New coach Tim Plough ushers in old ‘Shredville’ motto at UC Davis, inspired by bouncebacks
Tim Plough’s coaching office includes photos and motivational statements dotted across the walls.
A large monitor by the desk of the first-year UC Davis coach details daily football meetings with players and staff in preparation for Saturday’s season opener on the road against the California Golden Bears. And here’s the thing about Plough: He isn’t so consumed by blocking, tackling and first downs that he has lost sight of what matters most. That’s family. You can’t miss the framed, grinning expressions of the three young sons of Plough and his wife, Christine, or how the mustachioed, 6-foot-3 coach beams at the view or mention of them.
Or how the parents Plough attended the July Rolling Stones concert at Levi’s Stadium, or how they make time for date night, exploring new eateries in Yolo County.
“It always starts with family,” Plough said Tuesday afternoon. “I’ve been at places where that’s hard to do — football and family. I can do that here.”
Mixed in with portraits of Aggies coaching legends Jim Sochor and Bob Biggs is a 1962 black-and-white image of President John F. Kennedy and his attorney general brother, Robert, deep in thought during the Cuba Missile Crisis. Plough was a history major and did a thesis on the Kennedy brothers during his first UCD stint when he was a scholar who played quarterback, starting on the 2007 Aggies team.
“I don’t have any brothers,” Plough said “The Kennedy brothers were not as good without each other as they were with each other. That’s true in football. You need everyone.”
Bouncing back
Plough learned over the years that not everyone gets a good break and it is how one responds that counts. He champions that theme to his players and his sons. He found that not every day is a breeze, even if it feels like it from the nearby beaches.
A star quarterback and baseball player at Ramona High School in San Diego County in the early 2000s, Plough’s dream was to play both sports in college. His goal was to land at San Diego State. His sports idols as a child included Tony Gwynn, the Hall of Fame San Diego Padres hitter who offered Plough a chance to play for him (Plough treasures the Gwynn plaque on his office wall).
A football coaching change at San Diego State before signing day left Plough in the cold. He bounced back. UC Davis coaches had recruited Plough and offered him either the first or second football scholarship in program history. This was in 2003, when the Aggies moved up from Division II to Division I status.
As a student at UCD, Plough asked Christine out for a date. She declined, preferring to just be friends, a line uttered across the country countless times over the years to many a jilted admirer. He was urged by a football teammate to not let a sure thing go. Plough bounced back. He finally got his girl.
Plough started coaching at UCD as a student assistant in 2008. He was urged to get into coaching by Sochor, the late, great College Football Hall of Fame coach who guided the Aggies football program 1970-88. Sochor was a thinker more than he was a yeller or screamer, and he had a simple saying of “Find Joy.” Find it in life and in football.
“Find Joy” is a motto that hangs on Plough’s office wall.
“It took one meeting with Coach Sochor, at Peet’s Coffee in Davis, to convince me,” Plough said. “Sochor, I miss him every day. He told me that the coaches here believed in me but that I have to choose to do this. I didn’t know what I wanted to do after I played here.”
Plough rose to offensive coordinator at UCD by 2010 under Bob Biggs before heading to Northern Arizona in 2013 to coach receivers. He returned to UCD as offensive coordinator in 2017 under newly hired coach and one-time Aggies fullback Dan Hawkins. Plough coined the term “Shredville” at UCD in 2017. It can be found everywhere at UCD — on hats, on shirts, in social media hashtags.
“In short, to shred is to do your skill at an elite level, to do your job at an elite level, and the ‘Ville part is where we do it,” Plough said. “I started saying Shredville in 2017 here to create some juice. We hadn’t been in the playoffs in years and we wanted to have some fun.”
By 2018, there was fun in Yolo County. UCD won its first Big Sky Conference championship, the 31st league title for a program that started in 1915. Plough in 2019 and 2020 served as the Aggies’ assistant head coach under Hawkins before accepting the offensive coordinator post at Boise State in 2021 for a new challenge.
Devastated from Boise State firing
In the middle of the 2022 season, Plough was fired. He was the fall guy for a team that started 2-2. He was devastated.
What moved the coach, he said this week, was having, “70-plus players knock on our door. We’d have a lot of them over for dinner before. It was wild. I was so touched. I would not have been prepared for this job now if not for experiences like that.”
Plough said he pondered curling up on the couch for weeks after the Boise let down. He chose to bounce back. He accepted offers from coaching friends the rest of the 2022 season, to attend week-long football practices and games with the Washington Huskies, the Oregon State Beavers, the Cal Bears and others. The coaching fraternity kept him in the loop and saved his competitive soul.
“I was down,” Plough said. “I wondered what I had done wrong at Boise, and wondered: ‘I must be bad at this.’ I have relationships with a lot of coaches, and I’ve been kind to people, and they helped me.”
Plough landed in Berkeley for the 2023 season to coach tight ends under Bears head coach and friend Justin Wilcox. The pregame embrace between the coaches on Saturday in the Bay Area will be genuine.
Plough’s dad snuck into UCD games
UCD just missed out on the FCS playoffs in 2022 and 2023. Hawkins stepped down at the end of an exhausting 2023 campaign with time left on his contract to pursue other interests — and to allow the Aggies to usher in a fresh voice. Hawkins is now on the coaching staff at Idaho State, where the head coach is his son, Cody Hawkins.
Before Plough accepted the Aggies head job, he conferred with another coaching friend in Chris Petersen, the Yuba City native who starred at quarterback for UCD in the 1980s. UCD is where Petersen got his coaching start, urged by Sochor, before producing hugely successful seasons as head coach at Boise State and Washington. Petersen challenged Plough: “Is UCD where you want to be?”
Plough then phoned top UCD players such as veteran quarterback Miles Hastings and All-American running back Lan Larison, the Big Sky’s Offensive Player of the Year in 2023.
“I asked them if I’d be a good fit,” Plough said. “We were all excited. I recruited a lot of these guys but didn’t get to see them play because I’d left. Miles wasn’t sure he wanted to come back and play. Lan was getting offered a lot of NIL money at other programs if he transferred. They both wanted to stay to finish the job here. I pinch myself.”
Larison said during Big Sky media day that the Aggies were “thrilled to have coach Plough back.”
So, too, is Plough’s family. The three young sons — Jackson, Camden and Bodie — will be regulars at UCD games. The Aggies will have six home contests at UC Davis Health Stadium, starting with the Sept. 7 contest against Texas A&M Commerce.
“To win the Big Sky,” Plough said, “you have to win your home games and get one on the road in bad weather — rain or snow.”
Also a regular at UCD home games: Plough’s father, Dan. When his son played at UCD, Dan Plough would sneak onto the field for home and away games, just suddenly appearing on the sideline. A big man decked in San Diego Chargers garb, Dan Plough told anyone who asked he was an NFL scout.
One day, a UCD administrator asked coach Plough if Papa Plough could stop doing that, that he could no longer help himself to the sideline. Dan Plough wound up becoming a UCD clock operator. He bounced back. The family vibe won out.
This story was originally published August 30, 2024 at 5:00 AM.