COLLEGE PARK, Md. –
Director of Athletics Kevin Anderson
Opening Statement:
"Good morning everybody. It's a great day to be a Terp. First and foremost I want to thank you for coming this morning, and then I want to welcome this lovely family of yours DJ. Sarah, Abigail, Luke, your father and mother, Dan and Marianne. Welcome to our family. We're looking forward to great things to come here. Prior to beginning this extensive searching process we outlined the qualities of what we wanted in our next football coach. The qualities including having a strong and dynamic leader with a great energy for our program. An innovative football mind. Having a great personality that would appeal to our players, donors, and alumni. We wanted someone with a strong background that had a winning pedigree. Most importantly we wanted someone that had a winning attitude and came from a winning culture. The other thing was we wanted was someone who was going to build these young men to be good role models and achieve academically in the classroom. Through this extensive search, we found the right person for our job, and that is DJ Durkin. DJ has been a coordinator of defenses that have been ranked in the top 15 of the nation for three years, including Michigan this year. He helped lead teams to five consecutive bowl appearances. His defense was the primary reason that Michigan was ranked number 10 this season. The four recruiting classes he worked with at the University of Florida were ranked among the top 11 in the nation. He was acknowledged and rewarded for being recruiter of the year in 2012. His last three years in Florida he had four first round draft choices. At Florida he recruited nine five stars that played at the defensive side of the ball. Most impressively about DJ, he's worked with tremendous people. Jim Harbaugh, Urban Meyer, Tyrone Willingham, Dan Quinn and David Shaw. He comes from the most prestigious football programs in this country. Ladies and gentleman, our new football coach: DJ Durkin."
Head Coach DJ Durkin
Opening Statement:
"Thank you Kevin, I appreciate it. Thank you everyone, it's amazing the turnout we've had. I've been waiting for this day for a long, long time and it's finally here and I'm very excited. I want to thank Dr. Loh, Kevin Anderson, Damon Evans, and the entire search committee. It was a very thorough process, it was an enjoyable process, and we learned a lot about one another. It was a good marriage on both sides of it. I would also like to take a moment and thank Jim Harbaugh and the University of Michigan. I can't tell you enough how supportive Jim, his staff, and Jim Hackett have been during this entire process. Everyone knows him as a great coach and he is, but he's an even better person. We have some special people here that I'd like to introduce. This is my wife Sarah, she's right there in front. I truly believe your wife is every much as part of the job as you are, that's how we attack this thing. This is our job, our profession, and no one does a better job than Sarah. It takes a special lady to be your wife, to be a coach’s wife. She's the best. Sitting next to Sarah is Abigail. Abigail is five years old going on 17. She also has her opinions about it. When I broke the news to Abigail that we were going to be moving again she was excited about that. I explained to her that it was for a head coaching job and I thought she'd be pretty excited about that, which she was. She didn't take much time to look right at me and say 'it's about time you became a head coach'. I've been disappointing her all along but I finally got that done. Then I have Luke here, Luke is two years old, he'll be three in February. He'll be jumping out of his seat in the next thirty seconds. I also have my mom and dad with me, Dan and Marianne Durkin. I'm very fortunate to have great parents that have been very supportive all along, I'm very thankful.
“The next obvious question is why Maryland, why are you here. To me it's a very easy one. I think personally I really identify with this program. This is a blue collar place, a blue collar university, a blue collar program. We get to compete in one of the best divisions, best conferences in the country. I embrace competition, I want to recruit guys that embrace that competition. From my time in coaching I've been involved with some great programs, some great universities. But in those programs, it's the people that make them what they are. Just going through the process with everyone involved, and the search committee from Kevin to everyone on down, everyone's in alignment and pushing in the same direction in where they want to go. I just got that feeling and I couldn't wait to be a part of it. I'm sure we'll get plenty of questions of what we'll be like on the field, I don't know how specific we'll be with that. A couple of things about our program. We're going to bring in quality student athletes that are going to help us compete for championships. That's what were all here for. We need guys that can help us win on the field, compete for championships, and become quality young men. Guys that want to get degrees and want to graduate, guys that are motivated to do that. We're going to help them with that motivation.
“Lastly, we're going to prepare guys for life after football. Whether that's in the NFL or some other profession. That's our job, I take that very seriously. The reason Sarah and I are in this profession is to help young men somehow have confidence and success in your life. That's what our program is going to do. We're going to be aggressive in everything that we do. If there's anything you know what my history and where I've been able to coordinate and coach, we are aggressive. Offensively, defensively, special teams, in the classroom, in offseason workouts, we will be aggressive in everything that we do. I truly believe in being a blue collar, hard working team. I think you can out-effort people. You can out-effort people on and off the field, that's what I'm from. I'm from the ground up back in my hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. I've learned those values a long time ago and that's what we'll be."
On what makes Maryland an attractive job:
"The attraction to this job is I think there is already talent in the building. I think right in our backyard is one of the richest talent areas in the country. We have to be able to do a great job of keeping those guys at home. We have to go like crazy and do it. Anytime you have that advantage in your backyard where you have a strong enough pool that you can field a team from that, it's a huge advantage. There's not a lot of places like that in the country. Competing in our conference and the division we're in, I think it's a huge positive. We want guys that want to go play in those games. We want guys that can embrace that challenge, that want to go play in those atmospheres, in those games. That's what we get to do week in and week out."
On filling out his staff:
"I'm going to be very deliberate about it. As the right guys come forward, we'll keep moving with it as we go forward. We're in the middle of a recruiting period right now. We have a number of guys here right now that are putting work in recruiting that I have to get with and go through the board with them on. We have to get it right and get the right people in here. We're going to get people that have a purpose, good people, good family men that understand the game, and what we're all about as a program. However long it takes to get them is how long it will take to do it."
On qualities of Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh that can help him as a coach:
"It's funny as coaches, I've been fortunate to be around some of the best in the business. You always take bits and pieces from people you worked for, worked with. You're always learning, you're always evolving. There's a long list of things I've learned from Jim and the other coaches I've worked with as well. You put your own stamp on it, your own personality. You don't just do it the way someone else did it just because, you put your own stamp on it, your own personality. That's how we'll operate here. Those are great guys that we'll continue to lean on and communicate with."
On if he will coach Michigan in their bowl game:
"I will not be coaching the bowl game at Michigan. I said to the players today when we had a team meeting, I'm an all in type of guy. For me, if I'm here I'm here. Splitting between would've been really hard for me to do, so I'm here. I can't say enough about the support from Michigan and Jim Harbaugh and Jim Hackett and everyone has had for me. Also, the players at Michigan. They were phenomenal, they really bought in and did a heck of a job this year. I'm going to miss those guys, I know they'll do well in the game."
On why the University of Maryland can compete for championships:
“Any good organization has proper alignment. From the top down if you have alignment and a culture when everyone is pushing in the same direction the sky is the limit. You can accomplish anything. In our industry in particular talking about football, again with our recruiting base in our backyard, I know we can recruit the right talent to be here. You mix an organization that is aligned right, a healthy culture. Energy equals production. This entire building will be filled with high-energy people that are excited about coming to work and will go do it from the top on down.”
On when he will start recruiting:
“We will be hitting it soon. Where I am going, not totally set yet. We are going through that here later today. We are going to sit down and meet and go through that and strategize the best ways to do that. The biggest thing for me is getting on the phone with the guys that we are actively recruiting as well as getting new guys on board and hitting the ground running.”
On what kind of players it takes to win the Big Ten:
“I think you try to find guys that are competitive. I think that is the characteristic that carries over anything. Guys that are competitors, they find a way to get to the top. Whatever environment they are in, they are going to fight and scrap and somehow get to the top of that environment. Those are the types of guys we are looking for in this conference.”
On how he plans to keep high school talent in Maryland:
“Recruiting is all about relationships and relationships are built through time, through adversity, you go through circumstances together. I just plan on starting from day one and just being consistent and continuing to build those relationships. I don’t think there is any magic thing to say to win everyone over. They are going to get consistent feedback from myself and my staff. They are going to get consistent effort on our end recruiting and evaluation. And they are going to get honest feedback and honest evaluation from us and just start to cultivate and continue to build those relationships. That is what it comes down to.”
On adjusting from having just defensive responsibility:
“Defensively and special teams wise, I have a really good, clear picture of how that will go and what we are going to do. Offensively, I have a really clear picture of what I don't like seeing, what gives us problems, I have kept good note of that throughout the years so I know what I want that to look like. I think I can provide a great perspective to an offensive coordinator from that angle.”
On feeling better prepared from serving as interim head coach at Florida:
“Without a doubt. 100 percent. Although it was a short-lived amount of time, it was an unbelievable experience. You never think totally that way until you sit in that seat and have to think big-picture wise. It really, if nothing else, reiterated to me what is important about coaching.”
– Maryland –
