When New England Patriots Vice President of Football Operations Scott Pioli was a graduate assistant at Syracuse in 1988 and 1989, he won the ‘refrigerator award.’ You won’t find a graduate assistant with much money, so the refrigerator award, as former Syracuse head coach Dick MacPherson deemed it, went to the GA who collected the most food to store away in the refrigerator.

Even then, as a fresh-from-college coach-in-the-making, Pioli was industrious.

As it turned out, Pioli did not end up in coaching. He left Syracuse and spent two years as an assistant at Murray State before uniting with then-Cleveland Browns coach Bill Belichick in the Browns’ personnel department. It was here that perhaps the NFL’s most successful coach-management duo was created. Together, Pioli and Belichick built three Super Bowl champions. That number might swell to four on Sunday, when the undefeated Patriots play the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII.

If that happens, much of the credit will deservedly go to Pioli, one of the architects of the Patriots who made a habit of finding the right players to play the right spot at the right price.

The Patriots did not respond to requests for Pioli to comment in this story.

Before Pioli was considered a personnel mastermind who has turned down general manager jobs throughout the NFL, he was one of MacPherson’s graduate assistants performing the eye-rolling tasks associated with entry-level jobs. Pioli took classes at Newhouse, although his focus was on the football team.

‘He knew what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it,’ MacPherson said. ‘I couldn’t tell you how many hours he spent in that football building. He was really involved in it.’

Those hours included early mornings. One of Pioli’s responsibilities was making sure the players arrived for breakfast at 9 a.m. Naturally, the players tried to stretch whatever sleep they could out of the arduous weeks.

When former Orange captain Andrew Dees arrived with some teammates at breakfast at 9:02 one morning, Pioli would not let them in. Dees and the teammates pleaded their case, but Pioli would not hear it.

‘The next morning, we were running in Manley,’ said Dees, now Temple’s offensive line coach.

Somewhere in Arizona, Belichick is scowling with delight.

Whatever Pioli learned, it worked. And not just for him. Both MacPherson and Dees emphasized that Pioli isn’t the only one to make it big from that staff.

‘If you looked at the coaching staff, I knew we were around some pretty good coaches,’ Dees said. ‘I believe almost every one of those assistants, are in the NFL.’

One of those graduate assistants was Joel Collier, now the Patriots’ secondary coach. Syracuse was coming off an 11-0-1 season and was considered a hot program. For someone learning the industry, good coaching can become contagious.

‘We were able to recognize talent, yes we were,’ MacPherson said. ‘He didn’t stand out because we had some great guys with him. He was one of them.’

Yet MacPherson’s greatest compliment of Pioli had nothing to do with acquiring Randy Moss nor finding scrap-heap free agents as the core of the 2002 Super Bowl champions roster. It was Pioli’s devotion to the other members of that Syracuse staff, with Collier as a sterling example.

Collier is the son of former Buffalo Bills head coach Joe Collier, who was MacPherson’s defensive coordinator when MacPherson coached the Patriots in the early 1990s. Joel Collier was the Miami Dolphins’ running backs coach from 1998-2004 and was a sought-after position coach candidate after the Dolphins staff was fired at the end of the 2004 season.

MacPherson said Collier and Pioli were close as graduate assistants, and the friendship lingers.

‘We have so many guys now, and they’ll all tell you Scott hasn’t lost who he is,’ MacPherson said.

There was a hint of pride in MacPherson’s voice, and it wasn’t just the ‘I-knew-him-when’ type of pride. It was the esoteric understanding coaches hold for other coaches; the knowledge that Pioli earned his way up the ladder.

He came to Syracuse from Central Connecticut State. Former Syracuse head coach Paul Pasqualoni and assistant coach George DeLeone also worked at small programs in Connecticut. Pioli started at the bottom at Syracuse and found a college-coaching gig. He worked from the bottom of the NFL front office structure and turned his way into the most sought-after front-office man in the league.

And it’s all happened behind the scenes. On Sunday night, more than 150 million viewers are expected to watch the Super Bowl, many of whom are casual fans. They’ll see Belichick with his trademark hooded sweatshirt; Giants coach Tom Coughlin, a Syracuse alum, with his fiery red cheeks; and, of course, superstars like Tom Brady and Michael Strahan smiling for television with viewers recognizing both.

Pioli’s name will be a mere footnote, if mentioned at all. Yet he has spent eight years building the Patriots, a team a win away from a historical 19-0 finish and the hallmark of Pioli’s storied career. That career started at Syracuse by pointing at the watch when the teenage Dees was minutes late or stocking the refrigerator with food for his colleagues.

‘He started off as a grunt,’ MacPherson said. ‘Now he’s all the way at the top.’

Zach Berman is the featured sports columnist for The Daily Orange, where his column appears weekly. E-mail him at zberman@syr.edu.

Published on January 29, 2008 at 12:00 pm