MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Of all the assistants hired by new West Virginia coach Neal Brown, it feels safe to say that inside linebackers coach Blake Seiler is making the most jarring transition.
Since spending his freshman year as a wrestler at Oklahoma State, the only college Seiler has known is Kansas State. And with the exception of his final weeks at K-State, the only head coach he ever worked for was Bill Snyder.
Now, the 34-year-old Seiler is moving from old-school to new-school in more ways than one. After cutting his teeth with the septuagenarian Snyder, he’ll be spreading his wings with one of the youngest FBS coaches in Brown.
Some of the differences are stark.
Seiler noted Brown is “a little bit more modern with some of the things he does.”
Notably, there’s Brown’s utilization of Twitter. He’s not exactly an addict, but he has used it more recently than 2016, which is the last time Snyder posted a tweet. (About a cooking competition, no less).
There is also the matter of the age bias that was used against Snyder on the recruiting trail. According to Seiler, every year there were whispers that it could be Snyder’s last.
“I think all of us on staff thought it would never happen. The joke for us was Coach Snyder, he’s not human, right?” Seiler said. “It got tough at the end because of the questions. It probably impacted recruiting, because it was tough to get those two or three guys that are difference-makers in the program.”
There are also more things in common between Brown and Snyder than most would realize.
“There’s a lot of similarities between the way Coach Brown runs his program and the way Coach Snyder ran his,” Seiler said. “Organization, accountability, teaching the fundamentals of toughness, being respectful, community service. If you can teach guys that, the football side of things tends to take care of itself.”
Seiler thinks it takes a similar attitude to win at West Virginia. It is ultimately about accomplishing the same task – finding a team capable of competing with the blue chip-laden rosters of bluebloods Oklahoma and Texas in the Big 12.
“We never had the most talented players there, but we taught them fundamentals. We taught them accountability. We taught them discipline. Those are the building blocks,” Seiler said. “Obviously, if you can recruit some talent and teach them to play together with toughness and discipline, then you have a chance. You have a chance to be special if you can add talent to that equation.”
Seiler was prepared to stay on at his alma mater with new head coach Chris Klieman despite a demotion from defensive coordinator to defensive ends coach. But new WVU defensive coordinator Vic Koenning, who was K-State’s defensive coordinator in 2009, convinced Seiler to make the jump. Seiler worked under Koenning a decade ago, leaving his lucrative engineering job at Cessna Aircraft to enter coaching as a graduate assistant.
Seiler’s wife is from southern Pennsylvania, so the chance to live closer to her side of the family also held appeal.
But the thing that sealed the deal was Seiler’s experience going to Milan Puskar Stadium as a visiting coach.
“Driving up here in the bus and seeing the tailgating in the Blue Lot reminded me of Manhattan, because that’s how our fans are. It’s just a little bigger here,” Seiler said. “If you give them something to cheer about, this is a tough place to play.”
— Allan Taylor contributed to this report