An amazing season complete, what’s next for the Coastal Carolina football program
Back in August, Coastal Carolina was picked to finish last in the Sun Belt Conference by the league’s head coaches and select media representatives, and just one CCU player was voted preseason First Team All-Sun Belt.
That’s not likely to happen again.
Instead of their predicted woeful season, the Chanticleers embarked on a wild ride that included a top-10 ranking, Sun Belt championship, undefeated regular season, epic Cure Bowl game against Liberty, and 10 nationally-televised games that captured the attention of the college football world.
The Chants ended the season 11-1 after a 37-34 overtime loss to No. 23 Liberty (10-1) on Saturday at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, and entered the game ranked ninth in the AP Top 25 Poll, 11th in the Amway Coaches Poll and 12th in the College Football Playoff rankings.
“There was a lot of great things that happened for our program, just the way we played and all the different things,” CCU coach Jamey Chadwell said. “We’ll look back on it fondly. I’m not going to let this loss diminish what we did accomplish, being Sun Belt champions. It is disappointing, we wanted to obviously win this game, but it won’t take away from the season we had.”
The season began with a 38-23 win at Kansas, where Chadwell surprisingly started redshirt freshman quarterback Grayson McCall and the Chants raced out to a 28-0 lead.
It included two wins over top 25 teams, as the Chants defeated then No. 21 Louisiana 30-27 on a last-second field goal on Oct. 14, and beat then No. 8 BYU 22-17 on Dec. 5 with a tackle at the CCU 1-yard line as time expired.
The Chants were scheduled to face Liberty that day, but the Flames were forced to cancel due to coronavirus cases within the program, and CCU and BYU agreed to play at Brooks Stadium just two days before the scheduled game.
The Cougars agreeing to fill in for Liberty allowed CCU to keep ESPN’s College GameDay show at the stadium that morning, which brought unprecedented national attention to the program.
The Chants also defeated four-time defending Sun Belt champion Appalachian State 34-23 on Nov. 21 with two touchdowns in the final 2:30, and kept their undefeated record alive with a 42-38 win at Troy in the regular season finale, scoring a touchdown in the final minute after Troy took the lead with 1:20 to play.
The CCU senior class, which endured an eight-game losing streak within a 3-9 record in 2017 and back-to-back 5-7 records in 2018-19, was able to lift the Chants to the top of the Sun Belt and into the national college football conversation.
“For us in FBS, they’ve built a foundation of what our expectations are going forward,” Chadwell said. “We’re expecting to win and compete for Sun Belt championships and be in bowl games every year and hopefully win bowl games. And they’ve put us at that position where now that’s an expectation, and that wasn’t what it was before. They’ve laid an unbelievable foundation.
“. . . When they look back on their time here they’ll be thankful for what they did and know 30, 40 or 50 years down the line from a program standpoint that they gave us the jumpstart we needed in the FBS to build this into a consistently winning program.”
Senior linebacker Silas Kelly said he’ll remember “how we played for each other and how we loved each other. I love each and every one of those guys, they’re all my brothers. It’s been a heck of a ride, though it didn’t end the way we wanted it to.
“. . . This is what can happen when you buy in. This season has been incredible. It’s been fun, the most fun I’ve ever had playing football. We had a lot of success and that’s what you can do if you buy in and play for each other.”
The Chants have a lot of upperclassmen and underclassmen returning, including quarterback Grayson McCall, who was named the Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year and is or was a finalist for multiple national awards.
“He’s got a maturity to him on the field that is hard to compare a lot of people to for him being so young,” Chadwell said. “He’s just got a great knack for the game and he’s competitive. He wants to make plays and he cares, he loves it, and that’s contagious. He’s obviously got talent and ability, but he’s just got a contagious spirit on the field where the guys want to play hard for him and compete for him, and that shows up.”
McCall believes the Chants will use Saturday’s loss to Liberty, which included a Flames fumble at the CCU goal line with 41 seconds to play in regulation and a blocked CCU field goal attempt to end the game, as motivation going into the offseason and 2021 season.
“I’m going to remember the relationships with my teammates and what we were able to accomplish this year,” McCall said. “Although this was a really tough way to end the season, we did a lot of great things this year not only for our team but the school and the community, so I’m grateful for it.
“I’d say it definitely motivates us, finishing like this. Now we know what it takes. We know what it takes to get here and now we know what it takes to have to come here and play a great team and finish. It’s definitely going to motivate us, and we’ll have a great offseason.”
Moving on
The NCAA has granted all fall athletes an extra year of eligibility because of the coronavirus pandemic, so even Coastal’s fifth-year seniors may have an opportunity to return.
A pair of those – center Sam Thompson and Kelly – have said they are considering a return to the team, and there are likely several other Chants weighing a return.
Players who aren’t planning to return include senior running back C.J. Marable and senior defensive end Tarron Jackson, who have declared for the NFL Draft, and backup junior quarterback Fred Payton, who has entered the Transfer Portal.
Marable is a First Team All-Sun Belt selection at two positions, and Jackson is the conference’s defensive player of the year. Payton started 11 games over three years, including the fifth game of the season when he led the Chants to a 28-14 win over Georgia Southern with McCall out due to an injury.
Coaching rumors
Chadwell has been named the CBS Sports/247Sports and Sporting News national coach of the year and may win other national coaching awards, and the success and recognition has led to Chadwell receiving attention from other programs.
His name came and went as a possible replacement for Will Muschamp at South Carolina, and it was mentioned for the open Vanderbilt job that was filled by Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea.
Though Chadwell signed a contract extension through the 2027 season that the school said resulted in a significant raise, Power Five programs still offer more, and that won’t deter any programs that might be interested in Chadwell becoming their next head coach.
His name might resurface when more Power Five and more lucrative Group of Five jobs become available this offseason and the foreseeable future, especially if the Chants are able to back up this year’s 11-1 record with another successful season if Chadwell remains in Conway.
Chadwell said in late November he wasn’t going to answer any more questions about being a candidate for openings, and he shared in November and this week how he handled the rumors and plans to handle future rumors with his team.
“I tried to approach it up front,” Chadwell said. “We were talking after practice and I brought it up to the team about the situation and rumors that were happening. And I told them they were rumors, if there was truth to them I would tell them, and to ask questions. I brought the captains in and if I did talk to another university I told them up front. I think you have to be up front and honest about that.
“. . . It gets challenging the more and more you win, no doubt, because your name might get tossed out for this, might get tossed out for that, it always gets tossed out. Until there’s a contract in front of me or something, then we figure we can talk about it, and that’s what I tell them.”
Chadwell said in November his focus was on making CCU a program that could have sustained success in the Sun Belt Conference.
“I want us and this program to be, the East Division has to come through Conway. That’s my goal and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish,” Chadwell said “. . . At the end of the day, and we’ve talked about this with our staff, this is a special place and I think we’re just scratching the surface of what’s going on here.”
Chadwell and his coaching staff certainly have the support of the players considering this year’s success.
“I’m thrilled to keep him at Coastal,” senior linebacker Silas Kelly said of Chadwell’s contract extension. “I think he’s an incredible coach, and he’s created a culture here along with coach Moglia that just leads to wins and leads to great teams. This is the closest team I’ve had since I’ve been in high school in terms of culture. That’s something that’s really special and unique that he brings to the table, and he does a great job of bringing the team together and having the teammates play for each other. So to keep him around at this university, it’s only up from here.”
Cashing in
Chadwell and his staff have earned a windfall of bonuses with the team’s success, though the loss Saturday cost them $200,000, according to Chadwell’s contract that was in place prior to an extension announced earlier this month.
Chadwell entered the season with a base salary of $375,000, according to a contract that was updated in April 2019, and his 10 assistants made between $80,000 and $152,000, with the exception of defensive coordinator Chad Staggs, whose salary was $240,000.
Chadwell’s contract called for a $200,000 bonus for a Sun Belt East Division title, $300,000 for a conference championship, $150,000 for a bowl invitation, and $400,000 for an end-of-season top 25 ranking. That adds up to $1.05 million.
The contract calls for 50 percent of the incentive payments to go to Chadwell, and 50 percent to be distributed to his assistants, staff and “program contributors” at the discretion of Chadwell and athletics chairman and former head football coach Joe Moglia, with required approval from the university president.
A bowl victory would have paid another $200,000. Chadwell’s contract also includes incentives for classroom performance measured by the Academic Progress Rate that considers eligibility, graduation and student retention of scholarship recipients within the program, with up to $150,000 possible. The bonus will be based on the 2019-20 APR computed by the NCAA.
Fun and focus
No team in the country had more fun than Coastal Carolina during the 2020 season, and the Chants managed to do it while maintaining their focus on the next game and their immediate task at hand.
The Chants let loose with celebrations in the locker room after wins, including a wild WWE-style wrestling extravaganza following a win over Georgia Southern that went viral on social media.
But the Chants’ discipline was exemplified by being the least-penalized team in the country among teams that played at least six games with 3.67 penalties per game.
“When you have freedom you have fun, and if you want freedom you have to be a little bit disciplined. The more disciplined the more freedom you have and the more fun you can have,” Chadwell said. “If we handle our discipline, if we do the things we’re supposed to do, and what I mean by that is if they’re going to class, if they’re doing what’s necessary, then they have more opportunities to have fun because they have more freedom because they’ve earned that right.
“I don’t think it’s hard at all. You want your guys to enjoy it. It’s a hard game. But before that fun comes there has to be a discipline and a buy-in to how you earn that fun. . . . That’s how we try to balance it, and when you have guys who have been in your program longer they get it. The ones who just get here, you have to teach them. And the ones that have been here awhile, they’ve bought into it, then they teach the young guys and that sort of takes care of itself.”
The leadership of the team’s upperclassmen including captains Jackson, Teddy Gallagher, C.J. Brewer and Trey Carter allowed the coaching staff to give the players some leeway.
“Our older guys have been phenomenal, our leadership has been outstanding,” Chadwell said. “Any time there might be somebody struggling with some of those [undisciplined] things, they have been the ones to handle it. From a team standpoint if you’ve got that type of leadership and coaches don’t have to do it, then you’ve got something great going.”
The Chants also managed to enjoy the season despite the coronavirus pandemic, playing 11 games before they had to cancel the Sun Belt Conference championship due to positive cases within their program.
“Even in the midst of a terrible year from the perspective of being a pandemic and all the different things that went on, our team was able to find joy in that, which made it a pretty special year for us,” Chadwell said. “To the credit of the staff and players we could have made excuses, but they didn’t, they found a way.”
This story was originally published December 28, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
