He has worked for Pitt, PSU athletics
Fox Chapel alum’s perspective unique
Dann Kabala has built a career out of his love for football in Pennsylvania.
This Fox Chapel High School graduate and current director of high school relations for the football recruiting department at Penn State has bounced around the country in his career, working football operations gigs in Indiana, Florida and Arkansas.
But eventually, Kabala always wanted to come back to his home state, and he worked two different stints for Pitt before joining the Nittany Lions in April 2018.
That last point — working for Pitt and Penn State — puts Kabala in a unique position this weekend, as the in-state rivals match up Saturday for what could be the final time in a long while.
“I think it’s important to the state of Pennsylvania for Pitt and Penn State to play this game,’ Kabala said this week. “I know there’s just difficulties in today’s environment of college football with scheduling that make it hard. I’m glad that I was part of it for three of the four years.
“I’m glad that people in the state of Pennsylvania got to see it again and some of the kids who didn’t know about it get to see it and were part of it.”
Kabala claims he didn’t have an allegiance to either university while growing up.
Instead, what drew him into the profession was his experience playing football at Fox Chapel in the mid-1990s.
His senior season, Kabala, 40, says his team at Fox Chapel was quite successful, rejuventating the program’s drought in the previous years.
“Seeing what it meant to the communities in Pennsylvania, and specifically Pittsburgh on a Friday night,” Kabala said. “All the lessons that football taught me in Pittsburgh, it just made me love football.”
That love makes him perfect for his current job.
He is part of making the pitch that coming to play football in Pennsylvania is a good move, which is something he truly believes in. He thinks his knowledge of Pennsylvania football is what persuaded Penn State coach James Franklin to hire him in the first place.
When he worked for Pitt, he wanted the Panthers to do well, and he pointed to the amount of NFL draftees that came from the program as a point of pride. But Franklin has earned his loyalty these days. After hiring Kabala, Franklin fought to get Kabala’s wife, Becky, a job teaching fifth grade in the State College Area School District.
So Kabala says he wakes up every morning with the goal of helping Franklin bring a national championship to Penn State. The next step to achieving that lofty goal comes Saturday afternoon.
Franklin emphasized earlier this week that his team will approach Saturday the same way it approaches every other game. He did mention, however, that he recognizes the game’s importance to in-state fans.
That’s true for Kabala, too. “I think that being from Pennsylvania, and knowing that the players and the coaches that have come from this state, how much football means to these people of Pennsylvania, I think that’s why it really means so much to me,” Kabala said.
“I believe in the football that’s played in Pennsylvania. I always have. That’s one of the reasons I came back to Pennsylvania when I was at Arkansas. So I think it’s important to the people of Pennsylvania, and I love what football means to the people in this state.”