Ego and doubt aren't part of Gophers coach Tracy Claeys' makeup

There are 65 teams attached to the power conferences of Division I football. Tracy Claeys has to be longest shot to be a head coach for one of them.

He brings two rarities to the job: He did not play college football and he came up through the ranks without being a head coach at any level. Put together that combination and you have an underdog to equal Buster Douglas vs. Mike Tyson.

Claeys' uniqueness also carries over to the personality and the demeanor he brings to being the boss of the Gophers.

There have been eight head coaches since Murray Warmath was replaced after the 1971 season. There have been coaches who were over-the-top salesmen, or self-promoters, or self-doubters, or extra defensive to criticism.

Lou Holtz was most of those things, and yet if he had stayed more than two years, the Gophers would have won, because he was as smart as anyone when it came to getting ready for and coaching a football game.

I look at Claeys as unique because he is not a salesman or a self-promoter. He will not stand in front of boosters and deliver a fiery speech that causes them to leap to their feet and shout, "Hail, Minnesota," as could Cal Stoll, and Holtz, and Jim Wacker, and perhaps even Tim Brewster for a time.

It's less certain, but I also suspect that Claeys will not be consumed with doubt if things start to go bad, as were Joe Salem, John Gutekunst, Wacker, Brewster, and perhaps even Jerry Kill as the 2015 season unraveled.

Claeys will tell boosters of the appreciation he has gained for Minnesota, but he will do so sincerely and without the style and spin of Kill, his mentor and predecessor.

Claeys will make the same sincere pitch to recruits, while also adding for the out-of-staters, "Two things we can't do anything about are the weather and how far you are from mom and dad. If those are going to be big issues, you probably shouldn't come to Minnesota."

People close to him say Claeys is the coach who truly means it when he says, "I only want players at Minnesota who fully want to be here."

You're not going to get the hard sell from Claeys. You're not going to get self-promotion. You're not likely to detect doubt. And if you criticize, chances are good that he won't even have noticed.

There is one way in which 47-year-old Tracy Claeys of Clay Center, Kan., can be a success as Minnesota's ninth head coach in 45 years. It won't be by selling, promoting or defending himself. It will have to be by being smarter than the next guy.

Holtz and Claeys might provide the most amazing contrast of body types in the history of football coaching, but it's also possible that they share this: big brains for football.

To start with, Claeys is a math savant. A colleague of his told me if you want to understand the pension plan or other benefits at the university, all that's required is spending five minutes with Claeys. He makes hard problems understandable.

He has the same mind for football. Claeys' defense became a competitive group much more rapidly over five seasons at Minnesota than did the offense. He concentrated on that defense, while also wondering (mostly to himself) why Kill's staff had gotten away from the aggressive offensive linemen that won for them at Northern Illinois.

The first change he made when named officially as Kill's replacement was to fire offensive coordinator/ line coach Matt Limegrover and quarterbacks coach Jim Zebrowski. The second was to back off on a couple of recruits and lock up a pair of junior college linemen.

Claeys knew what he wanted on defense, and it has worked. He now has started working on what he wants on offense, and that could turn out OK, too.

"Coach [Kill] worried about everything," Claeys said. "He would get home, couldn't sleep, and go back to the office. I do everything I can to get ready for a game, but win or lose, when I get home and put my head on that pillow, I go right to sleep."