"Shortly after Navy hired him as running backs coach in 1995, Ken Niumatalolo chatted with a player in the Midshipmen's expansive sports-conditioning facility.

Soon, a tall, sturdy man approached them and politely interrupted.

"Very stern and direct, he said, 'Don't talk to the players during their lift. They're focused,'?" Niumatalolo recalled. "There was a focus about the man I had never seen before."

That was Niumatalolo's introduction to Phil Emery, then, for all intents and purposes, the czar of player performance. Niumatalolo is now Navy's football coach and Emery is the Bears' general manager."