By: Joey Mullins
Samford Athletics
 
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Today, we continue our series named the S-Club Profile, presented by Med Center Mazda, focusing on former student-athletes and giving updates on what they have been up to since finishing their Samford playing careers. In this month's edition, we highlight former football student-athlete and current Samford strength and conditioning coach Tommy Rohling.
 
Rohling has dedicated most of his adult life to Samford, starting as a freshman football player in 1984. Coming out of high school, Rohling considered joining the military, but Samford offered him an opportunity to continue his athletic career and to get a first-class college education.
 
"I could've gone to college and not played college football, but it was my only opportunity to continue in any type of athletic career," Rohling said. "It was either that or the military. Samford being an academic school, I knew I could play college football and get a top-notch education. Once I got in, as they say, the rest is history, and I haven't regretted it."
 
Rohling's first season at Samford in 1984 was the first football season for the Bulldogs in over a decade. Following the 1973 season, the school had dropped football, but the program was resurrected entering the 1984 season under the direction of head coach Kim Alsop. Rohling said helping to build a program from scratch was a difficult but rewarding task.
 
"It was a challenge," Rohling said. "Did it make me better? Yeah, because any time you go through a challenge, pain, whatever you want to call it, if you survive it, then you come out better on the other end. To go through what we did in 1984 and then to be able to reap the benefits of 1987 was rewarding."
 
That first season, Samford went 1-7, opening the season with an 82-9 loss to Salem College, with Terry Bowden as Salem's head coach and Jimbo Fisher as its quarterback. But the Samford team increased its win total in each of the next three seasons, culminating with a 9-1 record in 1987, Rohling's senior season. That season, Bowden was hired as Samford's head coach and Fisher transferred to Samford for his senior season to be the Bulldogs' quarterback. Rohling talked about what he felt contributed to the turnaround.
 
"Everybody worked hard because we had a lot of blue-collar kids," Rohling said. "And, let's face it, you're Division III non-scholarship, you're here because you want to be here. You had those guys who were here and each year, obviously we got better. And everything crystalized in 1987 when we brought in Terry Bowden, and we brought in Jimbo Fisher. I don't want to understate bringing in Terry Bowden and Jimbo Fisher. When you saw Jimbo in practice, you're like, 'oh yeah, this guy's good. He's really good.'"
 
Another change for that 1987 was that Rohling, who had played fullback for the first three seasons of his career, moved to nose guard on defense.
 
"Terry let me know, on offense, I wasn't going to play," Rohling said. "But, he said, 'in high school, I noticed you played nose guard. We're going to run a gap attack, up field defense, I really think you can start.' It didn't take me long to say, 'okay, I'll make the change.' I really didn't have a choice. And then when I saw who they brought in for running backs, I knew I was probably going to watch the games from the sideline my senior year."
 
Rohling came back to Samford to finish his degree in 1989 and an opportunity came up for him to work for the coaching staff as a student assistant and later graduate assistant. Rohling said it was an easy decision to take the position when it was offered.
 
"I was sitting in the weight room working out, it was in season 1989 and the coaches had to walk through the locker room to go take a shower," Rohling said. "(Assistant Coach) Todd (Stroud) came through and asked me how I was doing and then Terry came through and he said 'you said you wanted to finish school and you need to get your Master's, Todd needs help with the defensive line and the weight room and if you help him, I'll pay out the rest of your school.'"
 
After talking to his father, Rohling accepted the position. He started working in January of 1990 as a student assistant and finished up as a graduate assistant in 1992. By that point, Samford had moved from Division III to the Division I-FCS level. The 1991 Samford team posted a record of 12-2, the best in program history, reaching the semifinals of the FCS Playoffs. Rohling reflected on how far the program had come from a rough start in 1984 to reaching the semifinals of the playoffs just seven years later.
 
"In 1991, albeit we lost to Youngstown State in the semifinals, to put that into perspective, you go from losing 82-9 to being 10 points away from the national title game," Rohling said.
 
After finishing his time as a GA at Samford, Rohling handled the personal training for Dr. James Andrews and his son at Gold's Gym in Vestavia. Rohling's wife, Christine, a fellow Samford alum, saw that Samford had an opening for a strength and conditioning coach and suggested that he apply for the position.
 
Rohling called the athletics department and talked to then-athletics director Steve Allgood, and they set up a time to talk about the position. The two men had a first interview for the job in early February. Rohling did not hear anything else about the job until June when Allgood called him to discuss the position further.
 
"I got a call on June 29^th and Steve asked if I was free the next day and I told him I was," Rohling said. "He goes, 'let's meet again at 9:30 and on your way up grab (former athletic trainer) Chris Gillespie.' I don't think I got a wink of sleep that night because I didn't know what he was going to say. We get up to Steve's office, he comes around his desk and says 'Thomas, what's your opinion on Creatine?' I kind of bumbled through it and he goes, 'hey, if you'll accept it, we want to offer you the job,' and I said, 'I'll take it.' This was June 30^th, and I asked when I would start and he said, 'tomorrow's the new budget year, you start tomorrow.'"
 
Rohling began working at Samford full time on July 1, 1998, and he has been at the school ever since. When he was first hired, Rohling was the only strength and conditioning coach for the entire athletics department. Rohling talked about the changes he has seen in the industry during his time at Samford.
 
"Each sport is becoming more specialized, we're getting away from the monolithic football structure of doing workouts," Rohling said. "Baseball has really gotten on board with strength and conditioning. Also, the emergence of HRV, Heart Rate Variable, Heart Rate Monitoring at which soccer, especially here, has really pioneered. Track is the sport that started all of this with strength and conditioning, so track is always going to be track because everything we do started with track. Then football went to track and asked, 'how do we become faster, more explosive?' So, track showed them."
 
Rohling has also seen a lot of changes at Samford as the strength and conditioning staff has grown from one coach to five coaches, and it has been through a significant increase in facilities and equipment.
 
"We've gone from having one strength coach working with all 17 sports, which I did from 1998 to January of 2007, to now we have five strength coaches," Rohling said. "And you've gone from a weight room with eight racks that ran all 17 sports, to now we have 20 racks in the Hanna Center and another 10 or so racks down in the Sullivan-Cooney Field House. So, we've gone from eight racks to 30 racks. It's been quite gratifying, satisfying to see it morph into what it has."
 
Rohling has given a lot to Samford and has gained a lot from the school as well. He met his wife, Christine, in the weight room at Samford when she was a cheerleader at the school. The couple has three children, Conner, Colton and Chaney. Their oldest child, Conner, recently played football at Samford. In fact, in his final game at Auburn in 2019, he was selected as a team captain. Rohling talked about what that honor meant to him.
 
"To be honest with you, there is nothing I will ever do that's more gratifying," Rohling said. "To see my oldest son, who came in as an uninvited walk-on, make the travel squad, become the signaller. I told him, 'I couldn't have written a better ending for my college career.' To walk to midfield as one of the four game captains at Jordan-Hare Stadium meant a lot. And he got to play in the game too. Christine and I will always be thankful to Coach (Chris) Hatcher for what he did for Conner because he didn't have to do that. But I'd also like to think that Conner played a role in earning it."
 
When asked what his favorite memory of his entire time at Samford is, Rohling mentioned two memories involving his children.
 
"I want to include the whole family, so it's Christine and I watching Conner walk to midfield," Rohling said. "That's when you realize as an athlete, your life as come full circle. Probably a second memory was Conner in 2004 made the cover of Seasons Magazine. He was only five years old in a miniature Samford football uniform."
 
Rohling and his family have dedicated a lot of time, work and energy to Samford University. For the contributions the Rohling family has made to the institution and its athletics department, Samford will always owe a debt of gratitude.
 
For more information on the S-Club, contact Hal Langston at hlangst1@samford.edu. For giving opportunities, please contact Maggie Folker at mrountr1@samford.edu.