First day on the job: Takeaways from Anderson’s first press conference with USU football

Utah State University ushered in a new era of Aggie football on a snowy Monday morning in Logan with the introductory press conference of its newly named head coach, Blake Anderson. And despite the current circumstances surrounding the program ― a 1-5 2020 season, several players gone to the transfer portal, alleged religious bias from the president of the school, and a global pandemic — Anderson didn’t shy away from sharing his expectations.

“The standard is very very clear. It’s to win championships. It’s that simple,” Anderson said. “The standard is high. I don’t know how long that’s going to take, I don’t know exactly what the roster looks like, but I understand that the goal and the standard is to win championships. To win the Mountain West and honestly be the best team in the country in the group of five. That’s the goal.”  

The standard is very, very clear … It's to win championships.

🗣 @CHbanderson#AggiesAllTheWay pic.twitter.com/EZP47ESZDQ

— USU Football (@USUFootball) December 14, 2020

It’s big talk. The Aggies have been close to winning a conference championship, but have never reached the peak in its first eight seasons of the conference. And to be the best team in all of the group of five, becoming a better program than Cincinnati, Boise State, and UCF, among others, seems unrealistic at this moment. But the man who coached Arkansas State for seven years before arriving in Cache Valley this past Saturday has a plan. 

“We’re going to do it building it on three things: we’re gonna build it on faith, family, and a fun exciting atmosphere,” he said.

Fun

Anderson built his career on coaching dynamic, exciting offenses. In his seven seasons at Arkansas State, his offenses averaged 34.1 points per game and 455.2 yards of offense per game. With his experience, along with the coaches he’s bringing in — possibly UCF co-offensive coordinator Anthony Tucker, who is reportedly leaving his job as co-offensive coordinator at UCF to be Utah State’s offensive coordinator, according to Football Scoop — and former Aggie quarterback Chuckie Keeton, expect that offensive prowess to continue. 

“Don’t get something to drink in the middle of the series or you’re going to miss the whole thing,” Anderson said. “I’m talking about fast, physical, and fun all the time. We need to recruit speed, we got to be fast we gotta train fast. But we’re also gonna run a fast tempo pace of the offense. We’ve done that over the last 20 years, we’ve been good at it everywhere we’ve been, we’re going to continue that tradition here.”

But don’t mistake any of the razzle-dazzle for being soft and unaggressive. 

“As pretty and as fun, as some of the offenses are in the country to watch, at the end of the day, you must be blue-collar tough physical to win championships,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how it all looks, you can wrap it in a different wrapper and that’s fine and we do, but at the end of the day we gotta be the toughest most physical, most violent team on the field on game day.”

Anderson is committed to instilling a blue-collar culture into his program and he said there are two main components to creating that culture: the strength staff and recruitment. Because the NCAA rules that regulate when coaches can interact with players and conduct practices do not apply to the strength coaches. Anderson said, “(The players) spend 80% of their time with the strength staff.” Though he won’t release the name of his new strength coach because he is currently with a team playing in a bowl game, Anderson was anxious to share how excited he was about the guy. 

“I’ve seen the buildings he’s been apart of, I’ve seen the product he’s put on the field, we will be tough, we will play hard and fast,” he said. “I promise you I have more confidence in the guys that is coming than anyone else in the industry.”

Faith and Family

51-year-old Anderson isn’t old, but seems to have had a tremendous amount of life experience. He has been in coaching for 28 years and in recent years he’s dealt with the pain of losing his wife to cancer and losing his father. He made it clear on Monday that much of his effort to bring Utah State back to prominence will be done by instilling his values into the program. 

“I feel like God’s moved me in a new direction and this is a great new challenge, new fresh start, new opportunity for myself, my family, my staff, and their families,” he said.

For Anderson, religion is not a taboo subject, and it’s going to be much of what Utah State football is about going forward. 

“I’m a Christian before anything else, I love the Lord, I feel like God put me in coaching, he built me that way to do exactly what I do,” he said. “I’m about affecting the lives of young men and the staff around me in a way that honors God. So we’re gonna talk about faith, we’re gonna be about faith, the guys that want to be a part of that environment are the guys that are going to say yes to us in recruiting.”

Calling your team a “family” can be a cliche, but when Anderson discussed it in the Utah State press box Monday morning, he sounded genuine. 

“Family is huge to me. Obviously, losing people close to you makes it, even more, a priority,” he said. “We’re going to create a family in every aspect of what we do inside the locker room and out.” 

Anderson’s goal is to make what is already a tight-knit Aggie community even closer; his vision for what he wants to accomplish in Logan is big and he understands that. He said that nobody is required to trust him yet, that he hasn’t earned that trust yet. But when you listen to the man speak, it’s hard not to get excited. 

“I don’t think family is just a football team. I think family is the local community, we want to do this together,” he said. “We’re gonna put a product on the field that makes the people of the valley proud, the alumni of Utah State proud.”

@jacobnielson12

—sports@usustatesman.com