After his playing career was ended by injury, former Big Green defensive back Joe Scola '07 spent several years coaching at Dartmouth. He then moved on to Florida State, where he served as a defensive graduate assistant under D-coordinator Mark Stoops while working on his master's degree.A quick post on a coaching site this spring noted that Scola was moving on to Kentucky along with Stoops – in his first year as head coach in Lexington –and when a web search didn't turn up much about his new role I touched base directly with Scola to find out what his role would be with the Wildcats.
Joe reports that his title is Director of Player Development. His responsibilities include dealing with players in every aspect of their lives from football to academics to the social side. Among his other duties he has been working on a curriculum to enhance leadership development that saw him spend time in Australia in the spring to better understand a program in use Down Under. He's also been studying military leadership initiatives to incorporate some of those strategies into his program.While Scola's ultimate goal is to r
eturn to on-field coaching, he says he's excited to continue learning under Stoops and is staying close to the coaching side with his involvement in gameplanning.
Scola earned a master's in Sports Management at FSU in May and capped his time at Florida State by seeing seven of his defensive players drafted this spring and visiting the San Francisco 49ers training site where he caught up with Tank Carradine and Nick Moody, who played for him with the Seminoles.
