Sgarlata Named Head Coach

[proudhoya]

Announced to team this morning.

Not sure what else we would have expected.

But, he knows the challenges , he loves the program and I'm sure he is thrilled to have the opportunity.

Make it happen, Coach!

[RusskyHoya]

Rob Sgarlata Named Georgetown Football Head Coach

Sgarlata assumes role after eight seasons as Assistant Head Coach

WASHINGTON - Georgetown University Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Lee Reed has named Rob Sgarlata (C’94, S’12) the 31st head football coach in program history. Sgarlata has served on the Hoyas coaching staff for the past 18 seasons, including the last eight as Assistant Head Coach/Defensive Coordinator.

Sgarlata took over as the interim head coach on January 30, following the departure of Kevin Kelly and was selected following a national search for coaching candidates. Sgarlata becomes just the fourth person to have played football and graduated from Georgetown before earning the head coach title, joining Joe Reilly, Jack Hagerty and Maurice Dubofsky.

“Rob Sgarlata brings a wealth of relevant experience to his new leadership role in our football program,” Reed said. “As a coach and an educator, he has shown his commitment to the holistic development of student-athletes as well as his passion for the game of football. I look forward to working with Rob to ensure that Georgetown football is a quality experience for his players.”

As defensive coordinator under Kelly, Sgarlata helped guide the Hoyas to its best stretch since joining the Patriot League, between 2010 and 2012. GU possessed the top-ranked scoring defense in the Patriot League in 2011 and featured the second-ranked scoring defense in the league in 2012.

"When I was a student-athlete at Georgetown, our Athletic Director, Frank Rienzo used to say that we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us,” Sgarlata said. “During my time on the Hilltop, I have witnessed this sentiment first hand. I have been fortunate to play for Scotty Glacken and work under excellent former head coaches Bob Benson and Kevin Kelly. I look forward to the challenge of guiding this program forward. I am extremely excited to work with the group of football players we currently have on the Hilltop."

Sgarlata has helped develop four All-Americans, including Michael Ononibaku in 2005, Alex Buzbee in 2006, Andrew Schaetzke, just the ninth consensus All-American in Patriot League history in 2011 and Robert McCabe in 2012. Buzbee would go on to play in the NFL with the Washington Redskins and the Canadian Football League (CFL) with the Toronto Argonauts. Schaetzke and McCabe each went to NFL rookie camps, following brilliant playing careers on the Hilltop.

During his tenure as defensive coordinator, the Hoyas have featured four ECAC First Team selections and 20 All-Patriot League selections on defense.

Within the defense, Sgarlata worked with the defensive line in 1995-96 and again from 2002-04, where he coached Buzbee, Ononibaku and 1996 MAAC Defensive Player of the Year Janne Kouri. He worked with the defensive backs from 2005-12, where he worked with All-Patriot League performers Brian Tandy, Travis Mack, Jayah Kaisamba and Jeremy Moore.

Prior to his work on defense, Sgarlata worked with wide receivers and tight ends from 1996-2000, helping the Hoyas to consecutive MAAC Championships in 1998 and 1999 and an appearance in the 1998 ECAC Bowl.

In addition to coaching, Sgarlata has also served as an academic advisor, career and alumni liaison, financial aid liaison, internship director and computer and technology liaison during his 18 years with the football program.

Sgarlata, a four-year letterman at Georgetown, is among the program’s all-time leading rushers. He was a team captain in 1993 and the recipient of the John J. Hagerty Award presented annually to Georgetown's outstanding back, following his senior season. He also excelled in the classroom, being named to the 1993 GTE District II Academic All-America Football Team and was also named to the MAAC Football League Academic All-Star Team.

Sgarlata graduated from Georgetown in 1994 from the College of Arts & Sciences with a degree in government and international relations. In May 2012, he completed his master's degree in sport industry management from the School of Continuing Studies at Georgetown.

[cheer48]

Congrats and keep on loving Georgetown football !

[derhoya]

Better late than never for Sgarlata! Kelly jumped the shark long ago.

[Problem of Dog]

I mean, good for him, but there's still no reason to be excited about this on anything other than a personal level. He's done nothing in his career up to this point to suggest that he'll be much of an upgrade over Kelly. In fact, he'll probably be an extension of Kelly, since I doubt we'll see much staff turnover.

[ColumbiaHeightsHoya]

POD, Rob has run a top defense for years and learned under Benson who always had dynamic defenses. Rob also has been a key recruiter for the program. He is keenly aware of the challenges of recruiting on a need basis against other scholarship programs which is a specialty in and of itself. Great hire and good luck Coach Sgarlata!

[Problem of Dog]

Feb 18, 2014 13:48:09 GMT -5 ColumbiaHeightsHoya said:

POD, Rob has run a top defense for years and learned under Benson who always had dynamic defenses. Rob also has been a key recruiter for the program. He is keenly aware of the challenges of recruiting on a need basis against other scholarship programs which is a specialty in and of itself. Great hire and good luck Coach Sgarlata!

Top defense? Not last year, that's for sure.

And recruiting has been a disaster lately. Obviously there are other factors at play but it doesn't seem that Sgarlata's "keen awareness" has helped all that much.

It's not a good hire, it's a lazy hire. It's like getting new uniforms, but making no progress on the MSF. Sure, you feel good for a little, and then long term it makes no difference and you continue to be a dumpster fire.

[alumni47]

  Nothing will change.  I am done with G-TOWN Football. Im not wasting my time anymore.  SEE you guys later..   IM DONE !!!!!!

  To leave on a good note, I heard they were going to Replace one of the PORT-A-Johns  at the MSF. ( no national search needed)..... 

[puppydog100]

alumni47, I'm with you. Sgarlata is a great guy, but not a head football coach at a D-1 program.

There was no real "national search," that was just cosmetics. I cannot image that he would be a candidate for head football coach anywhere but Georgetown.

Sgarlata is a "company guy," he will not make any waves or demands, will gladly operate the program on a shoe string budget. Our game plan is to maintain the status quo.

When the administration and AD are ready to make a commitment to the football program, I will reconsider. For now, I'M DONE, too!!!!!

[ColumbiaHeightsHoya]

To POD, Alumni47 & Puppy, your complaints are warranted. There is no commitment to the Football program financially. With that limitation in mind, we did make a run two years ago in the Patriot league with a dominant D headed by Sgarlata.

POD, tell me how you recruit a kid whose parents make 100k and on a need based aid he gets 15K in assistance from Gtown and a full ride to Lehigh, Fordham, ABC university. The net cost for his parents to take Gtown's offer is 35K a year. He ain't coming here. That is what I mean when I say Sgarlata understands the limitations. He has to find kids who are fits from an athletic standpoint and then he needs to determine if either they can get the kid full aid so he is low income or if he can sell the Gtown academic experience to the kid whose parents are wealthy and are willing to pony up the money to attend Gtown despite an offer from another school being on the table. That my friend, is a recruiting pain in the A**. Rather then complain about the current new hire the only way to change the culture is $ and lots of it. Get the MSF built (pipe dream at this point) and we are suddenly competitive. Find football alumni who have a lot of money and start to endow scholarships. That is what will change the current system of trying to be competitive on a shoe string budget. Basketball is what makes the money and that is tenuous with realignment as well. You've got to realize the reality of the situation before complaining that nothing is being done because Gtown isn't going to go all Maryland and operate at a huge loss in sports when the economics don't support it.

[RusskyHoya]

To be clear, scholarships are not happening anytime soon. This was true even before the Patriot League apparently decided, as part of its implementation of football scholarships, that non-scholarship players could not receive any financial aid. That effectively guarantees that we won't see scholarships for at minimum a decade. My best is on somewhere around "never." So that money ColumbiaHeightsHoya mentions would be going to scholarship equivalencies instead.

The IAC will help some. The MSF would help some as well, although perhaps not as much as people think. I have been hearing that there is some movement on that front, incidentally. I don't entirely know whether to believe it or not, but it's better than the giant black hole of silence that has been the case for the better part of the last decade.

Sgarlata is indeed a "company guy." In the other thread, DFW said:

Feb 13, 2014 7:44:43 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

A point I've tried to make is that Georgetown needs to figure out what it wants from football before resources (player, coach, or financial) will follow. The program is still running on much the same playbook Bob Benson arrived with in 1993 and the landscape has changed.

The point I've been trying to make is that Georgetown - which is to say, Healy 2 - already has figured out what it wants from football. It simply chooses not to communicate it openly, because the answer is a profoundly unsatisfying one to most of the people actually involved in the program. As it is for field hockey, swimming & diving, tennis, baseball, etc. etc.

The competitive landscape has changed since 1993, but that's not the landscape that the administration is looking at. They're looking at the academic landscape. On that field, from that vantage point, being an Ivy Light (which includes being defeated by the Ivies 95% of the time) is far superior to being Villanova or a scholarship-laden Fordham or even William & Mary. That may be a tough thing to sell to football recruits and alums and prospective coaches, but it's a much easier sell to the constituencies that 'matter.'

Sgarlata knows all this. For that reason alone, he may indeed be the right man for this job, or as right as anyone can be.

[Problem of Dog]

Feb 18, 2014 23:21:02 GMT -5 RusskyHoya said:

A point I've tried to make is that Georgetown needs to figure out what it wants from football before resources (player, coach, or financial) will follow. The program is still running on much the same playbook Bob Benson arrived with in 1993 and the landscape has changed. The point I've been trying to make is that Georgetown - which is to say, Healy 2 - already has figured out what it wants from football. It simply chooses not to communicate it openly, because the answer is a profoundly unsatisfying one to most of the people actually involved in the program. As it is for field hockey, swimming & diving, tennis, baseball, etc. etc.

Sgarlata knows all this. For that reason alone, he may indeed be the right man for this job, or as right as anyone can be.

Bingo. This football forum is the same stuff over and over again, but the reality is that Georgetown football's status quo is exactly where the administration wants it and that's not going to change any time soon. Ignoring Kelly's failures over and over again demonstrated this very clearly. Hiring Sgarlata furthers hammers the point home.

[DFW HOYA]

Feb 18, 2014 13:58:05 GMT -5 Problem of Dog said:

Top defense? Not last year, that's for sure. And recruiting has been a disaster lately. Obviously there are other factors at play but it doesn't seem that Sgarlata's "keen awareness" has helped all that much.

It's not a good hire, it's a lazy hire. It's like getting new uniforms, but making no progress on the MSF. Sure, you feel good for a little, and then long term it makes no difference and you continue to be a dumpster fire.

A lot of chatter on this thread that assumes because Sgarlata worked for Kelly, he must therefore be an extension of Kelly. That's not how assistant coaches work. Was Kelly an extension of Paul Johnson (then at Navy, now Georgia Tech) or Bob Pruett (Marshall)?

1. Sgarlata's strength is defense, learned from Bob Benson (who himself learned from Bob Ford at Albany). Given the talent gap, defense has been among Georgetown's success stories of late, inasmuch as the the defense spent a lot of time on the field. He also coached WR's in the MAAC era, but the focus has been on defensive and the DB, to which Georgetown has been a fairly consistent unit of late. Choosing a DC will be important because coaches shouldn't be wearing two hats when it comes to running a team and a defense. We also do not know how many of the present staff will return so that effort will also be key. (Sgarlata was the only assistant Kelly retained when he arrived in 2006.)

2. Sgarlata is the lead recruiter in Northern NJ and Texas. Georgetown doesn't get as many NJ kids like it used to but I suspect the cost to scholarship issue is losing a lot of recruits. He has been very sucessful in a number of recruits from Dallas-Ft. Worth, from Nick Parrish and Wayne Heimuli to Jayah Kaisamba and Dez Richardson, the latter of whom who could be a star if he stayed healthy. Georgetown has some big recruiting gaps elsewhere (Kelly never built a local recruiting base) but this isn't one of them.

3. Progress on the MSF is not the responsibility of the head coach. The constant MSF mess took a year or two off Benson's coaching life and Kelly decided at the outset that he was statying out of it. But at some point, Lee Reed has to get front and center with alumni about this, regardless of where the IAC stands or does not stand at this point.

[Problem of Dog]

Feb 19, 2014 13:16:31 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

Feb 18, 2014 13:58:05 GMT -5 Problem of Dog said:

Top defense? Not last year, that's for sure. And recruiting has been a disaster lately. Obviously there are other factors at play but it doesn't seem that Sgarlata's "keen awareness" has helped all that much.

It's not a good hire, it's a lazy hire. It's like getting new uniforms, but making no progress on the MSF. Sure, you feel good for a little, and then long term it makes no difference and you continue to be a dumpster fire.

A lot of chatter on this thread that assumes because Sgarlata worked for Kelly, he must therefore be an extension of Kelly. That's not how assistant coaches work. Was Kelly an extension of Paul Johnson (then at Navy, now Georgia Tech) or Bob Pruett (Marshall)?

1. Sgarlata's strength is defense, learned from Bob Benson (who himself learned from Bob Ford at Albany). Given the talent gap, defense has been among Georgetown's success stories of late, inasmuch as the the defense spent a lot of time on the field. He also coached WR's in the MAAC era, but the focus has been on defensive and the DB, to which Georgetown has been a fairly consistent unit of late. Choosing a DC will be important because coaches shouldn't be wearing two hats when it comes to running a team and a defense. We also do not know how many of the present staff will return so that effort will also be key. (Sgarlata was the only assistant Kelly retained when he arrived in 2006.)

2. Sgarlata is the lead recruiter in Northern NJ and Texas. Georgetown doesn't get as many NJ kids like it used to but I suspect the cost to scholarship issue is losing a lot of recruits. He has been very sucessful in a number of recruits from Dallas-Ft. Worth, from Nick Parrish and Wayne Heimuli to Jayah Kaisamba and Dez Richardson, the latter of whom who could be a star if he stayed healthy. Georgetown has some big recruiting gaps elsewhere (Kelly never built a local recruiting base) but this isn't one of them.

3. Progress on the MSF is not the responsibility of the head coach. The constant MSF mess took a year or two off Benson's coaching life and Kelly decided at the outset that he was statying out of it. But at some point, Lee Reed has to get front and center with alumni about this, regardless of where the IAC stands or does not stand at this point.

I'll give you a much less long-winded response on all three points.

1. I doubt Sgarlata changes the staff at all. So, yes, it will be an extension of the Kelly regime.
2. His past success in these regions doesn't really mean anything in the new era of scholarships in PL. You yourself have identified how weak the recruiting classes have been as of late.
3. It's not the HC's responsibility, but hiring someone who won't cause a fuss about it is perfect for the administration.

[puppydog100]

POD, we are all in agreement.    There was no meaningful national search, Coach Sgarlata, based upon the universities priorities, is the perfect choice.  Be a caretaker, make no waves, continue to work on a shoe string budget.

In the press release, Reed states, "I look forward to working with Rob to ensure that Georgetown football is a quality experience for his players."  That's it!

Not a word about building a winning program and being competitive with other PL schools.

I can no longer support this activity, why should I, if the administration and AD are not committed to success.

[RusskyHoya]

Feb 19, 2014 17:30:27 GMT -5 puppydog100 said:

POD, we are all in agreement.    There was no meaningful national search, Coach Sgarlata, based upon the universities priorities, is the perfect choice.  Be a caretaker, make no waves, continue to work on a shoe string budget.

In the press release, Reed states, "I look forward to working with Rob to ensure that Georgetown football is a quality experience for his players."  That's it!

Not a word about building a winning program and being competitive with other PL schools.

I can no longer support this activity, why should I, if the administration and AD are not committed to success.

I mean... I don't want to be the guy pissing in everyone's corn flakes here, but I think we do need to step back and ask ourselves: what does "success" mean?

Is it competing for the PL title and the automatic berth in the FCS playoffs? Is it being competitive with - and occasionally beating - the Ivies? Is it .500? Or .750? Or are we aiming higher, aiming for playoff success?

More to the point, what tradeoffs are we willing to make in exchange for such success? Given the cesspool that is modern day college football, with its dubious (and often laughable) claims of amateurism, its academic malpractice, its rampant facilitation of player misconduct, its bloated and oxygen-hogging budgets, and the festering issue of concussions/repetitive brain trauma/other injuries that have lasting effects... where are we drawing the line? How much is being the best team in one of FCS's lower-ranked conferences worth? What level of tradeoff is consistent with institutional values and just plain old-fashioned Cura Personalis?

As much as I love football, with each passing year, I find my own answers to these questions falling much closer to the thinking on Healy 2 than on Any Given Saturday. Maybe there is someone out there who could square that circle. Maybe it's Rob Sgarlata. But whoever it might be, their ultimate success would not be largely - or even mostly - determined by their won-loss record. To a great extent, it would indeed be gauged by the "quality experience for (the) players."

Universities are in the people business, which to a great extent means the quality experience business. Obscure trophies, like that MAAC championship totem, tend to get quickly consigned to the dustbin of history. We don't want the same to be true of our players.

[cheer48]

I am totally overwhelmed by your sagacity and forthrightness Bro Russky. splendidly written, "we are Georgetown" but are so as a great university of study and values and intellectual and moral wellbeing.......like. will you believe, Oxford, Cambridge and even our own Princeton or even my beloved Italian Universita` di` Siena, Torino, Bologna etc.
Grazia, caro fratello mio, Vitale Paganelli, M,D,, class of `48, i.e. of FR Toohey, Law. McFadden, Yates, Cohalen etc.....ye wonderful sons of Ignatius !

[puppydog100]

RusskyHoya, well written. Georgetown is a great university. However, we can maintain the high academic standards, and be respectable and competitive in athletics.

It's all about choices and commitment. Neither Healy nor the alumni are committed to the football program. Now, we are putting our players in harms way, week after week playing against teams with superior talent, speed and size. There is nothing that Coach Sgarlata can do to change that. We can choose to compete, or move down in class, those are our choices.

Doing nothing cannot be an option.

If you think college football is in the cesspool, take a look a college basketball. If you think the Hoyas are going to be able to compete, year in and year out with the top 50 basketball programs in the country, think again.

Sports is an extension of the university. Agreed, it is a business, a big business. But a Hoya run deep into the NCAA tourney brings national exposure, and increases alumni pride, participation and giving to the university.

Healy just doesn't get it.

[cheer48]

...me thinks, after all these years that the axiom, " pride goes before fall " may still have a bit of merit ....

[MassHoya]

And so it begins...OC Vince Marino has been fired.