Chris Beatty calls the recent events in his life an “interesting deal” as he shakes his head and chuckles at the memories of everything that’s happened. Granted, this will happen to anyone who’s in the business long enough, but he’s been a college coach for barely two years. You really need to wrap your brain around what he’s been through to get an idea what his life has already been like.

“It’s been a bit eye-opening. You sit back and watch things happen and you read about things in the newspaper and you think you know what’s going on. You have no idea what’s going on until you’re involved in those things. You never really realize what’s going on until you experience it.” 

 Since the winter of 2006, he’s left as stable a situation as imaginable as a wildly successful high school football coach in Virginia to enter college coaching. He jumped on an offer to be the offensive coordinator at Division I-AA Hampton and did that for a year before nabbing a DI-A offer at Northern Illinois. The Huskies coach resigned unexpectedly after Beatty’s first season and Beatty was without a job or any interest for three weeks. Then three teams called to offer jobs and Beatty accepted the running backs/slot receivers position at WVU. His best players at each position abruptly entered the NFL Draft and he enters his first spring with two running backs and two slot receivers.

“It’s a concern,” he said in what will be the first and perhaps strongest candidate for “Understatement of the Year.”