Dolphins head coach Tony Sparano still getting used to spotlight

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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/dolphins/content/sports/epaper/2008/07/19/a1b_sparano_0720.html

Dolphins head coach Tony Sparano still getting used to spotlight

By EDGAR THOMPSON
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Saturday, July 19, 2008

The van slowed to a crawl, following Tony Sparano as he jogged down the sidewalk.

Sweat pouring from his face, heart pumping, Sparano kept looking over his shoulder.

Just then, the van screeched to a halt at a stoplight and several men jumped out.

The Dolphins coach was startled and surrounded, like a scene out of, well, The Sopranos.

It was a roadside hit.

Click . . . click . . . click.

The cameras were firing away.

Jeannette Sparano, Tony's wife of 23 years, laughs as she recalls her husband recounting the scene.

"They all piled out and took pictures with him," Jeanette said. "He said he was a little embarrassed. He was running. He was sweaty. He was just trying to get his workout in.

"But he enjoys meeting people and getting to know the fans. Hopefully, the fans will be a huge part of everything going on with the Dolphins."

Sparano, a family man and a players' coach, always has been a people person. He's just never cared much for special attention.

Those days are over.

On Saturday, Sparano begins his first NFL training camp as a head coach, and one of the league's most dedicated and desperate fan bases will go out of its way to let Sparano know how it feels - good or bad.

"We talked about it the other day - he doesn't know how to act with this limelight because he's a regular guy," said Tony Mortali, a fellow football coach and one of Sparano's closet friends back home in New Haven, Conn. "He doesn't consider himself a celebrity. People stop him and ask him for his autograph. He doesn't know how to take that because he's never been that way.

"He doesn't want to be treated any different than anyone else."

Outside of South Florida, Sparano his little celebrity cred, though some NFL fans know about the coach named Tony Soprano.

Jeannette gets a kick out of people referring to the Dolphins' new regime as "The Sparanos.''

"The people in our family, the people we grew up with, we have a joke," she said. "You don't like to sit with your back to a doorway because you can't see what's coming at you."

Sparano, 46, hasn't been prepared to expect a lot of what's been coming at him since he was hired as head coach in January.

The spotlight never found Sparano during eight seasons as an NFL assistant coach or in his one head-coaching stint, at Division II University of New Haven.

Now, when Sparano gives his name to a maitre d', his dining party is moved to the front of the line. A night at the movies, early morning Mass or a quick stop at Publix can turn into a meet-and-greet for fans backing the man Bill Parcells handpicked to lead the franchise back from its lowest point in history.

The attention is awkward for Sparano, but he's taking it in stride.

"He's happy to talk to whoever," said Jeanette, who was a 13-year-old high school freshman in 1978 when she began dating Sparano. "It's nice to know people care enough to take five minutes out of their day to talk to you. That's kind of an honor."

Humility is a quality Sparano learned well growing up in a working-class neighborhood in New Haven.

A lifelong New York Giants fan, Sparano and his father, Tony Jr., rarely made the 90-minute drive to see scrambling quarterback Fran Tarkenton play in the late '60s and early '70s at Yankee Stadium.

"To be honest, we really didn't have the money to do that," Sparano said.

For an up-close look at the game he loved, Sparano went to the Yale Bowl. As a kid, he watched Calvin Hill run for the Bulldogs and later worked as an usher when Dick Jauron, now the head coach of the Buffalo Bills, was an All-Ivy League running back at Yale under Hall of Fame coach Carm Cozza.

Sparano picked up trash and wiped snow off the seats when the Giants played there (1973-74) while Yankee Stadium was renovated. The Giants were struggling then, and Tarkenton was gone to the Minnesota Vikings, who beat New York 31-7 to end the '73 season.

Didn't matter to Sparano.

"I got to see all those guys," he said. "That was a real treat for me."

Sparano's Yale Bowl job was fun, but he knew that hard work could take a toll.

He had watched his father come home worn out from pouring hot metal at a foundry for 12 or 14 hours. Later, when his father drove a liquor truck, Sparano sometimes would tag along as his dad hauled crates up and down staircases.

"This was a man who worked really hard for the money he got," Sparano said. "There were no shortcuts in what you had to do. That's what he taught me.

"If there was something worth getting, you have to get it, and you have to do whatever it takes to get it. If that means spending 12, 14, 15 hours doing what you have to do, that's what you need to do."

Sparano now works out of an office that's as big as the living room of the three-story home his parents shared with their in-laws. But that doesn't mean he's forgotten the lessons of his childhood.

Hard work. Accountability. Attention to detail.

Sparano will demand as much from his players, pushing them to win while emphasizing the cohesion of a strong family - and a leader who will be there for them.

"As I told the players, there's a lot of ways I'll touch you during the course of the day, but at some point every day I'll touch every one of you," Sparano said. "It might be me patting you on your back. It might be me having to make my point very clear to you vocally or it might be me throwing a dig at you.

"But one way or another you're going to know coach Sparano was by, and he said something to me."

Some Dolphins seem to be getting - and responding to - the message.

During a recent visit back home in New Haven, Sparano kept receiving e-mails and text messages on his Blackberry from players just checking in, high-tech communication that impressed his longtime buddy.

"Tony wasn't one of those guys that was very electronically touched," said Mortali, who's an assistant coach at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. "It's funny now, players e-mailing and texting, just keeping in touch with him.

"It's kind of neat."

But becoming a member of Sparano's football family isn't filled with too many warm-and-fuzzy moments.

He let the Dolphins know that immediately during the most grueling off-season conditioning program many of them had ever endured. And once they hit the field for mini-camps and other drills, players never had to wonder where they stood with their new head coach.

"He's about as honest as a heart attack," said Pete Rossomando, who played and coached under Sparano at New Haven, where he now is head coach. "He'd just bring in a kid and say, 'You're not good enough to play here.' Most coaches would dance around that. He's not like that.

"If you're a coach and you're not doing your job, he's going to tell you right up front. There is no fluff with him. That's what I love about him."

Some Dolphins aren't sure what to think just yet. Parcells and Co. tore up the roster from last season's 1-15 team, adding nearly 50 new faces and creating an edginess among players that didn't exist when pre-season camp opened last year under coach Cam Cameron.

"He's hard. He laid it on the line with them," said Mortali, 54, an assistant coach at New Haven when Sparano was a center on the team. "He's going to make them accountable for their actions on and off the field.

"That's why there's some nervousness with some of those guys."

Sparano knows all about expectations. As the only son and the oldest of three children, he was expected to set an example.

"Being the only boy in the family puts a little pressure on you to do the right thing and lead your younger sisters," Mortali said.

A solid student and multi-sport athlete, Sparano usually pleased his parents. But when he didn't, they let him know - especially his mother, Marie.

"His mom is tough. She's a very, very tough woman," said Rossomando, 37, a family friend for 19 years. "When discipline needed to be dealt out in that family, she's the one who dealt it out.

"I think Tony got the best of both ends."

Jeanette Sparano remembers how her in-laws used to feed their son's entire high school football team once a week. Many times, Marie Sparano, who waited tables at a pizza parlor and was a crossing guard, washed the players' uniforms because the school couldn't afford to.

"They were right in the thick of things," Jeanette said of the elder Sparanos. "They were really present and really involved.

"I remember they were at everything for their girls and Tony. They even came for stuff for me."

Sparano family gatherings were a highlight of Tony's upbringing, with more than 20 people gathering around the table, and even more cramming in for a Sunday feast.

Sundays began with Sparano and his grandfather fishing the Long Island Sound and bringing home their catch for dinner.

"Every Sunday there was no question where we were going to be," Sparano said. "We'd be out in the yard having a good ol' time."

Starting this fall, Sundays will have a different feel for the Sparano family.

But those who know Tony Sparano best say the demands and rewards of NFL coaching haven't changed the essence of a man who made $2,500 a year in his first job as a graduate assistant at New Haven.

Sparano, who signed a four-year, $11 million contract with the Dolphins, still prefers life's simple pleasures. A good pizza pie. A Miller Lite by the pool. A morning playing golf or fishing on a lake. Date night at the movies with Jeanette.

"His favorite time of the year is when he can get on vacation," Rossomando said. "He loves football, but that's a great time for him and his wife to relax.''

But a hard-wired guy like Sparano can break away only so far.

A fanatic for routine, Sparano knows where he has to be and what he has to do every minute of the workday. So vacations with his wife and three kids sometimes can feel like a family mini-camp.

"The kids and I always tease him because even when we're on vacation in the summer he has to have a routine," Jeanette said. "He has to have a set plan. He doesn't like to get up and wing it.

"He's a real fun guy. I don't want it to come across like he's a drill sergeant. But he likes to know what's going on."

Sparano knows what's going on now - Dolphins fans are getting pumped up for a turnaround.

And, ready or not, this 'regular guy' now is the center of attention.