Andrus on top of the world
BIGFORK - In a city infamous for its seedier side - a destination for the debaucherous where vice and vacation intertwine - Amsterdam's temptations can't compete with Bart Andrus' siren song: a return to the NFL and the Super Bowl.
Andrus, a former Montana quarterback who for the better part of the last five years has called Bigfork home, just completed his fifth season as head coach of the Amsterdam Admirals of the NFL Europe League. The Admirals won the league championship, the World Bowl, and Andrus earned coach of the year honors.
All that, he hopes, is a precursor to another gig in the States, one where he can experience the thrill of a Super Bowl win, rather than the despair of defeat as he did in Super Bowl XXXIV as quarterback coach with Tennessee.
"I've coached in a Super Bowl, coached in two World Bowls now," he said during an interview on the back deck of his home overlooking the fourth hole at Eagle Bend.
"Obviously, the Super Bowl I coached in I was on the wrong end of that one, so I want to someday coach in a Super Bowl and win. And I can't stay in NFL Europe and do that."
For the last six years, though, Andrus has been content to coach in NFL Europe - first as offensive coordinator with the Rhein Fire for a season, then as the Admirals' head man - giving his family some stability against the normally vagabond lifestyle of a professional coach. The abbreviated season runs about four months.
"This has been good in terms of being with my kids and seeing them participate a lot in sports," Andrus said. His daughter, Brooke, is a cross country and track standout for the Valkyries and son Travis is approaching his freshman year.
"Though I've never seen my daughter run track (because of being in Europe), I do see every cross country meet and I see my son play every football game, and pretty much basketball is over for him by the time I go, so that's been really nice.
"And living here is pretty nice, too."
The season
Conducting a football season that is basically one four-month-long road trip in a foreign land presents a unique set of challenges to coaches and players, not the least of which is a high turnover rate from year to year.
"We get a completely different team every year," Andrus said. "It's rare that we get any kind of carry over.
"This year we had five players that had been with us before, out of 47 that make the team."
Those few returning veterans are counted on to shepherd the new crop through orientation and act as a conduit between the coaching staff.
Training camp is a quick three weeks in the Tampa area where coaches have to trim the roster from 62 to 47 and install an offensive, defensive and special teams gameplan.
Then it's off to Europe and the resulting jet lag, culture shock and nerves for the start of the season.
"I've coached at every level, and this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do," Andrus said. "It's like being on an extended bowl trip in college. We live and work out of a hotel. Our practice site and facility is one of those mobile, temporary type buildings that they put up and take down.
"I tell our players every year, it's a different than other experience they've had playing the game. They're working and living together, eating together. They're in a foreign country. They're only tie to their home country is themselves. Everything revolves around the team. From that perspective it's very much like being on an extended bowl trip in college."
And like bowl trips, a four-month stay in Amsterdam presents plenty of opportunity for mischief.
The City
"Amsterdam is no different really than any other big city anywhere else in the world," Andrus said. "If you're looking for something in Chicago, you can find it. If you're looking for it in Amsterdam, you can find it maybe a little easier."
The pervasive drug culture of the Dutch capital is put in check by the NFL's random drug testing policy, so that hasn't been much of a problem.
"The thing about it is most of these guys have never traveled outside the country, so it's a great experience for them culturally," Andrus said.
"At the same time, they're young professionals, and one of the things that we really stress with them is that not only are they trying to show they're wares, they in the back of their minds have to be thinking every time they take the field that they're auditioning for all 32 NFL teams.
"One of our jobs is to teach them how to be professional football players, because some of them don't have any idea what that takes. With that in mind, it's their job and we expect them to do their job, and if that limits what they can do, then it limits what they can do socially."
The Championship
Going to the sportswriter's bag of cliches, the question is asked: When did you know you had a championship team?
"My son, who's 14 years old, asked me the same question when we were in (the championship) - 'when did you think you were going to be in the World Bowl?' - and I told my team this same story the day of the World Bowl: I knew it when we left camp," Andrus said. "I knew we had a very good opportunity, I knew we had a championship caliber team."
A bad loss in Week 2 refocused the Admirals, who went on to finish second in the regular season to Berlin, and went on to defeat the Thunder 27-21 in Dusseldorf, Germany, though they had to make two defensive stops in the final seconds to secure the win.
"They started on the 6-yard line," Andrus recalled. "We moved the ball past midfield, probably could have went for it on a fourth down, but we chose to punt it and make them earn it.
"Then they started moving it. I'm saying to myself over and over, 'somebody make a play here.' Finally, third and fourth down inside the 20, two guys stepped up and made a play. We had a defensive lineman get a piece of the quarterback and the last play our safety knocked the ball down."
And that gave Amsterdam its first World Bowl title, and hopefully a boost in popularity for the Admirals who only pull in between 15,000 and 25,000 per game.
"One of the things our front office had been talking about is not just a trip to the World Bowl, but a World Bowl win would really help step that up," Andrus said. "Just the little I saw in Amsterdam the two days that I spent there before returning home, all of the newspapers were very supportive and excited about the win, the city officials came to Dusseldorf and presented each one of our team members the city medal, which they give out to one sports team a year. That was a big honor.
"I noticed on television, the morning shows like we have here, some of the people in front of the camera wearing our jersey in celebration of the win."
The Future
"I'm going to pick and choose my opportunities as they come," Andrus said. "I've had opportunities to leave, they weren't good enough for where I was at the time with kids in school - my daughter wouldn't move for all the tea in China right now going into her senior year in high school - but this could be the year, maybe next.
"Jobs start to open in December and January. I'm open to a lot of things. I would go back to college if I had an opportunity to be a head coach, or coordinator at a major major.
"I'd go back to the NFL as a position coach or coordinator, and I've interviewed for both those things, but they just didn't seem right at the time. My agent is looking all the time, because that's what those guys do, so I'm sure he'll come up with some opportunities.
"And I've got some friends that I started out with in the NFL that are probably pretty close to being head coaches in the NFL. A couple of those guys may give me a call if that happens. You never know."
Wherever he ends up, Andrus will be doing what he loves, what he's been doing since leaving the University of Montana to become head coach at St. Patrick's High School in Vallejo, Calif., in 1981.
"There's days I wake up and I'm amazed they pay me to do this, really," he said. "For me, it doesn't seem like work.
" I had a chance to go to the (New York) Giants camp (after college). But I also had an opportunity to become a head high school coach, and that's what I really wanted to do, and I really haven't looked back."