Leaving the sidelines: Coach JB Arnold announces retirement from football

While the majesty of the sport JB Arnold loves best plays out under bright lights, on freshly lined grass with the blaring horns and steady beat of its own bands, he knows the soul of the game is built on long, early morning bus rides, late practices in sweltering heat and primarily in promises kept.

He doesn’t remember falling in love with football. In so many ways, it was always there. At eight years old he cut the color photos of college players from the Atlanta newspaper, touching the brightly uniformed athletes in their heroic poses, performing miracles in cleats.

“I was just enamored from day one,” he said. “It was the pageantry of it all, the excitement in the crowds, it motivates people. That's why you see 100,000 people at a game. I just loved it.”

His passion for the sport grew deeper and more complex as he began playing the game himself and learning how each position on the field supports those around it. He began to see how it is about more than brute force and glory, winning hinges as much on precision, anticipation, timing and execution.

“I loved how you put 11 people together to lean on each other and be as good as they could possibly be,” Arnold said. “The different ways of thinking to get stuff done, the physicalness of the game the different personalities of the game, I could talk about it forever.”

He played and somewhere along the way he realized that he was never going to have the raw talent that would earn himself a place on a college roster. But he kept playing and he coached his younger brothers in wrestling and basketball and somewhere else along the way, he realized what he loved best he could still do from the sideline and on the practice field.

“It’s the competition,” Arnold said. “Realizing what it takes to be good, to be successful and really compete at a high level. You have to be humble, you have to be unselfish and you have to work extremely hard.”

For 22 of the 28 years Jefferson County High School has fielded a Warrior football team, Arnold was the man standing on the sidelines, calling the shots. In all, he has spent 33 seasons coaching, first at Louisville High, then JCHS.

In his time as head coach his team has earned seven region titles, appeared twice in the semi-finals, four times in the quarterfinals and won 168 games.

Now, he believes, it is time to hand his whistle to whoever comes next.

“When I took the job 22 years ago, all I ever said was, ‘Good Lord, let me know when it’s time to go,’ and He let me know,” Arnold said. “It’s a great job. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I worked hard. But I wasn’t going to hang around just to hang around.”

The coach said that he thought about retiring when his youngest son graduated, but knew that the 2022 season would be a tough one for whoever was at the helm.

“Even though covid hit two years ago, I knew it was really going to start playing a factor in the football program this year,” Arnold said. “And I knew it would really be brutal on the next guy if he stepped in right then.”

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the Georgia High School Association restricted players gatherings for workouts to just 25 players at a time that summer. Arnold rose early, drove a bus to Bartow, Wadley and Louisville to pick up the first group of players and bring them back to the school. While his coaches were working them out, he made that same route to pick up the next 25 players. He made four trips a day on that route the whole summer. The Warriors made it to the semifinals that year with their final game played on Dec. 18. To get his players where they needed to be, he drove long routes June through December.

“It’s what you have to do here,” Arnold said with a shrug.

Over the last 22 years Arnold built a program that became known for its football players not just across the state, but across the country.

He took players to camps and passing league competitions across the south east, in Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and South Carolina. At each of these his player competed against some of top college recruits in the nation.

“Some people don’t know this, but we have faced Tim Tebow, Julio Jones, other players who have gone on to become names not just at the college level but in the NFL as well,” Arnold said. “I wanted to expose our kids to top quality competition, to show them how hard you have to play to be good. Once they bought into that we had a heck of a running success.”

His Warriors have gone to the playoffs 21 out of 22 years, had 18 winning seasons and around 100 of his players have been offered scholarships to move on, get a college education and play football at the next level.

Arnold has a letter he received from Vanderbilt University a few years ago that says that at that time, Jefferson County was in the top 25 percent of high schools in the nation getting players Division 1 scholarships.

“I’m proud of that,” Arnold said. “It takes a tremendous amount of work, but all I can do is give a kid the opportunity to go play ball. They have to take it from there. Football, if you’re going to do it right, has to be a 12-month-a-year job, it really does. Recruiting is year-round. Getting your kids ready is year-round.”

In his first year two years as head coach Arnold had the pleasure of coaching Fernando Velasco, who would eventually go on to an eight-year career in the NFL where he had the chance to play in Super Bowl 50.

“He (Arnold) had an overall tremendous impact on my life,” Velasco said. “I grew up without my father around and I look at he and Coach Charles Rutland (Arnold’s predecessor at JCHS) as father figures. He’s been there with me every step of the way. He supported me through college and once I got to the NFL he allowed me to come back and run camps at the school. He and his family always helped and anytime I called he was there with advice or encouraging words.”

When still a high school student, Velasco attended a football camp at the University of Georgia with Arnold. Velasco said he had a great first day at the camp and was beating some of the top recruits from across the country.

“After the first day, I was talking to Coach Arnold and he was basically like, ‘You just have to go out there and have a better day tomorrow, be the best offensive lineman there,’” Velasco said. “I think Coach (Mark) Richt had pulled him (Arnold) aside the first day and told him I was going get offered. Coach Arnold was just motivating me to make sure I didn’t get complacent, that I didn’t let up.”

Velasco smiled and said that it was the only time in his life that Arnold hasn’t been 100 percent honest with him.

“He’s had a ton of guys earn scholarships under him and they’ve won a lot of ball games,” Velasco said. “For him, that’s what it’s all about, to inspire his guys to dream and to see a bigger picture and what they can accomplish through hard work and perseverance.”

Arnold said that yes, he has always loved the Xs and Os, learning new schemes and studying the sport itself, but that really putting together a winning team is about so much more than that.

“It’s about relationships,” he said. “It’s about doing what you can to make sure that each kid plays as hard as he can. The only way that’s going to fly is they have to know you are working hard for them and that you care about them. Expose them to things and see the excitement in their eyes.”

Seeing Velasco play in the Super Bowl or KJ Jenkins this year playing for the Big 10 Championship, the success stories of others, Arnold said, they are what is most encouraging.

“Those are kids from Jefferson County,” Arnold said. “And being able to point to them, to know we can dream big and follow that with a little work and go get it.”

Arnold said he learned along the way that most of his players have people yelling at them and disciplining them every day.

“I can make them run laps and do up-downs all day, but until you know how to change their heart, they’re going to make the same mistakes over and over again,” he said. “You can discipline them all day long. They get plenty of that. You look them in the eyes and tell they you love them, they don’t know what to do with that.”

Arnold said that meeting his wife, Stacy, probably did him more good than anything else in his life.

He had just moved to Jefferson County to take a job teaching physical education at Louisville High School and on the first day of new teacher orientation he and one other teacher went to the wrong building.

“That other teacher was Stacy and she and I have been married for 28 years,” Arnold said. “She already had a great foundation in faith. She was very professional, very motivated, and that helped me. She pushed me to the be my best.”

Stacy said that football has been a part of their family from day one. Their two sons, Bryant and Burton, both grew up on the sidelines as ball boys and eventually played on semi-final Warrior teams for their father. Their daughter, Raley, was a water girl and homecoming queen.

“We have been blessed to be a part of the lives of so many young men and their families,” Stacy said. “Our lives have been enriched by them. I have enjoyed the journey, and I am thankful that all three of my children were a part of Warrior football. The only word I know to describe the end of this season in our lives is bittersweet. We will always be Warriors, proud to wear the blue and gold and proud to call Jefferson County home.”

His next best move was hiring Coach David Land as his defensive coordinator, he said.

“We’ve been together through it all,” Arnold said. “He’s been my right hand and I couldn’t have done any of it without him.”

After more than 40 years in education, Land is retiring this year as well.

School Superintendent Sam Dasher said that while Arnold will be retiring from football, he is glad to say that he plans to remain in the school system.

“We hate that he is leaving,” Dasher said. “It’s always comfortable to have a coach like JB who is a class act, who is consistently positive and straight forward. You know he’s going to put the best team possible on the field. We’ve had some great years with teams who went deep into playoffs. JB is going to have some large shoes to fill. We’re glad and hope that we can keep him working in some capacity in the system, because outside of coaching he’s a good man.”

The Warrior head coach position was posted online and Dasher said that the school board hopes to make an announce who will be taking over the team no later than the February board meeting.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Leaving the sidelines: Coach Arnold announces retirement from football