Professional football is back in San Diego, led by one of its own.

Mike Martz, a Madison High School alum who played and coached at Mesa College, on Thursday was introduced as head coach of the city’s new team in the fledgling Alliance of American Football.

“I can’t tell you how excited and thrilled and honored I am … for this opportunity,” Martz said. “How good is this? Coaching football in San Diego. It doesn’t get any better.”

The team will play 10 games over 12 weeks beginning in February. Home games will be played at SDCCU Stadium, which was the Chargers’ residence from 1967 through 2016.


“I love cities that love football,” said Charlie Ebersol, CEO and co-founder of the AAF. “One of the things we talked about was the culture of football in cities ... It was very important for us to figure out a way to have a deal.

“We’re bringing football back to a city that was one of the great professional football cities, and we’re very excited about that.”

The five home games will bring “up to $500,000 in revenue to the city,” said Andy Zlotnik, chairman of the Stadium Advisory Board.

Other cities announced so far in the AAF are Orlando, Atlanta, Phoenix, Memphis and Salt Lake City. Two more cities will be named later. Ebersol said a name for the San Diego team will be decided later because he wants the community involved.


“We will succeed or fail based on the quality of football we can put on the field,” said J.K. McKay, head of football operations of the AAF.

After he was introduced, Martz stood on grass near the stadium’s west end zone.

He wore a sport jacket as the mid-day weather warmed up, but the 67-year-old professed to feel “chills” induced by landing the job.

It seemed an over-the-top comment, considering that Martz took the St. Louis Rams to the Super Bowl as a head coach and won a Super Bowl with them as an offensive coordinator.


A Super Bowl ring on his left hand sparkled, as Martz explained why this job, with a league that will collect many players who are released by the NFL, connected so many dots for him.

“I’m serious about this, how meaningful and emotional it is for me to come back in this stadium and have this system,” he said.

In the same stadium, in 1968, Martz had his first date with a fellow Madison High student who would become his wife, Julie Martz.

“I was pretty smitten, she just didn’t know that then,” he said.


The two had gone to San Diego Stadium to watch football.

Not only did Martz fall in love with Julie, he became mesmerized by the offensive system of Don Coryell, the obsessed and outside-the-box coach of the San Diego State Aztecs and future architect of the “Air Coryell” Chargers.

As a coach, Martz gained expertise in the Coryell scheme that h said was integral to the “Greatest Show On Turf” offenses he would design with the Rams.

One of Martz’s treasures is Coryell’s original playbook from SDSU. Martz bought it at a local auction that raised money for the Junior Seau Foundation.


As he did with the Rams and other NFL teams, he will use Coryell’s play codes for his Alliance San Diego offense.

He said the playbook Coryell devised was an enduring marvel that combined simplicity and flexibility, allowing fresh Aztecs recruits to get up to speed fast.

“It’s a three-digit system so that junior college transfers can come in and the learn the system right away. It’s on a legal pad. I’ve got that,” Martz said.

The Coryell connection extends to several of the coaches Martz has hired onto his San Diego State staff. They learned Coryell’s scheme, including offensive coordinator and former NFL quarterback Jon Kitna, who was under Martz in 2006-07 with the Detroit Lions, and Hall of Fame offensive lineman Jackie Slater, who spent most of his career with the Los Angeles Rams.


They’ll be coaching in the same stadium where Coryell worked for parts of three decades.

Though he has maintained a San Diego residence since 2005, Martz had worked outside of San Diego for most of his nearly 40 years as a coach.

He said that he retained a passion to coach but wasn’t willing to leave San Diego again after his final full-time coaching job, as offensive coordinator of the Chicago Bears, ended in 2011.

Thanks to his first coaching job in San Diego since he worked at Mesa College from 1975-77, he will drive only about 10 minutes from Bay Park to the team offices in Mission Valley.


“I never lost my love or passion for coaching,” said Martz, whose Rams teams went 53-23 (.624) from 2000 through the fifth game of the 2005 season, when he was fired.

Martz kept his hand in coaching. The past four years he directed college players at the NFLPA Bowl at the Rose Bowl.

Also, he worked as commentator for the NFL Network and Fox Sports.

He’ll try to turn around a trend. Several outdoor football leagues that were minnows next to the NFL have come and gone in the Super Bowl era. Martz and McKay said a “complementary” relationship with the NFL will improve the Alliance’s chances.


“I know this for a fact: (NFL personnel) will be watching our games and they will be coming to our practices,” said McKay, who has a relative who works for the Atlanta Falcons.

Martz said single-entity ownership also bodes well for the Alliance. “There are no independent owners of the teams, I think that’s a big deal,” he said.

The timing for a developmental league, he said, is favorable because the college and NFL games are so different nowadays.

Martz said the Alliance can be a bridge to the NFL for talented players who need more time to learn NFL styles than the NFL can give them.


“Some of these guys, they just weren’t prepared,” he said. “They’re so different, offensively or defensively, in college. What we’ll be doing, it’s so different because it’s more like the NFL, so to speak.”

He said quarterbacks and offensive linemen probably are the most in need of NFL development that he and his staff will provide.

“We can teach them the game at a different level,” he said, “and that’s why I get excited. Giving back to football is really what it’s all about for me.”

Martz also has an appreciation for the first head coach of a professional football team in San Diego. Back then, in 1961, it was Sid Gillman. He directed the American Football League’s Chargers, freshly transplanted from Los Angeles. The boy Martz watched Gillman’s teams at Balboa Stadium downtown. He owns two Chargers jerseys autographed by Gillman’s top receiver, Lance Alworth. Gillman became a mentor to Martz. When Martz coached with the Rams, Gilman watched their game telecasts in San Diego and called on Monday with his critique. Martz made sure Gillman got the coaches’ film, too, so he could provide more detailed feedback. And when his health waned, the former coach, unable to speak, still worked up notes that his wife read to Martz over the phone.


The San Diego football beat goes on, from Gillman to Coryell to others and now to Mike Martz, who won a Super Bowl with former Aztecs stars Marshall Faulk and Az-Hazir Hakim.


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jay.posner@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutposner

UPDATES:

4:15 p.m.: This article was updated with additional information and quotes.


11:10 a.m.: Original publication time.