Wofford introduces Josh Conklin as new head football coach

Wofford went outside the immediate family for a football head coach but kept things relative.

Josh Conklin, a former Wofford assistant, was introduced Wednesday at a news conference in his return to campus.

Conklin is sort of like the distant cousin who came to stay for a while and was a favorite by the time he left. He was here from 2007-09 as coach of defensive backs and special teams. For the past three seasons, he has been defensive coordinator at Pitt, a team that last year knocked off eventual national champion Clemson and this year previously second-ranked undefeated Miami.

And he came home anyway.

“It was too good of an opportunity to pass up,” Conklin said.

Conklin, 37, replaces Mike Ayers, the legendary figure who coached Wofford for 30 years. Ayers retired last month after leading the team to its fifth Southern Conference championship and eighth berth in the FSC playoffs since 2003. The Terriers finished their second straight 10-win season (for the first time in NCAA Division I program history) with another trip to the national quarterfinals.

When Conklin left Wofford, it was to be defensive coordinator at The Citadel for two years. He then spent one year as an assistant at Tennessee, two more years as coordinator at Florida International and has been at Pitt since 2015. He was an assistant at South Dakota State, a former graduate assistant, when hired by Ayers.

“When you look to become a head coach,” Conklin said, “you want to come to a place that is first-class academically and understands what it takes to win and is committed to winning. I feel like Coach Ayers has done such a tremendous job of that.

“It’s a huge responsibility. Obviously, I’ve been in some pressure-filled situations in my career and this will match it just because of what he was able to accomplish and the quality of man he is and the top of integrity he has and what he established here at Wofford. I’m not going to be Mike Ayers. I have to be me. But I understand what this place is all about and what he established here. I’ll try to move that forward.”

Conklin said he wasn’t looking to leave Pitt and was actually caught off-guard when he got that first call from Wofford athletics director Richard Johnson.

“I was surprised,” Conklin said. “When they reached out to me, I went to my wife and family. We all felt I owed it to myself to take a look at this because it’s just an incredible opportunity. It’s such a unique place and a place I understood. I didn’t know which direction they would want to go. But as we went through the process, it just seemed more and more of a fit.”

Conklin is married to the daugher and granddaugher of Wofford graduates. He said he met Molly after a 2007 playoff game at Gibbs Stadium. So there is that family angle as well.

Johnson said there were highly qualified in-house candidates — three of them, he said, who interviewed — but that Conklin rose to the top in discussions with school president Nayef H. Samhat and a small group of advisers.

“We had great candidates already here,” Johnson said. “We went through an exhaustive process and everybody had their chance to share a vision. But Josh brings an experience that others might not be able to bring to the table.

“Like the others, though, he gets us, having been an assistant here for three years and working under Mike Ayers as well as many of the coaches on our staff. On top of that, he has great experience. He has the breadth and depth of experience that is hard to get, frankly. So he had the complete package.”

Conklin said he does not anticipate replacing any staff members, many of whom he worked with during his time at Wofford.

“I’m not going to just come in here and not give everybody an opportunity to stay,” Conklin said. “It’s such a good staff, recognized around the country as a good staff. I’ve known a lot of these guys. I will say that I’ll go through the job of talking to them. I hope they would like to stay.”

Another question has been whether Wofford will continue with the option-style of offense that has been a staple for half a century.

“As a defensive coordinator, I know that offense that is difficult to defend,” Conklin said. “That is the worst week of the year when you get ready to play the triple option. Yes, I would like to keep some semblance of the triple option. On the flip side of that, I want to continue to innovate and push things forward just like Coach Ayers and (longtime offensive coordinator) Wade Lang have done. We’re going to look at all those things and see if we can open it up a little more, whatever we can do to score points in a football game.”

Johnson said he didn’t necessarily want to hire someone with Wofford connections, but had Conklin in mind among current and former assistants.

“When they come here and they move on, if you were impressed with them, you track their careers,” Johnson said. “When I watched him, he had a quiet, easy manner about him. But he was driven. He was passionate. I got that in my evaluations from former players, too. He was very well-liked and respected.

“Josh is not coming here because he didn’t have job security. He had plenty of that. And Josh is not coming here to get to the next level. He was at the next level. He’s coming here because when he was here, this is what he found was appealing to him.”