Daily News | Ohio State coordinator Jim Knowles’ path to success started on a ‘stoop’ in North Philly
The offer of a lifetime: A chance to live in the basement of a Cornell University assistant football coach. It beat the side room next to the Cornell visitor’s locker room, where six Big Red assistants slept on cots during the 1988 season.Knowles, 57, was raised on the “stoop” of a North Philadelphia row home, who at the insistence of a grade school teacher took an entrance test for St. Joseph’s Prep.
One of the important decision-makers in this game will be Knowles, who has spent over half his life coaching. A 1983 St. Joe’s Prep graduate who is considered one of the best defensive minds in college football. It’s what prompted Ohio State head coach Ryan Day to pluck Knowles, who spent most of his young life in Lawncrest, steps from Rising Sun Avenue, from Oklahoma State, where in the previous two years he had transformed the Cowboys defense into one of the best in the country.
That’s when he opted, at 22, to trade his world of making close to $100,000 working for Prudential for a wake-up call, and a cot for $3,000. Back in Philadelphia on Saturday, former St. Joseph’s Prep coach Jack Branka, 84, will be sitting on the edge of his sofa, watching Penn State and Ohio State with his wife Mary Ellen seated next to him in the family room holding her rosary. Each year, usually sometime around July, Branka, Knowles, along with Knowles’ former Prep teammates Rich Gannon, the 2002 NFL MVP, and Clayton Carlin, the defensive coordinator at Sam Houston State, get together for a golf outing.
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