Oklahoma State football's Bryan Nardo settling into life-altering change as Cowboys' DC

STILLWATER — Bryan Nardo walked toward the south end zone of the Sherman Smith Training Center, stopping around the goal line as about two dozen people engulfed him in an old-fashioned media scrum.

Nardo smiled, looking back at the video cameras, iPhones and tape recorders pointed at him Monday afternoon as he prepared to speak to the Oklahoma State media contingent for the first time since being hired in late January as the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator.

Just like his post-practice interviews at Emporia State and Gannon University, right?

“Oh, yeah, 100%,” Nardo joked before embarking on a nearly 25-minute question-and-answer session.

But the 37-year-old — who had never coordinated a defense above the Division II level until Mike Gundy plucked him out of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference — seemed to find comfort in the media chaos rather quickly.

By the end of his answer to the first question, Nardo already was showing the calm demeanor, the confident communication style and the joyful spirit that those who know him have been telling Cowboy fans about for the last three months.

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He got shaken only once, when a group of players walking off the practice field erupted in a chorus of “we love you Coach Nardo!” screams.

“They’re good kids,” Nardo said as the playful teasing continued. “It’s fun to be around good kids.”

Players, both offense and defense, have found themselves drawn to Nardo, who is nearing three months on the job.

“Man, he’s a real cool guy,” junior linebacker Collin Oliver said. “At first, I was like, this guy knows defense? But Nardo, he’s a freak up here (pointing to his head). Guys are just now learning this defense and we feel like we’re clicking already. He’s just a real cool guy.”

Above all, Nardo was himself amid Monday’s media mob, and that’s one of the qualities that sold Gundy on Nardo to begin with.

Nardo told the story of the first time Gundy called him back in January. Sitting in a recruiting meeting at Gannon University, located in Erie, Pennsylvania, he looked down at his buzzing phone to see a phone number from Stillwater calling.

“Decided to answer it,” Nardo said. “Most of the time, it’s telemarketers. Glad I answered that call.”

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How Bryan Nardo landed at Oklahoma State

A few days later, Nardo awoke at his home in Erie at 4 a.m. to drive to Cleveland to catch a flight to Oklahoma City, where he met Gundy and other OSU assistants for what turned into six hours of football talk. Nardo flew back to Cleveland that night, getting home at 3 a.m.

“It was a blur,” he said. “It was a lot of fun. It was six hours of talking football. I think I had one cup of water. That was it. Just kept going.”

Nardo was reportedly making $60,000 per year at Gannon, and his OSU contract pays him $650,000.

For a married man with two sons under the age of 4, it’s a life-altering moment. And Nardo acknowledged as much on Monday, showing his appreciation and his understanding of what this opportunity means for him, his wife and his children.

“Outside of that, it’s been the exact same job that I’ve always done,” Nardo said. “I thought it would be something different and it really hasn’t. … Once you get past how big they are, you realize they’re still 18-to-23-year-old kids, and coaching is coaching. Football is football.

“It’s been life-changing in the fact of what it means for my family, but it’s been great, because I still get to do what I love every day.”

So don’t expect Nardo to change because his paycheck is bigger or his job is more prominent on the football food chain.

Talk to anyone who knows Nardo well, from his family to his former players, and eventually one phrase is going to be repeated by virtually all of them: “It’s cool to be you.”

The motto is a pillar of Nardo’s approach to connecting with the young men he coaches.

“That’s what my dad used to tell me when I was a kid — still tells me,” Nardo said of his father, Perry Nardo. “That’s what I’ve told my players. We grow up and you go through things and you realize real quickly that people will always try to slot you where they think you should be. One thing we talked about as a family, and what my dad wanted to constantly get through was, it’s cool to be you.

“I don’t have to be anybody else to be great at what we do. We tell our players you don’t have to do anything special to be elite. It’s cool to be you. Who you are is good enough. … If you get them to understand it’s cool to be me, I don’t have to do anything special to be great, all of a sudden now, they not only believe in what they’re doing, they believe in who they are and how they do it.”

That approach was a safety net for Nardo 16 months ago when he was dismissed from his job as the linebackers coach at Youngstown State.

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Bryan Nardo's exit from Youngstown State a blessing in disguise

After two seasons on staff, Nardo interviewed for a Division II head coaching position, which he didn’t get. Afterward, Youngstown State coach Doug Phillips decided to part ways with Nardo.

On Monday, Nardo referenced a “dark time” after the dismissal. In past interviews, he said he felt like a failure. He had a toddler at home and his wife was pregnant with their second son. He was scared.

At first, so was his father.

“The more I began to look at it as a business decision — you know, Coach Phillips had to do what he thought was best for his program,” Perry Nardo told The Oklahoman. “He made a decision, and quite honestly, I’m glad he made it.

“If he doesn’t make that decision, Bryan is still the linebackers coach at Youngstown State. He’s working his butt off and he’s still happy, but not as happy as he is now.”

If he was still coaching Youngstown linebackers, Nardo wouldn’t have made the move to Gannon, wouldn’t have gotten back to running the 3-3-5 defense, wouldn’t have been discovered by Gundy.

“The biggest thing was it got me back to being a coordinator,” Nardo said of the Youngstown situation. “It got me back to running my defense and being able to have a voice again and impacting kids. That was the biggest transition, was to get me back to believing in myself and believing what we could do.”

That’s why when Nardo reached the end of a long list of coaches who have impacted his career — a list that ran from Frank Solich to Jimmy Burrow to David Brown to Garin Higgins — he ended with Gannon head coach Erik Raeburn.

“He taught me to trust in who I was,” Nardo said. “Gave me an opportunity to come back and be a coordinator again, believed in what I wanted to do defensively. Believed in me.

“Those players at Gannon, they talk all the time about thanking me for being there. I needed them as much as they needed me. They were unbelievable kids. They gave me the confidence to believe in what I was doing and got me out of a pretty dark time.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State football: Bryan Nardo settles into life-altering change