Here is Dan Hurley, the University of Connecticut's up-tempo-down-home-Jersey-guts basketball coach amid this week's crucial recruiting period.
He's trying to do what no coach since John Freaking Wooden has done: Win three straight NCAA titles when everyone thought going merely back-to-back had been blown up by the 21st century, like mail and pay phones.
Despite all that, he's got one question before he gets on the plane.
"Was Mims out there? How's he look?" asks Hurley of Bengals' first-round pick Amarius Mims. "It's been kind of tough over there (at right tackle). But they've been trying everything. It's a tough position."
Told that Mims looks like he's close, and that the other right tackle, veteran Trent Brown, appears to be healthy and his usual solid self protecting quarterbacks, Hurley is ready to perfect "The Griddy."
He's more than ready for Sunday's opener (1 p.m.-Cincinnati's Local 12) against the Patriots, when he follows two of his idols, Boomer Esiason and Ickey Woods, to the Paycor Stadium throne as Ruler of the Jungle.
"For me, minus just winning it, minus cutting down the nets, for me, it's better than going to the White House, or anything," says Hurley of holding Sunday's scepter. "I don't play golf. I've got my family. I've got my program, and the Bengals are kind of like my interest, my hobby. I'm a total fan boy with it."
Fan Boy.
That's what Hurley says he did to the old first-round pick Peter Warrick years ago when he saw him in the airport.
Fan Boy.
That's how he felt two years ago when the Huskies got to the Final Four in Houston and he received a box from the Bengals with a Who Dey note ("Coach, go out and win it!") from Bengals head coach Zac Taylor and a Ja’Marr Chase jersey.
"Zac put his phone number in there and we went out and won it," Hurley says. "After, I shot him a text message. So we've texted, we've talked on the phone, we've developed a little bit of a relationship, and, obviously I'm a big fan of what he's done there."
He needed that jersey about a dozen years ago when he was coaching Wagner College on Staten Island. Hurley found out not long ago that his wife used to pay their two sons five bucks every Sunday to watch the Bengals games with her husband while wearing Bengals paraphernalia.
Why, the boys wanted to know, can't we be like our friends and root for the Jets or Giants?
Because, Dan Hurley, 51, was about the same age when he fell in love with the stripes slashed across the Bengals' new helmets while growing up a scion of Bobby Hurley Sr.'s high school basketball dynasty in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Six days before he turned nine, Hurley formed an unbreakable bond of ice with his new team when he watched the Freezer Bowl on TV, beamed from Cincinnati's wind-chill encased Riverfront Stadium as the Bengals earned their first trip to the Super Bowl.
"All these guys on the Chargers are wearing big-ass parkas, hoodies, and big hats and gloves," Hurley says. "And (Anthony) Munoz and the boys come running out in just pants and jerseys and I think, 'I want those guys to win. Those guys are tough as hell. I like those guys.'"
Not long after, the Bengals were playing in New York and the right guard on Munoz's offensive line, Pro Bowler Max Montoya, was on a shopping trip. He saw the young Hurley looking longingly at a Bengals hat, bought it for him and signed it.
Boomer Esiason and Ickey Woods soon followed.
"I'm a lefty, and there were so few lefties, and Boomer was from Long Island and I'm from New Jersey, he had that screw you crap to him," Hurley says. "Sam Wyche with the No-Huddle. The Ickey Shuffle. Cris Collinsworth was the celebrity. It was cool to be a fan then."
But also tough if you lived in Jersey.
"Pre internet," Hurley says.
He remembers reading "Bengals Report," when he was in high school, and he's kind to a daily Bengals beat reporter from back in the day because to him, back then, any kind of Bengals' news he could get his hands on came mainly from newspapers and was precious and few.
Now, he gets his info right from the head coach.
"I called him right after the draft. We talked some and then I kind of peppered him a little bit about the draft picks," Hurley says. "He was really high on Mims and he's lived up to it. He looks the part. He was really high on those guys."
Hurley is high on how Taylor runs his program: When they're not talking the roster, they'll trade some philosophy. Naturally, Staten Island's own, defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, is a favorite.
"The continuity is one of the keys to my success here at UConn. I've been able to keep a large part of my staff together," Hurley says. "I know he's been able to hire really smart, quality people like Lou. We lost the offensive coordinator to Tennessee, but having Dan Pitcher go from quarterbacks coach keeps continuity. That staff continuity and then just how his team plays for him. What they did last year. Nine and eight, losing Joe Burrow. playing one of the toughest schedules. To me, that was crazy impressive."
And, you know how Hurley, a coach's son, must feel about Burrow, another coach's son. Hurley has a texting relationship with Jimmy Burrow, Joe's dad, whom he met in his travels and has kept in touch.
"He plays like he played basketball. I've seen his highlights from high school," Hurley says of the old All-Ohio point guard at Athens High School. "He was really smooth, really good basketball player. Great awareness of sports. Feel, vision. That awareness where bodies are. That spatial awareness, He plays quarterback like a point guard."
It was Bobby Hurley Sr. who unknowingly cemented that Bengals bond for Danny when Pete Gillen got the head job at Xavier, a stone's throw from Riverfront Stadium in 1985.
It was, Danny recalls, the closest his father ever came to leaving his dynasty at St. Anthony High School. Gillen offered him an assistant's job, and Senior flew home with Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky real estate brochures, along with the plan to enroll freshman Bobby Hurley Jr. at Moeller High School.
Danny, 12, thought it was great. Closer to the Bengals. His brother? Not so much.
"He had a meltdown," Dan Hurley says.
They stayed, and it worked out. Bobby Hurley Jr. led his dad's team to four straight state titles and an undefeated season in his senior year when St. Anthony finished ranked No. 1 in the country.
"I probably would not be the coach of the UConn Huskies," Hurley muses of the what-if. "Everything happens for a reason."
But he is and, not only that, he's Sunday's Ruler of the Jungle. Like any good coach, there is preparation even though he's in the throes of recruiting. He's got a good feel for the atmosphere. He's been to Paycor for a handful of games, with the last one just two years ago when he was part of a record crowd in the White Out win over the Dolphins.
"I've got my media people here. I messed around with The Griddy a little bit. It was real cringe, though," Hurley says. "They're cutting some things up for me, bouncing some ideas around."
There could be a salute to "The Ickey Shuffle." Or maybe to Chad Johnson's antics.
"I always loved Ickey Woods. "The Ickey Shuffle," Hurley says. "That's my Mount Rushmore now with Joe Burrow. Chad. Boomer. Ickey. I loved to watch James Brooks. He was quietly one of my favorite players, too."
Hurley says he's looking to bring a championship vibe to his beloved Bengals. He may have already: As he talked this week, Chase was completing one of his first practices.
"Lets go. Let's get it, man, this weekend," says the two-time national championship coach who is suddenly eight years old again. "Let's go."
