The miles might be too many to track at this point. Birmingham, Chicago, Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., Fort Lauderdale and an upcoming two-night commitment in Atlanta tend to blur the travel lines.
The mission for James Colzie? Unwavering as he prepares for his first season as head coach at Florida A&M, a program that had soared to unprecedented heights under former coach and close Colzie confidante Willie Simmons before Simmons departed for a top assistant coaching opportunity at Duke.
“I’m realizing how wide that Florida A&M ring is,” Colzie tells FootballScoop. “It’s a fairly national brand. I try to answer every question, stay late. Whatever it takes.”
First as interim head coach and then upon earning the full-time post, Colzie remains unwavering in his leadership of the Rattlers, who open their upcoming season Aug. 24 in Atlanta against Norfolk State in the MEAC/SWAC Challenge.
He knows from his time the previous two seasons as a defensive assistant and ultimately assistant head coach to Simmons that the foundation remains strong for Florida A&M, which enters the 2024 season after coming for 21 wins, a SWAC title and Celebration Bowl/HBCU national title in the final two years under Simmons.
“Early in the month (of January), it looked like the possibility of maybe things going a different direction,” Colzie, a former Florida State star with stints in the NFL and in Major League Baseball’s minor leagues, recalls. “But our players and alumni, it looked like the direction they wanted was the one I was in favor of.
“From the minute I was named interim coach, I was never not named anything else. My approach stayed the same. When we were going through the process, speaking to everyone involved, talking with the team, I was taking it on as being the head coach. Speaking to players, it was as the head coach. I never thought it would go in a different direction. It was just continuing what we were doing from the beginning of January to the end of January.”
With Colzie keeping consistency and stability atop the program, the Rattlers return plenty of experience to perpetuate the program’s recent run of success.
Florida A&M doesn’t figure to be just one of the more veteran teams in the Football Championship Subdivision; with almost 40 fourth- and fifth-year seniors, it enters the 2024 campaign as one of the sport’s most established teams at any level.
“I think for one, and I don’t want to speak for my guys, but we have 19 graduate seniors on our football team and 19 other seniors on our football team,” Colzie says. “Those guys, guys that have been engulfed in our program for two, three, four, five years, could have been having to learn from different offensive coordinators and defensive coordinators, different terminology, different schemes.
“I think obviously the guys were speaking for me [to be head coach] but they had built a lot of equity for the program and in our program. They had been MVPs of bowl games, of football games, being captains on our football team.
“They were looking for the opportunity to win another SWAC championship, another HBCU national championship and the alumni base wanted to make sure we kept this going in the direction we’ve been going.”
Offensively, the Rattlers’ offensive line is comprised entirely of graduate seniors and Kelvin Dean returns at tailback for his final season.
Defensively, even with newcomers, the unit is crafted with considerable experience and size. There are returning veterans along the defensive front and newcomers from the Football Bowls Subdivision level, including transfers from Kansas, Pitt and Wake Forest.
“We’re going to probably run the ball quite a bit early in the year to see where we are at the quarterback position,” Colzie says. “And I like my defensive side, veterans up front, even veterans we brought in, they understand what’s at stake. What I want players to feel once they’ve played us is that we’re very disciplined, we play hard and we play smart.”
In earning a second opportunity as a head coach, following a run at St. Mary’s University in Canadian sports, Colzie is seeking for his players the same thing he is demanding of himself.
“This is my second opportunity getting to be a head coach, and not a lot people are afforded this second chance,” Colzie says. “It’s almost 180 days that I’ve been the head coach here, and it’s exciting. We’re slowly but surely getting ready to play in Atlanta in our first game of the season, and there’s excitement but also a readiness that we’re going to be ready to play.
“We’ve got a lot of people accustomed to not losing a lot of ballgames around here. We can’t rest on the laurels of what we’ve done the last two seasons. Our slogan this year will be: No surprises. We’re not going to let any team slip up on us because we know we’re going to get the other team’s best.”