After nine seasons as the only head coach in the young history of Coastal Carolina’s football program, Bennett has surely had some teary-eyed moments himself since Friday.
“Up and down, like a rollercoaster,” he says.
He had used the term “blindsided” in a phone conversation leading up to the interview at his home, although he doesn’t seem totally comfortable repeating the word now.
Regardless, Bennett was wrapping up a recruiting trip in Georgia when he got the call Friday morning from CCU athletic director Hunter Yurachek that university president David DeCenzo wanted to meet with both of them later in the day. Bennett, who signed a 10-year contract in 2007, didn’t know what the meeting concerned as he headed back to campus.
“I sure didn’t have any idea that was coming,” he says of his dismissal. “Coastal Carolina and Horry County, we feel like it’s our home. It was my understanding that God’s plan for us was to coach at Coastal Carolina for a long, long, long time. But now, you know, we’re seeing that’s not the plan.”
It’s gotten a little easier each day, he says, but still there is disappointment in the outcome, in not getting one more year to try to move the program forward.
The Chanticleers finished 7-4 this season -- their best record since 2006 -- but the program’s 29-28 mark over the last five years and waning attendance were cited by DeCenzo in a Friday evening news conference as key reasons why a change was needed.
There is emotion -- especially as Bennett talks about his assistant coaches, whose employment status is left to be decided by the next head coach. He and his wife Melanie also voice frustration for the way the decision was delivered and that he wasn’t afforded the opportunity to tell his players before the news conference.
And, of course, there is uncertainty as to what the future holds, whether he’s finished coaching and what, if anything, will amount of the talk of reassigning him to another role within the university.
One day at a time, he says.
“I’m doing more prayer than anything right now,” Bennett says. “[I’m] saying ‘Alright God, you’ve got a plan. Your plan is perfect, mine is not, because I thought it was to be here until we retired. Lead us where we’re supposed to go.’”
Unexpected ending
Nearly three weeks passed since the end of the season and the CCU coaches had already secured about 10 verbal commitments from prospective recruits while building toward next year as Bennett completed his recruiting trip in Georgia.
He wasn’t told over the phone what the meeting Friday was about, and there was reason to assume it had to do with the news earlier in the day that longtime football equipment coordinator Wilson Beaver had been arrested and charged with forgery and embezzlement in connection to meal vouchers from staff members of the football team.
When Bennett arrived, he was met by DeCenzo and D. Wyatt Henderson, the chairman of the university’s board of trustees. Yurachek would soon join them, and as the meeting commenced DeCenzo got straight to the point, reading from a statement.
“The president read his statement to me, and I was like, ‘OK.’” Bennett recounts. “I just let him know, ‘We love this place. This place is like home to us.’ I said, ‘We’re all grown men in here, but it just kind of hurts my feelings that nobody came to me before, sat down and said ‘We’re thinking of making a change here. And coach, you helped start this program, and you’re very involved in this community -- we’ll work out another position.’”
Bennett says DeCenzo told him that possibility could be discussed when the new year comes, and that Henderson said the group thought Bennett would prefer to pursue another coaching position elsewhere.
“He said, ‘Coach, we just thought you’d want to leave here and go coach somewhere, that you’re a coach,’” Bennett says Sunday. “Before I’m a coach, I’m a person, I’m a husband, I’m a father and I’m a friend.”
Before the meeting ended, Bennett asked DeCenzo to let he and his staff coach one more year, and if they didn’t make the playoffs, then he’d understand. The answer was no. Bennett then suggested that he’d step away and that assistant head coach Maurice Drayton or longtime defensive coordinator Curtis Walker could take over next season. The answer was again no.
“I said, ‘If we’re going to make a change, why weren’t we talked to immediately after the season or two weeks ago?’” Bennett says. “[DeCenzo] said, ‘We just had to make sure.’ They said they had to make sure.”
Bennett noted that Drayton and offensive line coach Patrick Covington each have one more year on their contracts while the rest of the assistants are being paid through February.
Bennett was also told that the Beaver arrest did not play any role in the decision.
As he left the meeting, Bennett called his wife Melanie, followed by his daughter -- a student at Clemson -- and father. Then he started dialing his assistant coaches in order of how long he’s known them.
“I tried to get all them before they saw it on TV,” Bennett says. “I think at the end, [video coordinator Louis Francois] and [director of football operations] Parker Richardson, I hadn’t got to them before they did that press conference and Louie had to see it on TV. ... Our players had to see that thing on TV. I would have loved to have the chance to talk with our guys first. But again, we don’t live in a perfect world.”
Bennett had built CCU football into an early success with three Big South Conference championships and an FCS playoff appearance in the program’s first four years, but the program had not maintained its rise. As facilities improved with the construction of Adkins Field House and the growth of Brooks Stadium, the expectations increased as well.
Bennett’s early teams produced five players in Tyler Thigpen, Mike Tolbert, Jerome Simpson, Quinton Teal and Maurice Simpkins who would all go on to sign with NFL teams.
But the Chants then slumped through mediocrity on the field for several years before a four-game winning streak to close the 2010 regular season vaulted the program to a surprising share of the conference title and its second FCS playoff berth.
A 7-4 follow-up -- including lopsided road losses to rival Liberty and league champ Stony Brook -- was not enough to convince DeCenzo and Yurachek the program was competing at the desired level. DeCenzo also noted that attendance at games had “fallen sharply” and that Coastal was selling only “about 50 percent of our available tickets.”
It was simply time for a change, they said, and Yurachek acknowledged there’s no good time to break that kind of news to somebody.
Still, Bennett and wife admit their frustration in how the ending came about.
“I get it. It’s a business. It’s the nature of the beast, whatever,” Melanie says. “You can’t say you’re really surprised, really, it happened. ... It is part of it, but you know what, he deserved to tell his team and his staff before they held some press conference on a Friday night. Really? He had been on the road for three solid days recruiting. Why didn’t you call him off the road? Why didn’t you tell him before he even went on the road? You know, come on. He deserved better than that.”
Bennett says he doesn’t want to come off sounding negative, though. He wants to “take the high road.”
And one way or another, the university administration was signaling the end of an era Friday night.
The aftermath
The Bennetts’ Conway home filled with neighbors and friends in the wake of the news, they say, adding that the last time that happened was when Bennett’s mother died.
“A lot of people, if they’re not in coaching, they don’t get it,” Melanie says. “It’s not just your career; it’s your life.”
They speak the last part in unison
“It’s like a divorce or a death in the family,” she continues.
Adds Bennett: “It felt like a funeral - continual.”
But the response has been “uplifting,” he said, and there has been no shortage of supporters trying to raise the spirits of the Chants’ longtime leader.
Melanie talks of that parade Saturday morning in Conway -- which they had already committed to -- and how overwhelmed they were by the positive response. Bennett, meanwhile, mentions how linebacker Andrae Jacobs wouldn’t let go as the two hugged Saturday after one final gathering with the team, and all the text messages and calls he’s received from former players.
Sitting on the couch as the family’s yellow Labrador hounds him for attention, Bennett pulls out his phone and searches for one message in particular from former player Rodney Burgess.
He reads it aloud.
“I know I don’t talk much, I just wanted to say thank you for giving me an opportunity to play for you and attend CCU. You’re one of the best coaches I’ve had the privilege of playing for, and my time spent at Coastal was life-changing. You helped better me in more ways than you will ever know. Your faith is tremendous, and is one of the qualities I admire most about you. I can’t imagine CCU without David Bennett. ...”
He said he texted back, “Is that you Burg?”
Asked what he’s proudest of from his tenure as Coastal’s head football coach, Bennett says seeing players like Burgess mature through the years.
“A lot of people might think it’s seeing five guys go to the NFL,” he says. “I’m proud of those men that are there, but I’m more proud [than] anything of seeing boys turn into men, going to weddings of players, seeing those guys give back and be involved in their communities, and be good husbands, be good fathers, be good role models. That’s the most rewarding.”
Asked about his on-the-field legacy, which includes getting the program off the ground and a 63-39 overall record with the Chants, he says, “We’re proud of that, proud to be a part of the history of Coastal Carolina football.”
Now the question is what becomes of his future?
DeCenzo said in the news conference Friday that Bennett had accepted a yet to be determined reassignment, though it sounds like that is no sure thing.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Bennett says. “I don’t know which way it will go.”
Yurachek said Saturday in regard to the university’s available budget to hire the next head coach that he still had to sit down with DeCenzo as well to figure out what will become of Bennett’s remaining contract -- a 10-year deal he signed in May of 2007.
But Bennett doesn’t want to get into any of that now, whether he hopes to coach again someday or whether he’s content to remain at Coastal Carolina in another capacity. Those are tough decisions yet to come.
Outside on his front porch late Sunday night, Bennett tells the story of how the family secured the lot for their house -- how it seemed meant to be. And earlier, he had reflected back on when he initially moved his family to Conway and they started visiting churches.
“We went to First United Methodist, and the preacher, he was pretty good,” Bennett says. “And the sermon he spoke on was about planting roots. He said, ‘Don’t just plant them shallow, plant them deep.’ Mel looked at me and said, ‘This is our church.’
“So when we go somewhere, we don’t want to pass through, we don’t want to plant roots shallow, we want to plant them deep. And we just feel like we’ve got some deep roots here.”
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CCU's Coach Bennett through the years
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