Why Chiefs’ Steve Spagnuolo turned down Harvard grad school, leading to all else since
When the two by-then close friends were reunited as defensive position coaches at Bowling Green in 1996, Steve Spagnuolo went through his vast and meticulous archives to find and share an old correspondence from Steve Telander.
“Spags keeps records of everything,” Telander said with a laugh by telephone on Thursday. “Every meeting. Everything.”
Including, as it happened, the initial rejection letter Telander had sent him just as Spagnuolo was trying to start his coaching career as a grad assistant at the University of Massachusetts in 1981 while pursuing a master’s degree in sports management.
“‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” Telander remembered saying before Spagnuolo read the letter aloud much to the amusement of each in the moment and, really, ever since.
In theory, anyway, that letter could have been the best thing that ever happened to Spagnuolo.
Because the only other school to which he’d applied as he sought a grad assistantship coaching was the Harvard Graduate School of Education with an eye towards law school and possibly becoming a sports agent if coaching didn’t take.
“I wanted to keep both avenues open,” Spagnuolo said Wednesday in an interview with The Star as the Chiefs prepared to play Sunday at New England. “I wanted to have that education in case I wanted to go that way.”
So about everything and everyone and all logic was pointing him to Harvard, including, indirectly, Telander, who had offered him only an opportunity to volunteer at UMass.
As his Springfield College coach Howard Vandersea told Spagnuolo that spring, “‘Listen, there’s not even a decision. You’re going to Harvard. How could you not go to Harvard?’”
Perhaps he would have if Harvard coach Joe Restic didn’t essentially defer a GA spot for him to the next year. And maybe he would have gone on to law school or maybe kept coaching.
But when the original recipient of the UMass grad assistantship went another direction, Telander called back Spagnuolo with an offer to coach at the thriving Division I-AA program that Spagnuolo found irresistible.
And that launched a career and a friendship that set in motion some fascinating dynamics still playing out today on the Chiefs coaching staff.
The coaching business, and maybe yours, too, is full of these kinds of tales. But safe to say that few have the sorts of tentacles that lead to so much success.
Meanwhile, this isn’t just a six degrees of separation exercise but a reminder of the life pivot points that can present themselves in mysterious or curious ways at any given time.
If you’re lucky, you can probably think of a few of those turns in your own life that are well worth appreciating.
“People come into your life … You never know,” Telander said, later adding, “Needless to say, I’m a big Kansas City Chiefs fan.”
With ample reason.
And maybe that should be vice versa, too.
Because Telander, a former Mizzou assistant to Bob Stull who has been in the insurance business for some 30 years now, is improbably at the epicenter of what came to be.
“That’s the truth,” Spagnuolo said. “When you connect the dots, it’s because of ‘Tee.’ ”
Let’s start with Spagnuolo eventually meeting Andy Reid because of Telander, who went with Stull from UMass to Texas-El Paso in 1985. Joining the staff at UTEP as a GA was Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub, Chiefs linebackers coach Ken Flajole and future NFL head coach Dirk Koetter — who had worked with Reid on a three-man staff at San Francisco State and urged Stull to hire him from Northern Arizona.
By then, Spagnuolo and Telander were such good friends that Spagnuolo in his down time was a frequent visitor to El Paso … and later to Columbia when the staff moved to MU.
(Oh, and just for good measure on all these dots, it’s worth noting that Telander coached Chiefs defensive line coach Joe Cullen at UMass and that former Mizzou assistant Andy Hill is a special teams assistant to Toub — who had gone to UMass before transferring to UTEP.)
In some form or another, you can trace all this back to the twist of fate that led to Telander calling back Spagnuolo — who calls Telander his “original glue” to Reid.
That ultimately led to Spagnuolo getting his first fulltime NFL job with Reid in 1999 in Philadelphia. He rose through the coaching ranks to unfurl the masterpiece of his Giants’ defense in their 17-14 victory over the previously undefeated Patriots in Super Bowl XLII and later became head coach of the St. Louis Rams.
The glue also was what later made Spagnuolo the man to whom Reid turned after the Chiefs fired Bob Sutton following the 2018 season. Since then, he’s been essential to the Chiefs three Super Bowl appearances and two triumphs in the last four seasons and appears this season to have assembled his best Kansas City defense.
With all that, it’s funny how the Harvard talk between Spagnuolo and Telander has been reframed with time.
For decades grinding his way up through the business, perhaps up to the time he took over the Rams in 2009, Spagnuolo used to joke with Telander, “You know how much money you cost me over the years?” for finally offering the assistantship at UMass.
“Now,” Telander says, laughing, “I come back and say, ‘You know how much I made you?’”
Whatever the case, Telander said, “The rest is history.”
And an abundant one at that: Because one way or another Telander and the callback likely changed the trajectory of Spagnuolo’s career and life with ripples into a Chiefs staff that has created the most prosperous time in franchise history.
