CSU’S ADDAZIO MADE FAMILY A PRIORITY»
Why Steve Addazio decided to make CSU Rams a family affair
Indiana’s football coaches got Thursday nights off. What Steve Addazio wanted most was to spend that time with his family.
Which meant cranking up the car in Bloomington, Ind., around 6 p.m.
Which meant a four-hour-ish drive north to South Bend, back to the blankety-blank house that wouldn’t sell.
Which meant dinner at 11.
Which meant staying up for as long as the kids could.
Which meant, taking off before 5 a.m. the next day in order to catch morning meetings.
Four hours. Each way. For dinner and a hug. Maybe.
“I’m a young kid, I’m thinking, ‘It’s tough only seeing him once a week,’ ” Louie Addazio, the CSU offensive line coach, says of his dad, Steve, who’s now his boss and the Rams’ head dude.
“As a coach, by the time Thursday rolls around, you’re so burned out from gameplanning and prep … it’s such a strain, mentally and physically. But the moment he was out that door, nothing else mattered but us.”
They can both shake their heads and laugh about it 18 years after the fact. Chalk it up as just another bizarre chapter in This Coaching Life.
Steve had joined Gerry Dinardo’s staff at Indiana in 2002 after a three-season stretch at Notre Dame, but the Daz clan was struggling to find a buyer for their old house. So Kathleen, the coach’s wife, along with Louie and his two sisters, had remained in northern Indiana for about a year, with dad commuting when he could.
Four hours. Each way. For dinner and a hug. Maybe.
“That was quite hard on myself and my
wife and my kids,” the elder Addazio recalls. “I look back on that, and our philosophy always was, and I would always (vow) moving forward, that, ‘Whatever you do, you’ve got to be together.’ I remember saying to myself that I would never do that again.”
This coaching bag, it’s not for everybody. Even if you’ve got an angel — Steve’s was former Syracuse boss Paul Pasqualoni — to help navigate the career ladder, the rungs are slippery. The higher the climb, the harder the fall.
Louie grew up as baggage on the roller-coaster, although he says it never felt that way. He figures the family moved at least six times when he was a kid. In spite of the hours, the travel, the grind, the insecurity, he joined his dad on the ladder anyway.
“Was moving tough? Yeah, it was tough,” the younger Addazio says. “Sure, moving to a new area, that’s hard. But my family, we’re really close.
“I have a passion and a love for what I do. And my wife shares that passion, that I’m doing what I love. We understand that there are going to be sacrifices that we have to make at times. But that’s what you do when you’re chasing your dreams. If it was easy, everyone would do it. I was very lucky. I had a great role model growing up for the way to conduct yourself.”
because of him”
Moms, steel magnolias to the last, inspire and drive us. Dads, for better or worse, shape us, both by their presence and, in some cases, their lack thereof. Which might explain why so many sons follow their fathers into coaching. Especially on the football side.
Before COVID-19 and race relations grabbed the headlines and refused to let go, 2020 was supposed to be about new beginnings. Between last Thanksgiving and St. Patrick’s Day, all of which feels like it happened about six years ago, Colorado, Colorado State and Northern Colorado hired new football coaches. And, at some point during that same window, all three of those coaches — Ed Mccaffrey with the Bears, Karl Dorrell with the Buffs and Addazio with the Rams — hired their sons for their new staffs.
“(Louie) had great familiarity,” Addazio says of his son, whom he’d coached at Boston College from 2013-15 and who’d spent last autumn coaching tight ends at Bowling Green. “And he’s coaching a position that’s been really important to me in my career.”
Papa Daz is an old offensive line coach at heart. Steve and Louie fell from the same apple tree — matching motors, matching intensity, matching passions, matching attention to detail. The best line gurus are fine-point ninjas, nitpickers, borderline OCD cases. Hands. Hips. Feet. Repeat.
“He Ga-ed for (former Ohio State coach) Urban (Meyer) … he coached full-time at Bowling Green with Scot (Loeffler, a former Daz protégé),” Steve continues. “So he had tremendous familiarity with not only our offense, our style and how we recruit, but also, as a line coach, he knew all the (language) and all the terminology. And that’s so important for me.
“I am pretty actively involved in coaching the offensive line, but as a head coach, I’ve got to have the ability to dive in and dive back out. And that would never be productive if I wasn’t in complete alignment with the line coach. It just couldn’t work.”
Ergo, it stays in the family. Like Jim and John Harbaugh and their father Jack, Louie was one of those tag-along kids who scurry around practice fields and become gophers and ball boys when they’re not raising Cain. Steve
And he’s a trip. As there were still loose ends to tie up out east after leaving Boston College, Papa Daz lived with his son and daughter-in-law Courtney in Fort Collins for a spell this past winter while he and Kathleen house-hunted.
CSU’S new coach even got to watching — and commenting on — “The Bachelor” with Courtney. And “The Voice?”
“He’s a Blake Shelton fan,” Louie says of his dad. “He loves the show. I’m watching the show with him, and you can’t talk. You can only talk at the commercials now, because he’s studying, analyzing, giving his opinion. It’s the whole deal now.”
Like the man said: Whatever you do, you’ve got to be together.
“A lot of coaches’ kids out there (say), ‘My dad was never home,’ all this and all that. I saw my dad all the time,” Louie says. “I tell people, when I was in high school, playing ball, every Friday night, if it was within an hour’s radius (of where he was recruiting or working), very rarely did he miss any games. And the few he had to miss, you better believe — and this was before Facetime — he was on the speakerphone with my mom or my sister on the phone so he could get play-by-play. And I was really lucky in that regard. Because he made it his point to be there as much as he could.”
Four hours. Each way. For dinner and a hug. Maybe.
“It was great,” Louie says. “I don’t know how many coaches would do that, let’s be honest. That was cool.”