Andy Frye Looks Back On His Centre College Coaching Career

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Andy Frye will begin his 28th season as Centre College’s head football coach when the Colonels host Hanover tonight. He joined the Centre coach staff in 1989 as an assistant under Joe McDaniel before succeeding him as head coach after the 1997 season.

Frye is already the school’s all-time winningest coach with a 180-88 mark and the Colonels are coming off an 8-3 season that included a Southern Athletic Association championship and NCAA Division III playoff appearance.

Frye, 66, admits he has started to think about retirement after having some hip issues and knows his coaching longevity depends on his health. That’s one reason he gives his coaching staff the entire month of July off to recharge physically, emotionally and mentally.

“I tell them if I see them in the office in July, I’ll fire you. June’s recruiting is so intense. You just need a break,” Frye said.

Frye shared these other insights on his background and more before preseason practice got underway.

Question: Did you originally come to Centre College as the head track coach?

Frye: “What happened was I was at Muskingum and (Centre football coach) Joe McDaniel contacted Jeff Haycock about whether he had anybody that might be good for Centre and Jeff mentioned me. They asked if I would be interested and at first I wasn’t.  But what did interest me was the people. I’d never heard of Centre but higher education had and the people that I was working with kept telling me you need to look at Centre.

“It paid a lot more. Well, when I say a lot more is a relative thing. I had been working on my doctorate at Muskingum and they were paying for it. I got to the point where I said  am I going to get out of coaching and get into higher education? I decided, let’s just see where this takes us. I knew at Muskingum, I wasn’t going anywhere. Jeff was there. He was there until  2010 and was head coach for 30 years. The family was big at Muskingum. Jim Haycock was the associate head coach at Ohio State under Jim Tressel for 12 years and  was my position coach in college.  John Haycock was my teammate and is the defensive coordinator at Iowa State.

“The Haycock was a big family name at Muskingum and I just knew if I wanted to be a head football coach it was not going to be at Muskingum. I thought if I was at Centre, I might have a better chance to be a head football coach if that’s what I wanted.”

Question: Did you coach track and wrestling at one time?

Frye: “You got to remember back in small college everybody had to do two sports. That was just how they maintained small college athletics. If you were hired here, you did this, you did that. Even when I came here, remember Joe McDaniel was also the golf coach. I came here (as an assistant football coach) and they said you are going to be the track coach. The funniest part is I coached wrestling at Muskingum. I was at Ohio University when I interviewed at Muskingum. I get hired as an assistant football coach but they also said I was going to be the wrestling coach. I didn’t know anything about wrestling. They told me if I won the conference in wrestling I was fired because I was hired to coach football. But we were pretty good in wrestling because Ohio (high school) wrestling was so good.”

Question: So how did it go coaching track at Centre College?

Frye: “I think Herb McGuire was coaching the women’s track team, and I had the men’s track. Our track team was good because I got all the football players out. Back then you didn’t have spring practice, so what else were they going to do? We had some kids who could run but track was just kind of what they did to stay in shape.”

Question: How many years did you do that?

Frye: “I was a head track coach until I became the head football coach in 1998. They said, ‘Okay, you’re not the head track coach anymore, but you’ve got to coach the throwers.’ So I coached the throwers. That’s how it is at a small college. When I was at Muskingum, I coached tennis, wrestling and track. That’s just what you do.”

Question: So did your background make you more open to having football players participate in another sport on campus?

Frye: “The toughest thing right now is, and I always wanted guys to run track as part of their college experience, but now we’re practicing football in the spring. I’m competing against schools that are practicing football, and if we’re not doing it, you get behind. Quite frankly, your best football players probably would be really good track guys. Our rule is if you’re recruited as a track athlete to be a football player, then you do track. You can run track, but you’re playing football first.”

Question: What was the biggest thing you learned working under Joe McDaniel before taking over for him as head coach? Is there anything you learned that’s still helping you today?

Frye: “He was very detailed. He crossed every T and dotted every I, and quite honestly I learned a lot more dos from Joe than the previous coaches. I learned a lot of don’ts from others but with him I felt like I learned what to do. The biggest one I took away was the details. He made sure everything was taken care of.  He was a great teacher. Coaching is teaching effectively and then being able to motivate what you teach. Joe wasn’t a rah-rah type guy, but his expectation was if you don’t do it, there’ll be a consequence.  The other thing I would say, Joe was very consistent. You know this is how he does it.”

Question: What impressed you the most about Centre College when you first arrived in Danville 36 years ago?

Frye: “When I came here there were not a lot of colleges that were playing football, so we were able to get some really good football players for this level. People have always asked me if football now is better than it was then? It’s better and one of the biggest reasons is back then teams only carried 75 to 80 players. What happens is your first two groups are good football players but you’re practicing your third group as your scout team. They’re horrible. They’re guys that you’re just filling in.  Now we have more players and our scout team kids are going to be starters one day and maybe even eventually better than the first-teamers they are practicing against. So now every time you practice, you’re going against really good football players. I remember when I came in we had some really good players but the team didn’t have any depth. That’s way different now.”

Question: Centre named its football stadium complex after you in 2022. Has it gotten to the point you’re used to that now or not?

Frye: “That was very kind of them but I’m just not into that. Quite honestly, I don’t think about it. My son and my daughter are thrilled. And (my wife) Cindy … I mean she’s the one that really raised the family. She should have her name up there because if you’re gonna highlight something, she’s the one that did it all.”

Question: When you are recruiting, do you mention the trip your team took to Scotland in May and how you like to do that as often as possible?

Frye: “It’s a huge recruiting edge. We hit that hard. The NCAA actually changed the rule on foreign trips. It used to be every four years, and then they changed it to every three years to give everybody the opportunity in their four-year career to get a chance to experience something like this. That’s where we can make sure everybody goes on a trip. We missed when COVID hit and that group didn’t get a chance to experience that in 2020. It’s your non-graduating seniors and guys that were on the team in spring practice that are eligible to go.”