Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/825639
third round by Buffalo, he spent three years with the Bills, mostly as a backup and played on their Super Bowl team of 1993, before becoming a starter in Jack- sonville for one season. In 1996 he joined the Baltimore Ravens, but before the next year he was released and found himself looking for a new team. "I was capable of making a team but I couldn't get anyone to call and give me a workout, while I was seeing guys who were involved with domestic violence, drunk driving and drug use still getting these opportunities," Goganious said. "These guys were getting chances over and over again and I was saying, just let me work out and show you what I can do." Getting down to business Frustrated and disillusioned, Goganious decided to "put my business background" to work. "I sold real estate, did mortgages and worked for my father's real estate company in Virginia Beach," he said. "I really wanted to get away from football, and I was really stressed because it didn't end the way I wanted it to end. So I stayed away from football for a long time." Then in 2005, he went to work for the American Heart Association in the Wash- ington, D.C., area but also began thinking about football again and possibly getting into coaching. He had heard about a new high school opening near Wal- dorf, Md., about 25 miles south- east of downtown Washington, between the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. "I was curious, so I drove down. I don't remember how, but I ran into Ken Lane, the head coach," Goganious said. "We started talking and Penn State and Larry Johnson's name came up. He had coached with Larry at McDo- nough [High School a few years] before Larry went to Penn State [to coach the defensive line]. That's how the tie came in, and he asked me if I'd be interested in coaching linebackers. That pulled me back into football but also into Penn State, with Coach Johnson coming by North Point recruiting. I would see him on a regular basis." It was an after-hours, part-time job with a small stipend that enabled Goganious to get his first coaching expe- rience while still pursuing a career out- side of football in case things didn't work out. Four years later, Goganious was try- ing to get one of his linebackers a schol- arship and he called the football office at Hampton University, a historically black college near Goganious's hometown of Virginia Beach. "I ended up speaking to the head coach, Donovan Rose, about the young man and he said, 'We have a linebacking [coaching] job open. Are you interested in that job?' I went down and interviewed. By that time I was married, and my wife wasn't too interested in it because I left about $30,000 on the table to take the job. I told her if I took it and was not successful I'd know I couldn't do it on the college level, but I had to give it a try. I became the de- fensive coordinator and assistant head coach in my second year. We were in the FAMILY ALBUM Goganious poses with wife Ingrid and daughter Lauren, who is now 8 years old. Photo courtesy of the Goganious family