By Mike Finn, W.I.N. Editor
Editor’s Note: Cornell’s Rob Koll has spent 18 years in Ithaca, N.Y., including the past 14 as the Big Red’s head coach. During that time, he has built Cornell not only into an Eastern power — winning ten Ivy League and two EIWA titles — but also led his team to a fourth-place finish — second highest in school history — at the 2005 NCAA tournament, when Travis Lee added his second individual title. Last year the Big Red finished fifth and entered this season with a No. 8 national ranking. Rob, who became North Carolina’s and the ACC’s winningest wrestler in history — capped off with an NCAA title in 1988 — grew up in a wrestling family in State College, Pa., where his late father, Bill, was a successful coach at Penn State (1958-79). W.I.N. editor Mike Finn recently spoke to Rob, who with his wife, Rachel, are also raising two boys, William and Daniel, under the age of ten. When asked if they wrestle, Rob joked, “Only if they want to eat.”

Q Your father was a well-known wrestler and coach. What did you take from him to help you with this sport?
A He never pushed me. It was usually my brothers and sisters who would beat me soundly. Since I was the youngest, I do remember going up to the Penn State wrestling room, which served as a free daycare for my parents. I was always exposed to it. It’s not that he was coaching me so much. The environment I grew up with was pretty influential.

Q When did you first see yourself as a coach?
A When I was graduating and didn’t have a job. I had no clue what I wanted to do. I really enjoyed the sport but I didn’t think about my future very much. Then I had an opportunity with Jack Spates, who called me up. I was finishing up school at North Carolina and he offered me a job up here. I thought it would be fun and I enjoyed it. I certainly did not go to school to become a wrestling coach. I think few people do.

Q If not coaching, what were your post-graduate goals in college?
A I thought I’d go into some kind of business. I wasn’t like some of these kids I have at Cornell, where they know from the time they are in the womb that they want to be doctors, engineers or lawyers. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I picked my major (communications) on what my roommates were doing. I wouldn’t say that I was floundering but I went through school without a lot of vision. Then in my fifth year, I got married and did well after I got married. Unfortunately, I did not do what I preach now. I didn’t have a lot of academic motivation at the time. North Carolina is a good school, but I went for the wrong reasons. I probably would have been better served if I went into the military first for a couple years.

Q Once you decided that you were going to be a head coach, did you sit down with your father to discuss it.
A No. I did speak with my father a lot but I did know that whatever I did, I wanted to be the best. Once I officially retired from competing (Koll finished fifth in the World freestyle championship), my coaching became a lot more effective. As far as my Father is concerned, I’ve had everything compared to what he had when he was coaching. I remember he asked me what I was teaching at Cornell. I had to explain to him that as a head coach, I didn’t have to teach. He didn’t know what I did with myself all day long. He was a full-time professor and had a graduate student. I don’t think he ever had full-time assistant.

Q Even though you don’t teach in the classroom, do you still consider yourself a teacher?
A I would like to think that I’m teaching. At Cornell, you deal with a lot of kids who have financial issues and certainly you have academic and counseling issues. I have to deal with quite a few admission issues. There are also fund-raising issues, which I don’t think my father had to deal with. College coaches now will be facing that a lot more. They have to deal with development more than in the past where they’d say, ‘Here’s your budget. Go get it.’ Nowadays, you have to raise that budget.

Q What makes you a good recruiter. Are you simply personable?
A I’m not the most organized person so I have to work a little harder. I have a great product and when I go into a home, I know that I’m not selling someone a bill of goods. I like getting out on the road. I don’t like telling my wife that because I’m gone so much and I want her to think I’m miserable.

Q As you know, there has not been an NCAA team champion from the East Coast in over 50 years, when Penn State won in 1953. Why has it been so long?
A It’s not an easy question. I think some universities have innate advantages over others. There are some schools in the Midwest, which are extremely inexpensive and extremely easy to get into … and have a lot of support. Meanwhile, East Coast schools cost significantly more. Not to knock the Midwest schools, but these Eastern schools are better schools and harder to get into. You also can’t get the numbers. People will say there are more people out East, which is true. But there are far more schools out here offering scholarships and far more schools competing for those kids. You have to have support and tradition. There are schools out here which have support and tradition, then it comes down to sheer numbers.
I feel almost guilty because when I was coming out of high school, Penn State, had I gone there, would have won a national championship. Not that I was that good, but I would have gone there virtually for free because my father worked there. In three of their better years, I had taken third, third and first and those were three years where they didn’t have a placer at that weight (158) class. (With me at Penn State) it would have been enough for them to get over the top.
Q Wrestlers talk about having the vision of seeing themselves on the national championship stand before they actually do. Now that you are a coach, have you had visions of winning the national championship as a team. If that happens, how do you think that will feel compared to winning an individual championship.
A I’ve won it about 1,000 times in my dreams already so it’s not that I haven’t experienced that and hopefully, it will feel the same. When I won (the individual title), I was relieved. When Cornell wins it as a team, I will be exalted. I had placed too much pressure on myself to win that thing in college. It wasn’t joy. It was pure relief. I knew they had arranged for my father to be there and give out the awards. I said, ‘Oh my God, if I don’t win this thing, I’m going to have to be up there and he’s going to present me a second-place trophy.’ Winning as a team would be a completely different thing. I don’t have a lot of pressure to win national championships at Cornell. No one believed we could win a national championship at Cornell. But I know we have the team that could.
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