A couple weeks after receiving the biggest break of his career, new Nebraska defensive ends coach John Papuchis is back in Baton Rouge, La., assisting in preparations for LSU’s national championship game against Ohio State.

Having spent the past four seasons as a behind-the-scenes football staff intern at LSU, and before that three years as a graduate assistant at Kansas, the 29-year-old Papuchis is finally getting the chance to put a real stamp on Bo Pelini’s defensive plan for the Buckeyes.

OK, so it’s not nearly that glamorous.

“I walked right back into my (intern) role,” Papuchis said on Thursday. “I’m making copies and doing the same things I’ve always done. You know, this is the job that I was hired to do here.“

So much for any thought that Papuchis’ head might still be swollen from the fact that he’d been among the chosen ones to fill Pelini’s full-time coaching staff at Nebraska.

Sure, it’s a big deal for the Gaithersburg, Md., native and Virginia Tech graduate whom Pelini considers to be among the “upcoming stars” in coaching. But you’re not going to detect much hotshot cockiness from a guy who’s turned a humble beginning and some anxious times into a major opportunity.

Papuchis, after all, still can’t say enough about how lucky he felt getting his first coaching assignment while he was still a student at Virginia Tech.

A high school quarterback and son of a long-time volunteer coach who considered himself a student of the game, Papuchis went searching for something “along the lines of maybe a little scouting on the side, anything I could do to kind of help out and get my foot in the door. And as luck would have it, they had an opening for a coaching position, so I took it.“

His good fortune would continue, too. That is, if you consider it good fortune to be named head coach of the junior varsity boys’ basketball team one day before the start of the season.

“I had played high school basketball, but as far as being ready to coach it at the high school level, I was nowhere near (ready),” said Papuchis, noting that the squad finished with a 6-14 record. “I coached basketball like I would football, which I realize after that first year probably wasn’t the best way to do it. We weren’t very good.“

But Papuchis persisted, bent the ears of coaches he knew from his playing days, and the next season, with pretty much the same players, the jayvee team went 14-6 while winning a district championship.

“I’m as proud of that as anything I’ve done, including being part of the Sugar Bowl and potentially being part of a national championship,” Papuchis said. “That meant as much to me as anything else.“

That’s also about the time that Papuchis thought he might have a knack for coaching, and began to give serious thought to pursuing it as a profession.

No wonder that even as he’s just embarking on the most exciting phase of his professional life, Papuchis falls back on his junior varsity beginnings.

“It was a tremendous lesson. More than anything, it taught me that if you were going to coach at any level that you had to be who you were,” he said. “I think that first year I was trying to be the guys I looked up to on television. I would watch Gary Williams — he was my guy at Maryland. But you’ve got to coach to your own personality.“

Papuchis’ development would continue when Tom Hayes, the defensive coordinator at Kansas in 2001, hired him to be a graduate assistant. KU would change coaching staffs after the season, but Papuchis remained and for the next two years picked the brain of new defensive coordinator Bill Young.

After the 2003 season, Papuchis was recommended for a GA position at LSU by Tigers’ assistant Travis Jones, who had been at Kansas and left a year earlier to join Nick Saban’s staff.

Little did Papuchis know then that one year after coming to Baton Rouge, the LSU staff would change when Saban took the Miami Dolphins job. But that brought about the opportunity for him to work with Pelini, whom new coach Les Miles hired away from Oklahoma as his defensive coordinator.

And the two would hit it off almost immediately.

“I truly believe that you’re only as good as the guys that you get exposed to at a young age in this profession, as far as what you learn and what you know,” Papuchis said. “When Bo came here . . . it didn’t take very long for me to realize that this was a very lucky opportunity and that I would have someone to learn from that is as good as there is in the country.

“I probably annoyed him, but I asked a lot of questions and really locked into everything he had to say and tried to learn the defense as well as I possibly could. And I think as time went on he gained the trust and faith in me that we started to work together a little bit more than you perceive a normal coordinator-GA relationship.“

The biggest impression Pelini left on his young protégé that first season came in the form of a question.

Pelini asked: What if someone came and evaluated your coaching ability on how you performed that day?

“For whatever reason, that’s always stuck with me — as far as bringing a work ethic and intensity on a daily basis,” Papuchis said. “I would say that I hope I can be similar” to Pelini in that aspect.

After being hired at Nebraska, Pelini noted he would have taken Papuchis with him wherever he ended up. The two even discussed that possibility during the 2006 season.

That, mind you, came right after Papuchis had just gotten drug into an NCAA investigation of Kansas’ athletic program that stemmed from his involvement with seven prospective junior-college players who were found to be academically ineligible after getting to KU in the summer of 2003.

The case surrounding the football program — which ended up costing the Jayhawks three scholarships each in 2007-08 and 2008-09 — centered on activities that took place after the players had been enrolled in correspondence classes at Brigham Young. In August of 2006, the NCAA ruled that Kansas graduate assistant Mike Burns had committed academic fraud, primarily for providing answers to tests, and found his actions allowed one player to compete during the 2003 season even though he was still ineligible. For this, Burns was essentially placed on three-years’ probation if he desired to coach at a NCAA-member school.

Papuchis was not penalized, although the NCAA ruled he and Burns “impermissibly provided access to institutional services and facilities,” and also were wrong to arrange for test proctoring services.

“It was extremely frightening,” said Papuchis, who hired legal counsel for the hearing with the NCAA Infractions Committee. “But I just continued to have faith that when the whole thing came out in the wash that everyone would see that I wasn’t a dishonest person.

“I knew what really happened and I always felt like there was nothing that I had ever done that was intentional in nature and I, more of less, hoped for the best, and it worked out the way that it was supposed to. . . . It still bothers me that it’s something we have to talk about, but it is what it is at this point. Hopefully, it makes me a better coach and more knowledgeable of my surroundings.“

The one he’s about to enter gives him the kind of goose bumps that you’d expect of, say, a person who’s about to become a parent — which, coincidentally, is actually the case for Papuchis and his wife.

“The timing is terrific,” he said of landing his first full-time coaching job. “I’m looking forward to have a position that I can kind of put my name on.“

Truth be known, though, he’ll still be a do-anything volunteer assistant at heart.

“One thing that I’ve enjoyed about being around Coach Pelini is he’s a teacher, first and foremost,” Papuchis said. “I thought that was refreshing to see a coach have that kind of success that takes that approach on the field.

“He’s not a huge yeller or screamer. He will if he has to, and I want to kind of bring the same kinds of things to the table — be a great teacher, be a good recruiter and help the program however I can.“

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