By Jonah Bronstein
Homecoming was three weeks ago at Bowling Green, but for the Falcons’ head football coach, it will be Tuesday.
In his first season as a Division I-A head coach, Youngstown native Dave Clawson leads his team into a nationally-televised game at UB Stadium, a facility he used to show recruits the blueprints for when he worked as a Bulls assistant in the early ’90s.
“It’s going to be special,” Clawson said this week. “Coming home to where I grew up and played high school, when I got this job and saw the game on the schedule, I started looking forward to it.”
So have several locals who, in any other week, consider themselves UB fans.
“I usually root for the home team, but Tuesday I’ll be rooting for Bowling Green,” said Pat Krawczyk, the Lewiston-Porter basketball coach who was Clawson’s primary target when they played for the Lancers 25 years ago.
“I never thought he was going to coach when we were younger,” Krawczyk said. “But then when I found out he was getting into it, I thought about it. He has the demeanor and he does things the right way.”
Mark Johnson, the former Lancers assistant, could tell Clawson had a career on the sidelines.
“He was always very cerebral,” Johnson said. “He was a student of the game, always questioning in practice why we’d do what we did. He’d have suggestions on how we could tweak a play.
“He had coaching in his blood.”
Clawson didn’t realize this right away. After playing football and basketball at Williams College in Massachusetts, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, and took a job as an offensive assistant at Albany.
After two years there, he moved on to UB, which was just embarking on its “Run to Division I.” His office was on South campus, and games were played on the small turf field at North campus that is now used mostly for intramural activities. In his second year at UB, Clawson coached quarterback Clif Scott, a Grand Island native. But Clawson was let go after the season.
“At that point I was unemployed and if there was ever a time to get out, it was then,” he said. “I had been coaching for four years, had a master’s degree. But in those three or four years I wasn’t around it, I missed it so much.”
In 1993, Clawson was hired to coach the running backs at Lehigh, and the following year he was promoted to offensive coordinator. It was there that he learned the system that helped him become a rising star in the profession.
Moving on to Villanova in 1996, Clawson coordinated an offense that set 70 school records. Receiver Brian Finneran won the Walter Payton Award, given to I-AA’s most outstanding player, and running back Brian Westbrook became the first NCAA player to gain more than 1,000 yards rushing and 1,000 yards receiving in the same season.
At age 31, Clawson became the youngest coach in Division I, taking over a Fordham program in 1998 that had been under .500 for 12 straight seasons. He eventually led Fordham into the playoffs, and was named I-AA National Coach of the Year. After four years at Fordham, Clawson went to Richmond, and again was named I-AA National Coach of the Year.
Clawson left the I-AA ranks last year to become the offensive coordinator at Tennessee. He had been in the running for the Boston College job a year earlier, and some saw him as the eventual successor to Phillip Fulmer. But it didn’t work out that way. Three games into the season, Fulmer was fired, the offense finished the season ranked in the bottom five nationally, and Clawson was not retained by new coach Lane Kiffin.
“It was a 10-month blur,” Clawson said. “Any time you don’t win games in coaching, it’s tough, but in some ways, I had a great experience. I learned a lot about what it takes to recruit at the highest level. When I got let go, we had a recruiting class that was ranked in the top five or six.”
The Mid-American Conference has long been a proving ground for young, offensive-minded coaches, so Clawson could very well get the chance to coach at that level again. The Falcons are just 3-5 so far under their new coach, but those losses have come against teams with a combined record of 33-12, and the offense has been tremendous. Quarterback Tyler Sheehan ranks third in the country in passing yards per game (334.6), and receiver Freddie Barnes is on pace to set an NCAA record for receptions in a season.
“We’ve had a very difficult schedule and we’ve had some tough losses,” Clawson said. “But the key has been that everything we do as a program has been consistent. That’s the one thing I’ve always tried to do — let the players and coaches know what the demands are every day, whether we are winning or losing.
“... Buffalo is a lot like us. They’ve lost some close games and are very talented. They are a QB sneak and a couple dropped passes from being 6-2. Coach (Turner) Gill has put the program on the map. Back when we started the run to Division I, this is what we envisioned for the program. We always thought we could build a great program at UB, and it would be special. So when we don’t play against them, I’m rooting for UB.”
Contact reporter Jonah Bronstein at 282-2311, ext. 2258.
