Four decades ago, a 34-year-old assistant football coach from UC Berkeley trekked across the country and surveyed the campus of a small liberal arts college in Medford, Mass. He saw a team that had posted a 1-7 record the previous season, and, with its dilapidated athletic facilities and a staff that placed minimal emphasis on recruiting, there was little promise of improvement.
That coach decided to walk away from his dream of becoming a head coach in Div. I and signed a three-year contract.
That signature began a 40-year love-affair that is still going strong.
"I think that was what it was all about-it was a challenge," said Rocky Carzo, who spent eight years as the Tufts football coach and more than a quarter-decade as Athletic Director before his retirement in 1999 made him Athletic Director Emeritus.
"But I just felt like I had a miracle, a magic wand, and that you could out-work people," he continued. "Well, we out-worked everybody. It didn't make much of a difference in how many games we won. But we had a good spirit."
This Saturday will mark the 40th year that Carzo has cheered for Tufts football on Homecoming, and while his passion for Tufts athletics is deep, it wasn't always his plan.
"I wasn't really excited to go here at first, because I called all of my colleagues around here that I'd been coaching against and I played with," Carzo said. "They all said it had been a good football school at one time, but it was a graveyard now."
Nonetheless, the job was still appealing. Carzo was an East Coast guy who preferred the small-college environment. He grew up in Leiperville, Pa., just outside of Philadelphia, and played football while attending the University of Delaware in the early 1950s. After coaching at a Catholic high school in Delaware for a year, he took an assistant coaching job at his alma-mater for six years before moving on to Berkeley.
"I loved California," Carzo said. "I wanted to be at a major college. I wanted to be a Rose Bowl coach. I loved that. I wanted to play at the highest level or coach at the highest level."
Unfortunately for Carzo, however, history got in the way. At the apex of the free speech movement in the 60s, Berkeley's attention shifted away from athletics, and after coaching there for six years, Carzo was offered only a one-year extension and little job security.
Enter the small liberal arts college in Medford.
Carzo brought his hard-nosed enthusiasm for football back East and prepared for a different kind of challenge. His new players fell in love with his coaching.
"When you go away as an 18- year-old, you're very impressionable," said Bob Bass, co-captain of the 1969 team that went 6-2 under Carzo. "As a head football coach, he became a father-figure to many of the players. He let you know what his expectations were of you. He was so inspirational, so caring about his players. We really came to love and respect him."
That love was tested in 1969, when the new culture that emerged from the free speech movement clashed with Carzo's principles. An old-fashioned guy, Carzo required his players to have short hair and be clean-shaven. At the height of the hippie era, his players protested that rule, finally forcing their coach to call a team meeting to address the issue. Carzo eventually agreed to a compromise.
"I think that was a great example of how he changed with the times," Bass said. "He was able to listen to his players and let us have a say. He really kept the team together."
Carzo recalls this collision of generations and values as an eye-opener.
"You remember, of course, the guys who were skilled and the guys who made big plays," Carzo said. "That's all normal-you internalize that. But I also thought about the stupid things that happened that were kind of educational because they changed my perspective."
On the field, however, his perspective rarely changed. To Carzo, football was football.
"We always had a lot of fun in practice," he said. "We worked hard, but we realized that if the game's not fun, nobody's going to play. Our attitude was reflected by our movement; no talk was going to make any difference to anybody, but the way you move does."
After amassing a 22-43-1 record during his eight seasons as head coach at Tufts, Carzo left the gridiron for good in 1973, hanging up his hat and whistle to become Tufts' Athletic Director.
As on the football field, Carzo continued to inspire those around him.
"I cherish my relationship with him," Sports Information Director Paul Sweeney said. "He's legendary at Tufts. He was really at the helm when Tufts came together as an athletic department.
"He's a guy you want to work for," Sweeney continued. "He's got an informality that's contagious. He really cares a lot about people. He's a ring leader; you want be on his team."
Sweeney did play on Carzo's team when the two, along with other members of the Athletics Department and the University Office of Publications, left perhaps Carzo's most lasting legacy. "Jumbo Footprints: A History of Tufts Athletics 1852-2000," was published in January of 2006 and provides an insider's look at the on- and off-field evolution of Tufts Athletics.
For Carzo, the book is just one of many projects that he has undertaken in the name of the Brown and Blue.
"I really feel like Tufts never made me be anything I didn't want to be," Carzo said. "They gave me a lot of room. I came here because I was looking for an opportunity.
"And what does that mean to me? It means that it's an opportunity where people want to work with me, and I want to work with them," he continued. "And there's an opportunity for me to grow and for me to learn and for me to help you. We all go up together."
