Hal Hunter’s two sisters dusted off their footlockers and went digging for old Browns gear in January.
Hunter had been hired as the Browns’ offensive line coach, the same position his late father held from 1989-92. So summoning the family’s white sweatshirt with orange letters that read “O-line” seemed apropos.
“With my dad being gone, it’s nice,” Heidi Hunter Foote, Hal’s oldest sister, said recently by phone from Chicago. “It feels like we’re coming full circle.
“A lot of times, I can see my dad just in the way my brother stands out on the field. It’s like watching my dad.”
Hal Hunter Jr. died in August 2014 at age 82 after battling Alzheimer’s disease, and Hal Hunter III is continuing to carry on his dad’s legacy by coaching for the Browns. The magnitude of the proud tradition certainly will be on the Hunters’ minds this Father’s Day.
“He always said being a good coach is like being a good teacher or parent,” Hal Hunter, a former University of Akron assistant coach, said by phone from San Diego. “You’re trying to bring people along and treat them with respect and help them grow. That’s how I saw it, and that was what influenced me to first get into the profession.”
Hunter, 56, has 34 seasons of coaching experience on his resume, including the past 10 in the NFL with the San Diego Chargers and Indianapolis Colts. Cleveland is his third stop where his father previously coached. Indiana University and the Colts were the others.
“It’s heartwarming to see him where my dad was,” Heather Hunter, his other sister, said by phone from Charlotte, N.C.
College and NFL
The elder Hunter coached in the collegiate ranks for 23 years. He worked in the NFL for another 21 years, first as an O-line coach for the Baltimore and Indianapolis Colts (he served as their interim head coach for the 1984 season finale), Pittsburgh Steelers and Browns and later as a scout for the San Francisco 49ers and Carolina Panthers. He retired in 2005.
The family hails from Canonsburg, Pa. — Hunter grew up a hardcore Steelers fan — but moved several times because of the patriarch’s career.
“We were football brats,” Heidi Hunter Foote said.
Coaches work long, grueling hours, but Hunter’s three children recall their father making the most of his time with them and wife Eileen, who’s been known to discuss the intricacies of West Coast offenses. There were trips to the beach with bicycle rides and watermelon-seed spitting contests, badminton tournaments in the backyard and strolls through the neighborhood.
Hunter, though, has vivid memories of growing up in locker rooms and on practice fields. At 8 or 9, he would participate in 100-yard sprints when his dad ran conditioning drills at Duke.
“I’d get a 30-yard head start and those players had to try to catch me,” Hunter said. “If they caught me, they got to sit out the next one, but I’d run like heck.”
Athletic prowess was passed down. Hal Hunter Jr. played guard and middle linebacker for the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned All-America honors and became a captain. The family owns a photograph of him tackling Browns legend Jim Brown when he played for Syracuse. The younger Hunter played linebacker for Northwestern before neck injuries cut his career short.
Family business
Hunter wanted to remain involved with football, though, so pursuing the family business made sense. It also thrilled his dad.
“They would talk before every game. Then they would talk after every game and critique things,” said Heather Hunter, who also dabbled in coaching for a season on the Pop Warner level in 1999, becoming the first woman in Maryland to do so. Her son, James, spent several summers as a youngster living with his grandfather at Panthers training camp.
Hunter started off as an outside linebackers coach for William & Mary in 1982, but his father suggested focusing on either quarterbacks or offensive linemen for this reason: “If you become a good quarterbacks coach or a good offensive line coach, you will always have a job because they’re really hard to find.” The advice paid off. Although the Colts declined to retain Hunter in January, he quickly landed a new gig with Browns coach Hue Jackson.
“It is one of the biggest coups for us in getting Hal because the guy has fire, he has intensity, he can teach fundamental football,” Jackson said when the Browns hired Hunter.
His dad made sure he knew how to properly school his pupils.
“He used to always say, ‘Good coaches coach. Lousy coaches hide their inabilities behind a lot of yelling and screaming,’ ” Hunter said. “You hear a lot of coaches yelling and screaming and they’ve got catchy phrases, but they don’t really coach.
“He used to always say, ‘You’ve got to know what you’re doing, and you’ve got to care about your players. If they know you know what you’re doing and they know that you care about them, they’ll do whatever you ask them to do at any level.’ ”
Hunter lived in Akron when he coached the Zips’ O-line from 1987-90. His tenure here overlapped with his dad’s Browns stint for two seasons, so they were able to watch each other coach on a regular basis.
Fond of Browns fans
Along the way, the men from Pittsburgh fell in love with the Browns and their “football crazy” fans. Hal traveled to Denver for the AFC Championship Game at the end of the 1989 season, and he’s still mesmerized by how many Cleveland loyalists were there.
“My always told me, he goes, ‘Before you’re done coaching, you need to make sure you coach a traditional team, an old-school team,’ ” Hunter said. “Well, I got an opportunity to coach in a traditional, old-school football town.”
Words of wisdom will undoubtedly be offered to another coach Hunter. Hal and his wife, Tracy, have two sons. Akron-born Hal Hunter IV, 27, is an officer in the Navy. Andrew Hunter, 24, is a senior at California Polytechnic State who’s embarking on a career as a football coach. Andrew Hunter plans to spend two or three weeks at Browns training camp this summer.
“As a father,” Hunter said, “you always respect when your son wants to follow in your footsteps.”
Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com.