Editor's note: This story was originally published in August 2013. Mike Riley was hired as the head football coach at Nebraska on Nov. 4, 2014. Full coverage here.

CORVALLIS -- The phone call that changed Mike Riley's life came while he was sitting in Room 219 of a San Francisco Marriott.



On the line was his wife, Dee, who leveled him with news that had nothing to do with football: Kate, their then-22-year-old daughter, was pregnant. The father was her boyfriend, Jovan Stevenson, a backup running back for the Beavers.



Riley is deeply rooted in his Christian faith, a man who believes there's always a plan and a reason and a solution, but this caught him entirely off guard.



"I didn't know if I was having a heart attack or what," says the normally unflappable Riley, recalling the moment, shaking his head and staring into space. "But those words, they just took my breath away."



Mike worried instantly about Kate. He wasn't mad or disappointed but he was scared, and he had a million questions: What will she do? Does she know how hard this could be? What kind of awful things will people outside the program say about my little girl? In Corvallis, Kate panicked for her dad, and herself: Will this hurt his reputation? Is he ashamed of me? Does this make me a cliché?



Dee Riley says her husband can compartmentalize with the best of them, but the news about Kate was only one of many things weighing on his mind that offseason. Besides a team that was falling apart, Riley was losing the man he grew up idolizing. A debilitating stroke in the spring of 2010 had moved Mike's father, Bud Riley, into the final season of his life, and Mike was more than 500 miles away.



"I don't remember sleeping much that offseason," Mike says. "But I thought about what I teach our players: Life is about balance. I talk about that every day. I've got a family, I've got my job and I have to take the garbage out on Tuesday. So I'm going to go to work and we're going to figure out what to do, and then I went home and we were going to figure out what to do."



For almost three years, Mike declined to talk in depth about the 12-month span between his grandson's birth and his father's death. Though he is a warm, friendly face in a sport rife with grouchy old men who define themselves through wins and losses, Riley is intensely private. Through 38 years of coaching he has worked to shield his family from the media, wary of what they might have to endure. As the child of a coach, he learned quickly that "fan" and "friend" are not synonymous.



But a 3-foot tall, 29-pound boy with a mess of curly hair has changed all that. There is no shame and no denying that when Elijah Jo Riley Stevenson is in the room, his granddaddy has eyes for no one else.



"It's a different threshold when it comes to my family," Mike says. "My job is very public, and we've always been careful ...



"For me, my life is focused through my faith. And that's all been reinforced through this. Something that looked so hard has turned into the greatest thing in the world. It's a little miracle.



"Maybe this is a good story. Maybe somebody out there needs to know, there's a plan."





Baby Eli



A few weeks after Mike got the news in February that Kate was pregnant, the Rileys' youngest child sat across from her parents, worried that her dad was about to lose it.

Instead, her dad started telling Kate stories about the players he had coached over the years, young men who were smart and accomplished and kind -- and about the powerhouse single moms who raised them. No matter what happened between her and Stevenson, Riley assured his daughter, she could do this.

"His whole message," Kate says, "was one of encouragement."

"This experience, it's been one of shock and awe," says Dee Riley. "But the shock was momentary, and the awe is every day. When Mike walked in the door (from that recruiting trip) we were on the same page: This baby was going to be celebrated. And we weren't going to hide anything. This was real life."

Baby Eli -- as he's known around the Valley Football Center -- was born on Aug. 4, 2011, the first day of OSU's fall camp. Riley was immediately smitten.

When she nursed, Kate craved Gatorade. So every night when he left his office, whether it was 10 p.m. or midnight, Riley went to his daughter's apartment, toting a jug of Gatorade and offering a trade: She would drink it, he would hold Eli.

"That's when their obsession really started with each other," Kate says.

, a former standout OSU running back who remains close to the program, says Riley has always had "incredible perspective on life." The Beavers pride themselves on being family friendly, and coaches' families are as visible around campus as star players. But with Eli around, it's different.

"Coach has always been good about compartmentalizing things," Bernard says. "And he's good about being able to move on after losses. He's loose, he's fun ... but man, seeing him with Eli is something else. I think that now, more than ever, he cherishes the moment."

Mike always adored Kate, the younger of his two children. She has an infectious spirit, a big smile and a bigger heart.

And like her dad, she thinks her story should be shared. She was frustrated and scared through the pregnancy, but now on the other side, she says, "I'm not going to lie to Eli about anything."

Over the past three years, Mike says he's gained "the greatest admiration" for his daughter. And it goes both ways.

Kate has always been close to her dad, but watching as Mike walked out of the visitors' locker room at UCLA last fall and, in a moment of exuberance, grabbed Dee and dipped her into a kiss before exclaiming, "Baby Eli!" and

, well that kind of joy and pride, Kate says, "makes me love and respect him even more."

Trust in team

In the fall of 2011, things went from bad to worse on the field.

The

that left fans and players wondering, Did that just happen? "A loss like that," Riley says, "it shakes everybody right to their soul."

The following week

, a move that shocked the OSU community. Hampered by injuries, the Beavers went on to play 10 true freshmen that season. A program once known for churning out NFL running backs had no ground game. A defense once hailed as the best in the Pac-12 looked lost. Angry fans called for Riley's head and pundits wondered if the nicest guy in college football had lost his touch.

"I remember coming back to one game, and Coach looked so beat," Bernard says. "Both years, it was hard for him. I know they left a bitter taste in his mouth. Us losing, Oregon taking off, it was all bad, man."

By mid-November the Beavers had won just two games. The losses gnawed at Riley.

"I've played enough pickup basketball games with him to know he'll take a charge on the weekends if that's what it takes to beat you," says Gary Beck, the Beavers' coordinator of support services who has known Riley since the sixth grade. "Sometimes the nice guy stuff camouflages that he is as competitive as they come."

But Riley, who doesn't believe in bad days and says being moody is a choice, didn't lose faith in his team. He didn't panic, and he didn't chide his coaches for problems on the field. He kept his head up, put on a smile and made clear he wasn't losing perspective.

Eli helped.

After one loss, a game in which the Beavers blew a lead and fans booed as the team left Reser Stadium, Riley walked into his office and was greeted by the smiling, giggling 3-month-old.

"At least," he joked to Kate, "Eli still likes me."

"Nobody wants to go through a football season like that," Riley says. "I'm not naive -- I know that lots of times in our business, you don't even get to come back after that.

"But a grandson has an expectation when he comes to see you. He doesn't need to see you enveloped by 3-9. That's about perspective. A child doesn't know who won the game, or what happened at practice or who just got hurt -- he just knows he wants to see his granddaddy, and that it's time to play. And that is the best feeling."

Throughout his career, Riley has heeded the advice of his father, who told him long ago that the most important part of coaching was to be true to yourself. It wasn't in Riley's nature to kick and scream, so why start now?

Riley trusted that the Beavers would get better after 2011. He told his coaches that all the freshmen forced to burn a redshirt year would develop, and they had the pieces they needed moving forward. He couldn't pinpoint what it was about this group, but in the spring of 2012 he kept saying he "had a good feeling."

Dad

Riley says his coaching philosophy is simple: He got into it for the love of strategy, but stuck around because he wanted to help young men develop. Riley captained Corvallis High to the big-school state title in 1970, but "rose to my level of incompetency in college," at Alabama, where he rode the bench. Still, he always felt valuable. When he became a head coach, he decided he would run his program the same way.

It is

.

Mike tagged along everywhere with Bud as the oldest of three boys who had "the ultimate playground" growing up at OSU. Being a coach's kid was fun, but tough. Watching your dad lose was awful, and listening to fans say horrible things about him was worse. One summer when he was home from Alabama and Bud was coaching in Winnipeg, a fan started yelling at Bud. Mike doesn't remember what the guy said, but before he knew it, he started toward the stands, telling his brothers, "I'm gonna go knock that guy's teeth out."

"When our dad became a head coach in Winnipeg, he took a lot of heat from the press about some decisions he made regarding the team," says Ed Riley, Mike's younger brother who works as a physician and associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. "I think it was a great lesson for Mike, realizing that he doesn't have much say in what (outsiders) say about your program. What matters is that you believe in yourself and what you're doing."

Bud was the coach who yelled and got after players, the one guys didn't want to cross. A Great Depression kid, Bud wasn't affectionate or easy-going. But he preached to all his boys the importance of coaching with class. Defeat was never an excuse to lose your temper or forget your manners.

And above all else, he demonstrated a work-life balance. When coaches got a day off and went golfing, Bud came home where Mike waited eagerly with a ball and glove.

When it was Mike's turn to coach, he incorporated all those lessons as he built his program. He insisted on a work-life balance, too, and Dee made clear he could be a good coach, but that it wouldn't come at the sacrifice of knowing his family. So Mike would come home every night and eat dinner with the family, read bedtime stories to Kate and her brother Matt and put them to bed.

"I think our kids had later bedtimes than everyone else so they could stay up to see him," Dee says. "He walked in the door and he was theirs. He never made us feel like we were taking him away from something more important."

Now, that legacy lives on with Eli.

In July of 2012, Riley went one last time to see Bud. Hospital staffers let them sneak down the street to Boston Pizza, where they shared slices of pepperoni. On the way back, with thunder rolling in the distance, Mike pushed Bud uphill for two blocks, laughing as Bud cried out, "You've got to go faster!"

They made it to shelter just before the downpour. It was the last time Mike would see his dad. Four weeks later on Aug. 4 -- the day Eli turned 1 --

"Nothing prepares you," Mike says. "I wasn't surprised to get that phone call, but it doesn't lessen the blow. Just inside yourself, it's a weird feeling to know that rock, the person you admire, the reason you do what you do ... I mean, when I was a kid, I didn't know there were other jobs besides being a teacher and coach.

"When you get to be my age, and someone passes away it's an opportunity to kind of check yourself:

Where am I? How do I feel about this? What's important to me?

"

They are questions he asks himself every day, and ones he is determined to always have good answers for.

Faith

Each morning, Dee Riley wakes to the sound of her husband praying.

She listens as he asks for God to bless his family, then as he asks that every person in his program -- player, coach, and support staff member -- to be granted wisdom.

"I know the story of Solomon," Mike says. "He was granted anything he wanted in the world, and he asked for wisdom. So it must be pretty important to have, right?"

He prays they'll have the wisdom to make good choices. And the wisdom to understand that what they're doing here is about a lot more than football.

Riley insists that last year's surprise 9-4 season wasn't redemption. He spent all spring and summer telling his players he believed in them and he took comfort in his faith, trusting that everything would be OK. He came to peace with two frustrating years, and vowed to get better. And he's got plenty left to do. He still wants to get these guys to a Rose Bowl, and doesn't feel retirement hovering. He's 60, and he's "energized" by this group. But more than anything, he reminds himself daily not to lose perspective.

"If your purpose in this is just to win games, then you've got to position yourself at one of the powers," Riley says. "Go to USC. Go to Alabama. You can never, ever lose the substance of football. But what we're trying to do is a build a program, leave something of substance, really develop young men. We've got everything we want right here to do that."

And that includes a constant reminder of what's important, a 2-year-old bundle of energy who has the nicest guy in college football wrapped around his tiny finger. Riley says Eli has made him more thankful. He's a stablizing force in a world full of unexpected news and, Kate says, a reminder that "as shocking and scary and life-altering as an unexpected pregnancy is, you don't think about how good it could be."

This is a good story, Mike says. And he likes the ending even better than he could have imagined.

-- Lindsay Schnell