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Post by ochobeavo on Oct 11, 2021 7:53:17 GMT -8
Graduate assistant Cory Hall had been at Wisconsin for just five months when the coach who hired him, Gary Andersen, called a team meeting four days after the Badgers’ loss to Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game to inform them he was leaving for Oregon State. Hall, like most in the sport, was shocked, and wanted to know where he stood.
“An hour after his announcement, I poked my head in his office and he said, ‘Well, you won’t be at Wisconsin next season,’” Hall said with a laugh. “And I said, ‘I didn’t see that coming.’”
No one ever does.
To those versed in the norms of the coaching carousel, Andersen is an enigma. Since 2003, he has left four head-coaching jobs for what most would consider a downward move. In an industry where schools now commonly pay eight-figure buyouts to fired coaches, Andersen is almost certainly alone in voluntarily walking away from more than $15 million combined from his last two head-coaching jobs.
“I don’t want to sound like I’m pounding my chest in any way,” said Andersen, “but I think that when you’re at a place and you have a job to do and they’re paying you to do your job, at that point you take the money that’s been presented to you and you work your tail off in that job. It would be hard for me to wake up in the morning and see a check or see money in my bank account that I wasn’t working for, and I wasn’t working with a group of kids to receive that check.”
The 57-year-old grandfather of three is working for free as a volunteer analyst for FCS Weber State, whose head coach, Jay Hill, played and coached for him at Utah. He helps the Wildcats’ coaching staff in scouting for its next opponent and contributing to game planning, then watches games largely as a spectator in the press box.
“I’ve seen Gary Andersen (at Utah) in that role of being one of the best D-line coaches in the country, and then being one of the best D-coordinators in the country, and then one of the best head coaches in the country playing in Big Ten championships,” said Hill. “Absolutely, I want him around.”
“This opportunity presented itself, and I feel lucky and blessed, because I’ve been around a great group of coaches and I’ve gotten to know another group of young men,” said Andersen. “That’s what the sport has always been to me is the relationships and the kids. Not about the dollar, not about anything else.”
Andersen’s career choices may seem unusual, but they’ve fit a recurring theme for nearly 30 years, dating to 1994 when, as a young defensive line coach at Idaho State, he quit in protest of the school firing his good friend, defensive coordinator Kyle Whittingham, even though it meant taking a $12-an-hour teaching job back in his native Salt Lake City.
Later, he would walk away from Big Ten power Wisconsin after just two seasons to take over a rebuilding Oregon State program. Then, in the middle of his third season in Corvallis, with the Beavers flailing at 1-5, Andersen walked away from the school, and from a guaranteed $12.6 million remaining on his contract.
“I didn’t see any move he made coming,” said Hall, who became Oregon State’s interim coach after Andersen left. “It was always like, ‘Wait, what?’”
Or as one person who worked with Andersen at Oregon State said: “He is a strange cat.”
In 2019, Andersen returned for a second tenure at Utah State, which abruptly ended three games into his second season after losing all three by 25-plus points. He declined the remaining $2.7 million on his contract
Said one of Andersen’s Oregon State assistants: “He’s a guy that’s been more about morals. He’s more of a fit guy. A lot of people are like, he walked away from $12.6 million? But for some people, the fit is more important than money.”
More important than $12.6 million?
“I know I’m an abnormality,” said Andersen.
Utah State: 2009-12
From 1997-2008, Andersen spent 11 of 12 college football seasons coaching defensive linemen at Utah, eventually rising to coordinator. The only reason he left for one season — to become the head coach at Southern Utah — was because he was angry over the 2002 firing of head coach Ron McBride, his own former position coach and mentor.
Andersen insists he never felt as though he was looking for another head coaching job but that he made his career decisions based on where he believed he was needed. In December 2008, that philosophy brought him to a struggling Utah State program.
Over the previous 11 seasons, Utah State’s record was 35-90 (a .280 winning percentage). During the 2006 season, the Aggies went 216 consecutive minutes without scoring a point. Andersen believed deeply that he was the one who could fix the program, despite its limitations, and he impressed Utah State athletic director Scott Barnes during the interview process.
“When Utah State opened, it was something that I looked at and my peers thought I was crazy,” Andersen said. “But I looked at that job and I said, ‘This is something that I believe fits what I believe in, which is the Utah recruiting way, which was really all I know because that’s what I grew up in.’ And we applied it to that program and had some success.”
A big part of Andersen’s recruiting philosophy focused on targeting high school prospects from Utah, California and Arizona, as well as pursuing junior college players — Andersen himself began his playing career at a junior college in Idaho. During a four-year window from 2009-12, Utah State signed 67 players from those three states. Thirty-four signees overall were from junior colleges.
By Year 3 in 2011, Andersen had upgraded the roster and instilled belief that the team could win. He promised his players that, if they reached their first bowl game since 1997, he would get a tattoo of the school logo. Utah State went 7-6 and played in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. He made good on his word and had the logo tattooed on his right shoulder.
A year later, Utah State won 11 games and finished the season ranked in the AP Top 25 for the first time since 1961. Andersen signed a contract extension through 2018. His oldest son, Keegan, was a redshirt freshman tight end at Utah State. His twin boys, Chasen and Hagen, were set to enroll at Utah State in January. He turned down head coaching opportunities at California, Colorado and Kentucky.
He was committed to staying, and that was that. Until it wasn’t.
Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez had been impressed with Andersen when he brought his Utah State team to Madison in 2012 and nearly pulled an upset before the Badgers won 16-14. When Badgers coach Bret Bielema left that December to take the Arkansas job, Alvarez targeted Andersen. This time, Andersen couldn’t say no.
“I wasn’t looking to leave Utah State,” Andersen said. “That really was the last thing I was looking to leave. There were two or three other jobs that year that I turned down and they were all Power 5. Wisconsin was different. Even my AD Scott Barnes will tell you: He looked at me and said, ‘That’s Wisconsin. I mean, are you kidding me?’”
Wisconsin: 2013-14
At Wisconsin, Andersen inherited a program that had won three consecutive Big Ten titles, and he continued to win games. During his two seasons with the Badgers, his record was 19-7, including 13-3 in Big Ten regular-season contests. His 2014 team won seven consecutive games to capture the West Division and reach the conference championship. But the wheels fell off in that Big Ten title game, as eventual national champion Ohio State eviscerated Wisconsin 59-0.
Four days later, Alvarez was sitting in New York’s LaGuardia Airport waiting for a delayed flight back to Madison when he received a phone call from his senior associate athletic director. He was told that Andersen needed to speak to Alvarez in person immediately. Alvarez said he wouldn’t be home for a few more hours and asked to talk to Andersen by phone instead.
That’s when Andersen said he was leaving to take another head coaching position, at a school he had never even visited.
“I said, ‘Where the hell you going?’” Alvarez recalled. “And he said, ‘I’m going to Oregon State.’ I said, ‘OK. Call a team meeting. Give me two-and-a-half hours to get home. I’ll come straight to the meeting room, but have the team in there.’ So I landed. I drove straight to the meeting room, walked in. Gary walks in and he tells the kids, ‘This is never easy. But I’m leaving. I’m going to Oregon State. I’ll be in the office tomorrow between 12 and 1 packing my stuff. If you want to stop by and say goodbye, you can. I love you. I appreciate you.’ And he walks out.”
The meeting, which took place on the second floor of Wisconsin’s indoor practice facility, left Badgers players silent.
“I think that you kind of started to get the feeling that maybe it wasn’t the greatest fit for him personally,” said Joel Stave, who started 41 games at quarterback for Wisconsin from 2012-15. “If it’s not really where he wants to be or his family wants to be, then it’s not going to be great for anyone. If he’s leading the team, then you want him to be fully invested in the place that he’s at.
“To go to Oregon State, it’s still a major Division I program. But it’s certainly not a step up from Madison.”
Alvarez had spoken glowingly about Andersen during his introductory news conference, pointing out that their philosophies and beliefs perfectly meshed. But over Andersen’s two seasons, Alvarez said Andersen began to fundamentally change what had made Wisconsin football so successful for the past two decades.
On the field, Andersen wanted dual-threat quarterbacks who could operate out of a shotgun spread system rather than Wisconsin’s traditional pro-style approach. That was why he went away from Stave in favor of JUCO quarterback transfer Tanner McEvoy, only to return to Stave five games into the 2014 season. Alvarez said he also had concerns about the development of the offensive line.
Alvarez had grown particularly wary of Andersen’s recruiting methods. Alvarez said Andersen moved away from bringing in-state walk-ons into the program — a staple of Wisconsin’s success dating to when Alvarez, a College Football Hall of Fame coach, took over the program in 1990. Alvarez also questioned how Andersen recruited scholarship players from the state.
Alvarez specifically pointed out that Andersen did not express much interest in quarterback Nate Stanley, from Menomonie, Wis., because he didn’t fit the spread offensive identity, even though Stanley wanted to play for the Badgers. Stanley went on to be a three-year starter for Big Ten West rival Iowa and finished his career second in Hawkeyes history in career touchdown passes (68) and passing yards (8,302).
According to Alvarez, Wisconsin doesn’t have a chance if coaches don’t focus on the state, which is part of why he was “relieved” when he learned that Andersen was leaving.
“We’re losing guys,” said Alvarez, who retired as athletic director this past summer. “We’re not even talking to them. And if we did, we weren’t doing a good job recruiting because the emphasis wasn’t there. So I was really upset about that. That’s why I was fine with him leaving. I didn’t care where he was going.”
Stave said that Andersen was well-liked by most of the players at Wisconsin and was fairly positive. Wide receiver Kenzel Doe, who played from 2011-14, said he loved everything about Andersen and noted how he changed the team’s jerseys and helmets on game days, which brought “a little flavor, a little sauce.” But Andersen ultimately couldn’t make enough of the program changes that he wanted.
While Andersen had built his roster at Utah State with West Coast recruits and junior college prospects, his 2013-15 recruiting classes at Wisconsin featured six players from California and Utah and three JUCO players. Andersen had grown especially frustrated because he pursued players who didn’t academically qualify at Wisconsin. JUCO safety Serge Trezy’s admission was delayed a year. Receiver Chris Jones, defensive tackle Craig Evans and linebacker Mohamed Berry were among the high school players Andersen wanted but encountered academic issues at the school.
“You know what he told me when he called me?” Alvarez said. “He said, ‘I cannot do what you want me to do.’ That’s why he said he was leaving. ‘I can’t do what you want me to do.’ Gary wanted to recruit junior college guys. He was bringing in West Coast guys. They didn’t fit. He’s not even looking at some of the kids.”
Andersen, for his part, said the acceptance he and his staff received from Wisconsin players was “amazing” and used the same word to describe his experience with Alvarez, noting that he learned “so much about big-time football from him.” He praised the support the school gave players while also acknowledging just how much of a step up his time in Madison was for him.
“Coming from Utah State and going to Wisconsin is a major, major change,” Andersen said. “The commitment from the fan base is gigantic, all the different things you have to do.”
Oregon State: 2015-17
At Oregon State, Andersen succeeded Mike Riley, the winningest coach in school history. In 14 seasons, Riley took the Beavers to eight bowl games and four Top 25 seasons, but they’d gone 2-7 in the Pac-12 his final season. As Andersen began overhauling the roster, several notable players transferred. Quarterback Luke Del Rio would end up starting for Florida, and wide receiver Richard Mulaney caught 38 passes for Alabama’s 2015 national title team.
Oregon State went winless in the Pac-12 and 2-10 overall in his first season, but in Year 2 the Beavers ended an eight-year losing streak to rival Oregon to improve to 4-8 overall and 3-6 in conference. With the arrival of dual-threat JUCO quarterback Jake Luton, optimism reigned heading into 2017. Andersen got an extension through 2021.
Then Oregon State got blown out 58-27 at Colorado State in the season-opener. Almost immediately, according to people with first-hand knowledge, Andersen began discussing a possible exit. The next week, the Beavers beat Portland State by a field goal, and then got blown out 48-14 at Minnesota and 52-23 at Washington State.
It just so happened his AD was Barnes, who’d hired him at Utah State a decade earlier and saw how much his mindset had changed.
“The losses wore on him,” said Barnes. “The difference (from Utah State) was, where the program was and where he was in terms of just the pressure and anxiety. Even at Utah State, it took us until Year 4, but he was seeing progress. Overall, he took losses as hard as anybody.”
Every dissatisfaction became magnified. Those close to Andersen say he got frustrated that progress on facility upgrades had slowed, or that some at the school had unrealistic expectations for the pace of his rebuild. But the biggest issue was he’d lost confidence in the staff he’d hired, nearly all of whom worked for him at previous stops.
“The assistant coaches didn’t get along,” said an administrator at the time, who recalled an offensive coach screaming at a defensive coach from across the field at a spring game. “I remember thinking, ‘This is going to implode.’”
Text messages from Andersen to Oregonian columnist John Canzano that Canzano published after Andersen resigned show his increasingly frantic state during that period, ripping his staff but also hinting he might fall on the sword rather than fire them.
After the Portland State win: “If the defense can not get better … I will be making some decisions I really do not like or want to make. We will grind!!”
After the Minnesota loss: “Hard place right now… one thing I guarantee you is this: This staff needs to figure it out. I ain’t going to die doing this (expletive)!”
Later that week: “I have them by the (expletive) for every penny, no buyout for the next four (years) not counting this year… but that’s not my style!! If it does not improve I will do some crazy (expletive) with my salary so I can pay the right coaches the right money!!”
After Washington State: “I hired the wrong (expletive) guys and are still working our way through a bunch of recruiting years that stunk!! It’s year three! If these (expletives) can’t get it right I will not just say fire them and start over!! That’s not the way to go about it. If I (expletive) it up that bad I will take the bullet and ride off into the sunset!”
Less than three weeks later, after a 38-10 loss at USC, he did just that.
Hall, who was promoted to interim coach after Andersen left, said nothing in those texts caught him by surprise. “Coach A is not going to bite his tongue; It was no secret. He would say it in staff meetings. We knew he was not happy, we knew why, we knew when, we knew who it was with.”
The Beavers went winless the rest of the way. Hall, a Fresno State alum who’s since returned to high school coaching there, said he got a fuller picture of Andersen’s challenges upon taking over his role.
“I went to his house, I sat on his couch and I looked at him and said, ‘Hey, Coach A, it’s like you took all of your issues I knew nothing about, took a sledgehammer and went pow — take that! All of this was going on? … Yep.’ He just looked at me with this blank stare, shaking his head.”
And of course, Andersen sacrificed the $12.6 million in guaranteed money remaining on his contract through 2021.
“That’s something I’ve stood for my whole life. If the money’s there and I’m working for it, I’ll take it, if the money’s given to me in a contract (buyout) — I don’t know if that’s something I’m comfortable with,” said Andersen.
Back to Utah State: 2019-20
When Andersen left Utah State for Wisconsin in 2013, the school promoted offensive coordinator Matt Wells, who led the Aggies to five bowl games over the next six seasons. Wells’ team went 11-2 in 2018, at which point Texas Tech hired him away.
Andersen, at the University of Utah in 2018 as an assistant, did not initially appear to be on Utah State athletic director John Hartwell’s wish list. Multiple high-profile candidates, including Andersen’s former Wisconsin defensive coordinator Dave Aranda (then at LSU, now head coach at Baylor), pursued the job.
But Utah State faced considerable pressure from influential donors to bring back the coach who’d first led the Aggies to prominence.
Hartwell declined comment for this story.
Utah State went 7-6 in Andersen’s first season, after which star quarterback Jordan Love turned pro. Then the pandemic hit in 2020, and the Mountain West initially canceled its season before announcing an Oct. 24 start date.
“He was very against playing — even from early summer — and the players knew that,” said a source close to the program. “That was kind of a siren going off. Coaches who love this game, they want to compete all the time. … It was almost like he believed we weren’t going to be very good and didn’t want to deal with it.”
The Aggies indeed weren’t very good. They lost their first three games 42-13 to Boise State, 38-7 to San Diego State and 34-9 to Nevada.
“It was almost like (Andersen) was just going through the motions, and so opposite of when he’d been here before,” said the source.
The Nevada loss occurred on a Thursday night. In a news release Saturday, Hartwell announced that “Gary Andersen is no longer the head coach, effective immediately.” Nearly every subsequent media account of the news referred to Andersen being “fired.”
However, a Nov. 7, 2020 letter signed by both Hartwell and Andersen and obtained by The Athletic suggests Andersen resigned. Hartwell wrote in part: “As we discussed today, you will step down as head coach and voluntarily terminate the agreement between you and USU, effective Dec. 31, 2020. USU accepts your resignation of the head coaching position effective Dec. 31, 2020, and will relieve you of all coaching responsibilities effective (immediately).”
“It was eerily similar (to Oregon State),” said the Utah State source.
“I was fired,” insists Andersen, “and the letter says it.” Whichever the case, he once again declined the remaining $2.7 million on his contract.
The Aggies finished their abbreviated pandemic season 1-5. Hartwell hired Arkansas State’s Blake Anderson, whose first team is currently 3-2. Andersen told the Deseret News in January he didn’t think he’d coach again.
“He was always very passionate for his players, as a position coach and as a head coach,” said longtime college defensive backs coach Bill Busch, who worked with Andersen at four schools. “My theory was that he missed that (lack of closeness), being the head coach, because you’re never going to be quite as close to your unit. I know that’s something he missed substantially in his life.”
Weber State: Present
Andersen and his wife Stacey now spend half the week in Logan, Utah, with their grandkids, Baylor (2), Raylen (almost 3) and newborn Paisley, and half the week at their home in Salt Lake City. He drives to Weber State’s Ogden campus two or three days a week and does the rest by Zoom.
Under Hill, Weber State has reached five straight FCS championships and won the last four Big Sky championships. But the 46-year-old former Utah cornerback, whom Andersen once recruited away from his childhood team BYU, has been seeking his advice on numerous aspects of running a program. With Andersen helping the defensive staff, Hill, formerly the defensive play-caller, has been able to spend more time with the Wildcats’ offense than before.
“It’s been great for me to be around it and once again, hopefully be able to give back to football, that’s important to me,” said Andersen. “It’s not about the job. I’m doing it because of the love of the game and I can give back to football a little bit and give back to these coaches, and hopefully be of help.”
Andersen does not foresee himself seeking out another full-time coaching job come this winter. Or anytime soon. He said he’d rather not deal with NIL, the transfer portal and other recent changes.
“When I’m at my best is helping kids, whether it be (young) coaches in this case who are now obviously young men, or if it’s 18-year-olds,” Andersen said. “If it’s some environment that fits what I could do to help them, then I’ll do that. But to say that I wake up in the morning and say, ‘I have to coach a three-technique today,’ or ‘I have to coordinate a defense,’ or ‘I have to be a head coach’ — that’s not true.
“I loved every place I coached at, and that’s a true statement. That is a genuine true statement.”
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Post by atownbeaver on Oct 11, 2021 9:02:56 GMT -8
Thanks, Ocho for posting that. Poor Gary. That’s some terrible journalism right there. A few tough questions to the right people and a little googling, can shed some light on the situation. His behavior seems pretty consistent with someone with a drinking and ethics problem. Just sayin’ Softball article using mostly googled quotes to give a rundown of his coaching history all while not uncovering anything new. Regardless of personal issues that expediated his departure from OSU, I can say that when you read the article you continue to see why Anderpants was a terrible head coach. He was locked into a desired scheme and was rigid to it despite the talent he had, and the talent available to him. He didn't fit his identity to the ability of the players, but rather tried, and failed miserably, at getting players to fit his identity. He tried to reinvent the wheel at Wisconsin, when there was no need to do so. Not to make them better, but just because. Despite loaded team and 10 win seasons, he wanted to tear it down to go shotgun spread... just because. Then, when given a program that needed a rebuilt he used none of the existing talent, ran anybody good off, and then brought in "his guys". Guys other than a handful of notable exceptions generally had a pretty disturbingly high rate of being a "not P-12 caliber players" Then of course as he showed at Wisconsin and then again at OSU, he couldn't pick and managed a QB to save his life.
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Post by tnarg33 on Oct 11, 2021 9:26:48 GMT -8
That whole thing made me throw up in my mouth. Maybe he's a "strange cat", maybe he has a drinking problem, an alleged co-ed problem, or whatever the case may be. I really do hope he gets his s%#t together at some point. And by get his s%#t together I mean actually takes some responsibility for where he is at.
This whole "I don't want the money if I'm not earning it" reluctant hero bulls%#t is nauseating. Not unlike when he says it's "only about the relationships and the kids" when he spent the entirety of his time here overtly saying the kids he had sucked and blaming them or his assistants for every shortcoming.
If there is one guy in the world who needs to look in the mirror and put on some big boy pants and admit some things to himself, it is Gary Andersen.
From a football standpoint, his time here is unforgivable. On a personal level, we all make mistakes and people can grow, but I'm gonna hold some hate in my heart for him until he can actually give an interview or soundbite where he acknowledges that HE was the cause of his problems.
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