Tim Rebowe talks about visions for Nicholls football

Taking over a program that went 0-12 a year ago, new Nicholls State University head football coach Tim Rebowe said it doesn’t bother him to discuss winning.
However, the wins must come long before the players hit the field.
That was one of the goals he laid out to his players when he first met with them and one of the things he outlined to the East St. Mary Kiwanis Club during a speech Friday at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City.
Rebowe, who has coached on different levels of football from the junior high, to a state championship appearance as a high school head football coach at Destrehan High School in 1993 and for about the last 20 years as a college position coach, said winning must be done daily on a much smaller scale.
“We got to have a small victory when you wake in the morning to go to class,” he said. “We got to have that success on that test you have. We got to have a victory in the weight room. Little things each day, you got to learn how to win, and we’re going to win and be successful.”
While winning is desired, the chief goal is to change the mindset of the players.
“Listen, they were 0-12 last year, and I can’t change that. … I tell them the good Lord put eyes in front of our head, not in the back because we’re looking forward, and that’s what we want to do,” he said.
Rebowe, who is the 10th head football coach in Nicholls State University history, was hired Nov. 22. It’s his second stint at the school after an earlier job as an assistant coach at Nicholls in the 1990s.
He inherits a program that lost its head coach, Charlie Stubbs, after game 3 of the 2014 season due to resignation because of health reasons.
Steve Axman served as interim head coach for the remainder of the season.
Rebowe comes to Nicholls after most recently serving as the defensive backs coach at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
He juggled his coaching duties at ULL, which concluded with a fourth consecutive victory in the New Orleans Bowl, while also making his transition to Nicholls.
Rebowe said he didn’t begin hiring his staff at Nicholls until early January and credited them with the success in their first signing class, which featured 26 Louisiana prospects.
“I think we made a little noise in this area and in recruiting because one of the things that we said we wanted to do was to recruit local, and we did that and recruit the area,” he said.
He said he wants his local recruiting to include the Tri-City area.
“I want to come to Central Catholic, I want to go to Morgan City, I want to go to Berwick, I want to go to Patterson,” he said. “I want to go to those schools and get the players and keep them home.”
Rebowe noted that all of his signees this year are from a two-hour radius of Nicholls and all from Louisiana.
“I tell people that because when I was here before — and I didn’t want to be a hypocrite — I always said we don’t have to go far to get the good football players,” he said. “We don’t have to. They’re here. … There’s a reason, you guys that follow sports and athletics, why every program in the country, they come to south Louisiana to recruit. It’s because they got good players here. And we got enough of them and all the big schools that come, they can’t get them all so we have to go and we have to go get them.”
In his first meeting with his team, which he said lasted between 45 minutes to an hour, Rebowe said football wasn’t discussed.
“I don’t know even if how much football we talk to them now,” he said. “It’s all about the mindset and program and goals and keys to success and how to get these little victories every day that we’re trying to get to.”
In addition to winning, another goal he outlined was developing lifelong relationships among players and between players and coaches.
“Because our No. 1 job, if we don’t develop a lifelong relationship with you, I feel like we’ve failed,” Rebowe said.
His other goal is to get a “meaningful and useful degree.”
“You’re going to get a degree that you become a productive citizen when you leave here and not just to play football and say oh, we just got you a degree to graduate and you can’t use it,” Rebowe said.
He also outlined keys to success for the program, which are to commit, communicate and trust each other.