It sounded like a gun shooting off. 

The year was 1978. Craig Bohl, then a redshirt sophomore playing for his hometown Nebraska Cornhuskers, didn’t know it yet, but his life would change forever that day. 

It started like a normal practice. Warm-ups, stretching, the usual. Then came time for individual drills. Defensive backs and wide receivers were told to practice working off cut blocks. 

Bohl took part in the drill and suffered a nasty injury. Legendary Nebraska coach Tom Osborne recalled it as a leg break. Bohl later told reporters it was a shoulder injury that sidelined him for about eight months.

The injury didn’t end his playing career, but time away from the field planted the seed for what would later become an illustrious coaching career. 

“Coach Osborne pulled me over and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a freshman team. It’s time you start coaching,’” Bohl told the Associated Press almost a decade ago. “That’s how I got into it.” 

Bohl worked as a graduate assistant with the Cornhuskers before his first stint at North Dakota State as a defensive backs coach. His coaching journey would then take him to places like Tulsa, Madison, Houston, Durham, and Lincoln again, where he was a linebackers coach for two national title teams, before an unlikely reunion and another wave of adversity helped springboard Bohl into national prominence. 

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Bohl could feel it all slipping away.

It was a bitterly cold, late-November day in 2002. Memorial Stadium was packed. No. 13 Colorado had just erased a slim third quarter deficit with 21 unanswered second half points, and notched its first win over the Huskers in Lincoln in 12 years. When the clock hit double zeroes, the boos rained down.

As Bohl walked off the field, perhaps he knew it was over.

That season, the Huskers’ defense slipped from No. 8 in the country in total defense to 56th. Nebraska finished 7-6, snapping a 33-season streak of at least nine wins — an NCAA record at the time — and Solich fired the architect of the defense, Bohl, along with two other longtime assistants, days later. 

Deep down, maybe Bohl, fresh off a disappointing exit at his alma mater, saw his dismissal as a blessing in disguise. He was a well-traveled assistant at this point. He cut his teeth on excellent teams and learned from some of the best coaches in the business, in Osborne and Solich. 

With plenty of fire in his belly, Bohl left Lincoln part dejected and extremely motivated. He left the place he grew up with the feeling of unfinished business, but used that feeling as fuel for his next stop. 

Fresh off a firing, Bohl was ready to get back in the coaching saddle. 

A little over 450 miles away sat the North Dakota State Bison football program, which suddenly needed a head coach. After compiling a 46-22 record across six seasons, Bob Babich traded in the Fargodome for an assistant coaching position with the St. Louis Rams. 

Bohl, a football guy through and through, jumped at the opportunity and was sure to leave an impression while interviewing for the Bison head coaching position. 

“He stands up and pretends to get under center,” Gene Taylor, then the athletic director at North Dakota State, later recalled to the Lincoln Journal-Star. “He’s really getting into this description, with sweat coming off his bald head. I just loved that enthusiasm.” 

Bohl’s infectious personality was what swung the hiring process. Soon after interviewing, he landed the job and had a big task at hand. 

You see, the North Dakota State football program you know now wasn’t that program quite yet. Back in 2002, the Bison were good, but not good enough. Under Babich, North Dakota State notched three nine-or-more-win seasons and reached the Division II semifinals in 2000. Toward the end of Babich’s tenure, things went south, with the Bison failing to make the Division II playoff field in each of his final two seasons.

Taking what he’d learned from Osborne and Solich, Bohl was eager to leave his stamp on the Bison football program. He instilled a culture based on toughness and discipline. He drilled home the fundamentals. He molded a once-proud program in his image, but it took time for that tree to bear fruit. 

After one season in charge, the Bison made the leap to the FCS ranks, meaning the program was ineligible for postseason play for four seasons. Bohl guided North Dakota State to 43 wins, including two 10-win seasons, over five years until the program was eligible for postseason play once again. 

After a handful of strong seasons, the Bison struggled to adapt to the Missouri Valley Football Conference. North Dakota State went 6-5 and 3-8 in 2008 and 2009 before slowly morphing into the juggernaut it is today. The Bison rebounded in 2010, going 9-5 and reaching the FCS quarterfinals. Then Bohl finally saw his program break through. 

What came next was an unprecedented level of winning that we might never see at any division of college football ever again. With Bohl at the helm, the Bison rattled off three straight national titles, losing just twice over a three season span. 

Along the way, the Fargodome — the Bison’s 18,700-seat indoor stadium — morphed into the Game of Thrones equivalent of The Wall, a 700-foot-tall, 300-mile-long, and 300-foot-thick structure made of ice, stone, and earth designed to keep the Seven Kingdoms from the far north. The dome itself became as intimidating as the teams on the field. Opponents feared it. Missouri Valley Football Conference foes ran from it. Visitors rarely entered and escaped alive. 

After an impressive 11-season run in Fargo, Bohl accomplished everything he could. He weathered adversity, woke up a sleeping giant, and was ready for a new challenge. 

In 2014, Wyoming was one of the losingest programs in all of Division I college football. 

The Cowboys had 10 losing seasons out of 14 since the turn of the century. Wyoming looked lost in the Mountain West Conference. Strangely, it had many of the parallels to North Dakota State before Bohl turned them into a death machine. The Cowboys just needed someone to saddle up and bring them out of obscurity.

Bohl’s first two seasons in Laramie weren’t all that dissimilar to his slow burn of a start in Fargo. The Cowboys went a combined 6-18, including a 2-10 mark in his second season, headlined by an early season injury to starting quarterback Josh Allen.

It was a rough start. Patience was needed. But the turnaround would come, eventually.

Bohl, a man who had faced plenty of adversity in his life, was met with another dose of the tough stuff. 

The very next season, Allen fulfilled some of his sky-high potential, helping lead the Cowboys to an 8-6 record and a berth in the Mountain West title game. Bohl won Mountain West Coach of the Year that season. In 2017, Allen was the catalyst for a second straight eight-win season with Bohl at the helm. 

Bohl coached six more seasons in Laramie, leading the Cowboys to three straight bowl victories. He finished his career as the longest-tenured head football coach in school history.

He left Wyoming having never won a Mountain West championship. His road record sat at a paltry 19-39 through 10 seasons at Laramie. He did not build Wyoming into a perennial contender like he did North Dakota State, but he left his mark on a program in one of the most rugged parts of the college football world. 

He announced his retirement at the conclusion of the 2023 season. When asked about why the time was right to step away, he answered the question with the same directness he had coached with his entire career. 

“I think my time and my tenure — I really need to ride off into the sunset after this bowl game,” he said. “And you’re going to be charged with finding my replacement.” 

This Saturday, Wyoming will travel to the Fargodome to take on North Dakota State in the Battle of the Basins.

On one side of the field, you have the Cowboys, who suddenly find themselves at 2-2 after a big win over Hawai’i last week. On the other sideline stands North Dakota State, a program embarking on a new quest for modern college football dominance in its first season at the FBS level in the same conference where Bohl took Wyoming to newfound heights. 

The game feels fairly straightforward. Undefeated North Dakota State is the favorite, and if all goes to plan, will notch its first home conference victory in a new division of football. 

Perhaps Bohl will be keenly watching the two programs that he molded in his image battle for the first time with new stakes. 

Life has a funny way of working out. Just ask Craig Bohl.

He, like countless before him and many after him, endured numerous bouts of adversity throughout his illustrious coaching career. 

Bohl caught a lot of bad breaks along the way. But he never stayed down for long. 

A nasty injury in a blocking drill didn’t end his playing career. It started a new one. A public firing in Lincoln didn’t close the book on him. It sent him to Fargo, where he built one of the most dominant dynasties in college football history. The bad breaks followed him to Wyoming too, where his soon-to-be star quarterback, Josh Allen, broke his collarbone 13 plays into his first Division I start.

This weekend, the two programs he built in his image will meet as Mountain West programs for the first time. Bohl won’t be on the sidelines. But his fingerprints will be everywhere. 

College Football Week 5 is here, and a bunch of teams are trying to figure out whether the good vibes are real or just another mirage.

We make our picks for Alabama-Mississippi State in Starkville, Ohio State-Iowa in Iowa City, Florida-Missouri, Miami-Clemson and a pair of fascinating Friday night games with Pitt-Virginia Tech and Penn State-Northwestern. Can Mississippi State prove it belongs in the SEC race? Is Iowa’s offense actually evolving? How much should we trust Florida after its breakout win over Ole Miss? And can Clemson make things uncomfortable for Miami under the lights in Death Valley?

Then we work through the rest of the Week 5 slate with Michigan-Minnesota, Notre Dame-North Carolina, Auburn-Tennessee, Virginia-Florida State, Louisville-NC State, Kentucky-South Carolina, BYU-TCU, Washington-USC, Baylor-Arizona State and more. Plus, our Locks of the Week, the Quadfathers, Under-The-Radar games and a very important discussion about finding water.

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