Bringing it back

With Saturday's victory against Brown, Al Bagnoli, the George A. Munger Head Coach of Penn Football, surpassed George Munger on the program's all-time win list -- securing exclusive rights to second place and firmly establishing himself as one of a triumvirate of renowned coaches in Penn football history.

Bagnoli (83-32) now trails only George Washington Woodruff (124-15-2) -- Penn coach from 1892 to 1901.

While other coaches have had success for shorter periods of time, they moved on -- and no coaches have had the sustained success of Woodruff, Bagnoli and Munger (82-42-10).

But the similarities end there.

Born in Italy, Bagnoli's family immigrated to the United States when he was 5 years old, settling in East Haven, Conn., approximately five miles from the Yale Bowl.

As Europeans, American football was not ingrained in the Bagnoli blood as in other football lineages, but when the family arrived in the United States, Bagnoli and his brother developed a penchant for the sport.

"I didn't grow up in parentally driven sports," Bagnoli said. "My brother and I played a lot. He was a very good player. We were always active, running around outside doing things. I played probably because my brother played, followed in his footsteps. He probably had the most influence early on me."

An influence that in part would lead to Bagnoli joining Woodruff and Munger in the pantheon of great Penn coaches.

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Each of the three operated in radically different environments and faced unique challenges.

Woodruff made Penn the first school to challenge the Big Three of Harvard, Yale and Princeton, winning national championships in 1894, 1895 and 1897 and producing numerous all-Americans along the way.

Munger coached when interest in Penn football was at its peak. Throughout his 16-year tenure, Penn drew crowds of 70,000-plus to a teeming Franklin Field for games against powerhouse programs such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State, California, Georgia, Virginia, Pittsburgh, Army and Navy.

Known for his thick, round-rimmed glasses and patrician demeanor, Munger -- a member of the College Football Hall of Fame -- coached 14 All-Americans and five Hall of Famers, including Penn's most famous football graduate, Chuck Bednarik.

In his 16 years at the helm, the Quakers lost one or fewer games three different times -- finishing undefeated in 1947 -- and led the nation in attendance for several years.

A statue was unveiled last fall at the western end of Franklin Field to memorialize Munger's achievements.

But when Munger retired in 1953, the Ivy League was turning inward. Penn chose go with it, shedding aspirations of nationally competitive football and emphasizing the scholar-athlete ideal.

It is in this vastly different environment that Al Bagnoli has thrived since he arrived in 1992.

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Bagnoli's numbers do not deceive. He has won five Ivy League championships -- third best in Ivy history. He is sixth all-time in Ivy wins, sixth all-time in Ivy win percentage and currently the winningest active Ivy coach. In addition, he has the second highest winning percentage among active Division I-AA coaches.

In the Penn record books, Bagnoli is second in seasons coached and second in all-time wins.

He was the Division I-AA coach of the year in 1993 and 1994 -- both undefeated seasons -- and has coached 52 first-team All-Ivy players and five first-team All-Americans.

The story of Bagnoli's rise in the coaching ranks is an unlikely one -- his first coaching job, somewhat accidental.

After graduating from Central Connecticut State in 1975, he had not decided on a career path -- so he opted for graduate school at the University of Albany. In exchange for free tuition, Bagnoli agreed to be a graduate assistant for the football team.

His calling finally beckoned.

"I kind of liked it and kind of stayed with it," he said. "It wasn't like I was 14 and said, 'Boy I want to be a football coach.'"

Bagnoli came to Penn by way of Union College in 1992 after a successful head coaching stint at the Division III program.

"One of the reasons this job really attracted me and really made me look at it was because it had an enormous track record of winning," Bagnoli said.

"If you go back to the '80s, they were a dominant program. The thing that was very attractive was that they had a history of winning, and my job was not so much to resurrect anything as to get it back where it was."

Bagnoli stressed that he was charged more with getting the program back to its winning ways after a short slump in the early '90s than resuscitating a dead program.

"Hopefully we've been able to get it back to being an upper-echelon team like it was in the '80s," he said. "That was kind of my charge taking the job. I think we've been somewhat effective with it."

And as the numbers indicate, the always humble Bagnoli has been more than "effective."

With such success at a non-scholarship Division I-AA school, many have speculated that Bagnoli would use Penn as a springboard to land a position at a nationally elite program.

But despite opportunities to move on to scholarship programs, Bagnoli has chosen to remain in Philadelphia.

And football is just one of several factors that has kept him here.

"It's a really good job; that's first and foremost," Bagnoli said. "I've been treated well. I've never been transient by nature. The situation has to be right professionally, it has to be right family-wise and it has to be right personally."

Bagnoli emphasized that with three kids of different ages -- including current Penn sprint football player Greg Bagnoli and former sprint player Jeff Bagnoli -- he did not think it was fair to move his family.

"With three kids that are all different ages, we were very reluctant to move when [the] kids were in high school," he said.

"It's a combination of having a good job and being sensitive to some family things, and being in a place where I think you can win."

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Neither Bagnoli nor his players could identify an outstanding or unique trait in his personality that has facilitated his success. All pointed to his winning attitude, sincerity and diligence. But his management skills seem to trump all else.

"I think a lot of different personalities can get success," Bagnoli said. "I think the one thing that everybody has in common is you've got to work hard. It's a profession where people work exceptionally long hours. You have to have some organizational skills. Football always has an excess of everything -- excess amount of players, excess amount of plays, excess amount of variables. Organizational skills become very, very important."

But Bagnoli noted that his coaching style has evolved and matured since he began. However, despite the changes in style, the substance -- the man -- remained the same.

"You've got to be you," he said.

"Whatever that is, you can't fool the kids. When you start off, you have some strengths and some deficiencies. As you get older, you work on those deficiencies a little bit. It's always an ongoing evolution of things. I think early on in my formative days I was too vocal. I seem to have calmed down a little bit, kind of picked my spots of when I want to be vocal."

Captain Matt Dukes praised Bagnoli as a motivator, tactician and recruiter.

And he, too, underscored his superior organizational adeptness.

"Coach Bagnoli is a very organized, very disciplined coach," Dukes said. "He has a sense of where everybody needs to be and what everybody needs to do to succeed and to be a winner. He sets a high standard for his players."

And quarterback Mike Mitchell echoed Dukes' sentiments, also noting that Bagnoli's hard work is infectious.

"He's a great organizer, and he gets the most out of his players," Mitchell said. "He's dead honest with us. He's a very hard worker. The hard work that he does spreads throughout the program from the coaches all the way down to the players."

Whatever personal qualities separate Bagnoli from the fray of Division I-AA college coaches, having surpassed Munger on Saturday -- the namesake of his coaching endowment -- he will now chase Woodruff.

And despite the ostensible differences among the members of Penn's elite triumvirate and the climates in which they coached, each man has one thing in common -- consistent winning.

Penn can only hope that Bagnoli -- whose daughter is now a senior in high school -- will not succumb to the lure of Division I-A football. If he remains in Philadelphia to finish his career, few would argue that his name will be immortal.

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