately.
Reached by telephone, Perry heard the name “Courtney Viney” and didn’t even let me finish my first question before eagerly offering, “That’s my guy right there. He’s like my protege, man.”
Perry and Viney’s father are longtime friends, so Perry started working Courtney out as a youngster, and eventually coached him at Edison High.
Although he stood at just 5-foot-8, Viney made up for it with an intense attention to detail and dedication to learning the game.
Perry takes his pupils to camps around California, and took Viney to one being run by DeWayne Walker, who was the Washington Redskins’ defensive backs coach at the time.
Lots of current and former NFL players and coaches — like now-Seahawks defensive coordinator Kris Richard and then-Redskins cornerback Shawn Springs — worked Walker’s camp.
“Those guys were pinpointing him, ‘Who’s that little guy right there?’” Walker remembered in a phone interview last week.
Perry first got connected with Mike Stoops back during the 2002 recruiting cycle, when he sent Aaron Miller to Oklahoma. The two remained in touch after Stoops got the Arizona head coaching job.
That’s how Tim Kish — then an Arizona assistant and now OU’s linebackers coach — found out about Viney back in 2006, presenting the undersized cornerback with his first scholarship offer.
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Viney really liked Stoops and Kish and strongly considered Arizona, but ended up signing with UCLA instead.
At UCLA, Walker became Viney’s first defensive coordinator and position coach, and then was Viney’s head coach after he used the graduate transfer rule to join New Mexico State for his senior season.
“One of his strengths is that he pays attention to the things that are right and stays away from the things that are wrong,” said Walker, who is now the Jacksonville Jaguars’ defensive backs coach.
WHY IS HE CALLED ‘CHIP’?
Viney always went by his first name until he got to UCLA. During his career there, Bruins strength coach Mike Linn became impressed with how the undersized Viney played.
“I like the way you play,” Linn told Viney. “You play with a chip on your shoulder. I’m gonna start calling you ‘Chip.’”
Viney responded, “I don’t look like a Chip!”
Still, the nickname caught on, and before too long, Viney embraced it.
“It just kinda stuck,” Viney remembered. “I feel like it kinda explains my playing career and how I want to be as a coach. There’s always your doubters and haters, but I want to always be a guy who does his job with a chip on his shoulder.
“Now when I introduce myself, it’s Chip.”
BATTLING JALEN SAUNDERS
I referenced this briefly in Sunday’s story, but wanted to go into a little more detail about it here.
During Viney’s senior season at New Mexico State, the Aggies hosted Fresno State.
New Mexico State had never beaten the Bulldogs before, and star sophomore receiver Jalen Saunders did everything he could on Nov. 12, 2011, to ensure the streak continued.
Saunders caught seven passes for 174 yards and two touchdowns, while also rushing for a 15-yard score. But late in the fourth quarter, with New Mexico State clinging to a 48-45 lead, Viney broke up a pass intended for Saunders that allowed the Aggies to escape with a victory.
(You can watch the play in this YouTube video. The break-up happens at the 8:21 mark)
Fresno State never offered Viney a scholarship despite him being a hometown boy, and the Bulldogs beat UCLA 36-31 in 2008 during Viney’s redshirt freshman season.
“There was a little grudge there,” Walker said of Viney’s motivation in that game.
Between the 2011 and 2012 seasons, Saunders transferred to Oklahoma and became a Sooners star. During Saunders’ senior season in 2013, Viney had joined OU as a graduate assistant coach.
HE DIDN’T REALLY WANT TO COACH
Viney remembers sitting down in Walker’s office at New Mexico State near the end of his senior season, and Walker telling him he should consider a future in coaching.
Walker asked Viney what his future goals were, and Viney responded, “I want to play in the NFL.”That’s when Walker tried to delicately tell him that was unlikely.
“Guys want to play as long as they can,” Walker said. “I had a similar career as him. The chances of him making it were gonna be slim, and I told him his passion for football and wanting to be around it, coaching would be an option for him just because of his makeup.
“He just had a good feel for things. He just needed to get around some good people who were gonna teach him the right way from a coaching standpoint.”
That’s why Walker nominated Viney for the 2012 Future Coaches Academy, which was being held during the annual coaches’ convention in San Antonio that January.
Viney was one of 30 guys to get invited, and he attended, spending time around hundreds of coaches from around the country and sitting in seminars.
“I left out of there saying, ‘I’ll never be a college coach,’” Viney recalled.
Still, after Viney’s short-lived Arena Football League career with the San Jose SaberCats, he accepted his old high school coach’s offer to help him at Fresno’s Central East High School. That defensive backfield consisted of Hatari Byrd, Johnny Johnson, L.J. Moore and Michiah Quick. Johnson signed with UCLA, while the other three all signed with Oklahoma.
One day, Mike Stoops showed up to take a look at those guys, and Perry asked Viney to run some defensive back drills.
“I usually run everything, but I let Courtney run it in front of Mike,” Perry said. “I told Mike, ‘Watch this.’
“Mike said, ‘This guy knows what he’s doing.’”
Stoops would soon lose defensive graduate assistant Ryan Walters, who accepted the defensive backs coaching job at North Texas and is now coaching DBs at Missouri. So he offered the spot to Viney.
“I’d just gotten engaged and really wasn’t sure if I could do that,” Viney said.
Eventually, though, he decided he couldn’t say “no” to Mike Stoops twice and accepted the offer.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
When Mike Stoops first took Viney into the defensive backs meeting room to introduce him, those players thought he was a new transfer.
“We all just looked at each other like, ‘Who is this dude?’” remembered Zack Sanchez. “We thought it was a player transferring in or something.”
Then, the defensive backs were surprised by how involved Viney was in their training.
“What I did notice is that the coaches trusted him a lot to do things that I didn’t normally see from the GAs,” said former OU defensive back Kass Everett. “They gave him trust in running DB drills. They let him coach with his personality; they didn’t really try to tame him. They let him be who he was.”
Viney immediately put those footwork drills learned from Perry — “The DB Guru” — to work with the Sooners, and although it was often frustrating, the players say he undoubtedly made them better.
But he also helped them with their football IQ.
“Physically, I would say footwork and hips is his specialty,” said Aaron Colvin, who just wrapped up his second season with the Jacksonville Jaguars. “He’s really good at getting those things better.
“But more than anything, I would say he got me right mentally. The way I thought, the way I processed the game, the way I read receivers. He helped me with all that.”
Viney also surprised the players by frequently wearing his cleats to workouts and challenging both other defensive backs and receivers to one-on-one battles. He went head-to-head against guys like Sterling Shepard and Jalen Saunders.
“A lot of those guys think since he sits in an office he doesn’t have it, but he still does have it,” Sanchez said. “Guys would talk, but if he put those cleats on, he will get you.
“You may get him a couple times, but he’s gonna get you more than you get him.”
For his part, Viney said the best part of his job is watching guys transform. He worked with Sanchez all three years that he started for the Sooners, and watched him go from being a guy who wasn’t expected to start to intercepting 15 passes and skipping his senior year for the NFL Draft.
“There’s nothing like seeing a scrawny Zack Sanchez, who everyone thought had a ways before he would touch the field, trust you and then transform,” Viney said. “You put him mentally and physically through a test and he becomes a prominent, successful Division I athlete. You work through those wrinkles and three years later, he declares for the draft. That’s the part of it I love is the transformational part.
“I love the opportunity to transform young boys into men. God willing, I will continue to do my job well and see what happens.”
A BRIGHT FUTURE
So where does Viney go from here? He was promoted from being a graduate assistant into a full-time, special teams quality control position this month.
The position was created when C.J. Ah You left to become Vanderbilt’s defensive line coach. Even though Viney will be focused on special teams stuff, don’t think he won’t still be out there working with defensive backs on their technique.
Viney will also remain heavily involved in recruiting, where he’s already made a huge impact.
Many people interviewed for this package expect that Viney will be a full-time defensive backs coach within the next few years.
“I look forward to seeing him skyrocket in the coaching world,” Colvin said. “His dedication and his hard work are gonna take him a long way, and I’m really excited to see where it takes him. You guys will see him doing big things here soon.”
Former OU assistant Bobby Jack Wright worked closely with Viney before retiring after the 2015 season. He said Viney’s genuine nature and his ability to make people comfortable will take him far when it comes to recruiting.
“He’s got an opportunity to be a really good football coach,” said former OU assistant Bobby Jack Wright, who retired after the 2015 season but worked with Viney closely.
“The hardest thing anymore about coaching on the college level is getting that break. That’s basically what he needs is an opportunity where he finally does get a break and gets on a college staff. I think he’s got a chance to be very, very successful.”
Walker — Viney’s head coach at New Mexico State and one of his defensive coordinators at UCLA — said he has “all the attributes” to make it.
“Obviously, in our profession, the jury’s out,” said Walker, who is now the Jaguars’ defensive backs coach.
“Even for me, shoot, every year the jury’s out for all of us. At some point, he’s gonna have to get his own group and his own guys, and show some of the talent that he has.”
QUOTABLE
Here are a few more quotes about Viney.
Perry, the DB Guru and one of Viney’s mentors: “The thing with Courtney was his work ethic. He was a smaller guy so he had to outwork everybody. He worked with me every day. I mean, the kid worked every day. His footwork and hips were so good. He put the work in. He was smaller so he had to get his skill level up. He knew the game so well that he was becoming a young teacher.”
Walker, the Jaguars defensive backs coach: “I think you have to be a good person. You have to be genuine for people to continue to say that about you. It doesn’t matter who he’s around; that’s what you hear about him. That’s a very good trait to have as a young coach is to be real and genuine. I think that’s one of his greatest attributes. … I think that really starts with being a good person and caring about trying to help guys get better.”
Former OU defensive back Kass Everett: “Having someone around who was a little bit closer in age gave us some insight. He was into the same things that we were into. That helped us grow close to him. He wasn’t just a GA; he was a friend to a lot of us. You could tell he was passionate about the game. He loved what he did.”
Former OU safety Gabe Lynn: “I can only imagine how he is in recruiting and stuff like that. He’s a great dude. My parents loved him when they met him. It’s easy to get along with him and easy to have conversations with him.”
Former OU cornerback Julian Wilson: “He’s gonna give you the good and he’s gonna give you the bad. And sometimes it’s better hearing that from him than hearing it from a coach. After you have a bad game, that’s not really what you want to hear. Viney’s gonna come to you real with it. There’s not gonna be any sugarcoating and it might not be the way you want to hear it, but it’s coming from Viney, so you’re like, ‘OK. He’s right.’
Former OU cornerback Zack Sanchez: “He would bring up those bad games or those days when I was off and should have played better. He knew it would get more out of me. He knew what buttons to push to get me to work. He was really good at that. … I remember one time we probably did 200 press reps, just going back and forth, talking trash to each other. Those were the best days. That’s why I was so good at handling adversity on the field when bad things would happen. I’ve been in those workouts. There’s not anything a receiver or a team could throw at me that I haven’t seen.”
That story ran in the Sunday newspaper and you can read it at this link.
But, as is the case with many big stories, I had to leave out a hefty amount of great information. I’m going to try and squeeze as much of that as possible into this blog post, because Viney is a fascinating guy and a very important — if often behind-the-scenes — part of the OU football machine.
THE DB GURU
Tony Perry is known around Fresno, Calif., as the “DB Guru,” and with his record of producing Division I defensive backs, who can argue with that nickname?
The 52-year old Perry has sent dozens of his players to schools around the country. His entire 2008 Edison High School secondary, for example, went Division I — Robert Golden to Arizona, T.J. McDonald to USC, Brandon Leslie to Georgia Tech and Cliff Harris to Oregon.
Perry also runs camps and trains Fresno high school players privately.
Reached by telephone, Perry heard the name “Courtney Viney” and didn’t even let me finish my first question before eagerly offering, “That’s my guy right there. He’s like my protege, man.”
Perry and Viney’s father are longtime friends, so Perry started working Courtney out as a youngster, and eventually coached him at Edison High.
Although he stood at just 5-foot-8, Viney made up for it with an intense attention to detail and dedication to learning the game.
Perry takes his pupils to camps around California, and took Viney to one being run by DeWayne Walker, who was the Washington Redskins’ defensive backs coach at the time.
Lots of current and former NFL players and coaches — like now-Seahawks defensive coordinator Kris Richard and then-Redskins cornerback Shawn Springs — worked Walker’s camp.
“Those guys were pinpointing him, ‘Who’s that little guy right there?’” Walker remembered in a phone interview last week.
Perry first got connected with Mike Stoops back during the 2002 recruiting cycle, when he sent Aaron Miller to Oklahoma. The two remained in touch after Stoops got the Arizona head coaching job.
That’s how Tim Kish — then an Arizona assistant and now OU’s linebackers coach — found out about Viney back in 2006, presenting the undersized cornerback with his first scholarship offer.
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Viney really liked Stoops and Kish and strongly considered Arizona, but ended up signing with UCLA instead.
At UCLA, Walker became Viney’s first defensive coordinator and position coach, and then was Viney’s head coach after he used the graduate transfer rule to join New Mexico State for his senior season.
“One of his strengths is that he pays attention to the things that are right and stays away from the things that are wrong,” said Walker, who is now the Jacksonville Jaguars’ defensive backs coach.
WHY IS HE CALLED ‘CHIP’?
Viney always went by his first name until he got to UCLA. During his career there, Bruins strength coach Mike Linn became impressed with how the undersized Viney played.
“I like the way you play,” Linn told Viney. “You play with a chip on your shoulder. I’m gonna start calling you ‘Chip.’”
Viney responded, “I don’t look like a Chip!”
Still, the nickname caught on, and before too long, Viney embraced it.
“It just kinda stuck,” Viney remembered. “I feel like it kinda explains my playing career and how I want to be as a coach. There’s always your doubters and haters, but I want to always be a guy who does his job with a chip on his shoulder.
“Now when I introduce myself, it’s Chip.”
BATTLING JALEN SAUNDERS
I referenced this briefly in Sunday’s story, but wanted to go into a little more detail about it here.
During Viney’s senior season at New Mexico State, the Aggies hosted Fresno State.
New Mexico State had never beaten the Bulldogs before, and star sophomore receiver Jalen Saunders did everything he could on Nov. 12, 2011, to ensure the streak continued.
Saunders caught seven passes for 174 yards and two touchdowns, while also rushing for a 15-yard score. But late in the fourth quarter, with New Mexico State clinging to a 48-45 lead, Viney broke up a pass intended for Saunders that allowed the Aggies to escape with a victory.
(You can watch the play in this YouTube video. The break-up happens at the 8:21 mark)
Fresno State never offered Viney a scholarship despite him being a hometown boy, and the Bulldogs beat UCLA 36-31 in 2008 during Viney’s redshirt freshman season.
“There was a little grudge there,” Walker said of Viney’s motivation in that game.
Between the 2011 and 2012 seasons, Saunders transferred to Oklahoma and became a Sooners star. During Saunders’ senior season in 2013, Viney had joined OU as a graduate assistant coach.
HE DIDN’T REALLY WANT TO COACH
Viney remembers sitting down in Walker’s office at New Mexico State near the end of his senior season, and Walker telling him he should consider a future in coaching.
Walker asked Viney what his future goals were, and Viney responded, “I want to play in the NFL.”That’s when Walker tried to delicately tell him that was unlikely.
“Guys want to play as long as they can,” Walker said. “I had a similar career as him. The chances of him making it were gonna be slim, and I told him his passion for football and wanting to be around it, coaching would be an option for him just because of his makeup.
“He just had a good feel for things. He just needed to get around some good people who were gonna teach him the right way from a coaching standpoint.”
That’s why Walker nominated Viney for the 2012 Future Coaches Academy, which was being held during the annual coaches’ convention in San Antonio that January.
Viney was one of 30 guys to get invited, and he attended, spending time around hundreds of coaches from around the country and sitting in seminars.
“I left out of there saying, ‘I’ll never be a college coach,’” Viney recalled.
Still, after Viney’s short-lived Arena Football League career with the San Jose SaberCats, he accepted his old high school coach’s offer to help him at Fresno’s Central East High School. That defensive backfield consisted of Hatari Byrd, Johnny Johnson, L.J. Moore and Michiah Quick. Johnson signed with UCLA, while the other three all signed with Oklahoma.
One day, Mike Stoops showed up to take a look at those guys, and Perry asked Viney to run some defensive back drills.
“I usually run everything, but I let Courtney run it in front of Mike,” Perry said. “I told Mike, ‘Watch this.’
“Mike said, ‘This guy knows what he’s doing.’”
Stoops would soon lose defensive graduate assistant Ryan Walters, who accepted the defensive backs coaching job at North Texas and is now coaching DBs at Missouri. So he offered the spot to Viney.
“I’d just gotten engaged and really wasn’t sure if I could do that,” Viney said.
Eventually, though, he decided he couldn’t say “no” to Mike Stoops twice and accepted the offer.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
When Mike Stoops first took Viney into the defensive backs meeting room to introduce him, those players thought he was a new transfer.
“We all just looked at each other like, ‘Who is this dude?’” remembered Zack Sanchez. “We thought it was a player transferring in or something.”
Then, the defensive backs were surprised by how involved Viney was in their training.
“What I did notice is that the coaches trusted him a lot to do things that I didn’t normally see from the GAs,” said former OU defensive back Kass Everett. “They gave him trust in running DB drills. They let him coach with his personality; they didn’t really try to tame him. They let him be who he was.”
Viney immediately put those footwork drills learned from Perry — “The DB Guru” — to work with the Sooners, and although it was often frustrating, the players say he undoubtedly made them better.
But he also helped them with their football IQ.
“Physically, I would say footwork and hips is his specialty,” said Aaron Colvin, who just wrapped up his second season with the Jacksonville Jaguars. “He’s really good at getting those things better.
“But more than anything, I would say he got me right mentally. The way I thought, the way I processed the game, the way I read receivers. He helped me with all that.”
Viney also surprised the players by frequently wearing his cleats to workouts and challenging both other defensive backs and receivers to one-on-one battles. He went head-to-head against guys like Sterling Shepard and Jalen Saunders.
“A lot of those guys think since he sits in an office he doesn’t have it, but he still does have it,” Sanchez said. “Guys would talk, but if he put those cleats on, he will get you.
“You may get him a couple times, but he’s gonna get you more than you get him.”
For his part, Viney said the best part of his job is watching guys transform. He worked with Sanchez all three years that he started for the Sooners, and watched him go from being a guy who wasn’t expected to start to intercepting 15 passes and skipping his senior year for the NFL Draft.
“There’s nothing like seeing a scrawny Zack Sanchez, who everyone thought had a ways before he would touch the field, trust you and then transform,” Viney said. “You put him mentally and physically through a test and he becomes a prominent, successful Division I athlete. You work through those wrinkles and three years later, he declares for the draft. That’s the part of it I love is the transformational part.
“I love the opportunity to transform young boys into men. God willing, I will continue to do my job well and see what happens.”
A BRIGHT FUTURE
So where does Viney go from here? He was promoted from being a graduate assistant into a full-time, special teams quality control position this month.
The position was created when C.J. Ah You left to become Vanderbilt’s defensive line coach. Even though Viney will be focused on special teams stuff, don’t think he won’t still be out there working with defensive backs on their technique.
Viney will also remain heavily involved in recruiting, where he’s already made a huge impact.
Many people interviewed for this package expect that Viney will be a full-time defensive backs coach within the next few years.
“I look forward to seeing him skyrocket in the coaching world,” Colvin said. “His dedication and his hard work are gonna take him a long way, and I’m really excited to see where it takes him. You guys will see him doing big things here soon.”
Former OU assistant Bobby Jack Wright worked closely with Viney before retiring after the 2015 season. He said Viney’s genuine nature and his ability to make people comfortable will take him far when it comes to recruiting.
“He’s got an opportunity to be a really good football coach,” said former OU assistant Bobby Jack Wright, who retired after the 2015 season but worked with Viney closely.
“The hardest thing anymore about coaching on the college level is getting that break. That’s basically what he needs is an opportunity where he finally does get a break and gets on a college staff. I think he’s got a chance to be very, very successful.”
Walker — Viney’s head coach at New Mexico State and one of his defensive coordinators at UCLA — said he has “all the attributes” to make it.
“Obviously, in our profession, the jury’s out,” said Walker, who is now the Jaguars’ defensive backs coach.
“Even for me, shoot, every year the jury’s out for all of us. At some point, he’s gonna have to get his own group and his own guys, and show some of the talent that he has.”
QUOTABLE
Here are a few more quotes about Viney.
Perry, the DB Guru and one of Viney’s mentors: “The thing with Courtney was his work ethic. He was a smaller guy so he had to outwork everybody. He worked with me every day. I mean, the kid worked every day. His footwork and hips were so good. He put the work in. He was smaller so he had to get his skill level up. He knew the game so well that he was becoming a young teacher.”
Walker, the Jaguars defensive backs coach: “I think you have to be a good person. You have to be genuine for people to continue to say that about you. It doesn’t matter who he’s around; that’s what you hear about him. That’s a very good trait to have as a young coach is to be real and genuine. I think that’s one of his greatest attributes. … I think that really starts with being a good person and caring about trying to help guys get better.”
Former OU defensive back Kass Everett: “Having someone around who was a little bit closer in age gave us some insight. He was into the same things that we were into. That helped us grow close to him. He wasn’t just a GA; he was a friend to a lot of us. You could tell he was passionate about the game. He loved what he did.”
Former OU safety Gabe Lynn: “I can only imagine how he is in recruiting and stuff like that. He’s a great dude. My parents loved him when they met him. It’s easy to get along with him and easy to have conversations with him.”
Former OU cornerback Julian Wilson: “He’s gonna give you the good and he’s gonna give you the bad. And sometimes it’s better hearing that from him than hearing it from a coach. After you have a bad game, that’s not really what you want to hear. Viney’s gonna come to you real with it. There’s not gonna be any sugarcoating and it might not be the way you want to hear it, but it’s coming from Viney, so you’re like, ‘OK. He’s right.’
Former OU cornerback Zack Sanchez: “He would bring up those bad games or those days when I was off and should have played better. He knew it would get more out of me. He knew what buttons to push to get me to work. He was really good at that. … I remember one time we probably did 200 press reps, just going back and forth, talking trash to each other. Those were the best days. That’s why I was so good at handling adversity on the field when bad things would happen. I’ve been in those workouts. There’s not anything a receiver or a team could throw at me that I haven’t seen.”
