Syracuse, N.Y. — He's come to us from Boise, quite comfortable with football terms and basketball jargon and the secret to winning the Fiesta Bowl. But there was a time when Mark Coyle seemed more destined to talk about the Bard, citing sonnets and quoting verse along the way.
No, really. The guy who has been imported from Idaho to help Syracuse University tackle better than Florida State and rebound better than Duke projected once upon a time to be more intrigued by Desdemona than by Dabo, more inspired by King Lear than by Coach K.
"I had no idea I was going to be an athletic director," Coyle, SU's newly-named AD, confessed as he sat in his Manley Field House office the other day. "I was an English undergrad and got my Master's in Education. I wanted to be a high-school English teacher. I was going to go back to Waterloo (his Iowa hometown) and teach. I would have been completely happy."
And then Coyle paused while connecting his administrative present with his literary past.
"I might be the only athletic director in America," he suggested, "with four years of Shakespeare. That's got to get me something, right?"
Well, sure. That, and wins over Clemson in the fall and North Carolina in the winter will get him a few pats on the back and some tousled hair. And this, Coyle, who is Daryl Gross' successor — and (presumably) the Orange basketball program's maintainer and (perhaps) the Orange football program's savior — fully realizes.
So he understands the expectations and he's vowed to do his best to meet them. But Mark Coyle — born and raised in Iowa … schooled at Drake (where he scored two career touchdowns as a wide receiver for the Bulldogs) and later at Florida State (where he earned the second of his two Master's degrees) … and employed most prominently at Minnesota, Kentucky and Boise State — has been a Syracuse man for a while.
In fact, for more than 30 years now.
"My earliest memories of Syracuse are of Rony Seikaly and Pearl Washington and that group," recalled Coyle, who is 46, married and the father of three. "Growing up in Iowa, it seemed like they were on ESPN every night. They weren't, but it seemed like they were. So what was that? Mid-'80s? So I was 14 or 15.
"I was watching them because I was a huge fan of the orange-and-white Nike shoes. Remember those low-cut shoes Pearl used to wear? There was a shoe company called Eastbay where you could order the shoes. And I got a pair of low-cut, orange-and-white shoes because of Pearl Washington.
"A good friend who I've known since grammar school, Jeff Fritz — we were college roommates at Drake — is the biggest Rony Seikaly fan ever. So when I got the job and it became public, he sent me a text. 'Are you kidding me? You're going to Syracuse?' I hit him back and said, 'Our next one-on-one basketball game will be in the Carrier Dome.' He loved that."
And why not? Fritz' buddy is running the Orange show. He's in charge of Seikaly's basketball descendants, which amounts to a pretty good gig. He's been tasked with turning SU's football water into SU's football wine, which would make him a kind of miracle worker. He's here to ride the crest of Gross' successes and sweep up the debris Daryl left behind, which makes for conflicting double duty.
And maybe, just maybe if he finds the time, Mark Coyle will muse about that road not taken.
"Remember, I wanted to be an English teacher," he said. "Then I learned that teachers, at that time anyway, got only nine-month contracts. But if you wanted a 12-month contract, it was, like, 'Oh, become an administrator. Become an assistant principal.'
"Then somebody told me, 'Become an athletic director.' And I'm, like, 'An athletic director? What's that?' I mean, I knew we had an athletic director at Drake, but I didn't know what he did. So all of a sudden I apply to grad school at Florida State … and, boom, here I am."
In Syracuse, and ready to lead the Orange. And thinking, as the Shakespearian devotee he is, that Ophelia had it right in "Hamlet" when she sighed: "We know what we are, but know not what we may be."
Who'd have figured, huh? Whoever does?
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(During a wide-ranging Q&A session in his Manley Field House office the other day, Mark Coyle weighed in on all kinds of topics. His comments will appear on this site at 7 o'clock Monday morning.)
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(Bud also can be heard weekday mornings between 10-12 on the "Bud & the Manchild" sports-talk radio show on The Score-1260.)