FARGO — Craig Bohl’s career as a Division I football player took him crisscrossing the country like a pilot. In fact, he did so in his own small plane while he was head coach of the North Dakota State football team. Bohl retired after last season, leaving behind 10 years at Wyoming and 11 at NDSU.

So at 66, is it time to start retiring to a relaxed lifestyle of golf and horse riding?

Hardly. As executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, he finds himself in the midst of one of the most revolutionary times in the history of college football. Bohl has another word for it.

“Chaotic,” he said. “We are going through the most chaotic times I have ever experienced in my 42 years as a coach.”

Chaotic will take a brief vacation this week. He will be inducted into the Bison Athletic Hall of Fame, an honor for taking over a Division II program when he arrived in Fargo in 2003 and turning it into one of the most dominant dynasties in NCAA football history.

That didn’t happen overnight. There was the five-year reclassification, where Bohl showed the Bison could win right away. They had back-to-back 10-1 seasons in 2006 and 2007, including stunning performances against FBS programs.

This was never thought possible when he took over after being fired from the University of Nebraska. Former NDSU athletic director Gene Taylor went against public opinion and hired Bohl over his favorite son, Gus Bradley. The move was made because of Bohl’s Division I experience as an assistant at Tulsa, Rice, Wisconsin, Duke and Nebraska.

Bohl was fired as Nebraska’s defensive coordinator a year earlier after the Cornhuskers’ national title hopes were severely dashed. It is widely believed that head coach Frank Solich made the move to appease fans.

Bohl said he will be forever grateful to Taylor for hiring him despite the rocky ending in Lincoln.

“Hiring a guy who had never been a head coach before,” Bohl said. “It was really a special time for me because that transition, when I left Nebraska not in a good place, I had a chance to be included.”

The collaboration between Bohl, Taylor and then-university president Joe Chapman was the springboard to success in Division I. Add to that a fan group called Team Makers, which supported the move with all its might, and the city of Fargo, which allowed the coaching staff to move its office to the Fargodome, and the recipe for success was clear.

“A lot of people were doing the exact same thing,” Bohl said. “It was really heartwarming to see the program transition. It was a great example of a lot of teamwork. When a university president, an athletic director and a head coach are all on the same page, that’s really important. I had no doubt that NDSU was capable of making a successful transition.”

That transition is well remembered now that he no longer has to deal with the daily grind of coaching. An engraved nameplate that read “Just Coach the Team” still sat on his desk in the Fargodome.

It was a reminder to focus on the players and the football instead of worrying about all the external factors that come with the job. It helped him not get distracted from the basic principles of being a head coach. He’s been to Fargo a few times in recent years and is in contact with NDSU head coach Tim Polasek, who was an assistant under Bohl for seven years at NDSU and three years at Wyoming.

Bohl spoke to the team during training in August.

“Coach has built an incredible foundation,” Polasek said. “He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for rolling up his sleeves since 2003 to get this thing to where we are now in Division I.”

Bohl hired Polasek as a research assistant in 2006. During his first tenure at NDSU, Polasek’s father died. It was Bohl who organized a private flight to the funeral, which included all of the staff.

“He suddenly became a kind of father figure to me, probably when I needed it most,” Polasek said. “I was in my late 20s, early 30s.”

For example, it was Bohl who supported Polasek with advice and support when he met his wife Jill.

“He said when you cook spaghetti, make sure it’s red wine,” Polasek said. “In those little moments, he was that kind of guy for me.”

Two weeks ago, Bohl was at the North Carolina-University of Minnesota game for AFCA business, but he was constantly on the phone following the NDSU-University of Colorado score. He had become friends with the Bison players after his practice appearance in August.

“It was very special to walk into the team room, talk to the players and root for them,” he said.

As for the future of college football, things could get interesting. Bohl served on the AFCA board in the past before replacing Todd Berry in his current position, and he will be helped by his extensive experience, including being a Division I assistant at several schools, a Division II head coach in his first year at NDSU, and a Division I head coach at the FCS and FBS levels.

He also serves on the FBS Oversight Committee, which regulates the sport in the regular season and playoffs. He has pushed agenda items such as reorganizing the recruiting calendar, creating quality control and analyst positions for on-field coaches and narrowing the transfer portal from two to one.

He recently traveled to NCAA headquarters and had a one-on-one meeting with NCAA President Charlie Baker. Originally scheduled for half an hour, it lasted over an hour.

“I’ve never seen coaches go through so much fear, worry and uncertainty just to get a clear vision of where we’re going,” Bohl said. “In the midst of all this chaos, we may not deserve a seat at the head of the table, but our voices deserve a seat at the table. Maybe I have an opportunity to help in some small way.”

Small can become big. That’s Bohl’s way of working. He took Wyoming, an FBS school that had a hard time recruiting and was going through difficult times before he arrived, to bowl games. He took NDSU from a small Division II mentality to unimagined heights.

When the Bisons face the University of Towson on Saturday afternoon, they will have nine FCS national titles under their belt. Bohl was the first to set that in motion.

“When I think back, it was 11 phenomenal years,” he said.

Matt Krohn/USA Today Sports

Jeff would like to dispel the notion that he was around when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, but he has been a reporter for Forum Communications for three decades. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, and brother of a reporter, Jeff has worked for the Jamestown Sun, Bismarck Tribune and, since 1990, The Forum, where he has covered North Dakota State athletics since 1995.
Jeff has covered all nine of NDSU’s Division I FCS national football titles and has written three books: “Horns Up,” “North Dakota Tough” and “Covid Kids.” He is the radio host of “The Golf Show with Jeff Kolpack” from April through August.