Rich Kotite playing football in college (Photo courtesy of Wagner College).
Richard Kotite has gone down in NFL history for many things. But often his Arab American heritage gets ignored. He is one of four Arab American head coaches in NFL history, and he deserves to be acknowledged as such. I wrote an article on another Lebanese coach from the same era, Abe Gibron, here. Let’s dig into Rich Kotite’s life on and off the gridiron below.
Rich Kotite on His Arab American Heritage
Coach Kotite has never spoken about his Lebanese heritage ever. It’s unclear how anyone knows he is Lebanese, although of course we don’t doubt it. Even in multiple personal exclusives, he has never uttered a word about his background. Whether he’s vocal about it or not, he still is a part of crucial representation in the NFL, and we’re going to celebrate it. So what did we do without any information on Kotite’s heritage? Dig in nosily, of course.
What We Know
Kotite is so private that we know very little about his personal life. We know he got married in 1972. The status of that relationship is a question mark. If he is the Richard Kotite of Staten Island referred to in this article as the father of a young lady getting married, he was still married in 2006 and had children.
Young Richard was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942 to Richard and Elizabeth Kotite. His mother, Elizabeth, was the chairwoman of the English department at a Staten Island intermediate school. It does appear that the Kotite family was doing well fiscally.
Poly Tech
Kotite attended a non-religious, all-boys private school in Brooklyn called Poly Tech, which couldn’t be cheap. It became a co-ed institution in the 1970s, long after Richard graduated. If you have heard the alarming sexual assault lawsuit about the head coach of the football team at Poly Tech, Kotite had thankfully already graduated. Philip Foglietta allegedly victimized children during his tenure at school between 1966 and 1991, when his contract was not renewed. Aspects of the lawsuit brought about by 12 individuals that were not impacted by the statute of limitations ultimately were settled outside of court for 12 million in 2012.
Wagner College
Coach Kotite was a bit of a big deal in Staten Island, attending Wagner College. He was such a Staten Island hero he was enshrined in the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame in its year of creation in 1995. Kotite also identifies strongly with his Brooklyn background. Instead of identifying with his heritage, he seemingly bonded with people over being from his NYC borough. When discussing working with coaches in the NFL, he described networking and bonding with many other “Brooklyn boys” in the NFL world. His accent was a dead giveaway; no one had to guess where he was born and raised.
Boxing Blessed
In this exclusive, Kotite discussed being a bit of a fighter in college. A boxer, in fact. He would swing at anyone who gave him grief—something he may have dealt with regularly, which we will get into later. In his one year at the University of Miami, he was a boxing champ.
Kotite mentioned his dad networked in the boxing world and would travel to different gyms to look at boxers he was interested in. We don’t know what his father did, but it was in the boxing world somehow. Richard described himself as heavy and lethargic when he started boxing at the gym when he was 13. He got into shape and got much better over the years. He even sparred with Muhammad Ali for four months.
Brain Surgery
A little-known fact about Richard Kotite is that he had to retire from playing in the NFL after having accumulated two serious brain injuries. In his third year of coaching, Kotite had a 9.5-hour brain surgery due to the presence of a tumor. He went back to work 10 days later but found the whole situation to be scary. He couldn’t drive for a full year.
Anything Else
We were able to glean a few other things about Richard Kotite, one of the most mysterious men in the league. As a child, he remembered going to Giants games with his dad in below-freezing weather at Yankee Stadium. That’s how you grow them strong! This clearly left an impression on Kotite, as he was a huge New York Giants fan and loved coaching for them.
Last but not least, we know that young fans described him as being thoughtful and kind. One lifelong Giants fan remembered meeting him one day, and Kotite taking the time to sign autographs and make the children feel special by making meaningful conversation. The child came to the stadium the next day, and Kotite remembered who he was. That’s a genuine guy.
As a pre-teen, the same guy wrote letters to Kotite in 1971, and his hero wrote him back with an encouraging letter. That kid still remembered how meaningful that was when he was grown up and in his 50s. That’s a hell of a legacy, Richard Kotite! Along with his post-NFL retirement, when he did NFL commercials and commentating, he is believed to be retired in Florida.
What We Infer
We tried to pry around for information on Richard Kotite, and it was mostly fruitless. However, we dived into a bit of history to give context to a person’s background, like Kotite’s. Take this with a grain of salt since Coach Kotite was such a private guy, so confirming things is impossible.
Religion
Lebanon is a religiously diverse country with many Christians and Muslims. What was Richard? We have no way of knowing. We know he wasn’t Muslim since Robert Saleh was the first Muslim head coach in the league. Kotite did attend a Lutheran Evangelical college, but that doesn’t mean much. We can assume he was raised Christian. Why? We’ll get into it in a bit.
Last Names
We thought that perhaps the ‘Kotite’ name was of Lebanese origin. It isn’t. It appears to be a last name with no country of origin. Perhaps it is an Americanized version of another last name, since 91% of people with that last name live in the United States, and most within the states live in New York. There are other similar last names from other countries, some of which are Arab.
Coincidence
It’s of note that every Arab head coach in the NFL is Lebanese American, and the majority coached around the same time. Fellow NFL HC Ed Khayat was born in 1935 in Mississippi and was Methodist. Khayat coached in the league from 1967 to 1993. Abe Gibron was born in Indiana in 1925 to Lebanese immigrant parents. He coached from 1960 to 1984 in the NFL. Kotite was, of course, born in 1942 in Brooklyn and was an NFL coach from 1977 to 1996.
For the first 40 years of the NFL, we had no Arab head coaches and went over 20 years without having another one. Kotite retired in 1996, and Robert Saleh became the HC in 2021. Ironically, both coached for the same team—the New York Jets. Robert Saleh came from another generation, which makes him a bit of an outlier. It is interesting that all Arab coaches were of Lebanese descent. It’s unclear why they all have come from one country. Anyone from the other 21 countries is welcome too!
Timing
Understanding Lebanese immigration explains a little of the timing of the peak of Arab head coaches, maybe. From the 1850s until 1920, many Lebanese immigrants in that first wave came to America and primarily settled in Brooklyn, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts. The vast majority were Christians. Could that possibly be the Kotite family’s immigration journey? It could be.
There was a second wave of immigration from the 1940s until the 1990s. The majority were also Christian and were fleeing the Lebanese civil war for the first 20 years. After the 1960s, there were many Muslim and Jewish Lebanese who also came to America. Over 60,000 Lebanese immigrants came during the second wave.
It makes sense that if there are more Lebanese people in the United States, they are more likely to be in the NFL. It doesn’t particularly explain why only people from Lebanon entered the NFL and not, for example, Syrians, who often immigrated around the same time. This information also doesn’t explain why the majority of Arab head coaches entered and left the NFL around the same time. It does provide insightful context, though.
A Fighting Spirit
Richard Kotite being quick to swing makes sense if you consider the racism that Lebanese immigrants experienced in America. The locker room experience must have been a nightmare. Kotite may have been shielded from some of the more blatant racism in the South, unlike his cohort Ed Khayat, who remembers having to sit in the back of his Methodist church sanctuary due to his race, but it likely wasn’t easy for anyone.
For example, in a North Carolina newspaper, the recent immigrants were described like this in 1897: “These foreigners are…filthy and immoral in their habits, breeding pestilence and filth wherever they live.” NC Senator F.M. Simmons doubled down in 1914, saying, “These [Lebanese] immigrants are nothing more than the degenerate progeny…the spawn of the Phoenician curse.”
There was a couple, Nola and Fannie Romey, who emigrated to Georgia from Lebanon in 1906. They abandoned their home there for one in Florida in 1926 after violent attacks from the KKK and corrupt law enforcement run-ins. Florida wasn’t any better. Fannie was shot to death at the couple’s store by local law enforcement after an altercation. Nola was separated from his deceased wife and imprisoned. That night a local mob broke in and lynched Nola to death in the street. Their story deserves to be amplified and respected.
Citizenship
We can definitely understand why Rich Kotite would have a little emotional baggage with his Arab American community experiencing horrific things in the United States. Some may have been generational, as his parents were likely around for the citizenship battle. The 1790 citizen naturalization laws for the United States that were still in play in the early 20th century only allowed citizenship for “free white people.” Something the courts decided was this description only referred to Europeans.
Lebanese people, along with Italians, Syrians, and other groups, were considered some nebulous race America couldn’t reckon with. They understand African Americans and Caucasian Americans, but the idea that there were more people out there seemed to shock them. Multiple citizenship requests were denied by courts because the immigrants were too “dark.” In one court they described an individual as darker than the typical biracial person.
There was a landmark case in 1914 that awarded the Lebanese and Syrian immigrant the “white” title that gradually allowed citizenship to be given to more than just white Europeans. It’s a very confusing benchmark riddled with horrific racism and colonialism. That kind of trauma can leave an imprint on the people it impacts. How much of this was felt by Rich Kotite? We’ll never know, but we can see why he may have had a fighting spirit.
That NFL Thing
Rich Kotite was a bit more infamous than famous when it came to his time in the NFL. We do know that he was drafted by both the NFL and the AFL, which was not odd in the mid-1960s. He was a New York Giant from 1967 and again from 1969 to 1972. That must have been very meaningful for Kotite since he and his father felt so closely connected with the team. In 1968 he took a one-year jaunt to Pittsburgh to play with the Steelers. Besides being a little injury-prone, his playing career as a tight end went completely under the radar.
The former tight end jumped to coaching for the NFL in 1977 as a tight ends coach in New Orleans. Kotite bounced around as a WR coach in Cleveland and the Jets. He was also an offensive coordinator for the Jets and the Philadelphia Eagles before he escalated to the head coaching position. He was the HC in Philadelphia from 1991 to 1994 and for the New York Jets in 1995-1996. Kotite’s coaching record as a head coach was 41-57.
Infamous Quotes
It appears that Kotite’s Brooklyn connections helped him climb through the ranks, but it didn’t help him stay there. He will likely go down in history for his quote “Hey, eight and eight is great” in reference to his third winning season with Philly. Eagles fans can be intense, and that kind of acceptance of mediocrity inflamed them. He had another quote that went down in NFL history that pretty much sealed his end in Philly.
In a post-game press conference for a loss in that same season, he was critiqued for making the “wrong choice.” Many coaches have made the wrong call that seemingly brings about a loss, but Rich Kotite’s quote is what really angered the fans in tandem with his other quote. He said at the conference that he made the wrong choice because “rain made the ink run and blurred the chart, so I couldn’t see what was written on it to know what to do.” Eagles fans can be a lot, but anyone would facepalm over this atrocious quote combo.
Somehow, after firing Pete Carroll of all people, the New York Jets welcomed him back as an HC and GM in 1995. We called their coaching decisions into question in this article in 2024, but it clearly is a long-standing issue. Kotite coached the team with the worst record in the league for his two seasons. After not picking the fan favorite in the 1995 NFL draft, drawing their ire, his decisions as a general manager and head coach sealed his fate. He stepped down in 1996, two days before the final game of the season, and he headed into retirement. Leaving his team in a lurch for that final game is just one more questionable decision.
Final Thoughts
Rich Kotite was a notoriously private man who made a small imprint on the NFL. Coaching is not for everyone, and it wasn’t for Kotite. He rubbed many of his fanbases the wrong way, but he did take the time to connect with the children in his fanbase in a meaningful way that made a positive lasting impact on those young men. That’s a beautiful legacy to leave behind that trumps all of his terrible quotes.
Even if he never discussed his Arab American heritage, Rich Kotite is still an important example of representation in the NFL. He has a background that many Arab Americans can identify with, although it’s certainly not indicative of everyone’s experience. Kotite created a conversation in this article about the Lebanese immigration experience in America and has likely opened the door for similar discussions elsewhere. Many young people can grow up to be a coach like him, and hopefully a much better one with less infamous quotes.
