He was a head coach at 30. Now this Boise State assistant is taking on a new role
Offensive linemen at UC Davis showed up for their weekly position meeting on a Thursday night in 2005 and were greeted by an unfamiliar instructor.
Offensive coordinator Mike Moroski was seated in the back of the room, his legs crossed and a confident grin plastered on his face. Standing in front of the room with several pages of notes in his hands and a cluttered whiteboard as his backdrop was sophomore running back Demario Warren.
Moroski, who has been the head coach at College of Idaho since 2013, said he makes a habit out of asking players to run position meetings, calling it “a great way to encourage them to master their craft.” He said some struggle to articulate the game plan and often revert to repeating whatever their coaches said in the last meeting.
But not Warren.
Warren explained the most complex of concepts with the confidence of a seasoned coach and the patience of an overworked teacher trying to impart knowledge on a group of unruly high school students, Moroski said.
“He had a great sense of intuition and a desire to learn the nuances of every aspect of the game,” Moroski told the Idaho Statesman. “He was an amazing communicator right from the beginning, and outside of experience, that may be the most important item in a coach’s tool belt.”
If experience really is the greatest teacher, Warren has a master’s degree in football as he takes on added responsibility at Boise State in 2023.
Warren played at UC Davis from 2004 to 2007, joined the staff at Southern Utah the following year and was named the Thunderbirds’ head coach when he was just 30 years old. But his coaching career really began before he ever played a snap of college football.
Warren tore his ACL as a senior at Farfield High School in California and sat out as a gray shirt during what was supposed to be his first year at UC Davis. Looking for a way to stay active, he asked former Fairfield basketball coach Eddie Wilson if he could join his staff.
Before he knew it, Warren was running practices and drawing up plays in the huddle, and he went back home to help Wilson every offseason during his playing career.
Almost 20 years later, Warren still reflects on the lessons he learned while mentoring players who were only a year or two removed from being his teammates.
“You don’t realize the power you have as a coach until you experience it for yourself,” Warren said. “Everything you say is taken in a different way than it was when you were teammates. You really learn the effect you can have on young men’s lives, on and off the field.”
He is still putting those old lessons to use, especially as he takes on a new challenge at Boise State this year.
Warren, 37, joined head coach Andy Avalos’ staff in January 2022, replacing former Bronco Jeron Johnson. After focusing on the cornerbacks last year, he’s adding special teams coordinator to his job duties — a responsibility he’ll share this year with new defensive line coach Erik Chinander.
Warren and Chinander are replacing former Boise State edge coach Kelly Poppinga and running backs coach Keith Bhonapha, who split special teams duties last year. Poppinga left in December to take a job at BYU and Bhonapha bolted for Oregon State last month.
Special teams isn’t foreign territory for Warren. He had to step in as coordinator a couple of times while also balancing his responsibilities as a head coach.
Warren said last week that specific roles for himself and Chinander are still being ironed out, but he won’t be pulled in nearly as many directions as he was at Southern Utah.
“It’ll be fun because I’ll really be able to dive into the nooks and crannies of being a coordinator,” Warren said. “Coaching at the FCS level, you have to do a little bit of everything. The nice thing is you get experience doing a little bit of everything and get exposed to a lot of different ways to do them.”
Warren quickly climbed the ranks at Southern Utah and was promoted to defensive coordinator when he was just 28, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing.
After initially agreeing to join the Thunderbirds as a running backs coach in 2008, a shakeup on the offensive staff forced him to switch to defensive backs — a position he played in high school but hadn’t really been hands-on with since.
Warren made it work, though, and added recruiting coordinator to his title before he was promoted to defensive coordinator in 2014 and head coach in 2016. He led Southern Utah to its second Big Sky Conference championship and third FCS playoff appearance in program history in 2017.
Southern Utah went 9-3 that season, setting a program record for wins, and ended the season ranked No. 14 in the STATS FCS Top 25.
Success wasn’t long-lived at what Warren called a resource-strapped program, though. The Thunderbirds won just six games from 2018 until he resigned in 2021.
Warren admitted there were some dark days over those final few seasons — adding that only his wife, Amanda, knows how dark — but said he wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
“Losing sucks, but there are lessons to be taken from every experience,” Warren said. “I’ve experienced the highs and lows of this profession, but no matter what, I know who I am and I know doing things the right way is more important than wins and losses.”
This story was originally published February 7, 2023 at 4:00 AM.
