(STATS) – Chris Klieman and Mike Houston will forever be linked to the FCS level and each other.
They’re two outstanding football coaches striving to make the same impact.
But instead of Klieman, the former North Dakota State coach, and Houston, who guided James Madison, trying to outdo the other to win the FCS national title, they’ve moved on to leading programs on the FBS level. Klieman enjoyed his biggest win at Kansas State this past Saturday against then-No. 5 Oklahoma, while Houston is trying to lift East Carolina’s struggling program to a higher level.
Klieman was on North Dakota State’s staff for all seven of its FCS national titles, including the last four as head coach. The one season in the last eight years the Bison dynasty got interrupted was in 2016 when Houston, in his first season at James Madison, led the Dukes to a semifinal-round win at the Fargodome en route to capturing the national championship. A year later, the two programs met again in the title game, and NDSU came out on top.
Klieman and Houston say they are applying the lessons they learned at previous stops during their FBS debuts.
“Football is football, and it’s great at all levels, it doesn’t matter if it’s Division III, Division II and so on,” Klieman said. “I appreciate my time at NDSU, it was a great place, and I’ve kind of turned the page. Doing a lot of the same things that I was doing at NDSU we’re doing here, and the guys are buying in. It’s a daily process, but excited about what the future holds here.”
“Obviously, I had experiences at a couple different places,” Houston said, “and I think all of the experiences prepared me for this job. Certainly, the situation I’m in here at East Carolina is a little bit of a different animal than what we walked into at JMU. But still, the big thing we had to get done at JMU was getting the culture right inside the locker room and getting the level of expectations for performance on a daily basis where it should be. That’s certainly been a critical factor here in the beginning.”
Klieman, 52, has led Kansas State to a 5-2 start and into the Top 25 while replacing legendary coach Bill Snyder. His Big 12 squad’s style of power run and defensive physicality resembles Bison teams. That background reflects across his coaching staff, which includes defensive coordinator Courtney Messingham and defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton, who both coached alongside Klieman in Fargo.
Klieman even sounds the same in Manhattan, expressing the 48-41 win over Oklahoma made him happy for the upperclassmen and pleased the younger players could realize what comes out of hard work.
But, Klieman warned in a Klieman and NDSU way, “That’s the thing that’s great about this profession. You can be on the top of the world one week and you can knocked off pretty quickly, so you be better stay humble and you better move on and get ready for the next opponent.”
Houston, who turns 48 in two weeks, inherited a rebuilding project at East Carolina. The Pirates are coming off three straight 3-9 seasons, and although they’ve matched the win total in a 3-5 start this season, two of the wins are against FCS programs.
While coaching at Division II Lenoir-Rhyne and then The Citadel, Houston ran a triple option offense. But he built James Madison in the championship mold of North Dakota State, and now he’s trying to bring success to his American Athletic Conference program in Greenville, North Carolina. Among the assistants who came from JMU with him are offensive coordinator Donnie Kirkpatrick and defensive coordinator Bob Trott.
“I think my experience at The Citadel is one that’s serving me well right now,” Houston said. “It was one where you had to do a great job in recruiting, do a great job with development of your roster, be patient, and know that you’re going to have some days where it doesn’t go your way early on. But those experiences will serve you down the road.
“I think if you look at the programs that we have left, those programs have continued to be successful after we have left because of being on a solid foundation.”
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