Sports editor Callie Hummel discusses the new football coach hire.
The University of Tulsa introduced Kevin Wilson as the new football head coach at a press conference on Dec. 6.
After graduating from and playing for University of North Carolina, Wilson has spent his entire career and graduate experience coaching football. He has spent three years as a graduate assistant at University of North Carolina, one year as head coach and athletic director at Foard High School, and spent 1990-2022 as an offensive coach for Ohio Miami, Northwestern, Oklahoma, Indiana, and most recently, Ohio.
While introducing Coach Wilson, President Brad Carson gave his “full support to coach,” a man who is “experience rich with supporting student-athletes to succeed in both the classroom and on the gridiron.”
President Carson has been a frontrunner in attempting to create more hype behind the TU football team. Despite tailgating and personally promoting the games and giveaways, he is still struggling to give students and members of the Tulsa community a reason to attend the games that most often end in a loss on TU’s part. During the 2022 season, TU went 5-7 overall, and 3-5 in their conference.
Coach Wilson is confident that he will be able to help turn the team around. Despite coming from a school that is well-known throughout college football, he makes it clear that he has “worked for the two schools that have the most losses in the history of college football, and [he] can say [they’ve] had success at all those places.”
The universities he’s referring to are Northwestern and Indiana, both schools that Wilson helped to improve their overall record. However, these schools are significantly larger than TU, both schools with an undergraduate population over 20,000, while TU is the smallest school with Division One football with only 2,700 undergraduates.
In the first few weeks of the new year, Wilson was looking to connect with the team and coaches to figure out what he’s working with. He claimed during his initial press conference that he wasn’t looking to bring in a lot of transfers, and didn’t have a lineup of coaches following him to TU, saying, “grass ain’t always greener.”
While he may not be looking at the portal currently, high school teams in the Tulsa area are high on Wilson’s radar. He wants to put an emphasis on recruiting locally and developing a personal relationship with high school football coaches. Two weeks after his appointment, Wilson had already signed eight athletes to his first recruiting class. Three of the players are from the Tulsa area with the other five coming from Arkansas and Texas.
Having a solid group of defensive coaches will be key for Wilson, whose experience is all on the offensive side. Wilson spent decades as an offensive coordinator, and has now arrived at a school who’s “biggest priority is to play good defense.” Wilson didn’t give much insight into his specific plans for the team other than the emphasis on defense and stripping the game down to its basics, “The game is about blocking and tackling.” Despite having the experience and knowledge in offense, Wilson is planning on having an offensive coordinator to call the plays so that he can be completely focused on both parts of the game.
In the end, Wilson’s main goal is to have a team that draws fans out simply because they’re winning. He wants to have a team so good, fans “will come out for a Thursday afternoon game.”
