Tosches has brought success to Tigers football in 13-year tenure

Steve Tosches is now the senior member of the Ivy coaching fraternity and is second on Princeton's all-time win list. Steve Tosches is a mere 43 years old, but the Princeton football coach is currently the elder statesman in a conference more steeped in history than any other in the country. As the senior member of the Ivy coaching fraternity, Tosches assumes something of a proprietary role. "He's in a position where he represents us from a historical perspective," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "When I first got in the league we had Carm Cozza at Yale and Joe Restic at Harvard, and they gave a historical perspective on the way things used to be. Now, Steve does that because everyone else is basically new." With the departure of Cozza after the 1996 season, Tosches became the standard-bearer of an Ivy legacy that dates all the way back to Princeton's showdown with Rutgers in 1869 in the first-ever college football game. "It seems like our league has gone through so many changes since I've been here," Tosches said. "A lot of guys that were around for a while and knew the history of the league have gone, while I've just stuck around and stuck around." This season marks the 13th in Tosches' Princeton coaching career. The only other Ivy League coaches to challenge him for seniority are Ray Tellier from Columbia in his 11th campaign, John Lyons from Dartmouth in his eighth year and Bagnoli, who is also coaching his eighth Ivy season. The only thing more remarkable than Tosches' longevity at Princeton has been his success. His 78 career victories place him second on the all-time Tigers win list. His three Ivy titles tie him with Dick Colman for the most by a Princeton head man and his 51 conference victories place him as the sixth-winningest coach in Ancient Eight history. On the way, Tosches has coached four first-team All-Americans, four winners of the Bushnell Cup for the Ivy League Player of the Year and three academic All-Americans. "Coach Tosches, like the rest of the coaching staff, stressed the fact that you were at Princeton for a reason other than football," said Rob Vanden Noven, a 1989 Princeton graduate and a first-team All-Ivy defensive end in his senior year. "He took great pride in coaching at Princeton. I think that the fact that he has stayed even after so much success is a testament to that." The sort of success that Tosches has had is something of an anomaly at Old Nassau; the program had just two six-win seasons in the two decades before he took over. He inherited a program that averaged 3.6 wins for the 16 years prior to his coming. Since he took over 13 years ago, however, Princeton teams have averaged 6.3 victories per season. Princeton's 3-4 record thus far this season doesn't bode well for any improvement on Tosches' career numbers but this Tigers' squad, like all of those during his tenure, do the things essential for success, regardless of the squad's ability. "I think they are strong in all the areas that you need to be a good team," Bagnoli said. "They've historically had a good defense, a good kicking game and some good skilled kids on offense." Like many great coaches, Tosches practiced what he would later preach. He began his collegiate career at Idaho State University before transferring to the University of Rhode Island. As a Ram, he became one of the most highly acclaimed quarterbacks on the East Coast. After his 1979 senior season he earned a spot on the All-Yankee Conference, All-New England and All-East Division I-AA teams. Tosches' time as a top-notch signal-caller in college payed big dividends for the Tigers. "It might have been his experience at quarterback, or it might have been something else," Vanden Noven said. "He was just a very intelligent coach who had a great grasp of everything going on around him. He was tremendous at adopting the gameplan according to the talents of the players he had at the time." After his graduation from URI in 1979, Tosches signed with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League. He tossed the pigskin in the Great White North for only one season before returning to his alma mater as offensive backfield coach. After a single season back in the Ocean State, Tosches joined Ron Rogerson's staff at the University of Maine as offensive coordinator. When Rogerson won the head job at Princeton in 1985, he brought his young offensive coordinator along with him. The fiery Rogerson tragically only coached two seasons at Old Nassau. His unexpected and untimely death ushered his 31-year-old fledgling assistant into the spotlight. "I had a chance to work for him for six years," Tosches said. "He was an emotional and very energetic type of individual. He was an offensive lineman in his playing days, very popular with the players." With Rogerson gone, the more cerebral Tosches took the reins of a mediocre program in 1987 and had success from day one. "He was definitely more soft-spoken than Rogerson. He had the confidence of the team from very early on," Vanden Nowen said. The confidence Tosches inspired in his team spurred the Tigers on to a string of outstanding seasons but his tenure at Princeton has also coincided with a period of Penn football excellence. The Tigers' Delaware Valley neighbors have won nine of the last 16 Ivy League football crowns. Tosches' teams have, nevertheless, chalked up a 7-5 record against the Red and Blue. They do, however, have a losing record (2-4) against Bagnoli-coached Penn squads. From the oft-lauded "Game of the Century" in 1993, in which Penn edged past a previously unbeaten Princeton team before a Franklin Field Homecoming crowd of more almost 40,000, to last year's 27-14 Penn win at the Tigers' brand-new Princeton Stadium, this rivalry has been a joy to watch. "It's a great rivalry," Tosches said. "It's a great atmosphere down there regardless of what the records are. From our standpoint, Harvard and Yale are historic meetings, but in the years I've been here, with the success of Pennsylvania's program, our players know that the rivalries are changing." The Penn-Princeton rivalry is certainly not limited to the playing field. Much in the same way that the Tigers and the Quakers battle over basketball prospects, the two football programs recruit from very similar talent pools. "Obviously, we spend a lot of time in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, so there's competition there. It's not uncommon to have all eight schools going after one kid. There are a limited amount of kids who have the grades, the SATs [and] the financial situation, so you pretty much butt heads with everybody in the league." Tosches is acutely aware of the importance of tomorrow's game, even though he realizes that his squad is nowhere near the Ancient Eight driver's seat. He knows that vital lessons are always learned when Princeton travels to Philadelphia. Good coaches always know success is a long-term proposition.

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