As a high school and college quarterback, he was gifted and cocky. As a coach, he has been innovative and nomadic. With pit stops in the Canadian Football League and NFL Europe as well as at several colleges, Duke offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Peter Vaas has seen almost everything the football world has to offer.
But for a man who has coached everywhere from Berlin to South Bend, it's hard to believe Vaas' career started in a gym in Meadville, Pa.-with a mop.
Fresh out of college and looking for a job after being cut from the CFL only a month into his pro career, Vaas ran into his friend Sam Timer at a wedding. Timer, the head football coach at Allegheny College, said he would put in a good word for Vaas with the school's athletic director.
Soon enough, he had his first solid official job-Janitor of the Gym. Aside from his regular cleaning duties, Vaas assisted the football and basketball teams. Two years later, he was promoted to a position within the physical education department, where he taught badminton and bowling and racquetball.
But it was his talent for coaching football that set Vaas apart. In 1979, he was hired as running backs coach at New Hampshire, where he was promoted to offensive coordinator after only four years.
Vaas continued to rise through the ranks. After two brief stints with Allegheny again-this time as head coach-and at Notre Dame, he received a job offer he couldn't refuse when his alma mater, Holy Cross, offered him the head coaching position in 1992.
Twenty years earlier, Vaas had established himself as both a talented and risky quarterback, walking on his freshman year and starting by his sophomore campaign. In his three years as a starter with the Crusaders, he set nine school passing records including one that still shames him to this day-the most interceptions in a season, 23.
"My ego was so strong I felt that I could throw it there," he said. "As a quarterback, you have to be aggressive, but you have to be humble."
With the Holy Cross football field as a backdrop, Vaas' transformation from a reckless player to a coach who demanded patience and perfection was dramatic.
"The faculty members and the administrators at Holy Cross remembered me as a player-and one of those guys who probably didn't do the things he was supposed to do right all the time," Vaas said. "Now you come back and you're wearing a coat and tie, and trying to be a role model for some young kids and trying to represent the institution."
Things didn't go quite as Vaas planned, however. After compiling a 14-30 record with the Crusaders, Vaas left Holy Cross. In his 33-year career, that was the only time the coach has left a team with an overall losing record.
So, he left a place he loved because, in the end, his team didn't win enough games.
"That's the bottom line," he said. "Find a way to win. I'm not stuck on, 'You have to run the ball 100 times,' and I'm not stuck on, 'You have to throw it 100 times.' All you're trying to do in the end is find a way to win."
Although this win-at-all-costs attitude might seem like just a tired cliche, the Blue Devils have learned in just one year how seriously Vaas believes in it.
"He comes out and doesn't fear anybody," quarterback Thaddeus Lewis said. "He comes out with aggressive play-calling and tries to take shots, and he doesn't care who the defense is. He feels our offense can win in any situation. That's how he coaches-fearless."
It's also how he lives.
Vaas has never been scared to try new things. Looking for a job after leaving Holy Cross, he headed north for a year to coach in the Canadian Football League and then overseas for eight more-two as an assistant and six as a head coach-in NFL Europe. En route to earning coach-of-the-year honors and World Bowl rings with the Berlin Thunder, he received numerous job offers stateside to come back and coach college football.
But nothing made him budge until Notre Dame came calling. With a wife and two daughters living halfway around the world, Vaas said this job change was less about football and more about his family and the costs of living on two continents.
Even after Fiesta and Sugar Bowl appearances in his first two years with the Fighting Irish, the nomadic coach was ready to move again. This time, though, the reasons for taking the offensive coordinator position at Duke seemed less clear than his previous choices.
After all, the Blue Devils lost 95 games in the decade preceding Vaas' arrival, almost 70-percent as many contests as he has ever lost as a coach. Having compiled a 207-136-4 lifetime record while working in cities like Montreal, Barcelona, Berlin and Cologne, why would he come to a school that has struggled so much recently?
"I think one of the things that is extremely attractive about Duke is the fact that it's a great opportunity for a football coach," Vaas said. "It is the opportunity to see a program that hasn't enjoyed as many wins as they would like start to enjoy many, many wins."
Although they have won only one game so far this season, the Blue Devils have already improved substantially, especially on offense. Lewis has established himself as the leader of one of the ACC's premier aerial attacks, and the former-quarterback-turned-offensive coordinator has been a major influence in the sophomore's marked growth.
Vaas gives Lewis the advice he wishes he would have taken decades ago.
Do not throw the ball under duress.
If it's not there, throw it out of bounds.
Tuck it and run it if you can get the five yards.
"When you throw that interception, you never want to go back and face him," Lewis said. "Because he told you not to do it."
Vaas commands respect from his players with his attitude, his confidence and, perhaps most importantly, his years of experience. But he also knows that success should be accompanied by humility, as the long road that brought him to Durham started long ago with him sweeping floors in a gym.
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