Mount Mercy’s football vision all about ‘doing it right’

CEDAR RAPIDS — Paul Gavin admits he’s not a football guy.

He’s been a basketball guy and an outstanding golf guy for most of his life. He once was asked about playing football in high school, but the basketball court won out.

But now, as Mount Mercy University’s athletics director, he’s a football guy. And he’s loving it.

“I consider myself a builder,” he said last week after Mount Mercy announced its new Busse Football Center. “As an athlete, I was maybe not good enough to be at a high level. I had to learn to become better at my craft.

“As a coach, the same thing. I was a terrible coach my first year. I think we won six games. Then we had a pretty good career.”

That “pretty good career” he built as basketball coach included more than 300 career wins — the most in Mount Mercy history — and several conference titles, NAIA national tournament berths and 11 All-American players in 23 seasons. As a golfer, he was a two-time Cedar Rapids City Am champ.

So, yeah, Gavin knows a thing or two about building.

As AD since 2015, the school has added two new athletics facilities, including the Robert W. Plaster Athletic Complex, which houses baseball and softball fields, a beautiful track facility and a soccer field that soon will double as a football field.

He’s added bowling, men’s volleyball and women's lacrosse to the roster of sports offered on campus. The university has gone from 385 athletes to more than 600.

But football?

“This is the mother of all startups,” he said.

That’s an understatement.

So how does a basketball guy and a golf guy become a football guy? For one thing, it hasn’t been an overnight transformation. Since 2016, he’s fielded questions about football on campus.

“... it was no for now,” he said then and now. “... The university just wasn’t ready.”

But now — with the partnership with St. Ambrose and a need, like all small colleges, for enrollment — the time is right.

“I’ve done a lot of work ... looking at newer programs, looking at the return on investment,” he said.

Most importantly, he wanted to make sure Mount Mercy University was going to do it right.

“I think you can tell we’re doing it right,” he said.

The first big step was securing MD Daniels as the first coach in Mustang history. A friendly and enthusiastic 35-year-old, Marvellande Daniels has a likable get-it-done attitude.

“I think we’re off in the right direction and we’ve got the right guy leading the program,” Gavin said.

The second step was and is getting athletes to buy into the vision.

“Recruiting is a challenge,” Gavin said. “... these young men are coming in with the understanding they don’t get to play for a year. That takes a lot of courage to do that.”

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Daniels said “yes and no” about that recruiting challenge. He said many recruits have noted they’d likely be redshirting as freshmen and down deep on the depth chart.

Daniels already has 21 verbal commitments, including two local quarterbacks taking that plunge — Cedar Rapids Prairie’s Wyatt Easch, who passed for 1,547 yards and 18 touchdowns last fall, and Solon’s Ty Bell, who passed for 1,831 yards and 19 TDs in the fall.

“They see our vision,” Daniels said. “They’re coming in and they’re already in the top two on the depth chart.”

The third step is having the facilities to “do it right.”

Thanks to a $2.1 million lead gift from the Lavern T. and Audrey Busse Foundation, the new Busse Football Center is a “second to none” facility that will house locker rooms, offices, meeting spaces and a weight room.

“We want to be different than other startup programs,” Gavin said. “We have high expectations for all our programs here ... football is going to be no different.

“We’re going to do it well and we’re going to do it right.”

This new era in local sports will be here before we know it. Daniels said he expects to have 40 to 60 players on campus by the fall and “development games” are planned.

“We want to be a premier program,” Daniels told the crowd last week at Rinderknect Athletic Center, another new and beautiful facility built on Gavin’s watch. “It’s going to take a little bit, but we have the pieces in place.”

Doing it right can do it.

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