40-year sprint for Wagner

It’s a new sprint football season , but Bill Wagner is still the coach at Penn.

With a 20-14 victory Friday over Cornell, the lightweight football team opened its 40th-consecutive season with the man who has become the face of Quakers sprint football patrolling the sideline.

Talking to the longest-tenured Penn coach, you realize that he would not be the revered leader he is today without a passion for athletics and teaching that was developed long before anyone on the current roster was born.

“To still be involved in something you love to do for 40 years — not many people get that opportunity,” Wagner said.

Sports have always been what the New Jersey native loves to do, whether it was as a three-sport star at Trenton State, or as baseball and football coach at Woodrow Wilson and Cherry Hill East High Schools in South Jersey.

When Bob Murray retired from his head baseball and sprint football coaching positions at Penn in 1969, assistant Bob Seddon replaced him as head baseball coach. Athletic Director Fred Shabel then hired Wagner to fill the positions of assistant baseball coach and head sprint football coach.

But in his first 26 years he had to endure plenty of losing football seasons: his sprint teams compiled a 45-111 record from 1970 to 1995.

In the magical 1996 season, the tables turned. That year Wagner won his first Collegiate Sprint Football League championship. Two years later, Penn did it again.

But Wagner’s greatest feat came in 2000, when his team won its third title and went undefeated for the first time in 69 years, defeating both Army and Navy in the same year for the first time ever.

All in all, Wagner’s teams have compiled a 50-23 record since 1996, including last year’s 5-2 squad.

“From ’96 on it’s been something that we’ve been able to put together,” he said.

When Seddon retired from his baseball position in 2005, Wagner retired as assistant. Though if he had his way, he would’ve had double duty.

“I wanted to coach both sports, but the movement in the University was to have head coaches have single sports,” Wagner said. “My love for my sprint football alums and my players is very, very high, and I was asked to stay with the sprint football program. It’s been a great move on my part.”

The coach has had to make a lot of adjustments during a career that has spanned eight presidencies.

“When I came to Penn, I was a wing-T football coach. Today, we go no backs, no huddle, spread offense, pass the ball half the time,” he said. “The game is gonna dictate what you have to do … If you don’t change, you’re not gonna be having any fun out there.”

Much of the reason Wagner has come back year after year lies in the fact that teaching the game of football is still fun for him.

“He’s still pushing us as hard as we can go,” senior captain Joe Portelli said. “And he still has his ‘Wagsisms.’”

‘Wagsisms’ has become the term for the sayings the coach tries to instill into his players. According to Portelli, these include “fast food, slow body” and “other football expressions not appropriate for printing in the paper.”

So Wagner clearly hasn’t lost the ability to motivate his players, who already have incentive to play for a legendary coach.

“To add another ring to [his] collection would only make it a better experience for us but also give him another memory,” Portelli said. “We hope we can be a part of his legacy.”

And it looks like that legacy will continue. He and his staff have raised over $1.2 million dollars over the last several years in order to maintain the program.

“Eventually, before I leave, I hope [sprint head coach] becomes a full-time position,” he said. “We’re looking to endow the sport so it’ll be here for another 77 years.”

And Wagner wishes he could be here for them all.

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