A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
OU STUDENT COACHES WORK LONG, UNPAID HOURS IN PURSUIT OF A DREAM
NORMAN — They hold up those big boards with random, sometimes amusing imagery like toilet paper, pieces of fruit and professional sports logos that signal calls to Oklahoma players during games.
Sometimes you might catch a glimpse of one standing on the sideline with a clipboard, charting games. Or maybe you have been in a restaurant line with one on any ordinary weeknight when they have been sent to pick up food and bring it back to the football offices.
These are Oklahoma’s student coaches, undergraduates with a full-time course load who also work full-time, but unpaid, hours completing menial, thankless tasks in service of the Sooner football machine and in pursuit of a career that is difficult — and sometimes downright impossible — to attain, even for those who did play college football.
Currently, there are three OU student coaches — Matt Foster, K.C. Gundy and Joe Castiglione Jr. — but NCAA rules place no limits on the number of such volunteers allowed at each school.
“There are only so many guys crazy enough to do something that intense while you’re in school and not getting paid,” said offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley, who himself took that unconventional path into coaching 13 years ago as a Texas Tech student assistant.
Although student coaches work mostly behind-thescenes with no fanfare — you won’t find them listed with other support staff on OU’s athletic website or in the media guide — a couple of their names are certainly recognizable.
K.C. Gundy and Joe Castiglione Jr. are the sons of inside receivers coach Cale Gundy and OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, respectively.
K.C. played high school baseball at Norman North and planned to eventually walk on at Auburn under coach Sunny Golloway, the former OU baseball coach who has been friends with the Gundys for years. But K.C. began having elbow problems before his senior season and decided to give up the sport.
His original plan was to eventually become a baseball coach, but instead enrolled at OU and began working toward a football coaching career.
K.C. works directly with his dad.
“He travels with me; he’s in the meeting rooms with me,” said Cale Gundy. “On the sidelines, I talk to Lincoln and I talk to him. It’s special.”
Castiglione Jr. always knew he wanted to either coach or go into athletic administration like his father. After playing high school football at Mount St. Mary, the younger Castiglione decided against a small-college playing career and enrolled at OU. Last season was his first as a student coach.
“Organized sports have really been my entire life,” said Castiglione Jr., who helps linebackers coach Tim Kish. “I wanted to stay close to it. Coach (Bob) Stoops mentioned early in my senior year that this could be a possibility.”
For other undergraduates who don’t have those family connections, it usually comes down to getting a good recommendation from a high school coach. Matt Foster was a part-time starter at Stratford High in Houston, but is smart and was always drawn to football strategy.
So his high school coach put Foster in touch with former OU offensive coordinator Josh Heupel. The Sooners recruit the Houston area heavily, and current OU junior offensive lineman Christian Daimler played at Stratford.
“I’d never been around a big college football program, so at first you’re a deer in the headlights,” said Foster, who will be a senior in the fall. “Everything moves at such a fast and intense pace. The biggest thing is really just getting used to that intensity every single day.”
Foster works with outside receivers coach Dennis Simmons, who called Foster “invaluable.”
“In our meetings, he gives me a player point of view on my teaching and how I’m relaying the message,” Simmons said. “From a coaching standpoint, you’re around football all day and you talk football all day. There are little nuances that you may think aren’t a big deal, because you’re around it and you’re doing it all day, but for a kid who’s having to deal with class and other aspects of just being a student-athlete, you can lose track of that.”
The title “student coach” can be a tad misleading. NCAA rules restrict actual on-field coaching to the 10 fulltime coaches and graduate assistants.
That means student coaches are mostly cutting up film, entering data, charting practices and running errands. A student coach, during the season, usually works some in the morning, goes to class, returns to the football offices for meetings and practice, then continues working until late in the evening.
And that’s all before writing papers or completing any homework.
“It’s a sacrifice,” said Castiglione Jr., “but I always try to remind myself when I’m working on homework late at night that it’s all gonna pay off in the future.”
The scary thing, though, is that despite the experience student assistants are getting and the connections they’re making, it’s still tremendously difficult to break into college football coaching, and that can go double for those who never played football in college.
Only eight of the 128 current Football Bowl Subdivision head coaches weren’t college football players.
“There are guys coming back who were All-Americans, Heisman winners trying to get jobs,” said K.C. Gundy. “It’ll be tough.”
Tough, but not impossible — especially if you have connections.
After four years as an OU student coach working with both Heupel and Riley, Zak Kromer recently landed a gig as an offensive assistant with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. His father, Aaron, is offensive line coach.
“Really, the payment, in my mind, was the opportunity to learn football, go to school, get my degree and have an opportunity after I graduated,” said Zak Kromer.
“You’re learning to work with programs on the computer, the film, Excel … you’re learning how to run meetings like the coaches do. I learned so much more than if I would have played in college.”