A Championship Vision: Meet #Mizzou's DeMontie Cross
1/20/2016 2:56:00 PM | Football
Part one in an exclusive MUTigers.com series introducing Mizzou Football's coaching staff
A Championship Vision. That is the mindset that Mizzou Football head coach Barry Odom took into his first month on the job as he built an impressive coaching staff that boasts years of high-level college and pro experience and an abundance of success both as coaches and as players. Leading into National Signing Day on February 3, MUTigers.com will be introducing all of Mizzou's coaches in what was the first exclusive interviews for each coach since Coach Odom established the staff.
Up first is Mizzou's first-year defensive coordinator DeMontie Cross. Be sure to listen to an exclusive interview below and watch Mizzou Network's Ben Arnet go one-on-one with Coach Cross in an in-depth one-on-one that touches on everything from his playing days at Mizzou to his 18-year coaching journey that has led him back to Mizzou.
Coach Cross: A Homecoming 18 Years in the Making
MizzouMade has become more than a moniker on social media or a term that is thrown around by the Mizzou Football coaching staff. MizzouMade has come to personify the successes of every player, coach and staff member to be a part of the program. While head coach Barry Odom has established an impressive coaching staff over the last several weeks, he undoubtedly looked for coaches to embody what it means to be #MizzouMade. While every coach that Odom has hired exudes those characteristics, first-year defensive coordinator DeMontie Cross, just like Odom, is #MizzouMade himself.
"Mizzou is in my blood," Cross said. "It's the place that made me the man and the coach that I am today."
A standout safety in Columbia from 1994-96, Cross worked his way through the coaching ranks to collegiate powerhouses like Wisconsin, TCU and the NFL's Buffalo Bills. When presented with an opportunity to work for his alma mater and with his former teammate in Coach Odom, the chance to return to Mizzou was too good to pass up.
"Having a history here as a player and a graduate assistant, then also the opportunity to join Coach Odom, just having played with him back in the day, was definitely a draw," Cross told MUTigers.com in his first exclusive interview at Mizzou. "The fact that I think Missouri Football is definitely a championship-caliber program, and the chance to coach in the SEC, those are all things that pointed me to say that Mizzou was the right place to be."
With five division championships in the last eight seasons and three campaigns with 10+ wins in that span, Mizzou has become an attractive spot for the nation's top coaches. Cross, widely considered as one of college football's rising stars, was destined to land a major job whenever the opportunity presented itself. It just so happened that the leading job was at his alma mater and working with a head coach who he felt he was on the same page with.
"His toughness as a player, and the way he's grinded through this profession to reach this level. His desire, his attention to detail, we think a lot alike football-wise from spending time with him talking ball," Cross said of Coach Odom. "Those are things that I knew aligned with some of the philosophies of what I think makes championship teams, and once he extended the offer to me, I knew it was time to join him."
While it was those characteristics that drew Cross and Odom together, Cross got into coaching to impact young men. For many coaches across the country, the relationship with their players does not extend past the football field. But for Cross, that relationship with players away from football is where he credits much of his success.
"We drive them, we work them so hard, a lot of times we don't take time to get to know the kids off the field so developing that trust relationship away from the field is just as important as on the field," Cross said. "That's been what's worked for me; drive 'em, work 'em hard, but also love 'em up and put your arm around them."
For Cross, building that trust with his players is what sets him apart as a coach. Once he has the trust, he can put his players in a position where everyone is on the same page and working hard. His emphasis is getting his players to understand you have to play four to six seconds each play as hard as you can, all out and with that, success will follow, both individually and as a team. While players often get lost in the accolades, statistics and awards as a definition of success, Cross defines his triumph as a coach a little differently.
"At the end, when players come back and they just thank you for not giving up on them, or thank you for being hard on them, or just really thank you on their overall growth and development as a player. It's nice to coach All-Americans and to have first-team guys, but really, just making sure that you've meant something to them in the long run," Cross said. "That's probably the most rewarding thing for me is knowing that the guys care about you just as much as you care about them. A lot of times, they don't recognize it when you're coaching them, but when it's toward the end of their career, or when they finish, that they still want to have a relationship with you, that's more rewarding than anything else for me."
As much as Cross enjoys molding young players into men, it is easy for him to identify the types of players who will have success under his tutelage. He simply looks for players who played with the same qualities that he did as a player at Mizzou.
"Leadership qualities," Cross said when asked what he looks for in recruits. "Kids today have so many different distractions off the field, you've got to find leaders, guys that understand that they want to win, what it takes to win. And toughness. Do they play the game tough, are they physical, are they tough minded, just as much physically?"
For Cross, things have come full circle. After graduating from Mizzou in 1997 with a degree in business management while serving as a standout safety for Coach Larry Smith, Cross went on an 18-year coaching journey that has led him back to where it all started. After being around so many football greats over his coaching career, he described the opportunities that football has given him as "life-changing"'
"Had it not been for my coaches who took a vested interest in me as a young man, I wouldn't be in this position today," Coach Cross reminisced about his career. "It was life-changing, it's allowed me to see the world, it allowed me the opportunity to get an education and it allowed me the opportunity to change my life."
Now for Cross, he gets to be the one to take a vested interest in young men and help change their lives.
