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The University of Virginia’s football players will have three basic rules to follow this season.
“One, go to class. Two, show class. Three, treat people with dignity and respect. You can have a laundry list of rules, but those three rules cover a lot of things regarding on- and off-the-field behavior.”
That’s the Gospel According to Mike — Mike London, Virginia’s new head coach.
London, the former University of Richmond coach whose team won the 2008 NCAA Division 1 Championship Subdivision national championship, takes over in Charlottesville for Al Groh, who was fired at the end of last season.
Groh’s dismissal was as predictable as a fourth-and-long punt:
* Three of the past four seasons were losing seasons, including last year’s 3-9 record, which began with a home loss to William & Mary and ended with a 42-13 blowout loss at home to archrival Virginia Tech.
* The Cavaliers have lost six in a row to the Hokies, not a happy situation for Virginia fans.
* Virginia played seven home games last season and won only one, a drubbing of a weak Indiana team. Attendance sagged and the boo-birds grew louder.
So Groh was sent packing — with a large sum of contract buyout money. The search for a successor did not take long. Nine days after the season-ending loss to Virginia Tech, athletic director Craig Littlepage introduced Mike London as the 39th head football coach at the university, which has been playing Walter Camp’s game for 122 years.
A FAMILIAR FACE BUT A DIFFERENT APPROACH
 London needed no introduction in Charlottesville. His coaching resume includes six seasons on Al Groh’s staff, which explains why he is uncomfortable about succeeding Groh.
“Coach Groh allowed me to grow as a coach, and he promoted me along the way. I learned from him a lot of things. That has been the toughest part of being here now, hoping he doesn’t think I tried to take his job.”
Do not think for one minute, however, that London’s teams will resemble Groh’s teams.
“We’ve changed the way we practice,” he said. “We’ve changed the way we approach academic endeavors. We’ve changed the way we approach the community. We’ve changed schemes. We’ve changed systems. We’re changing the uniforms.”
Michael Wilson London Sr., who will turn 50 on Oct. 9, when the Cavaliers are in Atlanta to play Georgia Tech, was born in the post hospital at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. His father, Wilson London, a career noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force, was stationed at a base near West Point.
London’s family lived in Hawaii for several years, then moved to Virginia’s Hampton Roads area when his father was transferred to Langley Air Force Base. London went to Tabb High School in Yorktown for three years. Before his senior year, the family moved to Hampton. His father had retired from the Air Force, and they no longer could live in base housing. London transferred to Hampton’s Bethel High School.
“My coach at Tabb, Freddie Mitchell, wanted to not adopt me but become my guardian so I could finish my senior year at Tabb,” London said. “But he loved country music and stuff like that, and I couldn’t see myself living with him for a season and listening to ‘Orange Blossom Special.’”
London earned a football scholarship to the University of Richmond. He was married and a father during his college years, and money was tight. He and his wife lived in an apartment with a gas stove, and one time the gas was shut off because they could not pay the bill.
“Your gas gets cut off, so you learn to make a grilled cheese sandwich with an iron because all you have is electricity,” he said.
That experience, and many others, helped him to develop his ability to motivate his players.
A COP ON THE STREETS OF RICHMOND
After college, where he was a stellar defensive back, he was signed as a free agent with the Dallas Cowboys but was cut. He enrolled at the Richmond Police Academy and became a city cop, patrolling the mean streets of Richmond in the mid to late 1980s when the city’s murder rate was one of the highest in the nation.
“The first six months I was a patrolman; then for about three years I was a street crime detective,” said London, the father of seven. “That experience is part of my Rule Three. Treat people with dignity and respect. Everyone just wants to be treated the right way; whether you are dealing with the criminal element or your own family, people just want to be treated with a certain measure of respect. If you can do that as a police officer, you can defuse a lot of life-threatening situations.”
London had a life-threatening situation one night in a South Richmond alley, where he had used his police car to corner a van containing suspects in a restaurant robbery. On foot he approached the van with his badge held high. The van began rolling toward him. He hustled to the window on the driver’s side and reached in to turn off the ignition. A pistol was in his face. The suspect pulled the trigger. Click. Either the gun jammed or it had no bullets. It persuaded Mike London, a young father, to seek another line of work.
In 1989 he was hired by the University of Richmond as an assistant coach in charge of outside linebackers.
Now, 21 years later, he is the University of Virginia’s head coach, earning more money than he ever could have imagined when he was making grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron.
His new season begins the first Saturday in September when the Cavaliers host the Richmond Spiders.
“It will be emotional. I’d be fooling you if I said it wouldn’t be. I know those players. I love them like sons. It was hard leaving because I went to school there. So it will be tough. But my allegiance now is here, to the orange and blue.”
Steve Clark is a former columnist with the Richmond Times-Dispatch and, prior to that, with The Richmond News Leader. He can be contacted at
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The Scouting Report
MIKE LONDON
Born: Oct. 9, 1960, West Point, N.Y.
Family: Wife — Regina. Children — Michael Jr., Brandon, Kristen, Ticynn, Korben, Jaicyn and Madicyn
Alma Mater: University of Richmond, 1983, bachelor’s degree in sociology
Playing Career:
Defensive back at Richmond, 1979-82
Dallas Cowboys signed him as a free agent in 1983 before cutting him
Coaching Record:
1989-90: Richmond, outside linebackers coach
1991-94: William & Mary, defensive line coach
1995-96: Richmond, outside linebackers coach
1997-2000: Boston College, defensive line coach
2001-04: Virginia, defensive line coach (2002-04, also recruiting coordinator)
2005: Houston Texans defensive line coach
2006-07: Virginia, defensive coordinator, defensive line coach
2008-09: Richmond, head coach
2010: Virginia, head coach (paid $1.7 million annually, over five years)
Coaching Record at Richmond:
24-5 record, including the 2008 Football Championship Subdivision national championship
2008 Black Coaches Association Male Coach of the Year
2008 American Football Coaches Association’s FCS National Coach of the Year
VIRGINIA’S 2010 SCHEDULE
Sept. 4 vs. Richmond
Sept. 11 at USC
Sept. 25 vs. VMI
Oct. 2 vs. Florida State
Oct. 9 at Georgia Tech
Oct. 16 vs. North Carolina
Oct. 23 vs. Eastern Michigan
Oct. 30 vs. Miami
Nov. 6 at Duke
Nov. 13 vs. Maryland
Nov. 20 at Boston College
Nov. 27 at Virginia Tech
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