Penn State senior director of football operations Michael Hazel is set to join former Penn State defensive coordinator and now Virginia Tech head coach Brent Pry in Blacksburg, according to a report by The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman. Hazel is expected to take on the chief of staff role at Virginia Tech.
Hazel has been a longtime staple of Penn State coach James Franklin’s internal operations since their time at Vanderbilt. Hazel was retained under Franklin while at Vanderbilt having already been on the previous staff when Franklin was hired in 2011. The two have been together ever since.
“What’s interesting is when James got to Vanderbilt, he didn’t have to keep myself or Andy [Frank],” Hazel told StateCollege.com earlier this summer.
“And I remember vividly working for him for a few days, may have been a week, and eventually he called me in his office. And you know college football transitions, usually the coordinators go, the strength coach goes, and somebody — an operational or administrative role that works directly with the head coach — usually isn’t retained. It’s maybe like at nine o’clock on a Wednesday night after he’d been hired for like four or five days. I was walking in fully prepared to be looking for another job, and he said, “Hey, I’ve enjoyed working with you. I like what you’re about. And I’d like to hire you on my staff.” And what I thought was really cool about what he said was, “I’m going to hire you, on my staff.” He didn’t say “I’m going to retain you.” “I’m hiring you. I’m selecting you to be on this staff.”
Football Scoop named Hazel the 2020 Football Operations Director of The Year and is well regarded in operations circles across the country.
“My title is director of football operations, but it’s probably not exactly fitting in terms of when you think traditional sense of what operations folks do,” Hazel added “I do a lot of different things for James and involve a lot of different ways. I’m a very curious guy, and the types of projects and tasks that I’m involved with keeps me super engaged and super interested. And I think we’re both motivated to chase two things: to chase the development of people [players and staff] and also the chase a championship, and I feel like we can achieve that at Penn State. So that is something that’s always in the back of my mind and always motivates me when I wake up in the morning, to know that we had the opportunity to make a difference in young people’s lives. We also have an opportunity to chase a national championship. So, those are all reasons why I have been with him for a while.”
Monday’s news paired with the loss of Pry to Virginia Tech earlier in the year marks the second major departure of longtime Franklin assistants or staffers who cut their teeth with Franklin during their collective rise through the college football ranks.
