Reading, writing and playing - Rochester Institute of Technology

from the Archives
1970 –1973
‘Super’ coach started with Tigers
Former RIT football head coach Tom Coughlin won his second
Super Bowl in four years Feb. 5, after his New York Giants
defeated the New England
Patriots.
Coughlin coached the RIT
football team for four seasons,
from 1970-1973, leading the
Tigers to a 16-15-2 record in
his first coaching gig.
He left RIT following the
1973 season to become the
quarterbacks coach at his alma
mater, Syracuse University.
Coughlin spent the next
seven seasons with the Orange
Tom Coughlin
before heading to Boston College,
the NFL as wide receivers
coach, back to Boston College
as head coach and then back to the NFL.
He signed with the New York Giants in 2004 to become the
team’s 17 th head coach. Coughlin won his first Super Bowl
as head coach in 2007 when the Giants beat the Patriots 17-14.
The RIT football program ended after the 1977 season but
made national news before and after the Super Bowl as the
place where Coughlin formed his coaching philosophy.
“When I see him on TV, he hasn’t changed at all,” former
RIT Tiger Mark McCabe ’75 (criminal justice) told The New
York Times. McCabe played linebacker and defensive end
for Coughlin.
“I’ll bet if the Giants heard all the things he said and did to
us, they’d think it sounded real familiar.”
The RIT football team, above, in 1971. New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin, bottom left, ran
the football program at RIT from 1970 to 1973. Below, Coughlin is second from the right.
48 | SPRING 2012