'Blue-collar, low-ego guy’ Willamette Bearcat is OSU interim football coach Kefense Hynson
Kefense Hynson had some important phone calls to make in the hours and days after being appointed interim head football coach at Oregon State University, not to donors or recruits, but to his mentors.
He reached out to at least a half-dozen coaches for guidance, including two former Willamette University coaches, once given the reins to a program surrounded by uncertainty.
Hynson played football, earned a bachelor’s degree in history and launched his coaching career in Salem at what was then an NAIA Division II school.
Dan Hawkins and Mark Speckman, whom Bearcat fans should know well, were on Hynson’s must-call list.
Hawkins was the coach at Willamette from 1993 to 1997, two years before Hynson became a Bearcat, but later gave Hynson a job on his Boise State staff.
Speckman, who coached at Willamette from 1995 to 2011, recruited Hynson, watched him develop into a standout defensive back, and gave him his first coaching job.
Both coaches, each with 40-plus years of experience, have followed his career and stayed in contact with him. Neither was surprised to hear from him after he accepted the interim job at OSU.
“It was typical of him,” Hawkins said. “Kefense is a very smart, humble person. Some guys would get that job and think, ‘OK, I’m going to show the world — which he can, and he will — but he’s smart enough to go, ‘Hey, I should ask some people some questions. Everybody’s got something to offer, let’s see what you've got.’”
Other mentors on speed dial for Hynson? Head coaches he worked for at Yale (Tom Williams) and Western Washington (Robin Ross) and two former Pac-12 coaches (Mike Riley and Chris Petersen).
“Those guys have done it,” Hynson said of his unofficial advisory council. “They’ve sat in the chair. They get it. They know what the pitfalls are, what to look out for and what to be ready for. It was great counsel, and I’m going to keep reaching out to them.”
Hawkins and Speckman are proud of Hynson's career, especially his latest opportunity.
“There’s like nine other guys they could have picked," Speckman said. "Obviously, it speaks to his leadership and his abilities.
“He’s in a tough spot, the way this whole thing’s gone down. There’s been a lot of interim coaches, but I don’t know if there's ever been one in this kind of situation.”
'This comes with the territory'
Hynson’s first chance to be a head coach came amid Jonathan Smith departing for the job at Michigan State and Oregon State announcing the promotion of defensive coordinator Trent Bray as his replacement.
It all happened in less than 72 hours.
Hynson has taken the whirlwind of events in stride, perhaps testimony as to why he would be chosen interim during this time of upheaval.
“If it doesn’t stop my heart from beating, I keep pushing,” Hynson told reporters Thursday after Oregon State's practice. “We chose to do this for a living. Every day I wake up I make the decision to come here and go to work. Nobody forces me to do it. This comes with the territory. It comes with football at this level.
“I’ve had experience with coaches retiring, coaches getting fired … You live and learn and grow from it and keep it all in perspective. I’ve got a beautiful wife and kids, I go home every day, and they don’t care anything about this. It’s all relative.”
For the record, Hynson said he did not know Smith was leaving until the Nov. 25 announcement, and he said Smith did not ask him to join his staff at Michigan State.
“The guy gave me a job when he didn’t know me, which is not normal in this business,” Hynson said. “I coached for him for six years. I learned a ton from him. So, I’m not going to let the business side of this thing ruin a real relationship. I refuse to do it.
“He’s a friend of mine. I love the dude, and I appreciate him, and that’s all that really matters at the end of the day.”
While several members of the Oregon State staff have followed Smith to East Lansing, others have committed to coaching the Beavers through a bowl game to be announced Sunday.
Fielding a staff will require some of the graduate assistants to backfill positions and take on added responsibilities.
“When I was a GA, I would have paid money to get that experience,” said Hynson, who is committed to the Beavers beyond the bowl game.
When asked if he was interested in returning next season, he told reporters: “I am coming back,” and confirmed he has already had those conversations with Bray.
Coaching plan for the bowl game
The immediate plan is for Bray and Hynson to split duties in the coming weeks. Bray will focus on putting a staff together and recruiting. Hynson will focus on preparing and coaching the team in its bowl game.
“I think that’s a good way to do it because he’s got a whole recruiting class to keep intact,” Hynson said. “We’ve got a really good group of kids on deck, and we don’t want to lose those guys. I do think it’s going to take some focus to do that."
The experience may change Hynson’s mind about wanting to be a head coach someday.
“I would have said no before this deal,” he said. “Now it’s to be determined.
“My experience so far has been awesome. It has kind of opened my eyes to what the job really is. I just think it’s a great opportunity to serve others in a greater capacity, and I’m into that.”
The road to Corvallis begins in Salem
Kefense Hynson — pronounced Kuh-Fence-A Hin-Son — grew up in Oakland, California. Willamette alumni records show he attended Saint Mary’s High School in Albany, California, near Berkeley.
Speckman recruited him to play defensive back at Willamette.
“He’s one of the few guys who reached out to me and connected with me,” Hynson told the Statesman Journal this week, describing the move from Oakland to Salem as a difficult transition.
He remembers Speckman encouraging him to stick with it, which he did, earning freshman of the year honors for the team in 1999.
Hynson was selected to the Northwest Conference all-conference team the next three years, the second team in 2001 and honorable mention in 2000 and 2002. He was a team captain as a senior.
“He was undersized, but was smart, tough and very intense,” said Speckman, who spoke about Hynson during a break on the recruiting trail for Clarion University of Pennsylvania, where he is the offensive coordinator for the NCAA Division II program. “He was an outstanding leader who usually let his play do the talking for him.”
With his leadership skills and Speckman’s influence, coaching was a natural path for Hynson. Speckman gave him his first job, assistant receivers coach for the Bearcats in 2003.
“I thought it would be a good experience for him to be on the other side of the ball,” Speckman said.
Hynson has been coaching on offense ever since, and he credits Speckman for instilling the importance of relationship-building.
“I love Speck,” Hynson said. “He taught me a whole lot about life, ball, and how to treat players.”
Speckman has watched Hynson’s career path like a proud father.
“He is a really outstanding football mind who is also an excellent teacher and communicator, and he is well-regarded in the coaching world,” Speckman said. “I am very excited for him. He is in a tough spot, but that’s where he excels.”
Coaching stints at Boise State, Yale, Montana
Hynson’s second job and introduction to NCAA Division I football came in 2004 at Boise State under Hawkins. His title was director of football operations, but he said he was more like a graduate assistant, working with recruiting and travel and wearing several administrative hats.
“That was the biggest growth I had in coaching, the time I was there,” Hynson said. “It was fun.”
Like Speckman, Hawkins was influential beyond just the X's and O's of football.
“He was an awesome big-picture thinker, an outside-the-box type of thinker,” Hynson said. “He showed you didn’t have to be a screamer, yeller or cusser type of guy to be successful. He’s been a resource for me ever since.”
Hawkins recently stepped down as the head coach at UC Davis but will remain a special assistant to the program.
Hynson spent one season as running backs coach at Minnesota-Mankato, then became the special teams coach at Western Washington. He was promoted to offensive coordinator the next season, a position he held until the university dropped the football program in early 2009 because of budget constraints.
“I’ve had experiences with tragedy in football, in the football sense,” Hynson said. “Yeah, you have to deal with crisis, but it is what it is. You just grow from it and learn from it. Nothing surprises me anymore in this business.”
He spent three seasons each at Yale and Montana, one at Norfolk State and two at Hawaii before joining Smith’s staff at Oregon State after the 2017 season.
'I'm a blue-collar, low-ego guy'
The program in Corvallis was a good fit for him. Growing up on the West Coast and watching the Pac-12, he said he has always been a Beavers fan.
“I’m a blue-collar, low-ego guy,” Hynson said. “Even when I was coming up, Oregon State always seemed like that kind of program. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t hype. It was just production. It just seemed like it was my speed.”
He is “Coach Fense” to his players, past and current. Using one word, some of them described him as intelligent, smooth, fresh, real and different in a video posted in 2019 on Facebook.
They also described him as a kid at heart, which one player explained is why it is so easy to get along with him. Another said Coach Fense is in tune with his players and easily relates to them, conversing about topics other than football.
The roots of that approach go back to his Willamette days.
“The people element of it can get lost at this level because there's just so many things, and it’s just a business,” Hynson said. “The purity at that level is something that's always stuck with me.”
While few people on the Willamette campus and in Salem may remember him from the late 1990s and early 2000s, he has at least one fan in Mike Allegre. The longtime voice of the Bearcats pointed out Hynson could be the highest-ranking college football coach among Willamette alums.
Allegre has followed Hynson’s career for years and appreciates the occasional glimpse during TV broadcasts of the former Bearcat working the Beaver sideline during a game, still recognizable but with gray stubble on his chin.
“Here’s a young man from small beginnings, all-conference, an outstanding player and leader,” Allegre said. “He’s in an odd situation, but I’m happy for him and very proud of him.
“I think it’s a great tribute to Bearcat football in the past.”
Capi Lynn is a senior reporter for the Statesman Journal. Send comments, questions and tips to her at clynn@statesmanjournal.com or 503-399-6710. Follow her work on Twitter @CapiLynn and Facebook @CapiLynnSJ.
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Oregon State football's Kefense Hynson has ties to Willamette Bearcats
