 "Photo: Courtesy")
UMass quarterback Liam Coen never watched children's programming as a kid.
No Winnie the Pooh, no Power Rangers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he said.
Just a heavy dose of Xs and Os for the Rhode Island native, whose dad, Tim Coen has been a head football coach his entire life.
"He used to come to practice all the time, so he was around," Tim Coen said. "He saw the injuries. He saw the intensity, and I saw that's what brought him joy."
Liam Coen would voluntarily watch game film of whatever team his father was coaching at the time, picking up enough to entertain his dad before he entered kindergarten.
"One day when we were practicing," said Tim Coen, who was coaching at South Kingstown High School in Rhode Island at the time, "my assistant comes in and looks down at the chalkboard. Liam had a tight end with a split end, in a wishbone formation. He had it drawn out perfectly. He was four years old."
As if any more proof was needed, Tim Coen knew he had a son that would continue the family pedigree - if not as a player, then probably as a coach.
Before coaching at Brown, Liam Coen's grandfather, Phillip Coen, was a guard and captain at Boston College from 1947-1951.
Including his stint at Kingstown High School, Tim Coen started the football program at Salve Regina, a Division III school, where he was head coach for nine years. After that, he coached at LaSalle Academy in Providence, R.I., where he coached his son at quarterback.
"When he became my coach, it really only got better because I had more of an understanding of the game," Liam Coen said. "I could kind of talk to him as well as a coach (and a) player, but also he was my best friend."
Coming out of high school as the Gatorade Player of the Year, location became a problem for Liam Coen in regards to recruiting. He always knew he could play in the Football Bowl Subdivision, but he said playing in Rhode Island already put him under the radar.
Despite the lack of attention, he did receive offers from top-notch schools such as Rutgers and Maryland, but the way he was pursued turned him toward UMass.
"Most schools kind of had me, 'Hey if this guy doesn't come, we'll take you, if this doesn't work out,'" he said. "It was a second tier kind of thing, which was tough at the time, because you want to go to the top level of college football."
Since then, the 2008 All-American and Player of the Year candidate has started four consecutive years under center, becoming what UMass coach Don Brown said is "the best quarterback in UMass football history."
He has set nearly every passing record at UMass, and out of all active quarterbacks with at least two seasons played in the Football Championship or Bowl Subdivisions, Liam Coen leads the nation in career passer rating with 152.43.
Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell is second with a 151.8 rating.
As a sophomore in 2006, Coen led UMass to a 13-2 record en route to a FCS Atlantic 10 Championship and the national championship game against Appalachian State. The Minutemen lost to the three-time defending champions 28-17.
It was during that season when he could have hit rock bottom.
After battling for three painful years, his mom died in the winter of 2006 from complications of Lyme disease - a bacterial disease which can affect the joints, heart and nervous system.
"I never expected what happened," Tim Coen said. "But for her pain to be eased, that eased my pain. I miss her a lot now."
So does Liam Coen, who said he used the football field and the run to the national championship game as a way to get his mind off the situation.
"I felt I really had two choices: You could move on and try to continue on in your life, or you go in the dumps and you get miserable and depressed," he said. "That's not what anybody wants. I chose football."
In the semifinals that year, the Minutemen played in a hostile environment at Montana, where the 6-foot-2, 220 pound quarterback struggled, throwing two costly interceptions.
UMass ended up winning 19-17, but Liam Coen said he felt the presence of something greater than football that day.
"'How the heck did that happen?'" he asked himself. "It was kind of an adverse situation. We came together, and I think definitely she helped me out."
Most recently, Tim Coen - who has never missed a game - said this season's game against Holy Cross was another one of those moments he'll never forget. Not for the last second field goal that won a 45-42 shootout, but how everything seemed to play in his son's favor.
The weather was dreadful before kickoff, pouring rain had soaked the field, but as soon as the game started, it stopped and did not continue until after the game was in the books.
Most see that as a fortunate change of rain clouds. Tim Coen saw it otherwise.
"I told (Liam), 'your mom was there with you the whole time," he said. "'She made sure that the weather was good, so that you had a good day. I could feel your mom being there.' He said to me, 'Yeah I really felt it too.'"
Liam Coen calls it an "unknown, quiet" bond between him and his father, which strengthened after the death of his mother.
"We understand that we've both gone through something pretty difficult," Liam Coen said. "Him and I aren't the most emotional when it comes down to that kind of stuff, but we definitely know what we have, and what we had."
Through it all, Liam Coen's leadership has never wavered, and his teammates' confidence in him has stayed just as strong. Probably because the most notable characteristics Tim Coen sees in his son are how humble and respectful he is to everybody.
"I used to tell him," Tim Coen said. "'Some of the other kids might not be as skilled as you and might not have the ability you have. Pat them on the back; you get more out of them all the time.' So his teammates all love him.
"I can't tell you how many people go up to me and say what a wonderful son I have. Not a great football player, but a wonderful son. That makes me the most proud."
Liam Coen will try to make his father proud when UMass makes a rare trip to the Lone Star State to face No. 10 Texas Tech at 6 p.m. Saturday at Jones AT&T Stadium.
Every time UMass plays an FBS opponent, Liam Coen said he always asks himself, "Can I play with these schools?"
In 2007, he proved himself against then-No. 12 Boston College, throwing for 151 yards and two touchdowns to whittle a 17-point deficit to 17-14 before going down with a sprained left knee in the fourth quarter. Umass went on to lose a close game, 24-14.
Liam Coen also had the opportunity to measure himself with some of the premier quarterbacks in the nation at the 2008 Manning Passing Academy at Nicholls State University in Louisiana.
He was a camp counselor brought in to teach high school quarterbacks alongside other counselors such as Georgia quarterback Matt Stafford, Purdue's Curtis Painter, Oklahoma State's Zac Robinson and T.J. Yates from North Carolina.
"If a pro team were ever to give him a shot, and get to know him and realize how much football he knows, and how much ability he does have," Tim Coen said. "I think he can show people he can do it."
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