U of L Insider: A vote for Brian VanGorder's intelligence, adaptability

Jake Lourim | Courier Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Bobby Petrino introduces new DC Brian VanGorder Brian VanGorder will run the defense for the Cards.

One of the key games that earned Brian VanGorder a spot on Mark Richt’s first coaching staff at Georgia was a 46-14 loss in which VanGorder’s defense gave up 541 yards.

Of course, there’s much more to the story. Richt saw something in the young Central Florida assistant that years later made him hire VanGorder away from Western Illinois as his defensive coordinator. In the four seasons that followed, Georgia went 42-10 and VanGorder won the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach.

Coaches like to hire familiar faces to their staffs, and while Richt and VanGorder hadn’t worked together, VanGorder impressed Richt when they coached against each other in 1995. Richt was the offensive coordinator at Florida State. VanGorder was the linebackers coach at UCF.

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In Florida State’s first three games, the Seminoles had scored 70, 45 and 77 points. They were averaging 666 total yards. They brought their 3-0 ACC record and No. 1 ranking into a home tune-up against a UCF team that was not yet in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Florida State struggled — at least, as much as Bobby Bowden’s teams ever did against lower-division foes in the 1990s.

“We were just running through everybody, 50-points-a-game kind of season,” Richt said last month at the ACC’s football media days. “We play Central Florida, and they schemed us better than anybody we had played all year, and really in the last two or three years.”

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Despite the 46-14 final score, UCF proved to be Florida State’s toughest defensive test yet that season. An Orlando Sentinel story reported that “For more than a half on a crisp, windy night before an announced 76,600, UCF gave the Seminoles fits, so much so that their starters were in the game in the fourth quarter.”

“We won the game — we had better players than them that day — but we struggled for a little bit until we figured it out,” Richt recalled.

Richt said VanGorder was skilled at understanding what the opposing offense would do and tailoring his game plan accordingly. Later in the 1995 season, Virginia used some of the same concepts Central Florida employed in stunning Florida State, 33-28. It was the Seminoles’ first ACC loss ever, in their fourth season in the league.

Five years later, Richt left Florida State for the Georgia head coaching job and hired VanGorder.

“I knew he wasn’t just a cookie-cutter kind of coach that said, ‘This is what I do,’" Richt said. "He was kind of like, ‘I’m going to find out what they do, and I’m going to take away what they like to do best and make them play a little bit uncomfortable.’ And that’s what he did.”

VanGorder is Louisville’s third defensive coordinator in three seasons, trying to restart his career and reboot the Cardinals’ defense. He showed boundless energy when the team opened practice Aug. 3, as his booming voice carried across the field as early as the pre-practice stretching.

VanGorder is an on-field coach for the first time since 2016 at Notre Dame, a tenure that ended when Brian Kelly fired VanGorder as defensive coordinator four games into a 4-8 season.

After he began his 38th season of coaching football, VanGorder seemed as though he still had plenty of that enthusiasm left.

“It’s the start of training camp!” he bellowed.

Richt, 17 seasons after he hired VanGorder, said he would not underestimate the man, despite his recent history.

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“If you coach long enough, you’re going to have struggles,” Richt said. “You coach long enough, you’re going to run into a crummy season here and there, or you may get sent down the road somewhere. … It doesn’t mean you forgot how to coach or you’re not a good coach.”

Jake Lourim: 502-582-4168; jlourim@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @jakelourim. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/jakel.