MMA coach not a golfer, but knows football
November 2, 2008
By Paul Gately, Harwich Oracle
BOURNE - After a career in football coaching at all levels from high school to the pros, Tom Bresnahan and his wife left retirement in Phoenix for life at the Pine Hills at Plymouth. They wanted to be closer to family and grandkids. He wanted to improve his golf game.
This did not happen. Life on the links did not help Bresnahan's golf. So he joined the football coaching contingent at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and as a volunteer coordinator is trying to help build a winning Division III program.
Bresnahan has been to the heights, coaching offensive and defensive lines in the National Football League and going to the Super Bowl four times with the Buffalo Bills.
He was also a part of the westward transition of the Cardinals from St. Louis to Arizona. Phoenix was the place to be.
"My wife and I fell in love with the city," Bresnahan says. "It was like heaven. But [Bills coach] Marv Levy called and my wife said, ?Get the hell out of here.' It was my luckiest move. Nine years. Four Super Bowls. That helped me financially and helped my psyche.''
After Levy retired, Wade Phillips came in to coach the Bills. Phillips wanted his own staff. Bresnahan sat back and took stock. He retired. He thought he was doing the right thing. He built a home. He tried to be a fulltime golfer. He was nearly in a state of depression.
So he started writing defensive coordinator reports for the Oakland Raiders where his son coached. But Raiders owner Al Davis fired the staff. Bresnahan opted to coach at a junior college two years in Phoenix. Then he and his wife Elaine returned to Massachusetts. To home. And wind-swept Taylors Point in autumn where football is played canal-side.
Bresnahan is tall and seems low-key, but he knows football inside and out. His coaching stint at the Naval Academy helped him understand regimental life at Mass Maritime and the time pressures - as well as the positive points in terms of discipline - it can provide.
"It takes a certain type of kid to come here," he says. "At Navy they pay you to attend and play, but you have to give them back five years. You have to pay to come here, and in the end they put you in a successful career. But the recruiting can be a struggle. I don't get into that."
In the 1970s when MMA was struggling to fill its dorms, the resurrected football program was used as the tool to boost enrollment. Sometimes cadets were issued football gear before they were assigned dorm beds. Players often were gone at the end of the schedule. But a gridiron program slowly emerged.
The MMA campus is a different place today. The dorms fill easily, and there is a waiting list. The admissions department's work is made a bit easier by the football recruiting of MMA head football Coach Jeremy Cameron, now in his fourth season at Taylors Point with the blue-and-gold Bucs.
Academic standards are rising at MMA, but can those gaining admission also compete as talented athletes and help build a winning football program?
The jury is still out even as the academy invests in reconstructing its football facility. Some cadets say you can't graduate from MMA with its intense curriculum while doing both; not in four years, at least.
Cameron is building his own program, re-establishing MMA's football identity. He is bringing in the numbers. He carries a team of about 75 with 13 seniors in a conference where there are no longer any powerhouses. A winning season is a distant memory. But it could also be right around the bend.
There is no malaise or disinterest hitting Buc football. The game-day roster magazine is glossy and full of ads at 66 pages. Cameron and company are intent on creating a solid program that can take advantage on this season's quickness on both sides of the line. Exhaustive preparation by the coaching staff throughout the week seems a hallmark of this effort.
With Bresnahan on hand - with his four decades of coaching experience and now working with the defensive ends - the Bucs may make the turn to a winning squad.
"My job is to provide another set of eyes," he says. "I can sit back and see things where we can do more to get better. Sometimes I'm right. It works. Sometimes I'm wrong, and it doesn't work. Sometimes it's like climbing Mount Everest. But this is football.
"I just love the game," Bresnahan says. "I think it's an addiction. There are worse addictions, I guess. But I love seeing people get better. I feel good when I can help that guy improve. It's about the only thing I do well. I can't hammer a nail in straight, but I can help a kid play football."
The starting Buc quarterback this season is Nick Montalto. The 5-8 signal caller out of Dennis-Yarmouth is a freshman. Bresnahan says Montalto is "a very capable runner and decent passer. His forte is an ability to make the plays himself and something like that is pretty important in the game."
