MADISON, Wis. -- On most nights, Keegan Andersen finishes his tasks as a graduate assistant for Wisconsin's football program, hops in the car and arrives at his parents' house just after 9 p.m. He does not stay long -- duties of being low coach on the totem pole for a major college team are exhausting -- but even the chance to spend a few minutes with family is one not lost on him.
"I drive over there and see all those guys for a half-hour," Keegan says. "We just go hang out. It's good. All of our family is back in Utah. But being close to these guys, it's a lot better."
At the house, Keegan will usually find his wife (Jennifer), his father (Gary) -- also the head football coach at Wisconsin -- Gary's wife (Stacey), one of Keegan's younger brothers (Chasen) and the family's Great Dane dogs. Given the madness that can come with being the first family of the state's only Division I college football program, these moments are especially precious.
When Gary accepted Wisconsin's head coaching job in December 2012 and left Utah State, he also made the conscious decision to temporarily leave his three sons. Keegan was a tight end for the Aggies, and Gary's twin boys, Chasen and Hagen, were planning to enroll there in January. In the nearly two years since, however, Keegan has graduated and joined Wisconsin's program as a linebackers grad assistant coach, helping his father, who is now in charge of the position. Chasen, meanwhile, ultimately moved to Wisconsin as well, where he is a freshman linebacker. Only one of Gary's sons, Hagen, is still at Utah State.
Twenty months after moving from Logan, Utah, to Madison, Wis., the Andersens have found a comfortable life.
"It feels more like home," Gary says. "That would be the easiest way for me to say it. It comes out of your mouth after a year, 'We're going home.' When I'm in Salt Lake City, I'm not saying we're going to go back home there. So that's a big part of it."
While Keegan and Jennifer have their own place, Chasen is spending the year living with his parents at the family home, which overlooks the Hawks Landing Golf Course. Chasen has the basement to himself.
"I get to come home from school or practice and I get to have a family base around me," Chasen says. "I get to be with my brother. Unfortunately, I don't have my twin brother out here. But I get to have my mom, I get to have my dad, I get to have my brother and his wife and all my dogs. So it's easy for me to feel like I'm at home."
Gary Andersen often talks of creating a family environment inside his football program. But with two of his three sons by his side this year, the family environment at home is just as strong.
Here's a look at how Gary, Chasen and Keegan all came together in Madison:
Gary
Gary Andersen was the first to officially call Madison home after he accepted the Badgers' head coaching job on Dec. 19, 2012. From a football perspective, it was an easy decision -- a significant step up into the world of big-time college football at a program with two decades of consistent success.
He had learned of the opening from assistant coach Bill Busch at breakfast one morning while Utah State prepared for its bowl game. Busch had worked as a graduate assistant at Wisconsin in 1993 and '94 under Barry Alvarez and told him how special Madison was to him.
From a family perspective, the decision was far less clear-cut. Gary had been at a school located just 90 minutes from Salt Lake City, where he was born. Much of his wife's family was also about 90 minutes away in Murray, Utah. Only weeks earlier, he had declined head coaching offers from Kentucky, Colorado and California. And in a press release, he'd declared that he would be staying at Utah State -- close to the players he'd helped develop for four seasons and the family that had been by his side all along.
But this opportunity, Andersen realized, was knocking on his door. And he simply couldn't turn down such a highly coveted position. Change can be difficult, of course. Sometimes, however, change can be for the better.
"It's a transition for a family at any time," Andersen said during his introductory press conference. "I'd like to thank my wife, Stacey, and my three boys for hanging in there with this situation and being so supportive. It's been a big part of it."
Andersen says now he has no regrets about his decision. At the time, he reached out to all 106 players on Utah State's team to explain himself and provide them with an opportunity to share their thoughts. Almost unanimously, the team was supportive.
So, too, were his sons, who understood this to be a dream destination for their father.
Chasen
Wisconsin linebacker Chasen Andersen
When Gary accepted the Wisconsin coaching job, he sent a text to Chasen, who was between classes at the local high school, and explained they needed to talk.
The news hit Chasen hard initially because he had wanted to play college ball under his father for years. Chasen had blown out his ACL, MCL and meniscus during the first game of his senior season in high school, and Utah State was one of the few schools to offer him a scholarship. Was he ready to de-commit and play at Wisconsin? Did he believe he was good enough?
Before making any decision, Chasen joined his parents in Madison for Gary's official introductory press conference -- a time when he first began to consider the prospect of playing at Wisconsin.
"I walked out on the field and I was just like it'd be awesome to play here," Chasen says. "And I talked with coach (Barry) Alvarez, and coach Alvarez was funny with me. He was like, 'You can come out here and play. It would be fun. We want you out here.' I was like, 'I'll think about it.'"
But Chasen instead committed one month later to BYU and signed his National Letter of Intent. At the time, he said he felt comfortable with the coaching staff and looked forward to playing for four years. During the summer, however, his knee had not healed in the manner in which he'd hoped. In June 2013, he asked for and was granted his release by BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall.
"I committed to BYU right out of the blue thinking that was my best option," Chasen says. "I could be back with my family in Salt Lake. Things kind of didn't work out and my knee kind of acted up again. So I decided I needed to grayshirt. My dad just told me, 'Come out here, I think you can play out here, you can be good out here,' and I took full advantage of it. I could go home, be with family again, so it was awesome."
Chasen's next move was to Madison -- right into his parents' basement. He took a grayshirt and enrolled at Wisconsin in January 2014. He says he'll be living with freshman offensive lineman Michael Deiter next year. But for now, he is enjoying living in the cozy confines of home.
"I don't want to go out of there yet," Chasen says. "I get my home-cooked meals every night. My own basement. My own bed and my own dog. I love it."
Not to mention laundry service, too.
"Oh yeah," Chasen says. "Every once in a while my mom will boss me around, but she's usually good with it."
On the football side of things, Chasen is trying to work his way onto the travel team as an inside linebacker. The fact he has not played football in two years has been a challenge, his father admits.
"It's been difficult for him," Gary says. "And he really only played inside linebacker for one year and he had a tremendous junior year and then he got himself injured. I think he's in a good spot. He's got to stay healthy and continue learning the game like so many other kids.
"The game is important to him. He could have easily said I'm good like so many other kids. There are two or three kids on our team that went through the same thing where there's an injury and you kind of get stuck in another injury and it can overwhelm you. You know those kids have a love for the game."
Regardless of his standing on the team, Chasen says he recognizes what a special opportunity he has to play for his father -- and what a wild ride it's been for him to arrive in Wisconsin.
"He's provided a great teacher for me," Chasen says of his father, "and now it's time for me to kind of take advantage of it and be successful and build my own future and build my own legacy."
Keegan
Keegan Andersen during his time playing for Utah State, in 2013.
Keegan arrived in Madison in late July after a marriage and honeymoon in Maui, ready to begin his career as a football coach. He says he first began to consider the prospect of coaching as a redshirt freshman tight end at Utah State. It was around that time he realized his dream of playing in the NFL wasn't very likely, but he wanted to remain close to the sport that had given him so much and helped forge his relationship with his father.
"And then when I saw how much just being in the locker room, seeing and talking about how much my dad has changed kids' lives, not only through football but just life in general, it kind of opened my eyes that I like being around that," Keegan says. "Helping kids come from Florida. They didn't have anything to having a college education to getting out, being the first one in their family to go to college and stuff like that was cool to me."
Keegan had spent the 2013 season away from his father while finishing his football career at Utah State. He says the transition was not as difficult as some might imagine because players embraced him and new head coach Matt Wells already had served as the team's offensive coordinator. The opportunity to work for his dad a year later, however, was one he could not pass up.
He applied for one of Wisconsin's graduate assistant positions and beat out more than 200 applicants, he says. Keegan's responsibility is to help coach the boundary-side linebackers with Gary, who took over coaching the linebackers this season.
"Gradually I'll probably end up taking them over because the more into the season, he won't have time with everything," Keegan says. "He's just kind of easing me into it."
The learning curve, particularly, for a player coming from the offensive side of the ball, has been steep.
"It's going to be fun to watch him jump into the world of coaching," Gary says. "He was in his first staff meeting. He walked out, walked back home and he was like, 'Holy cow, dad.' I was like, 'Yeah.' We go over the practice schedule, the camp schedule. Every minute detailed out for a month. I said, you don't just throw out the ball and say, 'Hey we're going to practice at 10:30. Stuff goes into it, Keegan.'"
Adds Keegan: "It was just more of an eye opener because it was the real world. But I've adapted quick. Being a GA, you're starting from the bottom. So you're getting all the work. But I like it. I like being out on the field and helping kids get better."
Keegan even has an opportunity to coach his brother occasionally, and both appear to have bypassed the potential awkwardness of it all.
"I grew up watching him throughout college," Chasen says. "I watched him play receiver to middle linebacker to kind of an H tight end look. I've seen him get shifted everywhere, so I know he knows a lot about every position. He's pretty much coached me my whole life, too. When my dad hasn't been around, he's been around.
"Sometimes I want to goof around with him because he's my brother on the field. But when it comes down to being serious, he tries to tell me what to do, and I'm going to listen to him."
Gary suggests Keegan may wind up beginning his head coaching career at the high school level. Keegan doesn't know where he wants to go and is simply glad to have the opportunity to learn from his dad and spend time with his parents, brother and wife.
"It's an amazing position for me to be in," Keegan says.
That is a sentiment the entire Andersen family shares. When Hagen -- the lone son not already in Madison -- visited recently before returning to Utah State, the entire family found itself back under one roof, a new life merging with an old one.
"It's awesome to have all three of my boys here and a daughter," Gary said last week. "We came with none, now I have four. That's more than I ever had when they were all in high school."
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