MSU-N Coaching Search: Youthful Bills brings a unique passion

Kelly Bills is just 30 years old. To many, that’s young by any standard. In the world of college football coaching, it’s really young. But listen to Bills speak for five minutes and there’s no question, he’s ready and qualified to be a head football coach at the collegiate level.

And Bills wants that head coaching job to be at Montana State University-Northern.

Wednesday afternoon, he spoke passionately about that fact in front of community members, Northern faculty and administration and members of the media.

“Last year, I had the opportunity to be in the running for a head coaching position,” said Bills, who is currently the offensive coordinator at NCAA Division III Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. “But I pulled out of that pretty quickly. I just didn’t feel good about it. With anything in life, you can’t distrust your gut feeling. That one, it didn’t feel right. But this job, I have a great feeling about.

“I’ve been looking into it for a while now,” he continued. “My offensive line coach, Tanner Smith, played here and he told me the job might come open. He talks about how much he loved it here at Northern. He talks to me all the time about it. He brags about Northern actually. So as I looked into it more, I got really excited about it. I started to feel really good about it. And I went after it. This is a special place, and that’s why I am here. I want it.”

Bills makes no bones about his desire to be the next head coach at Northern. Then again, he makes no bones about anything when it comes to football. For an hour Wednesday, he conveyed his feelings about his past, his experiences, his vision for everything that could be at Northern, and for everything he thinks about life and football.

Bills has been at Willamette for two seasons, and the team possesses one of the top offenses at that level of college football. Before that, he played and coached under one of the greats in coaching in Bronco Mendenhal at Brigham Young University. And while many of his coaching counterparts may have been at more schools, and coached for more years, Bills’ two stops in the coaching ranks make him feel like he’s more than prepared to take on the role as head coach at MSU-N.

“This institution is very similar to the ones I’ve been at previously,” the native of Littleton, Colorado, said. “Recruiting at BYU is extremely difficult. Most of the time, BYU is a place where every team they play is better athletically. The recruiting is just completely different. And then I go on to Willamette and it’s the same thing. Because of the cost to go there and because of the academic standards there, recruiting is phenomenally hard. And yet, we’ve been able to be pretty successful at both places.

“The moral of this story is, I’ve been told it’s very similar here, that it’s tough to recruit here,” he continued. “And I think I can do that. I think I understand the model and can recruit here and get the right players to come here. The kids we want here are very similar to what we recruited at BYU and Willamette, and that’s smart, tough, blue-collar, hard-working kids. We can get them here and create a culture of discipline, hard work and dedication. I have a lot of experience with recruiting to a niche, and I think we can do the same thing here.”

The experience comes from working with and playing for Mendenhal, who’s been BYU’s most successful coach since the great Lavell Edwards. Bills says his time at BYU has made him the person he is, and the coach he is today.

“He’s one of the biggest mentors I’ve ever had,” said Bills, who played running back for the Cougars after transferring to BYU from Southern Utah. “He’s a disciplinarian. He’s extremely driven. He’s always coached at places where he doesn’t have the best athletes. But he prides himself in that. He prides himself and his teams in being the underdog. He’s aggressive and he’s been highly successful with that attitude, and I took those things with me to Willamette. He’s instilled those characteristics in me. He taught me that us against the world mentality, and I feel like both at Willamette, and here, it would be a very similar experience.”

There’s no doubt Bills has a passion for his days at BYU, first as a player, and especially as an assistant coach. Again, in everything he spoke about on Wednesday, his passion, enthusiasm and intensity rang out loudly. Right down to his excitement over the venue the Lights play in Saturday’s in the fall. He came up playing and coaching at Edwards Stadium in Provo, one of the hallowed stadiums in FBS football. But, as he toured Havre Wednesday and got a look at Blue Pony Stadium, he couldn’t help but envision the future.

“It’s unique; it’s a really cool stadium,” he said. “The car thing, that is just awesome. I love that it’s down in a bowl like it is. It’s a really unique place to play football. And then, all day, going in and out of the athletic office here, I kept looking at the big picture on the wall, from the day when you guys (Lights) beat Carroll. The crowd in that picture, it looked like the place was rocking. All day I’ve been thinking, I want that. I want to get to that point here. I want to get (Blue Pony Stadium) rockin’ like that.”

As Bills went on with his talk Wednesday, it’s hard to think he wouldn’t get the Pony Stadium rocking. He says, while he’s not married to one particular style of offense, if he was, it would be the spread offense that the Oregon Ducks run to perfection. He envisions his Lights playing fast, a no-huddle offense that goes up and down the field at a breakneck pace, with an emphasis on scoring as often as possible. That’s what he sees if he was given the keys to the MSU-Northern car.

And there’s no question, with his experiences under Mendenhal at BYU, where he says he coached every position on the offensive side of the ball at one time or another, and his two seasons directing a high-octane offense at a school that doesn’t offer athletic scholarships, Bills knows how to run an offense. He knows how to run a football program. His age doesn’t matter. He’s clearly ready. He clearly has a plan.

But it isn’t just on the football field that Bills has a clear vision, a plan and a model in place. He’s got that for what type of player he wants at Northern, what type of student-athlete he wants to recruit to play at Northern. He’s got a plan to win, in all aspects, life and football, and he’s every bit as passionate about every aspect of the future he sees for himself if he were to become the next head coach of the Lights.

“I can recruit really well,” he said emphatically. “That’s what I do, and I’ve done it at some places that are extremely difficult to recruit at. And I want to do it here. I want to recruit Montana really hard. I want to recruit this area really hard. But I also want to get a pipeline going in Utah and Colorado. I have made a lot of connections there, and I think we can do it. I think kids down there are the type of kids that will want to come here and stay. I think we can recruit the Dakotas, too, and Washington and Oregon.

“At the two schools I’ve been at, we’ve looked for very smart, very dedicated kids who are good football players,” he continued. “We look for kids with high character — good students — because they are student-athletes. It’s the Stanford model. And that’s the mindset I would bring here. It’s very similar to where I’ve been at previously. I want to bring in those types of kids. I want the type of kids that help you build a program. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is a rebuilding job. I want to win right away, and I know we can. But I want to also build a program, based on kids who come here and stay and who are great leaders on and off the football field. You do that with high-character kids and that’s what we want here. That’s the culture I want to build here.”

And though Bills has his whole life ahead of him, he sees a future for himself, his wife, Emily, and his son, Brooks, here in Havre. He passionately wants to be the next head coach of the Lights, and he wants to bring and instill that passion in Northern’s program. And he wants to do it for a long time.

And in order to have that future, he says, passionately, there’s one thing he has to do.

“Let’s face it, you have to win,” Bills said. “To me this job is a long-term investment. Again, I want to win right away, but I want to come here and build a program. I want to win a championship here. I want to build a culture here where our players are known for having high character, where they’re known for being just as good academically as they are athletically. I want to build relationships with the community, with the students, the faculty and the other sports in the athletic department. To have this be one big family. I want to achieve all those things here. And I think we can do that. Again, this place is special. I have a special feeling about it. I’ve been at some very unique, very special institutions, and I feel this is very similar to those.”

Note: Bills is the second of four finalists to interview for the vacant head football job at MSU-N. Today, Missouri Valley College offensive coordinator Aaron Christensen will interview at 4:30 p.m. in the Hensler Auditorium.

Note: Bills is the second of four finalists to interview for the vacant head football job at MSU-N. Today, Missouri Valley College offensive coordinator Aaron Christensen will interview at 4:30 p.m. in the Hensler Auditorium.