Getting to know Kent State football head coach Mark Carney

When discussing potential head coaching options for Kent State over the years, the name Mark Carney never came up.

In fact, if you try to do a quick Google search on Mark Carney right now, you're almost certainly more likely to get information about the current prime minister of Canada than the newest head coach of the Kent State Golden Flashes.

Carney, who started 14 games in three seasons at quarterback for Fordham under Dave Clawson, isn't even the first member of his family to go down the football path.

Carney himself insists his brother, former Air Force QB Shaun Carney, was a lot better at the whole "football thing" than he is. (And indeed, Shaun was certainly great at football, leaving Colorado Springs as one of the most productive signalcallers in Falcon history.)

"We're trying to get him into [Air Force's] Hall of Fame," Carney chirps, beaming like a proud brother should.

And yet, through a near-unbelievable series of circumstances, Carney, who was born and raised in northeast Ohio, is set to lead the Flashes as a full-time head coach in 2026 after leading KSU to a 5-7 record as interim in 2025.

We sat down and talked with Carney via phone after spring camps on April 30th, and what follows is a transcript of the full interview, lightly edited for clarity.

By The Belt: First of all, thank you for taking the time to talk with us. We weren't able to get together last year due to the suddenness of your becoming interim, but it's nice that we have this opportunity now.

Mark Carney: Absolutely. No, I appreciate the time. You guys have covered this conference and Kent State University extremely well, and we appreciate that.

You were born and raised in Cleveland, right?

Yes, I went to high school by Lakewood.

How familiar were you with Kent State in that time?

Yeah, great question.

So I did grow up, was born in Fairview General Hospital on the west side of Cleveland in 1980, so I'm a child of the 20th century. Seems a little bit odd, like, I was one of those kids that didn't grow up with a cell phone, you know what I mean? I'm kind of in that weird space, but have kids now that use cell phones efficiently and feel like I'm a bridge of the two generations a little bit.

But yeah, huge Irish-Catholic family, west side of Cleveland, grew up in Lakewood, played high school football at St. Ed's, you know, went to Fordham University and very familiar with Kent State, right?

I didn't come here. I didn't play here. I had aunts, uncles, cousins, you know, all graduate from here. My godmother, which is my dad's sister, is a graduate of Kent State and her husband, they met here at Kent State while they were students. He is the acting postmaster general of the United States of America. So a couple cool connections, yeah, to Kent State.

That's exciting. You know, it's not often that you can say that a relative of yours is an actual honest-to-goodness federal government worker.

It is. Absolutely. Yeah.

On that note, now that you've had a chance to learn about and understand Kent State as one of the university's faces over the last year or so, what is your favorite aspect of being in that particular community?

I think just that: the sense of community.

The people here, very similarly raised, right? Built by and through adversity. It's cold, it's hard to live in Northeast Ohio sometimes in the winter, and that forges a certain sense of, you know, mental toughness about you. A loyal community.

People are, you know, salt of the earth and and blue collar and you know those those are my kind of people. Those are the neighborhoods that I grew up in and the people that I went to school with and getting to do this job at home is really cool. We're fortunate; I think it was game six [of the 2025 season], Bowling Green came to town and we won the game, kind of in a comeback fashion towards the end in the third and fourth quarter. I did all the press conference stuff and showered and walked out into the parking lot, and my mother had each of her six siblings because my parents are both one of seven. So each of her six siblings and my dad had zero of his siblings, but five of my cousins on that side were there and their children. So, we're tailgating post-game with 50 people celebrating a Kent State win over BG... was pretty freaking cool.

Now, I know you're a Northeast Ohio kid. And you were just talking about that game six against Bowling Green. They're coached by Eddie George who took over that team first year.

Yep.

How did that feel?

A little bit surreal. Someone sent me a picture of me shaking his hand afterward. And he's a big guy, you know. I really, I mean, honestly, though. Outside of him winning the Heisman Trophy, our lives have been very, very similar to this point.

I'm totally joking. He's a stud human. Watching him and being a fan of football, you know, it's hard not to be an Eddie George fan, right? Especially growing up in Ohio. You know, so it was really cool, you know, one of those surreal coaching moments for certain, but, you know, the real joy came in being able to celebrate with my family afterward.

Something that you and Eddie George shared: both of you came up through HBCU (Historically Black College and University) ranks.You had a tenure at D-II Virginia State, I believe. How was that experience for you?

[Editor's note: Eddie George was hired by BG after a stint at HBCU Tennessee State. Carney was an offensive coordinator at Virginia State from 2015-2018.]

It was awesome. It was so impactful for me, you know, really the first time ever in my life I was, you know, a minority in a space. And, you know, to see, to experience things through that different lens was certainly impactful for me.

The relationships with the people at Virginia State and the players that I got to coach there and people I got to coach with there.... Just got to hire Alex Stadler, who was our offensive line coach there with me. You know, special relationships, a special time.

It's the only year in my football career playing or coaching that I ever finished a regular season undefeated. So, the lessons learned, through that time and the relationships were really, really special.

Prior to your promotion last year, you never held a head coaching position at any level, correct? What would you say was the toughest part of adapting as a head coach?

Really good question. I would say probably the transition from being involved as a coordinator and the daily life of the quarterback and running your meetings and preparing, that position and players for whatever it is, practice or game. You're so deeply involved in the game planning at every level, run game, throw game, situational...

And then you move to the head coach spot, the head coach chair. I felt it was best to get to know everybody in the program. I certainly helped recruit a lot of the players at a lot of different positions, but I wasn't very involved in the lives of our special teams guys, our guys on defense, so stepping back away from football was, probably challenging and the toughest one to swallow just because I'm very passionate about the coaching of the QB and have fun enjoying the chess match that is the X's and O's part of football.

Speaking of that: what systems do you run at Kent State? What is the philosophy behind it? Did you pick it up from anywhere? Did you just kind of internalize it and self-teach?

Yeah, no, great question.

I had great developers, right? My high school football coach, Jim McQuade, you know, my position coach, Tom Becks, they had a tremendous impact on me when I was, you know, a high school student athlete.

Then moving into college, got to learn and play from or with Dave Clawson, who's a program builder. You know, had great success at the FCS level and, you know, had an outstanding run at BG and then at Wake Forest. And, you know, he taught me a lot and poured into a ton to me. Forever grateful for him. Guys that he coached, Chris Bowden and John DeFilippo, were young quarterback coaches in my life and helped me tremendously. You know, those guys are now coaching in the NFL and coordinating the offense at Villanova.

And then, you know, as you break into coaching, I got to work with Dave Clawson and he hires great people. Mike Elko, right? And Jay Bateman and Russ Huesman and I mean, countless names... Warren Ruggiero, guys like Clark Lea, right? Like the guys I got to interact with in the office as a young coach continued to develop me, right? And bouncing questions off of those guys... I think I try to take and learn something from everybody that would help develop me.

But I think, you have to, as a coach, have your beliefs and be rooted in certain things, but at the same time be extremely adaptable, right? And I think the best coaches that have done it best found the balance of being rooted in a system or a culture or whatever, but ultimately adapting their schematics to the skill sets of the people around them.

Where do you think the teams’ strengths currently are right now? Is there anywhere you think they can improve going into the season? Anyone we should look out for?

Yeah, I think getting our quarterback Dru DeShields back was huge for us. You know, retaining the majority of our roster. Kent State's never been financially in the top tier of the spenders across Division I college football, and with the rev share part of college football and NIL and all the money these guys are able to make there, there are student-athletes that use this as a launching pad to go somewhere else, right? And I think... what was your question again? I totally busted up. I just started talking.

No, it's all right. Where do you think the team's strengths currently are right now?

Yeah, thanks for getting me back on track there. Retaining the roster, right? And the key pieces, right? Dru DeShields, Thomas Aiden, Dusty Morrell, who will start and finish his career here. Retaining our roster was huge.

I think another year of maturity and experience for Dru DeShields is critical. But I think overall, our overall competitiveness level and togetherness is a separator for us. We went through spring and winter and spring, and you add pieces, whether they're additions through high school recruiting or through the portal and how you build your team for the next fall, becomes critically important in January whenever you get the next group.

And so, we spent a lot of time from a physical development standpoint in the weight room and, learned a good bit of football system schematically here in the spring. We weren't super, super physical this spring, but really looking forward to getting there in training camp.

That was actually the next question I was going to ask. You finished up your spring ball recently. What was the message that you and your staff were sending to the players as you ramp up towards the season?

Keep getting better, right?

I think we took a tremendous step from 2024 to 2025, and the next step is critically important, right? I firmly believe you're either getting better or you're getting worse. And we established a standard for how and, you know, the way we do things here. Whenever you get new faces in, making sure that standard is not only is maintained, but the level gets raised is critically important, and I think our guys embrace those challenges and have done an outstanding job.

What was the process of bringing Josh Cribbs onto the coaching staff staff like?

[Editor's note: this interview was conducted the day after the hiring of Josh Cribbs as a special teams analyst for the Flashes.]

Yeah, I think... When, you know, whenever you have an open position, right, I like to talk to a lot of people.

Working at Charlotte with Will Healy taught me that. 2019, we had great success and went to the Bahamas Bowl, first bowl game in school history and the coordinator at that time was Alex Atkins. He left for a job at Florida State that offseason, and Will knew– I was his coach [at Richmond]– I was a coordinator, had been a coordinator, wanted to be a coordinator and knew I was capable of doing the job. We interviewed, I wanted the job... we interviewed probably 30 people. Different ideas came from that and conversations sparked conversations. And I like doing that now that I'm the head coach, is I like to talk to a lot of people.

We lost a really good coach in CJ Conrad. He did a lot for us, was a Northeast Ohio guy passionate about this place and being here and, you know, I was trying to find someone that felt similarly. When Coach Cribbs and I started talking, his passion for 1) helping people and 2) this university and this community, I mean... jumped out at me. Whenever you can find someone that checks, this box and that box and that box and that box, that's a value adder. So, extremely excited about him being back in the mix at Kent State and the wealth of knowledge that he has to pass along.

How much did you know Josh before having these discussions?

Yeah, we had met a couple times before. He brought his son to summer camp here a few years ago, a few summers back. I think it was summer '23. I saw him at training camp supporting [former Kent State receiver] Luke Floria last summer with the Browns. So we had met probably two or three times, but never gotten to talking ball or anything like that. Once we started those conversations, it was impressive now. He can... he's got some knowledge, right? Some great experiences to lean on.

All right. We did talk about this a little bit before we started the interview, but in the time we've gotten to know you from outside, what I've noticed the most about you is your use of social media. Your campaign to get Julian Edelman to visit campus and sign a wall immediately comes to mind. What was the inspiration behind that initiative and how do you utilize social media on a daily basis, both personally and as a head coach?

Yeah, the motivation is just to continue to connect former Kent State football players with current Kent State football players, right? That's our goal.

I think, as a leader, it's our job or part of our job to be a connector for people. Going to school at Fordham in New York City taught me a lot about that, our willingness to go shake people's hand and introduce ourselves to somebody we don't know and never know how that interaction or what door that interaction may open up. So, just trying to be a connector of people.

Obviously, Jules, you know, made a great impact here and got his degree from Kent State and represented this football program unbelievably well at the professional level, right? In my opinion, a Hall of Famer. I didn't think it would take this long.

James, to be honest with you, I was hoping he might swing back by through Northeast Ohio. But what it's allowed me to do is demonstrate consistency for our football team. And those watching us, we talk a lot about our habits here. It's not what you talk about or think about doing. It's what you actually put into action. So being able to model a little bit of consistency is nice.

And, you know, social media is a great tool. I didn't grow up with it. I didn't use it until I got to be a coach, but it was initially a connection for me, right? Reaching out to different people and prospects and coaches and all that. And now it's, now it's part of our daily media. We get our news from these sites. We check in on our friends and the screen time for a lot of our young people, right, these days are on these apps. It's a way to market yourself. It's a way to market our football program. We're going to use it as the vehicle that it was built to be.

Are you ever afraid you'll run out of pictures of Julian Edelman?

No! We got a treasure trove. No way. You know how many pictures we take around here at practice, at games? We got press conference stuff. We got CD-ROMs on top of CD-ROMs on top of CD-ROMs and photos of Julian Edelman. So, yeah, even some floppy disks.

That's good to know.

We hit a motherload about 90 days in that we knew would sustain us.

What was one of the first autographs you got as a kid? And what do you remember about that moment?

All right, so this is kind of cool, right? So my old man was a Metro Cleveland Metroparks Ranger. He was a police officer, right? And he, this guy taught me what habits meant. Like what you did and being a provider for your family, all I had to do was watch my father, right? He's my hero and, taught me so, much about life and so many life lessons.

But he had make money on the side, right, because being a ranger when you're 29 or whatever, 30 years old, wasn't super lucrative, I can't imagine. So he'd take a lot of different like side jobs and part of those jobs was driving limousines. Anytime there was a big event in Cleveland or a rock concert or anything, people would come to town for it, right? So I got O.J. Simpson's autograph on a Cleveland Metroparks Zoo pamphlet, like a visitor's guide pamphlet.

Wow.

He pulled Bill Belichick over one time. I got Bill Belichick's autograph on the back of like a napkin or something because that's all my dad had when he pulled him over. Some pretty cool, like, yeah, some pretty cool connections.

What is something you get way too competitive about outside of football?

Competitive at?

Yeah, that you just get way too into. You're way too competitive about it.

James, if we are keeping score, I am trying to win. I'm competitive in everything. But where do I spend my time and where do I enjoy most? I love to play golf.

That seems to be a pretty popular answer when I do these things.

I have two younger sons. We have a 20-year-old daughter who's a sophomore at the University of Tennessee, and then my boys are a freshman 15-year-old and an 11-year-old sixth grader. So, trying to get them involved in some summertime leisure activities.

What song or band is at the top of your personal playlist, and why?

Great question. Great question. Right now it's Pearl Jam. I've been listening to a lot of Pearl Jam. I'm a huge fan of music. I love music, all different genres and varieties. You'll hear everything coming out of the aux in my truck.

I like to have fun and change it up, but right now I'm on a big Pearl Jam kick. Got to see them live for the first time with three high school buddies, or two high school buddies. There were three of us at the show last summer in Pittsburgh. So ever since then, I've been jamming with pearls, yeah.

What moment have you had in your coaching career that was the most miserable you’ve ever been as a coach on the field?

I remember. I remember in 2022, we had we had great expectations for ourselves at Charlotte, especially offensively, and had an injury bug. Nothing super serious, but just some things that nagging things that kept guys out early in the season and got off to a super slow start. And I think we were 1-6 going into a homecoming game against Florida International at home and we laid a complete egg.

I remember it was a night game. And I remember going back to my office and waiting to see the head coach, Will Healy. So I saw him and apologized, and we got fired the next day. That was probably the toughest day I've ever had as a coach. Will Healy is a guy that I coached at Richmond and I love like a little brother. That was absolutely heartbreaking.

Conversely, what is your happiest moment as a coach, whether it's on or off the field?

I mean, my wife and I started our family in this place and space, and we got married March 4th, 2006, over spring break. I was super busy getting going, and super dialed into starting my career and and that was probably the happiest day of my life off the field.

On the field, winning championships is is really cool. I got to win a championship at Fordham as a student assistant coach after my playing career, got to win a a national championship at the University of Richmond, got to win the MAC Championship in 2013, you know, with Coach Clawson and that staff at Bowling Green. Got to win the CIAA championship, finishing an undefeated season in 2017. That was my first Gatorade bath. That was pretty cool. It was freezing.

Those moments are all so special. You know, you work so hard with a group of people for one goal: to call yourself a champion and for someone else to recognize that. But in those moments, watching the young people celebrate... no one will ever be able to take those championships, those moments, those memories away from groups like that. Those are special every time you get to be a part of it.

What is a time in your personal life you thought was really challenging but you feel proud now of the way that you responded to it?

You asked a hard-hitting question, James.

T-thank you, I guess.

That's a great question.

I didn't achieve as a student the way I wanted to or I was capable of. I was embarrassed by that for a long time and kind of ran from it. But now, I'm able to use the platform and the position I'm in to educate and help, the young people not make the same silly mistake or mistakes that I did. So I guess, being proud of the messaging and trying to teach lessons to the young people and avoid mistakes that I made.

All right, last question. Thank you so much, by the way, for enduring such hard-hitting questions.

No, these are awesome. These are making me think. I love it.

I'll make you think one last time then. If there is one thing a person should know about Mark Carney, what would you say that is?

I'm not like a "talk about it" guy. I'm a "be about it" guy, right? So I would hope people would say that I'm a man of action and that I'm passionate about what I do, no matter what it is, and that I love people.

Our thanks go out to Carney for taking the time to sit down with us, as well as to Kent State's football communications director Josh Padilla and Kent State football creative graduate assistant Kyle Trussell for their assistance with this interview.

The Kent State Golden Flashes start the 2026 campaign on the road against the South Carolina Gamecocks on Saturday, Sept. 5.