MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. – The Matt Drinkall experience is unprecedented and still unequaled success atop an NAIA program and as key cog across six seasons of Jeff Monken’s Army football renaissance.
It is an unflinching demand for toughness - smart toughness, "because we will not get into fights" -- and an intense care stretching beyond the lights of Kelly/Shorts Stadium, "the MAC's largest on-campus stadium," into the lives of players coaches and everyone who touches Drinkall's reemerging Central Michigan program.
THE DRINKALL EXPERIENCE
All of it is on display on this dreary day, the last in March when a light rain-snow pierces the CMU campus and a 6:40 a.m. arrival to the Chippewa Champions Center means finding Drinkall, 100-plus days into his first-ever FBS head coaching post, already in his third hour in the facility.
Drinkall doesn’t expect these pre-rooster-crowing hours of everyone; he wants coaches, same as players, to tailor to their skills.
Coach Drink attacks the hours that many college students see on the front end – on their ways to bed – the way his Army offensive line, Joe Moore Award winners in 2024 and driving force in Drinkall being FootballScoop’s Offensive Line Coach of the year, did en route to the Black Knights’ 11-win, American Athletic Conference championship.
Most every assistant coach is in by 5:30 or 6, ahead of team meeting at 7 and practice following positional meetings. Drinkall likes the staggering structure to staff arrivals because it ultimately gets more manhours into the day for Central Michigan football.
“I like those early hours and can’t wait to get in here, kind of like the first shift and Ayden (Opfer, CMU general manager), comes in around 6 and can work a little later, like a second shift,” Drinkall tells FootballScoop, calling the fast-rising Opfer his secret weapon in the Chips program. “And if we’re done and I need to leave mid-afternoon or the coaches need to leave, they know they can.
“We want to impact the quality of life of every person in our program; coaches, players, staff, all. That’s a chance to do an unbelievable thing to me.”
CULTURE CANDY
Which is why culture trumps everything in the building-block days of Drinkall’s program.
And why candy bars show the dichotomy of Drinkall.
The guy who insists all his coaches and as many players and other members of the program keep the Yuka app on their phone – “it tells you all the stuff that’s in your food and the shit in cosmetics, things you wouldn’t believe” – can’t wait to toss out candy bars in team meetings.
Only two options: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, or Twix.
‘Culture candy.’ Dual treats. Drinkall experience.
“I had a bad habit when I was young, I would stay on point so much that I would only point out critical things,” Drinkall says, making the underground walk from the Chippewa Champions Center over to the team’s indoor practice field and acknowledging flattery in imitation as Monken doles out Paydays for his Army players. “I was like 25 at the time, and Jeff Girsch, now head coach at Angelo State, told me, ‘Hey, at some point, you gotta catch these guys doing something right.’ So, I always thought about that.
“The culture candy, we only give out two kinds: we give out Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Twix. Each one of them is two things, because anytime a player demonstrates a behavior that is an individual person aligning himself with the program, those two things come together as one, then it’s a Reese’s or Twix and we want to acknowledge that in front of everybody and give those out.”
Drinkall’s pace accelerates when he reveals a CMU tight end is the recent recipient of ‘Culture candy’ because high school coaches see the player picking up trash in the meeting room.
Ayden Opfer (left), Central Michigan's general manager, is among Matt Drinkall's first hires at CMU, following him from Army and viewed by peers as among the top young risers in the burgeoning G.M. space in college football due to his work in the sport at various programs, as well as valuable experience in an athletics administrative role at Army. Photo, John Brice/FootballScoop
Offensive coordinator Jim Chapin, a Troy, Michigan, native back home on the heels of attention-demanding efforts orchestrating FCS program Eastern Washington ’s offense, delights in talking about a trip to an area business.
“Actually, I was at a furniture store here in town last (month) and the rep said, ‘Hey, we had one of your quarterbacks in here last week,’” says Chapin, a Michigan grad with memories – and photos – of his trips to Central Michigan youth basketball camps and football games. “And he said I’ll be rooting for his success but what a great kid, respectful, great representative of the football program.
“It was an ‘Ah-ha’ moment, and I think it’s spreading like wildfire, the positive impacts that they’re having on the community here and we want that continue here.”
After four days due to a mini-break in the academic calendar and Drinkall’s aversion to weekend spring practices for his players, a full-ad, 18-period practice is coming, and “ah-ha” moments or otherwise, the Chippewas are daily learning the standard.
“We are gonna be the most violent team in America,” Chapin says inside CMU’s team room, moments before practice. “We are not going to fight. We are not going to take the bait.
“We’re going to let them know they’re too little and go back to the huddle.”
PACE: UNSPOKEN PILLAR
If culture is king and Drinkall wills a program ethos of teaching football, recruiting and building real relationships, pace is the unspoken – impossible to miss – pillar.
An 18-period practice, with precise TV timeouts to mirror those pauses on gamedays, presents a tempo that seems implausible for a first-year program with myriad new players and all-new coaches and systems.
Yet, there are no fights; defensive linemen and offensive linemen walk through de facto handshake-lines following individual drills; no one absorbs or delivers any unnecessary violence in a practice that marks its finish at 10:31.
“The way they show care for us, getting us more food than we’ve ever gotten. The locker room is spotless, we don’t come in seeing trash all over the place,” says Michael Heldman, a Romeo, Michigan, native and fifth-year senior defensive lineman with options to leave for more money but bent on one final chance to deliver a conference title. “Just forcing it on us to be great instead of just telling us to and guys don’t listen. He’s forcing us to.
“I come in one-on-one with Coach Drink and the energy was there. The care was there. The focus in the eyes and the conversation, the way he was trying to lift me up. We do game nights as a team, the ‘Culture candy’ is setting in. Whether it was something small, something big, we were congratulating and trying to uplift guys.”
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Corners coach Christian Dukes brings Midwest roots and MAC experience from a strong career at Toledo to Sean Cronin's defensive staff. Photo, John Brice/FootballScoop
After the 7 a.m. team meeting sees everyone present and Drinkall outlining acceptable versus unacceptable penalties by 6:58, staff meeting is at 11:30; it starts at 11:28.
There is a fleeting moment of the Drinkall experience.
The head coach briefly discusses before the room fills in that there are documents – CIA docs, it turns out – being released that reveal America’s top spy agency’s search for Adolf Hitler in Argentina full decade after Hitler’s death.
Every aspect of the program is discussed, every staffer inside has a voice and wasting time is no different than an inexcusable penalty; no one does it.
PROGRAM BLUEPRINT
Drinkall reasserts his recruiting platform throughout the day.
“The first week we went out recruiting, we only went out in Michigan; believe we went to 86 schools,” says the Iowa native and still Kansas Wesleyan’s single-season winningest coach. “And every coach on staff has a primary area in the state of Michigan, and they wear that area out.
“So, when we went out, it was like, ‘Listen, I know what you guys think. You got a MAC offer? No shit. So do 80,000 other people. We are not going to operate like the rest of the MAC is.’ I think there’s been a devaluing of the football in this league, and it used to be how awesome it was.
“The problem was, a lot of coaches took jobs at these schools as in-between jobs and were like, ‘I’m doing this job for a couple years and then moving on.’ Inevitably, there are parts of this that do happen, but for us, to me, at Central Michigan, the thing we can build and believe that very few other teams have the ability to build is stability. Look, Miami of Ohio and Ohio the reason they’re so successful, they’ve had stability for so long. We’re a good school. We’ve got 246,000 alumni; that’s freaking insane, dude. Really good grad programs. We’ve got alums everywhere.”
CMU offensive coordinator Jim Chapin (left) brings Michigan roots and offensive innovation to the Chips. Photo, John Brice/FootballScoop
Chapin knows the days of the Chips winning 38 games from 2006-09, with first Brian Kelly and then Butch Jones at the helm. Mike Bajakian’s offense. Zach Azzanni recruiting and coaching a raw wideout from South Florida. Antonio Brown.
So, Chapin preaches his predator mindset -- attack, aggressive, confident, apply pressure on the defense – with first-hand experience of seeing previous iterations of the Chips on the hunt.
“Central Michigan is incredibly special to me,” says Chapin, already in his third year as a high school football coach while earning his Michigan degree in 2009. “And Coach Drink, to get that call; I knew enough of him from his background, clinics, podcasts he had done. I was very shocked to be having that conversation [about being CMU’s play-caller].
“But I was excited to be working for Coach Drinkall, and then at Central Michigan was almost incomprehensible. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I was just overcome and really grateful for the opportunity. When I was a high school coach in Michigan, I actually came up here to watch their practices when Butch Jones was the head coach and Mike Bajakian was the offensive coordinator. I was a 20-year-old college student who didn’t know anything about football but was so grateful and Central Michigan has always been special to me.
“I think we can hopefully get Central Michigan back to what those guys did 15 years ago.”
To get there, Drinkall will blend past with present. Back-helmet guards for the Chips are going to feature either Kramer or Deromedi. It’s not-so-subtle nod to the program’s dominance under the guidance of Roy Kramer and Herb Deromedi, the two combining for 193 wins and the program’s 1974 NCAA Division II national championship in their 27 concurrent seasons at the helm.
He wants a clear brand for CMU, old-school uniforms and teams who make foes dread seeing the throwback threads on a program he intends to be punishing but innovative; homegrown from the Midwest with key roster additions from anywhere necessary.
“Sign a roster-full of 6-foot-2 to 6-foot-4 guys that are the toughest pricks you can find and who are great people who have some position flexibility,” Drinkall says, wrapping a day that includes obsessing over Central Michigan’s new-old uniform samples for the coming season. “If you have a roster full of that and your quarterback won’t turn it over, you’re a tough out. I don’t know that you’re going to win them all, but you’re hard to beat when you do that. You do what you can.
“This community and up to about 45 minutes around us, all the communities feed off this place and love this place. They’ve been great to us. And it’s a really good fit for me, I’m a blue-collar guy and this place, I’m very, very aligned with the people of this place.”
President. Athletics director. Football coach. Insert handshake emoji.
“It’s always like, ‘What can we do for you?’ They’re both awesome,” Drinkall says. “Our A.D. (Amy Folan) is as tough of a human being you’ve ever been around, and she has awesome insight. She was at Texas for a number of years and has an unbelievable knowledge in this space that she can pass on.
“Our president (Neil MacKinnon) got here 30 days before me and is super-young, energetic, morale-boosting dude. Just awesome.”
Welcome to the experience.
Matt Drinkall looks on at practice, ready to restore Central Michigan to MAC contender and Group of Five power. Photo, John Brice/FootballScoop