Interim coaches bring change
The Western Kentucky f o o t b a l l t e a m h a d j u s t wr a pp e d u p a wi n n i n g record and a bowl invitation, but as players gathered for a postseason meeting, the mood was hardly celebratory.
Coach Jeff Brohm had been hired away by Purdue and had chosen to start his new job immediately. Nick Holt, the defensive coordinator, and a former USC assistant, was left to run the team.
“There were a lot of sad eyes around the room,” Holt said. “I told the kids to hang in there.”
Interim bowl coaches — assistants called upon to take command for only one game, often the biggest game of the season — are a fact of life in college football.
With the coaching car- ousel spinning full-tilt in December, a handful of fillins end up working the sidelines through the holidays.
This winter, substitutes have guided or will guide teams in the Boca Raton B owl , t h e B i r mi n g h a m Bowl and the Military Bowl. Last-minute hires will make their debuts in other games.
“It’s a challenge. It’s one day at a time,” said T. J. Weist, who will lead South Florida in the Birmingham Bowl. “That’s what I told the players — don’t focus on tomorrow, don’t focus on next week.”
Interim coaches are not unique to the NCAA. The Rams dismissed Jeff Fisher with three weeks remaining in the NFL regular season, leaving special-teams coordinator John Fassel in charge.
But college football is different in that coaches leave early for better-paying or higher-profile jobs. Or they get fired from what is essentially a playoff-bound team.
At Western Kentucky, Brohm parlayed three win- ning seasons into an offer from Purdue that could approach $5 million per year with incentives.
“We understood him leaving,” Holt said. “You want to stick around and coach that bowl game, you want to coach the kids a little longer, but you’ve got work to do at your new program.”
Indiana, which will face Utah today in the Foster Farms Bowl, was left without a leader when Kevin Wilson resigned in early December. Wilson and school administrators cited “philosophical differences.”
Defensive coordinator Tom Allen was handed the job. Still, like Holt and others in his circumstance, he faced a difficult team meeting on the first day.
“You have young men that were recruited by Coach Wilson,” he told reporters. “I tried to be real, genuine and from the heart. I told them how much I loved them.”
When an assistant gets bumped up a spot, the rest of the staff must be reshuffled. Players must adjust to a new coaching dynamic and cannot help but wonder about the future.
“They’re sitting there a little bit, saying ‘Who’s coming, who’s going?’” said Ed Foley, the interim coach for Temple in the Military Bowl on Tuesday.
Much of the onus falls upon the athletes.
Ri c k y Jo nes , a s e ni o r receiver at Indiana, said he and the other upperclassmen made a point of rallying the team: “Through tough times, we have to mesh together.”
At South Florida, senior o f f e n s i v e l i n e man Ko f i Amichia told reporters: “I understand the business. And everybody on the team understands the business now.”
Charlie Strong, who was fired by Texas and accepted an offer from South Florida, has been a presence at Bulls practices. Weist told reporters he doesn’t mind.
Strong “actually gives us another set of eyes,” the interim coach said. “He gave us some good advice.”