'Coach Jags' Makes Sure Eagles Are Right in Tune

JoLonn Dunbar huddled in a meeting room with his Boston College teammates last December, and none of them knew what to think or expect. Their coach was suddenly gone, replaced by the man about to walk through the door. He had a funny name and he had coached Brett Favre for a few years. They didn't know much else about Jeff Jagodzinski.

"He lit the room on fire," said Dunbar, a senior linebacker. "It was a point in time where we were all lost in a sense. He brought life back in."

Had Dunbar known more about his new coach -- how Jagodzinski started as a Division III fullback, how he drove through several states for his first job -- nothing about that first encounter would have surprised him. When the No. 12 Eagles play No. 6 Virginia Tech on Saturday in Jacksonville for the ACC championship, Jagodzinski will reach the latest peak in a career that began more than 20 years ago at Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Jagodzinski, 44, worked as an assistant until last winter, when he switched from the Green Bay Packers' offensive coordinator to replacing Tom O'Brien at "probably the only [college] I would have left the NFL for." He has brought BC to the brink of its first Bowl Championship Series appearance while dancing on the sideline like a body-painted fan and cracking jokes with his players, hallmarks of his demeanor since the beginning.

"Even when I catch a press conference now, he's got that smirk and smile, that joke that he's saying," said Lance Leipold, who played quarterback with Jagodzinski at Whitewater. "The one thing you learn when you come from Division III, you don't take anything for granted. You see him doing a jig on the sidelines, that's the love of the game."

After his playing career ended, Jagodzinski coached running backs under Bob Berezowitz, his coach at Whitewater. Playing fullback, he had been "a glorified guard," Berezowitz said, so he recommended Jagodzinski become an offensive line coach. Jagodzinski sent 125 application letters to schools across the country. His best offer came from Northern Illinois, an unpaid graduate assistant position for the spring only.

After the spring, he got a call from a friend: Louisiana State had a graduate assistant opening. Jagodzinski loaded golf clubs and a suitcase into a van and drove 15 hours from West Allis, the blue-collar Milwaukee suburb where he grew up, to Baton Rouge. Jagodzinski never even called Mike Archer, the LSU coach.

"If nothing else, he'd get in a few rounds of golf," said Leipold, who is now Whitewater's coach. "Make a trip out of it."

When Jagodzinski arrived, unannounced, an LSU secretary told him he'd have to wait to speak with Archer. Jagodzinski sat there for eight hours until, finally, Archer emerged from his office.

"Any guy who would wait eight hours must really want this job," Archer told him.

Jagodzinski was hired. He stayed at LSU for two seasons before his first major break, coaching offensive line at East Carolina. He stayed at ECU for seven years, the final four under Steve Logan, who is now Jagodzinski's offensive coordinator. He hopped to BC to the Packers to the Falcons and back to the Packers, remaining more existential than ambitious about his head coaching prospects.

"You just do the best job you can, and if opportunity comes along, you just take advantage," Jagodzinski said. "You just work and be happy with what you've got. If you work hard, those opportunities will end up coming to you."