Jason McEndoo came to Montana State as an unknown, unproven coach. He left Bozeman as a legend.
The longest-tenured coach in Montana State’s storied history spent 12 seasons coaching the offensive line for the Bobcats. Coach Mac helped lead the ‘Cats to five Big Sky Conference titles. He coached seven All-Americas and 11 first-team All-Big Sky selections. Included in those lists are Jeff Bolton, an All-America center who earned the 2005 Rimington Award as the nation’s top Division I-AA player at that position, and Mike Person, a 2010 All-America and a seventh-round choice in the 2011 NFL Draft who played for the St. Louis Rams last season.
The former All-Pac 10 offensive lineman and Washington State alum (1998) generated at least one team captain from his group 10 times. In 2011, he helped turn a line that included a converted walk-on fullback, a converted defensive end and a walk-on center into one of the league’s best units. Following that season, McEndoo earned his highest honor as he was named the American Football Coaches Association National Assistant Coach of the Year.
On Thursday, February 26th, McEndoo accepted a position to coach tight ends and fullbacks at Oklahoma State. By the first week of March, he was gone.
“Mac has been a powerful influence on my coaching staffs since arriving in this state,” said Bobcat coach Rob Ash. “He has been an incredible recruiter and an outstanding technician with our offensive linemen. He is also one of the finest game-day adjusters of any coach I have ever seen. He is a man of character and has imparted that standard to all his player. We will greatly miss Coach Mac.”
On the first Tuesday in March, Bobcat Beat caught up with McEndoo one final time. The full audio of the interview can be found here
What follows is a full transcript of that conversation.
Bobcat Beat: I will try to keep you as little as I can as I know you are incredibly busy with all these life changes. I wanted to catch up with you one more time.
McEndoo: “Right now is actually a great time. I’m done with meetings for the day.”
BB: So you guys are rolling in spring ball already then?
McEndoo: “We start on Monday. There’s three offensive coaches hired: a running backs coach, an o-line coach and myself. So we have been hashing everything out in the offensive staff room every day this week. Everyone got here last Sunday so we’ve been meeting all week going through stuff.”
BB: Who’s the offensive coordinator there now?
McEndoo: “His name is Mike Yurcich.”
BB: What’s his background?
McEndoo: “If you look him up, he has a very interesting story, very similar to mine. He was a D-II coach, a D-II coordinator. You’ll have to find the story and read it, but if I remember right, Coach Gundy kind of looked him up after he led D-II in statistical stuff and Gundy called him up and basically hired him off of Google.”
BB: That’s pretty crazy.
McEndoo: “That’s how Coach Gundy rolls, man. This guy does what he wants and he goes after it. It’s pretty cool.”
After losing two offensive coordinators to head coaching jobs in as many years, Gundy essentially found Yurcich by sorting the offensive statistics for Division II, finding Shippenberg University and calling up Yurcich. Here’s the full story:
BB: I’ve heard Gunday has a lot of freedom down there, like you say, he runs the show. Was that an appealing part about joining the staff?
McEndoo: “Oh absolutely. It was a tough decision to leave Bozeman. My family and I love Bozeman. We enjoyed our time there. Our kids only know Bozeman so to pick up roots and move, the one thing we always wanted if we were going to move was we wanted the right move. Not just a move but the right move for us as a family. Moving to Stillwater, Oklahoma, I mean, this town is 45,000 people. It’s the same town. We get to do 4-H out here like we got to do 4-H in Bozeman. It’s all very appealing and working for a proven coach like Coach Gundy, it’s just awesome.
“He’s got a some swag to him, a ton of swag. He is so confident and he’s positive with his players and coaches. Very involved, very directive but not a micro-manager. He gets the job done and he wants you to go do it. That’s been very cool.”
BB: What was the initially reaction of your family when you first told them about this opportunity?
McEndoo: “(Laughs) It’s been a whirlwind, an absolute whirlwind. I’ve actually submitted my resume for the offensive line job here last year. Really, the connection was Coach Dabo Sweeney at Clemson.
“The back story on all this…2011 when I won the AFCA Coach of the Year award, the convention was in San Antonio, Texas. Ruth, my wife, went with me on the trip to San Antonio to go to the banquet. At the convention hotel, Ruth and I were on the elevator and in walked Dabo Sweeney and his wife. So on the elevator, it was just the four of us.
“Of course, Ruth being the social butterfly she is, she told him she loved his coat and shoes. They just struck up a conversation and we end up walking five, six city blocks with the Sweeneys to the convention center. Great people. We talked about families, life, not just about football. I asked him if I could get his email. That whole next year, I kept in touch with him. I’d email Coach Sweeney once a month for a year. I’d ask him questions, ‘How do you do this?’ or ‘What would you do here?’ or ‘In your opinion, how would you do about this?’
“The unbelievable thing about Coach Sweeney is he walks the walk and talks the talk. Everything you read about him is absolutely true. He would email me back after 20 minutes of emailing him. Every time. And he didn’t know me from nothing besides a conversation we had. He would email me back with heartfelt answers, very thought out, not just hey give me a call in two weeks. There wasn’t one time I wrote him that he didn’t respond.
“That was cool. So I kind of built that relationship. Then not this convention but last year’s convention, I was bold and I emailed Coach Sweeney and said, ‘Hey, could you please look at my resume and my cover letter and let me know what you think?’ I also asked if he had a spot on staff, would he consider hiring me or would you recommend me for a job. He emailed me back in 20 minutes again, reviewed my resume, said it was awesome and that he would hire me in a second. He didn’t have anything but said he would recommend me to whoever he knew. And he invited me to come work their summer football camp. He said he wanted to meet up at the convention that year.
“So we meet up and this is really the first time seeing him in person since the 2011 meeting in San Antonio. He said, ‘He, I just saw my good friend Mike Gundy and I recommended you for the offensive line job at Oklahoma State.’ He said, ‘You do a good job and I don’t know where he will go with it but I know he’s looking for a guy so I recommended you.’
“I did one of those movie things where I looked over my shoulder and I was like, ‘Are you talking to me?’ He was like, ‘No, seriously, I would like for you to come and bring your son Luke out to our football camp. You can work the camp and Luke can do the camp and it will be a great experience and I’d love to have you.’ So I was like, ‘Ok. This is unbelievable.’
“The preface of the Oklahoma State job last year, I was in the works, in the mix but I never got a chance to talk to Coach Gundy. He went a different direction, moved on and that was the end of that.
“Luke and I went last summer went to the Clemson camp. To be honest, I almost didn’t go because I run our camps at Montana State. I’ve been the camp guy the whole time I was there. I was not going to go to Clemson because I didn’t want to leave. But basically, Ruth said, ‘You are going to go’ and then my sister in law actually paid for the tickets for us to go out there for camp. I couldn’t even afford to go so my sister-in-law footed the bill.
“Luke and I went out there and it was an awesome trip to Clemson. I worked the youth camp and the high school camp. We were there for six days. Basically, Coach Sweeney got to see me coach. This year, because he got to see me in person…a lot of times this day in age in college coaching, if guys don’t know you and they haven’t personally been around you, it’s hard to recommend you to someone they don’t know. The fact that I was there and he watched me coach was huge.
“When the job at Oklahoma State came up this year, I called Coach Sweeney and asked if he could call Coach Gundy on my behalf again. He said absolutely. The fact that he had seen me coach in person, now he could say, ‘Hey, I’ve seen him coach and he’s a great coach.’ That really helped me get the foot in the door. Then the wide receivers coach, Casey Dunn, was a Washington State guy. That was a connection as well.
“That was the back story but I’d never talked to Coach Gundy still. I didn’t know a call was coming. Then on Thursday, I’m sitting in my office in the morning and Coach Gundy called me. He asked me two questions. He asked if I’d be interested in the tight ends/fullbacks job and he asked me if my wife would want to move to Stillwater. I answered yes to both the questions before he finished I believe. He said great and said he’d make a few phone calls. About 2 o’clock that afternoon, he called and offered me the job on the spot and I accepted on the spot.”
BB: What was that feeling like? You’ve gone through this before and you’ve had other opportunities. What was that feeling like when you did pull the trigger?
McEndoo: “Euphoric. Cloud nine. It happened so fast. It was a bang-bang deal and in the coaching world, most guys would say it doesn’t happen that way. But for me, lightning really does strike twice.
“That’s how I got the Montana State job too. Coach Kramer called me and offered me the job on the spot and I took it. I didn’t interview here, I didn’t fly to Stillwater, none of it. I talked to Coach Gundy twice and he gave me the job on the same call. I don’t know what it was for him or how it played out for him on that end but the conversation was great and it seemed easy, like the right fit. It was awesome.
“Ruth and I have been hoping and praying for an opportunity like this. I talked with her and we conferred that it was the right decision to make.”
BB: Very cool story. Talk to me about the tight ends transition. You’ve been an offensive line coach for so long, will that be a tough transition?
McEndoo: “The answer is no. Really, yes I’ve been the offensive line coach but you work hand in hand with the tight ends. Coach (Daniel DaPrato and I have worked well together. The tight ends have sat in in our meetings. I’ve talked to them, worked with them and Coach DaPrato and I worked together. Here, Coach (Greg) Adkins and I are going to work together in that same realm.
“The biggest learning curve for me is learning the pass game system, route running and specific route running techniques. The guys here have been great working me through that. I’ve been pouring through new things, soaking up the offense.
“It’s almost a breath of fresh air, really. I’ve been in a room with 17 guys for 12 years and now I have five guys. It’s just a different angle and I’m learning lots of different things. I think one thing as a line coach, most line coaches would say obviously know the run game and the protections but the pass game is an area all guys can say they can improve on. I think that’s one thing I needed myself personally was to develop a better knowledge of the pass game. Now being the tight ends coach will give me that sort of responsibility, accessibility to really learn the next phase of the game, which will help me with my career.”
BB: Will you guys be running the pure spread like you have the last few years at OK State?
McEndoo: “No. They are transitioning away from that. That’s the way it has been, but Coach Gundy wants to have a physical presence. He wants to be up-tempo but he wants to be able to pound the rock and run the ball right at people. The cool part about all this is that they basically created this position. They have not had a tight end coach ever. I’m the first. So this is uncharted territory a bit. They’ve always had an inside receivers coach, two receivers coaches in other words as well as a running backs coach. The tight ends and fullbacks would bounce back and forth between the running backs room and the inside receivers room. They’ve never had a place to call home.
“The facilities here are top three in the country, including pro and college. It’s just unbelievable. They have this unbelievable position room they’ve never even gotten to sit in. Now we have the ability to create an identity and form camaraderie in the room. We are looking forward to working with those guys and building the chemistry that I built over at Montana State for all those years. It’s a new challenge and fun. The guys here are hungry and they just want someone to love them up and coach them up and a place to call their own. It will be fun.”
BB: The Big XII doesn’t have much of that power run game. That could add a fold to the whole league race.
McEndoo: “I think the other advantage with stuff (MSU offensive coorinator Tim) Cramsey and I were doing with unbalanced 12 personnel, spread tempo stuff will help here. Some of the stuff we were doing with Dakota (Prukop) and the fly sweep game, that’s cutting edge stuff where a lot of the spread teams are trying to get to but they don’t have the personnel to do it. We are trying to build that here. To be on the ground level of that and try to build that up is just awesome.”
BB: What will your recruiting responsibilities be there?
McEndoo: “(Laughs) Well, I’m looking at 5-star recruits on my desk right now.”
BB: It’s probably a different game than recruiting in Dutton, Montana.
McEndoo: “(Laughs) I wouldn’t change it for the world, you know what I mean? I wouldn’t change recruiting any of those guys over the years. Recruiting is recruiting, whether you are in Stanford, Montana or you are a five-star kid in Texas. It’s about relationships and building those relationships and cultivating those. That’s what is going to win you that battle. The facilities help and the stadium, the winning, but talking to these guys on staff here, they are about the same thing, about building the relationships with the kid and making it be the right fit, ensuring it’s the right fit. I’m excited about that.
“I will be recruiting Texas. Everybody recruits Texas and then you position recruit nationally. Basically, we will take whomever in Texas and then if I need a tight end and there’s a tight end anywhere else, that’s where I’ll go. I’m looking at the T. Boone Pickens sign out here so I think the budget might be a little different.”
BB: Have you gotten a chance to meet T. Boone Pickens yet?
McEndoo: “No. Pictures only. But I’ll text you a picture of the view from my office. I’m looking out the window right now and it’s absolutely amazing.”
BB: I know you’ve been building your resume for a long time and you said you wanted to choose the right move. Did you think it would be this big of a jump? What was your gauge before this came out of the blue for you?
McEndoo: “I’ve always thought this was the vision I’ve had: big-time college football. That’s the vision I had for myself. I knew I could do it. Every coach in America knows if they are a good enough coach. It’s just getting that opportunity, having the mindset that no matter whatever happens, whatever comes your way or doesn’t come your way, you have to keep rolling and believing in yourself that you can do it. I think that’s the coolest thing in this situation because I get an opportunity to do that.
“Getting to play college ball at the Pac 10 level and then getting to play in the NFL, I saw myself at this level and being able to compete at this level. It’s just awesome for it to play out. I really feel like for me personally, my faith really kicked in because there was a point where I let go. There was a point where I let go of this because I felt like I was trying to make it happen for a while. Maybe if I call this guy or that guy…I just took my hand off the wheel and realized if it is meant to be, it’s meant to be. I’ll be honest with you: my mind was already on 2015. I was already working on camps. This was the last thing I was thinking about or planning on. That’s when God works the most is when you just take your hands off. He opened every single door. He blew them open. It’s nothing I did or somebody I called.”
BB: Over the last 12 years, did you have any other offers to move on before this one came about?
McEndoo: “Yeah. There’s been different times when I’ve interviewed for different things that didn’t work, the ‘Thanks but we are going to go with that guy’ or you think you are in the mix and they hire somebody else. I’ve had some other offers to be a head coach at lesser levels. It just wasn’t the direction I wanted to go. It wasn’t the vision I saw for myself. It wasn’t the best move for me professionally and it wasn’t the best move for us as a family.
“The other thing too is for me, the why is more important than the what. I think people focus on the what too much instead of the why. Why are you doing what you do? It’s not about stuff or the what. My why is my family, it’s Ruth and the kids. Bozeman, as you know, is not a cheap place to live. Ruth has been a champion as far as the amount of work she does, two, three, four jobs just to pay the bills. That’s what made me work so hard is just to get the point where she can be mom. Most people have career goals, they want to do this or that. Ruth wants to be a mom. She wants to be able to be with the kids and be a mom. That’s her career goal. My whole time at Montana State, that’s what I was trying to strive for to allow her to reach her goals and her dreams and this will allow her to do that.”
BB: My dad worked in the underground mines in Colorado and Nevada until we moved to Montana. For my middle school and high school years, my mom was able to stay home with us. You guys are like that.
McEndoo: “That’s great. This has been hard just because the kids are trying to wrap their minds around it. You live your whole life in one spot. Neither one of us are experienced transitioners. I didn’t even know how to check out of Montana State, that whole HR process.
“But the kids, Luke was super excited. He and I were together first. He was super excited when I told him. He was pretty elated but then about two hours later he was down and I said, ‘What’s wrong buddy?’ and he said, ‘I just realized I don’t get to play ball with my buddies.’ The girls were super excited and then the next morning, it was a train wreck in the house. They couldn’t understand. They thought we were moving as a family next week. They didn’t realize that Ruth and the kids probably aren’t coming down here for a while. They will come down here for Easter Weekend and that will help them to see it and for them to be here. We are planning on keeping them in keeping them in school in Bozeman until the end of the school year. I think that will be best. I think it’s set in. I think they realize the significance of what this means.”
BB: How about the timing of this from the Montana State side of things? I know you’ve got this great group here that you’ve been building and now most of them are coming up on their senior years. Was that a hard decision to make as far as leaving those guys?
McEndoo: “I’ve had to do some pretty difficult things in my life so far and that ranked at the top. When I took the job on Thursday afternoon, I called Coach Ash just to inform him that I was leaving and I was pretty matter of fact about it. And he was excited and we moved on. My next most important priority after him and obviously Ruth was my guys. I was going to be the one to tell my guys what was going down. I didn’t want it to come from a secondary source. You do a great job but no offense, I didn’t want it coming from you. I think I earned their trust and they deserved to hear it from me. I had planned on telling them on Friday morning but social media, news travels. About 7:30 at night I started getting a bunch of random Twitter followers and they were Oklahoma State people. Coach Gundy said he had to sit on it because they weren’t putting it out yet but then they released it that night. When they did that, people started picking it up. At about 7:30, an Oklahoma State guy, a fan said welcome to the staff. I figured it would be a matter of time. About 15 minutes after that, it showed up on the coaching websites. So I texted all my guys and said we had to meet at 8:30.
“As a player, when your coach texts you at 8:30 at night during the off-season, you have a gut feeling what it’s about. I got to do it on my terms. They hadn’t heard it yet. I didn’t know if they wanted to punch me or hug me. I got hugs instead of punches.
“It was difficult, but I got to talk to each of them individually. But the thing I really feel good about is we had had a series of meetings the week before and we got to talk about a lot then so really that night’s meeting was a goodbye. I empathize with them because my coach left my second year at Washington State. Loved the guy, loved playing for the guy and he left and it crushed me. We talked about it and they need to press on and carry the torch and put the offense on their shoulders.
“As anybody would, you want to leave the place better than how you found it. When I got to Montana State in 2003, I had four offensive linemen. I was pretty much almost going to be the fifth guy for the spring practice. Now you have five returning starters, four all-conference players, two potential NFL guys (senior John Weidenaar, junior JP Flynn) in that group, some All-Americans in that group, I left it in pretty good shape.”
BB: Will you follow it pretty closely next year? I know you’ll be so busy.
McEndoo: “Sure. Once a Bobcat, always a Bobcat. Part of us is there. You can’t be there for 12 years and cut yourself off completely.
“Somebody told me one time too that if you never leave, you can never come home. We see Bozeman as home. Part of us will always be there. Where things go from here, I don’t know but as far as the career piece, being able to coach at a Division I school like Montana State for 12 years gives me a piece of my career that I feel very blessed to have.”
BB: On the Montana note in general, I know you recruited this state for a lot of years. I know this year wasn’t as much since you went to the Midwest. What sort of pride to you take in the inroads you built in recruiting Montana?
McEndoo: “Again, I think I left it in better shape than I found it. When I got the job in 2003, the whole Joe O’Brien thing went down after I was on staff for a month. Joe was the in-state recruiter and when all that went down, Coach Kramer called me in the office and he said, ‘You are now THE Montana state recruiter.’ That was in September and all of a sudden, I had the whole state myself.
“He said, ‘Go.’ I remember going to the Plentywoods, the Wolf Points, the Maltas, the Chinooks, the Scobeys, all sorts of places. All four corners, up to Troy, down to Darby, over to Broadus and to Stanford or Denton or Plains or Thompson Falls. Everywhere I went, coaches would say, ‘You know how long it’s been since we’ve seen a Montana State coach?’ We were coming off a 16-year dry spell and I’m not sure Cat coaches even showed their faces around the state. They would always say how good it was to see me and they’d say they haven’t seen a guy for eight years, 10 years. They’d say, ‘I can’t tell you how long it’s been’ and I would say, ‘I’m going to be here and I’m going to be here for awhile.’
“Establishing that grass roots kind of recruiting and the in-roads and getting to know people…I loved it and I loved driving around. I love the people, getting to know the small communities. It was awesome.”
BB: It’s a unique place. One of my favorite quotes that you’ve told me over the years is there is two types of coaches: ones that just got fired and ones that are about to be. When making this move and talking about your family, did you worry about those risks since Montana State is such a secure job? Coach Ash is a stable coach so do you worry about the instability now?
McEndoo: “There’s instability everywhere. There’s instability at Montana State. That’s a year-to-year contract. I signed my contract every June. It was never a given that I’d still have a job there. There’s no given that I will have a job here. I am on a two-year contract and after that, who knows?
“In the coaching world, you fly by the seat of your pants. It doesn’t matter what level you are at. So no, that wasn’t even part of the thought process. But I do know this: sometimes, you have to take risks. You can sit back and play the safe game and ride off into the sunset or you can take a chance, take a shot and see where it goes. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity, a no-brainer.
“But it was the same way when I got the job at Montana State. I was coaching high school. I was the C squad head coach and the JV o-line coach coaching on Fridays and Saturdays when Mike called and offered me the job. He called me and said, ‘I’m coming to Spokane for recruiting. Do you want the o-line job?’ I said, ‘What?’
“When I tell my story in the coaching world, people always say, ‘B.S.’ This has happened to me twice now. My mindset at Montana State and has always been is do a great job where you are. Work as hard as you can and do a great job and someone will find you, someone will take notice. And when they take notice, your opportunity will come. There’s ups and downs and you have to keep pressing and great things will come.”
BB: And you have to have the bravery and courage to take that opportunity when you come and never get stuck in the security.
McEndoo: “The other thing I told myself this year was I wasn’t going to take no. If that door closes, I’m going to go over there. When that door closes, I’m going to go over there. I wanted to keep pressing. I wanted to go as far as I can, do as much as I can. Finally, I took my hands off of it and it worked out.”
BB: Thank you for taking so much time. The entire state of the Montana State program, you’ve watched it grow, evolve, all these things over the last decade-plus. How would you evaluate where it’s at and the prospects for next season considering everything they have coming back?
McEndoo: “It’s been awesome to be part of the process. In 2003, we had a grass field with a big crown on it, a high school field with a scoreboard and wooden bleachers. We probably got less than 8,000 people. And it grew from there.
“Mike got the ball rolling. Then the hiccup and the build up process again and to be a part of that, to be held over, to be able to keep working and Coach Ash kept myself and EJ Arnold and Kane, it just doesn’t happen. Usually, everyone goes. To be retained and be able to continue to work toward building a program, that’s great. I feel like what I did and what I was able to accomplish at Montana State was helping to build the tradition and keep building on the program. It’s a very storied tradition as far as FCS football goes. It’s an unbelievable place. Everyone in America knows exactly where it’s at. There’s actually a coach here who is the special teams coach who was at Sam Houston both years we played them so we’ve had lots of talks. He was very impressed when he came out and played us at our place in that playoff game. To be a part of all of that and to help get it to where it’s at was pretty cool.”
BB: Last thing for you, coach. When I wrote that story about you for the magazine a few years ago, I remember you saying it was hard to beat a place where you can take your kids to the horse pastures and still be five minutes away from your office. What about Bozeman will you miss and remember the most?
McEndoo: “(Pause). That’s a tough one to answer. I’m not sure I can answer that without getting choked up.
“To get there as a 28-year-old guy who is trying to figure out his way through life, Coach Kramer takes a chance on me to be a full-time coach. To develop myself as a husband and a father and a coach and a man there, I think, was so awesome. I will always remember the people. The impressions from Montana are the people. I have fond memories of it all. We were able to spend time and do things we wanted to do whether it was 4-H or sports or living. It’s just great memories and it’s hard to put into words. It’s hard to leave but it’s exciting to see new adventures. And like I said, if you don’t ever leave, you can never come home.”
