Tom Matukewicz introduced as Southeast's football coach

After he was introduced as Southeast Missouri State's new football coach at a news conference Wednesday, Tom Matukewicz shook athletic director Mark Alnutt's hand and pulled a red hat with a Redhawks logo onto his head as the audience, filled with many Southeast employees, community members and the board of regents, stood and applauded.

"I feel like a player all blinged out with my hat," Matukewicz said, smiling.

"For me, to put it in an athlete perspective, this is like getting drafted," Matukewicz said. "Since I was 12 years old, I dreamed about the day that I could meet my own team, which I did 30 minutes ago. This is truly a dream come true, and I'm really, really excited to be your head football coach."

Matukewicz replaced Tony Samuel, who was fired Nov. 26, and takes over a team that finished 3-9 last season and has won three games in each of its last three seasons.

Tom Matukewicz speaks at a news conference Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2013 at Academic Hall. He is the new head football coach at Southeast Missouri State University. (Fred Lynch)

Matukewicz agreed to a four-year contract with a base salary of $130,000, and he can receive up to $57,000 additionally per season through incentives.

Samuel's contract was for $125,000 a year for five years. He had two years left on his contract when he was fired. Samuel received a $145,833.38 buyout to not coach at Southeast any longer.

Matukewicz was one of 40 formal applicants for the position, according to Alnutt. Alnutt said he met with three finalists last week and decided Matukewicz was the top candidate.

Alnutt wanted someone who "fit here with what we're trying to do from a department standpoint."

"I also wanted someone who had experienced success. That's important," Alnutt said. "And also important is someone that went through a turnaround in a program, who knows what it takes to start a program where we are currently and then to be able to build it to the final winner. Someone that has that blueprint, so to say. Someone that knows it's a structured approach, it's a systematic approach."

The 40-year-old Matukewicz was the defensive coordinator at Toledo for the past two seasons. The Rockets were 7-5 this season and 9-4 last year and earned a trip to the 2012 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.

He coached at Northern Illinois University for four years before that. He was the defensive run-game coordinator from 2008 to 2010 and linebackers coach in 2011. He served as interim coach during NIU's 40-17 victory over Fresno State in the 2010 Humanitarian Bowl after coach Jerry Kill accepted a job at Minnesota.

He came to NIU from SIU-Carbondale, where he worked for Kill from 2001 to 2007. He was named the 2007 Football Championship Subdivision Assistant Coach of the Year.

In Matukewicz's first season at SIU, the Salukis finished 1-10. The next season they were 4-8. From 2003 to 2007, SIU made it to the FCS playoffs.

In his first season at NIU, the Huskies were 6-7. They improved to 7-6 the next season. In 2010 and 2011, NIU finished 11-3 and made it to the Humanitarian Bowl and GoDaddy.com Bowl respectively.

Matukewicz said he plans to use a "brick by brick" approach in rebuilding the program, something he helped do at SIU, NIU and Emporia State.

"Brick by brick is about ... we're in the middle of finals -- and that science test tomorrow, that's a brick. Go kill it," Matukewicz said. "That recruit we signed, that's a brick. That extra lift in the squat rack, that's a brick. That's how you build a program."

Part of that process will include what he called a "yellow-shirt program," where players will wear different clothing if they don't meet certain expectations, such as grade-point average standards, missed classes or appointments and penalties in games.

He also said he knows what recruiting is like in the area after having worked "at the school up north."

Matukewicz never said SIU, knowing it is a regional rival, but mentioned the reason Brandon Jacobs, who plays in the NFL, attended SIU wasn't because he liked the football stadium, but because he formed a relationship with Matukewicz.

Matukewicz plans to primarily recruit players out of high school and will focus on recruiting locally and in St. Louis.

"The heart and soul is going to come from the area," Matukewicz said. "If there's a good player at Jackson, he better be here. He better not be somewhere else. Because that guy is going to put 10 guys in the seats, and I promise you when it's fourth and one, he cares. He'll die for this university if he had to. We need more guys like that."

He met with Southeast players before the official announcement.

"Like I told them, I said, 'I know you didn't choose me,'" Matukewicz said. "'Nobody in here selected me. But what was important is I chose you. You're getting a coach that left a really good job, that's going to bring his family here and chose you, and I want to coach you. I want to put a smile on your face.' That was what I want them to go away with after finals -- like, go home and enjoy your family knowing that you got a football coach that's going to give you everything he's got, that's really excited about coaching you."

He said next season the Redhawks will continue to run the ball and improve their passing game. Defensively, the focus will be to pressure the quarterback.

He is still selecting his coaching staff, but has met with current Southeast assistant coaches and people he's coached with at other schools. He hopes to have a staff in place by Jan. 4.

"We're going to do what our players can do, but here's a blanket statement: I'm going to put a team out there that you're proud of," Matukewicz said during the news conference. "We're not going to be jumping offsides. We're not going to have bad body language and doing things like that. We're going to play hard. I don't know how many games we win because that really isn't what it's about. It's about that process. But I promise you if you come watch us play in the fall, you're going to walk out of there proud. We may not win, but I think you'll be excited about the product that is on the field."

Matukewicz said it would be "absurd" to predict that team will win the OVC next year, but listed it as the goal for the Redhawks, who won it in 2010 -- the only winning season in the past 11 years.

"We're not at a point in our program where we can talk about winning national championships -- we will get there," Matukewicz said. "But right now it's about the OVC and competing that way."

Neither Matukewicz nor Alnutt said they are focused on the immediate future but on setting up the foundation for a successful program.

"I want to be a football program, and when I say a football program -- not a football team that happens to win an OVC and elicit so much excitement amongst the community," Alnutt said. "What I want to be is a program of consistency. I'm not saying we're going to win a championship every year, but you know what? We're going do be a program where our down year is a year that we go 4-6, 4-7 or 5-6, whatever the case is. At the end of the day just like what he mentioned, people are going to be proud of our student-athletes -- what they've done on the field and then also the mark they've made in the class and on campus."

eunerstall@semissourian.com

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