It’s 1969 and Stan Parrish has achieved the only goal he had when he enrolled at Heidelberg College.

He’s a football coach, just like his dad was in Cleveland, and he can’t imagine life being much better than it is for him at Windham (Ohio) High.

“Believe me, when I first started off,” Parrish said, “many a day I was thinking, ‘My God, they’re paying me to do this! I’m the luckiest guy in the world.’”

He was making $6,000 a year, and most of that, of course, was for his responsibilities as a teacher.

Thirty-eight years later, Parrish, now the coaxed-out-of-retirement offensive coordinator at Ball State, is still having a hard time believing his luck. As well he should.

The one passion of his childhood has provided a coaching career that’s posed nearly every challenge imaginable — and delivered rewards like national championship and Super Bowl rings.

Nebraska fans will remember Parrish as the unfortunate soul to be in charge of Kansas State’s woeful program for three seasons in the mid-1980s, just before Bill Snyder took over. But that stint, which Parrish admits dropped him to his knees, is a misrepresentation of what he’s meant to the game.

Parrish’s first job after being a grad assistant at Purdue came at NCAA Division III Wabash College. He was an assistant for a team that finished national runner-up, then ran the program for five seasons and compiled a 42-3-1 record.

That success helped him land the job at Marshall, which had struggled to recover from the 1970 airplane disaster. All Parrish did his first season was lead the Thundering Herd to their first winning record in 20 years.

 “I love Marshall University and I love it with a passion,” said Parrish, who had a bit role in the 2006 movie ‘We Are Marshall.’

Fueled by another calling, Parrish left, though, following a 7-3-1 season in his second year there to take the Kansas State job.

Three years later, in 1988, for the first time in his life he was asking himself if he really wanted to be a football coach.

Parrish had been fired after compiling a 2-30-1 record. Take away the Wildcats’ 1-1-1 mark against rival Kansas during that time, and there was no gloss.

 In three games against Nebraska, K-State was outscored 142-6.

“It was horrible,” Parrish said. “The AD who hired me was gone quickly, we had a schedule that was way over our head, and the budget — we certainly weren’t on equal footing.”

In fact, those were years Parrish would have liked to have back. And he needed a year just to recover from the experience.

“You blame it on yourself,” said Parrish, who spent time with his family while clearing his head (and doubts about whether he still could coach). “But this is a game you’ve got to get up off the ground when you get knocked down.”

Parrish returned to coaching as an assistant, spending six seasons at Rutgers before winding up as Michigan’s quarterbacks coach in 1996. One year later, the Wolverines won a share of the national championship, and after four more seasons (the final two of which he was offensive coordinator), Parrish went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to coach quarterbacks in 2002.

The Bucs went on to win the Super Bowl against Bill Callahan’s Oakland Raiders team. After one more season, Parrish was looking forward to a life of retirement, where he could play golf every day, spend more time with his wife and family and, perhaps, even make good on a dream he once had of running his own diner.

Then, one night, Parrish, who was enjoying a sports-talk radio gig in Memphis, took a call from Ball State coach Brady Hoke, with whom he’d spent time at Michigan. Hoke needed someone to tutor his quarterbacks, and immediately Parrish’s retirement was put on the back burner.

“My wife thought it would be good that I still had a little coaching left in me,” said Parrish, who turned 61 Thursday. “And Brady’s a defensive guy, so he lets me do my thing.”

Who’s Parrish to want to leave heaven?

“I’ve had everything you could ever want in coaching,” he said. “You always think you can do other things, but I think when you’re a coach, you’re a coach.”

Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.