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Pittsburgh quarterback Tino Sunseri (12) walks off the field following their 38-17 loss to Mississippi in the BBVA Compass Bowl NCAA college football game at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013.
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Former Pitt and WPIAL stars Tino Sunseri, Mike Shanahan back together at James Madison

AP

Former Pitt and WPIAL stars Tino Sunseri, Mike Shanahan back together at James Madison

Tino Sunseri and Mike Shanahan were among the contingent of Pitt players at the 2008 Big 33 Classic. The two knew each other already. Sunseri’s Central Catholic beat Shanahan’s Norwin en route to 2007 PIAA and WPIAL titles. Two months after that October meeting, Shanahan and Sunseri committed to Pitt on the same weekend.

But the Big 33 was where Sunseri, Shanahan, Jon Baldwin and more future Panthers worked extensively together for the first time. They practiced, then stayed after to throw. They ran gassers. They did what they thought they had to do to prepare for not only the Ohio team, but, more importantly, their impending Pitt careers.

What followed for Shanahan and Sunseri was five years of friendship — and eventually, a shared next step. As their Pitt careers wound down, both realized they wanted to get into coaching. Now, they’re not just fulfilling that dream, but doing so on the same staff.

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Sunseri was hired as James Madison’s quarterbacks coach two weeks ago, on the same day Shanahan was promoted from wide receivers coach to be the Dukes’ new offensive coordinator. The move by head coach Curt Cignetti — a former Pitt assistant — pairs the same duo that linked up for 11 touchdowns from 2010-12.

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“We would say all the time that it didn’t matter what the situation would be. We just wanted to work together,” Sunseri said. “I can’t tell you how surreal it is.”

What makes their joint next steps at James Madison all the more interesting are the differing paths Shanahan and Sunseri took to get there.

Both played in the Canadian Football League after their days as Panthers wrapped up. Sunseri, who finished his career second all-time at Pitt in total offense, spent three seasons with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Shanahan, who recorded 159 receptions and 2,276 yards with the Panthers, lasted one season professionally.

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Shanahan returned home in the fall of 2013. The former high school basketball star was a hoops assistant and headed the lacrosse program at Norwin for a year before reaching out to former Pitt head coach Paul Chryst and football administrator Chris LaSala. He was looking for an opportunity to help the program out.

“I knew my window of deciding what’s next was here,” Shanahan said. “And I wanted to give college coaching a shot.”

Chryst, LaSala and the Panthers welcomed Shanahan back as a volunteer assistant while he finished his master’s degree during the 2014 season. When Chryst left for Wisconsin and Pat Narduzzi took over, the new coach kept Shanahan on as a graduate assistant. From that point on, Shanahan was hooked on coaching collegiately.

In the winter of 2016, Cignetti hired Shanahan as a graduate assistant at IUP. Cignetti took the Elon head coaching job in 2017 and brought Shanahan with him. He did the same when James Madison came calling ahead of the 2019 campaign.

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The past two seasons, Shanahan has served as the program’s recruiting coordinator while coaching the Dukes’ wide receivers with aplomb. In 2019, former Penn State receiver Brandon Polk put up 1,179 yards, Indiana native Riley Stapleton had 65 catches and the Dukes’ offense, led by former Pine-Richland quarterback Ben DiNucci, lost to Trey Lance’s North Dakota State in the FCS national championship game.

This spring, James Madison reached the national semifinals in Cignetti’s second season — and he expects Shanahan to elevate the offense even further.

“Mike’s been with me for five years. He knows the history of the offense, the way it’s branched out,” Cignetti said. “He was ready for the opportunity.”

So was Sunseri, who’s set to coach his own QB room for the first time.

Sunseri jump-started his coaching career in 2016 when he was added to Jimbo Fisher’s staff at Florida State as a quality control assistant. He spent two seasons there before being hired to the same position at Tennessee in 2018. Then, Sunseri landed at Alabama, where he joined his father, Sal, the Tide’s outside linebackers coach and his brother, Vinnie, who’s now an assistant with the New England Patriots.

Graduate assistant gigs are hardly glamorous positions. But for Sunseri, working in the same facility as Nick Saban and with quarterbacks like Tua Tagovailoa and Mac Jones certainly has its perks.

Sunseri’s role was off-field on game days, but important. During practices, he helped run the scout team and tutor the backup quarterbacks — which in 2019, happened to be Jones, an eventual record-setting quarterback and first-round pick. And in the meeting rooms, Sunseri was offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian’s “right-hand man” as the Crimson Tide prepared to power through the SEC with relative ease.

In Sunseri’s two seasons there, Alabama averaged 47.8 points per game and produced nine offensive first-round picks. The credit for that goes around, but Sarkisian and Saban played obviously integral roles — the former concocting an intoxicating offense and the latter providing the program with unmatched stability and gravitas.

“He took the opinions of the people around the room,” Sunseri said of Sarkisian. “He was never too big not to hear somebody. It was almost an open floor. The guys in the room could go to the board or bring up a play or discuss a certain progression or a concept. He wouldn’t necessarily always take it. But he would always listen.”

“Nick [Saban] is very successful for a reason,” added Cignetti, who was Alabama’s receivers coach from 2007 to 2010. “Guys come out of there better coaches. I learned a lot my first year. I learned more about running a program as a head coach than I did in my previous 20 as an assistant.”

Cignetti also mentioned that his father, College Football Hall of Fame inductee and longtime IUP coach Frank Cignetti Sr., played a significant role in his development as a coach. Interestingly enough, Cignetti’s father hired a wet-behind-the-ears Saban to coach defensive backs at West Virginia in 1978 — evidence that the coaching world, for as vast as it may seem, is tight-knit.

Sunseri knows that better than anyone. He played under former Pitt offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti Jr. and now shares a staff room with the play-caller’s brother. And of course, he’s linked back up with Shanahan.

Sarkisian actually wanted to bring Sunseri with him to Texas when he took the Longhorns job in January, Cignetti said. The need for more Texas-centric recruiters trumped that desire, but Sarkisian still offered a glowing recommendation of Sunseri when Cignetti was looking for his new QB coach.

Sunseri himself was “extremely impressive” in his interview with Cignetti, sealing his spot with James Madison.

The hiring of Sunseri and the promotion of Shanahan comes in an odd part of the college football calendar. After the embattled exit of Les Miles at Kansas, Buffalo head coach Lance Leipold left to take the Jayhawks job in April. Leipold was replaced by Maurice Linguist, who hired James Madison offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery to call plays. That left Cignetti with a chance to bring some fresh blood.

Cignetti, who joked he has a few years under his belt now at 59 years old, said he has a tendency to hire younger coaches — coaches with promise of becoming coordinators and head coaches down the line. That’s what he saw in both Sunseri and Shanahan.

As for the up-and-comers, neither of them are focused on the future. A couple weeks into their new roles, they’re taking this thing day by day. But one thing both Sunseri and Shanahan admitted was that their transitions have been made easier by each other’s presence. That inherent understanding — one formed over thousands of reps by a quarterback and receiver — has translated to James Madison’s offensive meetings.

With how fast both have risen in the business, who knows how long their partnership at James Madison will last? But regardless if it goes on for one season or 10, Shanahan and Sunseri are going to enjoy the ride they’ve looked forward to for years.

“When Tino got up to JMU, we picked up right where we left off,” Shanahan said. “It’s funny how the timeline worked out. Neither of us expected it to be this soon in our careers. But it’s something we’ve always talked about.”

John McGonigal: jmcgonigal@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jmcgonigal9

First Published: May 30, 2021, 11:00 a.m.

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