The coach’s nephew earns his keep

In 2005, when Danny Rocco arrived at Liberty, he met with assistant coaches Pete Sundheim and Charlie Skalaski to discuss the Flames’ upcoming recruiting class. It was December, and Rocco quickly discovered the old coaching staff had offered exactly one recruit a scholarship — LCA quarterback/safety Chris Rocco.

This was problematic for two reasons. For one, most college programs offer more than one scholarship over the course of the regular season. Secondly, well, there was a pesky perception problem.

How would it look for a head coach to make his first scholarship offer at his new program to his nephew?

“Hey, look, I’m not offering a scholarship to anybody if he’s not good enough,” Danny said.

So one of the coach’s first orders of business upon arrival was to send assistants Marshall Roberts and Tom Clark, both of whom were fairly new to the program, to LCA to evaluate Chris on film and watch him play basketball. Roberts had limited background on Chris, and Clark had none, so Danny knew the coaches would offer objective answers.

The conclusion?

“We were like, ‘Coach, we’ve got to take Chris Rocco,’” Roberts said. “We said, ‘He’s reliable, he’s run this defense since he was a ninth grader, and he’s going to come in and be a valuable asset to our team, not just athletically, but with all the other intangibles he brings on and off the field.’ To me, it was a no-brainer.”

Chris’ progression has rewarded Roberts’ faith. Chris is a senior captain at safety. He’s Liberty’s third-leading tackler and is tied for the team lead in pass break-ups.

Those numbers are nice, but they don’t even begin to tell the story of what Rocco means to the Flames’ defense.

“I’ve learned everything from him,” sophomore safety Larry Claiborne said. “I just wanted to mirror everything he did.”

The fact that Chris Rocco would excel in the area of leadership should be a surprise to no one, considering the lineage of coaches that runs in his family. There’s his father Frank Jr., the head coach at LCA and former Penn State quarterback. Chris became the ball boy for his father’s high school teams as soon as he was old enough to carry pigskins out to officials. He idolized his father’s players as a young boy, and did everything he could to learn from his father, and those players.

There was his grandfather, Frank Sr. Chris never saw him coach, but his relationship with his grandfather afforded him luxuries not often experienced by young football fanatics. When Chris was nine or 10, he stood on the sidelines at Beaver Stadium and watched Penn State play Michigan State. Frank Sr., was the Nittany Lions’ director of football operations at the time, and Chris soaked in the excitement of game day in University Park.

His favorite player, former Lions tailback Curtis Enis, tore through holes and blazed down the field. Chris watched in awe and got an unexpected surprise after the game, as his grandfather escorted him into the Nittany Lions’ locker room afterward to meet Enis and other Penn State players.

“For any kid that age, that’s a dream come true,” Chris said.

The victory earned Penn State a Fiesta Bowl berth against Texas, where uncle Danny was coaching at the time. The whole family got together for the game. Chris was already hooked on football at that point, but that experience only strengthened his love for the game.

Chris and Danny weren’t particularly tight when Chris was growing up (“but we’ve always had a good relationship,” Chris said), but that was only because Danny was all over the country coaching — at Boston College, Texas, the New York Jets and Virginia. Chris attended some of Danny’s games at those stops, but he didn’t really get to see his uncle in action until he was at UVa, because Danny spent much of his time at previous stops coaching from the press box.

Then he saw Danny coach from the field in Charlottesville.

“It was crazy how much he was just like my dad,” Chris said. “They obviously both got their coaching styles from their dad. But I had never thought of that. He and my dad were almost the same coach.”

Chris recognized the potential for awkwardness when he signed to play at Liberty, though he had already experienced playing for a relative when he played for his father at LCA. But Danny immediately made it clear that there would not be favoritism toward his nephew.

“I can go over to his house, and he’s my uncle,” Chris said. “But when I walk into the FOC (Football Operations Center), he’s my coach.”

Perfect example: After Liberty lost at Presbyterian last season, essentially costing the Flames an FCS playoff berth, Danny was salty at practice the next week as the Flames prepared for VMI. He walked by a group of players doing a cut drill and sneered, not liking what he saw. So he stopped everyone, and barked, “cut me!”

The first two players cut Rocco, albeit gently. Everyone else in practice stopped.

“The whole team’s watching,” Danny said. “I’m causing a big scene here. And I yell at Chris, ‘cut me!’ He comes after me about as hard as he can come after me and bulls me and takes out my legs. I protected myself, but I got the message across.”

So did Chris.

When he first arrived on campus, he had very little interest in becoming a coach, but he’s come around in recent seasons.

He’s a “why” guy,” Danny says, much like Danny was when he was a player at Wake Forest.

“You know, (a coach says), ‘Stand here, do this.’ Well, why? Why is that what I should be doing? Chris is like that. He wants to know. You know, ‘Show me.’”

A kinesiology major who is a regular on the Big South Presidential Honor Roll, Chris wants to become a high school coach once his time at Liberty is done. And it’s not about continuing the family tradition, which it should be noted, includes another uncle, David, an assistant coach at Jefferson Forest. He respects how his father’s coaching has affected the lives of young men at LCA, and he feels the same way about how Danny’s coaching has affected his Liberty teammates.

With his intricate knowledge of football schemes, though, Chris may be selling himself short by just staying at the high school level, Roberts said.

“Put it this way, if I was a head coach, I’d hire Chris Rocco right now. For whatever responsibility. He will grow into a very good coach, because he’s been around it. He has a work ethic. He understands it. The sky’s the limit for him.”