Right Place Right Time

by: Richard Scott
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Brian Kelly will tell you that luck put him in position to be one of the top head coaches in Division II football. His record at Grand Valley State will tell you otherwise.

Yes, it’s true that Kelly was coaching linebackers and coordinating the defense in Massachusetts at his alma mater, Assumption College, when an old friend called Kelly and told him he was leaving his job as Grand Valley State’s defensive coordinator to become a head coach.

“It’s like anything else in the business: it truly is a fraternity, it’s the people you know,” Kelly says. “That gave me my first opportunity to come to Grand Valley.”

Kelly joined the Grand Valley State football staff in 1987 as a graduate assistant and secondary coach. Two years later, he was promoted to defensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator by coach Tom Beck. When Beck left for another job in 1990, following back-to-back 11-1 and 10-2 seasons, Kelly was immediately seen as the natural choice to replace him.

“It’s a story of being in the right place at the right time,” Kelly says. “The administration took a chance on a 28-year-old who didn’t know what the heck he was doing.”

At least that’s the way Kelly tries to explain it. The truth is, Kelly was the right man for the job. The past 13 years back that up, with Grand Valley State experiencing unprecedented success that culminated with a trip to the 2001 Division II national championship game and a victory in the 2002 national title game.

The one thing Kelly will admit to is that “we took a program that was good regionally and we were able to get into national prominence through recruiting and bringing in kids that we liked and we could build relationships with.”

Something must be working, because the Lakers have been able to sustain success under Kelly and his staff. Kelly, now 39, entered the 2003 season as Grand Valley State’s all-time winningest head football coach with an overall coaching record of 104-34-2. He also ranks first in Laker history in winning percentage (.750) and came into the season with third-best winning percentage among all active Division II head football coaches.

The Lakers also entered the 2003 season with a 26-game winning streak in regular season games, a 33-1 over their previous 34 games and 22 consecutive wins in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, as well as two consecutive GLIAC championships and a 94-21-2 record in conference games since 1990.

Along the journey to last year’s championship run, the Lakers won their first-ever NCAA Division II Playoff victory in 2001 and became the first-ever GLIAC school to advance to the NCAA Division II National Championship Game. In the process, Kelly has earned the American Football Monthly/Schutt Sports Division II Coach of the Year honor twice.

Kelly will be the first to insist he walked into a good situation when he replaced Beck at Grand Valley State. After all, this was a school with a strong tradition of success, outstanding Division II facilities and financial resources and the support of the administration, located in a state (Michigan) where football is important.

What Kelly and his coaches sought to do was take the program to a new level, a higher level than it had ever reached before. They started the building process by changing the focus of their recruiting and team building efforts.

“We knew we had the support from the administration, so it was only up to the efforts we put out in recruiting and building relationships with our players,” Kelly says. “I think more than anything else, the one thing I wanted to bring in as part of my leadership role was to establish a great level of communication and relationship building with our players.”

The Grand Valley State coaching staff expanded their recruiting range by reaching beyond Western Michigan for recruits. They also opened their doors to Division I transfers and junior college players, but only if those players seemed willing and able to fit into the program.

“It’s a very tricky proposition when you start to include transfers and Division I players, because the base of your program has to be built upon freshmen,” Kelly says. “If you look at our roster relative to freshmen verses transfers, we’re probably a 90-10 mix of four-and five-year players to transfers.

“But, and I have to underline this, of that 10 percent, all of those players must be impact players. The 90 percent rule the 10 percent relative to the day-to-day expectations and they’re really able to mold that 10 percent into doing the things we want them to do at Grand Valley.”

The Lakers also decided to start placing more and more emphasis on building better defensive depth through recruiting and developing players. In the early years of Kelly’s tenure, Grand Valley State made its mark with offense, leading the GLIAC in total offense in each of Kelly’s first four years as head coach and finishing the 1998 season ranked first in four offensive categories and in the top five of four additional categories.

However, after reaching the Division II national playoffs three times in the 1990s and failing to win a first-round game, it was the commitment to build a better defense that proved to be a turning point for the 2001 and 2002 teams. During that period, the Laker coaches relied on a 60-40 break, favoring defense over offense, when they divvied up scholarship money.

“When we were able to build some depth defensively, I thought we had a chance nationally,” Kelly said. “We had had some very good offensive teams, but that didn’t get it done in national competition. We were 0-5 in national competition with very good offenses and very average defenses. The defenses were good for our league, but when we started talking about national competition they couldn’t hold up in a one-game situation.”

Reaching the championship game for the first time in 2001 also proved to be a turning point for the program. The Lakers finished 13-1, with its only loss coming to North Dakota in the title game, and started to see themselves in a different light.

“It did two things: one, it strengthened the tradition within our program of expectations,” Kelly says. “Players then come in with a level of confidence and understand the kind of commitment they have to make to maintain that level of success.

“That’s a dynamic very few teams have if you look around the country. Larry Kehres has at it Mount Union. Larry Coker has it at Miami (Fla.). Bob Stoops has it at Oklahoma. There are probably 10-15 programs that we can look at and say they have those expectations.”

The second positive factor came during recruiting season. Because more and better players wanted to come to Grand Valley State to be part of the program’s success, the coaches were able to spread the recruiting budget around on more players who were willing to settle for less money and a chance to play for the Lakers.

“That’s created a lot more depth in our program,” Kelly says. “Now instead of paying market value on a player, we got him for half of that. That allows us to use those resources in other areas across the board. With only 36 scholarships you can’t recruit every position every year. You have to pick and choose your recruiting, relative to your available dollars. That championship exposure really gave us the chance to recruit across the board and build better depth.”

As much as that trip to the championship game helped the program, nothing is better than going 14-0 and winning the national championship. The Lakers got it done with a dramatic 31-24 victory over Valdosta State in 2002.

“More than anything, I think the national exposure for our university would be the thing I would point as the biggest positive,” Kelly says. “It gave us more exposure in Michigan and nationally and I think our whole university has benefited from it.

“In turn, I think our university recognized that football played a big part in that recognition and in turn, the university has given us great support and really re-invested in our program.”

Having reached two consecutive championship games and won one national title, Kelly, his coaches and players now face a dangerous new challenge. It’s not easy climbing to the top, but it’s even more difficult to stay there and not get caught up in the temptation to sit back and rest on success.

Many veteran coaches insist it’s almost easier to handle adversity than newfound success. After losing 22 seniors from last year’s team, Kelly is learning that lesson this season with a young team that must now build its own legacy at Grand Valley State.

“That’s what consumes me every single day,” Kelly says. “I think what you do is you go back to basics. You go back to the traditional values of hard work and commitment. You really try not to talk about anything else but doing things the right way, on and off the field, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“When you look at the big picture, there’s just too much pressure out there to be the No. 1 team for 18 consecutive weeks or win 27 consecutive games or win back-to-back championships. If you talk in those terms to 18- to 21-year-olds, that’s overwhelming. We really try to concern ourselves with what we do on a daily basis. That’s been the best way for this football team to continue to grow.”

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