The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Memories of Carm
How Carmen Cozza became like a big brother to a Register newsman
On Jan. 4, when Bob Barton learned former Yale head football coach Carmen Cozza had died, he thought back on their long association and the close bond they entered into after many years of knowing one another.
Barton, now retired, who sometimes wrote about Yale sports in addition to wearing many other hats as an editor at the New Haven Register for decades, at first had a necessarily removed, professional relationship with Cozza, winner of 10 Ivy League championships from 1965 through 1996.
“I think, as time went on and I kind of kept a respectful distance and didn’t write everything I saw and heard, Carm appreciated that,” Barton told me last Thursday when we met at Mory’s, the storied New Haven restaurant long affiliated with Yale and its sports legends.
“Carm, I think, came to regard me as a friend in the media who could be trusted not to blab,” Barton said as he sipped his coffee.
Barton, a 1957 Yale College graduate, has an encyclopedic knowledge of Yale football. He regaled me with stories of long-ago games and colorful players, replete with statistics. But after awhile his tone became more serious.
“There came a time when Carm and I began to relate outside of football,” he said.
“In the winter of 2001-02 — I think it was in March 2002 — Carm was down in Florida and he was not feeling well.” Barton noted Cozza and his wife, Jean, spent their winters down there.
“He felt so unwell that he decided to drive himself to the hospital. He told me Jean handed him six baby aspirins. When he got to the hospital, he pulled up outside the emergency room, walked in and told the nurse on duty how he was feeling. The nurse said, ‘Mr. Cozza, I think you’re having a heart attack.’ ”
He was immediately admitted to the hospital. Barton tossed off another insider’s anecdote: “The doctor said to Carm, ‘You don’t know me but I roomed with one of your players. We’ll take good care of you.’ ”
Soon afterward Cozza had triple bypass surgery.
Barton proceeded to chapter two. “In September of 2003, I remember I felt funny after attending the (New Haven) Ravens’ last game at Yale Field. I went to see my doctor. He told me, ‘There’s a cardiologist with an office downstairs. I am making you an appointment. Be there tomorow morning.’ ”
The cardiologist did a test. “Yeah, I had had a heart attack,” Barton told me. The surgery came shortly after that.
“When I next saw Carm, I told him, ‘Carm, I’ve got something in common with you. I just had a triple bypass.’ He said, ‘Whatever your medical plan provides for in terms of rehab, do it. They know what to do to bring you back, to help you recapture the mobility and feeling whole again.’ ”
“After that, we had a bond. He was like a big brother to me. He was 6 1/2 years older and he’d been through it. He really cared. Once he knew I’d had this, he was there for me.”
During our wide-ranging conversation at Mory’s, we of course got around to “the Tie,” a low point of Cozza’s career. In the 1968 season finale against rival Harvard, the undefeated Yale team had what seemed to be a comfortable lead of 29-13 with just 3 1/2 minutes
“There is, no question, a vacancy in my psyche. I’ve lost a guy I could trust.” Robert Barton, former Register editor
remaining. But unbelievably, the Crimson team capitalized on a Yale fumble, a recovered onside kick, two touchdowns and two two-point conversions (as well as perhaps some questionable calls by the referees) to score 16 points just before the game ended.
The famous Harvard Crimson headline blared: “Harvard Beats Yale, 2929.” For the Yale players and for Cozza and his staff as well as for the shocked Yale fans, it felt like a loss.
At that point in our discussion, Barton reached into a bag and pulled out a yellowed edition of the Boston Globe, dated Nov. 25, 1968, two days after the debacle. He pointed to a column on page one, headlined “Disappointed Yale Coach Questions Penalties.”
Barton told me a UPI reporter called Cozza at about 7 a.m. the Sunday of that awful weekend, perhaps awakening him. Rather than hang up, Cozza answered the reporter’s questions honestly, Barton said.
“When Carm saw the Globe had taken that and made this whole litany of objections out of it, I think he became gun-shy with the media almost ever after,” Barton said.
And yet he noted Cozza remained patient and polite with reporters. “I could ask Carm any question and he would not make me feel like a fool for asking it. Some coaches will say, ‘Why would you ask me such a dumb question?’ Carm never said to me, ‘Bob, why are you asking me this?’”
I asked Barton what made Cozza a good coach. “I think he was a teacher. And he did his best to surround himself with guys who could become good teachers. He knew how to sit back and let them teach.”
Barton said Cozza became a father figure to his players. This came out in a story Barton wrote for the Yale-Harvard game program in 1993 in which he called Cozza “the pastoral counselor who deals with players one on one.” He quoted Cozza: “We hope to give the kids some lessons about life.”
Barton recalled a player saying: “Coach Cozza is like God. You don’t want to screw up and get in trouble. Because if you do, you know he is going to land on you.”
Barton told me about a player from a successful Yale freshman football team who celebrated by going out to a party. “Apparently he got howling drunk. I think he got into a sexual assault case. Carm got that kid into his office and told him: ‘There are consequences for what you did and I can’t ignore that. So you’re not on the squad next year. But if you get things straightened out, we can talk about you coming back.’”
Barton noted, “The kid never played another down at Yale.”
When I asked why Cozza had remained at Yale, turning down offers at universities with more prominent football programs, Barton replied, “I think Carm didn’t want to take his three daughters out of school. I think he did what was good for his family.”
Asked how it affected him when he received the news of Cozza’s death, from complications of leukemia at 87, Barton said, “I hate to say this: I don’t think it hit me emotionally. It hit me first as a newsman. That was my first impulse: ‘What do I do as a newsman?’’’ He called around, making sure his contacts at newspaper sports departments knew Cozza was gone.
Then Barton told me, “Lately, I’ve kind of become mad at Carm for dying. Because I miss the guy. There is, no question, a vacancy in my psyche. I’ve lost a guy I could trust and a guy I could ask any football question on this green earth.”
Barton added, “I wish I’d asked him hundreds more.”
“I could ask (him) any football question on this green earth. I wish I’d asked him hundreds more.” Bob Barton, Former Register editor