Spaziani Named Interim Head Football Coach
December 08, 2006 | Football
Dec. 8, 2006
Boston College Director of Athletics Gene DeFilippo has named Frank Spaziani Interim Head Football Coach. Spaziani will coach the Eagles when they take on Navy in the December 30 Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte. BC's current assistant coaches are expected to remain with the Eagles through the bowl game as well. DeFilippo made the announcement following the news that Tom O'Brien would be introduced as head coach at North Carolina State University on Saturday.
"Our team will be in excellent hands during this time of transition with Frank Spaziani at the helm," DeFilippo said. "He is respected by our players, his fellow coaches, our administration and our fans."
Spaziani is in his 10th year on the BC coaching staff and his eighth as defensive coordinator. He joined the BC staff after three seasons with the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. During his coaching tenure at Calgary, he served two seasons as the defensive coordinator.
Prior to his coaching stint at Calgary, he served as the defensive coordinator for two years with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Spaziani spent nine years as a member of the Virginia coaching staff, where he was defensive coordinator for his last five seasons in Charlottesville, after having been defensive backs coach for the first four.
Spaziani is a 1969 graduate of Penn State, where he was a star defensive end on the Nittany Lions teams that tied Florida State in the 1967 Gator Bowl and defeated Kansas in the 1969 Orange Bowl. He began his coaching career in 1969 as a graduate assistant to Joe Paterno at Penn State. After three years as an assistant high school coach, he became head coach at Hempstead (N.Y.) High School in 1973, and, a year later, at Raritan (N.J.) High. He joined head coach George Welsh as an offensive assistant at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1975 and went with Welsh and Tom O'Brien from Annapolis to Virginia in 1982.
DeFilippo said BC would begin a national search immediately for a successor to O'Brien.
