Q. Riley Nowakowski told a story yesterday about the summer when you go through workouts, and then Sarratt would go, no, guys, we’re doing one more. And then it became Sarratt and then Cooper and then the receivers. And it kind of grew. He said Fernando got into it. What did you think when you heard about that? And what does the mentality say about the approach of your players?
CURT CIGNETTI: That’s the first I’ve heard of it, and I think that’s reflective of guys wanting to pay the price to be the best they can be and pushing themselves, understanding it takes a little bit more to be the best. There’s good and there’s great, and what does it take to be great? It takes a special discipline, work ethic and focus. And those are guys trying to find the edge and improve every single day.
Q. Both of you came up through the smaller-school ranks as head coaches. What did you learn on those experiences and how do you apply that now to both the success that you’re enjoying in your current roles, but also in how you build a team and build a cohesiveness with the players and staff?
KALEN DEBOER: I think, first of all, you have an appreciation for the resources and the things you have when you get to these levels of college football and these experiences. But I think when you’re putting it together and you’re so hands-on and wearing all the different hats that come along with being a small-college football coach, not even just a head coach, it really forces you to have to think outside the box, be creative, and that might be schematically, that might be how you set up your travel with limited expenses and things like that. So, there’s a lot, I think, that forces you to think through. But, again, it goes back to I have an appreciation for every person in our program because I know the jobs that they’re all doing, and there’s more to it than just a title. They’re working behind the scenes. Now it just comes down to managing the volume of the staff that you have and making sure that everyone is aligned and heading in the same direction.
But I think the small-college opportunity, not near as many people watching. There’s a lot of mistakes that I made at the small-college level that you learn from and that you continue to apply as you go through. Again, I’ve been fortunate to have had four head coaches I coached for after being a head coach myself that allowed me to take a little bit of bits and pieces of what they did and add it to what I thought could continue to help me as I became a head coach again.
CURT CIGNETTI: We’re both small-college head coaches. Our routes and career paths were a little different. There’s about five or six of us out there nationally that I followed for a while. In my particular situation, I had 28 years as an FBS assistant. I’m 23 years old, I’m coaching at Rice, which back then was in the Southwest Conference. We played SMU before they got the death penalty. You’re playing Texas, A&M, those people, every week. When I went to D-II, I came from Alabama, obviously. So for me, it was a chance to be the leader, and like Coach said, get the mistakes out of the way and improve your craft every year.
But having never been at that level, also, it was a culture shock, when you’re dressing in the shower up at Clarion for game day and many other things — playing in the playoffs and the university’s shutdown and you’re taking the garbage out before the staff meeting or waxing the staff table, or maybe the university’s changing their Internet system and you don’t have access to game tape until Tuesday of a Wednesday game. But it was a valuable experience, no question about it. And it was also — my parents were living there, my wife’s parents were there, my wife’s mother. But every move that I made, after I left Alabama, prepared me for this moment and also prepared me for the changes that have taken place in college football since I was an assistant coach, that’s where the recruiting coordinator experience came into play.
