WACO -- The football odyssey that has landed Jim Grobe in the most awkward coaching seat in America at Baylor, begins in junior college in the rural Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. His coach there was one demanding S.O.B. Grobe, an undersized linebacker in need of a role model, loved him.

A typical morning practice scheduled for 7 o'clock meant players needed to be ready to go by 6:58 a.m. or there was no go. Water breaks? No sir. Practices were wars of attrition designed for survival of the fittest.

So it was across America as the 1960s blended into the 1970s.

"Some people thought I was a butcher," the coach, Hank Norton, says now. "But we were a junior college, and you know what that means. Kids needed to be taught right from wrong."

Norton, who is 88 and enshrined in a bouquet of halls of fame for his work at what is now four-year Ferrum College, took a particular liking to Grobe, a "yes sir, no sir" son of a policeman already schooled in right from wrong when he stepped on campus.

Baylor head coach Jim Grobe was an undersized linebacker at Virginia in the 1970s. (Photo courtesy of Wake Forest University)

Grobe was maybe 5-10 on his tiptoes and on the wrong side of 180 pounds with more grit than potential. He had been hand-delivered to the coach by a mutual friend, a doctor, from the trio's hometown of Huntington, W.Va.

It was the diagnosis of the doctor, a Grobe family friend who served as a physician to the Marshall football team in Huntington, that Norton would make the ideal role model for a boy suddenly in need.

Grobe's own role model, his father, Melvin, had dropped dead from a massive heart attack during his son's junior year of high school.

"I thought he was indestructible," Grobe recalled almost a half-century later. "Too many cigarettes and too much alcohol makes any man mortal."

To complicate matters just a bit, Grobe had arrived for his freshman year at Ferrum with a wife, his sweetheart since junior high. Grobe didn't have a football scholarship. To pay for school and take care of a family, he was given need-based financial aid that mandated he work odd jobs such as cleaning floors and picking up trash.

To help make ends meet, Norton threw a few dollars Grobe's way by having the player baby-sit the coach's three children.

"I was scared stiff every time I went to Coach's house," recalled Grobe, who brought wife Holly along for support whenever possible. "I mean what if something had gone wrong? Coach wasn't an easy man to please."

But Grobe (rhymes with robe) managed.

"Jim could handle anything," Norton said. "He was good at everything I threw at him. He was a darn good baby sitter."

Tough situation

Baylor head coach Jim Grobe, pictured center right, received the ACC Championship trophy from commissioner John Swofford in 2006. (Photo courtesy of Wake Forest University)

Forty-six years after he arrived at Ferrum, Jim Grobe, 64, may be back in the baby-sitting game for a football program that will be every bit as demanding as his junior college coach.

Replacing the fired Art Briles, who built Baylor into a national power, Grobe is the selected caretaker of a scandal-plagued program disgraced by sexual assaults involving players.

He has a one-season contract, working under an athletic director and school president who were not involved in his hiring. They arrived after he did.

Grobe's official title over a team littered with talent and rated No. 23 in the country in The Associated Press preseason poll, is "acting coach."

In a game where length of contract affords coaches leverage, he has accepted his task.

Grobe comes armed with the work-ethic lessons he learned from Norton and a second role model, College Football Hall of Fame coach Fisher DeBerry, when Grobe was an assistant at the Air Force Academy.

Grobe went on to have a successful 19-year career as a head coach, but he had been out of the game for two seasons in May when former Baylor coach and athletic director Grant Teaff beseeched him to help a Bears football program sinking in scandal.

Grobe has no idea what will happen when his 20th head coaching season ends. But he knows Baylor and its fans expect it to play out over the next five months with double-digit victories and a major bowl trip.

This day in August, Grobe is sitting in Baylor's head coach's suite built for Briles. It has been Grobe's home for the last three months, and he has yet to add a single personal touch. His reception area has all the flavor of a generic meeting room at a Holiday Inn.

Even in his inner sanctum office, there's not a single picture of the Grobe family that includes Holly, two sons, daughters-in-law and three grandchildren.

Pictured: The Grobe family, at son Ben (third from right)'s wedding in 2012. Jim, left, stands beside wife Holly, his HS sweetheart. (Photo courtesy of Grobe family)

Not a memento from his head coaching years at Ohio University or Wake Forest.

No sniff of the multiple national coach of the year awards he won at Wake in 2006.

Post game press conference following the Demon Deacons 9-6 win over Georgia Tech in the 2006 ACC Championship game at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, FL, Saturday, December 2, 2006. (Brian Westerholt / Brian Westerholt / Sports On Film)

No evidence that he loyally served multiple terms as the squeaky-clean ethics chairman of the American Football Coach Association under executive director Teaff.

Nor does he have any intention, he said, of adding anything personal to the sterile décor.

He and Holly are living in faculty housing with no plans to house-hunt. Their dream home, their retirement house, the one they had built in Georgia on a lake in a gated community surrounded by golf courses halfway between Atlanta and Augusta, will sit empty for a while.

This picture was taken at the Grobes' home in Reynolds Lake Oconee, Greensboro, GA, at Christmas 2015. Pictured left to right: Cameron, Matt, Mackenzie, Jim, Holly, Nicole, Lucas and Ben Grobe. (Photo courtesy of Grobe family)

"I don't have a clue," Grobe said when asked about his end game at Baylor. "I have no ulterior motives. I'm here to help and coach a season of football. I'm not here trying to build a career."

Finding his calling

New Baylor head football coach Jim Grobe responds to reporters questions during the Big 12 Conference Football Media Days at the Omni Dallas Hotel, July 19, 2016. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News) (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Back when they met as kids, Jim told Holly he planned to be a doctor like family friend Ray Hagley, who would steer him to Ferrum but never see him play there. The same year (1970) that Hagley loaded up his car to deliver Grobe to junior college, the doctor, who had six children, died in a horrific plane crash after a Marshall football game.

Grobe changed his mind about his future soon after he left Ferrum for the University of Virginia.

Grobe picked Virginia both because the struggling football program offered him a scholarship and because of its reputation for pushing pre-med students to medical school.

But by the time he graduated Virginia in 1975, Grobe asked if he might stay on as a graduate assistant in the football program.

And so began a coaching odyssey that took him to back to high school, followed by a year at Virginia's Emory & Henry College. Then it was back home to Huntington for five years at Marshall, followed by 11 years at Air Force. He graduated to head coach at Ohio University in 1995 and finally Wake Forest in 2001.

At Wake Forest, the smallest of the 65 schools in what has evolved into one of college football's "power five" conferences, Grobe specialized in taking second-level recruits and beating traditional national powers. The stench of impropriety that often accompanies such upstarts never surfaced.

In Wake Forest's glory season of 2006, the Demon Deacons went 11-3, won their first Atlantic Coast Conference championship in 36 seasons and earned a berth to the Orange Bowl.

Think Rice, if it were allowed into the Big 12, winning the conference title.

Grobe was the consensus national coach of the year. He had succeeded where storied predecessors failed. The list included John Mackovic, who would coach at Texas; Al Groh, who went on to coach the New York Jets and University of Virginia; Bill Dooley, who had spent a decade at North Carolina; and Jim Caldwell, an NFL coach with the Indianapolis Colts and Detroit Lions.

Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, an icon in the business, declared his conference rival, "the best coach in the ACC."

Naturally, Grobe became a coach in demand at bigger, more traditionally powerful football schools.

His name was linked to openings at Nebraska, Arkansas, Clemson and Alabama. Grobe says he had serious discussions with all. Whether he was actually offered those jobs can be left to those who parse semantics. Alabama, he concedes, decided to go with Nick Saban. Grobe was a serious candidate at the other schools.

But he could never bring himself to leave Wake Forest. He remembered the anguish he suffered when he left Ohio University for Wake Forest. Telling his players was excruciating.

Always in conversations, he demanded to bring his entire coaching staff, every last assistant. When he was told that would be impossible, he balked.

"I could never leave anyone behind," Grobe said. "Every decision I ever made was with what would be best for my staff in mind."

Grobe always has allowed his assistant coaches autonomy. At Wake Forest, he was a CEO who allowed his assistants to do their jobs.

In 2007, Wake Forest rewarded Grobe's loyalty with a 10-year contract.

In the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of college football, he lasted seven seasons.

Grobe resigned in 2013 after his team finished 4-8. It was the school's fifth consecutive losing season. The cool sideline demeanor, considered a positive during winning seasons, was suddenly perceived as a weakness.

Loyalty to assistants was another issue. Despite the ACC title, Wake Forest couldn't compete with the big state schools in the conference during recruiting battles.

Still, Grobe describes his 13 seasons at Wake Forest as "fantastic."

"But it didn't end the way I wanted," he said. "I made mistakes on a few kids in recruiting and. ..."

He didn't have to retire. Schools such as Alabama-Birmingham, Georgia Southern and Army came calling.

"I couldn't do it," Grobe said. "I didn't want to jump in and feel later that I made a mistake."

Grobe discussed it with Holly and they decided they were finished with football.

Change in plans

New Baylor head football coach Jim Grobe (center, right) is escorted out of the Big 12 Conference Football Media Days following his Q&A with reporters at the Omni Dallas Hotel, July 19, 2016. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News) (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Grobe believes he was going to spend September on a Hawaiian vacation. Or maybe it was supposed to be Europe.

"We were going to be in Spain," Holly said, not surprised that her husband, who can recall plays from games played decades ago, was sketchy on details. "Cruise from Barcelona to France to Croatia to Venice. We were supposed to leave next week.

"Hawaii was October."

The joy of retirement was disrupted by a desperate call from Waco.

The Grobes were in a supermarket parking lot in Georgia, when the call came in loud and clear through the speakers of the family car.

Caller ID reported the call was from the 254 area code. The coach's wife heard the familiar voice, but the devastation in Grant Teaff's voice was alien.

As Grobe listened to Teaff, Holly felt herself assuming the fetal position.

Jim Grobe, acting Baylor head football coach is photographed in his office at the Baylor University Athletics Complex in Waco, Texas, Wednesday, August 24, 2016. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News) (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

"Grobie," as wife refers to husband, "couldn't say 'no.'''

True to his self, Grobe, who will earn a reported $1.25 million for bringing a season's worth of credibility back to a scarred program, has tried not to tamper much with what he has inherited.

Like the décor in his office, he hasn't tinkered with personnel. He has not made a single hire. He has kept Briles' coaching staff intact, which has come under some criticism. He hasn't brought in so much as a confidant to serve as a special assistant or in some other capacity. His son Ben remains assistant director of football operations at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

Meanwhile Briles' son, Kendal, remains Baylor's offensive coordinator. Briles' son-in-law Jeff Lebby remains the passing game coordinator.

Retaining Art Briles' staff has raised eyebrows in some quarters. Grobe, however, insisted that he has been presented with no evidence of wrongdoing on their part.

Grobe has exchanged infrequent texts with Art Briles, but there have been no conversations.

"I thought the best thing here would be for everybody to keep his job," Grobe said. "Head coaches always end up financially well off. But most assistants have to fight for jobs. I felt like nobody in the football program had done anything wrong. I've always looked out for staff."

Nor has Grobe changed the playbook. He told players he wouldn't tinker with Art Briles' system, and he hasn't. At his news conference last week, he told the assembled media he had never coached a team as physically talented as the one he has now.

Baylor Bears quarterback Seth Russell (17) runs the ball during the first half of their game against the Iowa State Cyclones on Saturday, October 24, 2015 at McClane Stadium in Waco, Texas. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News) (Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

"Nothing has changed, nothing," Seth Russell, Baylor's quarterback, said emphatically.

Grobe dutifully talked about a days-old video that had surfaced showing sophomore wide receiver Ishmael Zamora, listed as a starter on the post-spring depth chart, beating and kicking a dog.

He deemed Zamora's conduct "unacceptable" and the player "would be dealt with accordingly."

But the coach who once suspended his best player at Wake Forest for missing a class, would not yet cast sentence.

"Whenever you make a knee-jerk decision, I have found it the wrong decision," Grobe said.

Back in Virginia, Hank Norton, Grobe's role model, promised the coach would make the right decision.

"Everything Jim has done, he has done the right way," Norton said. "Character makes the man. I can assure you he is a man of great character."

Twitter: @bhorn55

Quick facts on Jim Grobe

Age: 64

Hometown: Huntington, W. Va.

Family: Wife Holly; sons Matt (golf coach at Marshall University); Ben (assistant director of football operations at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte); three grandchildren

Education: Ferrum (Va.) Junior College, associate of science, 1972; University of Virginia, bachelor's of science, 1975; University of Virginia, master's of education, 1978

Head coaching: Ohio University, 1995-2000 (33-33-1); Wake Forest, 2001-2013 (77-82); Baylor, 2016