Bucs Hire Greg Schiano as new head coach

Saw this news today and it did my heart a lot of good.

Why? certainly not because I am a Bucs fans, although they can be my NFC team now.

Greg Schiano, their new coach, and I grew up together in the same home town, Wyckoff, NJ. In fact, he was one of my good friends when I lived there, and a classmate of mine in 2nd and 5th grade.

Greg was one of the most charismatic 5th graders you would ever meet. He was a natural leader, and I can remember him doing things like-
- drawing plays on a paper towel for us to try at lunch recess during touch football games.
- moving around kids to make the optimum kickball lineups in recess and gym games
- coming up with all sorts of rules for paper football, you know, the game where you folded up the paper and slid it across desk tops. Greg's innovation was to put scotch tape on the paper footballs, because he said it would go farther when you flicked it.

Greg comes from a great family, and I am still in touch with his brother Barry.

You know, that was all back in 1976, we would sit there and play paper football and talk about our favorite football teams (Greg was a big Redskins fan). The Bucs went 0-14 that year, and we all laughed at them then.

Who would have thought then, that one of us at that group of desks would grow up to coach that team one day? Go figure. Still, if ever a kid was determined to be a football coach, it was Greg. And he remains to me as a great example of someone who was able to make their childhood dreams come true.

Good luck, Greg, and go bucs.

 

Cool story! Thanks for sharing it.

 

cool story but I don't think it was a very good hire