by Kris Dufour, Sports Information Assistant

Jerome Rizzo '87

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Since graduating from Williams College in June of 1987, Jerome Rizzo has taught school, coached with the likes of Bruce Snyder and Steve Marinucci, flown F-18 fighter jets, fought in the Iraq war, and currently has legendary Eph coach Renzie Lamb living in the basement of his home.

“It hasn’t been the usual path for a kid from Williams,” he laughed.

Currently the head coach of the sprint football team at the Naval Academy, Rizzo spent the summers between his sophomore and junior and junior and senior years at Williams living in the basement of then football and lacrosse coach Lamb.

Two years ago, after his retirement at Williams, Lamb joined Rizzo’s staff at Navy. This summer, Rizzo welcomed him into his basement.

“And my basement is a lot nicer than his was,” Rizzo joked. “It feels like life has come full-circle. I never paid Renzie rent for the two summers I lived in his basement, so I’m making it up to him.”

While at Williams, Rizzo majored in economics and played defensive back for the Ephs, starting every game of his final three seasons. His position coach was another Williams legend, Dick Farley, who was an assistant to then head coach Bob Odell.

“I just loved playing at Williams,” he said. “All I cared about was passing my classes and playing football. I got there a little early though, before coach Farley took over. We always played good defense and playing for him was always interesting.”

Farley, of course, went on to become the all-time winningest coach in Williams history, constructing the only five perfect seasons in the program’s history, the first of which came in 1989.

“His intensity level was a shock at first,” Rizzo recalled. “As a freshman, I remember thinking, 'who is this lunatic and why is he yelling at me,' but you got used to it. The one thing that stood out about him was we were never surprised by what the other team did. He got you so ready that by Saturday, you were like, 'I’ve seen this before every day in practice this week.”

Once his playing days were over, Rizzo discovered that the Wall Street type business job he had been schooled for was not to his liking. He taught at the DelBarton School in New Jersey and helped coach the football team. He then enrolled at the University of California-Berkley, where he was a graduate assistant coach on a football staff that included Snyder (former Kansas State and Arizona State head coach), Marinucci (head coach of the Detroit Lions) and several other coaches who now make their living in the National Football League as assistants.

He also earned his masters degree in education.

“The staff at California was so phenomenal that I learned so much — it was like taking a graduate level course out on the field.”

Still, Rizzo had not found his path. He submitted an application to become a marine and was accepted into the program for the fall of 1991. He trained, passed boot camp, and became a fighter pilot flying F-18s.

Rizzo said he wanted to become a marine simply because it was something he had always wanted, mainly because he had several uncles and cousins who had joined the corps.

“I consider the Marine Corps like being part of a great team,” he said. “There is a lot of pride, a lot of tradition. (In combat) you’re sort of focused at the job at hand. Your biggest concern is to do your job because you don’t want to see anybody get hurt because you screwed up.”

Though at Navy, Rizzo is still an active Marine today. But after serving his country in places like Kosovo and Iraq (the current war’s first three months), a medical ailment forced him to stop flying fighter planes. He was at the Top Gun aviation school when he found out that sorrowful news, but Rizzo made the most of the situation when he was hooked up with his current coaching position at Navy despite having not coached for 12 years.

“Obviously, I wish I could have done it (flying) a little bit longer,” Rizzo said. “But I like to look at it this way: At least I was able to do something a lot of guys only get to dream about doing for a little while.”

Sprint football is played exactly like regular college football except that no player can weigh more than 172 pounds. The Collegiate Sprint Football League was originally formed in 1934 by University of Pennsylvania President Thomas Sovereign Gates.

The league originally consisted of seven teams, but today has been cut to five: Navy, Army, Penn, Princeton and Cornell. Last year, Rizzo’s squad completed its season with a 27-10 victory over Army in the CSFL Championship game. Rizzo currently has 22 wins, the second most by any coach in the Navy sprint program.

“It’s been great,” said Rizzo, now in his fourth season. “The guys I am coaching are so coachable and work so hard, how can you not? The harder you work these guys, the more they like it.”

Rizzo, now a Major, is up for a promotion after the season and has the chance to be named a Lieutenant Colonel. That likely would take him away from coaching once again. However, if that doesn’t work out, he plans on staying put or finding a coaching job outside the military.

Before that though, he has another challenge: Getting through another undefeated season. Last week, his Navy team won the Pride Bowl XXVII against Army, 33-3, to improve to 3-0-0 on the season.

He has been part of three of the classic rivalries in American football, as a player in the Williams-Amherst rivalry, as an assistant coach in the Stanford-Cal rivalry and as a head coach in the Army-Navy rivalry.

“I’ve been lucky,” he said. “But more than that, I’m just thankful I had the opportunity to do this (coaching) again.”