By Joseph D’Hippolito
PASADENA, Calif. — A 30-year-old bond forged in Morgantown will stretch nearly 2,500 miles Wednesday, when 11th-ranked Wisconsin meets seventh-ranked Oregon in the Rose Bowl.
Wisconsin head coach Paul Chryst and assistant Chris Haering will help guide the Badgers three decades after serving as graduate assistants at West Virginia under Don Nehlen, the Mountaineers’ all-time leader in victories and a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
“It was my first job,” said Chryst, who played at Wisconsin for three years. “Coach Nehlen was unbelievably great to me and that staff. It was a veteran staff, so I was really able to learn the profession. My dad coached and I played college football, but it was the first time I was approaching it as a coach, and it was a great experience. I feel fortunate getting the opportunity.”
Nehlen also served as a model for Haering, one of the Mountaineers’ best linebackers ever and a starter on the squad that almost finished undefeated in 1988. Only a loss to top-ranked Notre Dame in the 1989 Fiesta Bowl kept West Virginia from a possible national championship.
“The example coach Nehlen set not only for the players but also for the coaches (included) a lot of the things I value even today in the coaching profession,” Haering said. “It had a huge influence on me wanting to be a coach and also the way I coach.”
The relationship Haering and Chryst built extends beyond football.
“We’re friends first,” Haering said. “I know his family pretty well and he knows my family very well.”
Both coaches’ professional approach reflects that friendship.
“They are of like minds,” said Wisconsin assistant Inoke Breckterfield, who worked with both men at Pitt. “They bounce ideas off each other. You can tell there’s a lot of respect between them. They’re like brothers.”
Haering and Chryst first met during the spring semester of 1989. Haering had just finished his junior season while Chryst was continuing his studies for a Master’s degree in educational administration.
“I had a lot of respect and appreciation for how he played the game,” Chryst said.
As both men got to know each other, they discovered uncanny similarities.
“I spent a lot of time in Wisconsin as a kid,” said Haering, whose mother came from Green Bay. As a senior in high school, Haering took a recruiting trip to Wisconsin, where Chryst was playing at the time. Like Chryst, Haering’s father coached Division II football.
“So we grew up with the same stories, the same life lessons, the same values, the same way we saw the game,” Haering said, “a bunch of common ground from the standpoint of how you approach life, players, player development.”
With their approaches meshing, both men reached an obvious conclusion.
“We talked about, ‘Hey, maybe it would be fun someday to coach together,’ ” Haering recalled.
It would take more than two decades for that dream to become real.
Once Chryst received his Master’s, he became an assistant with the San Antonio Riders in the World League of American Football for two seasons. When the WLAF collapsed in 1992, Chryst joined the Division III program at Wisconsin-Platteville. From there, Chryst moved to the Canadian Football League, Illinois State, Oregon State and the NFL, where he spent three seasons coaching the San Diego Chargers’ tight ends. The Wisconsin native even returned to his alma mater for two tours as an assistant.
Haering, meanwhile, played in the spring of 1991 with the WLAF’s New York/New Jersey Knights before returning to Morgantown as a graduate assistant that fall. In 1994, the former linebacker became the head coach at Hampton High School, just north of Pittsburgh. The next year, he began a 17-year career as the head coach at Pittsburgh’s Mount Lebanon High School, where he compiled a 171-71 record.
“Our paths were really separate after the World League,” Haering said. “But we stayed in constant contact.”
Then, in 2012, Chryst received his first head coaching job at Pitt. Immediately, Chryst recalled his conversations with Haering at Morgantown.
“I always had the vision and the desire that if I ever got an opportunity to be a head coach, I wanted to do it with good guys who I knew were really good football coaches,” Chryst said. “He certainly fit that bill and then some.”
After receiving the job, the Panthers’ new coach contacted the former Mountaineers’ linebacker “probably within a couple of days,” said Haering, who became Chryst’s assistant in charge of linebackers and special teams.
“It was kind of a no-brainer at that point in time to take the opportunity,” Haering said. “It was him, the chance to work with him and the chance to coach in Pittsburgh, which was easy at that time on my family. We didn’t have to move.”
When Chryst became Wisconsin’s head coach in 2015, he brought Haering with him.
“I think he’s extremely detailed,” Chryst said. “Cares a ton about the players. As a person, he’s as good as there is.”
Haering believes his boss embodies identical qualities.
“There’s absolutely no ego in what he does,” Haering said. “He always puts players and the program ahead of him. He fights for the players and he fights for the program at every turn. That, to me, is really exciting.”
The two coaches’ dedication to friendship even surpasses any outcomes on the field.
“That’s something he and I talked about going into this thing,” Haering said about coaching together. “I said, ‘Hey, at some point in time, if this thing doesn’t go the way you want it to, and I’m not doing the job you need me to do, I’d rather you fire me before we ruin our friendship.’ ”
