HUNTSVILLE, TX – Phil Longo and his family were on Day 3 of a 10-day island vacation when news reached him that K.C. Keeler left Sam Houston for the head coaching job at Temple. Longo, who was offensive coordinator at Wisconsin in the 2024 season, planned to take a co-OC job in the NFL that started in February. He and his family planned on spending January in Italy. 

By Day 5 of that 10-day vacation in the islands, Longo’s wife, Tonya, noted aloud that the only job her husband had talked about over the last 48 hours was the one in Huntsville, Texas. Not the one out West in the NFL. Longo and his family enjoyed their time at Sam Houston when he was an offensive coordinator under Keeler – his former college OC at Rowan – from 2014-16.

Longo knew his wife was right when he looked at his phone and noticed that the only calls he’d made since learning of Keeler’s departure were to folks in Texas who could help him become the next head coach of the Bearkats. His next call was to Sam Houston athletic director Bobby Williams. The two had remained in touch over the eight years since Longo left to call plays at Power Four stops like Ole Miss and North Carolina. 

“I’ve always felt at home in Texas, even more so in this area,” Longo explained from the head coaching office at Sam Houston in late January. He wasn’t with his family on a month-long trip to Italy. He spent his January on the recruiting trail with four graduate assistants, three analysts, and one volunteer coach. The ragtag bunch landed 22 portal commitments during that time. “I’d come back to this area two or three times a year after we left. We’ve rented a house on Lake Conroe in three different summers just to come back and see old friends from Sam Houston.” 

Longo’s love affair with the Lone Star State began as a boy growing in New Jersey. He was born in Red Bank but was raised in the Bayville section of Berkeley Township. His backyard was filled with sand instead of a lawn and right outside of his back gate was a beach and the Atlantic Ocean. Longo described his life as, ‘no shirt and no shoes’ from May through August, but he fell in love with the Texas lifestyle while spending summers and spring breaks with family who lived in places such as Frisco and Sugar Land. 

“Let’s put it this way, I asked for two things growing up. One was a sister; the other was to move to Texas,” Longo said. “I have no complaints about where I grew up, I just loved Texas.” 

The nixed Italy trip wasn’t the first time Longo’s plans changed. He was a 5-foot-9 Division III quarterback at Rowan who knew his playing days were limited. He wanted to stay around football and figured life as an athletic trainer was a great way to get in the door. He began a six-month internship in sports medicine for the Philadelphia Eagles and was accepted into med school at Syracuse. 

He loved coaching, though. Longo was provided a taste of the profession as a junior when an injury prevented him from playing. He spent that fall as a student assistant before helping on the recruiting trail in the offseason. He played as a senior as he dreamed about life after his playing days. 

Those dreams led him towards coaching. And to Texas. He began with the Eagles as a sports medicine intern but ended as a grunt assistant for the offensive line. Along the way, he met legendary trainer Otho Davis. Davis told Longo that if he was serious about becoming a college coach, the best place to build a network was in Texas. So, Longo ditched med school and became a coach. 

“It never goes as you plan, so I stopped planning long ago,” Longo joked. “I have this goal sheet I wrote up when I was 23 years old and I keep it in my files because it is interesting to look back at what I thought my goals were, what I wanted to do, where I thought I’d be. There is nothing on there that happened on the timeline.” 

Longo was a high school coach still searching for that network and an offensive identity five years removed from college. He was studying what BYU was doing under LaVell Edwards and what Jeff Tillery was doing at Purdue when Hal Mumme arrived at Kentucky with a young, mad scientist offensive coordinator named Mike Leach. 

Longo wanted to learn from Leach so he loaded up into his 4-Runner and drove south to Kentucky to attend a three-day camp that included multiple chalk talks by Leach. Longo didn’t have any money for the trip outside of what he’d need for gas, so he slept in his car and attended Leach’s first talk, which lasted until 10 p.m. 

“I couldn’t get to him until like 11 because of all the other coaches lined up to talk to him,” Longo remembered. “We talked ball from 11 to 4 a.m. We drank from 4 to 6.” 

Longo slept in his car for three nights, attending on-field sessions during the day and the clinic at night, mostly for Leach’s talks. He’d wake up in the parking lot at Kentucky and be let into the fieldhouse to shower and change. The trip earned Longo an offensive system and a network. He was now a member of a growing sect of offensive minds that would change football at stops like Kentucky and Oklahoma and Texas Tech.

“I felt like I found my system,” Longo said of the Air Raid offense. “I felt like I could teach it. It made sense to me.” 

Texas became homebase for the Air Raid Clan. Leach took the job at Texas Tech and Longo visited multiple times as a Division III coach at La Salle. He continued trips to Lubbock when Kliff Kingsbury took over. Longo says he’s been coming to Texas for 27 years to recruit, all because Davis told him it was a great place to build a network. That will help him in the main chair at Sam Houston. 

“There is nowhere in this country that I can drive to just about any high school in the state without a GPS except for Texas and New Jersey,” Longo said. “I’m happy to be back.”