My goal when I started NCAA 12 was that I wanted to take a small school that no one has heard of and make a name for them.
I got hired as the Head Coach in a town called Akron Ohio. I was the new head coach of the Akron Zips. I told the Athletic Director that he needed to understand success for Akron would not happen over night and this things would take some time. I thought he was on board with that.
I was wrong.
In my 1st and only season as Zips head coach we went 1-11. We had several close losses like an overtime loss to Army, 13-10, and many blow out losses like the one to Western Michigan, 56-3.
My 1st and only win as a Zip came in Buffalo New York on a snowy day in November. Our kicker kicked through a field goal in the heavy snow with no time left on the clock to give Akron the 24-21win over the Buffalo Bulls.
I was excited to see what Akron could do in my 2nd year after having recruited some pretty good new players...I was fired!
The Akron AD sent me packing and said he wanted a more experienced head coach at the helm.
So my time in Akron Ohio was short lived and it was time for me to find a new place of work.
Of course I wanted to still be a head coach, but after being fired and an 1-11 season, I only had four job offers, not a single one for a head coach job. Who could blame them.
I was offered Defensive Coordinator jobs at Idaho, New Mexico State & Colorado State. I was also offered an Offensive Coordinator job at Florida Atlantic University.
While I do really like defensive play and I like WAC schools, it was way to hard to turn down a job in my home state of Florida. So I took the FAU job.
In my 1st year we had some pretty bad moments on offensive but on the defensive side of the ball, witch I had no control over, was even worse. Any close games the Owls ever had a shot at winning were pretty much blown by the defense.
FAU went 3-9 in my 1st year with wins over WKU, North Texas & an FCS School.
Year two was a little bit better, at least for me, heck I still had a job!
The Owls got better on both offense and defense and finished year 2 with a 5-7 record, all Sun Belt Conference wins, but we needed to do a better job at the non Conference games if we wanted to make a bowl game.
Year three we finally accomplished that goal, with non conference wins over Akron (take that!) and UNLV with 4 Sun Belt wins gave us a 6-6 record and my 1st bowl game. We were forced however to take the Owls out of the bright sunny weather they were use to and head up north to Boise Idaho to take on the Toledo Rockets in the Humanitarian Bowl.
Much like my 1st win as a Zips head coach, this game was in heavy snow.
We pulled out the win in pretty dominating fashion 24-7 and with that, I was finally apart of a bowl winning team.
After the FAU AD saw how this team continued to get better year after year when I was there, I was given a big raise and offered a brand new three year contract, which I gladly signed.
Over my final three years at FAU we would go on win a huge season opener at Ann Arbor vs. Michigan and head to three more bowl games, a rematch with Toledo in the godaddy.com bowl and two New Orleans bowl games vs UCF and Southern Miss. We would go on to lose all three bowl games which was really disappointing.
However, you take the good with the bad and in the end FAU did go on to win two Sun Belt Championships. Past of that was because of the Troy Trojans leaving to join conference USA.
We never once beat Troy while I was at FAU, heck we never even came close to beating them. They whooped us every time. Troy went 12-0 in their last year in the Sun Belt and would go on to beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. Then they made the jump to Conference USA while UAB came to replace them here in the Sun Belt.
So with Troy gone, we soon became one of the best teams in the conference and would go on to win two Sun Belt titles over the next three seasons.
I was quickly offered another three year contract as FAU offensive coordinator, but I turned it down. Don't get me wrong, I had a great time and a lot of fun at FAU, but I was ready to become a head coach again. I felt like I had accomplished all that I could with FAU with two conference championships and a bowl win, and if I had no chance to move up and become a head coach, it was time for me to hit the road.
Tough thing is when you turn down a job, the dream job you are looking fir is not always there. No one offered me a head coaching job. I had five job offers when I threw my name back in the coaching pool, not one head coach job.
I was offered five offensive coordinator jobs at Vanderbilt, Memphis, FIU, Western Kentucky and Ole' Miss.
While I was disappointed no one wanted me to be their head man, out of the choices presented, I had a make a choice as FAU had all ready moved on.
It would have been a step backwards in my ultimate goal to go to another Sun Belt School, their was no point in that. So FIU and WKU were out. I took a long hard look at Memphis, but I was not the least bit excited with their offense. They were out. So it was down to my final two choices...two SEC schools. The big time. I weighed my options and finally signed on the dotted line to become a rebel.
I feel like I made the right choice as five years later Vanderbilt football would move down to the Sun Belt due to many unsuccessful seasons in the SEC.
My time with Ole Miss lasted just a short three seasons. Going 6-6, 7-5 and 6-6 in my three seasons with the rebels. We never won an SEC championship but we did make it to three bowl games while I was there. A lose to North Carolina State in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, and wins in back to back bowl games. We took down Air Force in the Hawaii Bowl and I coached in my final Ole' Miss game vs a familiar Sun Belt foe in Middle Tennessee State in the New Mexico Bowl.
My time with Ole' Miss was short lived, but I had a lot of fun with them and that offense, including a brief experiment with running the triple option in the SEC...it failed horribly.
The reason I left Ole' Miss so quickly was the reason I first chose to go there, they would give me that boost toward the head coaching job I wanted so bad.
I finally got that chance when I got a phone call from the university I got a
college degree from...Troy.
Troy, a little over five years removed from a 12-0 season, a Fiesta Bowl and a Conference USA move, wanted me as their head coach.
At this point Conference USA had replaced the Big East as an AQ team following four 13-0 seasons in a row from UCF twice, Houston & SMU. So this was a big time job as Troy was in an AQ conference and was fresh off of a Fiesta Bowl win.
The 1st year was a bit of a struggle for me as I had not been head coach for nine years. We went 7-5 in my 1st year back as the head man and made it into the Conference USA Championship game. Troy would take down UTEP and walk away as 8-5 Conference USA champs. That would earn us this...
A date with the #3 team in the nation, the Texas Longhorns. The biggest game I had ever coached in that is for sure. This Troy team played so hard to win, but it was just not enough as Texas would sneak away with a 24-21 win. Texas was a tough team for sure.
After this season, the AQ rule was done away with and now the top ten ranked teams, as long as there are not two from the same conference, will head to BCS games.
From this point on we would go on to win three more Conference USA championships over the next six seasons. Including season ending bowl wins in the Liberty Bowl over UCONN and TicketCity Bowl over Iowa State. We also had a bowl loss in the Liberty Bowl to Louisville.
One of the biggest things we accomplished as a team and as a University was a Fiesta Bowl victory over in state rival Auburn.
A 12-1 season gave us the shot that every Troy University student had been waiting for, a showdown with one of the big dogs in Alabama. We dominated.
Auburn never came close and with two Fiesta Bowl wins in the past five season, I felt safe in proclaiming the Troy Trojans the #2 team in the state of Alabama.
A big part of the success of the Troy Trojans was the play at the quarterback position by Josiah Higdon. He started all four years he was at Troy. He would go on to win multiple Maxwell, Walter Camp and Davey O'Brien Awards. A scrambling, big Tebow like quarterback that would go down as one of the greatest sports players in Troy History.
He also won this.
Josiah was recognized as the best player in all of college football. To this day the only Heisman winner in Troy history and he was so much fun to coach.
The last thing Josiah did was lead the Trojans to a 13-0 season and birth in the BCS National Championship game.
What was 1st projected as Troy vs. Georgia, a loss in the SEC Championship game gave Pac 12 Champion Air Force the shot at the title with us. It was so cool to see that #1 up next to Troy's name.
The game was in the Rose Bowl and we played our hearts out, but were not able to get the win. The Falcon defense was too tough for us as Josiah tossed four interceptions and Air Force scored 21 unanswered points in the 4th quarter to take the win 38-31.
I was disappointed for sure as was the entire small town of Troy Alabama, but we proved what this team was made of and most of all I proved I can coach at the highest level in the big games. Take that Akron!
I also proved it with a couple of these.
Three coach of the year awards. over six years at Troy.
We followed our National Title game with a 9-4 season and bid in the TicketCity Bowl. We also got a game scheduled with Alabama that season in Tuscaloosa. The Tide was tired of hearing our talk that we were the the best team in the state following our win over Auburn and National Championship game appearance. They shut us up with a 28-17 win, but we had the lead for much of the ball game and the score of the game was 21-17 late in the 4th quarter with us having a shot a winning.
We also have has wins at Troy vs, Oregon twice, on the road and at home, Texas twice, on the road and at home, Miami and Pitt both on the road. At the time we beat Oregon at home, it was the final week of the season and we were ranked at #1 and they were ranked at #2, both teams at 11-0. That was one of the biggest wins in school history as we scored on the final play to win that game. It was the biggest game in Troy Alabama history.
Only time will tell where me and the Troy Trojans will go from here, it is year #7 for me as Troy head coach, year 2027 and we are determined to make it back to a National Championship game!
As for me as Head Coach, three bowl wins, four conference titles, a Fiesta Bowl win and a National Title game birth....I say not too shabby :D!
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