In 1978, following his fifth season as Army's head coach, Homer Smith was fired.

He gave his playbooks, stastical journals and whistle back to the academy. He didn't need them anymore. He thought his career was over.

He couldn't have been further from the truth.

In his first season as Arizona's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks' coach, Smith brings to the Wildcats 37 years of experience. It is a career that has taken him to seven different college programs, one NFL team, 14 bowl games and two master's degree s along the way.

The man is a walking football library.

"Now I have all my books back," Smith said. "They decided to give them back to me."

His hiring came after two UA defensive coaches, Jeff Hammerschmidt and Rich Ellerson, went elsewhere, and Duane Akina, last year's offensive coordinator, took on coaching the defensive secondary.

When asked how long he pondered taking the Arizona job, he snapped his fingers.

"I knew that I wanted it from the start," Smith said.

He took the same amount of time mulling his first head coaching offer, from Davidson College in North Carolina € which is, appropriately enough, nicknamed the Wildcats € in 1965, the beginning of his head coaching and offensive-scheming career.

But to find the roots of his football influence, you'd have to go back 11 years earlier, when Smith graduated from Princeton as a stand-out fullback and the holder of an economics degree. From there, he went to Stanford, where in 1960 he got his first mas ter's degree, in business.

"I decided that I wanted to coach a year after I was out of college, then I went to graduate school at Stanford and ended up on the staff," Smith said. "I made a decision to (coach at Stanford) and I set out to do it."

At Stanford he worked under Ben Martin, who later went on to coach at Air Force and asked Smith to join his staff when the Air Force allowed civilians to be hired in 1961.

"I wanted that job and waited for it, so I was just going back to my first boss, really," Smith said.

After Davidson, Smith coached Pacific to two sub-.500 seasons and was fired for the first time in his career.

"Whenever I get fired, I try and do something that I wouldn't have done had I not been fired, and I did," Smith said.

He went to UCLA in 1973 and implemented the Smith system. His scheme, which relies on multiple offensive sets to try to confuse the defense, led to numerous school records, two of which still stand: total yards (470.6) and rushing yards per game (400.3).

Smith spent the next five years as the head coach at Army, a program he said he loved coaching. He was named the Eastern College coach of the year in 1977 after his team had broken all existing school passing records. During his tenure at Army, Smith's re lentless work turned the program around.

But in 1978, the program fell back to mediocre and Smith was again fired. It wasn't the first time he had been fired, but this time it was personal. He took a long look at his career, one that he felt had ended. Deciding to return to school, Smith enrolle d at Harvard, where he earned a master's degree in theological studies. While there, he was offered a job back at UCLA as the offensive coordinator, quarterbacks and receivers coach.

However, he wasn't about to give up Harvard, so he had to balance both programs. He took spring courses while coaching and commuting between both schools.

"I was studying theology in the men's room at UCLA," Smith said.

He stayed at UCLA for six years, graduating from Harvard in 1982. During his stint, every quarterback that started a game went to the NFL: Tom Ramsey, Jay Schroeder, Rick Nueheisel, Steve Bono, David Norrie and Matt Stevens.

The Kansas City Chiefs hired him as an offensive coordinator before the 1987 season. While he worked under Frank Ganz, who he describes as his mentor and a close friend, his system struggled.

"I loved it (coaching in the NFL)," Smith said. "I didn't do it very well, but I loved it."

Smith returned to the college game the following year when Alabama offered him a deal he couldn't refuse.

In 1989, Smith gave backup quarterback Gary Hollingsworth the reins of the team in the second game, and all he did was lead the Crimson Tide to a 10-2 record, a Southeastern Conference championship and its first Sugar Bowl appearance in a decade.

In 1990, Smith followed the lead of the rest of the offensive staff and went to a different program.

It was back to UCLA for Smith.

He stayed there for three seasons before returning to Alabama for two more, his most recent job before coming to his latest stop, in Arizona.

He brings to the Wildcats an offensive scheme that he has worked with and molded for 37 years. Still, he lives his life in a simplistic manner.

"Very much of what I do is based on fundamentals," he said. "I think that I am very good at deriving fundamentals out of football confrontations."

Over his career he has witnessed the game evolve and grow.

"It's just the same," he said. "Football plows through society and leaves change in its wake. It's a powerful game. It changes people. It has had a big effect on our country."

So far this season, Smith's offense has been somewhat of a teeter-totter. With a new quarterback and a new system, the offense has only been able to score more than 20 points once, putting up 23 against Texas-El Paso in the season's first game. Although i t has struggled, the offense has shown signs that Smith is already making an impact.

In the UTEP game, for instance, with third and goal from inside the five, Smith had quarterback Keith Smith run a naked boot-leg to the right. It resulted in a touchdown. Last season against Oregon, the team was faced with the same situation and tried to ram another one up the middle.

No touchdown, no win, no bowl.

In four games this season, the offense is averaging 187 yards rushing and 134 yards passing, but is still a work in progress. Smith has had many of those after nine programs. But he still uses the same approach: his boys against theirs, may the best team win.

"Before too long it will end, but as long as I can have a better playbook and I am capable of doing things better, I will continue," he said. "But if I level off or start down I'll know it."

For 37 years, Smith has eaten, drank and dreamed football.

"Someday my life will no longer be football and when that day comes I will be very sad," Smith said. "You don't work harder than other people work. In football you just don't ever stop thinking about it. It's so pressing and it's so important, you have it on your mind at all times."

While Smith can't narrow down his greatest accomplishment in sports, his personal life is another story. His wife, Kathryn ,who he has known for 50 years last January € an event in which he gave her fifty roses - is his sweetest treasure. She is the only person that has been through every team, every new city, every never-ending night in his career.

"She is wonderful," Smith said. "She has meant so much to me."

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