‘Coach Jags’ hire a high school highlight for Irish
At some point in the future, Jeff Jagodzinski probably will become just another assistant football coach at Notre Dame High School. The aura of his prestigious past — a winning head coach at Boston College, years of assistant success in the National Football League, including one season as Brett Favre’s offensive coordinator at Green Bay — will fade somewhat away.
“Coach Jags,” as some already call him, won’t be seen as all that special. Maybe.
“I think it was divine intervention,” Notre Dame athletic director Matt Pobieglo said a few hours after this newspaper’s Ward Gossett broke the story in the Tuesday edition of the Times Free Press. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Everything lined up.”
Noted parent Laura Powell, whose son Dallas Brown is a Notre Dame linebacker: “We’re definitely blessed to have someone of his caliber want to continue his career here.”
Added Fighting Irish senior offensive lineman Sam Stovall, who’s accepted a scholarship from Eastern Kentucky: “It’s amazing. The knowledge he has is unbelievable. We’ll be a pretty nasty offensive line with him coaching us. He’s going to make us better men and better players. He’ll help us get to the next level.”
Asked for details, Stovall said, “Pass blocking. He’s really fine-tuned our technique. He’s tweaking things, bringing a whole new perspective.”
This astounding hiring could provide a whole new perspective for high school programs everywhere regarding available coaching talent. Especially since this all happened in basically one week, the initial contact between Pobieglo and the 52-year-old Jagodzinski taking place because the athletic director placed a job posting on the website www. footballscoop.com.
“With head coaches you always have a list,” Pobieglo said. “Assistants are a little different. When (then offensive coordinator) Chandler Tygard took a similar job at Ravenwood, we knew we had some time, but not much time.”
Phone calls and resumes already were flying across his desk when news of Tygard’s exit became public knowledge. Pobieglo and Irish head coach Charles Fant were discussing candidates and options. But despite a sizable pool of qualified applicants, the AD felt the need to “broaden my horizons to see what’s out there.”
On May 24 he posted the position. One day later, as he checked his emails., he heard a chime on his computer at 7:30 p.m.. It was an email arriving from Jagodzinski.
“He sent along his phone number,” Pobieglo said. “We ended up talking for 30 minutes. It turned out he was living in Marietta (Ga.). He drove up the next day. We talked for four and a half hours.”
This was the Friday before Memorial Day, and Notre Dame principal George Valadie was out of town for the holiday weekend. Pobieglo was ecstatic over the possibility of landing Jags but also concerned that this was too good to be true.
“It’s got to be the right fit,” he said. “So I kept calling people, trying to talk myself out of it. But I couldn’t find any reason not to do this. Jeff’s a devout Catholic. He’s academically oriented. I even asked him at one point, ‘When we do a background check, what’s the worst thing we can find on you?’ He said maybe a speeding ticket, and he was right.”
Pobieglo did admit that it was a little daunting to wade through a reference list that included former University of Georgia and current University of Miami coach Mark Richt, Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank and current Indianapolis Colts head coach Chuck Pagano.
Then again, it isn’t every day you’re trying to hire an assistant high school coach who took BC to two Atlantic Coast Conference title games, worked as an assistant with the Packers, Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers and also recently spent four years as a Georgia State assistant.
“I told Mr. Valadie, ‘This is one of our guys,’” said Pobieglo, referring to Jagodzinski’s character and Catholicism. “You need to talk to him.”
On Wednesday, May 31, the two talked for nearly five hours. By that night, it was a done deal. But Jagodzinski needed a place to live. Quickly.
“We have a house on campus that hadn’t been used in years,” Pobieglo said. “But it needed a lot of work and it needed to be done in a hurry.”
Notre Dame parent Doogan Boyd first entered the home last Thursday evening to find cobwebs, dust and filthy bathrooms. He cleaned for five hours. Powell, Pobieglo and at least 25 players arrived early Friday morning to finish the job.
“A guy could move in, I guess,” Powell winced at the memory. “Not a girl.”
Asked the worst task, she quickly referred to a basement toilet.
“Imagine something with water in it that hadn’t been flushed in four years,” she said. “Just thinking about it makes me sick.”
But by 3:30 last Friday afternoon, the home was squeaky clean and ready for Jagodzinski’s arrival with his U-Haul.
“It probably didn’t hurt,” Pobieglo said, “that we told the players there would be no pizza until Doogan said the house was ready.”
Said Coach Jags on Tuesday of his new home: “It’s my safe house.”
In many ways, that safe house is really temporary living quarters for a coach whose family remains in the Tampa area so that his and wife Lisa’s 16-yearold daughter Jenni can finish high school there, their 19-year-old daughter Jaci can get the care she needs for her severe autism and the couple’s other children — Josh, Jojo and Jessi — can have a place to call home.
“You just get so tired of living all over the country,” Jagodzinski said. “We decided the family would stay in Tampa.”
As the Irish wrapped up practice atop Finley Stadium’s Davenport Field early Tuesday afternoon, Irish parent Brian Brigman and his daughter Martha watched her brother Jacob being coached by Jagodzinski. Already 6-foot-1 and 240 pounds, young Brigman is just the kind of talent who should hugely benefit from Coach Jags’ experience.
“He knows what D-1 programs are looking for,” said the elder Brigman. “The very first day, he had them bend their legs the way they need to on pass blocking. After two minutes they were dying. There muscles were burning. He told them, ‘That’s when you know you’re doing it the right way.’ That’s what he’s going to do for them.”
A bit later, practice over, Jacob Brigman said of his new line coach’s worth, “Just how he explains everything in such detail.”
As the Irish left the field, a sports writer asked Stovall how long it took him to realize Jagodzinski was a special coaching talent.
“About a minute,” the player said.
Judging from Coach Jags’ first few days on the job, his Notre Dame honeymoon should last a good deal longer than that.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com