Too busy winning to retire

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Ogden » On a Hawaiian vacation last week, Weber State coach Ron McBride's mind kept drifting back to his program, his players and the coming football season.

"I got a little bored," he said. "I was kind of excited to get home and see what was going on."

Does it sound like the 70-year-old McBride is ready for a life of fishing, grandkids and refection on a career that started when Lyndon Johnson was president and gasoline cost 31 cents a gallon?

Weber State athletic director Jerry Bovee doesn't think so, either.

Citing McBride's accomplishments with the Wildcats, his ability to "engage the community" and his still-passionate approach to the job, Bovee said, "I think Ron got his second wind here."

Since agreeing to lead Weber's dormant football program in 2005 -- three years after he was fired at the University of Utah -- McBride's record is 32-27.

But look closer.

Under the free-spirited coach known by almost everyone as "Mac," the Wildcats are 17-9 over the last two seasons, including back-to-back trips to the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs for the first time in school history.

In the same span, Weber is 13-3 in the Big Sky Conference, where it has rarely been competitive against perennial powerhouse Montana and former league members like Boise State and Nevada.

Under McBride, the perception of Weber State football has clearly changed, which is also what happened during his 13-year run at Utah.

McBride guided the Utes to a record of 88-63, six bowl appearances and six wins in their last 11 games against arch-rival BYU.

Not impressed?

BYU had won 16 of 18 meetings before McBride took the Utah job which, in 1990, few others coveted.

"Utah was a soft program -- expectations were very low," McBride said. "The contract was a one-page contract. It said, 'You get paid this much.' And that was it."

Today, the Utes are headed to the Pac-10 after the foundation McBride poured helped launch the dizzying success of replacement Urban Meyer and current head coach Kyle Whittingham.

"Utah's a football school now and expectations are high," McBride said. "I want the same thing to happen here at Weber State.

"I want these people to expect us to win a championship. I want them to be [ticked] off if we aren't at the top of the league. I want them to have the same expectations they have at Utah. I want them to say, 'This is a top-tier program.' "

After being fired at Utah, McBride spent 21/2 years at Kentucky as a linebackers coach.

When he arrived at Weber, the 'Cats had finished 15-30 overall and 8-20 in the Big Sky in their four previous seasons.

In 2005, Weber State went 1-10, which cost former coach Jerry Graybeal his job.

"It was a good experience -- Kentucky," McBride said. "But I couldn't have stayed there a long time. I'm too old to stay in another part of the country -- away from my family. So this thing with Weber was a blessing: the opportunity to build a program in a state where I love to live in, closer to my family. ... I was just lucky."

Frankly, McBride was a little surprised he got the job.

"I was, what, 66 at the time?" he said. "How many people want to hire a 66-year-old guy to come in and coach their football program and rebuild it? Not too many people."

A heart attack McBride suffered during his time at Kentucky also lessened the likelihood of getting another head coaching job -- at least in his mind.

"You don't look too attractive when you're a guy who could be on social security and a guy who's had a heart attack," McBride said. "You mean to tell me you're going to hire a guy like that as your head coach? Man, you'd have to be afraid he was going to die on you. So I was thankful Weber would take a chance on me."

When he was hired, the conventional theory was McBride would coach for a couple of years, get Weber State football on track and retire.

Somebody forgot to tell McBride.

"When I came here, I was going to build the program, and that's not an easy process," he said. "So you can't worry about coming in for [only] a couple of years.

"The idea was to take this program from the bottom to the top, and I was going to do it with patience. I wanted to build it the right way. I was going to restructure the whole thing."

It hasn't been easy.

In McBride's first three years, the Wildcats went 15-18 with only one winning season.

Weber's football program also took an off-the-field hit with the lowest Academic Progress Rate in the school's athletic department.

In the last two years, however, the Wildcats' APR has jumped sharply.

Of course, McBride's obvious enjoyment of his job and satisfaction with the direction of his program leads to an obvious question:

How long will he continue to coach, considering he turns 71 two days before Weber State visits Idaho State on Oct. 16?

"I don't know about retirement because I don't know what I'd do," McBride said. "... If I don't feel I'm productive and not excited about what I'm doing, then maybe. But right now, I feel good. I still enjoy what I'm doing and I like the people I'm around."

Asked if spending more time with his family would be nice, McBride throws his head back, looks at the ceiling and laughs out loud.

"I don't know if they'd want me to spend any more time with them," he said.

Bovee believes McBride will coach at least through 2012, when a contract that was extended two years ago expires.

He doesn't know McBride's timetable, however, because its a moot point.

"I'm not even thinking about how long he'll go," Bovee said. "I will say we are pleased to have him. He's done a great job here. His program is doing so well, I mean, we just haven't talked about it."

After a pause, Bovee added, "Maybe I'm just superstitious. Maybe I just want to keep this ball rolling."