BALL STATE

With a sick feeling in his gut, Mike Neu is hungry for 2017

Dakota Crawford
dcrawford@muncie.gannett.com
Ball State Head Football Coach Mike Neu talks with The Star Press in his office Tuesday morning about his first year as a collegiate head coach.

MUNCIE, Ind. — Mike Neu is somewhere between totally down and entirely fired up. Maybe its both.

In a sit-down interview with The Star Press on Tuesday, the former Ball State quarterback, who just wrapped up his first year coaching the program, talked frequently about recruiting. He was prepping for a series of visits starting Wednesday that'd take him away from team facilities and quite literally put his 4-8 debut season in the rear view.

"At it," Neu huffed, with his regular enthusiasm. "Recruiting. We're at it, getting guys in here that can get us where we want to go."

He's now 58-53 as a head coach, which includes time in the Arena Football League and the AFL 2. Neu, an Indianapolis native, has seen the ups and downs of this profession with 14-win and 11-loss seasons alike.

This year, though, was his first with a college team. And it was his college team, where he played four seasons and won a Mid-American Conference Championship. That's why during Thanksgiving dinner — the first he's spent with his extended family in Indianapolis in several years — he was a bit of a sourpuss. While he wanted to think ahead to what can be accomplished with the Cardinals, he's been stuck dwelling on this year.

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"This is the most recent, so I have a sick feeling in my gut," Neu said. "There's no worse feeling than coming back and you finish the season at 4-8. You know, I don't care what the situation or what the dynamic was going into the season, I expect to win. ...

"I hope people are disappointed, because I would hope people expect more than that. The Muncie community, Ball State students, Ball State fans, so I'm disappointed. I don't sugar coat anything. I'm one of those guys that the results aren't what they need to be, so we need to make sure that we turn the page.

"The next chapter has started now and we've got to get after it."

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While hardly satisfied with results on the field, Neu can hang his hat on a sustained culture shift that began this preseason. Players were excited, back then, about the youthful, energetic assistants — including an entirely new defensive staff — who were making football fun again. Even after a season that ended with a MAC-worst five-game losing streak, that shift stuck.

"It's completely different," said fifth-year senior KeVonn Mabon, one week before setting the program record for career receptions in the team's season finale. "We've been on a losing streak, but we're still having a positive mindset in the locker room and in the building."

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Neu said he has no doubt his assistants are the right guys for the job, and feels they've meshed through the year. There are some areas they need to improve in, he said, and they all know this is a results-oriented business that comes down to, again, recruiting. But in the meantime, he's worked to keep them enthused even when things were rough.

There was the one-score loss to Northern Illinois at home, the road win thrown away at Central Michigan, the last-minute flop on senior night and the 1-point, season-ending loss at Miami. So many opportunities for defining moments were missed by Ball State this season.

"They committed, and I told them that the night after the game at Miami," Neu said. "It was never a question in my mind that those guys were into it, ready to play, leaving it all on the field. That's all I can ask as a coach, is for those guys to be willing to do that. There were some days, certainly, that were tougher than others around here."

But he knows where players look during tough moments: "The players get their cue from you, so if you're not upbeat, positive, creating an atmosphere of approaching it like, 'Why can't we win every game we play?' then why would they believe that? The goal every single week is to make sure that we move on — good, bad or indifferent."

And that'll be the tone this offseason, as Mike Neu moves ahead to Year 2.

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Ball State head coach Mike Neu during their game against Eastern Michigan at Scheumann Stadium Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016.

The old quarterback is perhaps most excited about this: Ball State can take a significant step toward capitalizing on those defining moments with one fix.

"If we just eliminate the turnovers, the outcome of the season is very different," Neu lamented. "We can control that. That can fall on our shoulders. That doesn't have anything to do with 25 new players coming in the building."

Again, he thinks back to recruiting before visualizing quarterback Riley Neal as a junior. Neu knows that his young quarterback's touchdown-to-interception ratio (13-to-12) took its toll on the win-loss column. But Neu knows something other players, coaches and fans don't.

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From the outside looking in, it seemed like Neu had to stick with Neal. He was simply the most athletic and skilled QB on the roster. His decision making was shaky, sure, but when Jack Milas filled in for him against Western Michigan, well, we saw that his choices on the field weren't without fault either.

So Neu had all of that, but he's got his own experiences too.

"When you're a quarterback, the only way you can learn from that is for it to happen to you," Neu said. "That's not a good period of time, when that happens to you. It's happened to me, it's happened to a lot of guys. The only way you truly understand what that situation is like ... is to have it happen to you."

The losses that peppered Neu's return to his Alma Mater won't be easy to shake. He'll probably be down for a while, but he's still fired up.

"I want to win every game," Neu said. "I'm a competitor. You don't go out, and, look, my goal is not going to change; I want to win a MAC Championship. That's not going to change. I want to win a MAC Championship. Period.

"That is the only goal."

Find Ball State reporter Dakota Crawford on Twitter: @DakotaCrawford_.