VRBO CITRUS BOWL: AUBURN VS NORTHWESTERN

December 30, 2020

Mike Hankwitz

Camping World Stadium

Northwestern Wildcats

Q. Looking at win 400 and a big milestone. I know coaches don't get hung up on numbers like that, but to get that win what would it mean?

MIKE HANKWITZ: It would be icing on the cake. It's been a labor of love and I've worked with a lot of great people, some great head coaches, and a lot of great young men, and that's what's made it so worthwhile and been fortunate that I've been on a lot of championship teams and to see the players and the way they all work together and contributed to it.

So yeah, it would be nice, but I think I have been blessed a lot of other ways with the great people I've had a chance to work with. So if I get it, great. If I don't, I've had a lot of other rewards in all these years of coaching.

Q. Just wanted to know when you see when you look at Auburn's offensive personnel with Nix and bigs by and how your team matches up with the speed and athleticism of an SEC team?

MIKE HANKWITZ: It will be a great challenge because we have tremendous respect for bigs by and their big O-Line and then Nix is certainly dangerous with his ability to scramble and the designed quarterback run.

So we have seen some athletic quarterbacks. I've not sure we have seen one of his caliber. So we know we've got a tremendous challenge in front of us and our players have worked hard. But you know, and then you add to that, they have got tremendous skill at receiver with Williams and even Schwartz and Stove, they have some young guys that are not all there. They are got young guys waiting to step in and they have got a big O-Line. Fortunately we got some guys back but we know we're going to have a tremendous challenge stopping this bunch.

Q. I cover your neck of the woods, Muskegon, the place you grew up in, Scottville, how did that set the course for the career you would go on to have both as a player and a coach for such a long time?

MIKE HANKWITZ: Well, I attribute my desire to get into coaching with the type of coaches I had in high school. My high school football coach, Loren Dietrich, and my high school basketball coach, Duane Ingraham, not only were they outstanding coaches and teachers, but you had the feeling they cared about you as people, you know. It went beyond just coaching you and that always stuck with me.

And I've been fortunate that I've been around a lot of great head coaches that had similar type programs, but it kind of all goes back to that. We didn't have -- my high school had some basketball success. But football, they had not won a Big Ten Championship since 1932, and we get Coach Dietrich in there, who played at Central and we won the championship three straight years, my sophomore, junior, senior year, and we took a lot of pride in that.

And then basketball, we got to the regional finals my junior year and my senior year we won the league and we got to the state semis and beat in overtime. I just had such fond memories of those experiences.

And I wasn't sure I was going to coach. When Coach Schembechler came in, he met with each player to try to get to know you. He asked me, "What are you going to do."

I go, "I'm not sure."

He said, "That you ever thought about being a graduate assistant and you get to learn football from the ground up and you get to coach a JV team."

I thought, that sounds like fun. The minute I started, I was hooked. As a player, you have a scope of what your job is and they tried to teach you a little bigger picture, but I actually started coaching on defense and to see the intricacy and how things worked together, it was like, wow, this is cool.

And I got -- I just got hooked. You know, we -- it was fun because you were a graduate assistant doing all the breakdown work and helping and meetings and stuff, but coaching and scout team, we got to coach a JV team in games. So you felt like you were actually applying everything you learned. I became hooked.

After my second year, Coach Young had had some interviews, like at Minnesota, and I thought, I've got one more year and if I don't, I'm going to go coach high school because I remember my experience. And after that season, he got the head coaching job at the University of Arizona and took me with him, and you know, it seems like yesterday, but that was like 1973, or December of '72.

But I just can't say enough about the way those two men impressed me, and I think that was a real inspiration for me getting into coaching.

Q. You've coached numerous All-Americans in your 51-year career and one of your players, Brandon Joseph, just got named as a first-team All-American by the AP. What's it been like to coach a guy like him, especially this being his first year starting and the type of playmaker that he is?

MIKE HANKWITZ: Well, he impressed us from the beginning with his play-making ability. He gets himself in the right position and he finds a way to make a play.

You know, he's just a great young man. He's humble. I know he'll continue to work hard and continue to get better. But he's made some great plays for us at key times, and I think that his play-making ability -- some guys can get in position but they don't always come up with play. He finds a way to come up with a play.

So we are very -- I'm very excited for him and for his future.

Q. You've coached a lot of defenses over 57 years. Is there one thing that's characterized your units or many of them throughout the years?

MIKE HANKWITZ: Well, No. 1, you've got to execute whatever defense you're in. You can't make a lot of mistakes and let people -- and beat yourself. That's something we try to take pride in and our kids have done a great job.

Secondly, you have to be fundamentally sound. No matter what scheme you run, you're only as good as your fundamentals and Coach Fitz has been a strong proponent of that down through the years, and we have worked hard to try to be fundamentally sound.

And then develop an identity and a spirit, and these guys have done a tremendous job of responding to adversity. You get a turnover deep in your territory, you know, and the offense has a tremendous advantage, but we find a way to stop them. Or a team does get down on the tight zone, if you can hold them to a field goal, that's a tremendous win psychologically because field goals don't beat you a lot, and this is one of the best units I've ever had at doing that.

There is a red zone statistic which is the percent of scores that you give up when people penetrate the red zone, but that's touchdowns and field goals.

But if I'm not mistaken, our touchdown percentage is like second-lowest in the country. So we take tremendous pride in that, and you know, we're going to need all those things to happen New Year's Day, to beat a heck of an Auburn team.

Q. You've answered a few big picture questions already. I'm curious, from all the different head coaches and coaching staffs you've worked on, what are some of the biggest lessons you've taken away you've tried to instill in your own coaching staff now that you're developing coaching trees of your own?

MIKE HANKWITZ: Well, we work together. It wasn't just one person doing it. We have an outstanding defensive staff in Matt MacPherson, Tim McGarigle, Marty Long, and when you recognize that they are making great contributions, you know, the more you go with their contributions, the more they are going to come up with good ideas. I feel like we did it together. That's one thing.

And then you win as a team. You don't win just because of defense or offense or special teams. It takes everybody. And more importantly, it takes everybody on the team contributing because not everybody gets to play and not everybody starts and not everybody even plays in the game. But their role in scout team work, portraying the other offense, doing -- pushing the guy front of them, whatever it is, that's how you become a successful team when you get everybody working together to accomplish the same goal.

Yeah, I've been very fortunate in my career to work with some outstanding head coaches, and I was honored that they chose to hire me. But it's been great, a great run.

Q. In talking about how impactful the coaches were in your life, in high school and so forth, I've talked to some coaches along the lakeshore in west Michigan talking about how you give back and maybe had them up to campus or you've spoken to them either privately, etc. How important is it to give back to the game the way you have and the way that people have done to you?

MIKE HANKWITZ: I always thought that's what coaches should do. I thought we were in this to help each other, because I had a lot of guys help me, and I would have felt bad if I didn't give a little of my time to help somebody else.

I've gotten some great text messages from high school coaches that said that and I'm honored that they felt that way. I got a lot of help along the way, and if I can help somebody along the way, that's the way I feel it should be.

Q. When you were here in 2005, Colorado, I don't know if you recall grabbing that alligator by the tail. Do you have any recollections of this moment and what do you think when you see this picture?

MIKE HANKWITZ: Well, I remember they said they were going to do this and they said, "We're going to do what?"

When I found out I had to do it, I said, there's some way, somehow, I've got to win this battle. You know, our players were just great cheering me on and that's the closest I want to get to an alligator again; I want to go on record, all right.