Syracuse, N.Y. — Frank Maloney recruited some of the most talented players to ever don a Syracuse uniform.
He also lured some of the best, up-and-coming coaching minds in the game to Central New York as well.
Perhaps the two longest branches on his coaching tree are Nick Saban and Tom Coughlin.
Saban oversees the Alabama football machine and has won a total of six national championships. Coughlin is best known for coaching the New York Giants to two Super Bowl titles, beating the New England Patriots in both games.
Each made a stop in Syracuse in their early coaching years. Both were Maloney hires.
Coughlin joined the staff in February 1974 after a five-year run at Rochester Tech. The 27-year-old Waterloo, N.Y., native coached the offensive backs and was the final hire on Maloney’s first staff. He later served as offensive coordinator, coaching under Maloney for all seven years of his tenure.
In a statement Wednesday, Coughlin shared a humorous anecdote about how he was late to an interview with Maloney. He also gave Maloney, who died earlier this week of complications from brain cancer at the age of 79, his proper due for guiding the Orangemen through perhaps the most turbulent time in program history.
“Everyone in the Syracuse family should stand up and take their hats off for Frank and his family,” Coughlin said. “What he did for Syracuse during their time of transition was nothing short of amazing.”
Saban only coached at Syracuse for one season in 1977 before returning to his native West Virginia to coach the Mountaineers’ secondary. He joined the SU staff at the recommendation of Dennis Fryzel, who talked Maloney into hiring the 25-year-old Saban to coach outside linebackers/ends.
“Frank Maloney was a wonderful man and an outstanding football coach," Saban said in a statement to syracuse.com/The Post-Standard. “Terry and I were saddened to hear of his passing. We always appreciated the opportunity he gave us at Syracuse in 1977.”
Saban had been a graduate assistant at Kent State when the Golden Flashes pulled out a last minute win at Archbold Stadium during Maloney’s first season in 1974.
“Nick was a very hard worker and a good coach,” Maloney said after Saban left for West Virginia, according to Post-Standard archives. "But it’s a credit to your program when members of your staff are wanted by other institutions. We’ll miss him, but he really was looking forward to the opportunity of returning home.”
Turns out, several of the assistants Maloney hired would be wanted by other programs.
The impressive list of assistants to have worked under Maloney runs much longer than Saban and Coughlin. Here are 10 more names to know from Maloney’s coaching tree.
Randy Edsall (graduate assistant)
Edsall, now the head coach at Connecticut, joined Maloney’s staff as a graduate assistant in 1980.
Edsall, a former quarterback at Syracuse, often credits Maloney and some of his assistants at the time for instilling in him some of the same recruiting philosophies that made him one of SU’s best recruiters throughout the 1980s.
Edsall has his fingerprints all over (nearly) every great Syracuse football memory you have.
He became the head coach at UConn, first in 1999, then again in 2017 and also coached Maryland from 2011-15.
“I wouldn’t be where I’m at today if it wasn’t for (Maloney) giving me an opportunity and believing in me,” Edsall told syracuse.com/The Post-Standard.
“I still remember, when I was a junior, I walked into his office and told him I was leaving. I wasn’t a starter or anything like that, and I still remember him telling me, ‘Randy, I can never tell you that you’re ever going to play here, but I know you’d be making the biggest mistake of your life if you left.' "
Jerry Angelo
Years before he became the general manager of the Chicago Bears, Angelo spent five seasons on Maloney’s staff from 1975-79.
Angelo resigned his position as defensive ends coach in 1979. Earlier that season, Angelo had written a letter to the Post-Standard expressing concern for the football program (more on that coming next week). In the letter, he hinted he would be leaving Syracuse after the season.
Angelo came to SU in 1975 from the University of Tampa after the school dropped football. When he left Syracuse, he left the college game. Angelo spent the rest of his career in professional football, as a scout, position coach in Canada and then in the front offices for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Chicago Bears.
George O’Leary
Angelo’s resignation paved the way for a new defensive line coach in 1980.
O’Leary had joined Maloney’s staff after coaching at nearby Liverpool High School, compiling a 21-8 record (including a perfect 10-0 mark in 1979) during his three-year run.
Syracuse football great Tim Green regards O’Leary as the most influential coach in his life. O’Leary, back in Syracuse last fall for Green’s jersey retirement ceremony, called Green the toughest kid he ever coached in 48 years of coaching.
O’Leary was one of two assistant coaches Dick MacPherson retained from Maloney’s staff in 1981.
O’Leary later coached at Georgia Tech and Central Florida.
Ivan Fears
Like O’Leary, Fears was retained by MacPherson when he was hired following Maloney’s resignation in 1980.
Fears coached with Maloney for one season, coming to Central New York from his alma mater, William & Mary.
Fears was a running back at William & Mary from 1973-76 and became an assistant coach there following graduation in 1977. He coached receivers at Syracuse.
Fears has spent the past two decades as an assistant to Bill Belichick in New England. Fears has coached in nine Super Bowls and is the only full-time assistant who has been in New England for the duration of Belichick-Tom Brady era.
Rich Solomon
Fears filled the receivers coach position vacated by Solomon after the 1979 season, when Solomon left to take a job at Illinois.
Solomon was only on staff for that one season in ’79, when SU played its full schedule off campus while the Carrier Dome was being built.
But he got to coach one of the all-time greats, Art Monk, as SU won the Independence Bowl that season.
Later in his career, Solomon coached in the NFL, notably under Dennis Green with the Minnesota Vikings.
Bob Sutton
Sutton was with Maloney at Michigan prior to their one season together at Syracuse in 1974.
Sutton coached Army for nine seasons from 1991-99. Current SU assistant Reno Ferri played for Sutton at West Point and was a freshman on the 1996 team that finished 10-2 and ranked in the final Associated Press Top 25 poll.
Sutton later served as the defensive coordinator for the New York Jets under Eric Mangini and for the Kansas City Chiefs under Andy Reid.
Sutton spent last season with the Atlanta Falcons as a senior assistant.
Steve Szabo
Szabo spent three seasons on Maloney’s staff from 1974-76 before closing out the decade coaching under Earle Bruce at Ohio State.
Bruce fired Szabo, Saban and Fryzel — another name on this list — after the 1981 season.
Szabo went 15-15-1 in three years as the head coach at Edinboro from 1985-87. He later spent time in the NFL with the Patriots and Bills and coached at Michigan under Lloyd Carr in the mid-aughts before becoming the defensive coordinator at Colgate in 2008.
Dennis Fryzel
Fryzel had coached with Jerry Angelo at Tampa before coming to SU in 1977 to serve as Maloney’s defensive coordinator and linebackers coach.
Fryzel left after one year to go to Air Force, then by 1979 was working with Szabo under Bruce at Ohio State.
The next year, in 1980, Saban joined the Buckeyes’ coaching staff.
Unlike Szabo and Saban, Fryzel retired after getting fired by Bruce.
Saban credits Fryzel, who died of kidney cancer in 2009, for nudging him to consider leaving the Miami Dolphins for the Alabama job.
Dennis Fitzgerald
Maloney and Fitzgerald were assistants together at Michigan in 1968.
Prior to joining Maloney’s Syracuse staff 10 years later, Fitzgerald was the head coach at Kent State from 1975-77, during which he hired Saban.
After Maloney resigned, Fitzgerald served as defensive coordinator at Tulane before spending the next seven years coaching with the Pittsburgh Steelers under Chuck Noll.
Fitzgerald later coached arena football in Albany.
Paul Schudel
Schudel was on Maloney’s first staff in 1974 before leaving for a job at Michigan under Bo Schembechler.
Schudel left Ann Arbor, Mich., to be the head football coach at Ball State, where he went 60-48-4 over 10 years.
He later coached Central Connecticut for three seasons in the early aughts.
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