- August 25th, 2006, 8:30 am
#26310
Even the Roanoke fishwrap is giving us some love:
Rocco: Liberty's a destination pointhttp://www.roanoke.com/sports/college/wb/79674
The former UVa aide believes the Flames have the potential to become a Division I-AA power.
By Doug Doughty
981-3129
LYNCHBURG -- New Liberty University football coach Danny Rocco is a believer, and he's been a believer for a while.
Rocco tries to live up to the Christian ideals that Jerry Falwell's university espouses, but not all faith is spiritual in nature.
Even before he took over a moribund Flames program, Rocco was a believer in Liberty football.
His father, Frank, was the Flames' director of football operations from 2000-2001. An older brother, Frank Jr., was the offensive coordinator under Ken Karcher from 2000-2003.
"To me, this is a lot more attractive job than a lot of the other I-AA jobs where people might have said, 'Oh, boy, that's a good job for Danny,'" Rocco said Thursday. "Knowing what I knew, to me this was the best of the bunch."
Rocco, who turned 46 in July, had spent the previous five seasons at UVa, where he coached linebackers and served as associate head coach.
Four assistant coaches left the UVa staff after the 2005 season, three to become head coaches. Ron Prince and Al Golden took over Division I-A programs at Kansas State and Temple, respectively, during the same five-day period that Rocco was hired at Liberty.
Some analysts looked at Rocco's jump to a lower-level program with little recent success and wondered if he had become disenchanted with his UVa boss, Al Groh.
"That wasn't the case at all," he said. "What I wanted was to be the head coach at a Division I program that I thought was committed to winning."
In his mid-30s, Rocco could have been viewed as one of the nation's top young coaching prospects. He was an assistant at Texas from 1994-1997 and had talks with then-Longhorns coach John Mackovic about moving up to assistant head coach. That was in 1996. One year later, Mackovic was fired.
"I've always been a hard-working foot soldier," said Rocco, who earlier had coached at Boston College and later had worked at Maryland. "I've had many titles and I've done many things at some of the largest universities. I've never been a self-promoter. I've never tried to be the king of the mountain.
"I talked to Lou Tepper the other day. He's the coach at [Indiana University of Pennsylvania]. He went there from Edinboro. Here's a coach who used to be the head coach at Illinois, so that should tell you, these jobs are hard to get. When you take a step back, what job was I going to get?"
Rocco said he had been "tracking" the Liberty job for more than five years. He isn't sure when it was that he first got the attention of Falwell, but it may have been the Monday night after Virginia's 7-5 loss at North Carolina. Groh had gone to Pennsylvania on a recruiting trip and left Rocco to handle his Monday night call-in show.
"It was a bad loss, we didn't play real well and the wolves were circling," Rocco said. "Evidently, Dr. Falwell was listening to the show that night. When I met with him after the season, he told me, 'I was listening for your LQ.' I said, 'What's that?' He said, 'I was listening for your loyalty quotient. You stood in there and you took every one of those questions and never wavered.'
"It's the foot soldier thing. I think that's what prompted him to say, 'That's the guy I want to hire to coach my football team.' Dr. Falwell's a blue-collar guy. He's a roll-up-your-sleeves kind of guy."
Rocco was accustomed to a one-voice policy, first under Tom Coughlin at Boston College and then at Virginia, where Groh would not allow his assistants to do interviews during the season. So, it was unusual that Groh let Rocco handle the call-in show that October night. It hadn't happened before.
Rocco will let his Liberty assistants talk to the media, as Golden has said he will at Temple, but there will be plenty of signs of the Groh influence in Lynchburg.
"There was an article in our local paper where Michael Groh [the UVa coach's son] says, 'I'm just as susceptible to an jerk-chewing as anyone else,'" Rocco said. "So, that perception is out there, [that] that's part of the life in Charlottesville. But, Al Groh has treated me great for a long, long time. I talk to him regularly and seek his advice regularly."
On the corner of Rocco's desk is a plaque that reads, "Just Coach the Team," similar to the one Groh received from Bill Parcells prior to taking over as coach of the New York Jets. Groh sent it to Rocco this summer.
Hopefully, the plaque won't be misplaced next week when Liberty moves its football offices to the new $8-million A.L. Williams Football Operations Center behind the north end zone at Williams Stadium. Rocco said it compares favorably Virginia's McCue Center.
Liberty also has resurfaced its artificial-turf field to the tune of $750,000.
"The biggest selling point to me was, I wanted to go somewhere where they were making a commitment," Rocco said. "Although we're coming off a 1-10 season, the commitment far outweighs that record. The talent on this football team far outweighs the 1-10."
Liberty has had success in the past, most notably when ex-Cleveland Browns coach Sam Rutigliano presided over the Flames' program, but Liberty has had trouble attracting a strong schedule. Early on, opponents may have been wary about the possibility of proselytism.
Falwell didn't ask Rocco to be the team chaplain. He asked him to coach.
"He wanted a man of integrity; he wanted a man of character," Rocco said. "He wanted a man who had good Christian values. He also told me, 'You don't have to attend my church.' Our family is attending a non-denominational Christian church out in Bedford County, which is kind of what we've been doing for the last 10 years. I feel I can be myself.
"I'd be happy if I was here for a long time. This isn't about coming here so I can get the Virginia job. This is about coming here so I can impact these kids and that we can win. That's been my battle cry. We can win here. We can do it."
- By Dalegarz1