Digesting it all after the arrival of JaMarcus Shephard

Coach Shephard charmed and inspired and showed personality and a sense of humor during his introductory press conference (courtesy Karl Maasdam/OSU athletics)

It has been a week since JaMarcus Shephard’s introductory press conference as Oregon State’s new head football coach.

It has been a few days since Alabama dropped the ball — and Shephard’s receivers literally dropped the ball numerous times — in a 28-7 throttling by Georgia in the SEC Championship Game.

No. 9 Alabama faces No. 8 Oklahoma in a first-round CFP matchup on Dec. 19. Asked last Tuesday if he planned to continue coaching through Alabama’s playoff run or return to Corvallis and go full-time in arranging his program at Oregon State, Shephard said he would definitely coach against Georgia.

“After that,” he said, “I will have conversations with (Alabama) leadership to make those decisions.”

No word since then. Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer indicated after Saturday’s game that he expects Shepherd to juggle both of his responsibilities through the CFP playoffs. Regardless of his time spent with the Crimson Tide, “Coach Shep” will be going full speed ahead with coaching hires, player retention and acquisitions and the hundreds of things that need to be done over the next month for his first head-coaching job.

A few observations:

• The new coach couldn’t have made a much more positive first impression, could he?

Shephard, 42, charmed and inspired. He smiled and called his questioners by name. He showed that he has personality as well as a sense of humor. He was polished yet genuine, smart and engaging.

“JaMarcus seems humble and yet self-confident,” says former OSU coach Mike Riley, a member of the search committee. “I like that combination.”

Shephard, Alabama’s co-offensive coordinator and receivers coach the past two seasons, spoke as if he had cased the joint beforehand. He thanked Pat Reser (smart move, Coach), called OSU president Jayathi Murthy a “competitor” (hmmm),  declared he is ready to “lock arms” with athletic director Scott Barnes and said he intends to host a house party in which he will invite all other Beaver head coaches and their significant others, ostensibly to create esprit de corps in the athletic department.

“Coach Shep” did make a mental error, pointing out that one of his mentors was Willie Taggart (better to avoid that name in these parts).

• “If you surround yourself with knuckleheads, people are going to consider you to be a knucklehead,” Shephard said. “If you surround yourself with fighters, then you better start carrying around some boxing gloves. I surrounded myself with great men who had vision, who were great coaches.”

Shephard’s references are solid: DeBoer, with whom he has worked at Alabama and Washington; Jeff Brohm (Western Kentucky and Purdue), Bobby Petrino (one season at Western Kentucky) and Mike Leach (Washington State).

You know about DeBoer and Leach. Over 12 seasons at Western Kentucky, Purdue and Louisville, Brohm’s record is 93-56 with eight bowl game appearances. He was 30-10 at Western Kentucky, finished a six-year run at Purdue with back-to-back 9-4 and 8-5 campaigns and is 27-12 in three seasons at Louisville. Until his star fell in single seasons at Louisville (2-8, 2018) and Arkansas (0-7, 2025), Petrino’s career mark over 15 seasons was 117-48, with 11 bowl game appearances and wins in the Orange and Sugar bowls.

• Through 40 minutes or so of talking and answering questions, Shephard dropped a number of catch phrases, including “low ego, high output,” “how you do anything is how you do everything,” “integrity is what you’re doing when nobody is looking” and “Yaw yaw” (“you are who you associate with”).

Another Shep-ism: “The best things you get in life are because you earned them, not because someone gave them to you.” I have heard Pat Casey use that phrase more than once.

The Dean of Portland Sports is now on BlueSky.

• Shephard said after individual meetings with most of the players from Oregon State’s 2025 team, he learned that “there is an overwhelming theme in terms of what this program needs and desires, and that is a level of discipline.”

“For all the smiles and laughs and who I am, discipline is what has allowed me to be in this space today,” he said. “I had to discipline myself when things around me weren’t going in a great direction.”

The reference was to his hardscrabble beginnings in Fort Wayne, Ind., where times were tough for his family but he developed a work ethic that carried him far.

“I didn’t have everything growing up,” he says, “but I was going to compete.”

He attended DePauw University, a D-III school in Greencastle, Ind., on an Eli Lilly academic scholarship (I commend him for remembering that name a quarter-century later) and starred as a receiver and return specialist. Later, while a volunteer assistant at Western Kentucky, “I got my Masters with a 4.0 GPA and was Graduate Student of the Year at my university,” he said. “Academics has always been important to me.”

• Shephard threw out four pillars of success he sets for his players: Academic and athletic success, social and spiritual growth. He specified his goals: “We will win the Pac-12 championship and a bowl game with class, integrity and academic excellence. I want our players to have great class in terms of how they are dealing with others.”

• He sounded genuine in welcoming what he called “the Beaver community” (it’s “Beaver Nation,” Coach).

“My wife, family and I will be engaged in the community frequently,” Shephard said. “Do not hesitate to come up and say hello to us. We have done Easter egg hunts at our house for the kids in the neighborhood. Find a golden egg, you get a bike. That’s how I got my first bike — we couldn’t afford one.”

• He embraces toughness.

“I pride myself in being a tough coach,” Shephard said. “Receivers are the pretty boys, the ones who want the ball all the time, a lot of times considered to be the selfish ones. I have never allowed that to be the case for the group I’ve coached. The O-line creates the toughness, the receivers display it. When you see them out there blocking their tails off, now you know you’ve got a tough team.”

• He says his players are not going to have it easy.

“It is going to be very hard,” Shepard said. “I want to create adversity for them. The best achievements in life come from adverse moments and learning how to deal with adversity.”

Coach Shephard sends this message to the citizens of Corvallis: “My wife, family and I will be engaged in the community frequently. Do not hesitate to come up and say hello to us” (courtesy Karl Maasdam/OSU athletics)

• Shephard does not sound concerned about NIL funding in the new Pac-12, in which the Beavers will be competing with the likes of Washington State, Boise State, San Diego State and Fresno State rather than Oregon, Washington, USC and Arizona State in the old Pac-12.

“We are set up perfectly to compete in this NIL world — right where we need to be,” he said. “I feel like we are going to be at the top of our conference in terms of how we are going to be able to compete.”

Shephard is parroting what Barnes has told the media in recent months on that topic. I’m not sure that will be the case. Oregon State will have to be in the $5 million-plus category to be in the mix with their top competitors in the new Pac-12. The football NIL budget for last year was under $4 million, and Barnes has privately said that is the goal for the 2025 campaign.

Barnes has been quiet about Dam Nation and where the Beavers are with revenue-sharing and NIL funding. He would be better to be transparent about where things stand.

As it is, NIL funding is going to be a battle in the new Pac-12, and not just in football. There are some excellent men’s basketball programs coming out of the Mountain West that have significant NIL backing — some as much as $5 million. Oregon State’s NIL purse for men’s hoops is nowhere near that.

• By the way: Who is handling Dam Nation right now?

Oregon State took over the outside NIL collective in August, turning over what was to become an inside operation to Blueprint Sports. In October, when it became clear Blueprint was a smokescreen and flim-flam company, the school separated and then parted ways with assistant athletic director Brent Blaylock, who orchestrated the deal.

Dam Nation still has a website, but there is not much on it. There are still two August press releases about the school signing a multi-year deal with Blueprint, but none announcing that the deal is off. There is a statement that includes a quote from Blueprint CEO Rob Sine, extolling that “Oregon State has shown a bold commitment to its current and future student-athletes, and we’re proud to be selected as their NIL partner during this transformative period in college sports.” Again, nothing about the contract being severed. The website also advertises under events that “we’ve got some exciting things in the works for Beaver Nation.” Like what?

Why has all of this not been corrected on the website? Is money being raised? Has anyone been hired internally by Barnes to work on NIL funding and revenue-sharing?

Beaver Nation deserves to know.

Shephard said that when seeking his new post, “I felt like Oregon State is in a perfect place to continue forward in this new Pac-12 — not just be a part of, but take over this conference.”

Sounds like he doesn’t intend to be leaving Oregon State soon, because that sort of thing isn’t going to happen overnight.

The new coach says he is “a grinder. You’ve got a fighter on your hands” (courtesy Karl Maasdam/OSU athletics)

• I have not heard whom Shephard will hire for other staff positions, but I know two he absolutely has to retain — equipment manager Steve “Lightning” McCoy, who has been on the job for 27 years, and equipment coordinator Arnold Alcantar, a member of the staff for 22 years. They are competent, well-respected and popular and know the lay of the land of Beaver football. They can help bridge the old regime and the new.

Another hire Shephard should consider: Dan Van De Riet as chief of staff.  Van De Riet worked at OSU for 20 years under Dennis Erickson, Riley and Jonathan Smith as director of football operations and chief of staff. “DVD” spent the past two seasons working for Smith at Michigan State. He is available after Smith’s firing and would be a great catch if Shephard were able to get him back to Corvallis.

• Shephard offered that “a nucleus” of the OSU roster “needs to come from Oregon and within a five-hour radius.”

“Those young men are the ones who create part of the culture,” he said. “They understand the landscape of the area. Oregon State has been at its best when it recruited well from the Bay Area and Southern California. But we have to also tap into Utah, Colorado and Nevada, to bring kids from our footprint into the program.”

In a good year, there might be a dozen FBS in-state prospects. For the most part, the Ducks will get what they want. If the Beavers could get six to eight of the next-best recruits every year, that would serve Shephard’s purpose.

• I liked this Shephard quote: “The worst teams I have been a part of had no leaders. The good ones, the coaches led everything. The greatest teams? They were player-led. I want to teach our players how to lead. I want them to learn how to lead.”

• The biggest rap on Shephard’s resume is that he has never been a head coach. And to my knowledge, he has never called plays.

Smith was never a head coach when he took over, either. As Shephard said, “I never was a father, either, until I became one, and I think I have done pretty well.”

I imagine he will hire coordinators with experience in all three phases — offense, defense and special teams.

Asked about a defensive coordinator, Shephard said this:

“I want someone who has called it and done it himself before. I want someone who is creative … someone with a bunch of energy. … I want him to have the autonomy to allow our players to gravitate toward his energy. … I have identified a coach who can fit the mold for all of that.”

We should soon know who that coach will be.

I am guessing Shephard will bring in an O-coordinator who can coach quarterbacks and has play-calling experience, so Shephard can operate in the CEO-like fashion that Barnes has said he was looking for.

Special teams? Anything will be an improvement. I would budget scholarships for a punter, placekicker and long snapper — no walk-ons for those increasingly important positions.

Also, mix starters onto the kickoff and punt units who can run and get downfield to cover and prevent embarrassingly long returns, as we saw too often this past season.

• Barnes’ legacy at Oregon State will hinge on Shephard’s success or failure with the football program, though not his job in the short term. Barnes, 63, has a contract that extends through 2030, and Murthy seems very much in his corner. Health permitting, he may intend to ride it out and retire when the pact expires. Or perhaps a year or two down the road, if football is experiencing success, he will decide that things are stable and will choose to call it a career.

• Let’s close with this declaration by Shephard, offering a little self-analysis:

“I have an offensive acumen that will rival anybody, but I have had to grind through this thing to become the head coach here. I am not going to stop grinding. I am going to outwork people every single day. I still believe in the value of hard work. You’ve got a fighter on your hands. I’ve fought for everything that I have. I will continue to fight for Oregon State University.”

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