Challenge awaits new coach

Newly appointed sprint football head coach Thomas Cocuzza greeted his players in their first team meeting last Wednesday with an anecdote.

"I told them it's funny," he explained. "I came from a state university where the kids would be unbelievable competitors and win at all costs [on the field] and then you would get their grades and they would have a 1.5 [GPA] and they didn't care. I could never understand how you could be a competitor on the field and not in the classroom. [At Princeton], it is almost the opposite. I want these players to take their competitiveness in the classroom and bring that out to the field."

That is his primary expectation for a team that has struggled to compete in recent years.

"We are going to have to outthink and outhustle teams — that was always the type of player I was," Cocuzza said.

Cocuzza, who takes over the sprint football reins after stepping down as offensive coordinator for the football program at Kean University, has been "groomed to be a coach" since a very young age. His father, Charles Cocuzza, is the current head football coach at Kean.

"I was a much better baseball player than football player," Cocuzza said. "But because my dad was in the coaching profession, I knew this was what I wanted to do."

Prior to coaching at Kean — where he completed a computer science degree — Cocuzza coached in an indoor football league. He also coached at the high school level and in the arena football league, where he had the opportunity to coach Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Tommy Maddox.

At Kean, he developed a Texas Tech-type offense, rarely used by many colleges due to its complexity. Cocuzza, however, is confident that his system will mesh with the Tiger players.

"[My offense] requires a cerebral-type player and this lends itself to the type of kids we have [at Princeton]," he said. "I am going to go about the game as if it's heavyweight football. I don't see very much different. People have told me that sprint [football] is a faster game, but I have always played it that way anyways. We spread people out, not just the wideouts and the receivers, but the lineman as well — taking two-to-three yard splits."

Sophomore quarterback Alex Kandabarow, after just one meeting with his new head coach, is thrilled at the prospect of leading this new offense. The offense features no huddles (calling everything from the line), the ability to run almost any play out of any formation, and the option to put almost any offensive player anywhere on the field.

"He is really into football and has an intense intellectual passion for the game," Kandabarow said of Cocuzza. "I am really excited about playing for him. I think he is bringing great ideas to the table that can help turn this program around."

Defensively, Cocuzza plans to blitz, blitz and blitz, attacking and pressuring the offense whenever possible. As primarily an offensive coach, Cocuzza understands exactly what frustrates his offense.

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"I am going to do to people what I don't like done to me," he said. "My dad always told me not to get locked into just being an offensive guy. You always want to know what defensive coaches are thinking so that you know what you have to defeat. I have watched every game that they played last year twice and realized that we are probably going to have more blitzes in one game than the team had in all six combined last season."

Currently, Cocuzza is trying to put together a coaching staff while preparing for spring practices, which take place during reading period. He knows that the primary job for both him and his staff during these first few practices will be teaching fundamentals and bringing everybody back to the basics.

But it is the competitiveness of these Princeton players that Cocuzza really wants to see. Watching the game tape from last season, Cocuzza realized that many players displayed a lackluster effort.

"That is one thing that neither myself nor my coaching staff tolerates," Cocuzza said. "We need every player on the field to be ready to play with full intensity from snap to whistle and we will hammer that home hard."