College football is more than Xs and Os these days

After nearly 30 years in a job, one might think things would be pretty cut and dried.

Open the office door, turn on the lights and automatically do whatever you’ve done for decades.

But that’s not the case if you’re a Division I head football coach like Aaron Best is at Eastern Washington University.

Best is busily preparing for his eighth season as the Eagles’ big boss, the team opening at Roos Field in a non-conference game, Thursday, Aug. 29 against the Monmouth Hawks from New Jersey.

Fresh from another letter of intent day back in February Best spoke on a variety of fronts about the program. The dawn of a new season seemed like a good time to dust off that interview which seemingly had no place amidst the busy high school sports seasons for this paper.

Best approaches 2024 with the pressure of returning Eastern to its winning ways of the past. From 2008 through 2018 Eastern either won outright or shared Big Sky championships six times — including his second year in 2018.

But the past two seasons have been quite a challenge as back-to-back campaigns finished with respective 3-8 and 4-7 records.

One must go back a long ways to the toddler times of EWU’s Division I days that began in 1984 to find such a period.

Can you imagine the reaction today of experiencing FIVE consecutive seasons of under .500 mediocrity as the Eagles did under the “Godfather” of the program, Dick Zornes, between 1987 and 1991?

Doing some math about 2023 shows the difference between 4-7 and 9-2 was a total of 38 points, on average a touchdown and change per game.

Looking in the rearview mirror does little, but Best can say, “There was a ton more growth to (20)23.”

The fix for 2024 Best said is very basic: play better defense, create more turnovers and get off field on third down.

Best arrived in Cheney from Tacoma’s Curtin High in 1996 where he had been part of a state 3A champion team.

A year later he was long snapper for the Eagles under Mike Kramer. That was a team which finished a game — and a couple of touchdowns — shy of reaching the I-AA national championship following a 25-14 loss to Youngstown State at snowy Joe Albi Stadium in Spokane.

The slow transfusion of Eastern blood was completed by the time Best worked towards a path as a high school teacher and coach graduating in 2001. He was twice named to the Big Sky All-Academic team and earned numerous other academic and playing honors.

Best began his ascent up the tall ladder from the real bottom rung. He was first a student assistant under Paul Wulff in 2000, eventually gravitating to his current role in 2017. He spent 2007 in Canada as a coach with Toronto.

Aside from the past two seasons, Best’s 48-32 overall record and 35-19 Big Sky marks, include four playoff appearances and rank him second in win percentage in program history.

Life in Cheney as an Eagle was vastly different in those early days for Best. Jerseys came in two colors, red and white, helmets in red and the turf was real green grass.

Routine hopes of the past, however, rocketed in into the stratosphere following the 2010 national title.

“The expectation is never going to waver,” Best said. “We were spoiled for a long amount of time here.”

He knows all about the environment those past successes have created for the program and its fans. “I was part of it, I was in the thick of it,” he said.

But it’s much more than Xs and Os these days in college football.

One of the hottest topics these days centers on the randomly revolving door called the transfer portal. “We’ve had to navigate knowing there’s no handbook on how to navigate it,” Best said.

Uncertainty resides in now not knowing at the start of a season what a roster might look like at the end. “It’s even different than it was five years ago where you knew the seniors are gonna’ graduate,” Best said.

Now in the 11th hour a handful of players a coach didn’t expect to be gone opt out and “You’ve got a month to recruit those guys in middle of December, middle of January,” Best explained.

As for the voices of critics who think they know best about how Best runs the program, he certainly hears them — and may even listen on occasion?

“I don’t have the answers, but everybody gives them,” Best said. “Everybody’s got the answers, so maybe we should ask them?”

— Paul Delaney is a Free Press Publishing sports reporter. Email him at [email protected].