BJ Coad: 'It feels great to be back home" at Wittenberg

BJ Coad couldn’t have missed the photo of football coaching legend Dave Maurer to his right as he spoke at a podium Monday inside Wittenberg’s Health, Wellness & Athletics Complex after being introduced as the new head football coach.

“What an incredible honor,” he said. “Thank you so much. It feels great to be back home. It really does. And Wittenberg is just that — it is home for me.“

National championship trophies stood in a glass case near Coad as he spoke. Photos of other famous Tigers, like Dave Merritt and Charlie Green, were also visible.

Coad knows all those names well, but the most important name when it comes to his new job has to be Joe Fincham, who was the head coach when he played at Wittenberg (2004-07) and in the first five years of his coaching career (2008-12).

“Joe Fincham is the reason that I chose to be a Wittenberg Tiger back in 2004 coming out of Moeller High School,” Coad said. “He recruited me. He developed me. He changed me into the person that I am today. He also gave me an opportunity to get into coaching as well, too, which I’m forever grateful for.

“I look forward to holding that Wittenberg football family tradition high. This is a great fraternity that we’re all a part of right now. (Fincham), like so many other men, molded me and a lot of my teammates into great fathers, great husbands and successful men, and I look forward to doing the same thing."

Coad, 40, was a four-year letterwinner at Wittenberg. He earned a starting job as a senior in the 2007 season. He majored in history and returned home to Cincinnati after graduating in 2008, taking a job at Fifth Third Bank. He worked there three or four months before Fincham called to offer him an opportunity as an offensive line coach.

“I couldn’t say yes fast enough,” Coad said.

A year later, Coad moved to the defensive side, just in time to help lead the nation’s No. 1 defense. Wittenberg finished 10-0 in 2009 and won two playoff games by double-digit margins before running into national powerhouse Wisconsin-Whitewater in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division III playoffs.

Wittenberg finished 10-0 in 2010, too, and won another North Coast Athletic Conference championship in Coad’s final season in 2012.

In all, Fincham won 14 NCAC championships in 25 seasons before retiring after the 2021 season. His successor, Jim Collins, a Wittenberg graduate like Coad, was unable to replicate that success, finishing 20-17 in four seasons before losing his job with three games left in the 2025 season.

Now Coad takes over the responsibility of guiding Wittenberg back to the top of the NCAC.

"I’ll make no bones about it," he said. “I want (Wittenberg) to win an NCAC championship. I want us to be competitive in all areas. We will be champions on the field, and we’ll be champions off the football field. I will work tirelessly alongside my staff to give us the opportunity to win that football championship. We will chase excellence."

Coad spoke at a podium with his wife Ashley, a Springfield native, daughter Cecilia and son Jamey sitting to his right.

Brian Agler, Wittenberg’s vice president and director of athletics and recreation, and the new university president, Christian M. M. Brady, watched from Coad’s left.

Agler said several former Wittenberg football players worked on the committee that helped lead the search for a new coach. Wittenberg narrowed a field of close to 100 applicants to eight names and then three finalists.

Credit: David Jablonski

Credit: David Jablonski

Coad stood out for a number of reasons.

“He’s played and coached in some highly successful programs without question,” Agler said. “I think everybody — and we have over half of our committee in attendance today — could say that they could feel the passion that he had for Wittenberg football. He’s an extremely polished communicator. He has strong recruiting ties in our footprint in the state of Ohio, and the one thing that jumps out to me about our new coach is maybe more so than anybody else that we talked to, he was willing to bet on himself. He was unwavering in his commitment and his desire to have this job, and that resonated with me.“

Agler knows Coad has a tough task. Wittenberg finished 4-6 last season — its first losing season since 1989. It finished sixth in the NCAC, losing to all five teams ahead of it in the standings, including John Carroll and DePauw, who are both still alive entering the third round of the playoffs.’

Coad is a first-time head coach with a wealth of experience. After five seasons on Fincham’s staff, he worked at Syracuse University, Marian University, Butler University and Marian again before moving to Ohio Dominican University in Columbus for the last two seasons.

“When you get a chance to move around and coach with different people, your philosophy expands and becomes a hybrid of different things,” Agler said. “Most coaches will tell you that they value those different experiences.”

Coad was the associate head coach and offensive coordinator on Kelly Cummings’ staff at Ohio Dominican. Cummings was the defensive coordinator at Wittenberg from 2000-05.

“Kelly did a great job of giving me the autonomy and the freedom to build the culture that I wanted to build on the offensive side of the ball,” Coad said. “One of the main reasons that I took the job with Kelly when I moved from Marian to Ohio Dominican was he runs the program similar to the way that the program was run when I was here as a player and as a coach, and the alignment was something that I was really interested in. When I had the title of associate head coach, he let me be that, so I was very grateful for Kelly.”

Coad spoke to Fincham several times when the Wittenberg job opened and said Fincham was supportive throughout the process.

Coad remembers returning to Wittenberg only one time since his nine years in Springfield (four as a player and five as a coach). He had not seen The Steemer, Wittenberg’s 6-year-old indoor facility until he stepped on campus for his interview.

Coad pursued the Wittenberg job as soon as it opened, he said. He addressed the current players in his press conference, saying they would command his immediate attention. He planned to meet with them later Monday.

Coad also had a message for potential recruits.

“We’re coming for you,” he said. “Recruiting is happening right now. I love this place. What I can promise you is you’re going to get energy. You’re going to feel the love. You’re going to feel the excitement. I want you to know that in choosing this football program, you will get an elite experience.

“You are also going to be a part of something that’s bigger. We have 800 wins as a football program. We are one of two football programs that can say that throughout the country. We were the first to 700 for many years. We wore the winningest football tag in all of small college football, I want to get back to winning football games at a higher level and developing champions period. So to future Tigers, if you aspire to be something great, and if you aspire to do something wonderful, I want team guys that are going to buy into the vision of what Wittenberg is and create a culture of champions.”