CNY football coaching dean steams into 40th season: ‘I’m not ready to play pickleball and shuffleboard’

Syracuse, N.Y. — For the past few years, the future of the Baldwinsville football program has been decided in January on a beach in Panama City, Fla.

That’s where Carl Sanfilippo and Juliet, his wife of 42 years, vacation in the winter. At some point during the relaxation, the couple discuss whether it’s time for Carl to retire as the Bees football coach.

So far, it’s been an uncluttered decision. Carl still has the energy of a college offensive lineman and a deep passion for the job.

So today, at age 70, he’s whistling open the start of Baldwinsville’s preseason work for the 40th time as head coach.

“I love the energy of the kids. I think it keeps you young,” Sanfilippo said. “I’m not ready to play pickleball and shuffleboard and all that stuff.”

So on a hot weekday morning behind Durgee Junior High School last week, Sanfilippo bounded among the young players who will comprise the program’s immediate and distant future.

He seemingly knew the name of everyone at the preseason workout, from modified to varsity players, lobbing personalized tweaks at habits such as tardiness or the failure to hand in permission forms in a timely manner.

His voice hammered away at the humid air, booming with a drill sergeant’s resonance that’s snapped Bees players to attention since 1985.

But he recognized the need for the workouts to be more joyful and unstructured, at least for now. So Sanfilippo generously spread smiles and laughs.

Football has always been fun for Sanfilippo and he wants that emotion to span the generations. It was a get-it-while-you-can offering from the coach, with an expiration date of the first real practice today.

“Ah, I think I’ve toned down a little bit. I think you have to evolve, the sensitivity of everything outside the white lines. (A former player) came and saw us yesterday from North Carolina. He said ‘Coach, you’ve mellowed.’ See, I don’t feel any different,” Sanfilippo said. “But he noticed. It’s summer. Monday we won’t have mellowed at all. And the kids expect it. We want kids to be fired up. Any sport, any discipline, whether it be music, I’m in favor of it all because I think it gives the kid time management, it gives the kid responsibility. It gives the kid some focus.”

While other football coaches in the history of the section and state have longer tenures than Sanfilippo, he is the active dean of Section III coaches. It’s a remarkable stretch, especially since he was a last-second phone call away from never holding the Baldwinsville job at all.

He knew he wanted to be a head coach someday. His father, Joe, coached the sport for 40 seasons including a stint as Carl’s head coach at Salamanca High School near Jamestown.

After Sanfilippo finished the 1984 season as a Bees assistant, he accepted a spot as head coach of a high school in Chicago. Sanfilippo was ready to head out west when then-Baldwinsville AD Leo Johnson called him with an offer of the same position there.

Sanfilippo couldn’t spit out his “yes” quickly enough.

“Life takes funny turns. We stayed and been here ever since,” he said. “Once he offered it to me, it was a no-brainer. Never once in my life have I ever looked back. You’ve got to go forward. We start looking back, that’s when people start second-guessing themselves.”

So in the fall of 1985, Sanfilippo grabbed his whistle and took over the Baldwinsville field for the first time.

“(It was) just like the first day Monday (will be). It will be the same thing. Just establishing our program,” he said. “We wanted to be physical and run the ball. We wanted to establish ourselves. I remember telling the coaches that was our only objective. I remember being in the coaches’ meeting and telling the coaches if we can win four games, I’ll be happy. And we ended up 9-0 playing Rome for the championship.”

Sanfilippo said he’s never missed a practice and has sat out just one game, that setback coming after he was spiked in the leg during pregame warmups. He’s brought four sectional titles to Baldwinsville.

He said if someone told him 40 years ago he’d still be running the show at age 70, he’d have believed it.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” he said. “I think the one thing you’ll see, it used to be when we started working, you stayed. You were a lifer. Now everybody jumps. Look at the college ranks. I’m convinced that’s how they get their raises. They build a program for a few years and they take how many millions to go to somewhere else. I think in all parts of industry it’s like that. My father, you were taught commitment and loyalty. And I’ve always felt a tremendous loyalty to this school. I’m happy I stayed.”

Sanfilippo stiff-arms the issue of when he’ll call it quits. He said it’s become a year-to-year issue, with no firm commitment until he and Juliet do their annual beach-blanket review of the pros and cons. He said if they decide it’s best to quit, he’d be fine with that conclusion.

Still, if he wants to push his career a little longer, a new twist awaits. His grandson, Joe, is a wide receiver on the junior varsity team. For now, Sanfilippo said he watches Joe’s games as a proud grandpa.

If Sanfilippo returns in 2025, it would likely set up a chance to mold his father’s namesake as a coach.

“Cross that bridge when I get to it. I don’t know,” Sanfilippo said. “That’s a little bit different.”

Of course, Sanfilippo knows there’s a growing chance that every season could be his last. When he started out, he was the young challenger finding his way among coaching legends.

There was Tom Acee at Henninger, George Mangicaro at Liverpool and Tom Hoke at RFA. Now, Sanfilippo is the institution that younger coaches view as a peak of the profession.

At syracuse.com’s recent football media day, Sanfilippo bounced around greeting his head coaching peers, many of whom weren’t even born when he began his run as Bees head coach.

When asked how it felt to know some of those coaches now view him through the same lens as he respected the elders of his younger days, Sanfilippo leaned on a favorite personal philosophy.

“Well, I think it’s circle of life. You know, I’m big into the circle of life, and I think that’s what happens,” he said. “And I think, I pray, that a lot of these younger coaches, go stay the course, and I pray that they’re here 20, 30 years from now because I think there are some good young coaches. I think the sport needs that.”

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