The year is 1996, and 23-year-old Matt Canada, along with Joe Novak, is leaving Indiana University.

Novak, a defensive coordinator at IU, is taking his first head coaching job at Northern Illinois University, an Independent in a small midwestern town coming off five consecutive losing seasons.

Canada, a graduate assistant at IU, is excited about being the quarterback and wide receiver coach at Butler University in Indianapolis, Ind.

A former high school quarterback in Indiana, Canada gave up his playing days in hopes of a coaching career.

At Butler, Canada’s paycheck for the year reads $5,000. He just got married that year and is planning a family, so the paycheck wasn’t exactly what he had envisioned.

“All the guys I went to school with certainly had better-paying jobs than I had,” Canada said. “I had an IU business degree and a masters degree and my first job at Butler, I got paid $5,000. That’s not an exaggeration.”

“I loved what I was doing,” Canada said. “But at what cost do you do it? That first year was a challenge. It certainly made me realize how precious coaching jobs are.”

For extra money, Canada hung race banners for Budweiser at the Indianapolis 500.

Canada’s wife, the former Michelle Fariello, was carrying the financial weight of the relationship as a pharmaceutical sales rep.

“Certainly there’s sacrifices, but it’s worth it because he’s doing what he loves,” Michelle said. “I chose to marry a coach. I knew what I was getting into.”

In Canada’s second year at Butler, he was promoted to offensive coordinator.

Thankful for his opportunities at Butler, it wasn’t until he received a call from former cohort Novak that he saw the possibilities for the future.

Running into DeKalb

Canada hoped Novak would bring him with to NIU straight from Indiana, but in retrospect, he knows the route he took was the best one.

Everything seems to have worked out perfectly for the 31-year-old Canada, now in his sixth year at NIU as an assistant coach, and his first season as offensive coordinator for the Huskies.

“People say things happen for a reason, and I am living proof of that,” Canada said.

There was the time he gave up football as a player, unsure if it was the right move; the move got him into coaching.

There was the time he took the low-paying job at Butler out of college; it got him his first experience as an offensive coordinator at the ripe age of 24.

Then, there was the call from Novak asking him to join him on the NIU staff. But as a running backs coach?

“He always wanted to be a quarterbacks coach, that’s what he was trained to be,” Novak said. “But I had a chance to get him here.”

With an open spot, Canada jumped at it. Admittedly, he came in blind.

He was hired July 13, 1998. The team began practice on Aug. 1. Canada had less than a month to learn how to be a running backs coach.

“That was a great experience, no question about it,” Canada said. “I had to learn the whole offense and the finer points of running back play, which I certainly didn’t know. I had worked with running backs at Indiana for a year, so I had experience. But I wasn’t an expert and it wasn’t my most comfortable position to start.”

NIU senior running back Michael Turner remembers coming to NIU as a freshman with Canada as his coach.

“He’s a real straightforward guy and tells you how he sees it,” Turner said. “Whatever he sees wrong, he’s going to get it straight, believe that.”

All Canada did in his inexperienced spot as running backs coach was tutor three 1,000-yard rushers. William Andrews (1,127 yards in 1999), Thomas Hammock (1,083 in 2000 and 1,096 in 2001) and Turner (1,915 in 2002) all were under Canada from 1998 to 2000.

“I wouldn’t trade him for nobody else,” Turner said.

Family man

It’s the Wednesday before NIU travels to Bowling Green.

This is the first time two ranked teams from the MAC will play each other on national TV.

The players are grunting and groaning, the coaches yelling and screaming and a woman with her kids are on the sidelines. They fit in at this testosterone-filled practice about as much as Novak at a Ja Rule concert.

As it turns out, it’s Michelle, Canada’s wife, and their two kids, 5-year-old Tori and 3-year-old Chris.

“We try to see Matt as much as we can,” said Michelle, now a stay-at-home mom. “Last night, he didn’t have enough time to come home for dinner, so we try and get out here as much as possible.”

Married for seven years, Matt and Michelle met at Indiana University. Friends for most of their time at IU, they eventually dated for a year and got engaged when Matt finished his graduate assistant job.

Now living in Sycamore, Matt finds it hard to juggle time between work and home.

Whenever he’s not at the office or on the field with the team, he’s at home. He calls his job the greatest in America, but the only problem he sees is the time he spends away from his kids.

“For us to be in this profession, [the kids] gain from it though too,” Matt said. “They know the players and we’ve got such a great group of guys and they know almost all of them and they interact with them.”

Michelle, Tori and Chris make it to almost all the team’s games. They went to Alabama and Bowling Green, but didn’t make it to Central Michigan.

“That’s what makes it OK for me to be a coach, is the experiences my kids gain,” Matt said. “They get to meet a lot of special people. We’ve got a great group of guys right now and they are good people. If I didn’t feel that way, my kids wouldn’t be around them. Looking up to our players is definitely a good thing.”

There are the summer picnics with the players, the practices and the locker room after the games that Tori and Chris get to experience firsthand.

Tori’s favorite player is quarterback Josh Haldi. But Chris prefers someone on the other side of the ball: safety Lionel Hickenbottom. Matt insists he has no problem with Chris picking a defensive player as his favorite.

“I guess he’s destined to be a defensive player,” Matt said.

Reward of coaching

After the first fall practice this season, Canada had a revelation on his ride home.

He said to himself, ‘This is why I coach.’

Dealing with the death of offensive lineman Shea Fitzgerald, who died in the Chicago porch collapse on July 1, was the toughest thing he’s ever had to do.

“There was excitement for the year; then that just brought it back to everything that is important,” Canada said. “Then, when camp started and we all got together and to see that we were back together again, it made it worthwhile again. I love my job, I love what I do, I love being around the guys, I love sitting in the staff room trying to decide what we’re going to do, all those things. It’s why you do it.”

Directing the QBs

At New Palestine (Ind.) High School, Canada, like many young kids, had big dreams of a career as an NFL quarterback.

“I enjoyed the game and loved playing it,” Canada said. “I had a real good junior year. Then I had a knee injury senior year.”

That injury, Canada said, is the reason he didn’t pursue a playing career in college. A wise decision he now says, looking back.

“Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t recruit myself,” he said. “If I would’ve went on, I wouldn’t have been a starter, most likely.”

Choosing Indiana University, Canada knew the IU coaching staff briefly from high school where they showed mild interest in him as a player before his injury.

He then began life as a student coach and eventually a graduate assistant working 60 hours a week under head coach Bill Mallory – an NIU head coach from 1980 to 1983.

“Once I became a student coach, everything that Coach Mallory did, I was a part of,” Canada said. “That experience, you can’t put a price tag on that.”

Coming out of IU, Canada’s eventual goal was to become a quarterbacks coach at a Division I-A school. At NIU in 2001, he would get his chance.

In 2001 he coached Chris Finlen in his senior year. Finlen threw for 2,036 yards that year in becoming NIU’s career leader in passes (910).

Last year, he helped Josh Haldi set an NIU sophomore record in passing with 2,027 yards on the season.

Moving up the ladder

Dan Roushar had been the offensive coordinator at NIU since 1998.

Roushar took the running backs coaching position at the University of Illinois at the end of the 2002 season

Going into his sixth year at NIU, Canada was hopeful he would get the open position.

“We always try to promote from within because we don’t want to change our whole system,” Novak said. “Matt is a bright young guy, he’s a sharp coach, he’s hard-working and it was just a natural that when Danny Roushar left for him to get promoted.”

Novak said he’d rather have one guy learn the whole system than 55 learn it.

Novak sees big things for Canada and his future.

“He’s going to go far in this profession,” Novak said. “I just hope I can hang onto him for a little while. He’s going to be a head coach somewhere in the not-to-distant future.”

If Canada’s past is any indication of how his future will unfold, good things await. The path he takes, however, may not be what he expects.