After nearly 50 years, the Sirianni ‘family business’ reaches the Super Bowl

Frank Sirianni sold women’s clothing for years at the Dan-Dee Shop, a storefront he owned in a small Pennsylvania town about 90 miles southeast of Erie. The shop on Fraley Street — Kane’s main road — sold designer coats, dresses, and bathing suits. It was a piece of the town’s charm. But Sirianni told his son, Fran, to find something else after college.

“You don’t want to go into this business,” he said.

The Sirianni family business would not be fur coats and corsets. Instead, it became coaching. Fran Sirianni played football at Clarion, injured his knee as a defensive back in the Continental Football League, and then answered a classified ad to teach in Jamestown, N.Y. He was hired in 1976 as Southwestern Central High School’s football coach, starting a family business that will reach the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Nick Sirianni, the second-year Eagles head coach, is the youngest of Fran and Amy Sirianni’s three children. And all of them followed their father onto the sidelines.

“My dad has never, ever said that to us,” Jay Sirianni said of his grandfather’s warning. “What we got from him was the reward that he had from being a coach and having an impact in people’s lives.”

All three Sirianni boys — Mike, Jay, and Nick — played Division III college football at Mount Union before becoming coaches.

Mike Sirianni has been the head coach for 20 years at Washington & Jefferson, a Division III program in Western Pennsylvania. Jay Sirianni coached the Southwestern Central High football team for 12 seasons and now coaches the school’s boys’ track team and middle-school basketball team — both of which his father also coached — and assists his wife with the high school girls’ basketball team.

» READ MORE: ‘He was such a jerk’: Nick Sirianni’s trash-talking, camera-mugging ways date back to high school and still anger past foes

The field at Southwestern Central was like day care as Amy Sirianni dropped her sons off while their father ran through another practice. They tried to soar over tackling dummies like they were Walter Payton, sprayed each other with water bottles, and served as the team’s ball boys. The game was their life and their father made coaching seem like a dream job.

“We didn’t see all the other sides of coaching,” Jay Sirianni said. “My dad did a really good job of keeping that from us. You know how it is being a coach and all the outside chatter and the criticisms. I never saw that. I know my dad went through a lot and I’ve experienced that as a high school coach, but he never brought that home with him.”

You name it, Mike Sirianni said, and his dad coached it. His success on the sidelines earned him a place in 2018 in the county’s athletic Hall of Fame and the high school’s athletic complex is named after him. His name carries weight in Jamestown, but he was more than just a coach.

Fran Sirianni taught for 34 years and his wife was a kindergarten teacher. Their household was about more than football. The Sirianni boys saw the impact their parents made on their students and each of them studied education in college. Nick Sirianni said he would have been a teacher if his coaching career did not pan out.

Their father was able to connect like a teacher with his high school teams. Mike Sirianni does the same with his Division III squad and Jay Sirianni is more than a coach as he rides a school bus with his seventh- and eighth-grade basketball team. But is there a way for the youngest Sirianni to mirror that connection at the game’s highest level?

“When you connect, you build relationships,” Jay Sirianni said. “What that relationship turns into between a coach and a player is different at the high school level than it is for Nick at the professional level, but it’s still a relationship where there’s trust involved. It’s amazing when you have that connection and you’re willing to go out there and perform for one another.”

» READ MORE: Nick Sirianni’s path to the Super Bowl included a stint as a babysitter

Mike and Jay Sirianni won’t take any credit for their brother’s rise, but they did help him get there. They fueled his competitive fire. “He’s come a long way from when we were playing P-I-G in the yard and he would punt the ball across the yard,” Jay Sirianni said.

They also helped him develop the five core principles — “connecting, competition, accountability, intelligence, and fundamentals” — that Nick Sirianni teaches to the NFC champions. They’re not on the Eagles’ staff, but the Sirianni brothers have played a role in Nick Sirianni’s path to the Super Bowl.

Mike Sirianni told his brother to stay at Mount Union in 2006 instead of taking an entry-level job at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Nick had been a graduate assistant for two years at his alma mater and Mike told him to ride it out.

After his brother ignored him, Mike Sirianni tried to hire him on his staff at Washington & Jefferson but was overruled by the school because officials saw it as nepotism.

“Two for two,” Mike Sirianni said. “It worked out for him two ways.”

Nick Sirianni went against his brother’s advice and couldn’t coach with him, but the stylings of the eldest Sirianni brother have been easy to see on the road to the Super Bowl. The Eagles coach wears the numbers of injured players on his visor every Sunday and often practices during the week in T-shirts that feature his players. He co-opted both from his brother.

Mike Sirianni bets his players during the season that their old high school team will lose. If the team wins, he’ll wear a T-shirt from that player’s high school. It’s a little touch to bring a piece of their home to the liberal arts college about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh.

Mike Sirianni wore his brother’s No. 25 on his visor years ago when Nick Sirianni injured his knee and missed time in college. It inspired Nick Sirianni so much that he does it now for his players, wanting them to know that they’re a part of their team even if they’re not playing.

The oldest Sirianni used his visor brim in 2020 to remember Todd Young, who coached with him for 21 years before dying from esophageal cancer. Sirianni called Young “the heart and soul” of his football program.

“Todd is up there rooting for the Eagles and rooting for Nick,” Mike Sirianni said. “He was such a family person and would do anything for anyone. He was the type of guy who if you were moving on the same day he was, he would help you move and then not ask for help.”

Fran Sirianni is allowed to watch Washington & Jefferson’s games from the sidelines, but he has to watch from a box at Lincoln Financial Field. He paces the sidelines, invested in the game as if he’s still coaching. So Mike Sirianni knew to stay away from his father earlier this month when the family settled in to watch the NFC championship game.

“I don’t stand near him,” Mike Sirianni said. “I go in the back, like ‘I’m not sitting next to him.’ He gets mad at our games and this is times 100. I can’t imagine.”

» READ MORE: Nick Sirianni’s introduction to ‘pro’ football: Checks bounced, coaches quit, and players boycotted

The nerves were eventually able to ease as the Eagles won by 24 points, clinching their fourth trip to football’s biggest game. As the family was escorted onto the field, Jay Sirianni told Mike how their kid brother — “He’s still my kid brother who we beat up,” Mike Sirianni said — was going to be in one of the Super Bowl highlight films they used to devour as kids. This is crazy, he said.

Jay Sirianni looked at the crowd and listened to the roar as his brother stood on a stage and confetti sprayed in the air. And then he looked at his mom and dad. The family business was headed to the Super Bowl. All because a father took a job nearly 50 years ago and set an example that his children wanted to follow.

“My parents had tears in their eyes,” Jay Sirianni said. “Jeez. That’s all we want is to make our parents proud.”

“The values that he taught us at a young age are now being taught to the elite athletes of the world,” Mike Sirianni said. “I think he’s just a proud dad.”