Trent Bray struggled in media interviews.
He was rigid.
He sounded tongue-tied.
Those aren’t the biggest sins ever committed by a Division I college football coach. But Oregon State knew it had a problem before last season.
Ideally, the head football coach needed to be an ambassador, a fundraiser, a recruiter, a pseudo-CEO, and the face of the operation. What the Beavers had was a very good “ball coach” when it came to X’s and O’s, but a guy who looked at times like he’d rather be anywhere else except in front of the room.
OSU assigned an athletic department lieutenant to work 1-on-1 with Bray early in the season, per sources. It helped some. He improved over a couple of months. But what Bray probably needed more than a weekly media-training session was a long-snapper.
I spoke with Bray this week for the first time since his firing in mid-October. He told me that going 0-7 to start the season and getting dismissed by athletic director Scott Barnes shook him.
Said Bray: “When you get fired, and it’s on you, it messes with your head and it messes with your confidence.”
Bray now has a new job as the defensive coordinator at Washington State and what he described as “a complicated” relationship with his alma mater.
I sat down with Bray for a wide-ranging interview. He was candid, talking about the death of his father, long-time college football coach Craig Bray, and how difficult it was for his dad to watch the winless season spiral into a nightmare.
“In a lot of ways, it was harder on my dad,” Trent said.
Washington State coach Kirby Moore scooped Bray up in the offseason, hiring him as a defensive coordinator last December. Craig Bray, Trent’s dad, died in February.
I’m left thinking that Moore — a first-time, first-year head coach — didn’t just get a playcaller on defense. He got an assistant who, as a first-time coach, just walked barefoot through a field of broken glass and might help Moore avoid some missteps.
Where did it go wrong for Bray? What would he do differently? Lots of things, he said. Bray said he’d change the organization of his staff and make some different hires. Also, Bray shook his head at maddening losses to Fresno State and Appalachian State.
“Those were two that we had complete control over,” Bray told me. “You can look at the Houston one, too, but that would have been kind of an upset if we’d have beaten them. The Fresno State and App State game we should have won, and we outplayed them for most of the game.”
One of my primary goals with interviewing subjects is to get them to relax and talk freely. To humanize the subject, veer into surprising places, and bring the viewer, listener, and reader into the experience. Bray came a long way toward that in this interview.
Think about Bray’s journey. He could have bailed to Michigan State with Jonathan Smith after the Pac-12 splintered. He could have turned his back on Oregon State, too. Instead, he signed on for a high-wire act in high winds — holding together a disintegrating roster, helping rebuild a conference, and doing all that amid a wave of uncertainty.
Angie Machado, who has covered Oregon State for years as a reporter, reached out to me after watching the Bray interview on YouTube with a comment. Machado spent time around Bray, watching him operate. The guy she saw on Friday looked like a different person.
“Like a 1000-pound weight was off his shoulders,” she told me.
Offensive coordinators who have faced Bray will tell you he’s quick to adjust. He learns from errors in strategy, alignment, and execution. On-the-fly in-game adjustments are his speciality, and one of the reasons why he prefers to be on the field, not in the box, during games.
“I like to look my guys in the eyes on the sidelines,” he said.
As much as the business of college football chews up coaches and spits them out, I wonder if Bray might get another chance to run his own operation someday. I wonder how much better he’d be. Or if he’d even want the headaches, given the transfer-heavy, portal-infected system. He’d be perfectly fine coaching the defense, after all.
Would Bray entertain the idea of another head coaching job?
Would he be better at it the second time?
Said Bray: “I’m never going to say never because I used to say I didn’t want to be a head coach, and then I became one.”
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I really liked Bray. I think he's a great guy, and he's indisputably a great defensive coach and coordinator. He just hired the wrong people, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. And he was unwilling to let those individuals go when it was clear that they were in over their heads.
Best of luck to Bray at WSU. I think he's going to do great things there.
Go Beavs!
I will always respect Coach Bray for being loyal and not leaving with CJS and the rest of the coaches to MSU. He was put in a tough spot. If you look at the OSU games last year, there were 3 or 4 more that the Beavs shoulda won. He's a great tactician and DC. It's gonna be tough facing his defense when the Beavs play WSU. Part of me will always root for him.