Polian's road to head coach

If the Napoleon Complex is the curse of the short man, then the Polian Complex must be the curse of the man who shuns privilege.

Or maybe more accurately, it’s the curse of the son of the man who shuns privilege.

Brian Polian and his two brothers, Chris and Dennis, were raised in a home of football royalty. Their father, Bill Polian, was a general manager with three NFL franchises, including the Buffalo Bills teams that went to four straight Super Bowls in the early 1990s.

Dad never let the boys get fitted for a crown.

“When I went in, and when my two brothers entered football essentially at the age of 14, we were not too good to do any job,” Brian Polian, Nevada’s 38-year-old first-year coach, said recently. “We were hazed, abused — had to do from dirty laundry to packing a cooler full of beer for the equipment staff. The beauty of having been brought up like that is you have a great appreciation for everybody in the organization.”

If you remember those Bills teams — led by quarterback Jim Kelly, running back Thurman Thomas, wide receiver Andre Reed and defensive end Bruce Smith, to name a few — then you knew Brian Polian before he was named Chris Ault’s successor in January. You at least knew his face.

He had pimples then, but essentially it’s the same face he has now, 20-some years later. He still has a full head of blonde hair and the boyish looks he had when he was a ball boy, standing next to Bills coach Marv Levy on the sidelines on Sundays.

Whenever the Bills were on TV from about 1990 to 1993, there was Brian, a pretty good, tough, high school linebacker at the time, handling wires, headsets and whatever else Levy needed.

“Those are some of the fondest memories of my life,” Brian said after a recent practice, where he prepared to lead the Wolf Pack as a first-time head coach into the team’s season opener Saturday at UCLA.

Brian recalled one Monday night game in Seattle in which the team returned home right after the game, per usual protocol. The flight arrived in Buffalo at 6 o’clock the next morning.

“My old man took me right to school,” Brian said with a chuckle. “He said, ‘Hey, you made up your work for Monday, but you don’t get Tuesday off.’”

Brian wouldn’t go so far as to say he was the BMOC at St. Francis High near Buffalo, but it had to be pretty cool being the guy everyone saw standing next to Coach Levy on Sundays.

“I had these experiences that not a lot of people got to have, but with that came responsibility,” Brian said. “It was neat. It made it really hard to tell the teacher I had the flu when everybody in Buffalo was watching … and I was standing next to the head coach.”

They were Brian’s formative years, and the association made a lasting impression.

“When I was 14, 15 and I’m there at training camp every day and I see it, I knew that this is what I wanted to do,” he said. “That’s when I got bit by the bug.”

Levy, 88 and retired, wouldn’t go so far as to say he saw “head coach,” written all over the young Polian, who built his résumé as a special teams coordinator, most notably with Notre Dame, Stanford and Texas A&M. But Levy said he was always impressed with him.

“My impression then was he was a bright, interested, focused type of person,” Levy said from his home in Chicago. “I did follow his career. I saw him rise, and I was extremely pleased but not surprised by it.”

Levy, whose first head-coaching job was at New Mexico in the late 1950s, said he recommended Polian “very strongly” for the Lobos’ vacancy that went to Bob Davie in 2012.

“As Brian began coaching, I could see a bright future,” Levy said. “You need some good breaks, but I could see a bright future.”

He was not the only one. Along the way, Brian Polian has worked for or with some great football minds, including NFL coaches Tony Dungy, Jim Caldwell, Dom Capers and Chris Palmer, and college coaches Jim Harbaugh, Charlie Weis and Kevin Sumlin.

“As a young coach, he was thirsty for knowledge,” said Palmer, a longtime friend of Bill Polian who coached in college and the NFL for more than 40 years. “… His personality is key. He’s outgoing. He goes the extra mile. He’s a guy that is always working to get better. Brian is one of those guys I would always recommend, and he always impressed me with the way he went about his business.”

“I’ve had a chance to watch him coach, and every place he’s been, he’s been successful. He has an excellent personality for recruiting. People just gravitate to him.”

As Brian was finishing up his senior season as a linebacker at John Carroll University, a Division III school near Cleveland, in 1996, he and his dad began to map out a plan. Bill was the GM of the expansion Carolina Panthers, and Kevin Steele was the Panthers’ linebackers coach.

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