Mike Uremovich starts most days around 3:45 a.m. He didn’t want to specify how many cups of coffee he drinks per day, but let’s just say that he stays well caffeinated.
That schedule was the same Wednesday, Dec. 4 when he was officially announced as Ball State football’s head coach less than a month after the firing of former nine-season leader Mike Neu. Uremovich’s hiring was officially announced at 7 a.m. Dec. 4, and the former Butler head coach was walking alongside Ball State Director of Athletics Jeff Mitchell on Scheumann Stadium’s turf less than two hours later.
When the 48-year-old approached the Cardinals’ team center, he did so without a coat, saying after the fact that he didn’t want to wear a jacket during the short walk from his car to the door of his new home away from home because it would be a waste of time. Uremovich admitted he was cold while he fumbled with his new keys trying to get into the facility, but he soon made his way into the facility for the first time.
Uremovich eventually walked down the hallway of the first floor, later approaching the stairs that led to his second-floor office. Opening the door was officially the beginning of fulfilling a dream Uremovich has had since he was seven years old.
“I finally get to my desk, I turn the lights on, nobody's in there, and I was like, ‘Okay, I'm the head coach here. Let's get to work,’” Uremovich said.
The Illinois native has been a head coach for two programs before Ball State, but his tenure as the 19th head coach in Cardinals’ history will be Uremovich’s first time leading a FBS program. But Uremovich never thought he would get the chance to lead a collegiate football program, much less one in the Mid-American Conference (MAC). It has taken stops at 10 different programs over the course of nearly 30 years, but Uremovich now takes the reins of a program that has experienced four straight losing seasons in desperate need of a change.
Ball State football’s inconsistent past doesn’t bother Uremovich in the slightest. In fact, turning a program around is what enticed him most to become a Cardinal.
“There's other coaching jobs open as well, and people have reached out to my agent, but I said, ‘I'm not interested in that, I want to try and get the Ball State job,’” Uremovich said. “It's fun to win, but it's really fun when you do it with a bunch of guys that haven't been having success.”
In his two previous heading coaching roles, Uremovich first led the University of St. Francis (IL) to a conference championship and a first-round NAIA Tournament victory in 2011. While at Butler, Uremovich coached the Bulldogs to three straight winning seasons and the first FCS Top-25 ranking in program history.
It was his winning history and his sense of urgency during the coaching search process that Mitchell said made Uremovich his top candidate. Mitchell’s search narrowed from 50 initial candidates to nine, then from nine to five, from five to three.
Ball State’s Director of Athletics would not disclose who the other finalists for the job were, but he did say Uremovich was the only candidate to receive an official offer. Mitchell said as soon as he made Uremovich an offer, the former Butler head coach scooped Mitchell up in a bear hug in a sign of immediate acceptance.
Throughout numerous interviews, including phone calls, Zoom conferences, in-person meetings and even home visits, Mitchell said Uremovich’s excited body language and extensive Ball State football knowledge gave him the right impression about his potential new head coach. Mitchell even recalled Uremovich presenting him with an in-depth scouting report of the Cardinals’ roster at the time and what he would do to right Ball State football’s areas of improvement.
“I could tell that if we offered the job he was going to accept it and get to work immediately,” Mitchell said. “He showed me in the first four months of his calendar what he would do on a daily basis. It wasn't, ‘This is what I hope to accomplish,’ it was, ‘This is what we are going to do on these days.’”
Mitchell described his most essential qualities he looked for in a new head coach as windows, saying the football program needed a leader who led by looking through windows of competence, connection and competitiveness. In the same vein, Uremovich offered his own trio of expectations for the Cardinals, which include championship effort, championship accountability and championship attitude.
Mitchell is not worried about the Ball State football culture as it stands, but he does believe Uremovich meets the program’s needs in terms of producing wins that have been hard to come by in the past decade.
“It was important to me that we brought somebody in that would resonate with the community, resonate with our team and have a chance to flip our program,” Mitchell said.
Uremovich believes a university and its home city should be proud of its football program, deeming a successful football program as essential to a university’s well-being. He said when the weather is warm enough, he will take walks on the college campus which he calls home just to immerse himself in the student community.
“I know I'm getting fat and losing some hair, but it keeps you young,” Uremovich said. “It keeps you with the energy they have every day.”
He believes coaches of each team within Ball State Athletics need to work together to support one another, and Uremovich believes the players in the program need to constantly be around one another. That means spending ample time with each coach on staff and the coaches’ families during events like team pizza parties and team barbeques.
With some entering the transfer portal before the 2024 season even ended, Ball State’s roster has been decimated by graduating seniors and those seeking a fresh start elsewhere in the past week. Of the eight Cardinals who received MAC end-of-season honors, only one remains in the program as of publication – MAC Freshman of the Year quarterback Kadin Semonza. The largest loss to the transfer portal is undoubtedly All-MAC Second Team junior tight end Tanner Koziol, who set both the program’s all-time and single-season record for receptions by a tight end in 2024.
Uremovich didn’t seem too bothered by the Cardinals’ depleted roster, saying that he told each player he met with individually that they have a fresh start now that he takes the reins as the program’s new head coach.
“It hurts these players when their coach is gone, but there's also excitement that there's a new coach coming in,” Uremovich said. “Half the guys are upset that the coach left, and then half the guys thought they should have been playing and they think the new coach is gonna play them, so they're excited.”
No matter who suits up for Ball State next season, Uremovich will have a tall task at hand. With a new head coach comes heightened expectations, and there may be no one who is holding Uremovich to a higher standard in year one than himself.
But after bringing losing programs out of purgatory at two other universities before landing at Ball State, he feels pretty good about his chances of leading the Cardinals to their first bowl game since 2021 and their first MAC Championship since 2020.
Contact Kyle Smedley via email at kmsmedley213@gmail.com or via X @KyleSmedley_.
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