Santiago works hard at hobby
Offensive coordinator Mike Santiago has brought his hobby to Utah State University. It also happens to be his job.
“I get to work at my hobby,” Santiago said. “It’s a great deal. One of
these days, I’m going to have to get a real job, but right now I get to work at my hobby.”
Santiago came to USU from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacgdoches, Texas, where he was head coach of the football team. He posted six-straight winning seasons before getting fired in 2004.
“You can do everything, but you can’t fight politics,” he said. “It had nothing to do with football, so that was the good news. I’d be upset if it
had to do with football.”
“It’s a lot of fun,” Santiago said of switching to offensive coordinator. “It’s back to doing football again. Unfortunately, as a head coach you don’t
get that much time to do football.”
He played collegiate ball as a wide receiver for Glendale Community College before coming to Utah to play cornerback at Southern Utah University.
In college, Santiago didn’t think he would be spending much time with football at all. “I got a degree in psychology and I was fixing to become a
policeman,” he said. “What do you do with a degree in psychology?”
Then a call came from an old coach.
“He called me up and told me I was stupid and asked me if I ever thought
about coaching,” Santiago said. “He got me a graduate assistant job down at
Lamar University. I didn’t know what a graduate assistant job was. I didn’t
know where Lamar University was. I didn’t know where Beaumont, Texas, was.”
He quickly found out. Now his job – or hobby – is to help Aggie players find
the end zone. “I think we are getting better. I think we have a ways to go, but I see an attitude from the players that says they want to get better.”
Santiago made his way around the country with coaching jobs at North Carolina State, Northern Arizona, Western Michigan, Southwest Texas and McNeese State University before taking the head duties at Stephen F. Austin.
While at Northern Arizona, Santiago met his future wife. “She’s a big
marathon runner and she used to run by my office every day. My office used to
face the concourse of the dome and the good thing was, the dome was a circle.
I couldn’t catch her, but she had to come back by every day.”
His wife, Rochelle, teaches biomechanics at USU. They have been married for 21 years and have two sons – one at USU and one at Logan High School.
“I have a blessed life,” he said.
-benwalker@cc.usu.edu