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 dollarsGrobe'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