A life in football can sometimes be a long and winding road, and for Dave Christensen that journey began some four decades ago in his north Everett neighborhood and on the playfields of the nearby Everett Boys Club.
Other kids were probably better athletes, but as a young man Christensen had big determination and even bigger dreams. He never lost either when he switched from playing to coaching, and ever since he’s been plenty of places in the college game, his path always upward.
And this year, well, even Christensen probably never dared to dream so big.
Christensen is the offensive coordinator and assistant head coach at the University of Missouri, the nation’s No. 1-ranked team. On Saturday, at the Alamodome in San Antonio, the Tigers face Oklahoma for the Big 12 Conference title. A victory lifts Missouri to 12-1 and almost certainly into the upcoming BCS championship game.
That’s pretty good by itself, but there’s more. On Monday and Tuesday, he will be in Little Rock, Ark., for the annual Frank Broyles Award banquet and ceremony. The Broyles award is given annually to the top assistant coach in college football, and Christensen is one of five finalists this year.
“I worked hard in this business to get where I’m at,” he said, “but it’s always been worth it. I love what I do.”
After graduating from Everett High School in 1979, Christensen spent three years at the University of Washington as a reserve lineman — “I was just a walk-on who played two snaps of varsity football,” he said. He moved on to Western Washington University, where he got his degree. At that point, already having met his future wife Susie, he needed a career.
Torn between coaching and law enforcement, Christensen decided on the former. He spent two years in high school coaching (including the 1985 season at Everett) before heading to Eastern Washington as a graduate assistant. Three years later he returned to Washington as a volunteer assistant, there to reunite with UW assistant coach Gary Pinkel, then the offensive coordinator under Don James.
A professional friendship was formed, and when Pinkel became the head coach at Toledo in 1992 he named Christensen to his staff. Likewise, when Pinkel was hired at Missouri in 2001, Christensen joined him there.
In their seven years together at Missouri, Pinkel and Christensen have transformed the program from a Big 12 underling into a national power. A lot of that has to do with Christensen, who revamped the team’s offense in 2005. With remarkable ingenuity, he adopted an explosive no-huddle spread offense that is entertaining to everyone, except maybe rival defensive coaches.
It is, Christensen said, “a fast-paced, basketball-on-grass offense.” And, boy, does it work.
The Tigers, led by quarterback and Heisman Trophy candidate Chase Daniel, have scored 30 or more points in their 12 games this season, and 40 or more eight times. Among Division I teams, Missouri’s scoring average of 41.9 points a game ranks sixth in the nation, and its 507.3 yards of total offense and 336.8 yards of passing offense each rank fifth.
“The numbers are astonishing,” Christensen said. “There are a lot of great things going on here and it’s been a lot of fun. We’re having a lot of success offensively every single week.”
Said Pinkel: “(Christensen) has been with me a long time. He’s a very sharp guy and, like all my coaches, a great competitor. And I know he’s good at what he does. People study our offense and they marvel at the things we do.”
The team’s offensive prowess has lifted the Tigers atop the national polls and pretty much turned all of Missouri on its ear.
“The whole state is lit up with the success we’re having,” Christensen said. “They’re dying to have a winner here and we’re winning.
“The success,” he went on, “has been tremendous for the program. And we have great kids in this program. They’re the most unselfish team I’ve ever been around in my life. They practice hard every single day, so it’s exciting to come to work every day and it’s exciting to go to practice every day.”
Missouri’s sole loss this season came at Oklahoma on Oct. 13, a 41-31 setback that resulted from the Sooners scoring 18 unanswered points in the fourth quarter. Fitting, then, that Missouri gets a chance at payback in Saturday’s Big 12 title game.
The Tiger players “are very confident and I’m very confident,” Christensen said. “We’re a different football team (than the earlier game). We’re playing better now. And if we can win that one, we’ll be in a position I never dreamed of being in at the University of Missouri.”
Still, a football coach is never much better than his last win, at least in the public’s mind, and Christensen knows all the giddy e-mails and phone calls he’s been getting — “I’m just swamped with that stuff,” he said — will stop in a hurry if the team hits a losing skid. Which is why he holds onto both his sense of perspective and his sense of humor.
When things are going well, he cracked, “they want to make a stamp out of you so the next week they can spit on the back of it.”
Fickle fans aside, his future prospects would seem to be very bright. After all, Missouri is having the kind of season that gets promising coaches noticed, which means Christensen will likely be in line for a head coaching job very soon, if not immediately.
And that, he said, “would be my ultimate goal. Someday, to have my own program.”
Likewise, he thinks of the day he can bring his family — he and Susie have children Katie, D.J. and Emily — to the Northwest to stay.
“All my relatives are living out in Washington,” Christensen said. “My wife and I have been away with the kids for 18 years, but we love the Northwest and we’ll live there again someday. It’s the most beautiful place in the world.”
“That’s still home to me still,” he said, “and it’s always going to be home.”
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