With over 30 years of coaching experience in football, Tim Lappano has seen plenty throughout his career on the sidelines. Having coached a variety of position groups spanning the high school, college and NFL levels, the seasoned veteran is now bringing his knowledge of the game to Georgia State.
Lappano’s coaching career began in 1981 at Joel E. Ferris High School in Spokane, Washington as an assistant. He would then become the runningback coach at Idaho from 1982 until 1985.
Since then, he has coached at Washington State, the University of Washington, the University of Wyoming, Oregon State and Purdue at the college level; in the NFL, he has worked with the Seattle Seahawks, San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions.
Being back at the college level, with a wealth of coaching experience, Lappano emphasizes his players are “coachable.”
“My experience here so far has been very good because we have about 17 receivers that are good kids, good character kids and want to be coachable,” Lappano said. “If I’m going to come here and do this at my age and with my experience level, I want to make sure that they’re very coachable. That’s very important to me.”
He was hired as head coach Trent Miles’ wide receivers coach in March after a tenure in the NFL where he spent five years with the Lions. This included being tight ends coach for Brandon Pettigrew and receivers coach for four-time Pro Bowl Wideout Calvin Johnson. At Georgia State, he’s coaching a group of wide receivers that include sophomore standout Robert Davis.
Regardless of the level, Lappano loves to coach football.
“Coaching is coaching. I don’t care if it’s in high school, at the University of Alabama or the Detroit Lions. It doesn’t matter. I’m a teacher and a coach. I love working with kids that want to be good and want to be coachable,” Lappano said.
There is, of course, a dynamic that separates coaching at various levels apart from each other. In the NFL, the media scrutiny is more intense. Lappano acknowledged that because the talent level in the pros is so much greater, it allows for more scheme in terms of types of plays and time spent on each player.
“You don’t have the time to put together the size of the playbook that you do in the NFL. That’s business,” Lappano said. “You get those guys basically all day. That does not happen with the college student-athlete, so you have to be pretty selective in what you do because you only have so many hours to prepare.”
Lappano has coached various position groups including quarterbacks, runningbacks, defenses and wide receivers—a position in the NFL that is much maligned for being filled with “divas.” Lappano acknowledged that coaching wide receivers is a difficult task, but one position is even harder given the microscope they are put under.
“The quarterback is a tough position to coach because so much is expected of them and it’s a game of quick decisions,” Lappano said. “It’s a game of quick thinking and getting the ball out of your hands as fast as possible. It sounds easy, but it’s not.”
Lappano coached quarterbacks at the University of Washington in addition to being the offensive coordinator there from 2005 to 2008. Current Panthers coach Trent Miles was also in Washington around the same time when he was the runningbacks coach under Head Coach Tyrone Willingham.
In addition, Luke Huard, now Georgia State’s quarterbacks coach, was hired as an assistant QB coach under Lappano at Washington. Ronnie Fouch, now a graduate assistant for the Panthers, played quarterback in Washington before transferring to Indiana State when Miles was coaching there.
Lappano says that his decision to leave the NFL and come to Georgia State was motivated by his previous experiences working with the current crop of coaches.
“Knowing these guys and knowing that they’re good coaches and good people made it pretty easy for me to come here and work with them,” Lappano said.
This is Lappano’s first time coaching in the Sun Belt Conference. While coaching football may be similar regardless of what level it is at, coming into a new conference to coach can present a learning curve for someone who may not be too familiar with it and its teams.
“To be honest with you, I’m not very familiar with the Sun Belt Conference. I really don’t know that much about it,” Lappano said prior to the Panthers’ first game of the season. “After we’re done playing Abilene Christian, I’ll have a pretty good idea of where we’re at and I can start watching a lot of film on some of these guys. But right now, it’s kind of unknown for me.”
Regardless of the differences that come with the level of football one may be coaching at, the main goal remains the same—winning games.
“The bottom line is to win games. I came here to help some friends win games,” Lappano said. “I’m looking forward to these guys getting better every week and turning this program around in the right direction.”
