The undefeated

They have been undefeated for their entire careers as head coaches. This week, they're going to screw that up by actually coaching in games.

The 14 men who are Division I-A head coaches this season for the first time didn't get cushy jobs. Rarely do winning teams hire head coaches. Rarer still are the winning teams that hire head coaches who are new to the job. In the past decade, national powers Nebraska and Miami flouted tradition by hiring rookie head coaches. They have something else in common: They are no longer national powers.

This is what it's like to change coaches. The teams on this list that enjoyed the most success last season -- Boston College and Central Michigan -- now employ Jeff Jagodzinski and Butch Jones, respectively. They replace coaches who won 10 games and couldn't wait to leave.

The new group has won six national championship rings, three of which reside in the jewelry box of Miami's Randy Shannon. The rest will take their victories where they can find them.

Troy Calhoun will transform Air Force's offense into one moving the ball -- yes -- through the air.

Jim Harbaugh, who went to high school across the street from Stanford Stadium, then didn't get the chance to play in it, will get to coach in it (maybe he'll bring some fans into it, too).

As Idaho's third head coach in three seasons, Robb Akey will be cut some slack (and no matter what happens, after this week, Akey will never be as vilified as Idaho Sen. Larry Craig).

At North Texas, high school coaching legend Todd Dodge will try to make Mean Green fans forget his predecessor, Darrell Dickey -- and Gerry Faust.

They have been waiting for this week their entire lives. They might hope it never ends. Until it does, they're still undefeated.

Nagging question: How does a first-time coach feel?

Derek Dooley, the son of Hall of Fame coach Vince Dooley of Georgia, spent three years in law school and two years as a practicing attorney. In every other year of the 39 he has spent on this earth, game week has been a part of his life.

But as the first-year head coach at Louisiana Tech prepares his team to play Central Arkansas on Saturday, Dooley is immersed in the first game week of his life in which he is making all the decisions.

Growing up in Athens, Ga., Dooley remembered, "It was game week in your house. You didn't see your dad until later in the week. He wasn't always in the best of spirits. The paper was building it up. It's just something I've been doing my whole life."

As experienced as he might be with the rhythm of game week, the feelings this week are new. Dooley gave his team this past Friday and Saturday off without a second thought. "But then I opened up the paper and it said, 'Seven days to kickoff,' and I got sick to my stomach," Dooley said.

He has talked to his dad about his first game, Georgia's opener in 1964 against an Alabama team that would go on to win the national championship. The Crimson Tide won, 31-3.

"Dad said, 'I was just young enough and dumb enough to think we were going to beat the hell out of them,'" Dooley said. "I said, 'Tell me how to feel that way because I feel the exact opposite.'"

Dooley takes over a Louisiana Tech team that went 3-10 a year ago. He wonders whether he will continue to break headsets the way he did as an assistant at LSU and with the Miami Dolphins. When his anger gets the best of him, he slams them to the ground.

"Nobody knew who the hell I was on the sidelines at LSU," Dooley said. "I remember reading [Oklahoma coach] Bob Stoops saying that he was sitting there worrying about he acted on the sideline after he became head coach. Finally, he said, 'To hell with that. I got to be who I am.' You can only control yourself so much."

When Dooley broke a headset in practice this month, his equipment manager, Jeffrey Springer, reminded Dooley they had worked together at LSU. Now they don't.

"We got three backup headsets," Springer told him.

Vince Dooley, who retired as the athletic director at Georgia in 2004, will be in Ruston, La., to watch his son's head coaching debut. He will miss the Georgia opener for the first time since 1963. Even if your son has been in game weeks his whole life, it's only his first one as a head coach once.

Nagging question, sort of

As well as Dooley might think he knows his new team, his level of knowledge and his level of comfort with the players will rise exponentially Saturday. That's according to Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly, whose first season opener with the Bearcats is Thursday night against Southeast Missouri State.

Jay Gula/WireImage.com

Brian Kelly's tenure at Cincinnati got off to an early start.

There's an asterisk there -- it's not Kelly's first game with Cincinnati. He left Central Michigan in December in time to coach the Bearcats' 27-24 victory over Western Michigan in the International Bowl. That made a big difference for him.

"Anytime you can get in the locker room with the kids before the game and after the game, it's a different kind of bond," Kelly said. "You don't get the same kind of a bond on the practice field."

At the outset, he said, his new players tested him.

"I felt like the substitute baby sitter, where the kids go, 'Hey, we can stay up until 3 in the morning!'" Kelly said. "There was a little bit of that."

Soon after, though, the players figured out that they wanted the same thing that Kelly did -- to win the bowl game. So they got in line behind him.

"You can look them in the eye and they know a little bit more about you, how you're gonna handle yourself on the sideline," Kelly said. "That definitely helps you. … You really get a connection of who your kids are that you can count on, and I think they know they've got strong leadership when they can see you in a gamelike setting. That helps you."

Killer note

As if the USC Trojans don't have enough advantages: When Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning traveled to Los Angeles this summer to appear in a commercial, he carved out time on one afternoon to work out with USC quarterback John David Booty, wide receiver Patrick Turner and others.

Booty might be a redshirt junior in your playbook and a senior on your campus, but the course work he got from Manning was strictly graduate level. Booty learned the difference between going out to throw and going out to work. The former, Booty said, is "really just wasting your time." For example:

Harry How/Getty Images

John David Booty picked up some pointers from Super Bowl MVP Peyton Manning this summer.

"We're throwing against air," Booty said. "He would think about throwing the ball against a certain coverage. … Throw the same route but throw it a little different against certain coverages or a different linebacker in a zone coverage. So many little things."

The lesson Booty learned is to make every practice look like a game in your head, even when it's a midweek afternoon in June and there are no defenders at all.

Turner compared the workout to a birthday present. Manning, he said, threw an "easy ball to catch. He put in on you every time. In stride. With his deep balls, coming out of your post routes, he put it right there as soon as you turn around."

Manning did that for Turner, but not before tweaking the Nashville native for spurning Manning's alma mater, Tennessee, to go west. Turner, in turn, informed his quarterback that the standards for passes are changing.

"I can tease Booty: 'Don't throw me no crap,'" Turner said.

The workout also taught the players about commitment, which might be the lesson Trojans coach Pete Carroll appreciates the most.

"From the first play to the last play," Booty said of Manning, "there was no letdown or anything about how hard he was working. On rollouts and everything, you'd think a guy like that might take it easy because he is the best in the world. That shows you why he is, because of the way he works."

Ivan Maisel is a senior writer for ESPN.com. Send your questions and comments to Ivan at ivan.maisel@espn3.com.