Andy Kotelnicki was born and raised in Litchfield, Minn., a small town where everybody knows your name.
He was one of the most popular kids in middle school and high school, the center of attention because of his effervescent personality.
“Andy loved to have a good time,” said Jon Johnson, his high school football coach and physical education teacher. “He was fun. He was that kind of player. He always loved to connect with people. People loved Andy. People enjoyed being around him. We did, too.”
Kotelnicki enjoyed being around Johnson and John Carlson, the football team’s offensive coordinator and Litchfield’s head basketball coach who also taught phys ed. They were among several men who inspired the new Penn State offensive coordinator to choose coaching as a career a quarter-century ago.
“They made football fun,” Kotelnicki said. “They had this great way to get you to focus on getting things done.They were good about it. They knew when to rip my rear end. They knew when to hug me and love me.”
Penn State players have felt Kotelnicki’s love since he left Kansas last December to join James Franklin’s coaching staff. They enjoy his positivity, energy, enthusiasm and leadership.
“He carries himself like the head coach of the offense,” said quarterback Beau Pribula. “I think all of the players gravitate towards that. He has a good sense of humor. He’ll rib us, for sure, because we’re the quarterbacks, but he’ll rib everybody. He likes to joke and have fun with the players.
“He’s a great leader and a great offensive mind. So far it’s been nothing but good stuff.”
The games haven’t started yet, though. Franklin fired Mike Yurcich and hired Kotelnicki from Kansas to increase Penn State’s explosive plays and rejuvenate the offense.
To underscore how plodding the offense was at times last year, the Nittany Lions had three or fewer plays of at least 20 yards against Indiana (3), Maryland (3), Northwestern (3), Ohio State (2), Illinois (2), Delaware (2), Michigan (1) and Iowa (0).
Penn State had just eight plays of at least 40 yards; the Jayhawks had 24. The Lions averaged just 6.76 yards per pass attempt, which ranked 79th. Kansas averaged 10.04, which was third.
Carlson, Kotelnicki’s offensive coordinator at Litchfield and the father of former Notre Dame and NFL tight end John Carlson Jr., was asked what runs through his mind when he watches his pupil’s offenses.
“Interesting,” he said. “Creative. Complicated. Fun. Smart. He’s a smart, smart football coach. You could just tell. There’s not a lot of wasted motion, but there’s a lot of motion. It’s just fun to see how he operates. Obviously he does a nice job of teaching it.”
Like many coaches, the 42-year-old Kotelnicki considers himself a teacher above anything else. As a teen-ager, he experienced two events that pointed him in the direction of coaching.
When he was 13, he was asked by parents of younger hockey players to teach their children, ages ranging from 4 to 6, to demonstrate crossovers skating around a circle.
When he was a senior in high school and served as a teacher’s assistant because “I had no classes and just wandered the halls,” Carlson asked him to teach a younger boy with autism the very basics of swimming.
“I tried to get him to get his head under water and blow bubbles,” Kotelnicki said. “I was trying to teach him all the little things I could remember. I don’t know if we ever got him officially swimming, but the patience required to teach kids was very evident there.
“I found that to be very rewarding … Looking back now, those are the two moments that really let me know I was born to be a coach.”
He played center on the Litchfield football team and played the position well enough to earn an opportunity at Division III Wisconsin-River Falls. He was a team captain as a senior in 2003 and a student offensive line coach.
Kotelnicki began his professional career as a graduate assistant at Western Illinois, returned to River Falls for five seasons and coached at the University of Mary for two. Then Lance Leipold hired him at Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he thrived under perhaps the most successful Division III coach in history.
In 2014, Kotelnicki’s second season there, the Warhawks averaged 40.1 points and 487.7 total yards per game on their way to a 15-0 record and their sixth national title in eight seasons. The two went on to enjoy success the next nine seasons at Buffalo and Kansas with Leipold as head coach and Kotelnicki his OC.
“He and I have a great relationship,” Kotelnicki said. “It was tough to move on from him. He was always a big-picture thinker. He was really good about putting the players first.”
From Leipold, he learned to design an offense around the players – their strengths and weaknesses – and not have players adjust to a rigid system.
In their six seasons at Buffalo, Leipold and Kotelnicki helped resurrect a program that had just two winning seasons since 1999. The Bulls made steady improvement, going 24-10 in their final three seasons there and setting school records for total offense and rushing offense.
In the last three years at Kansas, the Jayhawks thrived on offense and became bowl eligible in back-to-back seasons (2022-23) for only the second time. Kotelnicki oversaw some of the most prolific offensive performances in school history behind running back Devin Neal and quarterback Jalon Daniels.
Kansas often used pre-snap motions and shifts and varied formations to confuse…
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