In order to rise from the depths, one must first have fallen into the abyss. And just a few years ago, the University of Idaho’s football program was the absolute pits.
There’s a strong argument to be made that as the 2020s rolled around, Idaho was the worst Division I football program in the entire NCAA. After being a consistent playoff team out of the Big Sky conference in the ’80s until the mid-’90s, the Vandals took the leap up to the FBS level, but were only able to make three bowl games from 1996-2017.
Things got so bad that the Sun Belt conference essentially kicked Idaho out of the conference after the 2017 campaign. So Idaho dropped down to the FCS level and rejoined the Big Sky. And while one might expect the team playing at the higher level for decades to come in and be a contender, the Vandals became a doormat team at the lower division, unable to even put together a winning record in their first four seasons back in FCS. All totaled, UI had four winning seasons over a 27-year span.
When head coach Paul Petrino was fired after the 2021 season, the bleak question was simple: How the heck is any head coach supposed to turn Idaho around?
Well, after two straight winning seasons with trips to the FCS Playoffs, Idaho enters the upcoming 2024 season as a Top 10 team, a rising Big Sky powerhouse and a legitimate national title contender.
Here’s how the Eck it happened…
“I WAS SURPRISED”
The trajectory of Idaho football began to take a completely different path when Jason Eck was named the university’s 36th head coach in December 2021,. While he was brought in to rebuild the program over time, results came swiftly. Not only did Idaho have its first winning season as soon as Eck was at the helm in 2022, but the team made the FCS playoffs for the first time since 1995. It was an out-of-nowhere turnaround that could’ve been chalked up to a fluke had the Vandals not followed it up by making the playoffs again and having an even better season in 2023. To underscore how shocking the turnaround has been, even the jovial 47-year-old wasn’t planning for this.
“I was surprised. The team exceeded my expectations with how quickly they bought in and listened and took what you were saying and just embraced it,” Eck says. “When we took the job, I remember sitting with [Offensive Coordinator Luke] Schleusner and kind of talking through things, and it was kind of like, ‘Hey, year three is the year we gotta make the playoffs.’ So we’re ahead of schedule.”
To flip a downtrodden program around so quickly and dynamically is borderline a miracle working in the coaching realm, but while Idaho’s revitalization might seem like an overnight success, Coach Eck’s journey to this point has been anything but that.
Born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Eck’s college football journey started at the University of Wisconsin where he played offensive line and was part of the Badgers’ 1999 Rose Bowl-winning squad. A coach’s son, Eck transitioned into his coaching career immediately, working as an offensive graduate assistant under the tutelage of legendary Wisconsin coach Barry Alverez. After another graduate assistant job at Colorado, he landed his first full coaching job in 2004, at a place that he’d come to know even better down the line — Moscow, Idaho. Eck served as the offensive line coach for the Vandals from 2004-06, cutting his teeth in the coaching ranks while he and his family grew fond of this little North Idaho locale.
“Well, I really liked it,” Eck says of his initial stint in Moscow. “And that’s part of the reason I wanted to come back. I think if we would have had a bad experience, it probably wouldn't have been at the top of my list.”
When he wasn’t retained after 2006, Eck and his family embarked on the nomadic life of a college football assistant. Between 2007 and 2016, he plied his trade at Winona State, Ball State, Hampton, Western Illinois, Minnesota State and Montana State. But the job that would really transform his football future came in 2016, when Eck joined the staff at South Dakota State as the school’s offensive line coach.
Under head coach John Stiegelmeier, South Dakota State was blossoming into an FCS powerhouse, and Eck’s coaching prowess helped contribute to that. Eck was promoted to offensive coordinator in 2019, and the Jackrabbits continued to rise. The team made the playoffs every season Eck was at the school, and his coaching mind did not go unnoticed as he won the America Football Coaches' Association FCS Assistant Coach of the Year in 2019. And when Petrino was let go in 2019, Idaho came calling once again.
“I’m probably lucky, because if [the job] was more desirable, I probably wouldn’t have got it,” Eck says with a laugh.
While most outside observers would’ve looked at the Idaho head coaching job and seen it as an wildly difficult challenge. Eck had a very different perspective on the gig. He saw it as almost the ideal spot for his approach.
“In the back of my mind, there were a lot of times I thought maybe I’d be a career assistant. And I kind of thought, ‘Well, I just don’t want to take just any head coaching job.’ I wanted a job and wanted a job where I liked where I was going to live, and I thought I could win at,” Eck says.
“And at Idaho, I knew we liked living here — that checked that box. And I really thought now, understanding FCS football, I just think there’s a lot of similarities between the state of Idaho and the states of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota — which have been the dominant teams in FCS. … So I thought it was kind of a perfect storm, where it was a sleeping giant that was kind of set up for someone to come in and improve the program.”
“IT CLICKS”
Coach Eck clearly had a vision for Vandal victory, but first he had to shape the program around the values. He went about assembling a coaching staff built around high-character leaders, in part because he knew any slip ups by assistants would reflect poorly on him in a tight-knit town like Moscow. He put a focus on building up the players’ mental toughness, which he defines through the question: “How do you respond when bad things happen?” And perhaps more than anything else, he wanted his players to focus on improvement beyond just the gridiron.
“I think there’s a lot of carryover throughout your life. How you do things in different areas of your life carry over. So accountability is a big core factor,” Eck says. “We put a lot of pressure on our young guys to make sure they’re taking care of their business off the field, they’re taking care of their business in the classroom. I don’t think it's a coincidence that our team GPA when I got here was 2.7. Now it’s 3.3 [the highest mark in program history], and we’re winning a lot more games. I think that’s tied in.”
“Really believing in your players, investing in them and coaching them to get them better in all aspects of their life,” Eck continues. “So the last two kind of foundational values talk about are urgency — a passion to get better on a daily basis — and grit, effort over a long period of time towards long term goals. Because I think at this level, you really have to have some homegrown guys that you build for sure three or four years before they become great players.”
Those values are good in theory, but it takes the right type of personality for those messages to click. Thankfully for Vandals fans, Coach Eck has the type of warm and open personality that allows those messages to connect with his young players. Even just watching him trot around the field during Idaho’s first scrimmage in early August of this year, it’s easy to observe how his demeanor is infectious. He’s a far cry from the old archetype of the authoritarian college football head coach who controls his program with an iron first. If anything, his vibe is closer to one of your best friends from high school’s fun-loving dad who always makes you feel welcome rather than afraid.
“He’s goofy, man,” redshirt sophomore linebacker Dylan Lane (brother of starting quarterback, Jack) says. “I tell you what, like those [team] meetings? Some great memories in there. I didn't expect that coming to college football. Like, we’re serious and he’s serious when he needs to be serious, but he knows how to make guys laugh. I think that just feeds into our relationships. We’re so tight as a team. It clicks.”
Coach Eck has managed to make the Idaho football team familial in a metaphorical sense, but also a literal one. His son Jaxton, who was born in Moscow during his dad’s first coaching stint, is a sophomore at UI and plays linebacker for the Vandals. While he was initially unsure about playing for his old man, the younger Eck has been relishing the slightly odd experience.
“It’s weird seeing him in a different light. Like I’d never seen him in a meeting talking to players, but it’s fun. He’s a great coach, and he just treats me like any other guy… well, he’s probably tougher on me,” Jaxton says with a laugh.
During recruiting, some of that cool dad energy — after the first scrimmage this year, Eck even surprised his team with a bowling outing instead of more meetings — is what ended up getting the Layne brothers from the Portland area to want to play college ball in Moscow.
“It’s the family aspect. I mean, obviously, his son is on the team, but I feel like we’re all his sons,” says Dylan Layne. “He cares about us. And he is really trying to make us good people off the football field. He wants our influence as people on this earth to be good.”
And it’s not just the players who’ve fully bought into Coach Eck’s vision.
“Coach Eck is a big personality… I’ve really enjoyed working with him over the years,” offensive coordinator Luke Schleusner says. “It’s just a lot of fun coming to the office every day. And that’s the same way we coach our players: high-intensity, but at the same time, we’re not yelling and screaming at them. We’re having fun. We’re building great relationships.”
Fans have been charmed, too — it doesn’t hurt that he’s great behind a microphone, creating some of the best post-game press conference moments on the Palouse since Mike Leach (with less baggage).
For Coach Eck, it’s all just what comes natural.
“Some of the best advice I got, and I heard this from quite a few people who are head coaches, you have to be yourself,” Eck says. “You can't try to be Nick Saban. You can’t try to be Pete Carroll. I think people will see through it, and know you're not authentic if you do that. And I love that fun.”
As for Eck’s fun outside of the team, he self-admittedly isn’t a man of many hobbies. He mostly just spends time with his wife and five kids taking trips to Gem State spots like McCall and Sandpoint. On the philanthropic side of things, Eck is very involved with the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation Coaches Council, whose goal is to increase the NMDP bone marrow registry in hopes of finding stem cell matches to help patients fighting blood cancer like leukemia and lymphoma.
The only other big thing that fuels Ecks competitive spirit off the field? Horse racing. This year he and his wife went to the Kentucky Derby, and the summer prior he went opening day at the famed Del Mar racetrack.
“It’s football, family and then I like horse racing,” Eck says.
“LOSING IS FEEDBACK”
While nobody would’ve bet on Idaho to win, place, or show when he first arrived, the results have spoken for themselves over the first two years of the Eck era.
After starting his tenure in 2022 with two surprisingly tight losses to FBS schools Washington State and Indiana, the Vandals made a statement with a 42-14 win in the new coach’s first game in the Kibbie Dome. After two more convincing wins to start the Big Sky season against Northern Arizona and Northern Colorado, Idaho officially announced its early arrival with a shocking 30-23 upset of No. 3 Montana in Missoula.
Idaho football was back.
The Vandals ended the 2022 season with a 6-2 record in the Big Sky — the toughest conference in FCS — and earned a playoff berth, coming up just short in a tough 45-42 loss at Southeastern Louisiana.
Things got so bad that the Sun Belt conference essentially kicked Idaho out of the conference after the 2017 campaign.
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The 2023 campaign kept up that momentum with another 6-2 Big Sky record — including wins over No. 4 Sacramento State, No. 19 Eastern Washington, and No. 2 Montana State — and another FCS playoff appearance. In the opening round, Idaho won its first playoff game since 1992, knocking off Southern Illinois 20-17. The second round saw more heartbreak as UI had a fourth quarter lead against UAlbany in the Kibbie Dome before eventually falling 30-22.
Obviously, it’s not the end result Coach Eck wanted for either season, but he’s also the rare football coach who actually can see the silver linings in defeat without them tearing him apart.
“Some competitive people say they hate losing more than they like winning. I probably like winning more than I hate losing,” Eck says with a laugh. “Losing is feedback — we got to do stuff better. It’s something we got to learn from. And when you have bad moments or bad games, back to the drawing board. We’ve got to improve.”
Just years after being the dregs of Division I NCAA football, Idaho enters the 2024 season as one of the top teams in FCS. The Vandals are ranked No. 7 in the Preseason FCS Poll. The team has its sights on capturing a Big Sky title, which would be no small feat considering UI was only picked third in the Big Sky polls because Montana and Montana State are nationally ranked No. 3 and No. 4, respectively.
Expect the defense to lead the way for the Vandals early in the season and establish an identity as a physical football team. Idaho’s defensive line and secondary have the potential to be elite units with defensive lineman Keyshawn James-Newby and Dallas Afalava and safety Tommy McCormick anchoring their units and earning Preseason All-Big Sky honors.
The offense may be a bigger question mark, but the cupboard is hardly bare. Idaho did lose All-Big Sky star quarterback Gevani McCoy to Oregon State via the transfer portal, but returning starters on the offensive line and Preseason All-Big Sky tight end Jake Cox adding to both the blocking and receiving game. There will be a lot of pressure on new starting QB Jake Layne, but the fact that he balled out in a late season spot start against Idaho State means Coach Eck isn’t too worried about his guy under center.
“If you would have told me, ‘Hey your quarterback’s gonna leave this year, but you can have one wish,’ I'd say, ‘Well, I’d want the backup to get a chance to play one game at the end of the year when the starter was hurt, and have him come in and play great, so all the team has the confidence of him,’” says Eck. “I mean, he threw six touchdown passes in the first half.”
Both Coach Eck and his players know that Idaho isn’t going to sneak up on anyone anymore. The hunters have become the hunted and that’s an incredibly positive thing.
“Our [defensive coordinator and] linebacker coach, Coach Jackson, says, ‘Move the standard.’ So I feel like that's what we've done,” says Jaxton Eck. “What's been done the past two years, the standard just keeps getting higher and higher. We just got to keep building on that. Like the playoffs is expected now. We’ve got to build on that and chase championships.”
Idaho football is relevant once again. What others saw as a punchline of a program, Coach Eck believed was merely a winner in waiting. And even more than any Xs and Os gameplan or recruiting philosophy, Eck’s lofty goals have come to fruition because the passion and familial environment he’s cultivated make his players and staff fully believe in him.
“Coach Eck came in and he changed the culture,” says Dylan Layne. “We use this word ‘belief’ a lot. He believes in his guys. From the day one when he got here, he said, ‘You guys are a playoff football team. You guys are a good team. You got great players here.’ And so we started to believe it. And through hard work, that's what happens, man. We believe in each other.”
