Bakersfield College offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Carl Dean has been called a guru of sorts when it comes to producing strong offenses and good Division 1 prospective quarterbacks, but that isn’t all he is about.
Dean grew up in Bakersfield and gained an interest in football by just being around the game and his older brother, who also played football. Dean played quarterback at West High School. Growing up, his favorite pro football team was the Dallas Cowboys.
“Shoot, as long as I can remember, I was tossing a football around. I don’t know that there’s one specific thing that ever got me really interested in playing it, other than, I had an older brother who played high school football and I just loved being around that, and I just got turned on to it,” said Dean.
“I can always remember being a Cowboys fan when I was a little kid. Being a big Tom Landry fan, and I remember the mystique of the Cowboys,” he said. “As I got into playing, I really enjoyed watching Joe Montana. Certainly an over-achiever at quarterback, and one of the greatest that’s ever played. I’d say he was the one I watched the most as a player,” said Dean.
After playing at West, Dean brought his talents to BC, where he played under then head coach Carl Bowser in 1992. That was also the year current head coach Jeff Chudy was hired as an assistant at BC.
After his time at BC was done, Dean traveled up north to play for the San Jose State Spartans, where he played three seasons, including one redshirt year.
Dean reminisced on why he chose coaching. “I got into coaching primarily because I knew I wasn’t good enough to keep playing, I wanted to be around the game and learn as much as I could about the game. So I took that path as a career choice,” he said.
As the offensive coordinator, some of Dean’s philosophies come straight from who’s on the team. “Philosophically my biggest thing is execution and repetition. We’re big believers in taking care of the football and if you turn the ball over, you can’t play for us,” he said. “Anytime you look at the box scores of football games, it really comes down to two statistics.
“One is turnover margin. Are you winning the turnover battle? If you’re winning the turnover battle, you’re going to give yourself a chance to win each week,” said Dean. “The other thing is time of possession. Are we controlling the football? When we do have it, are we scoring points? If we’re not turning it into to points, we’re kind of spinning our wheels,” he said.
Dean was asked about specific offense types and he continued with, “Philosophically, in terms of what kind of offense we’re going to be, it’s really going to be dictated on our personnel.”
He continued. “If we’re really good at throwing the ball, and we have the personnel to do that, then we’re going to do that. If we can’t throw the ball and we can only run it, then that’s what we’re going to do” he said.
“We’re going to do whatever gives us a chance to win,” said Dean.
Dean said if given any type of player for any position, the type of offense he would run would be multi-formation with multiple personnel packages. Dean said they would run a minimal amount of plays out of every formation possible, which would make it easy for the offense to understand, but difficult for the defense to comprehend.
As specifically for the Renegades now, Dean believes his offense can take them far, but it has to be a complete team effort to make the playoffs.
“Hopefully, the offense can take us to a conference championship. I know that it’s not just the offense, it’s all three aspects of the team, special teams and defense, and we’ve have to do our part,” he said. “I think our entire team is a young football team, and offensively we’re no exception. I think we’ve made improvements in areas from week one that we struggled with.
“So we’re coming along and we’re going to see here real quick, because the next five opponents are all good football teams and it’ll be a good measuring stick for us,” he said. Dean went on to talk about trying to perfect the offense and how that can be a struggle for him some times.
“I would say that I try to be a perfectionist, which is to a fault to some degree. I always see room for improvement,” he said. “Certainly we can be better blocking people, certainly better at taking care of the football. Our goal is to not beat ourselves and I think the first four games we did that.”
Away from the field, Dean spoke about his relationship with the rest of the staff.
“I think we have a great relationship. We understand that we have a job to do, and coach [Reggie] Bolton, and coach Chudy do a great job on the defensive side, and coach Chudy trusts me with the offense,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot from coach Chudy and one of the things as an assistant coach, is you always look for things that you can take away from the head coach, the knowledge and the wisdom that you can gain from him.
“I’ve learned a lot from him and coach Bolton, who was a head coach at this level. Coach Bolton and I, when we’re not coaching football, we’re exercising, playing racquetball together and our families get along great,” he said.
As for other stuff Dean likes to do away from the field – Dean is a married father of triplet daughters – he loves the time with his family. Dean’s wife, a former Renegade, is Christy Dean and their daughter’s names are Mia, Gracie and Sophie.
Dean talked about how the best part of coaching is similar to what he enjoys away from the game.
“Just seeing old players come back, who loved being Renegades, loved being here, had a good experience and are now in their community giving back to their and being a vital role being citizens. Having an impact on someone else’s life,” said Dean.