Coastal Carolina football coach Joe Moglia’s living arrangements 36 years ago were less than ideal.

The oldest of five children raised by immigrant parents in New York City, Moglia had dealt with hardship before. He grew up sharing a two-bedroom, one-bathroom home with his family in Manhattan while splitting time between school, sports and working at his father’s fruit store.

It was his love of sports, especially the game of football that would eventually take him from those streets in New York to a job as an assistant coach at Fordham Preparatory School while he earned a degree in finance at nearby Fordham University.

More than a decade later after various stops, Moglia found himself at Dartmouth University as the program’s new defensive coordinator. It was 1981 and the 32-year-old had just moved into a storage room above the team’s football offices.

“I didn’t mind that so much, but it didn’t have any heat and this is New Hampshire, so I could see my breath for four or five months over the winter time,” Moglia joked.

They were less than ideal conditions for the divorced father of four, but it was cheap and afforded Moglia the luxury of being able to support his children. To him, that’s all that mattered. It would be a theme that he would revisit throughout his career.

The ability to adapt, do more with less and think outside the box uniquely qualified Moglia to handle dramatic career changes and eventually help Coastal Carolina make a big jump to the highest level of college football.

Courtesy of Coastal Carolina Coastal Carolina receiver Chris Jones weaves through the Jacksonville State defense. The Chanticleers are moving up to the Football Bowl Subdivision level. Coastal Carolina receiver Chris Jones weaves through the Jacksonville State defense. The Chanticleers are moving up to the Football Bowl Subdivision level. (Courtesy of Coastal Carolina)

Moving on up

Coastal Carolina’s move to the Sun Belt was arguably one of the best kept secrets in college athletics.

However, the journey from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision has been in the making for quite some time. The journey began nearly a quarter of a century ago when the school broke away from the University of South Carolina to become an independent institution in 1993.

“I think if you look at the progress of the university: academically and athletically, it’s on a great trajectory,” Coastal Carolina President David DeCenzo said of the school.

Timing, safe to say, is everything in college athletics and while Coastal Carolina enjoyed success as a member of the Big South Conference, DeCenzo knew the school had outgrown the league and needed to look elsewhere for a new conference affiliation.

“It was a tough decision because we were one of the founding members of the Big South Conference, but I knew if we were going to continue to move the university forward the way I and the board [of trustees] where looking at that we needed a new conference affiliation for all of our sports,” DeCenzo said.

So when Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson asked whether the school would be interested in joining the league in 2015, it seemed to be a stroke of luck. But DeCenzo said he and the board didn’t feel the timing was right.

“Thank Karl, but tell him we’re not ready,” DeCenzo told his athletics director at the time when approached with the offer.

DeCenzo said at the time, he was in the process of making upgrades to some of the facilities at the school.

“The last thing you wanted to do is embarrass yourself in ultimately making a move,” he added.

But as luck would have it, another opportunity would present itself and this time around the timing would be perfect for the Chanticleers.

Lightning in a bottle

Karl Benson has a habit of striking at the perfect time, especially since taking over as commissioner of the Sun Belt in 2012.

As conference realignment raided his league of members, Benson had anticipated the defections and had already been recruiting new blood. In 2014, he recruited Appalachian State and Georgia Southern to the Sun Belt and both wouldn’t disappoint.

Appalachian State finished its first season in the FBS with a 7-5 record, while Georgia Southern would go on to capture the regular season title with an 8-0 conference record.

Benson was looking for another piece of the puzzle, one that would eventually help him add a football conference championship game. So he decided to once again reach out to Coastal Carolina in 2016 with an offer of membership.

Benson made an under-the-radar visit to idyllic Myrtle Beach and the campus of Coastal Carolina. What he envisioned would be an informal meeting with DeCenzo to inquire about any interest in moving up to the FBS and joining the Sun Belt. What he got instead surprised him.

“I was expecting to hear, ‘Yes, we’re interested and we have a plan in place, but we’re still a couple of years away from making the move,’” Benson said recalling the conversation with DeCenzo and the school’s chairman of the board of directors. “They were informing me they were, one, very, very interested and after hearing their overall plans, I said, ‘How soon would you be ready?’ He looked at me and said, ‘As soon as you can ask.’

“I left that meeting impressed.”

DeCenzo added, “When Karl called in spring of 2016, it just all kind of clicked. Everybody was like the time was right and it was kind of fortuitous that he called us back.”

Dollars and sense

Moglia would receive the big break he was looking for in 1984 when he was offered a job as the defensive coordinator at the University of Miami. The Hurricanes were coming off their upset win over top-ranked Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, claiming the first of the program’s five national titles.

The sandy beaches, sunny skies and clear blue waters of South Florida were a far cry from that tiny storage room above the football offices at Dartmouth.

“My goal was to always be a major head coach, at a Michigan, Florida or Notre Dame … ” Moglia said. “So I have an opportunity to go from defensive coordinator in the Ivy League to defensive coordinator at the potential national championship contender. That’s a great step in my career.”

But living in Coral Gables isn’t cheap and neither is flying your kids back and forth from New Hampshire, so Moglia decided to pass on the job.

“One of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made was turning down that job,” he said. “But I didn’t think I could do my job as a coach if I couldn’t live up to my responsibility as a father. That told me then, if I couldn’t take that job, there wasn’t going to be another job that I could take.”

Moglia would step off the gridiron and into the board room, enrolling in an MBA training program at Merrill Lynch. There were 26 participants in the program according to Moglia — 25 from Harvard, Wharton or Stanford and one football coach.

The skills Moglia demonstrated as a football coach transferred well into the board room, including his ability to listen, organize, inspire and motivate. He rose to through the program, eventually landing as chief operating officer for TD Ameritrade.

New beginnings