SDSU football head coach talks taking over for a legend, expectations for next season

When college football kicks off in August, the South Dakota State Jackrabbits will be the favorite to repeat as FCS National Champions.

They’ll also be under new leadership.

First-year head coach Jimmy Rogers is new to the position, but definitely not new to the program. He is a Jackrabbits football alum and captained the program’s first FCS playoff team in 2009.

In 2013, Rogers returned to his alma mater to coach the Jackrabbit linebackers. He was promoted to assistant head coach after the 2019 season, and in 2022, he helped lead the program to its first FCS National Championship as the team’s defensive coordinator.

The Argus Leader spoke with Rogers about being the man to replace the winningest coach in program history, his relationship with his predecessor John Stiegelmeier and the expectations for the Jackrabbits this fall.

Editor's note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Argus Leader: How did it feel, with your long history at SDSU and your history with John Stiegelmeier, to be named the head coach and take over the football program?

Rogers: It's pretty special. It's special for one because I was a part of the buildup to the Division I era and started my career really when that happened. And then to become a coach and assistant coach and kind of work my way up and be a part of it with a bunch of good teammates and good coaches, I mean, it's been a blessing. And to do it with Coach Stig, who has been like a father figure to me − to replace, really the legend here, all-time winningest coach, it means a lot.

But it has to be difficult in some way to follow the winningest coach in SDSU history right? I know it's very early in your tenure as head coach, but have you noticed that at all?

Rogers: Somebody always asks me if I'm nervous, because the expectation here has been to win the national championship. So, it's another year with a different team trying to accomplish the same goal. I'm not overly concerned about the public opinion of myself. That's for the public to decide. My job is to try to get this team to win games and win another national championship, and to make sure that they do what they're supposed to do on and off the field. I don't really get too caught up in the hype of all this, I'm just going to give it my best.

With Stiegelmeier’s legacy being the winningest coach in program history and winning for a long time, have you thought at all about what you want your legacy to be with this program?

Rogers: No, it's really out of my control. I just try to do my best to do my part to have success for everybody around me, honestly. This place has never been built on one particular person, and it won't be moving forward. It's about a collective team, program, university and that's going to stay the focus. That's why it’s so special. Because of the selfless acts of everybody around this program that gives it their best.

What's a favorite Stiegelmeier story that you have? With the long relationship you’ve had with him, I'm curious if there's any story that stands out to you.

Rogers: Probably the story that stands out the most is him giving me the opportunity to come here as a student-athlete, just because I wasn't highly recruited. He believed in me, regardless of who wasn't recruiting me, so I'll never forget that. Just him asking me why I don't think I'm getting recruited and me telling him I didn't know. I had ideas that I was too short, too slow, but he believed in me, and I came here and bought into the program and his culture and tried my best for the last 18 years of my life. It's kind of hard to come up with just one story. He’s been like a mentor to me. He's been really patient with me, and he's been a blessing in my life.

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I've also read that the SDSU defensive coordinator when you were playing, Jay Bubak, told Stiegelmeier that you impacted SDSU football more than anyone in the program. What does it mean to have someone say that about you, especially in the early stages of your career?

Rogers: It means a lot. It means a lot more from who it's coming from, because I respected and still respect Jay Bubak to death. He was a big part of my development as a player. He's also a part of my development as a coach earlier on and just watching him with his own life, how he treated people, and how he put his family first. So, for me, it means a lot.

Last year you were the sole defensive coordinator, how's your role shifted in the day-to-day?

Rogers: Still involved with the defense, but my focus has gone to the full team more than it ever has. I'm going to oversee the defense with Jesse Bobbit, and he's going to run it. I'm also going to trust myself on the offensive side of the ball too and help them out as well. As far as in game situations, those are my calls moving forward in the critical moments of the game. So that is going to be my focus, more so than anything is just making sure as a full team that we're running and operating smoothly, but I empower and entrust my coaches to do the best job that they can do.

Everything I've seen, in terms of next season, looks like you guys are favored to repeat as national champs in the FCS, especially with the amount of talent you have returning. Are you and your team feeling any kind of pressure to repeat next year?

Rogers: The pressure that we create is on ourselves, and I think that pressure is good. When you have really high expectations and you don't settle for being average, I don't know if there's much more pressure that we can put on ourselves more than what we naturally do intrinsically. So, for the world, that judges us on how we're going to go, (it) may affect the kids some just with the pressure, but we handle the pressure. And the pressure was to win the national championship last year, and we did it. There's extrinsic pressure from the outside for sure, but that hasn't changed our opinion on what we believe we can do or are capable of doing. So (we're) just excited for the next challenge with a new team, and we're going to give it our best.

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How do you address the outside pressure with your team?

Rogers: It gets addressed early in the year and then we get focused back on how we need to act on a daily basis. You don’t win the national championship in one day. You win the national championship by what you do every day. So to get the kids to understand that and to realize that nothing's guaranteed, and nothing's promised to you, and you still got to go out and work it, you got to work just as hard because there's a target on your back, I think people in the league know what South Dakota State football is capable of. So to say that we didn't get everybody's best shot before would be unrealistic. We've been taking everybody's best shots for a while now. But for us, we just really focus on ourselves and try to win the day and give our best on a daily basis. I think that's how you become a champion is by acting like a champion,. That doesn’t just happen on one day in Frisco, Texas. It happens through a routine of living your life.

You've coached talented defensive players in your time with SDSU and you always seem to get the most out of them. What's been the key to getting the most out of the talent on your team?

Rogers: Believe in them, push them, test the boundaries as far as physically how far they can take themselves, and then really challenging them in the meeting room and constantly harping on things until they get it right. We teach the action, not the result. So a kid is taught on every single play how he could have done it better, or if it was good enough. I don't base it on, 'Hey, you did this really well because you made the play.' Our focus is on trying to do it the right way all the time. Every person is coached thorohttps://www.argusleader.com/story/sports/college/south-dakota-state-university/2023/01/20/jimmy-rogers-introduced-as-south-dakota-states-new-head-football-coach/69825751007/ughly and tough, and that's not going to change.

What do you envision the identity of this team being next season? How do you see the team playing?

Rogers: Well, I think there's a lot of expectations on the team. I think there's a lot of expectations that our players have for themselves, what they want to do individually but it has to be about the team. We have a lot of talent, there's no question about that. I think the identity in the team is the team itself. It's not on one side of the ball. It's whoever steps on the field buying into their role and giving it their best.

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What expectations or goals do you have for this upcoming season?

Rogers: I said in my press statement that we want to become the standard. What I meant by that was over the years, we've inched ourselves closer to that, and we got to the national championship in 2021 and we lost. But now that we won the national championship, people expect that. That's why there's hype behind us. So we need to repeat those same actions that got us to that moment. That's the standard. It’s the way we go back to win another national championship, but what comes with that is a lot of hard work, a lot of consistency, sacrifice, finishing. There's a lot of things that come. It's not easy. That's what people from the outside see. A lot of star power, but football is fickle. It's going to take a lot to get back, but we can’t be focused on the end result. We're focused on the day-to-day and being the best that we can be in coaching it that way.

Jonathan Fernandez covers high school and college sports for the Argus Leader. Contact him at jfernandez1@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JFERN31

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: How SDSU's new head football coach plans to build champions: Q&A