No Secret Agent, Just A Straight Shooter
9/8/2011 12:00:00 AM | Football
(This article appears in Saturday's game day program.)
When Darrell Hazell was growing up, he wanted to be an FBI agent. The dream stuck with him through nearly 10 years of coaching football at the collegiate level before he finally realized that maybe this was what he was cut out to do.
Hazell grew up in Cinnaminson, N.J., just north of Philadelphia, where his mother, Bernice, was a bus driver for the Head Start program, and his late father, Daniel, was a maintenance man.
"Most importantly my parents instilled in me the value of hard work," says Hazell. "They also taught me about accountability and the importance of helping others. Those are things that I've carried through my life on and off the field."
With high school rapidly coming to a close, he had no idea of where he might end up in college, although Rutgers seemed a logical choice due to its proximity. However, one day at a college fair, Hazell requested some information on a few small schools in Ohio on a whim, and ended up getting a call from Muskingum College head football coach Jeff Heacock.
Hazell bought a bus ticket, visited Heacock and wound up deciding in a matter of hours that the small school in New Concord, Ohio was the one for him. Four years later, after wrapping up a career that saw him become a Division III All-American, Hazell was once again undecided upon what direction he was going to go with his life.
A speech communication and business major, he had two job offers in the "real world." However, before accepting either one of those jobs, he sat down with Oberlin head coach Don Hunsinger for two hours at a restaurant in Cambridge, Ohio. Hunsinger's message was simple and to the point: "You can always get back into business if you don't like coaching."
That mindset resonated with Hazell, who joined Hunsinger's staff and spent the next two years at Oberlin.
The long, winding road that is collegiate coaching led Hazell to numerous stops over the next two-plus decades. A year at Eastern Illinois, before returning to Oberlin for three more years. Three years at Penn. Two at Western Michigan. Two years at Army.
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The carousel continued with a three-year stint at Rutgers, in which Hazell was named the assistant head coach in his final season. He then moved on to Columbus and a job at Ohio State, where he was the assistant head coach for the final six years of his seven-year tenure with the Buckeyes.
"I've worked for some really good people, some very smart and even-keeled guys," says Hazell. "I've taken bits and pieces of each one of them with me after each stop."
Then in December of last year, he was offered the job here at Kent State.
"I don't know if there was ever a time where I said 'I want to be a head coach,'" says Hazell. "I think it was always 'This is how I would do it if I were a head coach.' I took meticulous notes and then this opportunity came around."
When pressed on what made this an attractive job, Hazell didn't hesitate.
"It was the people. After talking to some people on campus and understanding where the commitment was and how close they were – that's what led me to taking this job."
And after all those different stops and the many years of note-taking. Hazell knows exactly what he's looking for in his players.
"I want them to be good citizens first of all," says Hazell. "I want them to be good people and respect others. I want to make sure they go to class and graduate with meaningful degrees. I don't want them to ever underachieve. Whatever they are trying for, I want to make sure they work as hard as they can to give themselves a chance to be successful."
That and much more is contained in the "A" Players Manual that each player, coach and staff member received prior to the start of the season. In addition to Hazell's expectations, the manual includes a daily in-season schedule, team policies and a fundamentals for winners section among the binder's more than 400 pages. As a matter of fact, it states on the very first page in big, bold letters "NO ONE UNDERACHIEVES."
And in terms of what Golden Flashes fans can expect on the field this fall, Hazell was quick to the point.
"I hope what our fans are going to see is us play extremely hard and be a close-knit football team with a never-quit attitude."
Charged with leading a program that's seeking its first Mid-American Conference title and bowl bid in nearly 40 years, Hazell knows there's no easy solution, but he has a good idea of what the difference is between contending for a title and finishing fourth in the East.
"It's a very defined line – the line is called November," says Hazell. "In order to win championships, to be competitive, you have to win in November. Don't get me wrong, we have to be really good in September and October, but we have to be great in November."
The staff has incorporated that mantra into each and every one of Kent State's practices, which include a five-minute appropriately-named "November period" to acclimate the players to just how tough it's going to be on the field in November.
In the end, win or lose, Hazell seems to have chosen the right career path.
"I try to make people better – I try to help people. It doesn't matter who they are, what they look like or where they come from."
There's no doubt that Hazell would have made an excellent FBI agent with his attention to detail and people skills, but it's safe to say that there are roughly 100 young men wearing blue and gold who are thrilled to have him as their football coach, regardless of how winding the path may have been that led him here.
