Syracuse University Athletics

“First of all, I'd like to thank Chancellor (Dr. Nancy) Cantor, the Board of Trustees, Dr. Daryl Gross, the Syracuse alumni, the fans, former teammates, all the coaches I've played for and worked for, and obviously, my wife and kids. I hope I don't break down today because not a lot of times in your life can you accomplish your dream. When I first made the decision to get into coaching, I tried to come back to my University and become a graduate assistant and people thought I needed to go out and start practically coaching, so I went 30 miles down the road to Cortland State and started there. All during that time, the minute I made that decision to start coaching, all I thought about was, ‘I hope that one day, I can stand in front of my school and my friends and be the head coach at Syracuse University.’ Today, I stand here and do that. I want to thank everyone again and I appreciate you all having a kid from the Bronx who had a dream and making it come true.

 

“This is a great University. Today should be a great day for all of us. The passion in this program? When I look at words like 'Orange Pride,' they go through me. It starts now and it starts today. We need everyone. I told the players, some of them stayed and I appreciate that, and I told them that we need everyone. We need everyone to believe in it. We need the alumni, we need the fans, we need the people, we need everyone. The one thing I feel I can relate to is that I love the people here. I've worked at Eagle Comtronics in the factory and at Pepsi Cola. I know what we need to win. I've been setting this plan up for a long time. When I made the decision to go into the NFL, I knew that somewhere along the lines someone would say, he hasn't been out recruiting. He doesn't have the recruiting ties. Well, I've kept those recruiting ties. I was fortunate enough to take a job with the New York Jets. I was able to do clinics for coaches in our facility and I was also able to get things done by refurbishing helmets, equipment, shoes and things that don't get overlooked that these people will remember. I'm here to help the coaches in New York, New Jersey and all those areas that we need to go back and we need to regain our recruiting edge. I want to bring back Syracuse football players to talk to our team, people who have had success. I want to make sure that the staff, if possible, has had Syracuse ties. If they do not, I want to try to make sure they have Northeast ties for recruiting to lay the ground work.

 

“Today is the greatest day of my life. Besides being married to my wife or the days my children were born, because if I don't say that, they're going to leave me, I caught myself saying that (smiling). I'm glad that everyone here can be a part of it. You're going to be proud and we're going win some football games.

 

“Thank you very much."

 

"The difficulties of putting it together, it's really not as a difficult as it seems. When you are a candidate or potential candidate for a coaching position, the amount of emails and things that you receive from potential coaches is pretty unique. In our profession, and coaching is a very small profession and there probably aren't very many people who actually know how it works, but you command a lot of respect for each other. We all know who the good coaches are and we all know who the poor coaches. A lot of times when we go through it, we see someone who we have a lot respect for through hard work, through recruiting, through the "X's" and "O's", through whatever it may be, a lot of times you get together with that person and you want to be around them quite a bit and you always say, 'Hey you know what? If you ever get a job, make sure you call me. Or, if you ever get a job, I'd like to coach with you.’ I'm very fortunate enough right now that I've been around coaches who feel that way about me. Again, I'm not a big, as they call them "phone-guy". I've never been about that. I've always been about doing the best job I possibly can at the place I am coaching at the time. When you do that, you wind up climbing up the ladder and gaining the respect of a lot of people. They've called quite a bit and I think at the end of the day, just like Daryl (Gross) and the committee said, there were a lot of fine candidates for this job. We have a lot of people who want to come to Syracuse and coach here and be assistant coaches. A lot. This is an exciting time and I'll say it again, I'm so fortunate to have this opportunity to go and get the best people who are going to fit Syracuse University the way I feel fit in this institution. I'm happy with the process, and just so everyone knows where I stand as a former player, I was very happy with the process. In other words, I looked at it and I wanted it to be that way. I think that anyone who played should know, it was very thorough the way they went about it. There were great questions on the interview. You really had to be prepared to answer all of the questions. When you go through a process, usually what happens is the best person winds up with the job and I feel I am that person. I appreciate, Daryl, the process that you went through. I appreciate the patience in it, the patience of everyone in it, the thoroughness and I believe because of that process, that's why I am here today."

 

"The coordinators in place are going to be together very quickly. The problem that we have going is a couple of things. One, everyone has to understand that everyone else responsibilities. We have a responsibility to each other. They have a responsibility to their players and wherever they may be right now. I started working on this job, I think it was at 8:40am that you and I were talking this morning, right Daryl? It was at 8:46am? Well, at approximately 8:47am I started working. I started calling the high school coaches who I've had relationships with, not illegal. I just want to make that point that I've had past relationships with who were looking forward to see what my position was going to be here at Syracuse, and also, to coaches who we were looking to talk to. Daryl and I will meet about that along with everyone else about bringing some people back who want to be back at Syracuse."

 

"Yes I have decided that. I will not do that. It will be our system. There are people out there who know our system. I will be able to help them. I feel that when you get on one side of the ball, I don't want everyone to lose track of what's going on with the defense.  I want to make sure that offensively, I will be able to answer every question on what we do and why we do it on every single play. I'll be able to help them attack the defense in ways that will hopefully be beneficial to our team and put our players in the best position. Also, on defense, I want to be able to answer the questions of what do we do under this kind of zone pressure and this down and distance or why are we not switching off this coverage or why are we not playing these zones or when we are checking to Cover 2. I want to be an important part of that. Obviously, decisions as the game week goes on, I want to be involved with the special teams. I want to make no bones about it that I am the head coach and I want to make sure everybody knows that. Everyone on this team and everyone in this organization and the people who are hired should understand that."

 

"It's been very simple for me. We talk to players all the time about really taking a part of the game plan and concentrating on it. I'm going to follow it up with my point by saying, we're here installing our base run offense and base pass on one day. Well, now it comes to red zone and now it comes to goal line. We feed quite a bunch of information to players on a daily basis throughout the week and leading up into the game. The thing we stress to those players is to concentrate on each one of those phases. Well, I'm going through the same situation right now. I'm in a phase where I have responsibility for the New Orleans Saints and as soon as those are over, I have phases of responsibilities that I have here at Syracuse University, which started today. The one thing that never stopped and the one responsibility I never let down was that I represent this University 24 hours a day, 365 days a year because this is where I am from. This is my school and these are my people."

 

"I'll honest with you, when I watched the games, the first thing that goes through my mind at the end of the day when the score is there are the student-athletes. Unless you've been a Division I athlete, and unless you've been through that type of program, and the people in this room understand this, the amount of time and the amount of effort that you put in is a lot. It is a hard, hard job to line up across from someone every day, practice-wise, and hit them as hard as you can. It is hard to get up in the morning, to lift weights and run. For these players, when they didn't get the accomplishments or the achievements, that's who I felt for more than anything. That's why I've always wanted to say that I will put them in the best position, the hard work is going to pay off, and that is going to equal wins."

 

"I'm not sure I understand the question about no staff. We have people here who I'm willing to talk to and will talk to them as soon as this meeting is over. I have people in place who will be able to come in here shortly. We only have five working days left as far as the recruiting process goes before the dead period. I have to take this (compliance) test right away. I've created some time in my schedule where I'm going to be able to get on the road and hopefully get some things done working with the New Orleans Saints through this schedule as far as my responsibility. Again, we're talking about five days and I just wish that everyone could understand that I've been coaching a long time. I've been part of a lot of hires. The one thing that you cannot do is that you cannot make a mistake in your hiring process. The one thing that we're not going to do is we're not going to be too quick to jump and hire someone right away. We're going to make sure that we'll sit down and we're going interview and we're going to talk and we're going to make sure that we get the right people for our University. I owe that to everybody in this room and I owe that to everyone that I thanked. I just want to make sure that it occurs."

 

"We're going to do well. (smiling) Is that the easy answer? Do you know what they're going to say? I remember when I was a freshman and I remember Coach Mac (Dick MacPherson) sending us out and I had to do a Sunday morning church breakfast. I remember being a part of that and I remember how nervous I was standing up in front of about 40 or 50 people and really learning, and being around the people in this community, what they feel and how passionate they are for this University. I think the players we have here today are going to get out there and feel that passion. I think it carries over. I think that there's an understanding that we're out there with those people that we are doing the best we can. We know that we have their support and that is the key. Football has gone in some many different ways now, with the internet, and bloggers and newspaper articles, it's so hard now-a-days to ensure that other schools we are competing against don't use it against us. We need to show that we are united with our fans and alumni. We need to show the excitement we have in our program and we need to take this, finish the recruiting year, get the best recruits that we can and hopefully turn some who have already committed. We need to understand that we are not in a rebuilding process. We are in a process of rejuvenating this program with the players who we have here. We are in the process of going out and getting the best players we can in the state and around the state and we are in the process of winning football games. That is my responsibility. I went to school here, and I've told people this before and I told this to the committee, I don't have any options. I cannot fail. I cannot fail. My option is only to win. That's what I'm here to do.”

 

"The first person who has been the biggest influence on me from a football standpoint, outside of my parents, would be my high school football coach. I think it's important. His name is Carmine Calisano. After that, I would say the biggest influence to me has been Coach MacPhearson. After that, pretty much everyone I've ever worked for from the standpoint of George O'Leary, Herman Edwards, Jim Mora and as a player, Don Shula. Every single one of them has an unbelievable passion for what they do and unbelievable respect.”

 

"Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx, N.Y., at which I'm fortunate enough to have been invited to speak on February 6, to be the keynote speaker for New York State High School Coaches Association dinner. I appreciate that and that's one of the things we look for.”

 

 

"When you don't try to call people or manipulate a job or use the media to promote yourself, and I never did that because I wanted to get this job based on my own merit. The crazy part is I never called a lot of people I played with to try to help me, I never told anyone to write a letter oranything like that.  All of a sudden, things start working and now I am the next head coach at Syracuse University. For example, the night before a football game, I'll get maybe one or two messages and that's my wife saying, ‘Hey, you better call me before you go to bed.’ Yesterday, I had 70 something calls, within a matter of four hours, that to me is a crazy. Again, it's something that I planned for. I planned for this my whole life so I'm looking forward to it."

 

"Yes, somebody did send that to me. Obviously the one good thing about Rich's column is that everyone knows it's unsolicited because I would never say I was a captain because I was never a captain here! Rich was obviously with the Jets when I coached there. Rich loves this program and I was happy to see Rich write that. You never really know what people feel about you until you're in a race like this or you're in a competition to become a head football coach. Those things are special."

 

I know (Director of Athletics) Daryl (Gross) was asked about a delicate subject by mentioning the lack of head coaching experience. What do you feel about that?

"That was obviously a major question I was asked with the Board. Essentially, I answered in a bunch of different ways. I'll try and make it shorter. One, you look around college football and a team that is playing for the National Championship is Oklahoma with Bob Stoops. Bob was a defensive coordinator with Florida before taking that job and it was a great fit for him at Oklahoma. It was a great fit for Mark Richt at the University of Georgia. Also, in the BIG EAST, there are a lot of great fits for some of these coaches who didn't have prior head coaching experience. That's one way that I approached that question because that's what I believe. I think you need the right fit and the right background to see what you've done. The other way I've looked at the question was that no one has as much experience as I do recruiting Division I athletes. Today you look and say, is this person a Division I athlete? Was he a highly recruited Division I athlete? How long has he been at Syracuse University? I was a player here at Syracuse University and that experience was tremendous. Can this person promote Syracuse University? Obviously, I've been doing that my whole life. Maybe the standpoint of not having the experience of being a head coach, you look at it and say, 'Hey, he has a lot more experience than anyone else in a lot of phases of the job.’ The other thing is that I have been in the finance part of it as the Director of Operations, I talked in front of an NFL team every day, I've talked in front of college football teams. When I presented a plan that is specifically for Syracuse University, I had about three binders of how we're going to do the recruiting plan, the student-athletes, what we're going to try and do scheme-wise. At the end of the day, you have to look at it and you have to say, what is the best for Syracuse University?"

 

"It's very hard. In the summer, with my schedule and how I wake up early, the kids sleep a little bit and you get to work an hour on it. This binder has been made up, literally, over the last three years of my coaching. I started saying, I need to start putting this thing together. I want to have this in case something happens. The development of the scheme for an offense, defense and special teams are the same principles for me. But the recruiting area is the real key to do it. Those were always my thoughts, but I eventually put them on paper and was able to present them."

 

"When I was first putting everything together, I was just making sure that I'd have something knowing that if it did happen, I would never have the time to put it all together at once because of my responsibilities for the Saints. I wanted to make sure I had something together. Really, the last piece of the puzzle was the recruiting area and where we were going to go and what we were going to do. There was a lot of research done in regard to what Division I athletes are coming out of what regions in the last three years when Syracuse was successful. The longer we go, and I think we'll spend a lot of time together, I want to be able to make sure that there's access. We'll talk about access at practices and all that stuff with the media, as long as nothing out there or divulge what we're trying to do or put us at a disadvantage, I want people around our kids and our program. I want there to be all the great things written about our players and Syracuse University. I think that we're looking forward to a great relationship."

 

"I just want to make sure I'm clear – I put together a book on how to develop a student-athlete. I put together

a book on offensive and defensive philosophies. I put together a book on how I think you need to recruit, but I didn't put areas in it or where you can go because there may be change depending on which school I was interested in. What happened to me was there was a point of, if it wasn't this job, I wasn't going for any college job in the country. In other words, I was at a point in my NFL career where I said, ‘If Syracuse isn't the school, I'm going to stay in the NFL.’

 

Art Monk asked me a great question when he said, ‘Daryl's come out and said you're on a short list of some of these NFL teams of these general managers. Why would you go back to Syracuse?’ I always go back and say the same thing, and I mentioned it today, I wake up every day and I have a wife and three kids and I owe it all to this University. They are the ones who convinced me to come back and come here and really helped me develop as a football player. I really developed a lot as a football player, on my skills and on my character. I owe this University more than what I could ever pay it back. By me winning here and doing a good job, it's still not going to be enough to pay back for what it's done for me. I truly believe that. That's why this is a special, special job for me."

 

"I'll be traveling back and forth up here, or traveling to talk to people about potential jobs. Also, I have to make sure I'm solidifying our commitments. Passing the (compliance) test is the first thing. We want to do things legally, of course, because we want to be a school that does things the right way. As soon as we're done with this, I'm going to meet with the coaches here, meet with Daryl and get a couple of other things in order.”

 

"I think all those different types of offenses and the great names we put on them, one of the things that we have is, obviously, if you watch us now, we're mobile and I'm thinking of the standpoint from the NFL. I think when you go back, if you research when I was at Georgia Tech, we were a multiple, pro-style attacking offense with some option attack and some of those other things that you said. We led the country in offense and we were second in scoring. Again, you're looking at something in which we want to have a system in place that the ability of the players fits into the system. You're system needs to fit around these players. However you want word it and take advantage of it. If you have a quarterback who can't throw and is not accurate, well, how can you throw the football? If you have a guy who has a big time arm and can throw the ball deep but is not accurate, how is he going to make the big play? We are looking for quarterbacks who are accurate and can throw the football. Those are the types of things we are looking at for in our quarterback. Obviously, after that, we're looking for the mobility and the ability to run. If our quarterback can run, you have to implement those things in the offense. If our quarterback can't run, than you will see a more of a pro-style offense of what you see now. I want to say multiple. The thing that's going to happen is people are going to get film on the Saints, see what we've done. I know most of the coaches in the BIG EAST and have either coached against them or coached with them, so I feel comfortable with what they do and I know that I have a lot of respect for them. I think it's going to be a challenge for us when we go out there in an "X"'s and "O"'s standpoint. I know our players will be looking forward to it.

 

"I think everything is challenging. It's a challenge wherever you go. Again, it's a standpoint of the players' commitment to buying in and I think that they will. I think they're going to see the success that the system has and the people have and how we'll care about them and mainly, how we develop them as student-athletes. That's always been my big thing. Once they know that we care about them, we're going to go out on the field and make sure we can get it done. For me to sit here and say, I need three years and I need this and that, I'm not going to say that. I was hired to win football games.”