Coach Bohl establishing his brand at Wyoming

On a coffee table in his well-appointed office, there is a nearly 160-year-old branding iron that will tell you a lot about the man who inhabits it — Wyoming football coach Craig Bohl — and his team.

It is an 1860s era implement with the letters “NB” inside a circle, passed down, he says, from his “great, great, great grandfather,” Neal, who was a Nebraska homesteader outside of Lincoln.

“I thought me, being a Cowboy football coach, that I should have a branding iron,” said Bohl, who is in the process of buying some cattle for the acreage he has bought.

Born and raised in the Cornhusker State and schooled in football at the University of Nebraska, where he played defensive back and coached for Tom Osborne, the 60-year-old, bolo-headed Bohl comes by a belief in hard-nosed, no-nonsense power football.

At North Dakota State, where he won three FCS national championships in going 104-32, and, now, at Wyoming, where he has delivered the first back-to-back winning seasons (8-6 in 2016 and 8-5 in 2017) in 28 years, Bohl has put his brand on his teams.

At Wyoming (2-3, 0-1 Mountain West), the Cowboys have just two sets of uniforms — one for the road you’ll see Saturday night at Aloha Stadium, and one at home — and only one helmet, by Bohl’s mandate. No mixing and matching. And none of them with players’ names on them.

There is also a belief in developing players, which is part of why there are few junior college players and why few commitments are sought until prospects are in their senior season.

Even then, Bohl is realistic enough to know that the Cowboys can land few, if any, three-, four- or five-star prospects. Instead they make a living on unearthing and developing overlooked players. They did it with quarterback Carson Wentz at North Dakota State and with quarterback Josh Allen, who was a first-round pick in this year’s NFL Draft, and safety Andrew Wingard, a two-time All-Mountain West Conference safety, at Wyoming.

Even with Allen, Wyoming still power-ran the ball most of the time.

Wingard says he and his teammates, many like himself who arrived “with a chip on our shoulders” after receiving little recruiting interest elsewhere, have bought into the Bohl style.

So, too, have the people of Wyoming. Success has come hard to football in the nation’s least populous state. Natives have nicknamed it “Stepping Stone Tech” for all the football coaches who have come and been quick to depart. The average length of stay over the past half century has been 3.5 years.

That Bohl is in his fifth season and has signed a contract to take him through 2023, when he will be 65, and the way he has gone about it, has helped him earn a following in the state he frequently visited as a youngster and where he has plans to retire as a rancher.

“I think you always hear the term — sometimes it is overused — about fitting in,” Bohl said. “I’ve always believed for a coach to fit in and for the football program to fit in, it has got to reflect the nature of the state that you are representing.”

Bohl said, “Though it is probably overstated, many times you hear about a head coach’s brand on the football team, so I think all those things mesh and there is a lot of wisdom and truth to that. My wife and I have thoroughly enjoyed the state of Wyoming and have gotten to know the people in our state. It is someplace that we really feel comfortable. It has been a joy for me to be here five years and, hopefully, I’m gonna keep on coaching until they run me out of town.”

Until then, the branding iron, which he is looking to have licensed in Wyoming for his ranch, remains front and center in the head coach’s office.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.