By Russell V.
SouthernPigskin.com

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Mark Speir inherits a team that went 1-10 last season and winless in the SoCon. Offensively the team was solid enough, but the defense was lacking, to put it nicely.

Western Carolina looked into one of its own when hiring a new coach to bring Catamount football.

The past two months for Mark Speir have been a bit of a whirlwind to say the least. After spending more than 20 years as everything from running backs and defensive line coach to strength and conditioning coach and recruiting coordinator at Western Carolina, Presbyterian, Elon and Appalachian State, he now finds himself named head coach of his alma mater. Problem is he has just 30 days to assemble his staff and complete his recruiting class.

“I told everybody I didn’t have a care in the world up at Appalachian, sleeping 10-11 hours,” Speir joked. “Now, you learn to sleep three hours a night. It’s been great. Just a lot of time, especially at the very beginning, putting together a staff and then you’re thrown right into (it), a month away from signing day and you’re at ground zero. And also trying to get a hold of your present football team and establish expectations and standards that (we) are going to expect.

“When those three things are going, you are sleeping in the office at night. … It’s busy. Extremely busy, but it’s good. I’m just excited for the opportunity.”

And excited for the chance to turn everything around. Recently, the Catamount football team has fallen on hard times, going 11-56 since the start of the 2006 season, finishing no better than 3-9 overall and 1-7 in conference play during that span. The program became nothing more than a shadow of its former self as fans showed up on autumn Saturdays to see the band play more than the team itself.

It was time for change. Dr. David Belcher was named the new chancellor of the university and immediately placed an emphasis on returning the football team to its prior glory. He hired Randy Eaton on as the school’s new athletic director and, following the resignation of former coach Dennis Wagner, immediately looked to Speir to lead the Catamounts into this new era.

“(I was first approached) right after Coach Wagner had resigned. I had a lot of friends from the first time being here,” Speir said. “And what attracted me was the new administration. Dr. David Belcher I believe is an unbelievable leader for this campus. He has a vision for the athletics as well as academics. Then he goes and hires Randy Eaton.

“There’s a ton of tradition at Western Carolina and, for whatever reason, and I can’t answer to why it was, but the program had declined. With the new administration, it was a breath of fresh air for the alumni. I know you can win here – they’ve played for a national championship in 1983. My two years in ’92 and ’93, we were one win away from winning the Southern Conference championship, so I knew that it had been done here in the past and I was excited about what could happen here.”

Speir inherits a team that went 1-10 last season and winless in the SoCon. Offensively, the team was solid enough, but the defense was lacking, to put it nicely. They allowed more than 500 yards per game – including 334 on the ground – and allowed 45.64 points per game, all of which ranked near the bottom of the FCS.

Speir began to address these problems in his recruiting class, the same one that he had less than a month to form. Given the less than ideal conditions, he did very well for himself, bringing in 17 prospects led by transfer quarterback Eddie Sullivan and Darius Ramsey, a “Barry Sanders-type of running back.”

“The biggest thing with the class is we addressed what kind of identity we’re going to be as a football program,” Speir said. “The two things I said we are not going to compromise in the recruiting process is we are not going to compromise on character – meaning we’re not just going to take a great player whose character is questionable – and we’re going to recruit speed. … We went out and signed a bunch of athletes and we’ll figure out where to put them when they get here.”

Speir was quick to give the credit to the recruiting class to his coaching staff, who worked just as hard as Speir did in order to make everything come together.

“It was a tribute to our coaching staff,” he said. “Without our relationships with high school coaches in North Carolina, South Carolina and the Atlanta area, it wouldn’t have happened Our coaching staff had a lot of relationships because getting in that late on a program that’s coming off a 1-10 season, there’s not a lot of prospects that want to hear that. But these high school coaches really stepped up to the plate and said, ‘This is a new group up in Cullowhee. They got a new administration, new chancellor and things are different.’ People understand things are going to be different and they did a great job helping us get our foot in the door with a lot of these prospects.”

So how does Speir plan on turning things around in Cullowhee? Much the same way Cam Newton did not far away in Charlotte: by changing the culture and attitude of the team.

“Number one, we’re not here to be competitive – we’re here to win,” he said. “To win, it takes a tremendous amount of hard work and trust and respect for your teammates, and that doesn’t just happen. … That’s the biggest thing we’re going to try to do is change the attitude and the culture. It’s about forming winning habits. In my opinion, you choose to be a winner, you don’t (have) somebody put a magical wand over you. You got to choose to win and that’s a habit you choose to create every day.

“We want to develop men. (But) don’t kid yourselves, it’s about winning. Now, what your term of winning is – you don’t always win on the scoreboard. But we want to develop young men that are going to fight and do it the right way. We came here to win and that’s going to be our identity, point blank.”

Now, Speir says he looks forward to getting more than three hours of sleep a night as he prepares for spring practices, which begin March 12 and are open to the public.