Ball State showed patience with a coach, and Mike Neu brought a championship

Amid the chaos and confusion, Ball State athletic director Beth Goetz had no idea what to believe.

Ball State and Western Michigan players and coaches were scattered across the field during a final desperate multi-lateral attempt by the Broncos. Most everyone had thought the play ended, and players stormed the field. But it hadn’t, and WMU took the ball into the end zone.

On the TV broadcast, it was easy to see flags had been thrown. But Goetz was on the field and didn’t see them. The terrifying thought entered her mind: Were the Cardinals really going to lose a division title because of this?

CHAOS 🤯

Both teams ran onto the field before the play was ruled dead as Western Michigan attempted a last second TD.

Ball State went on to win the game and division title after the Broncos were penalized for an illegal forward pass. pic.twitter.com/yzjVTBgJ5b

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) December 12, 2020

Trying to figure out what happened, she spotted Ball State head coach Mike Neu. He was speaking to an official and looked unexpectedly calm.

“I thought, oh, this is about to be a heated exchange,” Goetz said. “But really, I think he was just saying, ‘Relax, there’s a flag, it’s coming back.’”

It was a sign things were OK. A penalty was called and the game ended, securing Ball State’s spot in the MAC championship game. The Cardinals won that game, beating Buffalo for their first conference title since 1996. Now, with a 6-1 record, they’re looking for their first bowl win, against No. 22 San José State on Thursday in the Arizona Bowl.

The lesson of Ball State’s turnaround season has been one of calm and patience.

It took five years for Neu to achieve his first winning season. That kind of time rarely exists in the sport anymore — not when almost half of the 130 FBS head coaches have been hired since the end of the 2018 season. At a time when the pressure to win has never been higher and some recently hired head coaches have been fired after just two seasons, Goetz gave Neu an extension after four losing seasons. She saw progress, and that faith in Neu and the process paid off.

“That was one of my first conversations after the (MAC championship) game,” Neu said. “I thanked her for all sticking with me, because I know she didn’t have to do that.”

Neu didn’t even apply for the Ball State job when it opened after the 2015 season. Two years after a 10-win season, head coach Pete Lembo left to be an assistant at Maryland. It was a shot to the pride of a program that had stumbled to 3-9. Ball State and then-athletic director Mark Sandy wanted someone who loved the place, so school officials turned to Neu, who quarterbacked the Cardinals from 1990-93, winning a MAC title and conference MVP in 1993. By 2015, Neu was the New Orleans Saints’ quarterbacks coach, and he spent 12 years in New Orleans during stints with the Arena Football League, Tulane and the Saints.

“When the athletic director reached out to me, I could not ignore that feeling in my gut,” Neu said. “Kind of like as a recruit, it was tugging at me. I’d been a head coach in the arena league, and I had the desire and the passion to be a head coach again. It was my alma mater and we were in a down time. There were people that had an opinion of me taking the job and didn’t think it was the best decision. But I couldn’t ignore the feeling of my gut.”

Neu inherited a senior-laden team, so it didn’t feel like the time to start a rebuild. The Cardinals went 4-8 but 1-7 in the MAC. The following year, Ball State went 2-10, 0-8 in the MAC.

“There were some really ugly days here in 2017,” Neu said. “Because 2017 is really when we bottomed out. … A lot of very ugly, lopsided losses.”

Goetz became Ball State’s athletic director in summer 2018, arriving from UConn for her first AD role. That fall, the Cardinals went 4-8 again, and Neu’s name started to appear in hot-seat talk. He’d had three losing seasons and a new AD was in charge. It’s often the case that a new AD will clean house and hire a new football coach as soon as possible if things aren’t going well.

But Goetz gave Neu more time. In 2019, Ball State went 5-7 overall and 4-4 in the MAC. It was another small improvement, but another losing season, the fourth in four years. It put him at 15-33 overall and 8-24 in the MAC.

“Especially here in the local community, I know people doubted,” Neu said. “‘Can Coach Neu really get this done? Is he running out of time? Is it gonna end here and not be as good as the first chapter that he had here at Ball State?’”

His contract was also coming up. The initial five-year deal was set to expire in February 2021. But instead of moving on with a cheap buyout, Goetz decided to move forward with Neu, and the sides agreed to a reworked two-year extension during the offseason. Instead of putting a hand-picked choice in charge, Goetz saw the improvement she wanted.

“My job is to make the best decisions for our student-athletes and for Ball State,” she said. “It has nothing to do with me or who I knew or had a relationship with before I arrived. …

“It just takes a long time to build a program and to put that together in a way that a coach envisions it. While many times we would all love to see results in Year 2 or Year 3, it takes a little bit of time.”

Despite the 5-7 record, Ball State led the MAC in scoring in 2019. The Cardinals lost three consecutive November games by four or fewer points, then beat eventual MAC champ Miami (Ohio) in the finale. They were close.

Goetz also knew this was the season coaches felt the breakthrough would come. Their veteran team would be led by seniors like quarterback Drew Plitt and running back Caleb Huntley. Even with new coordinators on offense and defense, the Cardinals were experienced.

They opened this season with a last-minute loss to Miami (Ohio), but it was the moment Neu realized things could be different.

“I could tell in the locker room that night at Miami, the steam coming out of everybody’s ears, that look in their eye, I knew that the bus ride back to Muncie was going to be what it needed to be,” Neu said. “Guys were going to be able to say that’s not good enough. We knew what had to be accomplished when we left the locker room that night. And we shifted our focus to play in the MAC West, and we knew we had to knock them all off.”

The Cardinals did just that, winning their final five regular-season games. In a conference where the difference between teams is minuscule, the close calls went their way this time, with four wins by one possession, including that wild ending against Western Michigan.

In the MAC championship game, Ball State faced heavily favored Buffalo, which was ranked in the top 25, had one of the nation’s leading rushers and hadn’t allowed a sack all season. The Cardinals shut down Jaret Patterson, recorded a sack that led to a touchdown by their defense and won 38-28 for their first conference title in more than two decades.

That bus ride back was a lot more fun. It took four hours to get back to Muncie by 5 a.m., and the team enjoyed every minute of it. Less than four months earlier, the MAC had been the first conference to postpone the season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The breakthrough year Goetz and Neu planned almost didn’t happen. When the decision was reversed, Ball State players held each other accountable. They adhered to COVID-19 protocols and didn’t miss a game on the shortened schedule.

They ended it as champions and head into Thursday’s Arizona Bowl looking to make more history. The Cardinals are 0-7 all time in bowl games.

Every college football program wants a quick fix. It’s what the fans demand, often with their wallet. It’s rare to see a coach given the chance to work through problems over several years. Frank Beamer had four losing seasons in his first six years at Virginia Tech. That kind of patience rarely exists anymore. Ball State gave Neu that rare commodity of time. Everyone kept the faith, and that faith was rewarded.

“I appreciate the patience. I appreciate president (Geoffrey) Mearns and Beth Goetz here for just showing the confidence,” Neu said. “We weren’t growing maybe quite as fast as some would like, but we were growing, and we were developing, and we were getting better. I’m just thankful that they stuck with us. I certainly know that they didn’t have to do that.”

(Photo of Neu, right, and Demetrius Murray: Nic Antaya / Getty Images)