Football sees slew of coaching changes

The Quakers' coaching ranks have seen a number of changes this off-season. The Penn football coaching carousel has done its fair share of spinning and it hasn't stopped yet. A flurry of coaching departures, hires and lateral movements has marked this off-season for the Ivy League-champion Quakers. In the wake of longtime defensive coordinator Mike Toop's move to the University of Connecticut, Penn head coach Al Bagnoli announced he will head up the defense in addition to his head coaching responsibilities. Further adding to Bagnoli's workload, he will assume control of the secondary, which Toop shared with assistant Paul Williams, who left for the University of Jacksonville. To ease the burden of being a head coach, a coordinator and a positional coach, Bagnoli and his staff have made a bevy of shifts. Mark Chmeilinsky, the running backs coach, will move over to the defensive side and assist Bagnoli with the secondary. Chmeilinsky has had experience with the position. Before coaching running backs the past two years, he led the d-backs for three years -- including 1994, when the Quakers were tops in the country in pass defense. Although Bagnoli will be the defensive coordinator, defensive ends coach Ray Priore and defensive line coach Jim Schaefer have been given greater responsibilities. According to Bagnoli, Priore will head up the pass game coordination of the defense and Schaefer will handle the run defense. To replace Penn's third defensive coaching loss -- linebackers coach Todd Orlando followed Toop to UConn -- Bagnoli brought in veteran and friend Cliff Schwenke, who most recently coached at Northern Arizona. Bagnoli believes the players will respond to Schwenke, who spent time at Holy Cross and Maryland before going to Northern Arizona. He reports today for his first day. "Once they get a chance to meet Cliff, I think they can form their own opinion," Bagnoli said. "But I think he'll do a very good job here. He's been in a lot of different environments. I've had a chance to work with him once before and he's been a friend for 20 years." Schwenke's tasks include coaching the linebacking corps and helping Schaefer with the run defense coordination. "In Cliff, we had to bring in someone with some experience," Bagnoli said. "We couldn't bring in another young guy because we lost Mike Toop, [who had] quite a bit of experience." But the Penn coaching staff has a few more moves to make. "What we have to hire is one defensive assistant to replace Todd Orlando and one offensive assistant to replace Mark Chmeilinsky," Bagnoli said. "[Tight ends coach] Karl Miran will probably move to running backs -- we haven't figured all that out yet." To fill the gap left by Miran, offensive line assistant John Keller will most likely take over the tight ends spot. So will everyone get lost in all this confusion? "I hope not," Bagnoli said. But the Quakers coaches have some time to get acquainted with their new digs before spring ball starts March 17 and they have about six months until training camp opens in August. While Bagnoli is confident the system will work, he is concerned about the huge plate he has served himself. "Certainly I can't do it myself," Bagnoli said. "That's the million-dollar question -- can you do everything? People in the NFL can do it, so I assume you can do it on the collegiate level, but until we actually do it [who knows]?" Bagnoli said the coaching changes had no effect on recruiting, emphasizing that the head coach is a more crucial position in recruiting, but admitted the changes made for more legwork for the remaining coaches. "It became a harder workload because we had less people to share it with," Bagnoli said. "We all had to assume Toop's recruiting. We had to get Karl Miran, Mike Chmeilinsky and Paul Williams on the road. In that respect, we lost some manpower."

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