Jagodzinski in different state of mind
Jeff Jagodzinski left a lot behind when he came to Boston College.
He left the state in which he was raised, the place where he went to high school and college. He left the National Football League and the safety/anonymity that comes with being an assistant coach. He left the Green Bay Packers, who were the only show in town.
Jagodzinski left home. He packed up his wife and five kids and moved to Greater Boston, where everybody knows your name only if you happen to work for the Red Sox. He signed on as the 33d head coach in the history of BC football and a week from tomorrow he'll stalk the Alumni Stadium sideline in the home opener against Atlantic Coast Conference rival Wake Forest.
He goes into this job with eyes wide open. He makes no attempt to equate football with nuclear physics and said he'll never sleep in his office or take the job home.
"I'm not going to let this job ruin me," said the 43-year-old former offensive coordinator of the Packers. "That can happen if you get caught up in the wins and losses. When I go home, whether we've won or lost, my 6-year-old daughter is still going to want me to do a puzzle with her."
The BC football job has evolved significantly in recent years. Under Tom O'Brien, the Eagles experienced eight straight winning seasons and went to eight consecutive bowl games. In those eight seasons, BC's record ranged from 7-5 to 10-3, players were delivered to the NFL, and most of the players graduated.
Meanwhile, the school changed, and we're not talking about the ever-expanding physical plant. While some of you were not looking, Boston College became a white-hot destination for 12th-graders across the land. In the old days, some of us thought of BC as a safety school for kids from Catholic Memorial and Xaverian. You signed up for BC like you'd sign up for driver's ed. No more. Boston College today gets more than 25,000 applicants for a freshman class of about 2,200. It really is the Notre Dame of the East, one of four ACC schools ranked in the nation's top 40 colleges by US News & World Report for 2008.
The head football job has changed, too. Despite recent success, alums are restless. They want better bowls. Seven straight postseason wins sounds good, but the double-, and triple-Eagles have had just about enough Meineke, Jeep Eagle, and Continental Tire bowls. Enough with the car parts. BC boosters are hungry for something that grows naturally -- like Cotton, Sugar, Peach, or Orange.
There's a trick to this, of course. BC has a lot to offer in academics, social life, access to a great city, professional sports teams, and overall student-body happiness. (When's the last time you met a BC kid who didn't love the place? Disclosure: the Globe does not own 17 percent of BC, but my son goes there.) But Chestnut Hill is not (thank God) Clemson, S.C., or Morgantown, W.Va. Ours is never going to be a yahoo college football town and the BC admissions department is still going to say no to some kids who might be Heisman candidates. This is why Jagodzinski knows enough not to promise a top-10 program or a national championship.
"This is a very solid program," Jagodzinski said. "In the past few years they've been a game away from taking the next step. The kids that are seniors this year, I think 17 of the 24 have already graduated. So I've got an older team that's been there before. They want to try to get this thing over the hump. Plus, I think if you want to be consistent that way, I think you have to outrecruit what you have. You've got to keep increasing your talent level. Good players make good coaches."
The Eagles play five of their first six games at home, then go to Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Maryland, and Clemson in a period of five weeks.
"Having the home games early is good because if you can get off to a fast start and get some momentum and confidence, that's a big plus. Everyone says this is a tough schedule, well it's been a tough schedule the last nine years."
He knows the BC situation because he was in Boston for two years as offensive coordinator under O'Brien in 1997-98. He was calling the plays when Mike Cloud failed to score on four straight runs near the goal line in a famous loss to Notre Dame in 1998. ("I hate that formation and I'll never use it again," he said, remembering the bitter 31-26 loss.) Being at The Heights in the late 1990s, he also had a close view of Pete Carroll going down in flames with the Patriots ("that was brutal," Jagodzinski said).
"You have to have relatively thick skin because you're going to hear things. It doesn't matter what you're doing or how you're doing it, there's always going to be some naysayers that know better. But until you sit in that chair and you're the one pulling the strings, you have no idea."
After leaving The Heights, Jagodzinski went to the pros, working for the Packers and Falcons. In Atlanta in 2005 he was in charge of the people blocking for Michael Vick, but he knew nothing of the quarterback's off-field activities.
"I never saw that side of him," said Jagodzinski. "When I was at East Carolina, we were recruiting a guy at his school and the coach introduced me to a ninth-grader and said, 'This one will be the best one.' It was Michael. I said to him, 'You are a skinny thing. You better start eating.' He always remembered that."
Jagodzinski said BC is the only job that could have lured him out of professional football, but he knows the Eagles will never be as important here as the Packers are in Green Bay. Not even close.
"It doesn't bother me that we're not the biggest show in town," he said. "Actually, it's probably a lot better."
He is not a disciple of the Dick Vermeil School of 24-hour workdays/Football Is Life.
"There are no medals here for who can stay at the office the longest," said Jagodzinski. "I'm not into that. The guys that brag about working till 2 in the morning, in my opinion, they're just not smart enough. I'm not going to sacrifice that for my family. I've done all of that I want to do. The guys at NASA sending rockets to the moon don't sleep in their office.
"It's not a complicated game. Guys make it a lot more complicated than what it is. I know this, there's 11 on each side and the field is 100 yards long."
The season starts a week from tomorrow. And all Jagodzinski is being asked to do is finish better than 10-3, do it with Chaucer scholars and bio pre-meds, and take the Eagles to a bowl not affiliated with mufflers, tires, or engine oil. Sounds simple enough.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at dshaughnessy@globe.com. 
