The Deepest Commitment

Mark Fabish


I know we've known about who was filling Al Bagnoli's coaching staff for a few weeks now.

But yesterday's official announcement, along with Bagnoli's own take on each hire was simply a delight. And it was more than that. I believe the assembling of this staff under Bagnoli is every bit as much a sign of the massive administration increase in commitment to Columbia football as the hiring of Bagnoli itself.

That's because it took money, perseverance and smarts to get a staff filled with this many experienced experts and up-and-coming phenoms.

Mike Faragalli and Paul Feraro are very hardened coordinators who have seen it all and done it all. They are not here to become head coach or jump to another program in the FBS. I don't even think recruiting will be a major part of their jobs. They're here to focus on what the team does on Saturdays. The overall program improvement and its image are somebody else's job. These guys are going to crunch the X's and O's and they have the gravitas to push their ideas to Bagnoli as hard as they need to.

Based on what my sources tell me, these are the kinds of coordinators consultant Rick Taylor prefers. That is, guys who are not necessarily looking to move up the coaching ranks but are simply very good craftsmen at the art of creating offensive and defensive schemes.

Thus, I believe the hiring of these guys may have been influenced in some way by the Taylor Report, but I am only guessing about that.

The real up-and-comers on this staff are Associate Head Coach Mark Fabish and Secondary Coach Jon Poppe. (Contrary to the reports I received, Poppe will also act as Recruiting Coordinator as opposed to Columbia creating a stand alone RC job. I'm not sure if someone changed their mind about that or if it was never actually in the cards).

Fabish and Poppe are considered to be two of the best, if not the best, recruiters in Ivy football. Just getting one of them would be a coup, but getting BOTH is beyond fortunate. In fact, that's the point. Getting them wasn't about luck, it was about hard work and a strong sell.

Another coup is getting long-time Penn OC and O-Line coach Jonathan McClaughlin simply to focus on the offensive line. The emphasis Bagnoli has always put on having a strong O-line cannot be overstated. So anyone who was able to remain on his staff at Penn as long as McClaughlin did has to be good. And he is. This is a tremendous pickup for a team that needs offensive line help so bad, the Red Cross was almost ready to set up blood donor stations at the games for our skill position players last season.

Joe D'Orazio is another Bagnoli acolyte in the mix and that speaks volumes about his ability to keep players and coaches loyal and "bought in" to his methods.

Darin Edwards, Todd Gilcrist, and Justin Stovall are also all "for real." I particularly like the Edwards hire as we continue to show the wisdom of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

This isn't just a good staff. It's an all-star staff that took a lot of work to put together. And by "work," I mean the mental work to come to a place where the Columbia leadership was able to make the emotional commitment to the program.

Make no mistake, we are off to a roaring start.