MORE ON BRAUN: Press conference notebook

EVANSTON-They brought in a band, cheerleaders and Willie the Wildcat for the press conference introducing David Braun as the 30th head coach in Northwestern history on Monday at Ryan Fieldhouse.

Northwestern president Dr. Michael Schill and athletic director Dr. Derrick Gragg were there. There were rows and rows of seats reserved for VIPs (though very few showed and they eventually gave the seats to media). The communications team made a slick video announcing him as the permanent head coach.

But if you want to know the real David Braun, you could find him several minutes after the press conference, after the band, the cheerleaders, the administrators and the VIPs had all cleared out. He had just taken a picture with his wife and three kids in front of the podium.

Matt Shelton and I walked over to shake his hand and offer our congratulations, and we started talking. About anything and everything. Eventually, ESPN's Adam Rittenberg walked over and joined us.

The newly hired coach stood there and talked to us for maybe 15 minutes, while holding his four-month-old baby girl, Blake, loosely in his left arm. We talked about how much of a whirlwind the last few months have been for him and his family. We talked about the last couple days, when the program offered him the job that he's been dreaming about his whole career. We talked about recruiting. We talked about NIL. We talked about transfers.

He was an open book, just a guy talking football. He wasn't guarded. You felt like you could ask him anything.

Braun seemed more at home there than he did at the podium, than he did having to listen to people shower him with praise. He was wearing a suit, and he was now a Big Ten head coach making millions of dollars a year, but for those few minutes, he was just a guy talking to a few reporters, and genuinely enjoying it.

We were standing in the program's cavernous practice facility, but it just as well could have been in his yard, talking over the fence. Or in a bar, maybe. He shared his thoughts. He laughed. He listened. We cracked a few jokes.

That's who David Braun is. That's why his players love him and are willing to put themselves on the line for him. That's how he got the job. That's how he got three prospects to commit to him when they weren't even sure who the coaches would be next season. That's how he somehow has the Cats at 5-5 and on the cusp of bowl eligibility with two games left in the season.

When you talk to David Braun, you get David Braun -- not a Big Ten head football coach who is careful about what he says and conscious of certain things he can't say. He's the same guy I talked to back in March, when he was a defensive coordinator. I imagine he was the same guy at North Dakota State, Northern Iowa and Winona State, too.

That's the secret of David Braun's success. It's not the Xs and Os. It's not his experience and resume. He connects with people, plain and simple. He likes engaging them. He's easy to talk to and easy to like, earnest and genuine.

It's going to get harder and harder to be that David Braun as time goes on. He's got difficult decisions to make. Expectations and pressure will rise.

But as long as David Braun keeps being David Braun, he'll be just fine.