By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            When Michael Ford left Baylor 24 years ago with a degree in marketing, not only did he have no plans to coach, he certainly didn't expect to one day head up the historic track & field program at his alma mater.
            "Honestly, for me, coaching kind of just fell in my lap," said Ford, who was named Baylor's head track & field coach last week after 21 years as an assistant under coaching icons Clyde Hart and Todd Harbour. "But, I think as you get a little older, a little wiser and coach more, you realize that you have to be the head coach if you want to make your own decisions."
            Ford was actually working in the marketing department at a law firm back in his home state of New York when he got a chance to be the part-time sprint coach at University of Rochester, a Division III program in his hometown. His initial response to the Rochester head coach was, "I know how to run, but I don't know how to coach."
            Nearly 25 years later, he's got a pretty good handle on this coaching thing.
            "(Michael) was an outstanding student-athlete and has already demonstrated his ability to coach while serving as an assistant coach for two decades," said Hart, who first recruited Ford to Baylor as a student-athlete and then brought him back as an assistant in 2000. "He will bring the same competitive nature he had as an athlete to the job as head coach."
            Harbour, the 16^th-year head coach that Ford now follows, said Michael "is a great coach and a greater person."
            "He cares deeply about the total athlete and the ministry that we all have to the mission here at Baylor," Harbour said. "He is a great choice to lead this great program into the future, and I am excited to see what the Lord does through him."
            Ford becomes just the fourth Baylor head track coach in the modern era and the third since 1963 when Jack Patterson left to take the job at the University of Texas. Hart headed the program for the next 42 years and then stayed on as Director of Track & Field until 2019.
            When Baylor Director of Athletics Mack Rhoades asked Ford if he wanted to be Baylor's next head coach, he said, "it just blew my mind."
            "Just to follow Coach Hart, a legendary coach that coached me while I was in college and actually brought me back. And then to follow Coach Harbour, it's an amazing feeling," he said.



            On his left wrist, Ford wears a rubber bracelet that says, "Do You Believe in Yourself?"
            "I think a lot of times, you might have more vision for (your athletes) than they have for themselves," said Ford, who has mainly worked with sprinters and quarter-milers at Baylor, being promoted to associate men's head coach four years ago. "I want to make sure they believe in themselves."
            Ford also believes in himself. He coached USA teams at the Pan Am Games in Lima, Peru, and the inaugural USA vs. Europe meet, "The Match," in Minsk, Belarus, in 2019.
            "I don't have any doubts," he said. "I think when head coaches have a great staff, it makes them look better. If my staff is making me look good, then I'm going to be OK. I know I'll have some growing pains, but I have some great mentors that I can call, even Coach Hart and Coach Harbour. I know I'll probably make some mistakes, but hopefully earlier rather than later."
             As a student-athlete at Baylor, Ford was part of back-to-back NCAA Outdoor national championship 4x400 relays, winning it in 1995 with Raoul Howard, Corey Williams and Deon Minor and then in '96 with Howard, Darrin Strong and Marlon Ramsey.
            Ford would like to build on the "Quarter-Miler U." tradition started by Hart, with a plan to "hit it hard on the sprints and hurdles" in recruiting. But, he also wants to "keep pressing" in the field events, where the program has had a lot of recent success, and "we want to get back to getting some good distance runners on our team to make us a better overall team."
            "I think the expectations for me have always been high," he said. "I've always shot for the stars. For me, it's making sure that we're nationally relevant each and every year and making sure that we perform well at the Big 12 Championships."
            On top of his Baylor coaching duties, Ford helped former Baylor All-American Jeremy Wariner win a silver medal in the 400 at the 2008 Olympics and continued to work with two-time NCAA national champion Trayvon Bromell after he turned pro in 2015.
            "When I met him, there was a connection there that I knew, he's the coach for me," said Bromell, a gold-medal favorite in the 100 this year after switching to Rana Reider. "It was more than just track & field talent with him, it was more of, 'I'm looking out for you. I'm here when you need me.' And that's the type of coach that I felt like I needed."
            With the relationships that Ford has built over the last 21 years as an assistant and even back to his days as a student-athlete, his phone was flooded with text messages and various social media platforms blew up with congratulations from Wariner, former Baylor All-American and Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson and a host of other past and current Baylor student-athletes.
            First-time Olympian Wil London tweeted, "LET'S GOOOO! Congrats, coach! Let's get it!"
            "To have guys like Trayvon, Jeremy, Wil, even Michael Johnson, Deon Minor, Tony Miller those guys all reach out to me . . . it was such a huge honor," Ford said.
            "Someone asked me, 'What's the best feeling you've had as a college coach?''' Ford said. "I say it's the relationships that I have with my student-athletes now, even as they're fathers or they're businessmen or businesswomen. The track stuff is definitely a big honor for me, but those relationships that I've built is huge."
            Ford will also get the chance to follow three former Baylor student-athletes in the Tokyo Olympics, with Bromell, London and pole vaulter KC Lightfoot all representing USA.
            "I think that's the ultimate goal for every kid that we work with," he said. "Of course, making the Olympic team, making the World Championship teams, they're special, because not a lot of people make those teams. I think the most we had ever had was two, so having three on this USA team, that's going to be special. And they're all still young, so they still have opportunities to make it in 2024 (in Paris). I'm just excited to be able to watch them compete."
            With Harbour retiring as the head coach last month, Ford will have at least one coaching spot to fill and said he is "in the process of figuring out the staff." While he plans to continue to work with the sprinters and quarter-milers, Ford said he could look for more of a middle-distance coach to fill the vacancy.