BC’s new coach lays out his vision for the football program
Opening Statement
Thank you very much. This is an overwhelming day for me because I see so many people that are here today that have been in my life for a long time, so I really appreciate everybody being here today, I really do. I have a few notes here so bear with me, a lot of people to thank, a lot of things that I want to convey to everybody in the crowd and everybody out there relative to Boston College.
I am thrilled and honored to be the head football coach at Boston College. I’m extremely grateful for this opportunity. And I’m very proud to be the leader of a program with such a rich history and tradition. I’ve been with the team since last Friday, I sat here last Friday and met with the team, I held our first team meeting. And I don’t know if everybody knows this about the Boston College program right now, is that this is a morning program, so these are young men that get up at 5:30 every morning and they work out with us, they meet on football, that’s how they practice in the spring, that’s how they practice in the fall, and then they go to class. As the leader of the Boston College football program, that’s one of the main reasons that I wanted the job. You can win at a place like this. This is a place where young men can come and play good football, get a great education, and give back to the community. And I think that’s what Boston College is all about. So, I just want you to know that this is an outstanding group of young men who will proudly represent Boston College both on and off the field.
I’ve already met a lot of great people here in my short time at Boston College and I can’t wait to meet more people. I’m especially excited to meet the students, I see them on campus a lot when I walk around campus, the alumni, and most especially the lettermen of Boston College football. I’m excited to work with the Friends of the Heights group to keep building on what they’ve already started, I’m really excited with that, I met with Tom Levitt yesterday and had a good meeting. In the athletic department, I’m looking forward to working with all the other coaches. I met a few coaches, I haven’t met them all, and I think that’s one of the things I love about college sports is that you’re able to interact with all of the other sports. I went to the hockey game the other night, I’ll be at the basketball game this weekend, probably the hockey game on Sunday if Colleen and I can make it to all of those games. I really enjoy all of the other sports and I really enjoy getting to know the other coaches and how they recruit and how they strategize and things like that. So I’m really looking forward to that. Really it’s about continuing the mission of building a winning culture at Boston College both on and off the field.
I would especially like to thank Father Leahy, Father Jack Butler, Blake James, Reggie Terry, David Trainer, and Craig Anderson. We had great discussions about the values of Boston College: faith, education, service to others, commitment, integrity, respect, and loyalty. Those are the things that make Boston College such an incredible place and really why I wanted the job. I will do my best every single day, we’ve already started this and I’ve been here for five days, to instill these values in our players, our student-athletes, every day that I’m here as our head football coach.
More thanks, I apologize, but please bear with me. I would really like to thank my wife Colleen. Being a coach’s wife is not easy, and Colleen is a very special person in so many ways, and I’m very thankful for her every day of my life. I’d also like to mention that she’s a proud member of the Boston College Class of 1992, Magna Cum Laude, so you know where all the brains in the family come from. [laughter] I want to thank my two sons Jack, who can’t be here today, and Michael, they are inspirations to Colleen and I every day of their lives. Michael is 18-years-old, he’s a very special guy, he goes to Tufts in Medford and he plays baseball there and we’re really proud of Michael. Jack is 21-years-old and a very special guy and hopefully everybody gets a chance to meet him someday. I’d like to thank my in-laws, Don and Claire, who help us take care of our son Jack. They’re in Dedham right now taking care of Jack.
I’d like to thank my parents John and Anne, my dad John is here in the front row, I’d really like to thank my parents. They gave us a great work ethic. They taught us the value of an education. They taught us the value of faith, what faith meant in our family. And they really put us on a path for success. My two older brothers are here today, very successful guys, and I’ll talk about them in a second. But I’m just really, really happy that my dad was able to come here today, my brother Tom picked him up, he’s down on the Cape. Anybody that’s familiar with my family knows that we have strong roots on Cape Cod, so thank you Tom for bringing Dad up here today. I’d like to thank my brothers and their wives, John and Kathleen who are here today, and Tom and Trisha, Trisha can’t be here today. And my two nephews, Matt and Tomas are here today, thank you guys for coming. Kathleen, my brother John’s wife, is a proud 1982 graduate of Boston College. And my niece Kate, works on the West Coast, is a very successful businesswoman and is a proud 2017 graduate of Boston College.
I really want to thank Ryan Day, the head football coach at Ohio State for his patience and his understanding of why it was so important for me to pursue this job. A lot of people here at Boston College are familiar with Ryan Day. Ryan Day is an outstanding person, an outstanding coach, and he was great during this whole process. I want to thank Bill Belichick for all that he has done for my career, I’ll never be able to repay Bill for what he’s done for my career, and I appreciate what he said about me for this opportunity yesterday. I really thank Bill for that. I’d like to thank Robert and Jonathan Kraft for all of their support over the years, that’s meant a lot to me.
As I already mentioned, my responsibility to this program is to instill in our student-athletes the values of Boston College. Character, hard work, respect, integrity in everything that we do. We will strive for success on the field and in the classroom. We’ll cultivate our minds and our talents and use those in service to others. Right now I’m putting together an outstanding staff of coaches who will represent BC in a first-class way in everything that they do. We will hold the coaches and players to a high standard, both on and off the field, that’s what Boston College is all about, that’s how we’ve won in the past and that’s how we’re gonna win in the future. We will recruit players who will embrace Boston College and all of its values. We can win with guys who want to get a great education and play good football in the ACC. In keeping with the great tradition of Boston College, we’re gonna be a smart, tough, physical football team. We’ve already talked about that for five days. We might not win every game, but we will not be out-toughed. We will not be out-competed. We will be a tough, smart, physical football team. We’ll be a good situational team, and we’ll be a team that plays complimentary football in all three phases.
I’d like to extend a message to the BC football family. I know there’s a lot of guys here today and I really appreciate guys coming out for this press conference that played here, some guys that I even coached at the Patriots that played here like Dan Koppen who’s a good friend of mine. I want to extend a message to the BC football family, former coaches, but especially the players. I have tremendous respect for the history of this program. I have great admiration for your loyalty. We respectfully request the chance to earn your trust and support through communication and a tremendous work ethic. You will always be welcome in this program and we hope you will be a big part of our program.
In closing, I just wanted to share that growing up outside of Boston with my family as a lifelong BC fan… a lot of us went to Brown, but we were secret Boston College fans, I promise you. [laughter] I went into coaching in 1993 when I got out of Brown, I went into coaching at Brown, and I always dreamed about being the head coach at Boston College. My career has taken some twists and turns and taken me down roads I never could’ve imagined, but as I stand here today I could never be more grateful that the road has finally taken me back home to Boston College. Thank you everybody for being here today and I’m proud to be your head coach.
Questions
At your stage in your career, is this your destination job?
Absolutely. I had a lot of discussions with Blake and the search committee, and also when I had the honor of meeting Father Leahy, about being committed to this program. This is a program that will do things the right way and can win, and a program that even just being here for five days, I can’t wait to get to work every day. I can’t wait to be here, to be around these guys, to be with our coaching staff, to try to get this thing going in the right direction. Jeff Hafley did a really good job, you know, he did. He did a good job here and we need to build on that. And we also need to build on what’s been done in the past here. Over the course of time, obviously, having connections to Coach Bicknell and Coach Coughlin and Coach O’Brien, knowing the success that they had here and the formula that they did it with, that’s something that I really believe in and I can’t wait to get that going.
What is the vision for this Boston College football program going forward, in terms of competing and where you want to take the program eventually in the landscape of college football? What’s your vision for how you get the players that you need to achieve that vision?
I think for me, that’s a great question, and we’re putting that all together. But the vision is what I said, this will be a team that on the football field will play smart, will be tough, will be a physical team, will be a team that does the simple things well. We have to be the team that wins the penalty battle, wins the turnover battle, plays the best on third down, plays the best in the red area. We have to play good situational football. Off the field, this is a place that I really believe that we all in the football program have to embrace what Boston College is. And you can do both. You wanna come in here in the middle of an unbelievable campus… I went to church, I went to 8am mass at St. Mary’s, I’m brown-nosing my dad a little bit I guess to tell him I went to church. [laughter] I went to church at 8am mass at St. Mary’s, walked up through campus, this is a beautiful campus. An unbelievable campus. And in the middle of the greatest city in the world. So we need to sell that to the guys that are coming in, and along with, quite obviously, one of the best educations that you can receive in this world. So that’s the vision and I promise you we’ll show up every Saturday and try to create that vision.
How did your local and family ties play into your decision?
I think that’s something that’s very important about me and my family, being from here and growing up here. I’m the youngest of three, so I was the one out of my two older brothers that was fortunate enough to… I grew up in Andover and spent most of my formative years in Andover and then I went to St. John’s Prep, I see the head football coach Brian St. Pierre, he’s a good friend of mine, who played here. I went to St. John’s Prep and graduated in 1988 and I dreamed after I got out of Brown and got into coaching, my parents were like “Are you sure you want to coach? We just spent all this money on this education, are you sure?” [laughter] I said please trust me it’ll all work out. [more laughter] Sometimes it worked out sometimes it didn’t. But I just think this is a great fit for my family, and Colleen went to school here, Michael goes to Tufts, I just think it’s a fantastic fit and I’m just looking forward to… we’ve gotten started, but really getting started.
What are your thoughts on Boston College and the changing landscape of college football, and how do you balance coaching the program, NIL, and all of the other stuff that comes with the job now?
That’s something that I think you need to embrace. Blake and Father Leahy and Reggie Terry, everybody has been so good to me and our staff right off the bat, and we need to work. It’s called work. You have to organize your time, you have to budget your time properly, and you gotta work. And so we’re gonna put the work in. Some things won’t happen overnight, some things will take time, some things will happen quicker, but it’s all about work. I think you can balance it when you organize it and you have great people around you, we have great people here. We’re putting together a great coaching staff, we’ll probably announce that all at once. Great people in the athletic department, really some of the best people I’ve already been around. You know Reggie and I have spent probably close to 12 hours a day together. He’s the liaison between Blake and the athletic department and football, and he’s just a great person. So just going to work every single day, putting in the time, and making sure that you balance it, you can do what you need to do.
Can BC win the ACC, make the playoffs, and win a national championship?
[laughter] This is not my first rodeo, I’ve dealt with several questions like that. I think that Boston College is a place where you can do a lot of great things. I am not into predictions, that’s not really what I do. What I will promise you is that we will field a very competitive football team with a bunch of guys that will play hard, that will be tough, that will carry on the tradition of… one of my best friend sin the world is here today, Mike Panos, who played here for Coach Bicknell and Coach Coughlin… will carry on the tradition of these guys that played here that played tough, tough football. Will we win the national championship every year? Who knows? Why not? I don’t know. I’m not a predictor, I’m not a genie. I’m just telling you that we will show up every Saturday and we will play to the best of our ability.
What does success look like for you here?
Success is fielding a team that is a tough football team, fielding a team filled with guys that understand the value of an education, that give back to the community, that graduate from Boston College and do great things in their lives. I think that’s one of the things about Boston College that really attracted me to the job, and when I spoke to the search committee those are the things that I really talked a lot about. The reason that I’ve loved the place and the reason that I’ve loved my first five days here is that if you’re around this football team for the five days that I’ve been around them, these are guys that invest a lot of time in a lot of different areas. They invest a lot of time in football, they invest a lot of time in the classroom, and they invest a lot of time in giving back to the community. These are great guys here right now that are working really hard. What does success look like? To me, that’s what it looks like. Good guys that care about football, that care about getting a great education, and care about giving back to the community.
What sort of offense do you envision running around Thomas Castellanos and what have those sorts of conversations been like so far?
Tommy’s been great, everybody’s been great. One of the things that I try to do right off the bat, I learned this when I went to Penn State, one of the things… not everybody is familiar with when I was at Penn State, but… you know it was a tough time when I went to Penn State, and one of the things that we did right away, which I’m doing right now, is that I met individually with every single player, I’ve probably met with 40 and I have 60 more to go over the next few days and the next week, and that’s been really good. Tommy has been one of those guys. Tommy is a great guy, an excellent football player. Offensively, we’ll be a gameplan offense, we’ll do some different things. We’ll have to see who we have and be able to teach it, and then go out there and practice it, so I’m not going to get into all of the details of what we’re going to do offensively. But I will tell you that the guys that I’ve met, including Tommy, I can’t wait to coach them and I’ve really enjoyed being around them.
Do you have a structure in place for spring ball? It’s right around the corner.
I mean, not right around the corner. It’s a little less than a month, we’ve got time. It’s called work. [laughter] We’ll have a good structure for it. I promise you, we’ll have a good structure for it. We’ll probably start after spring break, we’ll probably keep the spring game date the same date that it was, but we’ll have a really good structure for it, I promise you.
What’s your message to students to get them to buy in for all four quarters this year?
That’s a great question because Blake and I talked about this yesterday. One of the things that I think is obviously one of the most important parts of this program is creating a home field advantage, which obviously the students are a huge part of that. From what I’ve heard, the students come out very well to watch these football games, and like you said, we’ve gotta keep them in the stands for four quarters so they don’t head back to Shea Field for the tailgate. [laughter] We have to do a good job of being a very competitive football team that plays good football, that plays into the fourth quarter, that wins games at home. We have to have a home field advantage. One of the things I want to do with as much time as I have allocated to do this, is to get out on campus and to encourage them to come to the spring game and to follow that up with obviously encouraging them to come to the home games and be there for us. Because I do think, with the student body here, I think that it could create a really good home field advantage.
Do you plan on relying on anybody from the Patriots, or are you on your own now?
There will be certain staff members, like I said I’ll announce when I do. But no, I won’t be calling back to the Patriots for advice on how to play Florida State. [laughter] No I probably won’t do that. I’m not sure they’ll have time for me on that, too. I do wish them the best, I wish Coach Mayo and that staff, Eliott Wolf, Matt Groh, all those guys, I wish them the best for their success.
How do you envision BC in the community in its current spot and moving forward, having seen football at all levels in this region?
I think we have to do a great job, like I said, in the community. Relative to football, we have to have a really good high school coaches clinic. I know that I’m going out to the big New England clinic in Newport, I think there’s another clinic at Gillette Stadium, I’m gonna speak at that. So we’ll get out there football-wise as much as we can, as much time as we can allocate to that, but absolutely. I can honestly tell you that high school coaches especially, when I talk to some of the guys that have coached here in the past, that is one of the things that is very, very important. Is that we do as good of a job as we can of putting a wall up around New England and keeping these best players in New England coming to Boston College. Players that embrace what Boston College is all about, good football players that care about academics, that care about getting a great education. Not letting them go to Clemson and Miami, let’s keep them at home where there parents can drive 20 or 30 minutes to watch them play right here in this beautiful stadium. I think we’ll really start working, I mean we already have started working on that. High school coaches in Massachusetts and in New England, come on into spring practice, its opened up and you can come on in any time you want.