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Football
Q & A With Associate Head Coach Joe Trainer
March 6, 2008
Beginning February 11 and leading up to the Rams annual Spring Game on April 26, one member of the Rhode Island football coaching staff will participate in a 'Q & A' session for GoRhody.com. This week's edition features associate head coach and defensive coordinator Joe Trainer, who joins the URI staff after spending the previous two seasons at Millersville. You, Darren and Chris worked together at New Haven. Did you ever think you'd all be back together on the same coaching staff again? We were all pretty young and cutting our teeth together. I felt like we caught lighting in a bottle - we had some unbelievable character guys and great coaches. When you move onto the next job, it's kind of an unspoken thing where you say to yourself `I'd love to get a chance to work with that guy,' in any capacity if you're fortunate enough to where your paths cross again. Darren and I have a lot of similarities in philosophies, in our approach to the game, and our passion. I don't think I would have left for another assistant position in this conference but Rhode Island and to work with Darren. I feel that's strongly about him and this school. Talk about your relationship with Darren. How did you end up at New Haven, and how often did you keep in contact once you went your separate ways?
Darren and I were together at Colgate, and he left a year before I did. When the defensive coordinator position opened at New Haven, he recommended me for it. Looking back, it was an unbelievable experience because Division II football is a lot like minor league baseball. There is no glamour to it, there are a lot of long bus trips, and the kids aren't coddled as they are to an extent at the higher levels. In Division II, you're part coach, part fundraiser, part equipment manager. You wear so many hats, and looking back on it, Division II football is kind of its own entity. Since then, Darren and I have remained exceptionally close. When we were there, neither of us was married - we were dating our future wives. Ten or 11 years later, we have eight kids between us and we've both been married for nearly 20 years. Darren is not the Darren of old and I'm certainly not the Joe of old. We've always kept in touch through the progression of our careers and I'm really excited about the opportunity to work with him again.
You, Mark Fabish, and Chris Pincince were really the first two members of Darren's staff to arrive here in Kingston. What were those first few weeks like - putting together a staff, gathering a recruiting class, etc? It was unlike anything I'll probably ever experience again, even if I'm in this for 40 more years. Chris, Mark, and I showed up on January 2, and Darren wasn't here because he was preparing to coach in the bowl game. It was pretty daunting. We arrived at this new place ready to begin laying the foundation for the direction of this program, and along with the general awkward feelings that accompany any transition, we walked into about 450 unlabeled tapes. We began sifting through boxes and setting up makeshift video areas where we can evaluate players. When you go to a new place like we did, and in particular when you're late in the recruiting process, you've identified players that you were aware of and had been recruiting at your other school prior to coming here. That definitely played into the process. We were flying by the seat of our pants, but looking back on it, it was awesome because it was something that I've never really experienced in it. Those first seven to 10 days were pretty crazy. You spent the last few seasons at Millersville building its football program. How tough was it to leave? It was the hardest professional decision I have ever made. We were in a Division II scholarship conference, but the disparity in resources was unbelievable. We were 14th out of 16th in scholarship revenue, and with the maximum Division II scholarships at 36, we were less than 10. With that, there were three new members - Gannon, Mercyhurst, and C.W. Post - coming into the conference with 36 scholarships each. I just didn't see it getting any better. This profession is hard enough when things are equal. Having said that, I loved it and had unbelievable kids. It's a great place, but this opportunity allows me to work with someone I really believe in and respect a lot. I think this is a goldmine and that we're going to do some great things here. The timing on a personal and professional level was right, and I'm really embracing this move. Before you went to Millersville, you spent almost a decade at conference-rival Villanova. What were your impressions, both positive and negative, about the URI football program? It was kind of an enigma. I wondered why they were never able to sustain it and get it going. If I were to prioritize three things - the campus, the location, and the facilities - I feel the most comfortable selling a place that has a nice campus; secondly, a place that is in a great location; and lastly - and it's a distant third - its facilities, which we're in the process of upgrading. Once we get the student athlete academic center built, we're going to have facilities that match up with any in the conference. I've been places and witnessed success where the facilities were terrible. I can name three schools in our conference with very average facilities that have a harder sell than us which have won with regularity over the last eight to 10 years. We pride ourselves on selling and relating to people, and I think this year's recruiting class is a good example of that. At the end of the day, when we brought people through here, we heard them saying `I had no idea the campus was this nice,' and when you're staying a few miles away in Newport, you almost feel like you're 50 hours from New Jersey instead of three. From that perspective, I thought Rhode Island was a sleeping giant that could win consistently and win championships. Following with that thought, there currently isn't a Division I football program within 90 minutes of Rhode Island. Some feel that football has always been a second-place citizen to basketball in the state of Rhode Island, but talk about the potential this program has to become a regional powerhouse. We were in a similar situation at Villanova, and we embraced the basketball aspect of it. If you're an athlete, regardless of what level, you want to go to a school where you feel athletics are important. When we take recruits to a basketball game here, it's awesome. It makes them feel that being a student-athlete means something. Seeing the support from the students and the community and seeing the athletic director interface with the fans provides that feeling. At most of your great Universities, there's consistency throughout the athletic department. Florida is pretty good at everything they do. Ohio State is great at everything they do. It's more of a mindset within the department that athletics are important here, that you're part of that program, and that its OK to talk about winning championships. In your opinion, what's been the most surprising thing about working at URI? Has anything exceeded your expectations? Did you expect something to be one way and it turned out completely different? The campus. Having worked at several state institutions, you have a preconceived notion that it will be prefab buildings. I was really surprised with the aesthetics of the campus in a positive way. When we played here, we stayed in Newport, and when we came to URI, we came down 138 and made a right into the facility. You miss the campus. On my second say here, I toured the camps, and I was saying to myself, `This is awesome.' I know I mentioned this earlier, but nothing is better than when you're taking a recruit on a tour of your campus and kids are saying the same thing, it makes you feel good with the product you're selling. You're more at ease because it's the layout and the setting most kids want - big trees, stone buildings, nice area and layout. Talk about how the league has changed since you began coaching in the former Atlantic 10 and now the CAA. There is so much balance. I heard a statistic two years ago that every team in the conference except Rhode Island and Towson had been to the playoffs in the last eight years. I think it speaks volumes about the league. In my first year at Villanova in 1997, we went 12-1 and lost in the second round of the playoffs to Youngstown State, who ended up winning the whole thing. Before 1998 when UMass won the championship, there was a sense that football was king in the south - Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, Youngstown State, Marshall - and the mid-atlantic and northern part of the country really didn't get much respect. In the span of 10 years, it's UMass, JMU, Delaware, and even Colgate in the Patriot League. This area of the country has gained a ton of respect. This year, our conference set a record with five playoffs teams, and Delaware went to the championship game again. If you don't bring it every week in this conference, you're going to have problems. There's no other conference in the country week-in and week-out where you're going to have this challenge. The homefield advantages are so unique, and also the fact that some teams are just better road teams. All those little match-ups that play out in this conference more than anywhere else, especially with the schools ranging as far north as Maine and as far south as William & Mary. Andy Talley is a coaching legend in Pennsylvania and one of the most respected coaches at this level in all of college football. Talk about the impact he had on your coaching career and what specifically, if anything, you learned from him? He was a tremendous influence. I consider him a good friend. You can't help but grow and learn from someone you spent eight years with. Before I went there, I was coaching a sport. When I left Villanova, he taught me how to coach people. Some of that might have been maturity along the way, but I think the greatest thing I took from Andy was his ability to tap into people and maximize their production. He did that better than anyone I have ever been around. The other thing I took from Andy was his sense of calmness. There really was no crisis management with him in the sense that he kept anything that came across his desk at an even keel. Don't get too high, don't get too low. Whether it's an upset win or an upset loss, stay the course and don't throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak. His philosophy was to educate, re-educate, then eliminate. I'm going to educate these guys, then I'm going to re-educate these guys when they screw up, and then when they screw up again, I'm probably going to eliminate them. Sometimes there was an additional setup or two along the way, but for the most part, that was his philosophy. Darren and Andy are very different in some ways, in that respect, they're very alike. You're a few weeks into workouts now. Talk about how they've gone and the improvements you've seen. I'm unbelievably proud of these kids. We haven't seen them play a lick of football, but they've bought into what we're trying to sell and worked their tail off. Almost to a man, every kid is getting better and more invested. Timing is everything, but there is such a desire to be good because they haven't been for some time. When you have good kids who are going to work hard and pay the price and invest in it, it makes you feel good. I learned a long time ago that 11 opportunities a year isn't enough to sustain me - I've got to enjoy the day-to-day with the kids, and if I don't, I'll go sell something. It's not worth it to me. I love working with these kids. We're going to have some ups and downs, but when you have kids who are committed to one another and are invested in what they're doing, you have a shot. Honestly, the talent in this conference is so balanced. There might be two teams where you say `We're going to have to play way over our head to beat this team,' but I firmly believe that in this conference, intangibles account for so much. Who has great chemistry, great leadership, and a confidence in what they're doing? Coach Talley use to say that the most talented team won the conference one or two times. In my opinion, coaching is overrated. I believe in the sense of scheme. If we can create an environment where these kids feel special about what we're doing and where they are accountable to one another because of an internal peer pressure, then we will have a successful program. |
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