“I remember like yesterday talking with Randy Walker, and Randy asked me, ‘Don, do you think you would ever one day want to be the head football coach at Miami?’ and I thought about it,” Treadwell remembered.
“At that time I hadn’t gotten that far ahead because I was a young coach, and I said, ‘I think that would be unique.’ And he said, ‘Well, you keep working because I think you have a lot of the intangibles that may give you that opportunity down the road.’
“Of course you don’t think much of it at the time,” Treadwell said. “You just put your nose to the grind and keep working, but as it all comes full circle, needless to say there is so much excitement and great anticipation to be back to a home that had been so special to me.”
Treadwell, the Michigan State offensive coordinator who becomes the 34th head coach of a program that dates back to 1888, said during an informal press conference Wednesday afternoon at the Airport Marriott hotel in Mobile that he had “a brief opportunity” to meet with Miami’s players for the first time earlier that day at the hotel.
He declined to say what he told them.
“Oh, I don’t know, I would probably feel better maybe after the (GoDaddy.com Bowl) letting those guys share a little bit (of what was said),” Treadwell said. “I want the focus to stay locked in on their task at hand. I’ll just say it was a very unique experience, to say the least. Any time you stand before any football team, but especially your alma mater, it makes it a memorable event that will always be cherished.”
Treadwell said his immediate priorities after Michigan State’s bowl game were to meet with Miami President David Hodge and Director of Athletics Brad Bates.
“Then you start thinking, OK, what’s the next couple of things on the docket to give you an opportunity to connect with your current team?” he said. “Certainly the hiring of assistants is a priority, and needless to say one part of it that never ends is recruiting. That’s a year-round process. ... Without question those things have to be done and to be done well.”
Treadwell said he is not allowed to comment on the status of any recruits, and when asked if he already had named any assistants, he said any announcements regarding that would have to be made through the school’s athletic communications department.
Treadwell, asked if he planned to hire any of Miami’s current assistant coaches, said he would give each coach an opportunity to meet with him and decide “on a case by case” basis.
Miami’s players have had much to digest over the last few weeks, including the arrest and subsequent firing by the University of Pittsburgh of their former head coach, Michael Haywood. Treadwell apparently is confident he will inherit a team whose players have adjusted well to all recent developments.
“Kids are still kids,” he said. “When you deal with 17-, maybe 18-year-old young men, you’d be surprised that certain things that really are not that important to them that we think are very important to us. Sometimes that’s reassuring, because I think you’re putting too much emphasis on what they’re thinking and a lot of times they just want to know what’s for dinner. So that hasn’t really been an issue.”
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