Ohio coach Solich adjusts to mid-major bowl games, set for Pizza Bowl matchup with Marshall

Ohio coach Solich adjusts to mid-major bowl games

DETROIT — The Little Caesar’s Pizza Bowl is a long way from the BCS national championship game.

Ohio coach Frank Solich isn’t letting that change the way he’s preparing his Bobcats for Saturday’s game against Marshall.

“The buildup is the same — we’re just in a strange city on Christmas Day instead of New Year’s Eve,” he said. “That doesn’t change how much the kids enjoy the experience.”

A decade ago, Solich was coaching in BCS games at Nebraska, including the 2001 title game against Miami. The Cornhuskers lost that game 37-14 to a Hurricanes team featuring Andre Johnson and Jeremy Shockey, and Solich was fired two seasons later.

After taking a year off, Solich started again at the opposite end of the spectrum. When he took over at Ohio, the team hadn’t played in the postseason since a loss to Richmond in the 1968 Tangerine Bowl, and no coach had left the school with a winning record in almost 30 years.

Solich’s first season ended with a 4-7 record but included a win over Pittsburgh in his home debut, and the Bobcats reached the Mid-American Conference championship game and the GMAC Bowl in 2006.

“This was a completely different situation that I had in Nebraska,” Solich said. “There, I took over a program that was expected to contend for the national championship every season. At Ohio, we were trying to build a program that had no expectations and where we had to win back the fan base.”

While Solich hasn’t led Ohio to a conference championship yet — they lost the MAC championship game in 2006 and fell 20-10 to Central Michigan this season — he knows he’s making progress.

“I think things are going well,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll have better success at Ford Field this time after losing the two championship games here.”

Solich puts much of Ohio’s improvement down to a more physical style — something he thinks has come from picking the right players, not from coaching.

“You build physical teams by recruiting them,” he said. “That’s not something you can develop at this level. You can teach technique to help them use their physical nature, but it’s mainly an instinct that you either have or you don’t.”

Still, Solich’s success at Nebraska has helped him get players that would have never considered Ohio in the past.

“For me, it was an easy decision to go to Ohio, because I knew I’d be getting coached by one of the best coaches in the country,” said star wide receiver Taylor Price. “This was a coach that has been in big games with big-time programs and big-time players.”

Solich’s past and his current resume make him an obvious choice to be the next coach to leave the MAC for bigger things. Brian Kelly has gone from Central Michigan to Cincinnati to Notre Dame, Butch Jones has followed Kelly from CMU to Cincinnati, while Turner Gill went from Buffalo to Kansas.

Solich, though, is happy to stay in Athens for the next few years.

“We’re not done building this program,” said Solich, who is under contract through 2013. “We’ve made steps in the right direction, but we need to get to this level on a consistent basis.”