Baltimore high school football legend Biff Poggi says his new job as the head coach at Charlotte is “wildly exciting” because of the enthusiasm the school and city have for the program, the “blank canvas” the 49ers offer and the success his staff has already had in recruiting.
Poggi, most recently the associate head coach at Michigan, is one of the most successful high school coaches in Baltimore regardless of sport. He was the head football coach at Gilman School from 1996-2015 and led the Greyhounds to 13 conference titles, then held the same title at St. Frances Academy from 2017-2020 and lifted the Panthers to national prominence.
Poggi is credited with helping Jim Harbaugh take Michigan to the next level the past two seasons. Now, he is tasked with turning around a program that has gone 29-62 since joining the FBS ranks in 2015. This past season, the 49ers went 3-9 under head coach Will Healy (1-7) and interim Peter Rossomando (2-2).
Poggi, 63, is excited for the task ahead.
“Charlotte is unlike any place else that I interviewed with or was pursuing me, and there were some great names,” Poggi said on Glenn Clark Radio Jan. 10. “But I would just say that Charlotte is a blank canvas. If you’re a football person and you like building things, Charlotte’s like being a painter and having a blank canvas with very little on it and you can kind of try to make it in your own image. That was very, very attractive to me.”
Charlotte’s football program is still very new considering that the 49ers have only been playing for about a decade. Charlotte started off as an independent FCS program in 2013 and 2014, going 10-12 before making the jump to Conference USA. The 49ers have made just one bowl game since then (Bahamas Bowl in 2019).
Charlotte is one of 10 FBS programs in North and South Carolina, and the 49ers are ready to make their mark in the area.
“The school wants to be good. The town is dying for major college football. The movers and shakers there are completely behind the program. It is wildly exciting,” Poggi said. “Usually in recruiting you kind of have to recruit five guys to get one, sometimes even more. When we get people on campus, it is almost 100 percent commitment rate. It’s amazing.”
Poggi has had early success on the recruiting trail, reeling in players from the high school ranks and the transfer portal. Thirty-two players signed with Charlotte as part of the early signing period in December, including 14 who played their high school ball at St. Frances, 12 from the state of Maryland and seven from Baltimore.
In Poggi, a Baltimore native and Gilman graduate, there’s suddenly another player for the big-time talent from Maryland. He’ll have a chance to make an early statement to local recruits when the 49ers head to College Park for a game against the Terps on Sept. 9.
“Look, I spent 30 years of my life coaching in Maryland and in the DMV, as it’s now called, and I spent my playing days in high school here,” Poggi said. “I’ve invested a lot of time in this town. This is my town and my home. … When you get a long period of time to be at a place like Baltimore and the DMV, it means that you have impacted and honored people and their children. When that happens, people have a certain loyalty to you. So we have had an incredible amount of success here.”
Poggi also addressed NIL in college football and how Charlotte fits into the picture …
He started off by explaining what NIL is to him:
“The ‘I’ in NIL, by the way, is the most important thing. It’s not really your name. It’s not your likeness. It’s your image. And when I say that, that image means who you are as a human being. [If] a local brand is willing to put their brand behind your image because they know that you’re a good student, a good person in the community, you play on a good football team and you happen to be a really good player, then you’re going to get NIL opportunities at Charlotte because Charlotte is unique in this respect.”
Why is Charlotte so unique for players seeking NIL opportunities?
“It is the second-largest city in the country with domiciled Fortune 500 companies. Most people don’t know that. It’s only behind New York — more than Chicago, more than Dallas, take LA, take wherever it is. So there are a lot of businesspeople there, and I happen to know many of them. I’ve done business with those companies. [Charlotte is] the financial center of the country, by the way — more big banks are headquartered there than anywhere. You do a good job, there are people there that are going to want to associate their brand with you.”
How can players at Charlotte capitalize on the environment the city of Charlotte provides?
“You have to do all the right things. You have to be a really good kid. You have to do really well in school, you have to present yourself well and then you have to do it on the field. That’s kind of how NIL works these days. And by the way, I think the genie is out of the bottle with that. I don’t think it’s ever getting back in. I think it’s only going to become bigger and more sophisticated. I think those that are going to lose at it are going to be the guys that are doing the deals that are these silly deals like, ‘Hey, you come here and we’ll give you X amount of dollars.’ Well, first of all, that’s not legal, and secondly, most of those promises are never kept, which is, by the way, why there’s so many people in the transfer portal.”
For more from Poggi, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Charlotte 49ers Athletics