Central Michigan head coach Dan Enos walks the sidelines of Commonwealth Stadium Sept. 10 as the Chippewas lost to the University of Kentucky 27-13. (Andrew Kuhn/Assistant Photo Editor)

Head Football Coach Dan Enos’ contract was extended for one year, Athletics Director Dave Heeke announced Wednesday.

Enos is in his third year of the original five-year contract.

Enos’ contract has a base salary of $250,000, plus an annual media bonus of $75,000 for working with radio and TV, totaling $325,000 annually. The extension comes with no increase in base salary or buyout provisions.

“I commend Dan on his patience and courage over the past two seasons and thank our many fans who have stood behind this program as we have done the things necessary to rebuild and maintain success,” Heeke said.

The Chippewas recorded back-to-back 3-9 seasons during Enos’ first two years as coach.

“I can’t say enough about the support our program has received from our director of athletics, Dave Heeke, and the rest of our administration,” Enos said. “We share the expectation that our program will compete for championships on the field and achieve academic excellence in the classroom.”

Belleville senior Wendy Morton prepares dough for a pizza while Belleville senior Janel Weiss restocks ingredients behind the counter at The Grotto, 304 W. Broomfield Road, Sunday night. "It's been very busy; we have a private party going on," Morton said. "On top of that, having regular orders to do on Superbowl Sunday has made this a pretty crazy day." (Charlotte Bodak/Staff Photographer)

Long before the New York Giants claimed title of  Super Bowl XLVI champions, Mount Pleasant businesses were busy preparing for the night.

Some businesses spent the unofficial holiday more focused on cranking out pizzas and satisfying customers than celebrating the latest touchdown.

Sunday afternoon, Papa John’s Pizza employee Jesse Tallman said all employees were called in to work at his location, 1504 S. Mission St.

“It’s my first Super Bowl working here, so it is probably going to be hectic,” the Perrinton junior said. “One of the employees said I’ll probably be standing in the same spot for hours doing the same job.”

Tallman said his seven-hour shift started right before game time and concluded at midnight.

“I heard the lobby gets really full and drivers are in and out all the time,” he said.

Art Tait, owner of The Grotto, 304 W. Broomfield Road, said they make four times as much pizza compared to a normal Sunday.

“There’s only two girls working tonight, but they’re good workers,” he said. “They’ll stay nice and busy tonight.”

A group of friends from Gamma Phi Delta Christian Fraternity Inc. gathered at The Grotto to watch the game together and listen to live music during halftime.

“These people are probably the coolest family business,” said Detroit junior JJ Jones.

Instead of watching Madonna perform at halftime, the group listened to a live Christian hip-hop music acoustic performance.

“Looks like we’re competing with Madonna,” Jones joked.

Jones said he and his friends don’t really care about who was in the Super Bowl, but plan to just have fun with each other and the workers at The Grotto.

“It’s my favorite place in town,” he said. “We plan to order at least 12 pizzas tonight.”

Instead of taking a lot of small pizza orders, Kyle Schonbok, owner of Pizza King, 600 S. Mission St., said they received a lot of party tray orders that feed up to 17 people each.

“Once the game starts, we slow down, but then get busy again during halftime,” Schonbok said.

He said they prepared the dough the day before, knowing this Sunday would busier than usual.

“We typically prep about 10 for Sundays, but for today we did 30 and we plan on selling all of them,” he said.

To satisfy the 10 employees working during game time, Schnobok said they’ll have a couple of a TVs on to make sure everybody’s happy.

“We’ve got eight rooting for the Patriots and two for the Giants,” he said.

Bottle & Barrel Party Store, 1635 E. Broomfield Road, employee Josh Cleaver said they helped almost 200 customers before kickoff.

“We definitely sell more beer than liquor,” Cleaver said. “The whole back room is packed right now with beer.”

The Grotto employee Wendy Morton said they were still cleaning an hour passed the business’ normal closing time of 9 p.m.

“We normally can get an hour before close to just clean everything up and we’re generally out when we close,” the Belleville senior said. “But we’re still here, it’s definitely been a busy night.”

Morton said the business made double what they would’ve made on any other night.

“People continued to come in and order food throughout the night,” she said of the fraternity party. “Constantly people  were coming in to hangout and everyone seemed to enjoy it.”

Dan Enos

Temple and Toledo had the consensus No. 1 and No. 2 football recruiting classes according to Scout.com and Rivals.com.

The Central Michigan football recruiting class was ranked fourth by Scout and 11th by rivals.

Regardless of what the team ranked, head coach Dan Enos happily announced the signing of 25 new student-athletes to the program Wednesday inside the media room of McGuirk Arena during signing day.

Enos discussed that him and his staff want to build the program from the inside-out. In other words, he wants solid production from the offensive and defensive lines and at quarterback.

“Our staff and I talk all the time about building this football team from the inside-out,” Enos said. “We felt like that was a huge priority going into this class … strengthening both those areas, and not for just next year, but for two years, three years and four years down the road.”

The offensive and defensive lines consist of nine new athletes, leaving the remaining two for the quarterback position.

Cooper Rush is a 6-foot-3, 220-pound quarterback from Lansing Catholic High School. He is expected to redshirt be redshirted this fall.

Cody Kater, who originally was a Chippewa in 2010, de-committed for Cincinnati, but transferred to Grand Rapids Community College last season, leading GRCC to an 11-0 record.

“This thing kind of goes full-circle,” Enos said. “We had him back on campus this year and I talked to Cody in my office. As I told the coaches, it was like talking to two different people. It was like talking to a boy three years ago, it was like talking to a man this year.”

Enos talked about the ability of a lot of the athletes in this class that can play on both sides of the ball.

Last season, a majority of those two-way players, such as wide receivers’ Courtney Williams, Jason Wilson and running back Anthony Garland, were offensive players. He believes that this season it will be opposite.

“You’re going to see a majority of these guys on the defensive side of the ball,” Enos said of the players who can play either offense or defense in the class.

Those two-way players included in the 2012 class are: Tony Annese, Kavon Fraser, Anthony Scarcelli, Jordan Fields and Brandon Greer.

“Those guys are all two-way players,” Enos said. “They played running back, wide receiver, defensive back and a majority of those guys are going to start on the defensive side of the ball because we made that also a priority.”

Inside-out seems to be a priority that Enos and his staff have adopted, and in more ways than one.

The Chippewas signed four athletes from Florida last season, but just one in this class.

CMU signed 19 of its recruits from Michigan and the rest from Illinois, Indiana and Florida.

“We go inside-out,” Enos said of recruiting. “Our local areas are the state of Michigan, Northern Indiana, Chicago and Wisconsin. We have nine coaches out in those areas, and we cover them”

Enos then elaborated that if the staff is not satisfied after evaluating the local areas, the team then branches out toward other areas, including Florida.

There were three preferred walk-ons, making the class consist of 22 scholarship players.

Class list:

Dylan Anderson, offensive lineman

Tony Annese, defensive back

Joe Bacci, linebacker

Winslow Chapman, defensive back

Connor Collins, offensive lineman

Ron Coluzzi, kicker

Kevin D’Arcy, offensive lineman

Jabari Dean, defensive lineman

Jordan Fields, defensive back

Kavon Frazier, defensive back

Collin Goetz, offensive line

Brandon Greer, defense back

Ryan Hansen, wide receiver

Danel Harris, wide receiver

Mike Jorde, defensive line

Cody Kater, quarterback

Kelby Latta, defensive line

Saylor Lavallii, running back

Colton Odykirk, wide receiver/defensive back

Louis Palmer, defensive end

Anthony Rice, wide receiver

Cooper Rush, quarterback

Lance Sanders, defensive lineman

Anthony Scarcelli, wide receiver/defensive back

Martez Walker, running back

Mose Rison

He was “regrouping,” fired after three seasons as head football coach from then-Division II North Carolina Central.

So Mose Rison got in contact with an old friend, Plas Presnell, director of football operations at Central Michigan. It was last October, and the Chippewas were traveling to Raleigh, N.C., a three-hour jaunt from his home in Charlotte, to play North Carolina State.

Rison, a standout running back and former assistant coach at CMU, had not gotten a chance to see his alma mater play during the season.

Three hours later, following CMU’s 38-24 loss, despite posting 427 yards of offense, Rison was impressed with what he saw.

“Who was that guy?,” Rison asked Presnell, referring to receiver Courtney Williams, who made three catches for 63 yards and a touchdown.

“Who was that guy?,” referring to Titus Davis, who had one catch for 50 yards.

“Those kids are freshmen,” Presenell replied.

“You got to be kidding me,” Rison exclaimed, “Freshmen?”

Three months later, Rison is out of the contract that prevented him from coaching during the 2011 year. And he’s back at CMU, named wide receivers coach Wednesday during head coach Dan Enos’ signing day news conference.

Rison, a Flint native and cousin of former NFL standout receiver Andre Rison, played football at CMU from 1974 to 1977, apart of the Chippewas’ 1974 Division II national championship team.

As a running back, he rushed for 2,838 yards during four seasons. In 1977, as a senior, Rison was named first-team All-Mid-American Conference after rushing for more than 1,241 yards and 12 touchdowns. That year, he was named the team’s Most Valuable Player.

“He was a great player here,” Enos said. “He’s got a ton of experience, a lot of knowledge, and he’ll be able to recruit the state, which we’ve made a huge priority for this football program. He’s an outstanding wide receivers coach, and we’re very blessed and thankful to have Mose with us.”

After graduating from CMU with a bachelor’s degree in 1978, Rison became the program’s wide receivers coach and special teams coordinator in 1981, a position he held through the 1988 season. From there, he went to Navy (1989-90), Rutgers (1991-95) and Stanford (1996-2001) before joining the staff of the New York Jets for the 2002 and 2003 seasons, coaching receivers along the way.

More than two decades later, Rison is back in Mount Pleasant and ready to bring his experience. He said the first thing he plans to do is developing a one-on-one relationship with the team’s receiving corps.

“If you want your players to play at a high level, and do the things you ask them to do, you have to have the relationship,” Rison said. “It was important for me to that have that relationship with Laverneous Coles and Santana Moss and Wayne Chrebet and get those guys to trust what I was doing. The Xs and Os don’t change much. When you a run a curl route with the New York Jets, you run a curl route with Central Michigan.”

CMU athletics did state students will comprise the largest group of ticket holders for the MSU game on Sept. 8. A committee of student leaders and campus partners will meet to determine allotment and distribution methods.

Beginning next year students will now have their campus ID’s scanned while entering the gates. Students will have to get a digital ticket loaded onto their CMU ID to be scanned on gameday.

Season ticket holders and Chippewa Club members will have the first opportunity to buy tickets and CMU athletics expect it will sell out before the general public has the opportunity to buy tickets June 1.

After reserving student seats, contracted seats MSU gets and what athletics is assuming 7,000 tickets to season ticket holders there will not be that many tickets remaining to buy up. The price for the MSU game will be $55 with no discount for anyone.

The price last season was $20 for an adult at a single game. This year it will be $22 with premier Western Michigan and Navy games costing $30 and MSU $55.

It is the third time CMU will have in seven home games.

“We have a monumental football season ahead of us that is going to provide our fans with a historic opportunity,” said Director of Athletics Dave Heeke.

Adult season tickets will cost $160.

The Sunday passing of Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in college football history, was a tough pill to swallow for many. Paterno, 85, was a fixture on the sidelines at Penn State, one many admired and respected. His knowledge of the game and brazen personality — he wasn’t afraid to tell it like it was — made him an icon in the Big Ten Conference and around the country.

Like his colleagues and followers in State College, Pa., we also celebrate his decorated coaching career. Paterno won 409 games and helped lead 250 players to the National Football League. No one else in college football history had that type of positive influence, both on and off the field, with young men.

Paterno’s death, however, also recasts light on the string of serious allegations against Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant coach under him in the ’80s and ’90s alleged to have molested 10 boys during a 15-year span. While it has been reported Paterno was made aware of the illegal and extremely inappropriate actions going on within his program, and he reported them to university officials, no action was ever taken.

Could Joe Paterno have done more? Of course he could have, and should have.

But his passing, while sad and unfortunate, should serve as a wake-up call to other universities.

The culture many university administrators and public relations officials cultivate of putting their organization first and treating it like a business simply cannot get in the way of maintaining integrity and protecting those who cannot protect themselves.

If the administrators whom Paterno had informed of Sandusky’s alleged crimes had taken the necessary investigation seriously, they could have prevented more evil being done, and come out as the good guys in this story.

Instead, secrecy justified by claims of “protecting a legend” allowed several boys to be violated while the truth waited to be uncovered.

So when the detestable truth of the matter rose to the surface, Paterno’s legend was indeed tarnished. Instead of dying at the head of the team he brought to national prominence, the team which under his direction became the starting point of many legends of their own, he died a pariah.

Paterno did not do enough, but those who tried to protect his and the school’s reputation by sweeping the problem under the rug did more than any to dim their shining legacy.

Central Michigan head coach Dan Enos walks the sidelines of Commonwealth Stadium Saturday as the Chippewas take on the University of Kentucky. The Chippewas lost to the Wildcats 27-13. (Andrew Kuhn/Assistant Photo Editor)

Few CMU football fans remain late in the third quarter during CMU's game against Ohio on Thursday night at Kelly/Shorts Stadium. (Mike Mulholland/Photo Editor)

NCAA guidelines require Division I football average attendance to be at 15,000 at least once every two years — the Central Michigan University football team was dangerously close to being under this year.

CMU finished just barely over the threshold last year during a second-straight disappointing 3-9 season. It was the third worst attendance mark Kelly/Shorts Stadium has ever seen with an average of 15,291 fans at the five home games.

The final home game against Toledo brought in 12,741 fans. The game against Ohio the week before had even less people there. The student section and stadium appeared empty for numerous mid-week games this season.

The three mid-week home games and having another losing season contributed to football’s poor attendance. By the time the Chippewas played their second home game and first Saturday game they were already 1-3 and had lost to rival Western Michigan, making Mid-American Conference title hopes grim one game into conference play.

Dan Enos’ second season as head coach ended much like his first with a 3-9 record.

“We fell short of our goals and that’s going to hurt for a while,” said quarterback Ryan Radcliff.

Athletic Director Dave Heeke announced he has no plans on removing Enos of his duties after two tough seasons.

“I just fully support Dan and his vision for the program,” he said. “We’re in a process. You just can’t look at it as these mini slices in time. We’re in a process of trying to build a program. It will be easier to get people at games with Michigan State University, Navy and Western Michigan University coming to Mount Pleasant next season.”

He said he has no worries of making attendance next year. He anticipates a few games with huge attendances with a big schedule.

“I have every expectation that we’ll make that,” Heeke said. “I have no doubt we meet 15,000 next year.”

Heeke went on to say he expects four games next year to be near or at full capacity; the three games listed above as well as the Homecoming matchup.

Enos is expecting a better product on the field too.

“I really like the junior class and I think it’s a solid class of leaders and good players,” he said. “When you inject these young guys and bring in another recruiting class, I really like our football team.”

The former associate athletics director at the University of Oregon watched the Oregon football team storm out of the tunnel wearing specialized green and yellow Nike jerseys and chrome helmets.

Dave Heeke

On Tuesday, Heeke took to Twitter to gauge fan interest in the possibility of developing specialty uniforms for the Central Michigan football team.

“Looking for CMU fans thoughts on developing specialty uniforms,” Heeke wrote. “Last night’s Oregon Ducks were something else! Should we do it?”

On Thursday, Heeke confirmed the idea, saying development of alternate uniforms is part of the athletic department’s contract with Adidas.

“I’ve seen the benefits firsthand,” Heeke said. “I’ve been involved in the creation of that at Oregon and it has since gone across the country.”

Heeke was behind the football team’s maroon and gold specialty uniforms worn against Ball State in 2008, and the athletic department’s uniform contract with Adidas in 2009 that brought consistency to all of the CMU teams.

“Uniforms are a big part of recruiting and an expectation of an elite-level football program,” Heeke said. “It’s how you market and brand yourself. It’s good for our football program, recruiting, branding our department, and we’re going to continue to look at ways to do that.”

Heeke said nothing has been determined yet, and he continues to seek input from fans. There are a number of options available, from having jerseys decked out with chrome helmets like Oregon to having throwbacks developed. Costs are steep and could reach $100,000, funds that would likely come out of the athletics department budget. The jerseys would also be available for retail purchase.

Heeke said he is looking at debuting specialty uniforms as soon as next season. For which game (Michigan State?), or how many games, remain up for debate.

“It’s a huge commitment,” Heeke said. “But if our program wants to grow, those are some of the commitments we have to make. We have to sell more tickets, generate more donor dollars, have more interest from fans – we have to continue to be successful across the board.”