The conversation took place more than 20 years ago, but Clay Shiver still gets excited when it comes to mind.
The 1995 Florida State football team was wrapping up preseason camp. Various position battles had been raging for weeks, and the starting jobs were coming into focus.
There was no question Shiver would be in the Seminoles’ lineup; he was an All-American who had been the starting center since the beginning of the 1993 national championship season.
But it was beginning to look like one of his closest friends and roommate, Greg Frey, was going to come up just short.
Again.
Frey would definitely be a contributor. Even if he ended up on the second team, he was so versatile and intelligent that he could serve as the top backup at several positions. But despite being a senior and one of the team’s hardest workers, Frey wouldn’t be in the starting lineup for the 1995 Seminoles.
“He was fighting for a spot, but when we were coming out of camp, it looked like he was going to be a backup,” Shiver said. “They decided they were going to use him as a swingman along the line.”
That’s when Frey did something Shiver will never forget.
Instead of sulking about not getting to start as a senior, or being content to take second-team reps on a team that would open the season with a No. 1 national ranking, Frey surveyed the situation and made a gesture Shiver is convinced had a significant impact on that season and a long-lasting effect on the Seminoles’ program.
Frey, who was one of the nation’s top recruits when he signed with FSU in 1991, went to offensive line coach Jimmy Heggins and defensive line coach Chuck Amato before the regular season started and actually volunteered to move down to the scout team.
“He said, ‘If you want me to stay down there on the scout team, I’ll run the scout team and I’ll get the defense ready for these games,” Shiver said. “He knew we were going to have a young defense because we lost several starters and all those first-rounders -- Derrick Brooks [graduated], and Derrick Alexander and Devin Bush left a year early. I’m pretty sure we would have won another national championship in ’95 if those guys had come back.
“But we knew it was going to be a young group, and Greg could see that was how he could best help the team.”
So each day at practice that fall, Frey would play on the scout-team offensive line -- and help coach that group -- in an effort to give FSU’s starting defense the best look possible for that week’s game.
And Shiver believes it is no coincidence that several of the Seminoles’ young defensive linemen -- future stars like Peter Boulware, Andre Wadsworth and Greg Spires -- made major leaps that season.
“He was pushing them every day in practice,” Shiver said. “He stayed down there on the scout team because of his own commitment to the team. In a sense, Greg was coaching before he ever started coaching.”
Twenty-three years later, Frey is back at FSU in a full-time coaching capacity. After successful stints at Michigan, Indiana, West Virginia and USF, Frey was lured back to Tallahassee by new head coach Willie Taggart. He will serve as the Seminoles’ offensive line coach and run game coordinator.
