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Kevin Wilson is enjoying the warmth of Indiana.
Hey, it's certainly better than being the most hated man in Oklahoma.
''If we didn't come out and cover the spread and beat everybody, people wanted to know what was wrong and they blamed you,'' the Hoosiers' new coach told The Associated Press. ''If every play doesn't work, it's a bad play. But you know I enjoyed it, I embraced it, I loved it.''
Wilson, the new face of Indiana football, understands his next challenge may be even tougher.
He must win consistently to create excitement and put fans back in the seats in Bloomington. And, most of all, he needs to change the perception of the Hoosiers' program.
Since 1996, no Big Ten school has gone through more head coaches (six) and, over the last three years, no conference school has produced fewer Big Ten wins (three) than Indiana.
By signing Wilson to a seven-year, $8.4 million contract that could pay him even more with bonuses, Indiana believes it has found the right guy - the architect of the highest-scoring offense in Football Bowl Subdivision history when he was with the Sooners.
But as is the case with any coach, there are no guarantees.
Wilson has no head coaching experience above the prep level and hasn't run his own program in more than two decades. And after saying his top priority was finding a defensive coordinator, he picked two - Doug Mallory, the son of former Indiana coach Bill Mallory, and Mike Ekeler. Both are veterans of the Big 12 and the SEC and, with Wilson, give Indiana a distinctly Southern flavor as they try to rebuild a defense that yielded 34 points per game last season.
''We're going to start with the defensive side and then we'll come back to the offense, which is my side,'' Wilson said before the Hoosiers on Thursday picked Boise State assistant Brent Pease as their new offensive coordinator.
Experience isn't the only concern.
Some Hoosiers fans were nervous when athletic director Fred Glass brought in another coach from Oklahoma after the Kelvin Sampson experiment failed miserably in the basketball program.
Almost immediately after Wilson's introduction, Glass dismissed suggestions that Indiana should have looked some place other than Oklahoma for its new football coach. Glass did ask Julie Cromer, the school's new senior associate athletic director for compliance and administration, to look into a secondary NCAA violation Wilson acknowledged he committed in 2008.
Wilson explained the violation occurred when he returned a text message to a punter who was being recruited by Oklahoma - after the NCAA had banned all text messaging from coaches to recruits and their families.
''I am aware there were secondary violations and if there were a litmus test for secondary violations, we wouldn't have gotten anyone hired. We have about 30 secondary violations a year here,'' Glass said. ''Kevin is considered one of the good guys in compliance and Julie confirmed that.''
In July 2007, though, the NCAA found that three Sooners players had been paid by an automobile dealership for hours they were not working.
Oklahoma responded by self-imposing scholarship reductions and keeping some assistants off the recruiting trail, and the NCAA later ruled the Sooners also would have to vacate all eight wins from the 2005 season. But the school partially won its appeal and the victories were reinstated.
Wilson, then co-offensive coordinator, denied having any knowledge of the infractions.
''I wasn't part of that, no one was,'' Wilson said. ''It was just a kid doing something on his own, so we kicked him off the team, took a receiver and moved him to quarterback.''
By 2008, Wilson had the most productive offense in NCAA history, a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback in Sam Bradford, and this season the Sooners ran more offensive plays than any other FBS team.
When you call that many plays, critics have plenty to complain about.
But it's something he hopes to do at Indiana, too.
Wilson is still hiring assistants and is trying to convince recruits who had already committed to Indiana to stick around for his tenure.
So far, it appears four players might change their minds.
''They (recruits) all sound pretty good,'' Wilson said. ''We might lose a guy here or there, but I've tried to reassure them that they picked a great school and if you give us a chance to finalize the staff, they'll see it's still a great opportunity for them.''
If, of course, they can get past Wilson's self-description.
''I probably shouldn't say I was the most hated guy in the state because, really, it was pretty good,'' he said. ''It was nice to be at a place where they cared so much about it. But no one is more critical of my job than I am. I critique myself, and everyone else's opinion really doesn't matter.''
