BOWLING GREEN — Recently hired Bowling Green football coach Scot Loeffler completed his staff by adding another veteran coach.
Loeffler hired longtime assistant Brian VanGorder to be his associate head coach and also coach the linebackers. VanGorder has coached previously with three NFL teams and 11 colleges; he most recently was the defensive coordinator at Louisville, which fired coach Bobby Petrino this season.
Bowling Green also announced the hiring of Julian Campenni as the defensive line coach. The position will be the first full-time college coaching gig for Campenni, who was a graduate assistant at Boston College, where Loeffler was the offensive coordinator.
Loeffler bet heavily on experience for his first staff at Bowling Green. The 10 assistants have an average of 20 years in coaching among them.
VanGorder made two stops as a head coach for a total of four seasons. He coached Wayne State, his alma mater, for three seasons (1992-94), and resigned after a 3-8 debut season at Georgia Southern in 2006.
A native of Jackson, Mich., VanGorder spent five seasons on the staff of the Atlanta Falcons and worked with Loeffler in 2012 while both were coordinators for Gene Chizik at Auburn, a one-year term for both after the program fired Chizik.
Since then, VanGorder has made five stops before landing in BG. He spent a year with the New York Jets, parts of three seasons at Notre Dame before Brian Kelly dismissed him in 2016, analyst roles at Georgia and Oklahoma State, and most recently one season at Louisville.
VanGorder has coached in the Mid-American Conference before. He was the defensive coordinator at Central Michigan for two seasons, in 1998 and 1999.
In total, Loeffler retained three from former BG coach Mike Jinks’ staff, all of them on defense.
Carl Pelini, who took over as the interim coach, will remain the defensive coordinator, LaMarcus Hicks will coach the secondary, and Jacob Schoonover will be the special teams coordinator and assist with the linebackers. All three have spent one season at Bowling Green.
Loeffler brought longtime former Bowling Green assistant Terry Malone back to be the offensive coordinator. Malone coached at Bowling Green from 1986-95 under Moe Ankney and Gary Blackney, and was on staff when the Falcons won the MAC in 1991 and 1992.
Malone spent nine years on the New Orleans Saints’ staff, which included a Super Bowl title in 2009. He was an offensive coordinator at Purdue for two seasons in 2015-16 under Darrell Hazell, and spent the past two years as an assistant at Western Michigan.
First Published December 10, 2018, 5:37 p.m.
