Bulldog Football Enters the Entz Era

New Fresno State coach sits down for an exclusive, in-depth Q&A

By Eddie Hughes (’05)

New Fresno State football coach Matt Entz sits on the Bulldog Red leather sofa in his office overlooking Valley Children’s Stadium. A shiny red helmet is perched on the coffee table in front of him with the classic white “Bulldogs” script outlined in navy arching across each side.

The helmet was popularized in the early 1980s under then coach Jim Sweeney before the four-paw Bulldog helmet was born during the Pat Hill era. When Jeff Tedford took over as coach in 2017, the Bulldogs script made a return. So, naturally, curious minds wanted to know which look Entz would prefer for the university’s flagship program?

While Entz didn’t reveal which of the legendary former coaches his helmet preference will align with, it’s clear whose playing style his will look most familiar to. Entz hasn’t uttered the phrase “shutup and hit somebody” yet – a staple of Hill’s teams – but he’s made it abundantly clear he intends to build a team that begins with a strong, physical offensive line and leads with a relentless running game.

Entz was the head coach at North Dakota State from 2019-23, leading the Bison to a 60-11 record (.857 winning percentage) and two NCAA Division I FCS national championships, including in his first season. Entz was named the FCS National Coach of the Year in 2019 and 2021 by the American Football Coaches Association.

Entz coached eight NFL draft picks at North Dakota State, including the 2021 No. 3 overall pick, quarterback Trey Lance.

Last season, he served as the assistant head coach for defense and linebackers coach at USC, as he prepared to become a head coach at the FBS level.

Entz takes over at Fresno State for interim coach Tim Skipper, a Fresno State alumnus who stepped up amid Tedford’s health challenges to lead the program for this past season.

Fresno State Magazine sat down with Entz to discuss his vision for the program and the opportunities and challenges ahead as the Bulldogs prepare for their final season in the Mountain West before joining the Pac-12 in 2026.

Fresno State Magazine: When did you first learn about Fresno State?

Matt Entz: Dennis Wagner used to be the offensive line coach here for Pat Hill. I was a graduate assistant for Dennis Wagner at Wayne State in Nebraska. When he left and came out to Fresno State I immediately became a fan. Being in the Midwest, typically the Fresno State games were the late night games so that was about the only game I’d get to watch. I saw the energy, the fan base, the checkerboard end zones. Those memories just stuck with me. I remember the great players that have come through this program and draft picks, very successful collegiate players. It’s located right in the middle of the state, it is the epicenter of the Valley here and people are super excited about us.

FSMag: What makes you and your experience a good fit at Fresno State?

Entz: I think there’s a lot of similarities between Fresno State and North Dakota State. Both have huge applied ag programs. Both of them sit in very agriculturally rich areas. Both have tremendously passionate fan bases. I wanted to be somewhere where football was important and having conversations with athletics director Garrett Klassy and Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, they want football to be the front porch of the university. They want it to kick off every academic year. When you have a good football year it seems like the academic year moves in a better rhythm, it has a better vibe to it. I want a place that can tie in academics and athletics together and football can be seen as a bell cow of the university. Athletics becomes a huge marketing resource, and I don’t know if you can ever quantify how impactful it can be.

FSMag: How’d you get to know the team when you got the job?

Entz: I bet I had 60 or 70 individual meetings, and I felt like the best way to break ice is to do it in person. There were a lot of different topics covered. I tried to ask them as many questions as they asked me. ‘Where do we need to go? Why are we 6-6? What are the things we need to do that can help us move in the right direction?’ I was formulating my own ideas from the outside, but we also want to ask the players. We need to be a player-driven football team. We want them to feel like they have a voice, so I wanted to do that from Day 1.

FSMag: Tim Skipper was the interim coach when you were hired and is a beloved alum here who poured a lot of passion into this place. What can you say about your interactions with him?

Entz: Everyone in town knows him. He’s been a huge resource for me just as far as navigating Fresno and the Valley and getting to meet former players and getting a great gauge of what makes this place unique. On top of that he’s a tremendous football coach who’s had tons of success and has impacted players the right way.

FSMag: What’s your recruiting strategy?

Entz: Roster management, roster development is one of the most critical things you have to do. It doesn’t matter if it’s now or 10 years ago, putting together a talented roster is important. That’s what made this job appealing was the access to skilled kids, the access to the state of California. If you go four hours south, four hours north, you engulf the whole state of California. The Fresno airport has direct flights to Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, some outlying areas we want to get into, Chicago. Using more of those remote areas to increase the volume of big kids we can recruit. The number of big kids, offensive linemen and defensive linemen in the state of California, everyone wants them. So you better have other avenues of finding people. If we want to be a line of scrimmage based football team, we’ve got to find the right kids who can help us win there. From a skill athlete standpoint, you can find them all over California. The caliber of football in the Clovis and Fresno area has been eye opening in the first few months here.

We hit over 400 schools in a three-week period as a staff. We want to make sure we prioritize the Valley. That doesn’t mean we’re going to take every kid from the Valley, but I don’t want there to ever be a kid who leaves the Valley that we’re not aware of. If we want them here, they need to feel our recruiting.

It’s not an exact science. I talked about some of the measurables, but the intangible things you’re looking for are character, toughness, football IQ, athleticism. I’m not going to recruit a kid just because he has measurables. He has to have some of these things that can’t be measured. I want to know that he loves football. I want to know that he loves to practice. Football is a unique sport. You play it for a three-month window, and then you train for 350 days a year. It’s not like basketball or baseball where there’s doubleheaders, you might play five games of basketball in a weekend tournament. Football is one game a week, it’s a very violent, physical sport. I want kids who love the process.

FSMag: Have you identified leaders?

Entz: There are three or four on each side of the football we’re encouraging right now to get out of their comfort zone. One of the things we’re doing this offseason we’re reading a book as a team, trying to be a leadership multiplier. We’re reading “Legacy,” the story about the All Blacks rugby team from New Zealand, and trying to create a great daily environment within our own program. It seems like kids are responding. Not only are they reading it, but they’re getting up and talking in front of their peers and coaches. It’s been good.

FSMag: At Fresno State, football always had that sense of pride and tradition. Are you connecting with alumni and former players?

Entz: We’re trying to get an alumni group going here. They’re the foundation of the program. That’s why the program is where it is right now, and why we have the things that we have, is because of the success that previous teams, previous classes, previous coaches have had here. So we need to make sure our kids are fully aware of what the history and tradition and the success looks like.

FSMag: How big is it to be able to leverage successful alumni, guys like Davante Adams and Derek Carr?
Entz: I think it helps. It helps when you have the ability to communicate with those people or maybe they drop a note to a young man and talk about their experience at Fresno State. The volume of players who have come through these doors and gone on to have success in the NFL is something that gets people’s attention right away. There’s over 120 players who have played in the NFL from Fresno State. We sell it as you can do anything you want from here. If you want to be the largest almond producer in the world, you can do it from here. If you want to be an NFL player, you can do it from here. If you want to be president of the United States, you can do it from here. It’s what you make of the Fresno State experience.

FSMag: What are the strengths of the team that you’ve identified so far?

Entz: There’s a really good blue collar mentality to it. There’s a level of grit to this football team, and I appreciate that. Everyone talks about being a family. We’ll see once we get into some tougher moments. Can we still continue to be that family we want to be or that close knit group? We talk a lot about toughness right now. We need to be a tougher football team, we need to be better on the line of scrimmage, we need to be better from a discipline standpoint, we need to make better decisions. A lot of those things fall on myself and our staff to convey those things. I’m encouraged by how we approach the game.

FSMag: What are your goals for the immediate future?

Entz: Win. Win. That’s it. But do it the right way. Win and then make sure we’re handling our business off the field.

FSMag: Big picture, what’s your vision for what Fresno State football can be?

Entz: I anticipate as we move forward and we navigate into this Pac-12, so does our brand, so does everything associated with this university and this football program. How does going into a Power 4, Power 5 league impact our facilities, our budget, all the things that are associated with Bulldog football?

FSMag: In attracting you to this job, how big was the Pac-12?

Entz: It didn’t hurt to know we’re going to have some access. But we can’t just be part of the league, we have to be invested in being in the league. There’s a big difference.

FSMag: What’s that investment look like, and how can the community help?

Entz: There’s really three budgets that we have right now. We have an operational budget which is our day to day. We need to feed our players. If we’re going to be a line of scrimmage based football team, then we have to build those kids. If we’re going to be a developmental program, we have to build these kids. That takes calories, that takes having a tremendous strength program, a nutritionist and all the resources that they need, a training table that is second to none – and all of that takes revenue.

There’s the scholarship piece to it, being able to provide scholarships to our players, summer scholarships, cost of attendance.

The new one is NIL. How can we make it fit Fresno State?

All three of those buckets we need to be able to fill to help us win games. The big concern of mine as head football coach is the buckets never really get filled up – we just keep flipping one revenue source to another. There’s a million people in Fresno County. There are oodles upon oodles of alumni here who want to see this program do well. We need to make sure we’re touching the right people and, on my end, we need to make sure we’re doing it the right way. We’re developing a great college football program that is built on appreciation for the university and the game, and the other pieces will fall into place.

FSMag: What are the facilities needs you hope to see addressed during your time here?

Entz: That’s an area we need to continue to keep up. We have what we need to be successful, but at the same time we need to evolve, too. Sometimes it comes down to space, you just don’t have enough space. When you have 120 players on the team, you have to make sure your locker room, meeting rooms, dining area can handle that number. Otherwise those facilities get tired really fast. You’ll get to know Matt Entz, I’m not about sizzle. I’m all about substance. Let’s just get what we need. It doesn’t need to be the fanciest, it just needs to be the most practical for who we are. We’re in a blue collar community that is rich in ag, and you’ve got a head coach who doesn’t have a whole lot of sizzle to him. Substance is my thing.

FSMag: What can fans expect headed into this final year in the Mountain West?

Entz: What I challenge our football team with is it’s a new process right now, new coaches, new way of doing things, just trust it. We’re not just coming up with a random idea, this is a process to get us where we want to be. If we’re about the process and the people, the players, the coaches, the support staff, if we just keep our head down and keep working, it won’t guarantee victories, but it will guarantee us to be competitive in every game. On the other side of it we could be result oriented, we could look for stats, we could count yards, we could count reps, those things don’t matter. We need to make sure we understand what it looks like to play good football and how all three phases can be complementary, how we need to make sure we eliminate negative plays, we win the explosive play battle, tackle efficiency and ball security. The ball is the program. I said a lot right there, but those are the things that are going to get us where we want to be.

FSMag: How will the passing game come into your playing style?

Entz: We’re going to take advantage of it. I want to be able to run the football. I want to make sure our passing game is based on being accurate, taking what the defense gives us and allowing our playmakers to make plays in space. If we can throw a hitch for 5 yards to a guy like Josiah Freeman, he breaks a tackle and it turns into a gain of 20, is anybody really going to complain because the ball didn’t travel 20 yards through the air?

Probably not. When you see good football, you see both the run game and pass game can complement each other.

FSMag: What do you tell fans when they ask how they can best support the program?

Entz: Being a season ticket holder, getting into the stadium before kickoff, joining the Bulldog Foundation, being part of the Quarterback Club, coming to the Kickoff Dinner, being part of the Bulldog Bread NIL collective. All of those things help. Keep pushing the needle. We need to become uncomfortable a little bit as a fan base, and I think we’ll see where this thing can go. Winning solves a lot of problems, but we don’t want to get so far behind that we feel like we can never catch up. We’re looking at a couple other schools that feel like they’ve separated themselves from the pack and that doesn’t include Fresno State right now. We need to make sure we get there.

– Eddie Hughes is senior editor for Fresno State Magazine.

Off-field Xs and Os with Coach Matt Entz:

Tell us about your family.

I’ve been married 25 years in July. I met my wife, Brenda, when I was a graduate assistant. She played college volleyball. We have two sons – Kellen plays football at North Dakota State and Konner plays junior college baseball at Des Moines Area Community College in Iowa. We are empty nesters here in Fresno.

Mountains or beach?

A little bit of both, so I like where we’re situated. I probably became more of a beach guy living in Southern California last year, but we got out and drove around through the mountains recently. We got up to Yosemite.

Best day trip?

Yosemite

Social media?

I’m on X (@Coach_Entz), and I’m on Instagram.

Best day on the job so far?

Tomorrow. Today will have its challenges and tomorrow will be better.

Vehicle?

A little SUV right now, but I’m more of a truck guy.

Wine or beer?

Beer. My wife is a wine person.

Local restaurant?

I’ve eaten at Five restaurant 20 times already because of recruiting and haven’t had a bad meal. Yosemite Ranch, unbelievable. The restaurant at Copper River golf course. I haven’t had a bad meal out here.

Favorite pro team?

Pittsburgh Steelers

A year from now, what do you want your answer to be?

When we win the conference championship.