Wayne State football will have new head coach for first time in 2 decades
Wayne State football will have a new head coach next season for the first time in two decades.
Paul Winters is no longer coach after 19 years, Wayne State senior associate athletics director Jeff Weiss confirmed Friday. Winters has been coaching in college football for 41 years, since 1982.
The Warriors went 1-9 this season, 0-6 in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, and lost their final eight games. They went 2-9 in 2021.
Winters, 64, finishes with a 94-105 record at Wayne State beginning with the 2004 season (18 seasons), with a 79-90 record in conference play. The program had its 2020 season canceled due to COVID-19, after going 8-3 the year before and defeating Grand Valley State for the first time since 1984.
Winters, a three-time GLIAC coach of the year (2006, 2008, 2019), led the Warriors to a remarkable run to the Division II national championship game in 2011, winning four playoff road games before losing 35-21 to Pittsburg State in the title game in Florence, Alabama. The Warriors made the postseason for the first time in program history and went a school-record 12-4, and Winters was named Division II national coach of the year by the American Football Coaches Association.
Wayne State had seven winning seasons in nine years from 2008-16.
Winters oversaw running back Joique Bell’s Harlon Hill Trophy season in 2009, the Heisman equivalent in Division II. Bell went on to play six seasons in the NFL, parts of five with the Detroit Lions.
Winters came to Wayne State after serving as offensive coordinator/running backs coach at Akron, his alma mater, from 19952003. He previously spent time coaching at Wisconsin, Toledo and Akron, starting as a graduate assistant in 1982.
He was a standout running back at Akron in 1976-79, and is top 10 among the Zips’ alltime leading rushers, accumulating 2,613 career yards. He was inducted into the school’s athletic Hall of Fame in 1990.