Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/787374
T H E C L A S S O F 2 0 1 8 >>
su=er. You'll never see your kids. They'll
grow
up and you're going to regret it later
on.'
So I put that on the backburner until
they
got older, and now I'm in the process
of where I need to be to get another oppor-
tunity."
Humphries never thought about coach-
ing while growing up in Akron, Ohio. At
;rst he wanted to be a doctor and then a
lawyer, which led him to major in admin-
istration of justice at Penn State. He
changed his mind again a?er graduating
and, while playing for the Indianapolis
Colts in 1994-95, his career path swerved
into the world of internet technology.
"While I was playing for
the Colts, I wanted to own
an internet policing busi-
ness to go a?er hackers,"
he said. "I started into
building servers and try-
ing to ;gure out what
hackers do and hacking
techniques. I did all that
but I ended up being the
computer tech for all the
guys on the team. Every-
body who had a computer
would call me. I began
working for ADT [the security company]
in the o=-season to gain experience with
computers in a professional environ-
ment. My real computer technology ca-
reer started a?er I retired from football
when I began working for Managed Care
Solutions [a health care consulting com-
pany]."
That eventually led to a job with one of
the more famous internet companies, the
dating site Match.com, and a move to
Dallas in 2003. "I was the senior database
administrator for 13 years," Humphries
said. "I was responsible for the mainte-
nance and performance of international
and domestic sites. Any businesses we
would acquire, I was responsible for
bringing that database into ours and
troubleshooting anything that happened
in that environment."
Although he enjoyed Match.com, his
heart still ached for coaching. Football
University gave him the opportunity to
work part-time while the company eval-
uated this coaching ability. "I was helping
a friend coach his little league
team that my son was playing on
and he just happened to be the
regional director for Football
University, which I didn't know
much about at that time," Humphries re-
called. "They used to require you to
shadow an NFL coach and worked with
you to determine if you were someone
who could actually coach. I drew the de-
fensive back coaches for the Bu=alo Bills
and San Diego Chargers and they had to
validate me. Once I was validated, I be-
came part of the sta=."
Humphries is in a quandary right now.
He was laid o= at Match.com in July and
is looking for a full-time position in the
IT industry. That could force him to move
from Dallas, ending his current work with
Football University. "My number one de-
sire is to coach at some level, even high
school, but I need a job, "he said. "I'll
continue looking into coaching."
An ancillary bene;t at Football Univer-
sity has been the teaching and guidance
in the development of his son into a
highly sought recruit. It's vastly dissimi-
lar to his own recruitment, except for
going to team camps.
"Back then you would go to a [team]
camp so someone saw you and saw your
ability," Humphries recalled. "I did go to
one camp at Penn State in the summer of
my junior year and I was one of the fastest
guys, if not the fastest guy. I think I ran a
4.4 or 4.45 or something and really im-
pressed the coaches. Coach Caldwell and
Coach [Ron] Dickerson kept up with me
in my senior season and then made me an
o=er. Before that, they came up [to
Akron] to visit me once or twice and I had
to stay in contact. I had all these people
[from other schools] coming, but I really
didn't want to go anywhere else. I was
wanted by a lot of people and told by a lot
of college coaches I was a top-100 recruit,
but I didn't want to go too far from home
and I had fallen in love with Penn State.
My o>cial visits were to Pitt and Ohio
State, and it ended up coming down to
Ohio State and Penn State.
"My recruiting wasn't as