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Carm's
Last Call
When
he retires as Yale's head football coach at the end of this season,
Carmen Cozza will leave behind a record distinguished as much by
personal mentorship as by gridiron victories.
November
1996
by Randall Beach
Randall
Beach, who reported on the renovation of Yale Field for the Yale
Alumni Magazine in 1994,
is a former editor of Remember magazine.
The headline
in the November 23, 1968, special issue of the Harvard
Crimson crowed: "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29."
Painful as it was for Eli fans to accept, the judgment was right
on target, describing the results of an athletic event that remains
seared into the memories of both teams. Going into the 85th edition
of The Game, both Yale and Harvard were undefeated, and with only
42 seconds to go, Yale, led by the legendary duo of Brian
Dowling and Calvin Hill, was ahead 29-13. The Eli seats were
already awash in white handkerchiefs when Harvard charged back with
almost incredible force, scoring 16 points to even the score with
no time on the clock. To the great majority of the stunned onlookers,
the tie was indeed a Crimson victory.
But to Hill and Dowling,
arguably two of Yale's greatest players ever, the real winner was
Carmen
Cozza. In the dizzying final moments of that ill-fated game,
the two offensive stars had begged the coach to send them in on
defense. As they saw it, the reversal of fortune being played out
on the field called for a reversal of roles—anything to stop
the Harvard counterattack.
"We'll shut them
down!" they pleaded.
Cozza refused.
According to Dowling
and Hill, the coach didn't want the defensive players they would
have replaced to end their college careers in disgrace, bumped by
offensive standouts who weren't even trained for the job. Cozza
said to them: "I'm sorry, I can't do that. Think of what it
would do to those young men who have played those positions all
yearlong." It was a hard call, perhaps the hardest Cozza has
made in his 34 years at Yale.
But it was very much
in character. Cozza has served longer than any Yale coach of any
sport except Bob
Kiphuth, who dominated American swimming for 42 seasons. Cozza
is the winningest coach in Yale football history, having surpassed
even Walter
Camp, the first Yale football coach, who was instrumental in
creating the rules of the game. By the start of the 1996 season,
Cozza's teams had registered 177 wins against 111 losses and five
ties. He had won ten Ivy League titles, picked up a slew of awards
and sent nearly two dozen players off to play professional football
and five to Oxford as Rhodes Scholars. (Only seven of his players
have failed to graduate.) But for all the athletic laurels, Carmen
Cozza will be remembered by many of his players as much for his
personal and moral strength as for his skill at coaching football.
Recalling the 1968 game, Hill said recently: "Coach had a commitment
to the total young person, to everyone on the team—as personified
by what he said to us that day." Speaking for legions of other
athletes who have played for Cozza, former tailback Rich Diana '82
said: "He is kind, he is generous, he's a noble person. He's
got a good soul. This is a coach you wanted to play for and grow
up to be like."
At the conclusion of
the 113rd edition of The Game in Cambridge this month, Cozza's records
will be available for breaking. On September 7, the 66-year-old
veteran addressed a news conference at the Joel
E. Smilow Field Center to confirm what had been rumored for
weeks, that his 32nd season as head coach would be his last. President
Richard C. Levin, who spoke following the announcement, recalled
that during his years of teaching economics at Yale, he would occasionally
ask some of the football players among his students what they thought
of their coach. According to President Levin, a common reply was:
"He's the greatest coach I've ever had." Many of them
also remarked: "He's the greatest man I've ever known."
Anecdotes
about Cozza's performance on the job are legion.
Typical is one from former star halfback Dick Jauron '73: "In
my senior year I ran 87 yards against Columbia for a touchdown,
and Coach ran alongside down the sidelines and hugged me in the
end zone. He was such a great athlete, I wouldn't have been surprised
if he'd beaten me!" John Spagnola '79, who played tight end
for Cozza, was especially impressed by his willingness to take cues
from his staff, and even his players. "My senior year,"
recalls Spagnola, "we were getting ready for Harvard, and at
practice we came up with this play where the quarterback—Pat O'Brien—would
lateral to me, and I'd throw it downfield. Coach was watching us,
and he said, 'We're gonna practice that. I'm gonna call that in
the game.' We didn't think he was serious, but in the second quarter
we heard him call 'Downtown Left,' which was what we had named the
play. I was shocked. I took the lateral and threw it to Bob Krystyniak
for a 77-yard touchdown! It was the only pass I ever threw in a
game, and we went on to beat Harvard 35-28."
Cozza is no less admired
for the way he rose to the occasion when a personal problem came
up, often something that had nothing to do with football. "Coach
and I went to the Blue-Gray game in Alabama, where he was one of
the coordinating coaches and I had been picked to be a player,"
remembers Rich Diana. "Three days into practice, they had a
big luau, and I ate everything. I caught a 'bug' and Carm, his wife
Jean, their daughter Chris, and her husband took me to the emergency
room. I remember Coach standing next to me when they were putting
the IV needle into me; I'd never liked needles, but he said, 'Don't
worry about it.'"
Sometimes Cozza's work
seemed akin to that of the ministry. Late one Saturday night in
October 1966, word came to senior Yale officials that Brian Dowling's
father had died. Earlier that day, Dowling had injured his knee
in a game against Rutgers, and he was resting up in bed. As soon
as Cozza heard the news, he was on his way to Dowling's room. A
few days later, Cozza was in Cleveland to attend the funeral. "His
presence had a big impact on me and my family," says Dowling.
"My dad's funeral was right in the middle of the week, during
preparation for the next game. It just showed the kind of person
he is."
Although Cozza is now
a certified Yale institution, he got his start in a very different
environment. When he was born, on June 10, 1930, in the Cleveland
suburb of Parma,
Ohio, the Depression was making it difficult for many families
to get by, especially Italian immigrants such as the Cozzas. Recounting
his upbringing, Cozza says, "I was raised with my four sisters,
when not many people had anything, literally. I was the only one
in the family who went to college; if it hadn't been for an athletic
scholarship, I wouldn't have been able to do that." Cozza enrolled
at Miami University of Ohio, where he excelled in football and baseball
while earning a bachelor of science degree. His football coaches
were the esteemed Ara
Parseghian and Woody
Hayes. Cozza observed them carefully, storing up the experience
for future reference. But for the moment, at least, baseball came
first. He played professionally for the minor league teams of the
Cleveland
Indians and Chicago
White Sox. In search of a more stable career, he went on to
coach football at a succession of Ohio high schools, and in 1956
was named head freshman football coach at Miami. Later he was elevated
to the varsity football staff. "When Ara Parseghian invited
me back to Miami
University, that's when it all started," Cozza says. "I
knew then that this was something I truly wanted to do."
In 1963,
Cozza got a phone call from a former college teammate, John Pont,
who was by then the head football coach at Yale.
Would Carm consider coming east to be Yale's backfield coach? Cozza,
who had never been east of Pittsburgh, arrived in New Haven on a
dreary gray day, asking himself, "What am I doing here?"
But so many people made him and Jean feel welcome that any disorientation
quickly faded.
Two years later, when
Pont departed to become head coach at Indiana
University, Cozza assumed that he, too, would have to find a
new job. As it happened, he was offered the post of head football
coach at the University of New Hampshire—and he was all set to
accept it. But when Cozza told Yale's director of athletics, Delaney
Kiphuth, about his plans, Kiphuth asked him to hold on for 48
hours. During that time, a delegation of Yale players urged Kiphuth
to offer the head coaching job to Cozza. Kiphuth agreed with them
that Yale would be making a big mistake if it let Cozza get away.
The next day, Cozza was offered the job, and he accepted. Kiphuth
declared, "The future of Yale football is in very capable hands."
Cozza replied, "I'll be happy to be here all my life."
At another institution,
Cozza's first year as head coach might well have been his last.
In his first game, Cozza became the first Yale football coach ever
to lose to the University of Connecticut, a team that had traditionally
been a warmup for the Bulldogs. Walking off the field afterward,
Cozza wondered whether he had the stuff to be a college football
head coach. Over the next week, he recalls, "We got enough
angry letters to wallpaper a dining room." The following Saturday
against Colgate was no better, ending in a 7-0 win for the visitors.
In the third game of the season, against Brown in Providence, Yale
placekicker Dan Begel booted a field goal late in the game for the
only score of the afternoon. But the alumni, temporarily quieted
in their calls for Cozza's head, resumed their chorus of complaint
when Yale lost to Harvard, 13-0, finishing the season with a bleak
record of 3-6. The following year (1966), with Dowling sidelined
by that knee injury, the Elis were 4-5, and still Cozza's job was
not secure.
The breakthrough came
in 1967, when, after dropping the opener to Holy Cross, the Bulldogs
got both Dowling and Hill onto the field and embarked on a binge
of 16 successive wins that would span two seasons. Dowling recalls
that, "after that first loss in 1967, we started scoring a
lot of points. Coach was flabbergasted. It was very special, because
it was a young coaching staff and so we all started together. We
were able to turn things around after those two losing seasons."
Despite the social and
political turmoil of the late 1960s, Yale students still felt passionately
about their football team. "I remember the day we left for
Princeton with a chance to clinch the Ivy League championship,"
Cozza said recently. "I thought the students were going to
tip our bus over. They were rocking it back and forth, so I told
the bus driver, 'C'mon, let's get out of here before we get dumped!'
There were impromptu pep rallies every week. We'd get 47,000 people
for the Cornell game, 56,000 for Dartmouth. 'B.D.' of 'Doonesbury,'
Calvin Hill and company—it was an unbelievable offensive team. But
the one game that nobody will let me forget is 'The Tie.'"
Cozza can't forget it either, noting, "It's very hard on me
when we're not winning. It stays with me day-in and day-out."
Cozza
wishes that the sportswriters and fans would also ask him about
the Yale-Harvard game of 1967.
"We were losing 20-17 in the Bowl, with only a minute or two
left," he remembers. "Dowling threw 50 yards downfield
to Del Marting, and he ran it into the end zone. Harvard came back,
but they fumbled on the 20-yard line. Maybe we shouldn't have won
that game. If you're in this long enough, you find the pendulum
swings both ways."
Two of Cozza's most
satisfying wins were against non-Ivy League opponents. In 1980 the
Elis upset Air Force, 17-16, for Cozza's 100th win. "We were
close at halftime and we knew we had a chance to win," recalls
team captain John Nitti '81. "The feeling in the locker room
was that we were all trying to win that game for Carm." The
following year, led by Rich Diana, Yale knocked off Navy, 23-19.
"It was especially thrilling for me," says Cozza, "because
my former coach Ara Parseghian was in the press box doing the game
for ABC."
After Yale's three straight
Ivy League titles, from 1979 to 1981, the wins and championships
would never again come so frequently for Cozza. Forces beyond his
control began to make recruiting and winning increasingly difficult.
In 1981, the Ivy League instituted the Academic Index, a complex
formula that sets minimum admission standards based on grades and
test scores for players in football, men's basketball, and men's
hockey. The index reflects each school's academic standing, which
means that Yale, along with Harvard and Princeton, often has a relatively
harder time admitting top athletes. This system, as well as the
league's longstanding ban on athletic scholarships, cutbacks in
the number of football recruits allowed per year (now 35), and the
escalating cost of tuition all have conspired to reduce the pool
of football talent.
Nevertheless, Cozza
continues to be a firm advocate of the Ivy League's academic standards.
"I don't feel you should ever jeopardize the integrity of the
academics," he says. "Once you do that, you'll be like
any other university." But he is angry about what he considers
the "discriminatory" aspects of the Academic Index. "I
think it should be abolished," he says. "Before we had
it, if the admissions office wanted to take a chance on a guy who
didn't score too well on the SATs, but was a real achiever and maybe
Yale could really help him, they would take a shot. Now, we can't
do it. I think it's wrong."
Despite the index, Director
of Athletics Tom Beckett thinks
Yale can regain its standing among its peers. "Whatever the
sport, it is my belief that Yale can be champion of champions in
the Ivy League," he says. "That's our quest; that's our
goal. And we will continue to carry the message that academic and
athletic excellence need not be mutually exclusive." He cites
Cozza as a symbol of that commitment. "We don't find legends
in this business very often," Beckett said at the September
7 news conference. "You hear of transgressions at university
athletic departments daily. It never happened the last 32 years
here."
Why is
Cozza retiring now? He
said at the news conference that he didn't have a compelling reason.
"I was appointed Yale's 32nd head football coach, and this
happens to be my 32nd year," he said. In a subsequent interview,
Cozza elaborated: "I just felt—and I think the University also
felt—that maybe it's time for me to step back. I don't want them
to put a gun to my head and say, 'Hey Coach, you get out of here!'
If you take the win-loss record of the past few years, I stayed
on too long. But if I'd left, I would have missed the privilege
of working with some of the finest people this country has to offer."
Cozza says he made his
decision with his family last December, and thought it would be
best to break the news to his team at the start of this season.
"I wanted everyone to know, especially my players, in case
we should have a rough year, so they wouldn't feel it was their
fault, that that was the reason I retired." Cozza told his
players about his decision two days before meeting with the press.
"That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do,"
he said during the news conference, pausing to compose himself as
his players struggled to do the same. "It's really like having
two families. I told the team that it's like having sons. I told
them that we'll all be better off for having known each other. I
also told them that having dreams is a wonderful thing—and I'm proof
of that." Asked how he would like to be remembered, Cozza does
not talk about coaching football. "I would hope that I've gained
the respect of the players, and that I've helped them have four
of the best years of their lives here," he says. "Hopefully
I've helped them in the foundation of their careers."
Beckett has already
begun the search for Cozza's successor,
and hopes to have a new coach in place by January. But the years
ahead may still find Cozza involved in Yale athletics. Beckett has
offered him the position of assistant to the director of athletics,
working on such projects as improving Yale's sports facilities.
Cozza has said he will decide after the season ends whether to accept
the offer.
No account of Cozza's
career would be complete without one of Brian Dowling's favorite
anecdotes. The story is about an event that happened in 1968, a
year that many remember as one of the greatest in Yale football
history. But on a very hot afternoon during the preseason, things
were not going well. "We were just dragging ourselves through
practice, and Carm seemed to get very upset," recalls Dowling.
"We were all waiting to hear the signal for us to run sprints,
but he just took off somewhere. A few minutes later, Carm comes
back, riding shotgun on an ice cream truck that comes right onto
the field. He gave all of us free ice cream bars!"
No "father figure"
ever did more for his kids. |
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