If you don’t think college coaching is a small world, you should have dropped by James Franklin’s press conference in Arizona recently.

Franklin, the head coach at Penn State, is preparing his team to face Boise State in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoffs’ Fiesta Bowl Tuesday night. Aside from college football trivia experts, most folks probably didn’t know that Franklin got his first full-time coaching job at Idaho State University under then Bengal head football coach Larry Lewis.

“I was making ($23,300 annually), feeling really good about myself, coaching the wide receivers,” Franklin, who now makes $7.5 million a year, told reporters gathered in Arizona. “Joe Lorig, who is the special teams coordinator at Oregon, was my roommate. Just had a great experience in Pocatello, Idaho.”

Franklin, who will be 53 on Feb. 2, was just 27 years old when he accompanied Lewis from Washington State’s Rose Bowl staff, where he’d been a graduate assistant, to Pocatello in 1999.

Franklin arrived in Pocatello still in time to get the full “Holt Arena experience,” which no longer exists: monster trucks, rodeos and concerts.

“I remember literally we played a game on Saturday (and) on Wednesday they’d rolled the turf up and brought in dirt and it would be monster trucks on Wednesday night,” Franklin said. “Then Thursday they’d flip it over and it would be bull riding. You’d go down and there’d be these massive bulls. I remember Shania Twain that same week had a concert (at Holt Arena). She used our offices as her changing area. I remember walking out and there’s Shania Twain.”

I’m pretty sure Franklin condensed the timing of all those events a bit for dramatic effect, but you literally could watch bull riding, monster trucks and a great country concert all in Holt Arena in a few weeks’ time back in those days. Now, it’s only football and track, but I guarantee you the folks in those offices don’t miss the diesel fumes or the bull… manure. They might miss catching a glimpse of Shania, though.

The early years of the Lewis tenure at Idaho State saw some really good coaching talent inhabiting those cramped, low-slung offices in what is now known as the ICCU Dome, including Lorig, who Franklin mentioned earlier. Among them were Keith Uperesa, the offensive coordinator and O-line coach who left ISU to coach at USC; Aaron Price, the quarterbacks coach then, who has had a long career as an assistant at UTEP, Washington State and Tulane, among other places; and Chris Ball, the defensive coordinator, who coached at a number of Division I programs, including Washington State, Arizona State and Memphis, before serving as Northern Arizona’s head coach for four seasons.

Then there was Bruce Barnum, who served stints on both defense and as offensive coordinator under Lewis. Barnum is now the head coach at Portland State, where he just completed his 10th season at the helm. Another was James Ward, who was the secondary coach in 1999 and eventually moved up to defensive coordinator, where he led arguably the best ISU defense ever in 2002, before moving on to assistant jobs at Colorado State and Nevada. And Franklin, who departed Pocatello after only one season, to take an assistant’s job at Maryland.

Lewis himself remains a part of this tangled coaching saga. After he left Idaho State in 2005, he worked at Colorado State, Nevada and Virginia before working his way back into Franklin’s orbit as an analyst at Penn State from 2017 until his retirement in 2021.

“I’ve got great memories of Pocatello,” Franklin said. “Larry Lewis was great to me. I learned a ton under him. He came to work for us at Penn State. I had a great experience. Nick Whitworth (a running back on that 1999 ISU team) was with us (and) he is now special teams coordinator at Washington State. I’m grateful and appreciative of the time.”

In the press box opposite Franklin’s staff Tuesday night will be another tie to Idaho State: former Bengal quarterback Dirk Koetter, who will be calling the plays for the Boise State offense as the offensive coordinator. Koetter, who was the backup quarterback on the 1981 ISU national championship team, has had one of the most illustrious coaching careers of any Idaho State graduate.

Koetter has worked the full gamut of coaching experiences, starting at Highland High School, gradually moving up as an offensive assistant at San Francisco State, UTEP, Missouri, Boston College and Oregon, before finally getting his opportunity as head coach at Boise State and Arizona State.

He then took the leap into the NFL, working as offensive coordinator for the Jacksonville Jaguars, Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, before being promoted to head coach of the Bucs for three seasons. He did another stint as offensive coordinator for the Falcons, before returning to Boise State. There he was brought on as an offensive analyst, then interim offensive coordinator and finally as permanent OC this season.

Koetter, now 65, has said he will likely retire whenever Boise State’s season ends this year. That would eliminate one limb of the Koetter coaching tree, which began with his father Jim, who won state championships at both Highland and Pocatello High Schools, was an assistant on the 1981 ISU national title team, and served as Bengal head coach from 1983 to 1987. Dirk’s brother Brent was also a successful coach at both Pocatello and Highland High Schools, winning state championships at both schools. He is now out of coaching and working in the financial business in Boise.

But Dirk’s daughter, Kaylee Prigge, is the head volleyball coach at Wyoming, and his son Davis is in his second year as a graduate assistant with the football program at Texas. And that’s a good thing, because athletics without a Koetter on the sidelines or in the press box, just doesn’t seem right. The coaching circle just keeps on turning.