McCaffery: Borrowing from mentors, Connor brings discipline and toughness to Carroll
RADNOR >> Any head football coach approaching his first career game will have, along the way, absorbed some expertise. As for Dan Connor, this is the football faculty that prepared him to become the head coach at Archbishop Carroll High:
■ The winningest high school coach in Delaware County history.
■ The winningest coach in major college football history.
■ Two conference champion coaches
■ Another two-time Super Bowl-winning head coach.
■ And a Delco football legend who recently coached a team into the Division II Final Four.
That’s all.
Just Kevin Clancy at Strath Haven, Joe Paterno at Penn State, John Fox and later Ron Rivera with the Carolina Panthers, Tom Coughlin with the New York Giants and Bill Zwaan at West Chester.
Questions?
“A lot of really good head coaches, at every level along the way, even CYO football,” Connor was saying the other day, before practice. “I played at St. Francis and the coach was Stan Kutufaris, who is still there, and has been there forever, and is legendary in CYO football in this area.”
Connor was the Delco high school legend once rated as the top linebacker in the nation at Strath Haven. From there, it was to Penn State, where he set the Linebacker U. record for tackles. He went to the Panthers and learned from Fox. Later, he had a stop in East Rutherford, playing for Coughlin. And after a hitch under Jason Garrett with the Cowboys, he was back for another brief opportunity with the Panthers, by then led by Rivera, last seen in the Super Bowl.
Carroll will open its season Friday at Marple Newtown. And there will be Connor, the 2007 Delaware County Daily Times Sports Figure of the Year, thinking about it all, feeling the way he did in the sixth grade at St. Francis and on ABC from Beaver Stadium.
“We were taking the bus ride to West Catholic for a scrimmage and it felt like I was playing,” Connor said. “It feels the same, whether it is Penn State busing through the crowds, or in the NFL, where you hop off an airplane and get on the bus and go. It’s the same nerves, the same butterflies. You have your name and your reputation on the line.
“If you’re playing, if you’re coaching, whatever you’re doing, it’s you. It’s got your signature on it. It’s the same nerves and the same anxious feeling that you get. It’s a good feeling, though. You want to be successful. And this is something I wanted to do, to get back in coaching. I didn’t want to lose that, having played for a long time. I couldn’t just move away from football. That’s the feeling I thrive off of. It makes me better.”
Connor is 30, his playing career ended too early, a neck injury proving too much. For the past two years, he’d been assisting Zwaan, working with the linebackers, being reminded that college football isn’t always the way it is in the Big Ten.
“Bill Zwaan has been an unbelievable mentor,” Connor said. “Coaching with him for two years and seeing him first hand, he is one of the best I have ever been around. And that’s at any level. He’s a Carroll guy, and he has helped me with this transition, guiding me through the process.
“He’s tough. He’s old school. Look at his record. He’s a guy who could compete with any pro, any Division I coach I have ever been around, with his knowledge of the game, his feel for the team and rapport with players.
“At West Chester, he is basically the academic advisor, the equipment manager, everything. He has about five different jobs all while being the head coach. And high school is very similar to that. This morning, I was organizing my jerseys, organizing my pads. I’ll be keeping an eye on the grades during the year, helping to do the scheduling, making sure the buses are there, the organizational stuff. I learned that from him.”
Connor learned from them all, all bound for one Hall of Fame or another. And he learned, too, from his father Jim, formerly the assistant at Strath Haven, now an assistant at Cardinal O’Hara with Dan’s brother Mike. And, no, the Patriots and Lions won’t play this season, though there are enough Connors on both sides working to make sure they collide next year. Key word: Collide.
“All of those coaches are all the same type of guy,” Connor said. “They are tough and they are old-school. Their teams are really disciplined. They talk toughness non-stop. That’s their No. 1 thing, physicality and toughness. So ever since sixth grade CYO football with Coach Kutufaris, it was the same exact thing; it was teams that are disciplined and tough. Everything else you can work on, the scheme, the fundamentals. But the identity of the team is that toughness. And every coach I’ve had, that’s been their No. 1 thing.”
Connor will stress basics at Carroll, resisting many NFL-level schemes, but open to trying one in the right situation. An enlarged enrollment has jammed the Patriots in with the more dangerous Catholic League programs, complicating his task. But it has been done before at Carroll, including by Clancy, who won 67 games there from 1982 through 1990.
“It’s about fundamentals and discipline,” Connor said. “It’s not about the coach and out-scheming anybody. Not at this level.”
That’s what Dan Connor has been taught about coaching. And he has been taught by the best. The very best.
To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21st-centurymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery
