Projo Sports Blog

By Omar Kelly
South Florida Sun Sentinel

DAVIE, Fla. - The talk is tough.

The Northeast slang is thick.

The attitude oozes machismo.

If you spotted Tony Sparano III out about town, it would be quite understandable to mistake him for a longshoreman instead of the eighth coach of the Dolphins.

Sparano is stocky, a man's man. A guy you'd think doesn't make a habit of shedding tears often. But that would be assuming too much.

Tears fall from his face all the time, and Sparano can't help it. His eyes are extremely sensitive to light because of an accident he had with a deep fryer at a restaurant he worked at as a teenager.

Splashing hot grease burned his eyes, leaving him without vision for nearly a month. And 31 years later, the accident's effects are still present.

His eyes water regularly, and when they start running, so does his nose.

"When it starts, I become a mess," the 46-year-old confesses.

That's why Sparano usually wears dark sunglasses well into the evening, inside and outside.

It also explains why the lights in his office are usually off, leaving his home away from home in Davie almost pitch black day and night. The only light in the room is provided by what creeps in between the blinds, and the large flat-screen television he uses to break down film.

Coincidentally, Sparano is the man Dolphins czar Bill Parcells handpicked to usher the Dolphins out of the franchise's darkest period.

It's a good thing Sparano's sight hasn't distorted his vision for the Dolphins. Nor has it stopped this career offensive line coach's army of supporters from believing his detail-oriented ways, straight-talking style and comfort with confrontation will enable South Florida's beloved franchise to once again regain its bite following last year's disastrous 1-15 season.

"He is prepared very well for this spot, but there will be some learning curves," said New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton, who worked alongside Sparano in Dallas and would have hired him as the Saints' offensive coordinator in 2006 if Parcells hadn't blocked the promotion.

Two years later, Parcells tabbed Sparano as the replacement for a fired Cam Cameron and handed him a roster full of retreads and disappointments, challenging him to mold them into a winner.

"He's seen this process and has been taught very well," Payton said. "Tony will be judicious in his decision-making. He won't be afraid to ask for advice and help. The reason he'll do well is because the players will trust what he's telling them, and they will buy into it."

It's hard not to buy into what Sparano's selling, considering his honesty and how well he relates to players.

What's in a name?

Whenever Anthony Sparano Jr. goes to his neighborhood barbershop in New Haven, Conn., or is just gallivanting around town at his regular haunts, his friends usually give him a "Do you know who this is?" introduction.

He's a Navy veteran, a working class Italian-American who pushed carts, drove trucks and worked maintenance his entire life until he retired in 2002.

He's also the father of the man charged with the turnaround of the Dolphins franchise.
His son, the third generation of Anthony Joseph Sparano, happens to be the talk of New Haven these days because he's the local kid who made it to the top by busting his hump at every stop.

"If my dad were alive today he would have been so proud," Tony Jr. said.

"This means everything to us. Our name is known around the world because of what Tony has accomplished and will accomplish.

"Right now we're on cloud nine," Tony Jr. said, referring to himself and his wife, Marie, who raised Sparano and his two younger sisters in a blue-collar Irish and Italian neighborhood.

"But are we surprised? Not at all."

His son had always been a person who needed order. Even from when he was young.
His family occasionally recalls a time when a young Sparano was at his uncle Peter Sparano's house playing with a bag of marbles.

Instead of rolling them around the floor like most kids his age, Sparano spent his play time organizing the marbles by color, over and over and over again.

His room was always meticulously organized and clean. The notes he took in school were thorough.

"Everything had to be just so with Tony," said his father, who is 68.

He's still that way. He makes at least two lists of things to do per day - one for the morning and one for the afternoon. And he rarely leaves the office without making sure most of the things on his agenda are checked off.

Sparano says it's that meticulous nature that got him where he is today.

The first step

The first step to getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.

Those are the words typed in big bold letters on a sheet of paper Sparano had placed in every Dolphin player's locker during the exhibition season.

It's his rallying cry for the team's rebuilding efforts.

It's also the motivational saying that drove him during his trying start as a college assistant.

It served him well in 1985 when coach Larry McElreavy took most of his University of New Haven staff with him to his new job as Columbia's coach but left a young upstart named Sparano behind.

Sparano pressed on. He caught Chris Palmer's attention when New Haven's newly hired coach joined the football program later that spring.

Palmer watched how Sparano, then a low-level assistant, effortlessly ran every aspect of the coachless squad's program, from scheduling workouts and study hall hours to keeping up with recruiting.

Palmer said he quickly concluded he needed to retain the hungry and organized assistant on his staff.

"It was easy to see he had all the ingredients needed for the makeup of a good head coach," said Palmer, who is now the quarterbacks coach for the New York Giants.

Palmer liked Sparano so much he brought him along at every one of his college coaching stops, and leaned on him heavily.

However, when Palmer became the coach of the expansion Browns, he tried to talk Sparano out of accompanying him to the NFL.

Palmer knew the kind of grinder NFL coaches and their families go through to get to the top, and didn't want that for Jeannette, Sparano's wife, and their three children: Tony and Andrew, who both play football at the University of Albany, and daughter Ryan Leigh.

He figured Sparano, who had recently led his alma mater New Haven to the Division II championships, had a good thing going and was on the fast track to becoming a coach at a major college program.

Why bother starting from the bottom in the NFL?

What Palmer never factored in was that Sparano's lifelong goal was becoming a coach at the sport's highest level, and he desperately wanted in.

"As a coach he wanted me. But as a friend he didn't want me in the NFL," said Sparano, who became Palmer's offensive quality control coach in 1999, then was promoted to Cleveland's offensive line coach a year later.

"In hindsight, he was actually correct because when I first came into the league I got fired three times in four years," said Sparano, who finally cashed in, signing a four-year contract worth $11 million with the Dolphins. "But even in the hard times I never regretted it one bit."

And Palmer suspects patient Dolphins fans won't regret it either.

"He has a vision," Palmer said. "He always has a plan, and no matter what he's facing he'll eventually find a way to execute that plan."

 Tags  Bill Parcells Miami Dolphins Tony Sparano

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