NC State Wolfpack Football Head Coach Dave Doeren Hires His Friend Ruffin McNeill

At the end of the 2019 season, NC State Wolfpack football head coach Dave Doeren took time to reflect and review. He analyzed not only his coaches and roster, but also himself.

During that time he thought of how good it was to have a former head coach like Ted Roof as an assistant in 2018 before Roof left after his one season in Raleigh to become a defensive coordinator at Appalachian State.

“It’s always great to have someone on your staff that has had your chair,” Doeren noted.

He talked with his predecessor at Northern Illinois — Jerry Kill. Last year, Kill served as a special assistant to head coach Justin Fuente at Virginia Tech. Kill has decided to take a similar role at TCU this year for Gary Patterson. Doeren also reached out to Fuente.

The collective feedback apparently confirmed Doeren’s thoughts: he wanted a former head coach to assist him.

“To me it was a no-brainer, and it was really just about finding the right person,” Doeren added.

Enter Ruffin McNeill.

On Tuesday, NC State announced that McNeill would serve as a special assistant to Doeren.

McNeill spent six seasons as the head coach at East Carolina, and he was beloved by Pirates nation along with the media that covered him. After going 42-34 with four bowl appearances in six seasons, McNeill was surprisingly let go by his alma mater following the 2015 season. Following one year as an assistant head coach and defensive assistant at Virginia, McNeill reunited with his protégé Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma.

Riley, McNeill’s former offensive coordinator at East Carolina, hired his former boss to be an assistant head coach and a defensive assistant, and in 2018 he further tagged McNeill with an interim defensive coordinator title. For three years, McNeill helped Riley and Oklahoma make three straight College Football Playoff appearances.

However, in January, McNeill felt the need to return near his Lumberton, N.C., home. His father was ailing, and he felt the need to be a son again after coaching for 39 seasons. One of the first calls McNeill received was from Doeren, but it had nothing to do with the job that Doeren was envisioning.

“He just called to make sure I was all right, my dad was all right,” McNeill recalled.

McNeill said that call is reflective of the long-standing friendship between the two.

“That’s how it’s been,” McNeill confirmed.

The two first were acquainted in 1999 when Doeren was a graduate assistant at Southern Cal, and McNeill was a defensive line coach at Fresno State. Part of Doeren’s job as a GA was to show opposing coaches around.

“Visiting staffs come and go,” Doeren remembered. “Some of them treat you like you are the lowest and some of them treat you like you are an up-and-coming coach.

“The whole staff at Fresno that Ruffin was on, their defensive coaches came in and just treated me like gold.”

The two furthered their friendship when Doeren was an assistant at Kansas and McNeill at Texas Tech, rivals in the Big 12. Then they competed against each other when Doeren was hired at NC State, with McNeill’s Pirates getting the better of Doeren’s Wolfpack in 2013.

“Every time I talk to him, I smile,” Doeren confessed.

Both Doeren and McNeill repeated the phrase “sounding board” when asked how they saw McNeill filling a role on NC State’s staff. McNeill noted that being in the head coach’s chair is like being on a three-legged stool.

“It’s not four-legged,” McNeill added. “It rocks back and forth, sort of awkwardly. … I hope to be a balancing leg for that stool for him.”

McNeill added that he and Doeren have more than trust in each other. They have, what McNeill called, “verification of trust.”

From Doeren’s perspective, McNeill can help alleviate the load a head coach faces and allow him to actually get to what he most enjoys — coaching.

“As a head coach, lot of times you don’t get to coach,” Doeren noted. “Lot of times you get pulled out of your chair. Having someone who knows how to deal with those things, like Ruff, ... allows me to be more present when I want to be.”

Thus everything came together for McNeill and Doeren to team up, somewhat similarly to how Doeren was able to hire his longtime friend Tim Beck as his offensive coordinator earlier in the offseason.

“Timing was kind of perfect,” Doeren admitted.

“This worked out, perfect concert with me being back home in my state to see my dad, and then have a chance to go work with Dave,” McNeill added.

McNeill also said, “It was more the right opportunity with the right people.”

The final result, in Doeren’s eyes, is a “win-win.”

“Knowing that I have a sounding board, a confidant, a friend, an established person, husband and father like Ruffin working for me, it’s a great day,” Doeren concluded.