Joe Moglia is a once and future football coach. In between, he had a little job heading up TD Ameritrade, the mega online brokerage firm. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.
Twenty-seven years ago, he was an assistant football coach at Dartmouth. His path diverted toward Wall street and Merrill Lynch and then to Omaha and Ameritrade, where he was chief executive and chairman. The football bug followed him through it all. After retiring as Ameritrade CEO in 2008, Moglia spent the past two seasons volunteering as an executive adviser with the Nebraska football program, offering career counseling and leadership advice to Husker players and coaches in return for the opportunity to learn from the coaches.
His transition back to football came full circle in November when he was named head coach of the expansion franchise Virginia Destroyers of the two-year-old United Football League. But when the UFL’s Omaha Nighthawks recently went looking for a new coach, guess who the league tabbed?
Who would have thought two years ago that the chairman of TD Ameritrade would be coaching a professional football team in downtown Omaha’s TD Ameritrade Park?
The World-Herald got some recent one-on-one time with Moglia to talk about coaching hires, coaching philosophy and how his time went with NU, among other things.
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WH: Where are you in terms of putting a coaching staff together?
JM: Tom Olivadotti, a former defensive coordinator under Don Shula with the Miami Dolphins, was going to be my defensive coordinator in Virginia, and he’ll be my defensive coordinator in Omaha. That’s great for the Nighthawks to get someone of that caliber. I’m in the process of trying to wrap up an offensive coordinator, and I’m pretty close in naming an offensive and defensive line coach and a kicking coordinator. I had already started that process. I’m going to be the head coach of a college all-star game (Eastham Energy College Football All Star Game) in Arizona next week, and if I can wrap up these coaches over the next couple of days, I’d like to bring them with me to Arizona so that we could get a little head start.
WH: Given that you are new to professional football, are you looking for assistant coaches who have NFL experience?
JM: I’m looking for great teachers. I think one of the things I always recognize is, ‘What are my weaknesses?’ Does everybody around me have to have professional experience? No, but at least a couple of the key guys must. Tom (Olivadotti) has phenomenal professional experience. The offensive coordinators I’m talking to all have professional experience. The line coaches have professional experience. The kicking coordinator has professional experience, but it’s more important to me that they are really great teachers.
WH: What are some of the other challenges in the coming weeks?
JM: I need to finalize the front office. Once you do that, everything starts to kick in. I’d like to do that as soon as possible. I’d like to meet with the entire team ... have some kind of conference call or video conference. I want to meet with the current staff. It will be a priority to meet with the people already associated with the organization.
WH: Have you started to break down last season’s video?
JM: I had started to look at a little tape of some of the teams when I first got the Virginia job. But, frankly, I was so committed and involved in what I was doing at Nebraska that I really didn’t have a lot of time. Between Nebraska and TD Ameritrade, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to focus on UFL personnel. That, obviously, will become a priority.
WH: What was the breakdown of the time you spent working at Nebraska and at TD Ameritrade the past two years?
JM: I worked about 70 hours a week at Nebraska, and I spent about 10 to 12 hours a week doing Ameritrade stuff. When we had board meetings, I’d spend about 25 hours. I anticipate a similar type arrangement now.
WH: That’s a pretty heavy workload for a 60-year-old guy.
JM: I think the No. 1 thing is that you have to be doing something you love. I think this is something I have skill sets for and an aptitude for. I love doing it, and if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do it. If you can’t be really passionate about something, then you have a job. This is far more of a career. I think you have to do a decent job of keeping yourself in shape to be prepared for something like this. I don’t do nearly so good a job of that as I should, but I have worked out 165 days in a row now.
WH: What’s your workout regimen?
JM: I cross-train, about 40 minutes a day, going back and forth between cardio and strength training. When I was at Nebraska, it was easy to work out there. At the very least, if I’m tired or it’s late or I don’t have the energy, I’ll get in an aggressive 30-minute walk.
WH: From an X and O standpoint, what will the Nighthawks try to do on the field next season?
JM: My coordinators will help determine that. We will be aggressive on defense, with our disguises and coverage. We’ll be aggressive in how we bring pressure. Offensively, the one thing I learned at Nebraska over the last two years, was the teams that created the most difficulty were the ones in which the quarterback was actually a part of the structure of the offense. I’d like to be more aggressive and differentiate ourselves by utilizing a quarterback that has the ability to run as well as throw. We’ll be aggressive with our play-action, our rollouts and bootleg game. We will be very aggressive in the kicking game. We’re competing with outstanding coaches in (the UFL) who have phenomenal track records. To be able to compete effectively against them, we have to do something that gives us a little bit of a competitive edge.
WH: What’s the most important thing you learned the past two years while working with Bo Pelini and Tom Osborne?
JM: You have to care about your players. You can’t be everything to everybody, so you have to concentrate on the handful of things that really matter, and that begins with your players and your staff. That’s something that has been a critical part of my philosophy since I was coaching years ago and then when I got into the business world. It was something that was reinforced by Bo and Tom.
WH: Would you be as prepared as you need to be for this new challenge had you not spent the time at Nebraska?
JM: No. I spent 4,000 hours there. I pretty much got a private tutorial from Bo and Tom and the guys on the staff. No one could go through something like that and not be better prepared.
WH: After not coaching for 27 years, you’ll find yourself competing against coaches such as Jim Fassel and Denny Green next season, guys with a wealth of NFL experience. Will you be at a competitive disadvantage?
JM: First of all, I’m not competing against Jim Fassel or Denny Green. It’s my team that is competing against their teams. As phenomenal as their résumés are, their résumés are not going to give them a victory. As lacking as someone might think mine might be, that’s not going to give me a loss. Our jobs are to put as competitive a product that we can on the field. If those guys do a better job of putting a better team on the field than we do, they’re going to beat us. If we do a better job, we’re going to beat them.
WH: Do you have any financial stake in the UFL?
JM: No. It’s not that I couldn’t, and when I have friends that ask me about the UFL, I tell them it’s a good investment. But I didn’t want to get involved financially with the league because I didn’t want people to think that I bought this job.
WH: You say the UFL is a good investment. Why?
JM: When I first started getting involved, I talked to a lot of people that had NFL experience. I asked: Is there a place for the UFL? There was not one person that didn’t say absolutely. From a business perspective, you have a product in which the entire philosophy and strategy is to have professional football in a non-NFL venue where the people care about football. They put a great product on the field and make it fun and affordable. The league works hard in trying to keep its budget intact, so you have parity across the entire league. Like any of these types of investments, its high risk, high reward. But I think the risk-reward trade-off on this investment is a good one. That’s why when friends talk to me about the league, I encourage them to get involved.
WH: Give us a sense of your excitement about taking over the Nighthawks.
JM: I can’t wait. I’m excited and jacked up about it. This is going to be my team. I was excited about the Virginia fans. I’m so much more excited about the fans we have in Omaha.
WH: Are there going to be any problems getting your players to relate to you?
JM: I understand there might be some apprehension about my lack of professional football experience. I think as the players get to know me, they won’t worry about that. I’m not worried about that at all. The guys that I want to hire all have NFL experience. I’m not hiring a guy who’s not a great teacher. A player wants to be the best that he can be, he wants to be developed, he wants to be coached and he wants to get better. I’m hiring those types of guys that can do that. It’s a two-way commitment. We’re going to ask the players to give us everything they’ve got. In return, we’re going to motivate them, we’re going to teach them, we’re going to develop them.
WH: How important is it for the Nighthawks to match the success they’ve had off the field, with the sellout crowds, on the field?
JM: You have to win, period. At the end of the day, all the fans are going to care about is whether they are proud of the team that is on the field that has their name. If we play competitive, if we play well, if we win, I think the community will be proud to be affiliated with that. Do you have to win every game? I don’t know if you have to do that. But you have to be competitive all the time, you have to be reasonably exciting and you have to win.
WH: Is winning a championship important to you?
JM: Yes. You think about TD Ameritrade. Eight years ago, TD Ameritrade had about a $700 million market cap. Today, that market cap is about $12 billion. That’s been in the face of a couple of difficult markets. We’re the No. 1 firm in the entire world, the entire world, in terms of the number of transactions that get done in the equity market. You have to win, and you have to win championships.
WH: What will you say when one of your players asks for investment advice?
JM: I’m going to give it to him. At the college level, you always want to prepare your kids for what life is like after football. Frankly, that’s the same thing we’re doing here. Not all the UFL guys are going to get the opportunity to go on to the NFL. What’s life going to be like for them when their football careers come to an end? One of the most important responsibilities they’re going to have for their families is to manage their finances. I want to be able to talk to our guys about stuff like that.
— Steven Pivovar
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