New Sacramento State football coach Andy Thompson vows: ‘We’re going to keep winning’
Andy Thompson arrived plenty early Thursday for his big day. He stood outside Sacramento State’s Welcome Center decked in his new gray suit and green tie, the bright afternoon splashing down on a man who was basking in his moment.
As humble as he can be game-day fierce, Thompson accepted no credit for looking like a sharp-dressed man, pointing to wife, Mikal, for all of it. She shops for the coach and he coaches teams.
Moments later, Thompson was introduced by Sacramento State president Robert S. Nelsen and athletic director Mark Orr as the Hornets’ 12th head coach since the school started football in 1954. He replaces Troy Taylor, who was hired five years ago this week. Thompson thanked Taylor for bringing him aboard before the 2019 season to run the Hornets’ defense, a unit that would help the program win three consecutive Big Sky Conference championships and rise to a No. 2 national ranking after a 12-0 start in 2022, all school records.
Taylor is now the head coach at Stanford. Thompson said his Hornets assistant head coach will be the same man who was the assistant head coach the previous four seasons — Kris Richardson. The offensive coordinator is also a familiar name in Bobby Fresques, who has been on staff as the quarterbacks coach.
Thompson was clear that, should he get this gig, those two coaches would remain, and those coaches were clear that they wanted to remain intact if one of them was named head coach. It’s that sort of unity that moved Nelsen and Orr last weekend and on Monday during interviews. And that sort of loyalty resonated throughout an overflow setting in the Welcome Center that included old alums and campus staffers. Orr said he didn’t “need to do a national search, didn’t need to shake bushes to see who’s out there. We knew we had our guy right here.”
Orr then presented Thompson with a Hornets jersey with No. 1 on it.
“Great moment,” a glowing Thompson said. “I do speak from the heart. I’m very humbled, excited.”
Thompson’s three sons, all under 11, attended the event, each of them giddy that they could get out of school to see their father speak in a shirt and tie.
“It’s not easy being a coach’s wife,” Thompson said. “It’s not easy being their dad for the boys because I am gone a lot with coaching and recruiting. We will continue to grow what Troy Taylor started here. It’s an unbelievable place to be. This is a special place. We’re going to keep winning, doing it the right way, playing hard.”
Thompson said the reception from players about his promotion that was made official earlier in the week was mutual — equal parts relief and joy. He said the very theme of competing is good for athletics but also in life. It starts with attitude, Thompson said. The Walla Walla, Washington native has long lived by that theme, right on through his championship days as a player at Montana of the Big Sky and over his long career as an assistant coach. In football, there will be ups and downs, he said.
“You’ve got to pick yourself up and keep going, no matter what, right?” Thompson said. “Life isn’t always easy. But learning to compete and deal with ups and downs ... it’s going to help you down the road.”
That line of thinking helped Thompson get through a roller-coaster weekend. His defense was taken to task in Sacramento State’s final game by the best player in the FCS as quarterback star Lindsey Scott Jr. led Incarnate Word of Texas past the Hornets 66-63 in a quarterfinal playoff game, the highest-scoring game in FCS history.
Thompson blamed himself for the loss, for not having the answers for a player that, really, no one has stopped this season as Scott set a bounty of FCS and school offensive records. Within days, Thompson went from the despair of defeat to the thrill of being named head coach, a career defensive coordinator with a sparkling reputation now tasked with running a powerhouse as the lead voice.
“I’m human, for sure,” Thompson said. “I did go through some emotions over the weekend. It was not an easy time. Any time you end a season with a loss, it’s ‘Boom!’ It’ hits you all the way to the core. I was hurting with that loss. But you’ve got to get back up and you’ve gotta go on.”
He added, “I’m very confident that we can keep this going. We have the right people in place.”
There was a lot of speculation that assistant head coach Richardson would join Taylor at Stanford as the two have worked with each other for years, including during state championship seasons at Folsom High School. Richardson said remaining assistant head coach works “perfectly for me”, adding that he’s become close friends with Thompson, so much so that the Thompson boys regularly swim in the Richardson’s pool in Folsom.
Richardson also stressed that he enjoys coaching offensive linemen, a role he will continue to hold. He’s so connected with the linemen that an army of them joined the Richardson family for quite a Thanksgiving feed.
“This is a perfect scenario for me,” Richardson said. “People were worried that I’d join Troy at Stanford, but in my heart, I didn’t want to leave here. Andy Thompson is the perfect guy for this position, and I love the guy. I’m in my perfect role, too.”
Said Fresques, the one-time Hornets quarterback now known for grooming quarterbacks, “We can keep this thing going. We can keep doing what we’ve been doing. What an exciting time.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2022 at 2:30 PM.