LOGAN, Utah - The Aggies lost both of their football coordinators during bowl season. They've replaced them with a familiar face and one former Big 12 offense coordinator.
Utah State is bringing in former Oklahoma Sooner offensive coordinator Josh Heupel to be the new OC and quarterback's coach. Heupel has coached in 11 bowl games during his professional career and has been apart of six conference championships. When he was a player, he was a runner-up for the Heisman Trophy and led Oklahoma to a 2000 BCS National Championship. Heupel says what attracted him to Utah State is how much they have grown in the past couple of years.
"To see the transition and the leadership of this university and the vision that it has moving forward is something that is extremely attractive," Huepel said. "You look at the track record of what it's been able to do the last four, five, six years as a program as far as competing on the field... this is something I wanted to be apart of."
Kevin Clune is returning to the Aggie defense to be the defensive coordinator. He coached the Aggie defense from 2009 to 2013 and then took a year to be the defensive coordinator at Hawaii. When he was the linebacker coach at USU, he helped the team to three-straight bowl games and a 2012 Western Athletic Conference championship. During his last season with the Aggies, Clune's defense ranked first in the Mountain West and seventh in the nation in scoring, allowing just 17.1 point per game. He coached now Seahawks linebacker Bobby Wagner, who is going to his second straight Super Bowl. Clune said the development of the Utah State football program is impressive.
"When I got here in 2009 nobody thought about Utah State," Clune said. "Everyone wanted to schedule us, that type of thing. Now it's completely different."
The coaches just barely arrived on campus, so they couldn't answer very many of our questions about where the next season is headed.
Head Coach Matt Wells did say that after this last push of recruiting, it is back to the grind to figure out how to win the Mountain West Conference Championship. He says the end goal is to get that last national bid and play in the Fiesta Bowl next season.
