BOWLING GREEN — He is the most interesting man on a most interesting staff, a singular object of fascination among college football fans, not just for his throwback mop of hair — think Uncle Rico from “Napoleon Dynamite” — but his ability to outlive a cat.
How does new Bowling Green defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder continue to get jobs coordinating defenses?
It is a fair question.
Once a coaching star, in his past three stops in that role — at Auburn, Notre Dame, and Louisville — the 59-year-old lasted a total of four seasons and four games. He was dismissed each time, twice along with the entire staff. At his most recent stop: Louisville’s defense ranked 122nd nationally last season.
As you can imagine, the Internet had fun with his hire here, the approval rating on social media lower than rain on vacation.
But even the Twittersphere has to give VanGorder this: The man is resilient.
And, for that matter, resistant.
The criticism?
“I don’t pay any attention,” he said. “They don’t know. Circumstances are just an incredible thing in this game, and it’s often misinterpreted by the public, and it’s quite often misinterpreted by the media. I don’t expect you guys to know what I know about the business and what’s going on.
“The media and the public, they’re going to be critical. That’s the world we live in. A long time ago, maybe it would have bothered me. It doesn’t at all now.”
So here he is, on his 20th stop in a long, strange, arcing odyssey, having landed on one of the few runways left for him.
A coach’s coach, the have-whistle-will-travel assistant is out of the spotlight, but perfectly in his comfort zone, ready for another chance — and the opportunity to prove he, along with a Falcons program coming off nine wins in three seasons, can rise again.
“The only difference is there will be smaller stadiums,” VanGorder said, “which has never been important to me anyway.”
Same as with new Bowling Green coach Scot Loeffler; consider our mind open here.
There is good reason to be encouraged too, and that goes for the entire staff. As we’ve written about the previous boss, BG’s mistake was not the hiring of Mike Jinks. It was not providing the rookie head coach any guidance in assembling his staff.
Where Jinks should have made it a point to hire a few veteran aides to help navigate unfamiliar ground, he brought in only yes men, including seven first-time Division I coaches, none with Ohio ties.
Loeffler has done the opposite.
A longtime coordinator in the big seat for the first time, he knows what he doesn’t know. The former Michigan quarterback, who went on to coach the passers at his alma mater from 2002-07, did not just ask his mentors for advice. He hired them.
Seriously, not since The Eagles has a band gotten back together like this, the Falcons’ staff a who’s who of former Lloyd Carr assistants. Count ‘em: associate head coach Jim Herrmann (Michigan DC/linebackers coach, 1990-2005); offensive coordinator Terry Malone (Michigan offensive line/OC, 1997-2005); passing game coordinator Erik Campbell (Michigan receivers coach, 1995-2007); and strength coach Kevin Tolbert.
In all, the Falcons’ full-time assistants have 123 years of NFL or college power-conference coaching experience among them. It is an absurd amount of experience for a Group of Five program, and let me say, it shows. In a brief view of practice this week, there was a distinct rhyme, reason, and intensity. An air of competence has returned.
“It was critical to be around a bunch of guys that every single day I walk in there, if I make a mistake, they can look at me and go, ‘What are you doing?’ and I don’t even blink. It’s just, ‘I got you,’” Loeffler said. “I can bounce ideas off of them. I’ve got four or five head coaches, which is huge, and there are no egos. No one is ever afraid what to say and what not to say.”
You can’t put a value on that, including with VanGorder, who coached alongside Loeffler at Auburn in 2012.
Look, I’m wary. Of his past three jobs, VanGorder said, “those were all difficult situations to go into, and this is right along the same lines.”
Well, if he allowed 44.1 points per game with ACC-level talent last season and was fired from Notre Dame after the Irish allowed 134 points in the first four games in 2016, what leads us to believe he will adapt his notoriously complex schemes and do better with the talent here?
[Rubs chin.]
Still, as hard as it is to separate the caricature from the coach, this is a hard hire to judge by its cover.
It is easy to forget now, but it was only eight years ago VanGorder was the successful coordinator for a different flock of Falcons — the ones in the NFL. He spent four seasons in Atlanta, a stretch in which the Falcons averaged 11 wins per year.
Before that, he was the next best thing at Georgia, where he coordinated top-10 defenses in each of his four seasons and won the Frank Broyles Award in 2003 as the nation’s top assistant.
If coaching is anything like riding a bike, BG is on to something. We’ll see. VanGorder is a good recruiter and perhaps a tweak here, a tweak there — in collaboration with Herrmann — will make all the difference on Saturdays.
BG is counting on it — “This guy is going to get it right,” Loeffler said — and so is VanGorder, who said he looks forward to seeing this rebuild through.
The next order of business for the coaching itinerant: Purchasing a new home.
“I’ve always been more of a buyer than a renter,” he said, smiling.
First Published April 6, 2019, 3:00 p.m.
