Former Bearcat moves up in coaching ranks
PHOTO COURTESY OF PARKER WATERS/TULANE ATHLETICS
Tulane wide receiver coach Jeff Conway watches on during a practice last year in New Orleans. The former Northwest Missouri State football player and assistant coach is entering his second year at the Division I school.
Years ago, Willie Fritz and Jeff Conway were on the same football field together as foes.
Conway played safety for Northwest Missouri State, while Fritz played defensive back for Pittsburg State.
In 1981, the two teams met in Maryville and the Bearcats won 9-6 against the NAIA runners-up.
A few years later, the one-time foes crossed paths at Sam Houston State. More than 30 years later they are now working together at Tulane.
Conway is entering his second year coaching wide receivers at Tulane, but has spent several years working with Fritz, who is best known around Maryville as the former coach at University of Central Missouri.
Tulane went 4-8 last season, struggling down the stretch with five losses to bowl-eligible teams like Houston, Central Florida, Tulsa, SMU, Memphis and Temple.
“It was a lot tougher than we anticipated,” Conway said of playing in the American Athletic Conference. “I feel top to bottom, the American is no different than the Mountain West.”
Conway, a Knoxville, Iowa, native, has been a part of a lot of football games since playing for Northwest.
The All-MIAA safety played from 1978 to 1981 and helped the Bearcats win 1979 MIAA Conference championship, the 11th in the program’s history.
His football coach, Jim Redd, recalls the one-time walk-on making an impact throughout the program.
“He was a very bright young man and a good student,” said Redd, who guided the Bearcats from 1976-82. “He had a good eye, was a good tackler and had a number of interceptions. He became a real important member of our team.”
Conway also served as backup quarterback, a spot he played in high school, as well as being the Bearcats’ kicker one season. After the slated starter couldn’t play, tryouts were held and Conway got the job.
After graduating from Northwest with a finance degree, he started working in marketing. He said he was miserable and in the spring 1984, came back to Maryville to be a graduate assistant under coach Vern Thomsen.
However, fate intervened and led him to Huntsville, Texas, where became a graduate assistant under Ron Randleman at Sam Houston State -— as did Fritz.
Conway spent two years as a graduate assistant and the team went 8-3 and won a conference championship.
He then went to Lamar, where he coached quarterbacks and wide receiver but the school dropped the program following the 1989 season. That led to Conway going to North Shore High School in Houston, where he was the offensive coordinator in 1990.
He moved back to Missouri in 1991 coaching, serving as the offensive coordinator at Missouri Western State University for two years. The Griffons had a two-win improvement in his first year and then another win in Conway’s final year under Stan McGarvey, the head coach.
The defensive coordinator for Western at the time was Jerry Partridge, who later became the head coach there.
After his two years in St. Joseph, Conway started coaching with Fritz again, this time at Blinn Junior College. From 1993 to 1996, Conway was the offensive coordinator for a team that went 39-5-1 in that stretch and at one time won 26 games in a row.
Blinn won the national title in both 1995 and 1996, guided in large part due to quarterback Michael Bishop, who went on to play at Kansas State.
Conway took over as the coach in 1997 when Fritz moved on to become the Central Missouri coach. Conway went 8-2 at the helm of the Buccaneers, which had 16 players during his tenure move onto the National Football League.
After guiding Blinn to the No. 14-ranking in the country in his first year as a head coach, Conway took a step back and became an assistant, but moved up to the Division I level.
He held a variety of coaching roles with the Lobos from tight end (1998-99), running back (2000-2001) and wide receivers (2002-2003), while also serving as special teams coordinator.
There were two notable players under his tenure at New Mexico. The most notable is former Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, then a safety. The other is Katie Hnida, who became the first woman to score a point in a Division I game by kicking two extra points in a 2003 game against Texas State.
Conway and Fritz then reunited in 2004, when Conway joined Fritz in Warrensburg as the Mules’ wide receiver coach and associated head coach.
Conway spent six years in Warrensburg and the Mules went 42-14.
The chance to go to the Division I level and back to Sam Houston State put the end to Fritz’s and Conway’s time in Warrensburg.
Conway spent two years at Sam Houston State as the assistant head coach and wide receivers coach for the Bearkats. In the second year, the team made the Football Championship Subdivision national title game and went 14-1.
Following the 2011 season, Conway moved over to Texas State where he was the co-offensive coordinator, running backs and tight end coach for Dennis Franchione, a former Pittsburg State head coach.
He was in the position for four years until the chance to reunite with Fritz for another opportunity came up. Fritz was making the move from Georgia Southern to Tulane after going 17-7 in two years.
Much of Fritz’s staff has ties to either playing or coaching at MIAA schools.
The staff includes defensive coordinator Jack Curtis (Central Missouri), offensive coordinator Doug Ruse (Northwest Missouri State); linebackers coach Mike Mutz (Missouri Southern); defensive line coach Kevin Peoples (Central Missouri); director of football operations Shane Meyer (Central Missouri); offensive analyst/recruiting Derrick Sherman (Pittsburg State), director of player development Donn Landholm (Central Missouri) and special teams analyst/recruiting Chris Couch (Central Missouri)
In what turned out to be a unique twist, Conway went 0-8 against Northwest in his two stops in the MIAA at Western and Central Missouri.
He still recalls some of the losses. Once, the Griffons had a 19-0 lead evaporate and another time, the Mules had the ball at the three-yard line and couldn’t score in four tries against Northwest.
The success at Northwest, though, gives Conway pride no matter where he went.
He recalls being in a bar in Albuquerque watching Northwest winning its first football national championship in 1998 and running around screaming ‘that’s my school, that’s my school.’
“No one had to ask what school I went too,” Conway said with a laugh. “I was in a sports bar that was the only place I could watch the Northwest game at.”
He has watched the national championship game each year that Northwest had advanced and states that he knows 10 to 15 former players that played in his ‘day’ that travels to every playoff game.
Conway and Greg Lees, a former teammate and later a college football coach, ran into Mel Tjeerdsma at a national convention following the 1994 season. The Bearcats went 0-11 that season.
“I remember Mel saying, ‘I think we can get it turned around, we just had a bad year.’ I remember thinking, great, I hope he does, but that was a tough start. Then last year, I was listening to the championship game and they said he had 18 playoff wins. Good Lord. There were a lot of adjustments and they keep rolling and doing a good job. Having been a part of it brings a prideful feeling.
“I don’t think anyone could have that vision to have that success and that is a tribute to Mel Tjeersdsma and all the people that hung with Northwest after the first year.”
