Idaho State head football coach Mike Kramer recognizes how difficult the Bengals’ 2012 campaign has been, but is content with the state of the program.

    His reasoning is simple: People on the outside don’t see what goes on behind the scenes and in practice. He does.

    “It’s been a long, difficult season in a lot of aspects, but it’s also been an awesome, rewarding, positive, fun season in areas that maybe nobody sees as much of,” Kramer said on Tuesday, his last weekly press conference of the season. “I love this team.”

    Kramer, who has paced the sidelines of three different Big Sky schools for a combined 15 seasons, has a very solid grasp of what has taken place at Idaho State and what needs to happen next.

    “I’ve done this a couple of times before,” he said. “I’ve taken over some pretty sad programs, and I know how long it takes. The one thing I underestimated was how far away we were in certain aspects at Idaho State. It’s really been shocking. But after I’ve been here now for two full years I totally get what has happened, why it happened, what we can do to fix it and how long it’s going to take to fix it.”

    That knowledge and commitment leaves Kramer excited, hopeful for what is to come in the next few years in Pocatello.

    “I’ve had a lot of football teams at various levels, and this group of guys I will remember for a very long time for their complete dedication to each other, how hard they are willing to play and how hard they are willing to try,” he said. “We’re not very effective on game day in terms of being able to produce what we’re talking about, but our attitude makes it very worthwhile for our coaching staff to come to work today and help these guys try to solve the mysteries, the inequities of the sport.”

    “I like every member of this team,” Kramer added. “The inner workings of who we are behind the scenes has been just a great experience this year in 2012. While it might appear to a lot of people that 2012 has been a rough year for us, especially for those seniors, I’m pretty dang proud of these guys for how hard they’ve played and how hard they try. And in the end maybe that’s the best barometer of a team that I’ve ever heard of.”

    It’s been mentioned in numerous conversations involving ISU football, but the reason for this year’s struggles began long before Kramer took the job.

    “It’s going to require quite a bit more patience because the run down of this program didn’t just begin with the last coaching staff, it began some time ago,” he said. “And it actually occurred really over a period of the entire 50 years of the history of our run in the Big Sky.”

    The biggest issue was the Bengals’ APR score, which has since been fixed thanks to the efforts of Kramer and his coaching staff. The team could not go forward until grades and academic progress became the focus, even if it came with a price. The way to do that was sacrifice two full time assistant coaching positions to hire Quinton Freeman, ISU’s Director of Football Academics.

    “To get our scholarship count back to just base line, we had to impact ourselves academically way more than we did weight room wise, recruiting wise or schematically on offense of defense. Our APR had to be fixed,” Kramer said. “We’re heading to some sort of announcement here about our APR last season, which I think will make everybody realize that the first issue in our program is heading in the right direction.”

    Kramer pinpoints the sliding academic morals as the culprit behind Idaho State’s current lack of success on the football field.

    “At no point has anyone at the university saw fit to make sure that football program success endured, and this team has paid that price,” he said.

    But even in ISU’s perceived darkest hour, a light can be seen by players, coaches, fans and any outsiders that wish to criticize what Kramer has done.

    “It’s been a tale of two cities,” he said. “The first tale was an angry, nasty, wicked, lying bunch of thieves that were stealing from each other and from the university in terms of what they wanted out of the program. This team, this year is a complete 180 degree turn. They care about themselves, they care about themselves academically, they care about the team, they care about the inner workings of the locker room, and for that I am extremely proud of them and profoundly, profoundly emotionally attached to this team.”

    As the Bengals (1-9, 0-7 Big Sky) prepare to take the field this Saturday against Weber State (1-9, 1-6) to close out the 2012 season, Kramer’s optimism is palpable.

    “This will be one of the most positive teams I have ever coached in terms of having great memories of this team,” he said.

    The Bengals and the Wildcats kickoff at 4 p.m. from Holt Arena.