A Clear Picture

Please don\'t adjust your TV set... Yes, the field is cool blue, but Boise State\'s Dan Hawkins leads AFM\'s 2003 red hot coaches\' list
by: Richard Scott
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Potatoes? Can we just forget about the potato jokes for a little bit? This story isn’t about spuds. It’s about football. Football in Idaho. Boise to be exact. It’s about a winning football program. It’s about winning tradition, high expectations and making the most of what you’ve got with players who want to be there. It’s about blue artificial turf and quality of life. It’s about a head football coach who’s good enough to be somewhere else, but sharp enough to stay.

Ok, so most outsiders think “Idaho” and immediately think “potatoes.” Of course, those same outsiders haven’t lined up to play football against the Boise State Broncos, especially when the Broncos play at home on their brilliant blue artificial turf. The Broncos expect to win every time they take the field at Bronco Stadium, regardless of the opponent, and with good reason: they’ve won 14 consecutive home games against Western Athletic Conference opponents, and 26 of their past 27 home games.

“Some people might not know a lot about the place, but it’s special,” says former Bronco assistant Ted Monachino, now the defensive line coach at Arizona State. “A lot of people don’t give Boise State and the football program enough credit. It’s a place that’s been historically successful in football for a long time and it’s been an important part of the fabric of the community for a long time, from the time when it was a junior college program to its days in I-AA and then at Division I-A.”

Surprised? Yes, Idaho isn’t exactly famous throughout the United States as a football hotbed loaded with a dense population of top prep football prospects. It’s not a place where winning is an obvious conclusion and losing is inexcusable. This isn’t Ohio, Florida or Texas, where resources are abundant and kids grow up dreaming of being Buckeyes, Gators and Longhorns. Kids in California don’t grow up fantasizing about playing football at Boise State.

But a bunch of them end up in Boise anyway, and with few exceptions, most of them leave as winners.

“They find ways to win at Boise State,” says Oregon coach Mike Bellotti.

That’s where the head coach and his coaching staff enter the story. When Dan Hawkins came to Boise State with head coach Dirk Koetter in 1997, the staff inherited a decent program on the way back up the ladder up and then took it to the next level with two Big West championships and two Humanitarian Bowl wins in three years.

When Koetter left for Arizona State in 2000, taking several staff members with him, Hawkins was the obvious choice to become the head coach after serving as Koetter’s assistant head coach, special teams coach, tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator. All Hawkins has done in the two years since is take the Broncos to a new conference and go 19-5, 14-2 in the WAC, including an 11-1 overall record, an 8-0 conference record, a conference championship and another Humanitarian Bowl win in 2002. The Broncos closed out their regular season ranked 16th in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches poll, and 19th in the Associated Press poll – the first time in the history of the program Boise State was ranked in the top 20 of both major college polls.

That success might have surprised outsiders, but it didn’t shock anyone associated with Hawkins or the program.

“Dan’s surrounded himself with a bunch of good people. He’s hired a bunch of people off my staff,” Bellotti says, laughing. “He has done a great job of recruiting. That talent base just doesn’t jump up and hit you in the state of Idaho. But he sees things sometimes that other people don’t and he brings in some next-level guys who are going to eventually be as good as blue chippers.”

“Winning at Boise State takes the same things it takes everywhere else: you’ve got to go out and recruit great kids,” Monachino says. “When I was there, Dirk did a great job of bringing in great kids, and now Hawk’s done the same thing.”

No wonder Hawkins’ name is included in any conversation concerning the nation’s hottest football coaches. In fact, he could be coaching elsewhere this season if he had chosen to. Instead he’s eagerly preparing for another season at Boise State and another shot at the conference championship and a bowl bid.

Yet, much like his program, Hawkins’ names remains something of a mystery to the national media and the average college football fan. That’s just fine with Hawkins, who at age 42 isn’t concerned much with image, perception or the next job when the current reality of his life and his job is so positive. Hawkins, as Bellotti says, is “a guy who’s very optimistic about the opportunities associated with the job.”

Some of that is due to his background. He wasn’t a star athlete at a major football program. He didn’t get his start in coaching as an assistant at a major power. Instead, he worked his way up the ladder.

Hawkins, like Bellotti, played at UC-Davis, where fame and fortune take a back seat to getting an education and a pure love for the game. That love for the game, and the respect he gained for his coaches, pushed Hawkins toward a coaching career. After four years as a fullback for the Aggies, Hawkins got his first coaching job with the UC-Davis freshman team. Only this time, he found himself looking at the offense from the other side of the line as a linebacker coach.

“I didn’t know anything about defense,” Hawkins says, “and I figured if I was going to be the kind of coach I wanted to be then I needed to learn the other side of the ball.”

When freshman team defensive coordinator Sam Young moved up to the varsity following the season, Hawkins found himself taking over the defense – ready or not.

“I’m thinking ‘oh my goodness,’” Hawkins says, laughing. “We were running the bear, the flex, the tilt, the 4-3 - Coach Foster was a guru and our defensive playbook was about four inches thick and I really had to go to school to learn it. It was a trial by fire and I had to really figure some things out.

“That provided an excellent foundation for me. A lot of the stuff I do today I took from those coaches, like (former UC-Davis coach) Jim Sochor and Bob Foster, about what is important and what isn’t important. I’ve learned a lot along the way, but those guys knew what they were doing.”

Hawkins made the most of his three years at UC-Davis before moving on to Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento, where he was the head coach in 1986 and ‘87. From 1988-91, he served as the offensive coordinator at the College of the Siskiyous (Calif.), helping lead the team to the Golden Valley Conference championship in 1991. In 1992, he moved back to defense as the defensive coordinator at Sonoma State University. The next year, he became a college head coach for the first time at NAIA-level Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.

Hawkins continued to grow at Willamette, taking over a mediocre program and improving it year by year until the Bearcats went 13-1 and advanced to the NAIA national championship game in 1997.
v “What he accomplished at Willamette was a precursor to what he was going to do at Boise State,” Bellotti says. “You appreciate what you have more when you come from programs that didn’t have that much. You also realize the need to make it a player-friendly environment. When you come from programs where everybody’s a walk-on and people are working a job in addition to going to school and trying to play football, you have great respect for the kids’ energy and enthusiasm for the game. Then when you get to a place where you have more resources and facilities and amenities, it just makes everything that much better.”

Hawkins says, “Coaching at so many levels has given me a broad perspective about how to do a lot of things. It’s also been the backbone of my career. Some of those places were somewhat disadvantaged because we didn’t always have the best of everything or the easiest place to recruit to. I’ve been the equipment man, I’ve been the trainer, I’ve been the video guy, I’ve done it all, so I empathize with all those people in our program and I understand something about all those aspects. You’ve got to be able to go out and manufacture wins and championships. It’s not the easiest path by any means, but it’s been good for me and I really do draw upon those experiences all the time.”

After going 40-11-1 in five seasons at Willamette, Hawkins got a phone call from Koetter, who had just replaced current Arkansas coach Houston Nutt at Boise State. Koetter had spent the two previous seasons at Oregon with Bellotti and other former UC-Davis connections, including current Duck assistants Nick Alliotti and Neal Zoumboukas, as well as Foster and current BSU offensive coordinator Chris Peterson, and Koetter insisted he had to have Hawkins at BSU.

It would have been easy for Hawkins to stay at Willamette and keep his head coaching title, but Hawkins knew it was time for new challenges in his career. He had coached offense, defense and special teams, but realized he still had a lot to learn.

“There were a lot of things I knew about running a program and football, but I knew nothing about the semantics and mechanics of Division I-A football,” Hawkins says. “I knew Dirk would be a great teacher, and that was one of the reasons why I went there. He’s been around, he knows what he’s doing and he’s very smart. It was the right time, the right place, the right opportunity and the right move for me and my family.”

One of the smartest moves Hawkins made when he arrived at Boise State was to open his mind to new lessons.

“My ego isn’t such that I can’t subordinate to someone else,” Hawkins says. “I’m not on a power trip. I’m always trying to learn and get better. I did want to be philosophically aligned with someone who has the same kind of values I do, and Dirk does. He’s a family guy, a class guy, he works hard. He’s got high standards.

“But up until I came to Boise, I had been a coordinator or a head coach everywhere I had been except for one year, and that was my first year. In many respects, I was looking forward to a chance to step back and learn from someone else. When I got to Boise, I just said ‘I’m doing this the Dirk Koetter way.’”

Those three years with Koetter turned out to be valuable for Hawkins, and not just because he became a head coach when Koetter left.

“He spent some time getting me up and running and what he needed to do, and just when I was getting to the point of being able to anticipate and supplement what he wanted, he took the Arizona State job,” Hawkins says. “In all honesty, I was a little disappointed when he did leave because I felt like we had just gotten to the point where I could be of full service to him.”

Hawkins didn’t waste much time worrying about Koetter’s absence. Boise moved quickly to hire Hawkins and he went straight to work building on the momentum the program had gained under Koetter. In the past two years, the university has expanded the weight room, purchased a new video system, provided for summer school scholarships and found more money to hire and maintain quality assistants.

“The inertia required to get a program going is always the hardest part, and Dirk did that,” Hawkins says. “We just tried to ratchet everything up another notch at that point and improve every phase of the program.

“The support is tremendous. It’s not the kind of place where we have everything, but it is a place with tremendous potential. If you’re looking at all the things you’d want at a place, it has everything but a big-time budget right now.”

The university even replaced the blue artificial turf playing field with a new surface. The blue surface was once considered something of a gimmick, but eventually became a source of pride for Bronco players who love nothing more than defending their home field.

“Trust me – those players love ‘The Blue’ and they play their hearts out,” Monachino says. “It’s something they rally around.”

Like Boise itself, the blue represents a unique can-do spirit that Hawkins embraces.

“Boise State isn’t for everyone, but this is a city and a university that’s very conducive to what young guys want to do with their lives,” Hawkins says. “It’s safe, it’s clean, we’ve got a great airport with a lot of direct flights to every place on the West Coast, so it’s pretty easy to recruit to. We’re treated like an NFL team, too, and that helps.”

Plus, the Broncos win, and that makes the city and the university even more special for current players and potential recruits.

“It’s impressive,” Monachino says. “The things he’s done with the program, both statistically and making it his own, are a real testament to Hawk as a leader. Hawk’s successful because he’s innovative and he has the ability to recruit people around him who are driven to the same level of success that drives him.
“He was a lot of fun to work with as an assistant, and I think he’d be a lot of fun to play for. That’s one reason why the kids play so hard for him and play so well. It’s something special to be a Bronco in Boise, Idaho, and that’s something the players are very proud of, and Hawk does a good job selling that Bronco mystique. I’m sure there were some kids who chose Boise State and weren’t happy there, but for the most part the city grows on them, the university grows on them, and winning makes a lot of things better.”

Winning also makes head coaches popular targets for other programs looking for head coaches. Granted, for all the positives surrounding Boise State and its football program, there are other programs with more money, resources and prestige. The Broncos aren’t going to win any national championships as long as they’re in the WAC, but there are plenty of programs out there that have what it takes to contend for a national championship. Some of those places – as Arkansas did when it hired Nutt and as Arizona State did in hiring Koetter – could be calling Hawkins with an offer someday.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Hawkins is eager to accept those offers. He’s got a good thing going at Boise State. Sure, he’ll listen if someone calls. He has to. But that doesn’t mean he has to leave, either.

“My goal in life has always been to make a difference,” Hawkins says. “We had some opportunities that arose this year and looked at them and it didn’t seem like they were the right fit at the right time and the right place.

“As long as we can continue to build and grow, I’m excited about that. I’ve never been a bigger-is-better guy. Better is better, and there are a lot of things you have to figure that in.”

Hawkins also has to figure his family life into the equation. He and his wife Misti have four children, and two of those kids are in high school, one will enter the eighth grade in August and another is in college. Hawkins will also consider his assistant coaches and their families, and the fact that Boise has proved to be such a quality place to live, buy a home, attend a school and grow a family.

“I get asked by people all the time about ‘how long will you be here” and “where are you going to go,” Hawkins says. “I just want to continue to grow and develop and not worry about all that. If I just wanted to go to a ‘bigger’ place, I’d have left this year.

“It was never my goal to be the head coach at Willamette. It was never my goal to be the head coach at Boise State. I’ve always been a guy who believes if you work hard, do the right things and get after it, things will happen the way they’re supposed to. If that means I’m at Boise for the next 20 years, that’s great. I tell people I could be a JV coach in high school and be happy and I mean it. It’s worked for me so far so that’s what I’ll keep doing.”

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