The Rise of the Monarchs – The fastest rising program in college football is just getting started.

Between 1940 and 2009, Old Dominion University did not play a single football game. Zero. The program that had been discontinued after the ’40 season was not reinstated until a 2005 vote established the framework for a new Monarchs team that would begin play in the ’09 season. Basically starting from scratch, the program would face the monumental challenge of building a team where one didn’t exist.

Today, the Monarchs are headed to the Football Bowl Subdivision this fall, in only their fifth year playing Division I football. They’ll transition into Conference USA in 2014. Who knows what’s next for the most successful start-up program in FCS history.

It’s been a meteoric rise for Old Dominion, one that exceeded even coach Bobby Wilder’s high expectations. The Monarchs went 38-10 in their first four seasons in the FCS. They finished ranked in the Top 10 the past two years and reached the quarterfinals of the 2012 FCS playoffs.

All 29 Old Dominion home games at 20,000-seat Powhatan Stadium sold out. The Monarchs had orders for 13,500 more tickets that they couldn’t fill.

The Monarchs scored 45.15 points per game in 2012. Three ODU receivers finished in the top 60 in the nation in receiving yards per game.

Old Dominion football has become a big deal in Norfolk, Virginia, sooner than Wilder expected. “My blueprint was for us to be a Top-10 program in five years. We did it in three,” Wilder said. “Now, heading into the FBS and Conference USA, there are no limitations to what we can accomplish. We have all the ingredients.”

A longtime assistant at the University of Maine under coach Jack Cosgrove, Wilder jumped at the opportunity to guide the revival of Old Dominion football in 2006. Having coached for years in the Colonial Athletic Conference, he was very familiar with the fertile recruiting grounds that would fuel the ODU program. He was impressed by the on-campus stadium as well as the overall support and enthusiasm from the administration.

During the interview process, he presented his philosophy for building the program. Six years later, he simplifies his game plan for building the program to two words: “Aim high.”

“That was our philosophy from the start,” said Wilder. “What ‘aim high’ means is we were looking to recruit and develop the best people, the best students and the best football players that we could find. And everything we do in the program always goes back to those two words. I truly believe that philosophy that we’ve stuck to is the biggest reason why we’ve been 38-10 and are considered the best start-up program in the history of the FCS football.”

Wilder accepted the job on Feb. 13, 2007 and instantly became the university’s No. 1 salesperson, using his charisma to energize a community that now bonds together annually for Wilder’s bone marrow registry drive. He’s also honored more than 300 speaking engagements during his six years.

Wilder is also an offensive wizard.

The Monarchs led the FCS in passing offense, total offense and scoring offense. Sophomore quarterback Taylor Heinicke set the Division I record with 730 passing yards in a 64-61 win over New Hampshire and went on to win the Walter Payton Award.

None of ODU’s success would be possible without what Wilder calls the “Leap-of-Faith” group, a class of 17 seniors who were a part of his first recruiting class. “What these 17 kids did, they took a leap of faith and believed in something bigger than themselves,” said Wilder. “They left a legacy that’s never going to be forgotten by people associated with Old Dominion University.”
A Tough Sell

The task was daunting even for a pitchman as skilled as Wilder. He had to sell a program with no trophies and no tradition to high school recruits. He also had to convince each of them to redshirt their first season, before the program began planning games the following year.

No problem.

“Most programs try to sell you on their tradition and success,” linebacker Craig Wilkins, a member of the Leap-of-Faith group, who went on to be a four-year captain. “Old Dominion didn’t have anything to show. They sold us on being different and creating our own tradition.”

Wilkins had offers from FBS programs, but liked that he was Old Dominion’s first choice. He led the team in tackles, interceptions and tackles for loss last season and says committing to Wilder and the Monarchs was “the best decision of my life.”

Wilder asked each recruit the same question: “Do you want to lead or do you want to follow?” But the chance to establish their own legacy was only a part his sales pitch. The other half required a complete change of his offensive philosophy.

Again, no problem.

At Maine, Wilder was the offensive coordinator of the Black Bears’ two-back, power-running scheme. “We were going to try to beat you 17-14,”  Wilder said.

That wasn’t going to work at Old Dominion.

“We wanted to be exciting,” he said. “We knew we were going to have to sell this program, because we were just starting it. We knew we could recruit to be exciting. We didn’t think we could recruit to two-back, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust.”

Wilder brought along Brian Scott, a fellow Maine assistant and former Black Bear quarterback, to be his offensive coordinator at Old Dominion. With all the skill players available in the Hampton Roads area, they knew a change to a zone scheme would be the best use of their resources. But going from coaching a two-back power running game to a spread attack required some research and tons of time in the film room.

Scott points to the year he and Wilder spent at Maine working with current Penn State tight ends coach John Strollo.

“We were fortunate to work with him for a year at Maine,” said Scott. “He was a great offensive line coach and taught us the nuances of the zone scheme. When we came down here, we knew this wasn’t going to be a two-back area. There are just so many skill guys in our area. So we built our offense around the zone scheme and getting our skill guys the ball. One of our best plays is the zone read with  a bubble option” (See Diagram).

Scott spent countless hours in the film room developing the Monarchs’ offense. When he arrived with Wilder in 2007, he studied what Rich Rodriguez was doing at West Virginia. He looked at Oregon, Texas Tech and Houston in addition to plenty of high school footage. He prefers to watch uncut game film and build his own cut-ups by tagging certain key plays and filtering them against different defensive looks.

“I don’t really like to go around to different places. I think sometimes you can get caught up with some different things that don’t really fit what you do,” Scott explained. “I like to collect a lot of tape. I just watch games and see if there’s something that we could adapt into our scheme.”

Getting Tricky

Not only did Wilder have to sell a brand new program to recruits, but he also had to convince fans to support the Monarchs.

“I told them that they better be in their seats by kickoff, because they may see something they’ve never seen before,” Wilder explained. “That first year, we were all about trick plays and onside kicks.”

Wilder’s brand of exciting football was an instant success and quickly attracted big crowds. Old Dominion has ranked in the top five in attendance each of its four seasons. Trick plays remain a consistent part of the Monarchs’ repertoire, but they spend very little time implementing and practicing them.

“If we are trying to build in a trick play off a series we run, we don’t practice it until Thursday or sometimes Friday,” said Scott. “We don’t spend too much time on it, because we know we’re only going to call it once. If we’re spending 10 or 15 minutes on it, to me, that’s inefficient.

“We’ve actually been very successful on our trick plays,” he added. “We had a 45-yard touchdown off a reverse on a sweep. It was off of a series that we’d been pulling guys and just flipped to one guy, he flipped to another. I think it was something we put in on Friday.”

Substitutions

Few, if any teams played faster than Old Dominion did last season. Heinicke drove the Monarchs’ no-huddle attack like a sports car, constantly accelerating, constantly pushing the limits of the defense’s conditioning.

There are many keys to playing at the Monarchs’ pace, according to Wilder. A smart quarterback capable of making good decisions without slowing down certainly helps, as do well-conditioned receivers and lean, athletic offensive linemen.

But no matter how good shape your players are in, you simply can’t run 85 plays per game like Old Dominion did this year without substituting frequently and efficiently. Every second it takes a substitute to get onto the field is more time for the defense to get properly aligned. The tempo Wilder tried to keep couldn’t be much more different than the patient, huddled ground game he used at Maine.

At Old Dominion, Wilder says 15 to 20 players play on offense every game. Ten receivers get anywhere from 40 to 50 reps per game. “And that’s enough,” said Wilder. “They’re all exhausted by the end of the game.

“The entire group has to be unselfish,” Wilder added. “When they’re tired, they have to sub out, in order to keep the pace we like.”

The Monarchs follow some basic substitution rules. When they run a vertical route, they are instructed to peel off to the sideline, pointing to their replacement, who then points back to confirm communication. If a receiver runs three consecutive intermediate routes, he knows he also must sub out.

Old Dominion practices as fast as it plays, but never for very long. “When I was at Maine, we were running three hour practices,” said Wilder. “When I got here, we were 1 ½ hours max.”

Developing Quarterbacks

A former quarterback at Maine, Scott says the biggest key to developing a young quarterback is tailoring your offense to fit your signal-caller’s strengths. He looks at the best quarterback in the system, indentifies what he does best and then emphasizes those elements in the offense.

“There are some kids who feel comfortable in the pocket, and there are some who don’t,” said Scott. “And if your quarterback doesn’t feel comfortable in the pocket, calling drop-back passes probably isn’t a good idea. There has to be other things that he does well for him to be on the field, and you have to play to those strengths.To develop a good quarterback, you have to find out what he does well and make your system flexible around him.”

Aug. 13, 2008

Wilder will always remember that date.

“That was the day we brought in 82 first-year players. I used to have hair,” Wilder said with a chuckle. “I’ve never seen anything like that. This is my last start-up program ever. You can quote me on that. That moment was so unique, seeing those 82 kids. As I stood in front of them, I knew that I was going to have to teach them everything about discipline, structure, how to present yourself in public, how to present yourself in a classroom. Everything was going to have to be built from the ground up. We’ve had to build everything. That part always stands out to me.”

Zone Read With a Bubble Option

It is a basic running play with zone blocking. The quarterback has the option to give the ball to the running back and run inside zone, pull the ball and run, or throw the ball to the bubble receiver. The QB reads the number of defenders in the ‘tackle box’ and the number on the perimeter. If it’s three over two on the perimeter, we’ll run the football because that means it’s a five or six man box.