Q&A with Frank Spaziani

Frank Spaziani has been in the game long enough to know how it works – or the way it should work. In a world of instant gratification, his mantra has been if you work hard, stay humble, and pay your dues then good things will come. Which is why, after serving 33 years as a collegiate assistant, 12 of those molding the Boston College Eagles defense into a national powerhouse, the sixty one year-old is not surprised that he’s found himself in the captain’s chair in Chestnut Hill. But if his journey hadn’t led him here, he’d be okay with that, too. Even after he was spurned two years ago in favor of previous head coach Jeff Jagodzinski, it was Spaziani’s love of the program that kept him around. That’s just the kind of guy he is. Mentored by his former collegiate coach and friend Joe Paterno, “Spaz” learned a lifelong lesson. Do the best job you can while you’re there, and they will find you. Now, “Spaz” finds himself at the head of what he calls his dream job, with a mission of building some consistency into a program that has gone through three head coaches in four years. Spaziani took a break from spring sessions to talk about how far he’s come and how he got here.

Q: Coach, you’ve waited a long time to get a head coaching position. Did you ever think it would take this long?

A: You know, I never thought about a time frame to be a head coach and maybe that is why it took so long. It wasn’t like I was targeting that goal to be head coach. It was always a goal, but I first wanted to be happy where I was. I didn’t want to be a head coach just to be a head coach and uproot my family somewhere else. My personality is a guy who will do the best job he can. I always enjoyed what I was doing and hoped that the leadership will take me in the right direction. I’m an east coast guy and after a certain age the moving around just was never in my best interest. I had no problem being an assistant coach at Boston College for the rest of my life. I had enough faith in the community that they would recognize what kind of contributions I made. It just so happened the head coaching job came open.

Q: With the success you’ve had here, there had to have been other opportunities. Why stick around?

A: I could’ve moved laterally to a lot of places, but it just wasn’t right. A lot of it had to do with my passive aggressiveness. I was not aggressive to try and make sure I positioned myself for any head coaching job in the country because it didn’t matter to me in terms of the money in different places. This was a lifestyle that I appreciated. I had never been in Boston until I got up here as an assistant. Once I got to live here I realized this is the place for me, I didn’t want to go anywhere else. I had put in for some jobs in the east, but there really wasn’t any interest. At this level a lot of it is who you know and you have to be willing to go out there and promote yourself. That just wasn’t me.

Q: You were passed up in 2007 when Jeff Jagodzinski got the job over you. Did you feel slighted?

A: I was weaned on stability as a staff. You get that when you play for a guy like Joe Paterno, who kept his staff intact for years. The continuity of being in a group is something that I believed in. When Tom O’Brien left and I had choices to go with him, go somewhere else or try and become the next head coach here, I wanted to be here. That didn’t work out and they afforded me the opportunity to stay here. At that point I asked myself, ‘Do I want to chase my tail, or do I want to make it work here and see how long this would work out?’ I didn’t get position A, but I got position A-.

Q: When Jagodzinski got the job here, both you and DC Bill McGovern were kept on board. As an assistant, how do you make sure you handle a transition, particularly one where you were turned down?

A: The situation is not from me, it’s more of a problem for a head coach to decide that he wants to keep someone. From my end, I think you have to make sure that you’re not staying there just to get someone’s job. You should stay somewhere because you like it there and you want to do a good job. Sometimes you just have to make it work. Truth is, I took a flier by risking my livelihood to stay here. The community here wanted me to stay and that also helped.

Q: Speaking of staff, as a first year head coach, how did you get your staff together? What were you looking for?

A: I couldn’t have found a better guy to coordinate the offense than Gary Tranquill. If I drew up what I needed for an offensive coordinator, Gary would have been the first one. I needed a guy with experience who completely understood how to coach and how to coach coaches. He knows his discipline and he knows every side of the ball. In essence, he is another head coach. It started with him, putting the rest of the staff together was finding guys that were both technically sound and had an ingredient to recognize what I recognize in this place. I don’t want guys that will be here as just a stepping stone, although it just might be – you can’t control that. They’re here and they are not going to look for another lateral job somewhere else. I’m hoping some of them will think the way I did and not want to take a lateral move.

Q: How do you know when to take a lateral job or when to stay put? What factors should go into a decision like that?

A: That’s a tough one. When I was weaned on coaching, when you had a good job, you stayed at your good job. Now you got guys that say ‘I need to go to this job or go over here, now I gotta do this. I want to be the head coach so it’s not a matter of a certain place it’s just about being a head coach. If I don’t do this, I can’t get to that head coaching position.’ That’s not necessarily the case. You may have to move around but another way to do it is be really good at where you are.

Q: When you’re taking over a program that has already been successful as opposed to a build-up job, what are some of the things you want to keep and some things you want to change?

A: We wanted to emphasize things this community stood for, such as education. We want to keep that culture intact and bring in the right kind of guys. But the reality is I’m the third head coach in four seasons here so there has to be some potholes that were created because of that. I had to bring in a group of coaches who want to make this a long-term job. If something really good comes along, great, but if it doesn’t, I’m still at a nice place. I’m not worried about them looking over their shoulder for something else.

Q: This year, I saw you in practice as more of an overseer or manager of your team rather than an in-your-face personality. How did you make a smooth transition from a beloved assistant coach to the guy that has to make all the difficult decisions?

A: It’s important that your assistants coach and they have ownership of what they’re doing. We are at the stage where we’re developing our players and I’m watching to see how we are progressing during spring. If you come back in the fall it may be a different situation, only because we’re trying right now to see what guys can do. I’m not interested in guys coaching like myself. I’m interested in the same results. Everybody coaches differently, and it’s important that those guys take control. The sooner I can get across to them exactly how I want it done and exactly the way it needs to be done, then I can back off as much as possible. If you hire a guy, you need to let them do their jobs. I have to make sure they understand our mission and then it’s their job to get it looking the way it’s supposed to look.

Q: You’re losing a lot of experience with many starters lost from last year. How can you turn inexperience into a positive factor?

A: There is no better teacher than experience. You have to make sure that inexperienced guys don’t lose their confidence. You have to make sure they learn the fundamentals. You make sure you don’t move onto B if you don’t have A. You cannot be vanilla at this level because everyone is too good. Always just gets you beat. But, there is the law of diminishing returns. It’s the “you think, you stink” principle. You got all these schemes but if they can’t get it, it doesn’t matter. You have to play fast. It doesn’t matter what you know, it’s what your players know. You don’t want to overload them.

Q: Aside from playing fast, what did you want to make sure your players understood while building all these terrific defenses here in the past?

A: It was always one play at a time, one series at a time. Play as hard as you can each play. It’s always rewarding when other coaches would come to me and say ‘hey your kids are flying around.’ That’s how you play and that’s how you can compete, especially with the kids we have. One play at a time, one game at a time, one quarter a time.