ON THE RECORD: A Gridion Architect

Al Bagnoli, head football coach at Union College for the past ten years, was introduced at a January 2 press conference as the 21st coach in the 115-year history of the Penn football program. Bagnoli, who signed a multi-year contract, replaces Gary Steele, who resigned in November with a 9-21 mark in his three seasons as the Quakers' head coach. With a career coaching record of 86-19, the 38-year-old Bagnoli ranks fifth among all active football coaches for career winning percentage (.819). He has never has a losing season and in 1991 he received the Eastman Kodak Award as the American Football Coaches' Association Region I Coach of the Year. A 1974 graduate of Central Connecticut State College, Bagnoli is married and has three children. He spoke last week with The Daily Pennsylvanian's Matt Kelly and Eric Gomberg. Daily Pennsylvanian: You enjoyed 10 extremely successful seasons at Union, compiling 86 wins as head coach. You've turned down other head coaching positions before. So why leave now? Al Bagnoli: It wasn't anything pressurized from my end. The last five years or so, from a challenge standpoint, I had pretty much done everything I could. [At Union] we had back-to-back unbeaten seasons, led the nation in scoring defense, rushing defense, total offense, scoring offense, and played in two national championships. In short of winning the national championship, just about everything I could have done, statistically I accomplished. If I had stayed at Union, that would have been great. But the right situation came along -- a situation where there wasn't extremely high risk. There's risk in any job, especially when you're coming off a 2-8 season. [My family and I] thought that if we were going to make the next move, Penn would be a great situation. DP: What's type of a transition is it, going from Division III Union to a I-AA football program like Penn? Bagnoli: The biggest difference comes in recruiting. You go from a fairly national Division III program to a Division I program that's as national as any in the United States. What we do on the field, what we do practice-wise, in the weight room, team policies and rules -- they'll be the exact same. At the recruiting level, the amount of alumni contact -- all that stuff is magnified. DP: Having been here a few weeks, what strikes you as being the Penn football program's greatest needs? And how are you prepared to satisfy them? Bagnoli: We've got to restructure things a little. Football is a fairly-structured sport and you have to have things in place to be successful. Not only from a stadium viewpoint, to an office viewpoint, to a weight room viewpoint -- all these things you have to have. We have most of these things, but we need some better things. We need a better weight room. We have to restructure the weight-training program. We need some office changes. We need to tie up a lot of loose ends which, for whatever reason I don't know, have left too much freedom, too much laxity in the structure of the program. That's my first job. I have to get all the things a Division I-AA, top-shelf national football program should have. DP: What do you mean by "laxity"? Bagnoli: There are too many optional things, too many directions the kids can go in. There are things that need to be tied up to get this [program] turned around. I'm not passing judgement on who was here before. ut] we've got to change the structure of the way people think about football. I can't get into them, but you'll see some tangible changes. DP: Do you consider yourself a disciplinarian? Bagnoli: In football, you have to have discipline. I try to do all the dirty work and let my [assistant] coaches coach and get real close to the kids. If there's a discipline problem, if they're going to be upset at anybody, let them be upset at me. DP: How much contact have you had with the team so far? Bagnoli: I'm coming in at a very awkward time. Obviously, we're way behind in recruiting. We don't have the time I'd like to have to sit down with the players on an individual basis. We'll do that, but not in the next month. It's awkward right now -- I still don't know enough of the kids. Their mental outlook, their confidence level is going to be of prime concern. I've got to prove to them that I'm in their corner, that I'll do everything at my end so they'll be productive. DP: Just how badly was recruiting hurt by the absence of a head coach for six weeks? Bagnoli: We're behind. We're trying to play catchup. There's been a 3-4 week lag in terms of gathering info, evaluating kids, trying to promote interest. It's just a crucial time and I would be very naive to think the transition hasn't hurt our recruiting. We obviously know that the [freshman class] won't be as strong as it would have been if [my staff and I] had been in place in July. We don't think it will be a disastrous year, where you get only 15 kids and 11 of them aren't players. It will be somewhere in the middle. Eventually, we'll catch up. DP: How do you market yourself when recruiting? Bagnoli: I think the school will market itself. I have to be positive and show the kids there's enough leadership here. I don't think anybody in their right mind would say, 'Don't go to Penn, it's not a real good school.' My job as a representative of the University is to shed some light [on the program], to give it some direction. DP: Over the past two seasons, Gary Steele juggled his starting quarterbacks, apparently never giving any one signal-caller a complete vote of confidence. Are you willing to employ the same strategy? Bagnoli: Quarterback is not the position where you can afford to have half of your snaps taken away. That is a position of repetition. One of the first things we're going to have to do is make a decision at quarterback and see which guy it's going to be. DP: What is the offense going to be like? Bagnoli: We're going to be a lot more multiple than what you're used to seeing. There will be a lot more motion and one-back sets. We'll be very balanced. I'm going to try to get that 50-50 [passing attempts-to-rushing attempts] ratio. Last year at Union we averaged 280 rushing and 220 passing yards each game. The offense will be most like the [Super Bowl champion Washington] Redskins' attack, an H-back and motion man. I don't know how good it will be, but it won't be boring. DP:You've mentioned before about trying to instill "excitement" back in the football program. Bagnoli: You've got to be wide open. You could lose games or you can lose games and kill the crowd, as well, by being boring. You've got to make [fans] involved in the contest and make them want to come back. We have very smart [players]. That's one of the advantages of working at this level -- you can be creative. They can remember 20 different formations and seven different motions. If you don't utilize that talent, that intelligence -- it's like a major void left untapped. DP: Penn put together a dynasty in the 1980s, winning five straight Ivy titles at one point. You had a dynasty at Union at the same time. Can you build one at Penn in the '90s? Bagnoli: That's going to be real tough. I don't think there's been any other conference winner five consecutive years at any level. I couldn't imagine anyone winning the Southwest Conference, the Big 10 or the Pac 10 for that long. Those are lofty goals. Realistically, the chances of that happening again? I don't know. DP: Do you plan to stay awhile? Bagnoli: I'm not very transient by nature. I spent 10 years as head coach at Union. I don't go somewhere for two years and then bee-bop around. I like to give my family some stability. The hardest part right now is that my family's up [in Schenectady until the summer] and I'm down here. That will be something that will cause strain on myself, my wife and my children. It's no different than the military people who get shipped out for six months or the guy from General Electric who gets sent to Saudi Arabia. There's no such thing as a 9-5, solid schedule . . . not in the good jobs. DP: You look over the last three years and see three losing years on the heels of all that success in the 1980s, when Penn won six Ivy League championships. How much pressure do you feel coming in here? Bagnoli: I told the search committee during the interview process, 'If you're going to follow someone at Penn, this is the correct time to get involved in the program.' I wouldn't want to have been Ed Zubrow following Jerry Berndt and I wouldn't be Gary Steele following Zubrow. I wouldn't want to be the guy who replaces me at Union. Those are difficult situations with really little margin of error. There's no place to go but down. Realistically, this is not a bad time to jump into this situation, when the expectations aren't as high as after Berndt or Zubrow. People are a little more reasonable. DP: Do you think people will give you the benefit of the doubt? Bagnoli: You have to [give me some time[. As much as you love your school, the bottom line is you're a 2-8 team. To honestly think we can go 10-0 in our first year, we'd be fooling ourselves. Can we be better than 2-8? Yes. Can we get this thing turned around within a reasonable time frame? Yes. I feel confident, but to think that within six months we're going to get everything turned around, that's not the most accurate calendar. There are no guarantees. I'm not just going to walk in here with a magic wand and things will be perfect. You're always going to have doubters because there are so many constituent groups involved in the [selection]N process. The administration, the players, the media and the alumni each think a different guy [is best]. You're going to have controversy about who ultimately gets the job. The only thing that ultimately halts [that controversy] is how well you do. If we win 80 percent of our games, everybody will say, 'I told you he was a great choice.' If we don't, they'll say, 'I knew you should have gone with a Division I coach.' It took me 10 years at Union to get things the way I wanted them. Now I'm running around trying to do a million different things. The important thing [to remember] is that this is a long-term project. We're going to do things right and it's going to pay dividends in the long run.

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