Editor’s note: This was the cover story in the September 3rd edition of Gridiron.

Tom Herman wasn’t ready for this close-up.

The humble and gifted coordinator of Iowa State’s offense is gracious about helping out the media after the team’s Sunday night practice, but the man has a family waiting at home and things to prepare before this week’s game, and the 34-year-old is finding out he’s unshaven and wearing shorts for a photo shoot. This turns the pleasantly long-winded Iowa transplant into the prototype stone-faced football coach, if only for a few seconds.

Herman is equal parts football coach, news anchor and best friend, if only because he constantly displays the ability to shake hands and get along with everyone without leaving grease stains in their palms. He has that skill as a person, has shown his football prowess in the past three years, and somehow he finds himself in Ames, and there isn’t any place he’d rather be.

“I gotta be honest, this is going to sound cliched, but I never dreamt that I’d be here. I never dreamt that I’d have the opportunity to work for somebody like coach [Paul] Rhoads, with the staff that we’re working with, being a coordinator in the Big 12 at 34 years old,” Herman said. “I gotta pinch myself every now and again to make sure that it isn’t a dream.”

The road has to begin somewhere for football coaches, and like most up-and-comers, Herman’s story takes the right path, but takes a lot of turns. With names, playbooks and game plans looking like they’re going to take the place of putting his kids to bed on this night, Herman’s fiery blue eyes get a little distant, and he finally looks a little tired. It’s a reasonable physical response during game week, but the well-noted Mensa member approaches everything with focus — and he’s more ready than you are, you can count on that.

“I had an epiphany the summer before my last season of playing college football. Me and a buddy were up at Lake Tahoe spending a few days there and just trying to mull over myself and what I wanted to do with my life,” Herman said. “I thought, I want a job where I wake up before the alarm clock and I want a job where I’m fired up to go to work every day and I get to compete and teach, and I said, ‘Well, I might want to try my hand at coaching.’”

After coming to terms with what success would mean in coaching, Herman decided if he wasn’t doing anything with football, he could join the business world when he was 30, rather than join the business world straight away and try to make a late return to coaching. After graduating and playing Division III football at California Lutheran, his journey took a turn to the football promised land: Texas.

“I cut my teeth and learned football at the University of Texas when I was a graduate assistant. When I graduated college, I didn’t know what a three-technique was, I didn’t know how to call a defense or block anything,” Herman said. “Those two years I spent as a graduate assistant I spent with the offensive line, and having played wide receiver, that was probably the most beneficial thing I could have done for my career.”

Learning offense under the tutelage of Mack Brown and the Longhorns’ coaching staff certainly isn’t a bad place to begin, but the more he speaks the more you wonder whether Herman has the ability to conduct a bad interview. Smooth, but not slick; focused and concerned, but not abrasive; it’s no wonder he studied broadcast television. As friendly as the citizens of Iowa are heralded to be, this man could come into your home as your local pastor or your high school history teacher, but he’s waiting for 55,000 seats to fill at the stadium 50 yards behind him in the package of a big-time football coach.

“A lot of my influences came from that as just knowledge-based, and then going to Sam Houston State in 2001, they were a shotgun three- and four-wide team I got a lot of good ideas from,” Herman said. “Some of those we still use today, others that I thought that the way we did it at Texas was better or that Texas State. Once I had the opportunity to become the coordinator at Texas State, I kind of blended everything that I learned from those places and from studying other people.”

The journey and networking take time, but even being the quick study that he is, Herman insists this job is an important enough challenge for him to stick around and smell the turf. In a small coincidence, while talking about being grateful for being in a small town, the barbecue being served for the team dinner is going to run out and Herman’s gracious patience is forced to turn into survival mode. Eighty football players will put down the Hickory Park line in a flash and the coach will take his meals in his office, or any place he can get them. A quick apology receives an, “It’s alright,” from the coach, but he obviously didn’t expect to spend the Sunday evening letting his food get cold after a photo shoot.

“When you set out in a profession, I think it’s always good to have goals, and it’s good to have time-sensitive goals too, and I said by the age of 30 I wanted to be either a 1-A position coach or a 1-AA coordinator,” Herman said. “I was lucky enough to get hired as a 1-AA coordinator at 29 and then did that for two years, and then our head coach got the job at Rice and I was lucky enough to go with him. And, lo and behold, I was a 1-A coordinator at 31 years old.”

Does his path mean that if Iowa State wins this year he’ll be a head coach at 36, in the NFL by 39 and firmly entrenched as a coaching legend by 45? It might seem like hyperbole, but in a generation of high-rising hires and “the next big thing,” if Herman’s offense can turn Austen Arnaud All-Big 12 and put up 471 yards a game in the Big 12, it doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility.

“I’ve kind of dumped the time-sensitive part since I’ve got a wife and two kids now, and I’ve got a great job working for a great guy, and I can stay here as long as he’ll have me because I believe in what we’re doing,” Herman said. “Not only offensively, but Coach Rhoads and his plan for the entire program is just a joy to work for and work with.”

His eyes are finding some of that intensity again. The jury’s out on whether it’s because of the steaming plate of food that is sitting uneaten in front of him or because he’s passionate about what he’s doing. Inflection is everything, even if pork ribs are two feet away, and Herman means what he says, and he says with the tone that doesn’t have a hint of desperation or disbelief. There isn’t time for that.

“I counted the other day, if you don’t include our vacation. I think I counted that we have eight or nine Saturdays off a year, and a few more Sundays. When I do have free time — obviously I don’t see my kids very much, I’ll go a week at a time without seeing them awake — so I try to spend as much time with them as I can and [with] my wife,” Herman said.

His office would be considered bare to an interior decorator, but with pictures of family, notes on the white board and papers and notes on the desk, Herman’s lair is football-equipped and economical.

Won’t he complain about anything? The guy isn’t an ignorant optimist, just a well-prepared planner, but surely he can vocalize that he was caught off guard by responsibility, that he doesn’t want all this pressure at 34, and that he sure as heck doesn’t want a photo shoot when his dinner is waiting for him.

“If you’d have told me eight years ago that at 34 years old I’d be an offensive coordinator at Iowa State, working for a guy like Paul Rhoads, I would have signed up for that in a heartbeat, I can promise you that,” Herman said.

Maybe the honeymoon period will last a little bit longer and ISU fans hope it lasts through the year.

The entire coaching staff wants success, and Herman has done his best to understand what it will take for the Cyclones to be competitive, and he’ll use every best-buddy bone in his body to get that done.

He’s ready now.