Bob Shoop has been hired as the Alexander Head Football Coach, Spectator confirmed this morning with representatives from Columbia and Boston College's athletic departments. Shoop has already begun assembling a staff and moved into the football offices at the Dodge Fitness Center. An official announcement is expected within the next few days.
Shoop, 36, becomes the youngest coach in the Ivy League. He previously served as defensive backs coach at Boston College, where he helped the Eagles win four bowl games in four years, including an impressive 51-25 victory over Toledo in this season's Motor City Bowl.
Shoop has decided on five new assistants, according to footballscoop.com. Offensive coordinator Rich Skrosky is the only coach who will be retained from former head coach Ray Tellier's staff. Skrosky, who had also interviewed for the head coaching position, is very popular with his players and is expected to take over the play-calling duties. Shoop has also reportedly brought Harvard co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Tim Weaver to Columbia as defensive coordinator. Weaver had been at Harvard for four years and helped develop Harvard all-Ivy linebacker Dante Balestracci. Shawn West from Fordham will become Columbia's defensive backs coach, and Boston College's Sean Ryan and Notre Dame's John Defilippo are both reportedly graduate assistants, the web site said.
Calls to the football office in Dodge reached an answering machine with an outgoing message by Shoop, and a call to Shoop's former office at Boston College was answered by a woman who said he had left that school for Columbia.
Both Shoop and Athletic Director John Reeves both were not immediately available for comment.
Shoop played wide receiver at Yale and graduated in 1988. He served as Yale's defensive coordinator from 1994-96, and was a finalist to replace the legendary Carm Cozza after his 1996 retirement. That job went to Jack Siedlecki, and Shoop left to become defensive coordinator at Villanova. In 1998 Shoop was hired as defensive backs coach at Army then left for Boston College in 1999.
Shoop is highly regarded in the coaching community for his pass defense and nickel schemes, which was likely a consideration in his hiring given the pass-heavy offenses of the Ivy League. The American Football Coaches Association asked Shoop to write two pages on Boston's nickel defense for its Summer 2001 manual. His brother John is the offensive coordinator for the NFL's Chicago Bears.
Shoop's reputation as a great recruiter was recently featured in an ESPN.com series, "The Blue Chip Diaries," in which top Illinois high school football recruit Tom Zbikowski writes glowingly of a series of conversations with Shoop that that convinced him to keep Boston College on a list of schools that also includes traditional powerhouses such as Notre Dame, Nebraska, Iowa, Arizona State, and Tennessee.
Shoop replaces former Head Coach Tellier, now Assistant Athletic Director, who went 42-96-2 in 14 seasons as head coach at Columbia. The hiring of Shoop ends an exhaustive national search that included Rutgers offensive coordinator Bill Cubit, Trinity College Head Coach Chuck Priore, Union College Head Coach John Audino, Lehigh Defensive Coordinator Tom Gilmore, and Penn defensive coordinator Ray Priore, Spectator reported Monday. Footballscoop.com reported that University of Chicago Head Coach Dick Maloney and former Austin Peay State Head Coach Bill Schmitz were also considered, and the Baltimore Sun said Johns Hopkins Head Coach Jim Margraff was a candidate as well.
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