No big surprise here, Bob Casullo was officially hired today as assistant head coach where he will also oversee the special teams and the tight ends.
This hire is, in a word, tremendous:
"He brings a tremendous amount of experience and a tremendous amount local support as a native of Upstate New York," Marrone said.
I hope that sentence is just missing an "of" and Doug isn't actually speaking like a Lithuanian immigrant still learning English. Casullo brings with him quite a fine pedigree but his real value to SU is that he fits the three basic criteria required of almost all coaches on Marrone's staff. He's from New york, he's an SU guy and he and Marrone used to work together:
Casullo, 57, coached previously at Syracuse under Dick MacPherson and Paul Pasqualoni between 1985 and 1994. As a recruiter, he was reponsible for bringing several players to the Orange including wide receiver Marvin Harrison of Philadelphia. Casullo left Syracuse in 1995 to coach under George O'Leary at Georgia Tech. It was there that he coached on the same Yellow Jacket staff with Marrone.
Interesting side-note from way back at the beginning of his coaching career:
Prior to beginning his collegiate coaching career, Casullo spent two years as the head coach at Baldwinsville High School in Syracuse, New York, and 10 seasons as an assistant at Henninger High School, also in Syracuse.
Casullo hasn't worked in college since 2000 when he coached at Michigan State but since he's not being asked to handle the recruiting load, it doesn't really matter. Casullo has two sons, Rocco and Jamie. Whether or not that means Bob and his wife are overzealous fans of Celebrity chefs (like this one and this one) remains to be discovered.