When Larry Porter took over as head coach at Memphis in 2010, he was stepping into what he called his dream job. He had played at the school for four seasons before beginning his coaching career at nearby Wooddale High School.
Porter, 40, was coming off eight seasons as running backs coach under Les Miles at Oklahoma State (2002-04) and Louisiana State (2005-09), where he won a national championship in 2007. He also had four previous years of experience at Arkansas State (1999-2001) and Tennessee-Martin (1998). But Memphis was coming off a 2-10 season, and Porter wasn't able to turn it around -- he lasted just two years at his alma mater, winning three games total, before being dismissed after the 2011 season.
Not long after, new Arizona State coach Todd Graham called to offer Porter a job. He wasn't ready to accept. Graham instead hired Division II Abilene Christian head coach Chris Thomsen, but Thomsen left after less than a month to coach the offensive line at Texas Tech. Graham called Porter again, and this time Porter accepted the offer to become running backs coach.
Porter sat down this week with FOXSportsArizona.com to discuss his coaching history, ASU's running back corps, recruiting and more.
FSAZ: What lessons did you learn working under Les Miles at Oklahoma State and LSU?
Porter: I learned a lot. Les is a true ball coach. Whatever it was we approached every day, it had to be just right. You don't leave a stone unturned until you get the results that you want. Again, he loves football. He has a great passion for it. He's very demanding of himself, so whether you are an assistant or a player, he's very demanding of you as well. You just learn to be demanding for the results that you want.
FSAZ: What did you take from your experiences working with some very talented running backs such as Tatum Bell at Oklahoma State and Joseph Addai at LSU?
Porter: The whole key -- when you look at it, no matter who you are, you want to be coached. I'm very demanding as a coach, but I also give what I expect. I'm asking for 110 percent from those guys, so I give 110 percent to those guys. That's kind of been my deal. They (players) want to be coached and they want to be loved. If you know how to balance both, I think it fares well in terms of being able to maximize their potential.
FSAZ: What made you feel it was the right time to take the next step and accept the head coaching job at Memphis?
Porter: I felt like I was ready, and everything kind of fell into place. I had been to the pinnacle of my career. I had won a national championship, and I'd had success coaching a lot of guys. Les did a great job in giving me some tremendous responsibility to grow. The other thing I felt was (Memphis) was home. That was my dream job. Regardless of where it is, they're not just giving (head coaching jobs) away. So when an opportunity presents itself, you have to take it.
FSAZ: How strong was that appeal of coaching at your alma mater? Did the homecoming of sorts maybe put more pressure on you to succeed?
Porter: Again, it was my dream job. Call it appeal or whatever you want, but a place that had done so much for my life as a student-athlete and an adult as well, it was a no-brainer for me. I wanted so bad to give the university and the community and the city something I thought it deserved, and that was an elite-caliber program. I think all the makings are there to do it. I've always thought that way of that job. One, it's an area that has over a million people, so I think it had the potential to have a fan base that was strong. Two, you're in an area that had some pretty good prospects around to build your program. And three, if you nurtured the relationships well enough, you had the resources that could potentially help you build what you wanted to build.
FSAZ: So was it maybe a situation where you needed more time to build the program than the two years you got?
Porter: Well, yes. But at the end of the day, it's all about winning. So I want to be man enough to say that they gave me a great opportunity and I didn't get it done, without getting into what I thought or 'Woulda, coulda, shoulda.' You know, I'm grateful I had that opportunity, and I always will be.
FSAZ: What was your biggest takeaway from your experience coaching there?
Porter: It was a great experience overall, but right now the window to build and grow a program is becoming smaller and smaller. When you go into a program that was in the state (Memphis) was in, you think that people understand that it's a process to build it to where we needed to be. But the one lesson is that at the end of the day, everybody wants a winner now. Regardless of the situation or the circumstances, they want a winner now. They don't care what the circumstances were when you took the job; they want results. I think some of that is fair because the other side of it is that they're paying coaches a lot more now than they ever have before. So I understand why their patience is not all that long.
FSAZ: What was the selling point for joining Todd Graham's staff at ASU?
Porter: Of everybody I talked to about this job, nobody had one negative thing to say about the school or the area. Everybody said that it has tremendous potential and a great upside to it. They couldn't figure out why you couldn't win at a high level here. So you hear that over and over and it's a big selling point, as well as (senior associate head coach and co-defensive coordinator) Paul Randolph, who is a good friend of mine. I've also known Coach Graham from coaching against him at Tulsa, so there was some familiarity here.
FSAZ: A lot of people seem to think, at this point, running back might be the most well-stocked position on this team heading into the season. Do you agree with that?
Porter: No, being that in spring I had, on average, maybe three guys. Cameron (Marshall) practiced three days in helmets, Kyle Middlebrooks maybe had five or six practices, so he missed maybe two-thirds of the spring, and Deantre Lewis was trying to recover from an injury, which mentally, physically and emotionally was a struggle for him. D.J. Foster wasn't on campus. Marion Grice wasn't on campus. So there are a lot of unknowns. What everybody is doing is talking about a lot of potential that we haven't yet seen -- I haven't yet seen. So I'm still at a point where I don't know truly what we have because I haven't had them all out there.
FSAZ: While you haven't seen much from Cameron Marshall yet, is it exciting to have the opportunity to work with a player like him?
Porter: Well, yes, but I love coaching, so I'm excited about this regardless of who is here. With Cameron healthy, we'd like to see if we can get one of these guys to be a 1,500- or 1,600-yard rusher. But with the tempo we're going to have and the way we want to play, it's going to take more than one guy to get us where we want to be.
FSAZ: You mentioned Deantre Lewis recovering from injury. What are your expectations for him and the role he might have this season?
Porter: I finally convinced him that his leg's not going to fall off. He just kept waiting for it to fall off, and it didn't, so it was like, 'Hey man, it's still here, so let's go.' If you go back and look at where he was on Day 1 (of spring practice), which was a little uncoordinated without much burst or confidence, and then look at Day 15, you can see him start to run with more confidence. You could see him running with more vision and stick his foot in the ground and start to get vertical. So you could see that growth. If we can get him to the point to where he can improve his burst and his explosiveness, he'll start to feel more like himself.
FSAZ: A lot of people are excited about D.J. Foster, a freshman. Is he a guy you could see contributing this year?
Porter: Absolutely. I think D.J.'s skill set lends itself to him being able to be productive in this offense. The biggest issue, regardless of position, for a freshman is the mental transition. D.J. won't be afforded the luxury of being able to kind of sit back and learn. He's going to have to learn on the go. We're going to force feed him and give him a package he can handle, and we'll build off that. He's going to be expected to come in here and help us in Year 1.
FSAZ: Coach Graham seemed impressed by the spring James Morrison had. What was your assessment?
Porter: James kind of laid the foundation for what we want our identity to be as a group. He practiced with toughness and physicality, he held onto the ball and did a pretty good job of blocking and protecting the quarterback. So that was exciting. Now, once we get all the pieces together, we have to have an identity as a group with the same mentality that James had throughout the course of the spring.
FSAZ: You've also garnered a pretty strong reputation as a recruiter. What do you want to emphasize most in the recruiting process here?
Porter: Recruiting is first and foremost about relationships. I try to grow those through my work ethic, honesty and trust. We have a great product here, but we just can't undersell it. You talk about our university being one of the top 100 in the world, the leadership of (ASU president) Dr. Crow, our honors school, the engineering program, the business school, our head coach -- we've got a lot to sell. It's a great product, and we can't undersell it. We've got to sell it with a passion. The Phoenix area and right here in Tempe -- what's not to like about this place?
FSAZ: As a running backs coach, selling an offense like Coach Graham's to recruits must be pretty easy.
Porter: It's very easy to sell it when you've got a head coach that believes in running the football. So for me, it's like a kid in a candy store. There's great opportunity here as a running back to be very successful.
