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Family Time
An early trip to Chapel Hill proved to be a harbinger of an unexpected return that was the perfect fit for Phil Longo and his family
Phil Longo was a high school coach in New Jersey and then an assistant at LaSalle University in Philadelphia in the early 2000s when he traveled to Chapel Hill regularly in the spring to visit his old head coach from Rowan College, John Bunting. Longo met the Tar Heel staff, visited haunts like Lucy’s Bar & Grill on Henderson Street and even crashed on the couch in Bunting’s office late one night.
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“It was part Xs-and-Os and watching and talking ball, but it was mostly about supporting your coach in his dream job,” Longo remembers. “As a kid in New Jersey, we’d visited the Outer Banks, so I knew a little something of North Carolina. I loved to visit college campuses, and the UNC brand was well-known. Those were fun times.”
Nearly two decades later, Longo was back in Kenan Football Center, this time accompanied by his wife, Tanya, and being interviewed for the job as Tar Heels’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach by Mack Brown, newly installed as the Carolina head coach.
“I knew the stadium, I knew my way around town,” Longo says. “I walked around the offices and said, ‘I know these offices. Gosh dang, here I am at North Carolina. Of all the schools in the nation, what are the chances I end up back here, at one of my coaches’ alma mater?’ It’s a smaller world than you think.”
Carolina, the Chapel Hill community and Brown’s family-centric program have been perfect fits for the Longo family—Phil, Tanya and four young children, Gianna (nine), Marcaria (seven), and twins Morgan and Nico (two).
It works from a football perspective as Longo’s version of the “Air Raid” offense with the added gear of always having a viable running threat meshed with exactly what Brown wanted in assembling a staff and program template.
And it works from a family standpoint as Tanya, a former head coach at two collegiate women’s basketball programs, and the kids are welcome and encouraged to be active and visible around not only the Tar Heel football program but the university athletic scene as well. The fact that Tanya had newborn twins her first year to mind and the Covid-19 restrictions the second year are the only things having tempered their visibility. “Mack and Sally have what is the epitome of a family environment,” Tanya says. “This is a great match, and I can be involved and they want us involved. I love sitting with parents and with recruits, getting to know them and helping them sort through their thoughts. That’s what I did for 15 years.
“The deal when I quit coaching was that I could live vicariously through Phil’s coaching job. This is the perfect environment for that.”
Longo played running back at Rowan University from 1988-91 under Bunting and then went into high school coaching in 1996 at Parsippany Hills High in New Jersey. He was intrigued watching the evolution of Kentucky quarterback Tim Couch as he threw for
nearly 4,000 yards under an innovative system called the “Air Raid” that was run by head coach Hal Mumme and offensive coordinator Mike Leach. In the spring of 1998, Longo drove to Lexington to attend a clinic where Leach spoke of a system built on using four wide receivers, going fast, having a limited playbook and letting great athletes play more by instinct than strict regimens.
“I left there knowing I’d found my offense,” he says. “It made sense to me. I adopted that philosophy and have been adapting it ever since.”
He’s developed his playbook over two decades at a half dozen stops, most recently at Sam Houston State and Ole Miss. Now the Tar Heel offense and a bevy of skill players have rewritten the record books on multiple levels through two seasons.
The unit’s totals of 33 points a game in 2019 and 43 in 2020 and 474 yards a game in 2019 and 557 in 2020 dwarf any pair
of seasons in school history. Carolina was 12th in the nation in total offense in Longo’s introductory season, fourth in his second. Sam Howell, Michael Carter, Javonte Williams, Dazz Newsome and “ “MACK AND SALLY HAVE WHAT IS THE EPITOME OF A FAMILY Dyami Brown have the statisticians working at warp speed to keep up with new records. The unit was more prolific in year one with the passing game and
ENVIRONMENT. THIS IS A GREAT pivoted more during the second season to ride the sturdy backs of the two
MATCH, AND I CAN BE INVOLVED tailbacks—not only on running plays but AND THEY WANT US INVOLVED. I LOVE SITTING WITH PARENTS AND as receivers out of the backfield. “The term ‘Air Raid’ makes you think you throw it every time, and you don’t,” WITH RECRUITS, GETTING TO KNOW Brown says. “It offers a good balance,
THEM AND HELPING THEM SORT THROUGH THEIR THOUGHTS.” and you can do either. A lot of it is taking what’s there. I really like what Phil has done with our offense—a lot of moving parts that make it difficult to defend.” Longo was offensive coordinator at the University of Minnesota-Duluth from 2005-07 and was immersed in spring practice in April 2007 when the Bulldogs hired a coach from
Santa Clara to head the women’s basketball program. Tanya Nash’s office was in the same building as the football staff, and Phil took particular interest because Tanya liked to brew coffee into the evenings.
“We were both working long hours, and she would make coffee late at night,” he says. “Her office was the only place I could find coffee without going out. I’d walk down the hallway, steal some coffee and we got to know each other.”
One thing led to another, and they were married in 2010 and were able to coordinate concurrent jobs at Southern Illinois, Youngstown State and Slippery Rock.
They were busy with the business of coaching and parenting at Slippery Rock in 2013 when one day they realized that Gianna, then just two years old, had three separate babysitters in a single day.
“We were like ships passing in the night, as football and basketball schedules are polar opposite, particularly when you get into recruiting,” Longo says. “Tanya said, ‘You go back to Division I football and I’m going to call it a day and raise our kids the right way,’ We didn’t want to keep handing her off. Tanya gave up her career to let me pursue what I love. She’s been the leader of the family ever since.”
“It’s not possible to do both things really well,” Tanya adds. “It was a very difficult decision. It was a tough transition to not be on the sideline coaching and in that day-to-day grind. But it’s worked out fine. We’ve been very selective in choosing programs that are all about family.”
Enter Mack and Sally Brown. Brown has made it requisite in interviewing potential assistant coaches that the candidate bring his wife for the visit so the Browns can see if the couple together will be a good fit for the program. When Brown and Longo arranged Longo’s visit in December of 2018, Longo didn’t mention that Tanya was eight months pregnant—with twins. She conferred with her doctor about making the trip and got the green light with certain precautions and restrictions.
“Mack’s jaw kind of dropped when he saw Tanya waddle in, and she was huge with those twins,” Longo says. “Afterward they both said, ‘She is definitely a coach’s wife.’”
Gianna as the oldest child has had the most opportunity to visit her dad in the office or on the practice field. She’s diabetic and has developed a friendship with receiver Beau Corrales, also a diabetic who, Longo says, “has been a wonderful example of how to do things the right way.” Gianna spends a couple days a week helping the trainers or equipment staff with assorted chores during practice and will often spend the entire day with her dad around the football office.
“It gives me a real kick to be running a quarterback drill and turn around and my daughter is standing there with a water bottle and a towel,” Phil says. “That’s something you don’t see in a lot of places.”
“She has this glow about her when she gets to go to work with Dad,” Tanya adds.
The Longos made the decision when their girls became of school age that Tanya, who holds a degree in elementary/ middle school education from Wisconsin-Eau Claire, would home-school them, partially because it would provide consistency if and when the requisite job changes in the life of a coach evolved. Little could they envision the calamity that would engulf the world in March 2020.
“There are many reasons we chose to home-school,” Tanya says. “It’s certainly helped during the transitions from one stop to the next. But with Covid, it’s turned out to be a great decision. Still, it’s not been easy. We can’t take the afternoons and go out and explore. I look forward to things getting normalized. I love taking the kids to college sporting events. College athletes are some of the best mentors and role models for the young ones to see and be around.”
During games, Longo chooses not to work from a detailed call-sheet as he doesn’t want to get bogged down trying to find a certain call for a specific situation. Instead, he’d rather call plays by feel and instinct. But he does rely on Tanya helping him with a rigorous memorization session on Thursday nights to cement opposing defensive tendencies and the calls Longo thinks are the best ideas given downand-distance and defensive personnel situations.
“She’s been a coach, she understands what it’s all about, the rapid-fire decisions you have to make,” Longo says.
And is Mrs. Longo just like everyone else in the stadium, in the press box and watching on television an “armchair playcaller?”
“Not at all,” she says with a laugh. “Sadly, I don’t know as much about football as I’d like to. Basketball? I might have a few more questions. I leave the football to Phil.”
FOUR YEARS OR 40 YEARS?
Are you making a decision on where to play football for four years or where to find friends, mentorship and a network for four decades and beyond?
That’s the question Mack Brown asks every high school player he’s courting for a potential scholarship offer to play football at Carolina.
“Mack told me, ‘If you take a chance on the University of North Carolina, it will take care of you for the rest of your life,’” Tommy Thigpen remembers of being recruited to play linebacker in the late 1980s, then adds that every step he’s made in a two-decade-plus coaching career has been helped by a boost or recommendation from Brown or someone he met during his Carolina career.
In Brown’s two years back as the Tar Heels’ head coach, he’s hammered home the “40-year decision” concept at every turn. A total renovation of the ground floor of the Frank Kenan Football Center included positioning a large photo on one high-trafficked wall with a random Tar Heel walking through the tunnel onto the field, draped in a cap and gown, holding a jersey in one hand and pair of cleats in the other with the words, “It’s a 40-year decision, not a four-year decision.”
“We can only play 22 guys at a time,” Brown says, “and we have 120 on the team. We tell them that a bunch of them might not ever play or play very much. We tell them that most will never make it to the NFL, and those that do will have an average career of 3.4 years. “So let us help you have a better life when you get out of here.”
An important element toward that end is the Bill Koman Game Plan for Success and its branding initiative, Blueprint 919, that were announced in the summer of 2020. It will help players develop their skill sets in areas such as job interviews, resume writing, public speaking, financial management and developing their personal brands through social media and public relations.
“I had a kid the other day say, ‘Coach, I’d like to learn about the stock market, I don’t know anything about it,’” Brown related last summer. “Another said, ‘Coach, how do you buy a house?’ There are so many things we can do to help these kids be better prepared when they go out into the world beyond football.”
