COLUMN: Dunphy and Bagnoli have reasons to stay

From Adam Steinmetz's "Wide Open," Fall '95 He has weathered, but he sure hasn't fossilized. Last year Penn won 25 games. So you wonder about the longevity of Penn's two more decorated coaches, Al Bagnoli and Fran Dunphy. Could they be here when your kids come to Penn? It would not be unprecedented. Carm Cozza has coached football at Yale for 30 years. Pete Carril just completed his 26th year slinging one-liners and smoking cigars at Princeton. Both Dunphy and Bagnoli are young enough to coach 25 years at Penn and retire in their mid 60s. But because they are young and so stunningly successful, they are ideal candidates for any school looking to find a coaching messiah instead of a retread. There is absolutely no indication either one is currently looking to leave Penn. Both should be congratulated and thanked for the sporting glory they have helped bring to Penn. It is strikingly possible that no school in the country has a better pair of coaches in the two major sports. In the future, though, they will likely get some tantalizing offers. Odds are even Bagnoli and Dunphy themselves do not know how long they will stay. They likely have no master plan for their careers. Both are too smart. They realize life doesn't work that way. My hunch is Bagnoli will leave first. Both coaches have been successful by wringing every last drop out of their talent. Their styles differ. Bagnoli's greatest strength is organization. Dunphy's is teaching. Al Bagnoli is a planner. He thrives on details. One tale, perhaps apocryphal, but definitely in character, has Bagnoli asking his players whether they would be playing in an autumn clash scheduled for Yom Kippur. He asked the question in March. Details are important. But you also get the sense he doesn't care much for the non-football details of the job. The game is in some ways the easy part. The hard parts are the gladhanding, the alumni and the media. Saturdays are a procession from one event to the next. The game is his time. The other events he handles grudgingly on his good days, and inelegantly on his not so good days. And those were all after wins. You still have not seen him when he loses. He has said many times, and correctly, that he is not a transient. He is not a mercenary who will turn a program around and then puddlejump to the next one. His resume backs him up. He is not a vagabond. He did stay at Union for 10 years. But he is a man always in motion. Always thinking. Always planning. Bagnoli will run out of challenges. Already, in three seasons, he has transformed a 2-8 team into the all-time Division I-AA record holder for consecutive wins. One day going 10-0 at Penn will not be enough to get him out of bed when the alarm clock rings in the morning. And the truth is no matter what Al Bagnoli does, as long as Dunphy is at Penn, November will mark the beginning of basketball, and not the end of football. He will be choosy. He will not go to a coaching graveyard such as Temple or Rice like successful Penn coaches of the past. He will select a job where one day you will say, I knew Al Bagnoli. Not well, but I knew him. It is hard to predict when that job will come along, but the guess here is that Bagnoli stays at Penn for two more years. Fran Dunphy will stay longer. Much longer. Dunphy, first and foremost, is a teacher. He likes the Socratic method. He stops practice and asks his players where they were supposed to be on defense, and what they did wrong. Sometimes, he asks it with, shall we say, a little enthusiasm. In his own way, he is every bit as intense as Bagnoli. He sits in that crouch on the sideline and mutters a stream of words you cannot print. Anyone who suggests Dunphy has ridden on the coattails of his talent is a fool. Ask Carril when he knew Fran Dunphy would be a great coach and he will tell you he knew it back when fans were calling for Dunphy's 9-17 head. His players always played hard. And they will for many years to come. Dunphy will stay because he can build a legacy here. He can build a team that competes for the Ivy League title every year. He can play a nationally competitive schedule. He can play in one of the best arenas in the country. And he can do it in Philadelphia, where his son goes to school and he has planted firm roots. Like Bagnoli, if he takes a supposedly higher profile job, the accompanying higher pressure will also percolate through his veins. For Dunphy, though, there is not as much upside in moving on. Of course for both men, money is the wild card. Only they know how they will react when the big dollars come flying. But do not be shocked if Fran Dunphy is here when the calendar flips to 2000. Adam Steinmetz is a Wharton senior from West Palm Beach, Fla., and a sports writer for The Daily Pennsylvanian. Wide Open appears alternate Tuesdays.