Where Super Bowl LIX Coaches Went to College Might Surprise You

The coaches leading the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles to the final game of the NFL season come from throughout the wide spectrum of American higher ed.

Feb 07, 2025

Every year, there is coverage about where players for the Super Bowl teams played in college. Given the popularity of college football, fans want to see the players they used to root for on the biggest stage. By the way, my home state flagship, the University of Oklahoma (OU), dominates the list of players in the game this year again.

What I do not often see is an analysis of where the coaches went to college. After my recent piece on the educational backgrounds of the DeepSeek AI team, I figured I could do something similar with the coaches from the two Super Bowl teams: the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. This one will be a bit more fun and accessible, too.

Ground rules: I collected all of the coaching staff members listed on the official team pages. For the tally, I am only counting the colleges where they graduated from, including community, undergraduate, or graduate. Sorry to places like Howard University, where Terry Bradden (Chiefs Assistant Defensive Line Coach) spent three years before transferring to Tuskegee University. The degree must have been earned.

Likewise, I tried to confirm all the results via the official team pages. Bless the Chiefs’ PR people for having the degrees all listed nice and neat at the bottom of the coaching bios. The Eagles, on the other hand, made me do some Internet sleuthing to confirm graduation. On to the list!

Super Bowl Coaching and Education

Note: please feel free to download or share these graphic maps.

One thing that I love about seeing this list is that it isn’t dominated by the expected names. In my part of the world (academia), looking at the colleges on some kind of elite list would be full of Ivy League universities. Famously, professors are most likely hired from the same handful of universities. The very best NFL coaching staffs are more economically and socially diverse than academia!

Further, being football, I would have also expected to see some of the top college programs still overwhelmingly represented. While there are a few Ohio States (current NCAA national champs) or Penn States on the list, the Alabamas, Georgias, Texases, or many other traditional powers are missing.

The list isn’t even dominated by the big state flagships, as regional public universities can be found. As a graduate of the University of Central Oklahoma, I have a certain kinship with the likes of Western Kentucky, Missouri Western, and Northern Arizona. So it feels good to see other Directional Us on the list.

Being at a small liberal arts college here at Soka University of America, it was also nice to find that there were some similar colleges on the list. Emory & Henry College and Geneva College only have around 1000 or so students and they both produced coaches in the Super Bowl.

From R1s to regional publics, fancy privates such as Notre Dame, to HBCUs like Howard University and South Carolina State, the college backgrounds of these coaches really do represent the entire spectrum of the American higher education sector. Even Andy Reid went to a community college! It was Glendale Junior College, now Glendale Community College, which is the inspiration for Greendale Community College on the TV show Community. It is refreshing to see such a wide array of institutions.

I could see a plot on *Community* around alum Andy Reid coaching the Super Bowl.

Path to Coaching in the Super Bowl

One final thought on the coaches’ backgrounds. There might be a thought that these guys are all really good football players, perhaps playing in the NFL for a few years. What lessons can a normal person take away from these coaching pathways?

Obviously, a lot of these coaches were former players. Not everyone will be able to have a solid NFL receiver career as Southern Miss alum Todd Pinkston, nor will they be a former Heisman finalist like former Boise State Bronco Kellen Moore.

Being pretty good at football is going to be a path into coaching, although it seems that being elite is not a necessity. A lot of the coaches played at smaller colleges or were backups before their coaching careers. Small colleges provide those opportunities to continue playing that springboarded them into a career.

One thing I did not expect from these coaches is that so many of them would have Master’s degrees. Poor David Girardi, Chiefs QB coach, even has two grad degrees (like myself, I know his pain). Perhaps it’s worth getting two master’s degrees to work with Patrick Mahomes (perhaps).

After college playing days are done, most players cannot make an NFL roster, so they go into coaching. Universities use graduate assistantships as a way to fill out their staff. Several of the coaches earned master’s at places like Arizona State or Brigham Young University while coaching as graduate assistants. Often these programs are housed under schools of education.

A couple of the coaches actually did not even have college football playing experience. Marc Richards, Football Research Analyst for the Chiefs, just seems like a stats whiz, as he has a PhD in stats from the University of Pittsburgh. I guess being an NFL Super Bowl coach is a good alt-ac job for PhDs who are done with academia.

It does not even have to be grad school. T.J. Paganetti, Run Game Specialist/Assistant Offensive Line for the Eagles, was an undergraduate offensive intern and student assistant while at the University of Oregon. It seems like hard work and a bit of luck got him on the sidelines coaching in Super Bowl LIX.

The diversity of schools and pathways for coaches is fascinating. It just adds another wrinkle to the big game. So if you get bored on Sunday with the commercials, the halftime show, or just the actual football, start having a look at some of the universities connected to the coaches (see full list below).

Coaches Education - Kansas City Chiefs

Format: Name - Position - College (graduate degree indicated)

Andy Reid - Head Coach - Glendale Junior College - Brigham Young University
Dave Toub - Assistant Head Coach and Special Teams Coordinator University of Texas at El Paso - University of Texas at El Paso (graduate)
Matt Nagy - Offensive Coordinator - University of Delaware -
Steve Spagnuolo - Defensive Coordinator - Springfield College - University of Massachusetts (graduate)
Rick Burkholder - Vice President of Sports Medicine and Performance - University of Pittsburgh - University of Arizona (graduate)
Louie Addazio - Defensive Quality Control - Boston College - Ohio State University (graduate)
Joe Bleymaier - Pass Game Coordinator - University of Delaware - Marquette University (graduate)
Terry Bradden - Assistant Defensive Line - Tuskegee University
Greg Carbin - Assistant Strength and Conditioning - Missouri Western State University - Concordia University (graduate)
Nick Cassetta - Assistant Strength and Conditioning - Montclair State - Ohio University (graduate)
Joe Cullen - Defensive Line - University of Massachusetts Amherst
Donald D’Alesio - Safeties - Youngstown State University
Brendan Daly - Linebackers - Drake University
Porter Ellett - Assistant Running Backs - Brigham Young University -Brigham Young University (graduate)
Connor Embree - Wide Receivers Coach - University of Kansas
Mike Frazier - Statistical Analysis Coordinator - The College of Wooster
David Girardi - Quarterbacks - Geneva College - Seton Hill (graduate)/ Northwestern (graduate)
Andy Heck - Offensive Line - Notre Dame
Andy Hill - Assistant Special Teams - University of Missouri
Corey Matthaei - Assistant Offensive Line - Willamette University
Tom Melvin - Tight Ends - San Francisco State University - Northern Arizona (graduate)
Dave Merritt - Defensive Backs - North Carolina State
Todd Pinkston - Running Backs - Southern Mississippi
Spencer Reid - Asst. Strength and Conditioning - University of Utah - Colorado State (graduate)
Ryan Reynolds - Head Strength and Conditioning/Dir. of Sports Science - University of Iowa - Arizona State University (graduate)
Marc Richards - Football Research Analyst - St. Olaf College - University of Pittsburg (graduate)
Kevin Saxton - Offensive Assistant - Emory & Henry College
Alex Whittingham - Defensive Quality Control - University of Utah
Dan Williams - Offensive Quality Control/Asst. Quarterbacks - Stevenson University
Rod Wilson - Outside Linebackers - South Carolina

Coaches Education - Philadelphia Eagles