The Daily Orange

Sometimes in coaching, all it takes is a break. Greg Robinson gave Jim Salgado his.

Salgado, Syracuse's cornerbacks/secondary coach, is a native Long Islander who grew up watching Syracuse every weekend and had friends play for the Orange. Yeah, but so did every wannabe football coach from Yonkers to Cicero. It wouldn't do the quarterback coach at Long Island Lutheran any good.

Well, it did for Salgado, in a way. Now, he's coaching the Orange's defensive backs, focusing on a cornerback group that has two senior starters - Tanard Jackson and Terrell Lemon - and three interceptions in four games while serving as a crucial part of the defense's early success.

There are three players in the secondary who converted from offense to defense this season - safeties Bruce Williams and Joe Fields and cornerback Nick Chestnut - which makes coaching that much more important. And it's helpful that Salgado is the one helping the transition, considering the young coach specializes in relating to his players.

Salgado did what all coaches seem to do and worked his way up a coaching ladder. He started as a quarterback/secondary coach at Long Island Lutheran in his hometown in 1993. During the next 12 seasons, Salgado held seven different coaching jobs at six different schools throughout the Northeast. He worked at his alma mater, Hofstra, on two separate occasions.

An eager coach working his way up a coaching ladder - not that original.

But then came Salgado's break. He was working assistant head coach/defensive backs coach at Northeastern when Paul Pasqualoni was fired down I-90. In came Greg Robinson, who had a stop with the New York Jets during his coaching career.

The Jets practice on Long Island. Hofstra is on Long Island. Salgado went to Hofstra. That's where the connection started.

When Salgado was playing for the Dutchmen in the early '90s, Robinson was the assistant coach/defensive line coach for the Jets. Pat Kirwan also worked with the Jets at the time with Robinson after serving as Hofstra's offensive coordinator for six seasons. The pipeline was intact, and when Robinson was going to be named head coach at SU, his friend Kirwan suggested he look at Salgado as an assistant.

That was the break. The New Yorker was coming home for his first Division I coaching job.

"It's special because I'm from New York," Salgado said. "I used to watch (Syracuse) every week. For me to get my first big opportunity to coach here, it's just unbelievable."

Continued...

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