“He’s already been good luck for us,” Sayler said Wednesday during the press conference at which Martin was formally introduced as Miami’s 36th football coach.
Martin, whom Sayler said was one of three finalists, agreed on Tuesday to a five-year contract with an annual base salary of $450,000 plus bonuses.
Martin, 45, faces a bigger uphill climb in football than the basketball team did Tuesday against the Mastodons. He inherits a team that has gone 8-28 in the three seasons since the RedHawks won their last Mid-American Conference championship and bowl game in 2010.
That includes this season’s 0-12 record, the most losses in one season in the history of the program.
But he still described himself as “super, super, super excited” to land the job at the “Cradle of Coaches,” following in the footsteps of champions such as Woody Hayes, Ara Parseghian and Bo Schembechler.
“Miami football tradition is coming back to where it has been for many, many years,” Martin said. “I was getting my hair cut the other day sitting in the same seat that Ara Parseghian sat in the day before. They said he was saying, ‘(Miami’s) got to get this right this time.’
“I was so excited. He was talking about the job I was about to get.”
Miami was 0-5 when Sayler fired coach Don Treadwell on Oct. 6. Quarterbacks-receivers coach Mike Bath, a former RedHawks quarterback, was named interim coach while Sayler immediately launched a search he hoped would end in a hiring as near as possible to the end of Miami’s season.
Martin, whose first full-time coaching job was with linebackers at Wittenberg in 1994 and 1995, was hired four days after Miami’s season-ending loss at Ball State.
Sayler was looking for a candidate who possessed two qualities — head coaching experience at some level and Division I experience in any role. Besides serving as an assistant with six different teams, Martin won two Division II national championships in six seasons as Brian Kelly’s replacement as head coach at Grand Valley State before joining Kelly at Notre Dame in 2010.
Sayler said he first heard about Martin from the Grand Valley State athletic director. They met for the first time in mid-November.
“It felt perfect from the time I met Chuck for the first time,” Sayler said. “We felt good about his emphasis on the values that we care about. He’s got experience as a coordinator on both sides of the ball. He’s coached in a national championship game in seven of his last 13 seasons.
“When you look at his resume, he has never failed. He’s played or coached on 10 undefeated teams, and teams he’s coached are 158-28. That’s a pretty strong number. That’s something that caught our attention.”
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