The Life of A Football Coach: Interview with Roc Bellantoni

By Simon Carroll

The life of a college football coach is not for the fainthearted. The hours are long. Job security is rare. And in order to keep the paychecks rolling in, you have to be willing to move across the country at a moments’ notice. This is a career that isn’t blessed with patience. And as such, the lifestyle can be lonely, nomadic and unpredictable.

But the rewards are great. Coaching is a vocation; a job that, when things go right, doesn’t just recompense you financially. That feeling of winning, the satisfaction of developing kids into young adults, and the pride of enhancing an athletic program – as far as occupations go, the highs are unmatched.

Nobody knows the highs and lows of college football quite like Roc Bellantoni. The Auburn outside linebackers coach has been in the game thirty years, with eighteen different roles in ten destinations. He sat down with Simon Carroll to discuss his incredible career and life on the Plains:

From The Ground Up

When Roc Bellantoni hung up his cleats in 1993, he knew immediately he wanted to go into coaching. A New York Native who played defensive tackle for UMass and Iona College, he jumped straight into high school coaching whilst relentlessly pursuing an opportunity at the college level:

“I just always loved the game. I thought I’d go into business whilst at college, but I saw the coaches at UMass and Iona. They really seemed to enjoy their life. And I know I appreciated every coach I had in high school and college and all they poured into my life to help me become a better man. I just knew that was the route I wanted to take. The first two years out of college, I wasn’t able to find a graduate assistance job. So I coached in high school for two years. I was an in-school suspension teacher, so it was miserable. But I coached football, I coached wrestling, I coached baseball. I just kept sending out resumes – I had no idea how to get in! And finally, after two years of trying, I got a GA job at Buena Vista division three school in Iowa.”

Bellantoni didn’t know it at the time, but he’d just checked a couple of the boxes required to be a coach – refusing to quit, and willing to relocate in the blink of an eye. His first foray into college coaching was an eye opener, but defined more than his career:

“I will always be appreciative of that opportunity. Iowa was where I really grew up; I met my wife there, even though I had no idea where Iowa was! I was from outside New York City, it was alien to me. But it gave me that platform to show what I could do and how hard I was willing to work to achieve it. From there I went to Drake University where I made a lot of my coaching contacts, and I’ve just kept climbing the ladder ever since. It’s been a blessing for me, and I hope to stick around for a long time because I love this game. I love helping young men reach their goals, their dreams, and make their lives better.”

The Leipold-Bellantoni Buffalo Connection

Roc Bellantoni was a fast riser. Affectionately known as ‘Coach Roc’, he worked his way up to defensive coordinator at Drake before moving on to Eastern Illinois, where he stayed for more than a decade – including a spell as acting head coach in 2007. A special teams coordinator role at Villanova followed, before Bellantoni landed his first job with an FBS school – as defensive coordinator at Florida Atlantic in 2014.

Bellantoni’s career would see him have a couple of stints at FAU, just like he has at Auburn – more on those schools later. But in 2017 he would pair up with Lance Leipold at Buffalo, and help transform the Bulls from MAC cellar dwellers to a nationally ranked program. How that connection came about is a microcosm of the college football coaching fraternity:

“It was a full-circle moment, how I got my first start with Lance. A few years before Buffalo I had just taken my first college football job at Drake. A mutual acquaintance, Rob Ianello [now Kansas general manager] had worked up at Wisconsin-Whitewater with Coach Leipold, and he reached out to me about an opening at Nebraska-Omaha. It was a better place, a better school, a higher level. But I just couldn’t do it to the guy that had just hired me. I didn’t think it was right. Lance kept that in his back pocket for a long long time.”

Leipold would eventually get his man; a mixture of family adversity and fate linking the two coaches in Upstate New York:

“I was at FAU the first time. My wife had breast cancer; I had to turn down a big-time job offer and sit out the spring of 2017 to support her. But in the summer Lance had an opening and reached out hoping the situation had changed. My wife was doing better, and it was an awesome two years with those guys. Most of them are at Kansas with Coach Leipold now, and I love them like brothers. I’m so thankful to Lance for getting me there. UB was 2-10 the year before I got there – year one we were bowl eligible, and year two we really made the jump. We got to play in the MAC Championship Game, went to a bowl game in Mobile, Alabama, and I learned how to run a team from one of the best coaches in the game.”

Family & Football

After Buffalo, the transient lifestyle continued. Bellantoni was lured to Washington State by Mike Leach to lead the Cougars defense, then spent a year at Utah State. And In 2021 he had his first taste of SEC football, landing a role as a defensive analyst at Auburn under Bryan Harsin.

The Harsin era on the Plains was tumultuous to say the least; Bellantoni’s role was adjusted to ‘assistant coach, edge rushers and special teams’ the following year. But despite things not flourishing on the field, Bellantoni fell in love with his new home. They say you have to visit Auburn to understand what makes it special; Coach Roc couldn’t quite explain what’s in the water either:

“People ask you that all the time. Like, what’s it like to be in the SEC and… It’s like a religion, only way more serious. You know, the people in this area of the country take the game very, very seriously. And the passion that they have for the game and their favorite team, man, I love that. And that’s what you want to be part of. It’s an honor to be in this league; when you wake up in the middle of February on a Tuesday, you better have the best Tuesday ever, because if you don’t you’re going to get your butt kicked come October. The recruiting, the off-season coaching, the passion of the fans, it’s a level of intensity you can’t find anywhere else. They want to win every game, they want to win national championships and they want to beat their rival. It means more to them than anybody else. And that’s what drives you.”

Bellantoni went to Auburn without his family, a decision made to protect his children and their own dreams. We discussed the strain a coaching career puts on those closest to you, and it wasn’t lost on Coach Roc what his wife and children have sacrificed:

“Our kids didn’t choose this life. We did. And they didn’t choose their parents. And it’s really hard. You don’t see the things that go on behind the scenes of ripping your kid’s heart out when he’s got to leave his first girlfriend or really being successful in baseball and you relocate him. It takes a special wife, which I have, and special kids who really support their dad and their dreams. But there have been a couple of spots where I’ve been away from them, including that first stint at Auburn. And the people here couldn’t have been better to me. Everybody you’d meet, they’d always ask about my family. And any time my family came to town, people made them feel really special.”

The Florida Atlantic 'Trilogy'

Bellantoni would return to Auburn at the beginning of this season. But before that he took in a second stint at Florida Atlantic – the first FBS school to give him a chance. The two stints at FAU (which turned into three) were contrasting experiences, even if both had the usual highs and lows that college football seems to revels in:

“Oh, the rollercoaster of FAU! The first time I went in there, we were told to build a program. We recruited hard; I think I had 10 NFL players on that 2015 defense. But we didn’t have a quarterback and we didn’t win enough games. Coach Kiffin came in, brought in his own staff, and had great success with the roster we had built. But being able to go back was a dream come true; I’ve always said there’s three schools I would crawl over glass to go back to – Villanova, Auburn, and Florida Atlantic. They’re my college football homes. So I was excited to return. My family got to live back in Florida, it all seemed great. And that first year, we were one of the most improved defenses in the country.”

2024 was not the same experience for Bellantoni. FAU struggled, and head coach Tom Herman was making moves to preserve his own status. Coach Roc was fired in early November, but Herman wasn’t far behind, removed from his own position a week later. It speaks volumes that the interim staff thought so highly of Bellantoni that they immediately brought him back to see out the season with the Owls:

“It was crazy. We had success on defense early in the season. I won a national coordinator of the week in October. Won a couple of games, lost a couple of close ones to tough teams like Michigan State, Army. But the offense started to struggle and the defense got beat up. We went to East Carolina and had to run a five-man front because we didn’t have five defensive backs to take the field. We obviously played awful, and Coach Herman called me in and told me he was making a change. I was upset because I thought I was doing a very good job. But it’s part of the business. And when the school made the change the following week, Chad Lunsford said he wouldn’t take the interim role unless they reinstated me. It made me feel really good about myself that they cared about me that much. I felt like I owed it to everyone in that building to go back and finish what we started.”

Heading Back To The Plains

Nobody said the life of a college football coach was dull. After a season that had a storyline usually reserved for Hollywood, Roc Bellantoni was ready for some normality. Unlike when Lane Kiffin took over the Owls in 2017, new FAU head coach Zach Kittley wanted him to stick around. But a phone call from Hugh Freeze at Auburn saw Bellantoni head back to the Plains for 2025:

“I would have stayed at FAU forever until this opportunity had come up. When Auburn called me back, it felt like mama was calling me home. I had unfinished business there. A couple of the kids I recruited were here. Some of the kids I coached on special teams the first time were still here. So I got a chance to come back. This game is a roller coaster of emotions; not only over the two years at FAU and then this last year at Auburn, but you can go back to the first two years at Auburn. You were watching the Paul Feinbaum show to figure out if you had a job or not. The COVID year at Utah State was a disaster. The year with Coach Leach, the DC quits after the third game of the year and I get promoted to coordinator. It’s an unpredictable career, but man, we love it.”

That unpredictability struck for Auburn this season too. Freeze was let go at the beginning of November following a disappointing loss to Kentucky. Defensive coordinator DJ Durkin has taken the reins, and Bellantoni and his fellow colleagues have been working hard to help him bring the good ties back to Jordan-Hare:

“Coach Durkin is one of the best leaders I’ve ever been around in my entire life. He raises everybody’s level, their urgency, their focus, attention to detail. He’s injected some energy into the entire team, especially in this day and age where we know everybody in the country is hitting up our players to get them to transfer; he’s doing an unbelievable job keeping them focused and locked in. I think it’s a credit to him that we haven’t lost anybody, and everybody’s still playing hard and trying to win games. And there’s some really cool things we can do here the last couple of weeks. I think all of us have tried to pick up our level to help him because he’s pulled in different directions and things like that. But other than that it’s been business as usual. We’re all trying to fight for the same thing.”

Finishing Strong

Roc Bellantoni’s coaching career is a story all of it’s own. And maybe the journey up and down and across the country can overshadow his achievements on the gridiron. Bellantoni has coached up some of the best defensive players in the nation in the last ten years; his last stint at Auburn saw names such as Derrick Hall, Owen Pappoe, Eku Leota and Nehemiah Pritchett head to the NFL. Renowned as one of the best recruiters in the game, he explains how the art of attracting and developing talent has changed in the NIL and transfer portal era:

“You used to recruit an area. Florida’s been my area for 30 years, and you recruit that whole area, you recruit every position. Now, because there’s money involved and the NCAA has condensed the amount of time you can spend recruiting, you really recruit your position. So I’m going out and seeing all the top guys that play on the edge in the country. And you’re trying to figure out who you’re going to have a shot at, what they’re looking for from a football program. Me, I want a guy that wants to be coached, a guy that wants to be professional, wants to come in here, take notes. I’ve had 18 guys play in the NFL on the edge. I’ll have 21 after this season. So you kind of have a Rolodex in your brain of how the really good ones are wired and behave. They can’t be scared to compete. That’s really what I’m looking for, good people who really want to be great players. And then, you know, once you get them here, it’s your job to take it out of them. That’s the fun part for me – figuring out how to get it out of them.”

Hosting this interview ahead of last Saturday’s game against Mercer, there was no opportunity to talk to Bellantoni about this weekend’s rivalry game against Alabama. Coach Durkin wouldn’t allow it, and Coach Roc is too professional to look beyond the next opponent even without a mandate from his boss. Auburn handled their business against the Bears and have been fully locked in on finishing the season right – the Tigers still have a bowl game to play for. Despite the Iron Bowl embargo, Bellantoni was able to acknowledge the importance of the yearly spectacle in the Yellowhammer State – even if he couldn’t bring himself to refer to it as anything other than ‘that other game’:

“Words can’t even describe to you how intense that rivalry is. Thanksgiving week is a lot of fun around here.”

Denying your in-state rivals a playoff place with a dramatic win in Jordan Hare? That feels like taking care of unfinished business. WAR EAGLE!

Mock Draft

SIMON CARROLL

Lead Writer, Head of Content

PREVIOUSLY THE FOUNDER OF NFL DRAFT UK, SIMON HAS BEEN COVERING COLLEGE FOOTBALL AND THE NFL DRAFT SINCE 2009. BASED IN MANCHESTER, SIMON IS ALSO CO-CREATOR & WEEKLY GUEST OF THE COLLAPSING POCKET PODCAST AND COVERS THE JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS FOR SB NATION.

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