INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis Colts coach Jim Caldwell is a big fan of college football.
A former assistant coach at several colleges — including his alma mater, Iowa, along with Southern Illinois, Colorado, Louisville, Northwestern and Penn State — Caldwell’s first head coaching job came in 1993 when he took over the program at Wake Forest.
While the Wake Forest program now is ranked among the best in the Atlantic Coast Conference, it wasn’t that way when he came on board. Far from it. And while Caldwell ended up being fired after the 2000 season, the foundation for the success that the Demon Deacons have experienced since then had been set.
After going through what he did those eight years, trying to build a football program at a school that hadn’t seen much success in the previous 25 years before he arrived, Caldwell has taken an interest in what has been transpiring at Indiana State the past few seasons.
He’s been in Trent Miles’ shoes 15 years earlier. He faced the same kind of skepticism when he told his coaching colleagues that he was going to go take over a football program that had fallen on hard times.
“Overall, [Wake Forest] didn’t have a history of winning consistently. The overall attitude was one where there were a lot of excuses made. Academics, size of the institution. There were a lot of those kinds of things that they leaned on for rationale as to why the record had been so poor,” Caldwell said recently.
“Ironically, the year before I went there, they had been to a bowl game. It was a senior laden team. But after they’d have a good year, they’d have a huge falloff. So we really had to go in and change the culture. That means on every front. It was a constant battle. I talked to faculty members. I talked to fraternity houses, student drives and rallies. And alumni. And I met with the [local] newspaper, constantly beating that drum. Just talking about how [Wake Forest] is a special place. It takes a lot of energy. And time.”
When he interviewed for the head coaching job, Caldwell was in his fifth season as the quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator for Joe Paterno at Penn State. But he was ready to move out on his own.
“One of the reasons [that he was interested in the Wake Forest job] is that it was a real challenge. That’s number one. A great challenge. Because of the fact that there had been difficulty there before and I just thought that it was an ideal place for me,” he recalled.
“I thought that we could create an atmosphere where we could go out and find students that could do the work and we didn’t have to worry about sacrificing the academic integrity of the institution and still win games. I thought that was a great selling point if you value an education. I thought we did that pretty well. And we did upgrade the talent level during my time there.”
Before he took the job, though, he had to convince some of his coaching brethren — most notably Paterno — that he wasn’t out of his mind for wanting to move on to Wake Forest.
“Oh yeah. Joe Paterno told me not to take the job. He actually discouraged me from taking it. He just felt that it was too tough [to win]. I told him, ‘Hey, it’s a great place. It’s a real challenge. But it’s a good fit for me.’ He said, ‘Well, there have been a lot of good coaches down there who haven’t won.’ He didn’t say, ‘Don’t be arrogant,’ but it was something along those lines. He did say, ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself,’” Caldwell said.
“But the fact of the matter is that although I had confidence in my ability, that was one place where I thought the administration was ready for me.”
Which brings us to the topic of Indiana State’s program. Caldwell knows about the Sycamores and its football past, having started his career as a full-time assistant working at Southern Illinois from 1979-80 for former Salukis coach Rey Dempsey.
That time period has proven to be the high point for ISU football. Coach Dennis Raetz’ teams battled Southern Illinois in the mid-1980s for the Missouri Valley Conference title. In fact, the two programs faced off in the 1983 I-AA playoffs, with the Salukis winning and advancing on to the I-AA national championship that season.
He also knows the present. Offensive coordinator Troy Walters was a wide receiver for the Colts when Caldwell was the team’s quarterbacks coach. So when he was asked about the state of the Indiana State football program, and what it’s going to take to turn things around, the first-year NFL coach was understanding.
“I know the feeling. When I first started coaching, I started out at Southern Illinois. But the next three jobs, I actually took them because of the fact that I wanted to go in to a situation that was bleak, they hadn’t been winning and I wanted to experience a turnaround,” he said.
“I went to Northwestern with Denny Green. I went to Colorado with Bill McCartney and helped to turn that situation around. And I went to Louisville with Howard Schnellenberger. All good coaches. But in all three of those situations, I thought that at some point in time that I was going to have to have success. And so I wanted to have a good understanding of the best way to approach it.”
Caldwell also relayed some advice that he received from McCartney.
“He said believe in what you’re doing. And then he used these words, ‘Don’t flinch.’ And I took that to heart,” he said. “It just kind of takes time [to turn a program around]. But it also takes patience from the administration. That’s the thing that I did get at Wake Forest. I signed three contracts while I was there. They gave me time.
“But that’s what [Indiana State will] have to do. They have to be patient with them. Give them time. Commit to it. Give them a chance to get all their [recruiting] classes in place. They’ll see change. They’ll see it happen. Let [Miles] get his guys in there. And the change will come.”
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Give him time and Miles will make it happen, Caldwell says
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