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Football: Fouquier stayingTim Buckley, Daily Advertiser, Jan. 15, 2012 It was going to be the adventure of a lifetime, a father and son leaving together to join the same college football program — one to coach, the other to play — at the University of New Mexico. For one Fouquier, it was to have been opportunity to get back into the profession he loves after a stint away from it. For the other, it was to have been the chance to play for a team on the same side of the line coached by his pop. The plane was to have left Louisiana at 10:45 a.m. last Thursday. But when push came to shove, neither former UL defensive coordinator Kevin Fouquier nor his boy, a Comeaux High product and UL football recruit also named Kevin — was on board. "Toughest decision in my life, to walk away from it," the elder Fouquier said Saturday. Kevin Fouquier, a former UL walk-on and later a UL assistant coach, was going to be the defensive line coach on the new New Mexico staff of Bob Davie, the former Notre Dame head coach and longtime ESPN college-football analyst recently hired to coach the Lobos. Davie also had offered a scholarship to the younger Fouquier, who had made a verbal commitment last year to UL and Ragin’ Cajuns coach Mark Hudspeth. "We were gonna leave Thursday," Fouquier said, "and I told Hud that if it didn’t feel comfortable we’d be back. "But it didn’t feel like the right timing, for the whole thing," he added. "So I called Coach Davie, and just said, ‘At this time in my life I can’t take it right now.’ " The plane left without them. The Fouquier family’s next calls went to two UL coaches, Hudspeth and offensive coordinator Jay Johnson, telling them their prized recruit from Comeaux was going to honor his commitment after all. "They were all excited," the elder Fouquier said. Later Thursday, Kevin Fouquier — a versatile athlete recruited by the Cajuns as an outside linebacker — went with his father to the UL campus, enrolled in school and checked into his new dorm. He took his first classes Friday, having graduated already from Comeaux so he could take part in spring practice with whichever program he wound up joining. And Kevin Fouquier had plenty of offers, indeed. North Carolina was on him early and made an offer. UL too. Texas A&M, where Fouquier was an assistant and Davie was defensive coordinator back in the early 1990s, has been showing interest in him as an H-back. Texas Tech just recently offered him a scholarship as well. But, the elder Fouquier said, "he was gonna go to UL" all along. "The only reason to go to New Mexico," he said, "is I was gonna be able to get back into coaching." A Franklin native, Fouquier has bounced around as a career assistant, with stops everywhere from Tuerlings Catholic High to UTEP, A&M, Sam Houston State, Louisiana Tech, Middle Tennessee and Florida International — not to mention stints as a student assistant for the Cajuns from 1985 to ’89, and again as UL’s defensive coordinator under Hudspeth predecessor Rickey Bustle. "After 25 years, to have an opportunity to be part of a new staff with a coach (Davie) I coached with 20 years ago, and to have my son there — it would have been really special thing in my life," he said. "But sometimes it’s not about me," added Fouquier, who plans to keep his current job with Francis Drilling Fluids. "It about what’s best for my family. And (son) Kevin was fine either way. But I’ve got three other kids. And a wife. This is our home, you know?’
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