Joe Bottiglieri could have been a coach in the NFL. In fact, he remains friends with current head coaches in the league, such as Dan Quinn, Mike Tomlin and Sean McDermott.<\/p>\n
Bottiliglieri coached with Dan Quinn at William & Mary, and Quinn, who is currently the head coach of the Washington Commanders, once asked Bottiglieri to join him at Hofstra.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was the defensive line coach at Hofstra after he had been with us at William & Mary in his first job,\u201d Bottiglieri said. \u201cHe had played at Salisbury [Maryland] State, whose head coach at the time was one of my former assistants, so there was a connection there. And he got hired at William & Mary as a defensive line coach along with Mike London. He then went to Hofstra two years later, while I was at Lehigh at the time, and we just went 12-1 [in 1998] and beat Richmond in the first round of the playoffs and then lost to UMass, which went on to win the FCS national championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cDan called me and wanted me to come to Hofstra as the defensive coordinator. He said I had to take this job, but I had just returned to the Lehigh Valley and was getting settled in at Lehigh with Kevin Higgins. He lobbied for me and said the job was mine if I wanted it because we really did have a great rapport. But I decided to stay at Lehigh.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who knows if going with Quinn some 27 years ago might have led Bottiglieri to a position in the NFL?<\/p>\n
But Bottiglieri has no regrets about not going pro.<\/p>\n
He spent 53 seasons coaching college and high school football, much of it in the Lehigh Valley, including the last two seasons as defensive coordinator at Liberty.<\/p>\n
But after 53 years on the sidelines \u2014 36 in college football and 17 in high school \u2014 Bottiglieri has announced his retirement.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that he doesn\u2019t still enjoy the game or working with kids.<\/p>\n
![\"Joe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TMC-L-JoeBottiglieriLehigh-1.jpg\")
Joe Bottiglieri, seen working with Lehigh football players during his time as the Mountain Hawks\u2019 defensive coordinator, has retired after 53 seasons as a football coach. He most recently was the defensive coordinator at Liberty. (Lehigh University\/contributed photo)<\/p>\n
But the 1966 Easton High School graduate, who began his coaching career at Lafayette under Neil Putnam in 1973, just feels it\u2019s time to do some other things and watch some of his grandkids play, like Allentown Central Catholic\u2019s Grayson Schmell, who made his mark as a sophomore this past season.<\/p>\n
Liberty head coach Shawn Daignault said Bottiglieri has forgotten more about football than most coaches will ever know and said he was a great part of the coaching staff the last two seasons when Liberty went 7-4 and 8-4 after winning just five games over the previous three seasons.<\/p>\n
Bottiglieri enjoyed the people he worked with on the Hurricanes staff and the players as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had so much fun and it was so enjoyable to coach at Liberty the last two years and this year we had a great group of seniors,\u201d Bottiglieri said. \u201cJake Pukszyn was phenomenal. He\u2019s just a special player. He would be getting double-teamed and Antonio Fontanez, our quarterback, would still throw the ball to him and we\u2019d say \u2018Oh no.\u2019 But Jake would still go up and get it. He\u2019s just a fantastic receiver and he also did a good job on defense when we needed him because of some injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just had great players, great kids and this was the first time in 15 years that Liberty beat both Bethlehem Catholic and Freedom in the same season. The city championship is a big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bottiglieri also complimented Daignault and the rest of the coaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cShawn has done a great job of getting that program turned around, and I think that\u2019s going to continue,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are going to be relevant every year now. Frankie Lane, being the offensive coordinator, led to some great practices that were a lot of fun because we\u2019d get on each other and kid around. Defensively, Levi Brown, who is a Liberty legend, was with us, and so were Anthony Orlando and RJ Guffy. What was interesting was that we had five former Easton players on that staff, including me. Easton grads outnumbered the Liberty grads, and we\u2019d kid them about that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, it was Easton that beat Liberty twice, including in the District 11 6A semifinals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were the best team we played,\u201d Bottiglieri said. \u201cIn fact, I would have loved to see Easton play Harrisburg because I believe Easton was the best public school team in Pennsylvania. It\u2019s just unfortunate that there\u2019s such an imbalance between the public and private schools at that level.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s something Bottiglieri, like many others, would like to see changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can understand parents who live in that area who have sons and daughters who are tremendous athletes wanting to send their kids to the best possible situation,\u201d he said. \u201cPlaces such as La Salle College High School, St. Joe\u2019s Prep, Malvern Prep and so on. That\u2019s great. But when it comes to state playoffs, let\u2019s keep them separate.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose kids go to those schools because they\u2019re going to get great exposure, and have a chance to go to the next level. Wonderful. But let\u2019s separate them and have a public and private school champion.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Joe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TMC-L-JoeBottilglieriEmmaus-1.jpg\")
Joe Bottiglieri said he has retired after 53 seasons as a football coach. Bottiglieri went 70-51 as the head coach at Emmaus over 11 seasons from 2002-2012. Most recently, he was the defensive coordinator at Liberty. (Alen Beljin\/Chronicles)<\/p>\n
Bottiglieri said that the biggest change he has seen with high school kids is that the focus for many of them and their parents is getting to the next level.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so much on their mind, more so than years ago, and it\u2019s almost like \u2018Coach, I want to do [this and that]\u2019 because they want to get to the next level instead of worrying about what\u2019s going on right now with our team and at Liberty,\u201d Bottiglieri said. \u201cI\u2019d tell them not to focus on the next level, focus on the next game, and what we have to do to be ready. That\u2019s the biggest difference I\u2019ve seen with kids today as opposed to 15 or 20 years. But the kids are still great. They\u2019re still competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n
The good experiences far outweighed the bad as Bottiglieri was the head coach at both Mansfield and Shippensburg and had stops at Rhode Island, Wesley, and Moravian in addition to Lafayette, Lehigh and William & Mary. He was also the head coach at Allentown Central Catholic for one season and at Emmaus for 11 where he turned around a doormat program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say you\u2019re going to know when it\u2019s time to retire, and that\u2019s the way it was for me this year,\u201d Bottiglieri said. \u201cI will still try to stay involved and do some consulting wherever I can, but the day-to-day stuff and the offseason weight program were getting to be too much, and there are some other things I want to do with my time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout sounding corny, there\u2019s nothing better on a fall Friday night than hearing that Liberty band play and the kids running out onto the field. It sends chills up and down your spine. There\u2019s nothing like Friday night football, especially here in the Lehigh Valley where football is so big. All of those years, 36 in college and 17 years in high school, and for me, the more enjoyable years for me were at the high school level. It\u2019s just tremendous to see these kids go out and have a great time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t big on pregame speeches,\u201d he added. \u201cWe\u2019d go over what we had to do and then I would just say \u2018Guys, I am excited to go out and see you perform tonight.\u2019 That\u2019s what made it so exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Bottiglieri could have been a coach in the NFL. In fact, he remains friends with current head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,305,726,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-73714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-high-school-sports","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}