Carmen L. Cozza achieved legendary status while patrolling the sidelines at Yale Bowl for 34 years. As Yale’s head football coach for 32 years, he led the Bulldogs to 10 Ivy League championships and an overall record of 179-119-5. Coach Cozza was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2002.
At the time of his retirement, Cozza’s 179 wins placed him twelfth among active Division I coaches, yet his won-lost record hardly illuminates a career which saw him called the “ultimate teacher-coach”. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the “cradle of coaches” Miami of Ohio, learning his future trade from fellow Hall of Fame coaches Ara Parseghian and Woody Hayes.
During his illustrious career, Cozza coached in the East-West Shrine Game, the Blue-Gray Classic, and the inaugural Epson Ivy Bowl in Japan in 1989, where he led the Ivy all-star squad to victory against their Japanese counterparts. During his tenure, Cozza also coached 5 Rhodes Scholars, 35 All-Americans, 121 1st Team All-Ivy winners, and saw 21 players drafted by the NFL.
At one time Yale’s interim director of athletics, Cozza also served as special assistant to the director of athletics after his 1996 retirement. He also spent more than a decade as a radio analyst for Yale football. As his Hall of Fame plaque notes. Cozza’s basic values of “hard work, fair play, loyalty and compassion define his legacy.”
