Smooth Transition
February 18, 2008 12:12 PM | General
February 18, 2008
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Chris Beatty is used to being around talent. When West Virginia’s new running backs/slots coach was offensive coordinator at Hampton University the Pirates sent five players to the NFL combines in 2007. That was as many as Penn State and Arkansas and actually four more than the number West Virginia sent to the combines that year.
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| New running backs/slots coach Chris Beatty talks to reporters last week at the Milan Puskar Center.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
“We had some great players at Hampton,” Beatty said recently. “I had three receivers and a running back that all went to the league so it wasn’t like we didn’t have great players there, too.”
Beatty’s most recent coaching stop was at Northern Illinois last year where he served as running backs coach for Joe Novak. Beatty is coming into a West Virginia system that is much different than the one he was involved with at Northern Illinois.
“This is not close at all to what we did at Northern Illinois,” Beatty said. “We were more of a traditional pro-set style offense but it’s a lot like what I did in high school and it’s a lot like what I did at Hampton.”
Beatty has been a rising star in the coaching profession after compiling a 78-18 record with three different high schools in Virginia and leading Landstown High School to a state title in 2004. The East Tennessee State graduate was quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator at Division II Hampton under former Mountaineer Jerry Holmes before breaking into the Division I ranks last year.
Beatty recalls a conversation he had with Bill Stewart several years ago when he was still coaching high school and Stewart was recruiting the area for West Virginia.
“He said to me four or five years ago, ‘Hey, if I ever get a job I’m going to hire you.’ Sure enough when he got one he called me,” Beatty said. “Most people say that but they kind of give you lip service.”
Beatty said he had several offers to work at other places when Novak was not retained at Northern Illinois.
“When Coach Stew called it was a no-brainer for me,” Beatty said. “People want to work for him. He’s a great guy, he’s honest, he treats you right; he treats you like a man and I think you can’t ask for much more than that.”
Beatty says his coaching philosophy is to treat players differently because he believes all players are different.
“You and I aren’t the same and none of those kids are the same,” Beatty explained. “You try to take the approach of getting to know them individually. I’ve always learned from playing and coaching that anyone that says they treat everybody the same ought to get up and find another place because they’re not telling you the truth.”
Beatty is also about developing relationships and trust with his players.
“If you get those guys believing in what you tell them and they feel comfortable with you and they want to play hard for you, then usually they’ll learn whatever it is you want them to learn,” Beatty said. “You can be the smartest guy in the world but if you treat them like a robot and you try to feed them a bunch of information and they don’t relate to it, then a 4.2 guy is running a 4.6. My job is to make sure the 4.2 guy still runs a 4.2.
“I want to make sure those guys stay fast and that I don’t over-coach them – that’s the balance,” Beatty said.
In many respects, coaching both the running backs and slot receivers is very similar to what Beatty did in high school.
“You kind of coach everything in high school and that’s what I did,” Beatty said. “It is a little bit different because you have different skill sets but at the same time we do a lot of similar things with those guys. It kind of lends itself to being more multiple when you do have a guy that can do more than one thing. Obviously Calvin (Magee) did a great job with those guys and hopefully I can keep it going.”
In addition to coaching the running backs and slot backs, Beatty will also have a vital recruiting area for the Mountaineers taking the I-95 corridor from Virginia Beach to North Carolina. There are tons of good football players in that region and although Beatty got a late start this year, he believes his contacts will eventually give West Virginia University a solid presence in the region.
“We were trying to do in two weeks what a lot of people were doing in a year and a half,” Beatty said. “That’s a hard process to catch up on but you get beat up a little bit and you learn on the ropes and you come back. I think it will help us in the future. It’s a learning process. We were trying to learn West Virginia at the same time we were trying to present West Virginia to all these kids.”
Beatty admits he is still getting caught up on the culture of West Virginia University and the Mountaineer football tradition.
“I had never been to West Virginia before,” Beatty said. “I had been to Huntington because we played Marshall a couple of times, but I couldn’t really tell the kids much about here other than the facilities and things like that."
Beatty says his biggest goal before the start of spring practice is getting on the same page as offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen and learning an entirely new set of offensive terminology.
“Everybody has their say but Coach Mullen does a great job of leading us as a group,” Beatty said. “You’ve got five different offensive coaches coming from five different offensive systems that have all been fairly successful wherever their background has been.
“It’s a learning period but I think the good thing is that everybody wants to learn,” Beatty continued. “A lot of times you’ve got people wanting to monopolize some things but in our case, we’ve got a bunch of team-first guys instead of me-first guys.”
