Interview Q&A: Temple Coach Brian Ginn
Former Chicago Bears coach and Lake Forest resident re-enters college football.
In late spring, a Lake Forest resident flew back home. He came to visit his family, but his out-of-state day job kept him on the road, traveling the busy expressways of Chicago.
Over this past winter, Brian Ginn, a former Chicago Bears coach, accepted a job with the Temple University football program under first-year head coach K.C. Keeler. Ginn had to pack his bags and move to Philadelphia, where Temple is located. His family stayed in Lake Forest.
Ginn’s official job title at Temple is special teams coordinator but being a college job, his duties involve a heavy dose of recruiting. He flew back to Chicago in the late spring on a business trip—to visit as many high schools as he could, build relationships with coaches and meet prospects in the classes of 2026 and ‘27.
I sat down with Ginn at a local Starbucks while he was in town, and we had a wide-ranging conversation about the state of college football, his acclimation back into the sport after being out for seven years, and having his family remain in Lake Forest.
This is part 1 of the Q&A. Part 2 will be published sometime later.
College football is bonkers right now in terms of changes. What is Temple going to do with scholarship limits?
We are going to stay at the 85 equivalency and work off of that. Where it’s become different now at the FBS level you could never do that before. We can put two on scholarship to give us that one equivalency. Cold never do that in FBS football before. Now you can. IN FCS you can, that’s where you hear about the partial scholarships. For in-state kids it was always, ‘hey, we’ll give you tuition but you have to cover room and board. In-state it was obviously cheaper. Now, apparently, you can do that in FBS.
You are back in college football for the first time in a number of years. Things have changed wildly since.
It’s been seven years. This recruiting game is completely different. You have to remember, take the NIL or the transfer portal out of it, when I was last in college, there was one signing date, in the beginning of February. Now, even the signing dates have changed (early December). Now, we’re talking official visits in June. We never used to do them until December because the kids weren’t signing until February. Now you have to bring them up in June, before the season, before their signing date. The whole calendar has flipped. That’s all different.
This week you spent driving around Chicagoland visiting high schools.
I know all these schools because my son, Brayden (an 8th grader) has played basketball or my daughter Addison (a LFHS junior) has had field hockey or Riley (a LFHS junior) has had tennis so I know all these schools but even being out here now since 2018, I never met any of the coaches except for Chuck (Spagnoli). Going in, when I call these guys, they don’t know who I am, I’m just the guy from Temple to them. I never had to recruit with the Bears and the last two years didn’t have to do it either (Ginn was out of coaching). So that part has been fun because, yeah, I know this area but I don’t know the guys I’m dealing with as well as who the players are.
Has there been any effort by Temple in recent years to recruit the Chicago area?
No. The coach at Carmel Catholic is a Temple grad (Jason McKie). He said he hadn’t seen Temple. That’s not a knock on anyone its just that Illinois is not a natural fit for Temple when you look at it in the big picture. As I was trying to convince them to send me out here—more so so I could see my family—it started to make more and more sense to me. You can get a flight out of O’Hare to Philly every hour on the hour. It’s an hour and a half flight you are coming from Philly to Chicago, there’s a connection with the big city type lifestyle. The more and more I tried to convince them this was a good idea so I could come and see my family, it made more and more sense to me too, like, ‘hey, this is a natural fit.’ With the access to O’Hare. I’m working Chicago north so everyone is within 30 minutes of O’Hare. When you land in Philly we are a 20 minute ride from there, so it’s super easy. So yes, I originally put this together so I could come home and see my wife and kids, but it made more and more sense as I was trying to convince them I convince myself that was actually a pretty good idea.
The transfer portal is very much a modern day term in college football. There was a window that opened in the spring (April 15-25) for athletes to enter the portal. But they remain in the portal unless they find a school. So the process of recruiting and evaluating never really stops.
They are evaluating guys and bringing them on campus. Obviously, they didn’t think it was important enough to have the special teams coordinator there so they sent him out, as far away from Temple when they are bringing recruits in as they could as possible, stay as far away as you can.
What class of high school kids are you out here visiting?
We’re looking at the ’26’s (2026 grads) as those are the ones I can meet with. First time out here, once we talk through the ‘26s, I at least want to get a list of the ‘27s (2027 grads), who should I keep my eye on as they play their junior year in the fall. The main focus is the ’26 class, figure out who we should offer, who we can get to camp to see if we can get an offer, or who we should take off the list for whatever reason. The more kids you can get off the list, that can help you down the line too. There’s a number of different things we are trying to go through with the ’26 class.
How did you put the recruiting trip together?
It was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. You get all these different reports. You are trying to find names. I didn’t have just one specific list with all the names in the area so I’m trying to put all of these different reports together and essentially I was looking for guys who were getting offers and seeing where those offers were and worth going to see…if a kid has ten Big 10 offers, there’s no need for me to go see him. Because of my background, if I see a wide receiver, I tend to want to go see them. I’ll have a better idea of what we are looking for. I saw more wide receivers this week, and that might be because of what’s in the area this year. There seems to be a good crop of wide receivers.
What sources provide information on these prospects?
We get different reports sent to us, about different offers. And its not just by state which is why I said it’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. There might be 250 names on there from California to Maine. I’m just kind of going through looking for the Illinois kids. It will have a name, high school, where he got offered by, and when. There’s all kinds of different reports. Locally, we get more structured reports that are broken down by state. Because Illinois has never been a priority recruiting state, we don’t get those reports. Hopefully, in the future, we will, and that will help me out more than going through a report of 250 kids and trying to find the 10 from Illinois. And once I get that, some of these are down by East St. Louis, which I know is a fabulous program, but I’m not going all the way down there. I can’t do the whole state. I might call those guys, but when you have five days to work on it, you have to prioritize where you are looking.
These reports you get, these are third parties you contract with who help curate names or do you have staffers at Temple who are watching film and recommending names?
A little bit of both. We do have staffers who do that, but they are more regionalized in the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast area. Now that we are actively coming out here, they will get more involved. I think from the players I gathered this week once that video is seen by everybody, they’ll agree this is a good area for us to come to they’ll agree to expanding to helping me out here. There are good football players out here, and I think the access to the connection to O’Hare to Philly, you can find the flights almost on the hour. The biggest thing is can we come out here and get players? Yes. As I look at it, you have the Big 10, which recruits out here, and there are some great FCS programs and MAC schools that recruit hard. It gives another option for kids.
Where high schools did you visit?
When I landed, I went right to York High School (Elmhurst) and met with a coach there. There was a specific guy I wanted to see there, and I knew it was close to the airport. Luckily, that was the only one I set up that day as there was a thunderstorm that hit and I sat on the runway for 40 minutes and just got to the school in time. Then I went to Loyola, Maine South, Glenbrook South and Nazareth. Another day, I was in the Palatine area, went to Hersey, St. Francis, Palatine, Fremd. I spent one day in the city, Mt. Carmel, Brother Rice. The Brother Rice head coach is a Temple alum. The Mt. Carmel receivers coach trains Brayden, so I knew him. It was two-fold as I’m trying to find ‘26s we can recruit, but also establish relationships with these guys so next time I come out it will be a little easier. There are some guys I didn’t get to see and I’ll have to establish relationships with, but that’s OK. If you go to five or six a day, and you know four of them, that helps the process a bit.
Jumping back into this after being out of the sport for several years, did you have to do any training on current NCAA rules?
The first week, there was a big compliance meeting to brush up on the rules. The problem with that was most of these guys were brushing up last year. What has changed since last year? I’m like, ‘can we walk this back a little and go over what has changed the last seven?’ There was a little training there. Sometimes when in doubt, I revert back to what the rules were seven years ago and the rules seemed more relaxed now than they were at that point. At that point you weren't allowed to meet with anyone at this time of year. Now you can home visit kids. Seven years ago you were allowed to what they called “bump” into them at school, which essentially meant you were allowed to introduce yourself to them, but that was it. The recruiting calendar was so different then.
Your overall assessment of the talent in the area?
I don’t know the leagues well enough to say, ‘this one is better,’ but overall, I think there are talented players. We’ll see how it goes through the years, but it appears to be heavy on offensive linemen that I saw this week. This is a good year recruiting-wise for receivers in the area. Since the 7v7 stuff, there seems to be better receivers and DB’s. There are a number of good quarterbacks in the area, some are major, major guys.
How do you feel about the fact so much of the job of a college coach in 2025 is about recruiting?
I enjoy the recruiting part of it. I enjoy getting to know the kids and the families. So much has changed in seven years, I guess I wasn’t ready for the sped up process of recruiting. Typically, in the past, February and March were slower months recruiting-wise. Now, every kid has access to you and they get your cell number and your Twitter, and you are getting messages, and you are like, ‘Holy smokes, I forgot about this.’ In the past, you were always recruiting in February and March, but it wasn’t as fast-paced as it is now. In college, you are either recruiting or you're losing. That's a huge part of the job. With the transfer portal, you recruit those kids at a much faster pace. The high school recruiting will always be part of Coach Keeler’s plan. We want to get high school kids, develop them, build a nucleus that way, and use the transfer portal to fill a couple of holes.
I know you’ve only been at Temple for a few months, but what is your sense of how the program is keeping up with the size and scope of personnel staffing needed to compete?
It’s obviously there. There are so many people on our football staff now. It used to be 10 coaches, a couple of GA’s, a head coach and probably a director of football operations. That was your staff. Now we got our 10 coaches and four or five analysts, we got a couple of GA’s, we got a general manager, a chief of staff, we got a whole recruiting department, it’s like ‘holy smokes, where does this staff end?’ So the resources are certainly there. I know that was a question (Head) Coach (K.C.) Keeler asked. He’ll tell you the same thing, he’s getting to the tail end of his career. He’s been doing it a long time. He wasn’t going to leave Sam Houston State where he was winning and have a good thing going to just take any job. Being back on the East Coast was appealing to him; his daughter is back there, his three grandchildren are there, so all of that made sense. But he wasn’t going to leave a great situation to just go anywhere. He certainly had those questions and assured me when we had our initial conversation about the job that all those answers were checked off.
The House settlement will cap revenue sharing at 20.5 million per school. Will Temple reach that figure?
Our league has come in and put a minimum that you have to spend. I don’t know if any other league has done this, but the AAC has said over the next three years that you have to spend $10 million of revenue sharing on student-athletes, that’s the minimum.
Is that just for football?
It’s the athletic department, but huge chunks of that are going to football.
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