BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer

MADISON, Wis. – Although his dad coached youth football and mentored him on the playing field through his mid-teens, Paul Haynes really didn't see himself in the coaching profession. Not initially. "I was always thinking of getting into the FBI, the U.S. Marshalls or Secret Service," he said.

After graduating with a degree in criminal justice from Kent State – where he was a walk-on defensive back who collected 440 career tackles, the seventh most in school history – Haynes actually had a conversation with an FBI recruiter in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.

At that time, Haynes was informed the agency would be hiring within the next year. "He told me, 'I'm going to send you the application, fill it out, address it to me, send it back,'" Haynes recounted. "The day I got the application, I put it on my desk, got in the car and I went to the store."

That's where he ran into Phil Callaghan, the athletic director at his alma mater, St. Francis DeSales High School. Callaghan got an update on what he was doing and his plans. And he planted the seed of coming back to DeSales as a coach and teacher on a part-time basis. Sounded good to Haynes.

"I never filled out that (FBI) application," he said. "I guess I was meant to be a coach."

Thirty years later, Haynes is writing another chapter in his coaching narrative by joining a fourth different Big Ten program as an assistant. At the UW, he will groom cornerbacks for Luke Fickell, also a DeSales alum. "He always makes it known that I'm older than him," laughed Haynes, 53. Fickell is 49.

Building relationships in this business – or now renewing them not only with Fickell but with defensive coordinator Mike Tressel – has never gotten old for Haynes, whose resume is a reflection of player development as a position coach and coordinator. He has tutored four first-time All-Americans.

"It's about relationships, it's about growing," Haynes said. "When you sit there and you look at Luke's career, he has definitely grown. He has challenged his assistant coaches.

"Part of the blueprint of this program is to challenge everything ... (like) how you teach things. We go through it. You've got to explain it and you've got to give the reason why. Continuing to be challenged was definitely a very attractive trait to me.

"You've got a lot of guys my age who say they know it all. I don't. I want to continue to learn. And this defense is definitely different than I've run in the past …But it has been a great fit (on the defensive staff). We work well together.

"And we have one goal in mind. That is to play good defense and win and serve the kids."

Of all the position groups on the Badger defense, though, the corners are among the least experienced and defined. So, what would the ideal cornerback look like to Haynes?

"It would be a guy that's very confident," he said. "A guy who's competitive, a guy that can recover. This is the Big Ten. Guys are going to catch balls at certain times. But if they do get a catch, we're going to respond and go to the next play. I'm more into the intangibles than the body types."

He showed that to be true the last three seasons at Minnesota. It will be no different here.

"I really love the room, they're hard-working kids, they want to do well, they want to get better," said Haynes, who singled out sixth-year senior Alexander Smith's off-season emergence as a leader in the cornerback group. "They're definitely a hungry group."

As a unit, they're learning Tressel's defensive scheme. "Simple and sound, but aggressive is the way I would describe it," Haynes said. "That's the thing when you look at Luke and Mike, regardless of how thick our playbook might become, it's still all about the fundamentals and techniques over scheme.

"What do our guys do the best? Let's find out and make sure we're doing those things. When you figure out your personnel, you can adjust this scheme to fit them best. That's what it comes down to. It's not really the defense you run but what they do well."

Before Haynes' tenure at Minnesota with P.J. Fleck – who was a graduate assistant at Ohio State when they first crossed paths – he was at Michigan State with Tressel, the Spartans' defensive coordinator and nephew of former Buckeyes' head coach Jim Tressel. The latter was a mentor to Haynes.

"It was a learning moment every single day," Haynes said of his growth on the OSU staff. "If you were inspired to be a very good coach, there was no better teacher than Jim Tressel. Mike has a lot of what I would say are Jim Tressel-like qualities, attention to detail, a great leader.

"He's a fired-up dude in everything and a super competitor. But he's an even-keeled guy who will get everybody calmed down no matter how overly excited everyone gets around him. He has a way of getting everybody back on course and going in the same direction."

Ten years ago, Haynes altered the direction of his career path as Kent State's head coach.

"The biggest thing that helped me was that you see everything in the big picture," he said. "Until you sit in that seat, you kind of always just think about your position. If you're a coordinator, it's your side of the ball. Even though everyone is team oriented, you kind of stay trapped in that little box.

"When you sit in that seat, you see everything. You see all perspectives of offense, defense, special teams. When your head coach – coach Fickell or whoever the coach is – makes a decision about something, you handle it a little bit different, even if everyone doesn't agree.

"You know it's the best thing for the team because he's always thinking big picture."

What was best for Haynes upon his Kent State exit was to partner with Tressel in East Lansing under head coach Mark Dantonio. In the transition, Tressel was bumped from co-defensive coordinator to defensive coordinator and Haynes was put in charge of the secondary in his second MSU stint.

Over the last three decades, Haynes has stepped outside the college arena just once. In 2001, he was the defensive quality control coach for Tom Coughlin with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Gary Moeller was the DC, Perry Fewell had the DBs, Lucious Selmon the LBs. It was another discovery chapter.

Fewell was another mentor. He was an assistant coach at Kent State when Haynes was there. Much later, he was the direct link to Coughlin, a two-time Super Bowl winning head coach. "I learned so much from Tom," Haynes said, "on how to hold meetings and motivate kids."

He's still putting it all to good use. All of his learned and shared coaching experiences. Especially with Fickell. And Mike Tressel. "When you look at the tradition of this place (UW)," he said, "there's a ton of tradition of really good players, a ton of tradition of winning. The brand is super big here."

But what if …

What if he hadn't bumped into the DeSales athletic director at the store and taken him up on his offer to teach and coach – "That's when I got the coaching bug, I was 23, a little later than most guys" – and what if he would have filled out that FBI application on his desk and sent it back?

"Been doing this for a long time," he said. "I can't imagine doing anything else." Meant to be.