Time-tested ways are speeding up

Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo is one of the five finalists for the Frank Broyles Award, presented each year to the top college football assistant coach. This year’s presentation will be at 11:30 a.m. today at the Peabody hotel in Little Rock.

Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo is one of the five finalists for the Frank Broyles Award, presented each year to the top college football assistant coach. This year’s presentation will be at 11:30 a.m. today at the Peabody hotel in Little Rock.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

— Mike Bobo stepped onto the Woodruff Practice Fields at Georgia in 2001 to start his first season serving as the quarterbacks coach for his alma mater after one year in the same job at Jacksonville State in rural Alabama.

Bobo, 27 at the time, followed a four-year playing career at Georgia with a two-year stint as a graduate assistant before landing his first job as a position coach at Jacksonville State, a Division I Football Championship Subdivision program.

“That’s how you moved up,” said Bobo, 38, who just wrapped up his sixth season as Georgia’s offensive coordinator.

Bobo, one of five finalists for the Frank Broyles Award, which will be presented to college football’s top assistant coach at 11:30 a.m. today at the Peabody hotel in Little Rock, is at the middle ground between the youngest and oldest assistants up for the award.

Ranging from Texas A&M offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury at age 33 to Florida defensive coordinator Dan Quinn at 42, none of the finalists are long in the tooth.

Aside from Bobo, neither Kingsbury, Quinn, Stanford defensive coordinator Derek Mason and Notre Dame defensive coordinator Bob Diaco have been a coordinator for more than three seasons.

Diaco, who started his career in 1999 as a running backs coach at Western Illinois and became a defensive coordinator at Cincinnati a decade later, said he doesn’t read much into the deeper meanings of fellow coaches’ resumes in search of a trend.

“It can seem like a young man’s game,” said Diaco, 39, who followed Irish Coach Brian Kelly from his last stop with the Bearcats. “But those are like dog years. You read these guys’ resumes, and to a man you’ve been focused on the game since you were 8 years old every day, all day and all night.”

Mason said young coaches have accelerated their rise with some “coaches having opportunities to go to the NFL and come back while expanding their football IQ.”

A young coach can make several college stops, jump to the NFL as a quality control assistant coach analyzing tendencies off game film while picking up knowledge of advanced schemes, player development and staff structure.

“What I do know is there are more guys being presented an opportunity at an earlier age,” Mason said “You find guys developing alliances within their pedigree and gain knowledge extremely fast. You are seeing a young movement, and I don’t expect it to stop.”Coaching staffs are still built around stability and routine, but increasingly there’s a new found sense that conducing in-house critiques of strategy, play-calling, recruiting priorities and player evaluation. Curiosity, it seems, is welcome these days.

“We all want to be around good teachers, and be around kids that keep us young by asking questions and being innovative in their thought process,” Mason said. “That’s going on now more than ever.”

Bobo pointed out another reason for a potential youth movement in the coaching ranks:

“Recruiting is the life blood of your program, and you want young guys in there that can relate to those guys,” Bobo said.

All five Broyles’ finalists had four-year college careers, ranging from Kingsbury’s time conducting Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense as quarterback at Texas Tech to Diaco’s career as a linebacker at Iowa.

Bobo said one time-tested element remains unchanged.

“It comes down to your guys believing in you, whatever ‘X’, whatever ‘O’ you put in front of them,” he said. “If they believe that scheme has a chance to win, you’ve got a shot.”

Broyles Award finalists

Finalists for the Broyles Award, which is given to college football’s top assistant coach and will be presented by the Rotary Club of Little Rock today at the Little Rock Peabody hotel.

MIKE BOBO SCHOOL Georgia POSITION Offensive coordinator NOTABLE Played quarterback for the Bulldogs from 1993-1997, and was named MVP of the 1998 Outback Bowl.

BOB DIACO SCHOOL Notre Dame POSITION Defensive coordinator NOTABLE He was a semifinalist for the award last season, his first season as the Irish coordinator.

KLIFF KINGSBURY SCHOOL Texas A&M POSITION Offensive coordinator NOTABLE Coached seventh-place Heisman Trophy finisher Case Keenum at Houston, and is coaching another Heisman candidate in quarterback Johnny Manziel

DAN QUINN SCHOOL Florida POSITION Defensive coordinator NOTABLE Served as Seattle Seahawks defensive line coach under Pete Carroll before joining the Gators in January 2011.

DEREK MASON SCHOOL Stanford POSITION Defensive coordinator NOTABLE All three defensive coordinators nominated this year are in their second seasons in those positions.

Sports, Pages 17 on 12/04/2012