According to The Tribune in San Luis Obispo and The Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y., Cal Poly football head coach Rich Ellerson is on the verge of taking the same position at Army.
It would seem to be a perfect fit.
At Cal Poly, Ellerson not only elevated the program to unprecedented success at the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) level, but did so at an academically respected institution, and showed the ability to do more with less in terms of recruiting, placing several players in the NFL over a span of a few years and even periodically swinging up with some success at Football Bowl Subdivision (I-A) teams like UTEP (a 34-13 win in 2003), San Diego State (two wins, in 2006 and 2008) and even Wisconsin (leading the entire game before the last play of a 36-35, overtime loss in 2008).
Apparently someone at Army noticed.
Ellerson previously was rumored, if only purely from a media-driven standpoint, to be a candidate at Washington.
Ellerson’s brother, John, was a defensive end at Army from 1960 to 1963. In 1961, he led a defense that held six opponents to a touchdown or less. He was a team captain in 1962 and an All-American honorable mention in 1963.
Although I can’t link to it due to the article being viewed from an academic database, here’s an excerpt from a telling interview Rich Ellerson conducted with The Tribune‘s Peter Wallner that ran Aug. 26, 2001, less than a week before his first game as a head coach at Cal Poly, a home opener against Montana:
Q: I see that you were born in Yokohama, Japan. Can you describe your upbringing and when football entered your life?
A: “I was the son of a career Army officer from West Point. So I was born in Japan by happenstance. My oldest brothers are academy graduates. My oldest brother, John (who’s 14 years older), is a hero to me. He was a great football player and captain of the Army team back in his day. All-American this and that. So I always identified with him and the game.
“Like a lot of us in athletics, and a lot of players now, we feel good about ourselves because of what’s happened between the white lines. We’ve been so rewarded by those experiences it’s become a part of who we are. As a young man when you try and describe who you are, inevitably you’d say ‘football player.’ It’s a part of who I am — and in some cases, a big part. So when the opportunity presented itself to coach, I didn’t necessarily anticipate that. But I grabbed it and I climbed on that roller coaster and loved it. My wife is a military brat as well — Air Force.”
Here’s another excerpt from an academic article database, this time from a Sept. 7, 1997 Salt Lake Tribune story on the coaching change at Southern Utah, where Ellerson spent one year as the head coach between stints as an assistant at Arizona. (He reportedly left Southern Utah following the 1996 season after being allotted 25 fewer scholarships than FCS teams’ allowance of 63 — which is 22 fewer than the FBS allowance.)
To some, the hire was a surprise because Gregory was seen as
a flake on Ellerson’s staff. He was boyish, he smiled a lot, he actually
thought football should be fun. This was almost blasphemous, considering that
Ellerson ran his team the way Patton ran the 3rd Army.“Rich was very military,” Gregory says.
It looks like it.
What are your thoughts?
Sad to see him go? And who would make a good replacement? Is he on staff or elsewhere in the country? If indeed all this is true, of course.