The University at Buffalo's newest football coach arrives in Amherst familiar with the program he's taking over. Maurice "Mo" Linguist spent two seasons with the Bulls as an assistant under Jeff Quinn in 2012 and 2013.

He said several former Bulls such as Khalil Mack and Joe Licata have reached out to him with congratulations and welcoming him back to UB.

Athletic Director Mark Alnutt had to work quickly to hire Linguist, but had already done some preliminary homework on candidates to fill Lance Leipold's position. Alnutt said Linguist checked all the boxes.

He's had several stops before and after, including briefly with the University of Michigan, and before that the Dallas Cowboys, but it's been a long road to his first head coaching job.

"The ups, the downs — that’s where I get my healthy competitive chip from," Linguist said. “The grit that you have to have. The losses, the highs, the lows, the wins. I'm battled-tested."

He'll have to prove that in a hurry. He inherits a team that won the Mid-American Conference East division title last season, and has been bowl-eligible the past four years. The timing of former head coach Lance Leipold leaving to take the head coaching job at Kansas means Linguist has to quickly hire a coaching staff — and he says some are already on the way. 

And he'll also have to work hard to keep some of the players on the team — with some exploring their options to transfer to other programs given the coaching change.

"We've already reached out to a number of those guys," he said. “We are constantly, every day, recruiting our roster and we are confident in our ability to lay out a vision and a plan that we believe our student-athletes are going to want to be a part of, and ultimately retain those gentlemen that are in the portal and get them back on our roster.”

UB kicks off the season September 2 against Wagner. And with the opener just a few months away, Linguist said, "We are ready. We are focused, and we are hungry."