Maybe Jamar Cain Can't Barbecue — But in Recruiting, He Definitely Brings That Smoke
Kansas State coach Chris Klieman wants to set the record straight on Jamar Cain.
Cain is Oklahoma’s newest assistant coach. He worked for Klieman for three seasons at North Dakota State. In his short time at OU, Cain has already gained acclaim as a dynamic and effective recruiter.
But Klieman wants everyone to know Cain’s not nearly as good as he says he is.
“He thinks he’s the best barbecue guy on any staff,” Klieman told SI Sooners. “Every year in the summer, we had a barbecue contest. Five or six coaches, we’d bring a bunch of boosters over, donors, and they were our judges. He finished in last place every year. … It was always a blind test, but he’d finish last.”
Aside from giving his dear friend a hard time over his culinary skills, Klieman opened up about what kind of man, what kind of coach and what kind of recruiter Lincoln Riley brought in to bolster the Sooner staff.
“He’s a close friend of mine and I love him. Great man,” Klieman said. “ … I told Lincoln when he called me, I said, ‘Lincoln, it’s a home run.’ He called me and said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘It’s a home run.’ I don’t care if it’s how you treat kids, recruiting, being a team player, I think it was a home run hire.”
Cain, who turns 41 on June 13, was hired on Jan. 31 but has already impacted the future of the program by landing a verbal commitment from 2021 4-star Texas linebacker Clayton Smith. Cain went head-to-head with the Texas Longhorns for Smith’s services and won (verbal commitments are non-binding until prospect sign a letter of intent).
Cain is off to a good start, but Klieman suggests there’s more to come.
“I knew he was a really good recruiter and a great technician for defensive ends,” Klieman said. “For us, we were a four-down (linemen) team at North Dakota State and I wanted a guy that was just gonna be handling the defensive ends — a great pass-rush specialist, but a guy that was gonna give kids tools and a guy that was also gonna let them experiment some themselves.”
Cain will work with OU defensive ends and outside linebackers — Ronnie Perkins, Marcus Stripling and Isaiah Thomas on one side, and Nik Bonitto, David Ugwoegbu and Jon-Michael Terry on the other. He’ll also have interaction with Calvin Thibodeaux’s defensive tackles and will likely work some with Jalen Redmond and LaRon Stokes (especially if they slide outside to help fill Perkins’ spot at the start of the season).
Just like Klieman, Riley knew of Cain’s reputation. But before the interview, they were strangers.
“I had never met Jamar before he walked in the door to come sit down with Alex (Grinch) and I,” Riley said. “Some people just grab you. They do. And he grabbed my attention quickly because he was just very … he’s very confident and has a very focused approach to both recruiting and coaching and developing these kids. It’s been tested through time, it’s been tested at different universities under different defensive coordinators, and then as I started talking to a lot of the coaches he had worked for, all the answers were the same. It was the same conversations every single time.”
Cain hails went to Sacramento’s Valley High School in Northern California. He played defensive line at Sacramento City College, then finished his playing career at New Mexico State University, graduating in 2002 with a degree in family consumer sciences.
He began his coaching career at JFK High School in Sacramento in 2003, and in 2004 was an assistant at Sac City. His first foray into Division I was at Ohio under Frank Solich in 2005, and in 2006, he joined the staff at Missouri State in Springfield, where he spent three seasons. In 2009, Cain joined the staff at Cal Poly as defensive line coach while also serving three straight summers in the NFL’s minority internship program with the Cardinals, Chiefs and Raiders.
In 2013, Cain was back in Division I at Wyoming, and in 2014 he joined Klieman’s staff in Fargo. After that came stops at Fresno State under Jeff Tedford (2017-18) and Arizona State under Herm Edwards (2019).
“I’ve been very fortunate to work with a lot of head coaches,” Cain said in February after he was hired at OU. “I’ve learned a lot from so many coaches. Now to come work with coach Riley? I’m a lucky guy when it comes to coaching and head coaches that I’ve been around. I’m excited to be here.”
As Cain described his long, winding background, every stop seemed like another brick in his foundation. Those bricks, he said, are made up of mud — but they’re strong.
“I tell people this all day, that I came from the mud when it comes to recruiting,” Cain said. “I was at Missouri State. Cal Poly. North Dakota State. We won a lot of national championships at North Dakota State. But it’s hard to get a kid from Texas or Florida or California to get to Fargo when it’s negative-42. That ain’t easy. I can sell all the national championships, the Fargo Dome, what Coach Klieman is doing, but to get a kid to get up (there) when it’s negative-42, with wind chill, that’s tough.”
Said Klieman, “That’s something you have to be able to do at Fargo. But I always told people this, and I kind of chuckle at it when people say it’s too cold to be in Fargo. I used to say, ‘If you told a kid he has a chance to win a national championship and he has to be cold, would you come?’ Every one of them says ‘Yes, I would.’
“So I was cold there for eight years and won seven national championships, and I’ll never be able to replace that experience. And Jamar would tell you the same thing: ‘I was there for three years and it was cold but I won two national championships and got to be around a phenomenal culture and phenomenal program.’ ”
Fargo wasn’t just cold. It was remote — at least when it came to finding good football players.
“Seriously, I used to drive 7-8 hours to see a kid for 20 minutes or do a home visit and drive straight back,” Cain said. “There were no flights. I came up the hard way. I think people should come up that way. You all (reporters) started at a little small newspaper or small outlet, and you appreciate it. I appreciated my time at Missouri State, Cal Poly and North Dakota State. I drove through blizzards in Wyoming.
“Now, here, I can hop a flight? Shoot, this is easy now. There’s no limit on the hotel, either? I stayed at Motel 6 for $80 per night. Seriously. Doors locked, sleeping in my socks. I appreciate those times. I appreciate where I’m at now. I always think it’s a journey to where you’re at, and I appreciate those journeys.”
Cain said he’s fueled by doubters, but it sounds like the doubters are fewer and fewer. Cain’s reputation is beginning to precede him. Klieman said Cain is intensely confident, but also lacks an ego.
“Staff-wise, on that defense, he was the guy that had been to the FBS level, the Group of 5 level, and some of the other guys hadn’t,” Klieman said. “I know he was at Wyoming and stuff, but he didn’t take it as, ‘Hey, I’ve been at a higher level.’ He had a great knowledge and voiced his opinion on things, but he learned, that’s the way we did things at North Dakota State.
“You had to set up drills. Yeah, you had to make some long car rides. Or if you were flying out, maybe we had you drive four hours to Minneapolis to save money to get on a flight there, but then you had to go visit two kids in Minneapolis. … He didn’t mind those things. He knew that’s what we had to do to be successful.”
Eight games into Cain’s one-year stint at Wyoming, Dave Christiansen promoted him to interim defensive coordinator. When Christiansen made the hire in 2013, he called Cain “an outstanding young coach. I was very impressed with how his defensive line played when we faced Cal Poly (in 2012). He is a phenomenal technician. … He is a great family guy, and has a wonderful young family. I think he will be a great fit in the community, and I believe he will develop great relationships with our players.”
Herm Edwards said after hiring Cain, “We have had our eye on Jamar as an up-and-coming coach for a while. … “He’s young, energetic and is the type of person who wants to make a name for himself in this business.”
His bosses like how he teaches d-line technique, but most might say recruiting is Cain’s strong suit. Recruits around the country have taken notice. He brought St. Louis 4-star defensive end Joe Moore to Tempe.
“Going to Missouri and pulling a 4-star defensive lineman from there is a lot of work,” Cain said. “That’s a lot of trust, that’s what it is.”
“I knew the first day that he came to my school, I was like, ‘He ain’t lying to me. He ain’t telling me about that school and visits,’ ” Moore told 247 Sports last year. “He asked me questions about my family, about me. Not just, ‘Football this, football that, football, football, football.’ And then I got a real-life experience of that when I went down to my official visit. Because he introduced me to his wife, his kids. And most coaches don’t do that until, like, a player will commit or something. But I wasn’t committed yet, and he showed me his family. Like, he acted like I was one of his sons and that really showed me the other side of coach Cain, which really hit a different spot. And I just knew that was home.”
At OU, Cain has already hooked Smith, but there could soon be other prospects on the line.
Kelvin Gilliam, a 2021 4-star defensive end from Virginia who is currently undecided, said he first touched base with Cain when Cain was still at Arizona State. Now, although Gilliam’s primary recruiter at Oklahoma is Thibodeaux, Cain has been around, too.
“He’s a great guy,” Gilliam told SI Sooners. “Him coming in there coaching the outside linebackers and defensive ends for Oklahoma is a great asset for them.
“A great recruiter can be someone that hits you up a lot, not just talking about football but talking life itself. A recruiter that would show you everything. Not trying to sell you something, but actually being real with you. That’s what makes a great recruiter.”
Klieman said he has kept tabs on Cain’s targets ever since he left Fargo. Now that Klieman and his staff are recruiting against Cain for Big 12 talent, it’s gotten interesting.
“There’s a lot of kids at North Dakota State that we offered and all of a sudden the kid would have a number of Big Ten or Big 12 offers,” Klieman said. “I knew who he was recruiting at Arizona State, and obviously know who he’s recruiting at Oklahoma. And they’re gonna have a great opportunity to get those kids because of the relationship that Jamar will have with the young man and the family.”
Said Riley, “We know how competitive, certainly, (recruiting for) the defensive line/defensive end/outside linebackers (is). There’s the least amount of ‘em, they’re the hardest to find and everybody wants ‘em. So you’ve got to be an elite recruiter. You’ve got to be an elite developer of talent. And as we got to know Jamar, his family, they fit in with our culture here, our family atmosphere. They checked every single box.”
One character trait that Riley and Klieman love: Cain’s competitiveness. He enjoys a good scrap, and he’s not backing down from anyone. He’s always had it, but he said it really bloomed at NDSU.
“Every day that you walked into that building, it was third-and-1,” Cain said. “That was the type of intensity that you had to have there. I remember one year we didn’t win the national championship, we went 13-2 and you would have thought you were 2-13.
“That’s what you get when you come to Oklahoma. That’s what I want. That’s what I miss. I want to win a national championship. I want to win that big trophy. I’ve seen that at North Dakota State. Did my career start at North Dakota State? No, but I think my career started at North Dakota State, if that makes sense.
“I’ve always had to prove myself. I didn’t have a bunch of offers coming out of school. I had to go the junior college route. I went to New Mexico State. I always had to work my entire life. That’s just who I am. My dad was a retired cop. That’s who I am. That’s who my family is. I like people doubting me. It doesn’t bother me at all. When I took this job here, somebody told me you have to recruit against the big boys. So? That doesn’t scare me. I’ve been recruiting against them my entire life. Now because I have an Oklahoma patch, it’s something different?”
OK, so Cain has always that smoke. But who knows? Maybe it was actually stoked from all those last-place finishes in the summer barbecue cook-offs in Fargo.
“Last place. Every summer,” Klieman said. “He would be so mad. … And we would rub it in to him pretty good for how poor his barbecue was.”
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