Marshall University Athletics
MCGILL: Huff reveals how he built Herd coaching staff
2/4/2021 11:07:00 AM | Football, Big Green Scholarship Foundation, Word on the Herd, Ticketing & Promotions, Buck Harless Student Athlete Program
First-year head coach announced additions on National Signing Day
By Chuck McGill
HerdZone.com
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – National Signing Day, as far as college football is concerned, used to be about the big unveil. College coaching staffs across America would grab an early morning coffee and doughnut and then wait for the fax machine to hum, long before the sun decided to rouse from its slumber.
National Signing Day as we knew it has changed. In 2021, here at Marshall University, the reveal was more about who'd be doing the recruiting in the coming years than who was recruited.
First-year Marshall head coach Charles Huff, no stranger to the a.m. cup of Joe, held a virtual press conference to talk about his first recruiting class. He signed one player, but was able to finally share the others he'd recruited to Huntington to help him build a championship program. In addition to Caleb Coombs, a highly touted prospect out of Washington, D.C., Huff introduced his first coaching staff, a blend of familiar names and new faces who he believes will help elevate the Thundering Herd football program after a season partially spent in the Top 25.
"When you have lists, you have lists three or four deep at each position," Huff said. "'If I can't get this, I can get this guy. If I can't get that guy, I can get this guy.' Part of it is a combination of, one, people understand and truly respect how great this place can be. It's hard to take a job and try to convince somebody to move to the middle of nowhere and we don't know if the program has good history and tradition, but Marshall is a place a lot of people respect. People understand you can win at this place. People understand you're going to be able to get good players.
"Coaches understand that the vision of where Marshall wants to go and their ability can allow it to go, the sky is the limit. That's what attracts people. That's what made it so easy when I picked up the phone. Guys didn't have to do a lot of research. Guys didn't have to think twice."
Huff talked about his offensive coaches, which includes the retention of coordinator and quarterbacks coach Tim Cramsey. The Marshall offense ranked third in Conference USA in yards per play and fourth in the league in total offense, while producing a conference-best five first team all-conference players in 2020. Grant Wells, in his first season as a starter, was Conference USA's first team all-conference quarterback and the league's Freshman of the Year.
"It was very important to me to keep the system consistent because we have a solid quarterback," Huff said. "I didn't want to ask a young quarterback with talent to start over. It may have been different if he was a senior. When you have a young quarterback who has a lot of talent, you don't want to restart his progression or maturation. I knew Cramsey; I knew the scheme he runs; I knew the ideas we brought in from Alabama would merge well with his system. I knew if our quarterback played well, we'd have a chance, and that will create a lot of confidence on offense."
Cramsey will be joined on offense by Telly Lockette (run game coordinator/running backs coach); Clint Trickett (pass game coordinator/receivers coach); Bill Legg (assistant head coach/tight ends coach) and Eddy Morrissey (offensive line coach).
Lockette was the high school coach of Rakeem Cato, the Herd's all-time leading passer. Cato's offensive coordinator while throwing for all of those yards was Legg, who returns for another stint at Marshall. Trickett was a college quarterback at two major colleges and is from a football rich family. Morrissey crossed paths with Huff at Mississippi State.
"What I've learned from being around some really good head coaches, is you have a list, but your list is predicated on where your job is," Huff said. "There's a lot of guys I've had on a list, there's a lot of guys who called me, there's a lot of guys who I would hire who didn't necessarily fit the Marshall job."
That's especially true on the defensive side, which is headed up by a pair of former Marshall players on the first two levels of the defense: Ralph Street (defensive line) and Shannon Morrison (linebackers). Dominique Bowman will coach cornerbacks, and Lance Guidry will be the defensive coordinator and safeties coach. Jeremy Springer will handled special teams.
"There are guys if I would have got a job in Florida, I would have hired more Florida guys; if I had got a job on the West Coast, I would have hired more West Coast guys," Huff said. "Your staff is not who fits you; it's a combination of who fits you, who fits the area regionally, who fits the school or the university. I also think it's about what transition the university is in: Do you need somebody to come over and start over completely and start from scratch? Or is it a place where the history and tradition is so important that you need some of those people who understand the history and the tradition.
"Marshall is a place where the history and tradition is so important that you need guys who understand that. That's why I hired guys who played here or who coached here in the past."
Off the field, Huff will combine the familiar for himself with the familiar for Herd fans.
Sharrod Everett has been named the program's new Chief of Staff, while Mark Gale will be retained in the Football Operations role. Gale celebrated 400 career games with the Herd program during the 2020 season.
"Sharrod and I started working together at Tennessee State, my very first job," Huff said. "In that role, my Chief of Staff, is the person who can basically organize your message to the support staff and to the outreach of the program. Dealing with the administration; dealing with equipment managers; dealing with trainers; dealing with video; dealing with building management. The areas of the program that may not sit in the staff meeting every day, or the area of the program that might not directly touch the players, that the message is consistent. Sharrod has been at a lot of really good places: Oregon, Florida State, Northwestern, Western Kentucky. He has a wide range of knowledge. He understands my vision. I don't have to tell him A, B, C and D. Once I tell him A, he knows what B, C and D are."
So while we'll have to wait until the Class of 2022 to see Huff's first full set of football recruits, he was able to showcase the first wave of signees Wednesday evening: his assistants. And, after stints at places like Penn State, Mississippi State and Alabama, he knows how important those roles are to the success of a program.
"I'm the leader of the entire program, but I tell my coaches that they are the head coaches of their position," Huff said. "They should lead and they should be repeating the message of the program."
Chuck McGill is the Assistant Athletic Director for Fan/Donor Engagement and Communications at Marshall University and a nine-time winner of the National Sports Media Association West Virginia Sportswriter of the Year award. In addition to HerdZone.com's Word on the Herd, McGill is the editor of Thundering Herd Illustrated, Marshall's official athletics publication. Follow him on Twitter (@chuckmcgill) and Instagram (wordontheherd).
