R.I.P. Foge Fazio

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09336/1018049-100.stm

 

Marino loved him.

 

One of the coolest names ever.

 

RIP, but he could have done better job with Pitt football.

I believe Fazio was shortened by his parents. It was originally a huge, Italian name.

 

I saw Foge last year at the Pitt-Cincinnati game. I couldn't help but say hello even though he wouldn't have remembered me. I covered another team during Foge's days at Pitt, but I was around him some and he was one of the few genuinely likable football coaches I came across. The hurried obit doesn't do Foge's career justice. He was a sterling defensive coordinator at Pitt, which is how he came to be head coach in the first place. And he later had a great deal of success as an NFL assistant.
I'm very sad to hear he's gone. Too young, for certain.

 

Longer obit:
http://post-gazette.com/pg/09337/1018128-122.stm

 

Foge was a great guy.
I had the pleasure of being around him a bunch.
The one I'll remember most is the last time.
Every year since he's been Pitt's coach, Dave Wannstedt gives a nod to when covering college football was fun, and has one of these "let's invite some of the local media guys to a restaurant, have a food spread, an open bar, shoot the breeze and everything is off the record" kind of deals.
It happens at the end of camp, generally.
Well, this past year, Foge, Beano Cook, Wannstedt and Dick Groat were all just sitting at the same round table and spinning stories and me and a couple other guys were sitting there, listening....mesmerized.
Those are the kind of moments you only get when you work in this profession.