[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 30 (Tuesday, March 11, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2150-S2151]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            CARM LOUIS COZZA

 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, the State of Connecticut, sports 
fans, and alumni of Yale University said goodbye to a true national 
coaching legend when Carm Cozza stepped down as coach of the Yale 
University football team last fall.
  Carm was Yale's head coach for 32 years, winning a school-record 179 
games and coaching 1,300 players. He led the Elis to 10 Ivy League 
championships and coached future National Football League stars like 
Calvin Hill, who went on to win a championship with the Dallas Cowboys 
in the 1970's and Gary Fencik, a member of the Super Bowl XX champion 
Chicago Bears. He is a Connecticut and American coaching icon.
  ``I think Cozza epitomizes the champion that all of us try to be, 
that we strive to be,'' said Fencik, an All-American in 1975, in a 
recent interview with the New Haven Register.
  ``You learn a lot more about a man under adversity and Carm had 
tremendous adversity that first year. My first year we didn't even have 
a winning record and he treated that season the same as the next two 
when we won league titles,'' said Hill in the same story.
  Cozza began his coaching career at Yale at a time when Ivy League 
football was truly top-notch college football. But as the prestige of 
Ivy League football faded, and Division I-AA football slipped in 
general, Carm stayed at Yale. He was offered jobs at the University of 
Virginia and Princeton, but elected to stay in Connecticut. And we're 
grateful for that, because he's touched the lives of so many Ivy League 
athletes and so many other people in our State. A true testament of how 
successful Cozza's former players have become is in the numbers--Seven 
NCAA post-graduate scholarship winners, seven GTE /CoSIDA District I 
academic All-Americans, five National Football Foundation Hall of Fame 
Scholar-Athletes, and five Rhodes Scholars. These numbers make Cozza 
the proudest and the best of leaders.

[[Page S2151]]

  His coaches have also gone on to bigger and better positions. Eleven 
of his assistant coaches became head coaches on the college level. 
Included on the list are Buddy Amendola, who led Central Connecticut 
State University, Jim Root--William & Mary--Bill Mallory--Indiana--Bill 
Narduzzi--Youngstown State.
  Cozza's football coaching career commenced at the high school level 
at Gilmour Academy and Collinwood High, both in Ohio, before he became 
the head freshman coach at Miami in 1956. Five seasons later, he joined 
the varsity as an assistant. He left Miami in 1963 to join John Pont's 
staff at Yale and after Pont resigned to become head coach at Indiana, 
Cozza became the Bulldogs' new head coach.
  The lives he touched--let's just say they all remember. They all are 
grateful. At a farewell dinner last fall, all but one of his captains 
came back to pay tribute. The only one who didn't appear was on 
business and couldn't get away. Each shared a story about him.
  Sending written tributes, congratulating the coach on an incredible 
career, were President Clinton and former Presidents Bush and Ford. 
Gov. John Rowland proclaimed the day he coached his final game Carm 
Cozza Day and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano did the same for the city.
  Carmen Louis Cozza was born on June 10, 1930, in Parma, OH. He earned 
11 varsity letters in football, basketball, track, and baseball, while 
serving as class president his last 3 years, at Parma High and was 
inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 1982. Cozza and his wife, 
the former Jean Annable, reside in Orange, not far from his beloved 
Yale.
  We'll all miss this living legend's presence on the football field. 
But his presence in our hearts and the memories of his great career 
will live on.

                          ____________________