The hiring of first-year head coach Dino Babers on Dec. 9, 2011, marked the beginning of a New Era for Eastern football as Babers took over for longtime head coach Bob Spoo.

Having struggled through back-to-back 2-9 seasons and consecutive last place finishes in the Ohio Valley Conference, Eastern was searching for change.

Babers brought change. He installed an up-tempo offense, created a family-like bond between the players, and restored the winning atmosphere that was often present throughout the Spoo era, but had been lacking in recent years.

“In previous years, we weren’t close-knit and we weren’t family-oriented,” red-shirt senior wide receiver Chavar Watkins said. “When coach Babers and his coaching staff came in, they really focused on putting us together as a team and making it family-oriented,”

Praises for Babers resonate around the program as players have repeatedly noted the winning attitude and family-like bond for Eastern’s worst-to-first turnaround.

“The last two years it was just a different mindset; people were taking losing as if it were acceptable and it’s just not,” junior quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo said. “Babers came in here and really enforced that losing is not acceptable, and that we are a program that should be winning.”

The winning attitude had the Panthers claiming their first Ohio Valley Conference championship since the 2009 season despite being picked to finish second to last in the preseason rankings.

“When Babers came to Eastern, he talked about how we wanted to win,” senior wide receiver Chris Wright said. “We didn’t want this to be a rebuilding year because this was it for (the seniors). We wanted to leave with some hardware, and we wanted to do something.”

Wright also said Babers told the team that they could achieve their goals but needed full commitment from the players to make 2012 a special season.

After the players bought in to Babers’ philosophy, the winning atmosphere and family-like bond soon followed as the Panthers went through a rigorous training camp that had them developing chemistry, learning a new style of play, and coming together as a family.

“It all started in the spring,” Watkins said. “Coach (Babers) had a couple activities where we all got together and created a bond. We were here 24/7, and we just built chemistry that way.”

Along with the newly created bond, Babers combined a team that was full of individuals and created a team that was focused on winning as a team.

“I have a nickname for coach Babers, ‘the puppeteer,’” red-shirt junior wide receiver Erik Lora said. “Coach Babers is a puppet master, he knows where to put the different pieces of a team together. He just knows how to bring a team together, and he knows how to deal with people.”

The changes Babers brought to Eastern had the Panthers capping off the first year of the Dino Babers era in memorable fashion, claiming a conference championship and advancing to the FCS Playoffs for the 14th time in program history.

Jordan Pottorff can be reached at 581-2812 or jbpottorff@eiu.edu.