THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE, Dec. 28, 2014

It's not unusual for an assistant coach in college football to average about one new coaching job per year.

Jeff Choate hasn't had to move quite that much, though he does admit, "My wife (Janet) is the most efficient person in the world at packing and unpacking."

Since the former Post Falls football coach and athletic director began coaching football in college in 2002, Choate has worked for seven different schools in 13 years.

Take his latest job, for example.

Tuesday will mark the one-year anniversary of his hire as defensive line coach and special teams coordinator at the University of Washington - which is a pretty long stint by comparison, considering he made three moves in the calendar year 2013 alone.

"It's been an interesting couple of years," said Choate, 44, who was back in North Idaho for a few days earlier this week before the Huskies (8-5) headed south to prepare to play Oklahoma State (6-6) in the Cactus Bowl in Tempe, Ariz., on Friday (7:15 p.m., ESPN).

TO REVIEW:

In 2011, Choate had just finished his sixth season as special teams coordinator at Boise State - the final three seasons he was also linebackers coach. His first three seasons at BSU he also coached running backs.

His first season culminated in that overtime Fiesta Bowl victory over Oklahoma that put the Broncos on the map nationally.

After six seasons in Boise, Choate was asked by Eric Russell, newly named special teams coordinator and assistant head coach at Washington State, and like Choate a former St. Maries High standout, to come to Pullman and work under new Cougars head coach Mike Leach.

"I just really felt after the 2011 season (at Boise State) that everything we could accomplish there at Boise State we had," Choate said. "And that's not to say there weren't things out there that could have been done, I just felt like it was time. We'd won two Fiesta Bowls, we'd won a lot of ballgames, we'd gone start to finish with a group of five-year seniors that were the winningest group in NCAA history, and so for me, it was time to move on."

Choate was linebackers coach at WSU in 2012.

He liked being close to home, liked being in a small town.

"I thought it was a good fit from that perspective," he said, "but it wasn't the right fit in a couple of other ways."

So in early January 2013, Choate was hired as defensive coordinator by UTEP head coach Sean Kugler, who coached in Boise with Choate in 2006.

But in April, Choate received a call from Florida, "and that was hard to say no to," he said.

So Choate headed to Gainesville, where he was linebackers coach and special teams coordinator for the Gators under Will Muschamp, whom he described as an "awesome human being."

Florida had gone 11-2 the year before, but sunk to 4-8 in Choate's season there in 2013. It was the Gators' worst record since going 0-10-1 in 1979. Choate had the opportunity to stick around, and he intended to stay in Gainesville.

Then Chris Petersen, who hired him at Boise State in 2006, called him again and asked him to join him at his new coaching post, the University of Washington.

Choate thought about it for a while. He thought he was going to stay at Florida - his wife wanted to stay in Florida.

"But the more I thought about it, the more I saw the lay of the land there," Choate said. "I thought it was going to be tough for us to get done what we needed to get done to hold on at UF, and thought that, making a business decision, this was an opportunity for me, as my son was going into high school, to have as close as you can get to job security in this business - try to get Jordy (a freshman at Mercer Island High) in one place, my daughter (Jacy) in one place. I know what we're going to get with coach Petersen; he's one of the best there is in the business."

As it turned out, Florida went 6-5 this year, and Muschamp was fired. That usually means the assistant coaches are out of work as well.

So the "business decision" worked out pretty well for Choate.

"In life, it's good to have options," he said. "The hard thing is to make the right decision when you have those options. It was hard, I really enjoyed working for Will. I liked to think I could help him in that situation. But, in the long run, I worked for Chris Petersen for six years, it was six of the best years of my life, in terms of professional success and also my family, I was able to provide for them. And the way he treats us assistant coaches and our families is second to none.

"I thought, 'This (opportunity at Washington) is pretty good; we might not be able to replicated exactly what we did in Boise, but I think we can have a lot of fun and a lot of success."

On the surface, leaving a defensive coordinator job for one coaching special teams and linebackers seems like a step down. But this was not UTEP. This was Florida.

"This is a business," Choate said. "And we're not talking about a little bit of money. We're talking about quite a bit of money. And we're talking about the SEC - if you do well there you can pretty much write your ticket anywhere in this business."

Besides, he said, "I've rolled the dice more than once in my career," recalling the time he left Post Falls, where he was football coach from 1997-2001, to become a graduate assistant at Utah State at age 31. "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose," he said.

IF ALL you've been exposed to is football out west, well, the SEC football experience takes some getting used to.

"It's like the opening day of deer and elk season, with 75,000 people going crazy," Choate said. "People look forward to it all year long; it is like religion. There's nothing like game day down there ... football out West is important, but its not religion, and down there it's everything, and that can be a double-edged sword."

How so?

"I told my wife, 'Don't read the newspapers, don't listen to the radio, don't go on blogs, ignorance is bliss,'" Choate said. "You're going to be a lot happier if you don't know how bad people are throwing your husband under the bus."

Really? Even assistant coaches?

"They (the fans) know where you're at, they know if you got the recruit they wanted, they know if you didn't get the recruit they wanted," Choate said. "There is a certain degree of anonymity out here in the West, but it's kind of nice. I can drive along the east side of Lake Coeur d'Alene, and run into town, and I might see a former student from Post Falls, or somebody I used to work with, but they don't care that I'm coaching at Washington or whatever, and I kind of like that."

Choate said he thinks the Pac-12, in football, is a better league than the SEC, top to bottom.

"I don't know that you can, say, take the top five teams in the Pac-12, they're not going to beat the top five teams all across the board in the SEC," Choate said. "But when you take those 12 teams against the 14 in the SEC, I think the bottom-tiered teams in the SEC, I think a Washington State, because of what they can do, can go beat anybody. I don't know if you can say that about some of the bottom-tier teams in the SEC, year in and year out."

AT THE U-Dub, Choate presided over a defensive line that produced two first-team All-Americans in Danny Shelton and Hau'oli Kikaha, and the Huskies were third nationally with 49 sacks.

Special teams is Choate's specialty, and he said the Huskies have improved tremendously in kick coverage, "which was an area they struggled a lot a year ago," he said.

The key, he said, was that the players "bought in," which is not a given when a new coaching staff takes over. Some of the Husky players, Choate said, have already had three or four position coaches during their time at the school.

"I think you better do what you say and say what you do," Choate said. "If you lie to them ... you lose their trust immediately. Just be honest and consistent, because these kids don't have a reason to blindly trust you ... being honest and consistent with the players is the most important thing in a transition."

When Petersen was at Boise State, he spoke of recruiting "OKGs" - which means "Our Kinda Guys." Now at Washington, Choate says that's still the goal.

"I think you get in a few more houses when you're a Pac-12 team," Choate said. "We can get into a lot of homes of OKG kids that, quite honestly weren't going to go to a Boise State. They were going to go to a Stanford, a Washington, a UCLA, because of what they were looking for academically.

"But I do think we follow the same format, because we're not going to get caught up in how many stars a kid has, or who's recruiting him. If we love the kid, if we want him to be a Dawg, we're recruiting him.

"The blueprint is, he's a real good football player that's a great person, because if he's a great person he's going to take care of his business, he's never going to embarrass the program, he's going to get his degree, he's going to work really hard, he's going to be a great teammate ... that's who you want to coach."

THE CHOATES have maintained some roots in North Idaho. They have a cabin on Gotham Bay, on the east side of Lake Coeur d'Alene, and vacation here when possible. The Husky coaches and players were given some time off this week before reconvening in Arizona next week for the bowl game, so the family spent a few days here.

So, the Choates are set in the Seattle area for now ... at least until the next move comes along. Jory was born in Post Falls, and since then his dad has worked in Logan, Utah, Charleston, Ill., Boise, Pullman, El Paso, Texas, Gainesville and now the Seattle area. Jacy, a fifth-grader, was born in Logan when her dad was an assistant at Utah State.

Choate, as you might recall of his personality when he worked at Post Falls, chooses to look on the positive side of all this relocation.

"There's times it would be nice to be at Post Falls High School and not have this rat race, but you do have some unbelievable experiences," Choate said. "It can be really hard on families, but the positive side of this that you get some unbelievable experiences for your kids. My son's had an opportunity to live in a lot of different places ... I think it'll benefit him in the future. He'll be able to adjust and adapt to different situations. Being the new kid is hard, but if you have the skill of doing that, I think it can really help you."

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.