Coaches Sean McDonnell and Rick Santos watch the action in UNH's final game of the season against Maine. (Jeremy Gasowski photo)
Insider Report: Changing of The Guard
12/8/2021 1:00:00 PM | Football, UNH Insider
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'It's Been A Good Run, Man:' Coach Mac Hands Reins to Santos, His Star QB
By: Allen Lessels
DURHAM, N.H. – The University of New Hampshire football season ended with a loss to archrival Maine on Saturday, Nov. 20.
Action unfolded quicker than a Sean McDonnell-Chip Kelly-led offensive attack with the tradition-rich program in the 17 days after that.
Two days after the season ended, Marty Scarano, UNH's director of athletics since the summer of 2000, announced he is stepping down before the next season rolls around.
Nine days later, head football coach McDonnell followed suit. McDonnell arrived on campus from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., as a freshman football player in 1975. He returned to the school 30 years ago as an assistant and as the head football coach since 1999 guided the Wildcats to unprecedented heights.
It was time, McDonnell said, to pass the reins to the next generation of leaders.
Tuesday, Scarano introduced Rick Santos (Ricky when he was a player), one of the most decorated athletes in the history of the school, as the next Wildcat head coach.
No surprise there. Santos was brought back for a second stint as an assistant coach to McDonnell prior to the 2019 season with the title of associate head coach and the idea that he would one day take over for the man who not only was his mentor but steered him into college coaching in the first place.
Scarano has no doubt Santos will continue a line of success that sees him as just the third UNH head coach in the last half a century. College Football Hall of Famer Bill Bowes led the program for 27 years and gave way to his mentee, McDonnell, who covered the next 23.
One reason for Scarano's optimism is that Santos has already had a trial run in the job: He was only several months back at UNH as the associate head coach when McDonnell took a medical leave of absence just before the 2019 season opener to battle cancer. Santos took over as interim head coach for the season.
"I feel uber-confident because of the year Ricky got thrown into the fire," Scarano said. "Do I think Ricky's the right guy? Absolutely. Do I think Ricky's going to be very successful? Absolutely."
That 2019 season plays into his thinking.
"We were 6-5, one play away from seven wins," Scarano said. "You could say three plays away from eight wins. And we were going to the FCS playoffs. I think because of that season, Ricky will be much better right off the jump now. Hopefully in a couple or three years from now, we're in the playoffs and people go back and look at that lineage and go, 'Wow. Those three guys in the last half century.'" Rick Santos is just the 3rd head coach in the last 49 years of the Wildcat football program
Mac and Marty
Times were tough. The future looked dicey. At best.
The Wildcats struggled early in McDonnell's time as head coach and 2003, his fifth year, was not off to a good start.
The heat was on.
"We had losing seasons four of my first five years here," McDonnell said. "Nobody was comfortable with that. Nobody understood that. That wasn't the norm around here. It was uncharted territory for everybody.
"There was stuff in the papers like, 'We'll evaluate it after the year," McDonnell said, with a chuckle. "You know what that means."
Delaware, a national power at UNH's level of play, was undefeated and coming to town to play in Cowell Stadium on Oct. 11.
The Wildcats gave the Blue Hens all they wanted and more and but for a just-missed and disputed field goal in the closing seconds – players on the field swore the ball that went above the uprights was inside them, not out – would have won a game they instead lost, 22-21.
The next morning, McDonnell was outside his house in Durham raking when Scarano stopped by.
Scarano, too, had been feeling the heat.
What to do with the coach who was struggling and nearing the end of his contract? What to do with football overall?
A reporter from the New Hampshire Union Leader, the state's only daily newspaper, had been in his office around that time and asked this question: "Was UNH football still relevant?"
The query riled up the AD and he answered emphatically: "Yes!"
Scarano and McDonnell and the Wildcats – with the help of a talented cast of characters, including a freelancing, take-no-prisoners kid who that same season was giving the first-team defense fits with his play at quarterback on the scout team – were about to prove it.
In dramatic and decisive fashion.
Scarano had been researching and checking in with players. Jon Hart, a leader on the team, came unsolicited to his office and said: "I just want you to know most of us in that locker room would jump off a cliff if Coach Mac asked us to, that's how much we align with him."
The AD had done his homework and made his decision. He came by the house that Sunday to see how McDonnell was doing and to assure McDonnell that things were going to be OK. And that he was going to extend the coach's contract.
The Wildcats won three of their last four games that year, beating Maine in the finale to take back the Brice-Cowell Musket.
Delaware. Again
Ironically, Delaware was up next.
The Blue Hens had moved on from that victory over UNH in 2003 to win the NCAA Division I-AA title.
The Wildcats opened the 2004 season with a game at Delaware. The Blue Hens, as usual, drew a large crowd and they were celebrating a special occasion: the unveiling of the championship banner.
McDonnell's team put a serious damper on the festivities.
Rick Santos, the scout team quarterback from the year before, had climbed from fourth to the backup spot on the depth chart. He entered the game in the second quarter when starter Mike Granieri left with an injury.
History happened.
UNH football relevant? Heck, yeah.
The Wildcats knocked off Delaware that day and the next week went to Rutgers and Santos threw five touchdown passes – two of them to a sophomore named David Ball – and McDonnell's team was off and running and passing.
UNH went 9-2 in the regular season. The players – guys like Corey Graham and Aaron Thomas and George Peterson who were leading the defense while Santos and Ball and R.J. Harvey and others paced the offense - gathered with their coaches in the locker room on the day after ending the regular season with a 50-36 win at Maine.
There, they watched an NCAA Selection Show tell then they were headed to Georgia Southern to play in the first round of the I-AA – now called FCS - tournament.
Georgia Southern! One of the few programs that had a higher profile than Delaware and had won six national titles, including back-to-back crowns in 1999-2000.
McDonnell calls that game, that week, the most memorable of many memorable moments in his career. The Wildcats stayed in Savannah, Ga., for their first playoff appearance in decade.
"It was like a Bowl game," he said. "The kids were like . . . This is unbelievable. They didn't say much. But you could see it in their eyes. You could see it in the bounce in their step. Jon Williams sitting in Santa Claus' lap. Going outside, seeing the boat parade going up and down the river."
The team bused into Statesboro on Saturday morning and proceeded to pull off a stunner.
Justin Wright knocked a player out cold with a hit on the opening kickoff and the tone was set.
R.J. Harvey scored the winning touchdown late on a 52-yard run.
"He outruns everybody," McDonnell said. "We knew he was that fast, but none of those people had any idea that a kid from New Hampshire was going to outrun everybody."
The Wildcats made a statement that day, McDonnell said. New Hampshire was going to come to play. The New Hampshire kids were going to play tough, hardnosed football. They were going to be a tough out.
Yes, New Hampshire football was relevant.
Sean McDonnell recruited and molded coaches and players who made sure of that.
"It was an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to play for coach Mac at UNH. His legacy leadership, toughness, and success are that of legends. Love you, coach! Thank you for everything!," wrote George Peterson, in one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of tributes to the coach on social media when the news of his retirement broke. Peterson was one of the defensive standouts on the 2004 team and is now the head coach at Chelmsford High School in Massachusetts.
A Remarkable Run
Ball and Santos, fitting nicely into the innovative offensive attacks drawn up by Chip Kelly – who had the green light from McDonnell to let loose the creative juices – set record after record and Graham and others held up the defensive end of things.
Santos led the Wildcats to the FCS playoffs in each of his four years as quarterback. Kelly left for the University of Oregon after Santos' junior year and has made his name leading offenses and teams at the highest level of college and in the NFL since and now is the head coach at UCLA.
McDonnell and his staff built off those early years and put together a tremendous string of making the FCS tournament 14 straight years through 2017, establishing UNH among the elite teams in the country.
Santos vowed in his introductory press conference that the Wildcats will be back competing for playoff berths and a national championship.
Scarano, who loves being close to the action and spends his football Saturdays stalking the sidelines, is counting on it.
This is one of his favorite stories involving Rick Santos the player.
It was his senior year in 2007 and the Wildcats snuck into the playoffs and as a reward they get to play at No. 1 Northern Iowa with its 11-0 record.
Chad Kackert scored on a 94-yard kickoff return and Santos threw a couple of touchdown passes to Scott Sicko and the Wildcats hung around, but it's getting late and they trail 31-28 when they get the ball back with just under three and a half minutes to play.
"It was chaos on the sidelines," Scarano said. "The fans were right on top of you, screaming and yelling and they were vile. Ricky called everyone together on the sidelines and said, we're going to march right down the field and we're going to go ahead and win this ballgame."
Santos marched them down the field and they scored when Kackert broke loose for a 15-yard run.
The unfortunate part was they left just a little too much time on the clock and Northern Iowa went back the other way and scored with seven seconds left to avoid a major upset.
The point remained.
"It was one of those moments of leadership," Scarano said. "To this day, with him being the head coach, and hopefully 10 years from now when he's coaching Oklahoma, I'll never forget that. He did exactly what he said he was going to do. He drove us down the field and scored and we were going to win that game. It was unbelievable. I remember it like it was yesterday. That was my Ricky moment."
He's hoping there are many more of them.
Colorado Bound
As for McDonnell, his immediate plan is to spend Christmas in Colorado and get to know his infant granddaughter, Gracie.
"Get out there and see what it's like to watch Timmy and Erin in action with her, just hang with them," he said. "Come back, relax a little bit. Take some time. Fix up the house. Do some different things."
He chuckles again. "I think that's what's got a lot of people so nervous. I don't have any plans. Let it come as it goes."
He's got a list of people and places he can visit, friends who have asked him to come out through the years. He's rarely been able to make it. His health is good, he noted.
"I've got a guy that says I've got a plane ticket all ready for you for the Kentucky Derby," he said. "I've never been able to go to the Derby. Spring game."
Reconnecting has been one of the side benefits of his announcement.
"It's a rollercoaster, you know," he said. "The great thing is the reaching out by people. Former players, friends. Guys I played with. Coaches in the league. Other coaches around. People reaching out and expressing their gratitude and how they feel and what they're thinking."
Sharing stories of the good times. The tough times.
"There were some pretty good people I met along the way here that helped make this trip a lot of fun," McDonnell said. "Made it pretty successful. Some of the memories that come back when they talk about some things bring a smile to my face, tears to my eyes. It's pretty cool. It's been a great run, man."
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