Comparing CCSU to Fordham -- CCSU Athletics Forum

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Date Posted: 10:03:18 10/02/06 Mon
Author: J.J.
Subject: Comparing CCSU to Fordham

Some very nice things said about CCSU in a article about Masella now coaching at Fordham. CCSU had talent, just a history of losing.

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Masella will turn Fordham football around
Saturday, September 30, 2006

No one, least of all Tom Masella, thought it was going to be easy.

Fordham, wasn't going to be like the former Tottenville HS and Wagner College football star's last coaching stop.

Central Connecticut may not have had a winning season in 18 years when Masella arrived in 2004, but the Blue Devils didn't lack talent.

"Central is ready to explode. Tom is going to take advantage of the talent they have," predicted Monmouth University coach Kevin Callahan, the defensive coordinator at Wagner in 1981, Masella's senior year. And, the former Great Kills resident did just that: Central won back-to-back Northeast Conference championships.

And now ...

Fordham may have a higher profile than Central, but Central has a better team. Masella knew that coming into the Bronx. After all, he has been around the block a few times. After coaching first with Walt Hameline at Wagner and then Dennis Barrett at Kings Point, his coaching stops included defensive coordinator at Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Louisiana Tech, and head coach at Boston University, and Fairfield. Winners all, with the exception of BU, which pulled the plug on football barely a year after Masella became head coach.

Going into today's game at Holy Cross, Fordham is 1-2 with losses to Monmouth and Columbia sandwiched around a win over an Albany team which knocked off I-AA power Delaware the following week.

The loss to Columbia was the wakeup call.

"We were about even talent-wise with Monmouth," he said, "but I honestly thought we were better than Columbia." Which is quite a statement since Columbia won 37-7.

"We see what it is and what we have to do," Masella said yesterday. "We have a project in front of us. We have to go in a different direction."
Starting today when 11 freshmen, one a quarterback, will start against Holy Cross.

"We're hoping to find some big-play players among the freshmen," he said. The way he did at Central last season when by midseason, he had nine freshman starters, including Staten Islander Aubrey Norris at quarterback.

There's another reason for the switch, although Masella only touched on it obliquely when he went back to his first year at Central.

"Getting the kids at Central to believe they could win was a major challenge," he said. "They were conditioned to failure. The Wagner game was the turning point. We were up, we were down, and then we came back to win (28-21) in overtime.

"After that, even if we were down, the players still believed they could win. They still played hard."

Masella's a realist. He realizes Fordham posted a 5-6 record in 2004 and went 2-9 last season, and that he didn't inherit the same kind of talent he did when he arrived at Central.

"We're not where we'd like to be talent-wise," he said, "but we'll be fine."

That's what Tom Masella's history says. This time, it's just going to take a little longer.

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