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Clint Trickett Returns Home ‘A Perfect Fit’ For New Role as Marshall Assistant Coach

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(photo via fausports.com)

Life for the family of a college football coach is one of near-constant transition.

With rare exception, there is not a lot of shelf life for coaches — with families forced to uproot and move with all the hiring and firings that come each season. It’s hard to get a sense of home and establish roots anywhere with frequent moves, which is why the story of the Tricketts and the state of West Virginia stands out. The Mountain State is home for the Tricketts, and this week another member of the family returned to his roots.

Clint Trickett was named the receivers coach and passing game coordinator at Marshall for new head coach Charles Huff on Wednesday in Huntington, making him the most recent member of his coaching family to come come back to West Virginia.

Trickett’s father, Rick, was long regarded as one of the top offensive line coaches in the country and spent a large chunk of his career at West Virginia University. Rick Trickett, an alum and former head coach at Division II Glenville State as well as a West Virginia native, is currently back at his alma mater as an assistant head coach. Travis Trickett, Clint’s older brother, is a WVU alum who worked as an offensive assistant and staff member for national champion coaches Bobby Bowden, Jimbo Fisher and Nick Saban before coming back to Morgantown as Neal Brown’s tight ends and inside receivers coach.

Clint Trickett, of course, spent several years of his childhood growing up in the Mountain State while his dad was coaching the Mountaineers and went on to be a quarterback at Florida State before transferring to WVU to finish his playing career. His coaching stops have included junior college powerhouse East Mississippi — with Clint and the EMCC program featured on the Netflix series ‘Last Chance U‘ — and in Conference USA at Florida Atlantic but, like his father and brother before him, took the opportunity to return home when Huff called and asked him to be part of his first staff at Marshall.

“Coach Huff, as soon as he got the job [at Marshall], I told him ‘Congratulations’ and he said, ‘Hey, I’d like to hire your brother,'” Travis Trickett said. “I’m like, ‘Whoa! I did not know that.’ So at the end of the day, Clint kind of kept that to himself because we all have a lot to talk about — football’s not everything, but it is a good bit — so I waited until Clint wanted to talk about it and he asked my opinion. All I could tell him was, ‘You know, Marshall is a great program. They’ve won a lot of games in the past and they’ll continue to win games.’ Under a guy like Coach Huff, who I have a lot of respect for the way he does things, I know he’s been around great coaches, and I thought it would be a great opportunity for him. He kind of already had his mind made up, which was a good thing because he saw the same.”

The relationship between Huff and the Tricketts goes back several years. Huff said as a young coach trying to climb the college football ladder he admired Rick Trickett as one of the great offensive line minds anywhere and eventually developed a personal friendship with Travis Trickett through crossing paths on the coaching circuit. That relationship led Travis to introduce Huff to his younger brother when Clint was still playing quarterback, and Huff has had an eye on him since.

“We will give [Clint] a pass because he played at that other school up the street,” Huff joked during Marshall’s press conference this week to introduce the new football staff. “Although a great university, we know there has been some ‘love’ between Marshall and that university. I have a lot of love for them, but I’m told I need to have some ‘tough’ love.

“What you do when you decide to be a head coach is you start meeting people and you start adding them to your list. Where do they fit? If I had got a job in California I don’t know that I would have hired Clint Trickett, but when you add him to your list it makes a lot of sense — he’s from West Virginia, has coached in this league. He has a young, energetic, bright mind. He played quarterback so he understands the passing game from all perspectives. He’s a phenomenal recruiter because he can relate to the kids. When it all came together, it was a perfect fit.”

Rick Trickett didn’t want his sons to follow him into coaching, but now coaching has brought two of the three back home to West Virginia — with the third Trickett brother, Chance, the only outlier as a scout for the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams.

“No one pressured Clint [to get into coaching],” Travis Trickett said. “Clint writes his own story. He’s the most like dad of the three boys probably — he’s got a lot of bullhead in him and he’s going to do what he wants to do. I think he kind of knew at a younger age that’s what he wanted to do and he has moved up pretty fast because he’s worked his tail off and done a good job.

“In football and with football families you move around a lot, unfortunately. I went to three different high schools and Clint had to move a ton. We moved a bunch, but West Virginia has always been home because my dad’s from here, we’ve got family here. This is really where I cut my teeth and then Clint and Chance spent a majority of their childhoods here too. This has always been — when you cross that state line and you see, ‘Welcome to West Virginia’ it’s different. It has been really neat, especially now that I have three children of my own. My kids get to see their grandad and grandma every weekend if they want to and now Uncle Clint is in town, and he’s engaged to get married so it’s about to be Uncle Clint and Aunt Kaylee. We’ll be able to see them just three and a half hours away. We’re going to make sure we take advantage of that. It’s special. We’re very fortunate everyone is where they’re at in the same state — a state we all love and cherish.”

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