The veteran coach at Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice "doesn't move like he used to," writes Detroit News sports columnist Terry Foster, "but Al Fracassa is hardly washed up."
His team beat Muskegon by 35-28 Friday afternoon at Ford Field to win the Division 2 championship.
Fracassa cleaned out a lifetime of playbooks and he needed every one of them to win his eighth state title in 44 years of brilliance at Rice and 53rd year overall. It was his second straight title and capped off his state-record 416th win — 372 of them at Brother Rice.
Foster was there and was impressed. "There is still some spice running in those veins," he writes of the gray-haired coach..
Now we must wait to see if this was the last call for Fracassa, who might announce his retirement soon. Better yet, it would be nice to see the old man on the sidelines calling more of those zany plays.
Fracassa does not want to leave as Rice's football coach. He wants to stand on the sidelines for another year. But the reality is some inside the Rice family believe he is too old and too antiquated. They want Fracassa to become a figurehead who has an office in the school and oversees football operations. Fracassa is not a shiny trophy you stack in a glass case. He is not some old guy you stack in the corner for rich boosters to shake his hand.
Yeah, he is old. But he remains in touch and in tune with the game. . . . he is a football coach, not a casino greeter.
