Tracy Claeys looked comfortable when he started speaking to about 100 members of the C.O.R.E.S group earlier this month.  The Gophers’ new defensive coordinator is 42, has wanted to be a football coach since middle school and was talking to an audience that included many former high school coaches, plus ex-officials, reporters, educators and other sports fans.

Claeys declined a microphone, preferring to move away from the podium and closer to the audience.  He’s a big man.  Husky they call a person like Claeys who looks like a former college football lineman but didn’t play at his alma mater Kansas State and began his coaching career as a student assistant at Kansas.

He enjoys being close to the audience when he speaks and explained his move toward the C.O.R.E.S crowd with humor: “It’s about the only exercise I get,” he said.

Claeys and most of head coach Jerry Kill’s staff from Northern Illinois are settling in now to begin work on transforming Gophers football into something better than its current status as a Big Ten Conference bottom feeder.  Claeys said it’s been a “dream” for him to have a Big Ten opportunity.

“We will do everything we can to get this on the right path,” he told his audience.  Later in his talk he said: “I don’t know how long it will take us to win.  We just gotta get better every day.”

How will it all happen?  Claeys said vital elements are discipline, hard work and recruiting.

He didn’t say it in a mean or threatening way, but predicted players are in for “hell” the next couple months.  The process of acclimating to the new culture began earlier this month with a coaches-players meeting where copies of the personal handbook were reviewed.  The 100 or so page document describes what’s expected of the players.

The message from the coaches in the handbook and in the days ahead is this: “You’re going to become one of us.  We’re not becoming one of you.”

Claeys said “problems won’t be swept under the rug” and there can’t be any doubt about a player’s commitment to the program.  The coaches expect to see commitment week after week, starting right now, leading up to spring practice and throughout the 2011 season.  Kill, Claeys said, will tell recruits to make sure they want to play for the Gophers before signing on to come here.

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Presumably the Gophers will improve a lot in the seasons ahead but only if better players come to Dinkytown.  Claeys said recruiting is all about “relationships” including with high school coaches.  Kill surrounds himself with assistants who have been with him for many years and that means those coaches have ongoing successful relationships with prep coaches.  Those relationships are in various states, but Claeys emphasized recruiting will start in Minnesota where six assistants will be assigned to finding homegrown product.

If prep coaches like a college coach, Claeys stated, they will send you good players.  “You can’t make chicken out of chicken salad,” he said.

Kill and his staff have a reputation as exceptional teachers.  Maybe one day Gophers fans will make this comment about the staff:  “They could beat the other team not only with their players, but take the other team and beat the Gophers.”

Part of smart coaching is not asking players to do what they’re not capable of, Claeys said.  That could apply to the X’s and O’s of football or fundamentals.  Claeys quoted coach Bill Parcells:  “If they don’t tackle as puppies, they’re not going to tackle.”

At Northern Illinois the Huskies could play defense.  Last year Northern Illinois, a team with an 11-3 record, ranked 14^th in the country in scoring defense, giving up about 19 points per game.

The stat makes Claeys feel good but so too does a strength and conditioning program that at Northern Illinois seemed to keep players mostly on the field, not on the sidelines recovering from injuries.  The goal is to not only make players bigger, stronger and faster, but also healthier.  Kill’s strength and conditioning head coach, Eric Klein, has been with him for 17 years prior to coming to Minneapolis.

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Claeys has been an assistant to Kill for 16 years.  They started together when Kill first became a head coach at Saginaw Valley State (38-14 record), then on to Emporia State (11-11), Southern Illinois (55-32) and Northern Illinois (23-16).

Those were sometimes difficult places to win.  “We’ve never complained about what we didn’t have,” Claeys said. “Every place we’ve been, they stayed successful.”

Claeys is a bachelor, married to his job.  When Kill is on the road, he likes to have his defensive coordinator in the office, or nearby.

“He’s the most demanding person I’ve ever been around,” Claeys said. “He’s (also) the most caring person I’ve ever been around.”

Claeys was contacted about an NFL job awhile back but prefers college football and is loyal to Kill.  “He’s taken care of us,” Claeys said.  “He’s not a guy that thinks of himself first.  We’ve enjoyed it (the coaching experience).  Part of it is he enjoys being a part of us.  You have so many head coaches that, I don’t know, say put up theirselves on a pedestal.  He’s not like that.  One of the first things he did in Minnesota, he wants his locker right down in the locker room with us (other coaches) because he enjoys being one of the guys.  So that’s one of the privileges of getting to work with him.”

After Claeys finished his talk to the C.O.R.E.S group, a writer asked about the likelihood of Minnesota (3-9 last year) being a winning team in 2011.  “There’s a lot on the coaches to find out what those kids do well and try to get them in those situations to improve our chances to win,” he said. “There’s no guarantees until you take care of the little things. …As the process goes by, (and) we move closer through spring ball and all that we’ll have a better idea how competitive we’re going to be in the fall.”

Then the writer remembered something Claeys said to all those former coaches and others in the audience during his talk.  “We’ve got to play our…(tails) off on Saturdays,” Claeys told them.

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