Four Generations of Football Love
Tony Surace with sons Bob and Brian.
How fitting that the football game of all football games—the Super Bowl—is held in February, the month where we celebrate love.
For the Surace family the football experience goes beyond this annual one-day event. For this family the love of the sport is a lot more than the game itself.
Tony Surace is the patriarch of a football dynasty. He was a notable college football player and winning coach at Millville High School. His sons Bob and Brian were football standouts at Princeton and later college coaches, with Bob also coaching an NFL team. Tony’s four grandchildren carry the athletic gene, excelling in football, baseball, basketball, and softball. Grandson AJ is a sophomore quarterback at Rutgers.
The Surace legacy began in 1955 in a small town outside of Harrisburg, PA, where Surace grew up playing football, baseball, and basketball throughout junior and senior high school. Not surprisingly, he played football and baseball at West Chester State College, majoring, of course, in health and physical education with a goal of becoming a PE teacher and coach.
“Our football team was fortunate to go to the Tangerine Bowl twice,” he recalls with a smile. He was named to the All-Conference Team in his senior year.
Upon graduation, Surace realized his dream job at Millville High School, teaching health and physical education, and as an assistant coach in football and basketball. After three years, he applied for the head football job.
“I thought it would be a good experience to interview, not thinking they would hire a 24-year-old for a school like Millville,” he said. But to his surprise, on June 30, 1972, a day that he recalls vividly, he received a call from a reporter at The Atlantic City Press asking him for his comments about his new appointment as the head football coach. Yes, he got the job.
“I had just registered for a full load of summer courses at Glassboro State for my master’s degree!” he said, adding that he dropped the classes and got the team into weight training through the summer. Unfortunately, they lost that first game, but made a comeback in later games, finishing the season 7-2, and taking the conference title. “That team will always hold a special place in my heart,” he says. “They fought every game and gave this young coach a chance. They were one tough group.”
Surace is quick to share credit with fellow coaches, mentioning names he’ll never forget. “Football is not a sport you coach alone. Getting the job so late [in the preseason], I scrambled putting a staff together. I was blessed with outstanding coaches over the years,” he recalls. That staff included legendary two-time state wrestling champion Bob Hogan and Ed Andrews who coached with him all 25 years, and Paul MacLuskie, Rich Koeppel.
“I live for football, but I love baseball,” he admits and in 1974 he became Millville’s head baseball coach. “I was truly living a dream,” he says, “Teaching physical education with my mentor Ed Salmon and coaching football and baseball.”
“While I was playing games, my wife was raising the children,” he said of Barbara, his wife of 58 years. Sons Bob and Brian played both baseball and football with their father as their coach. Both inherited the coaching gene. Son Brian is currently coaching his children in sports now that his college coaching days have ended. He was named offensive assistant coach of the year at Division III Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).
“I could write a book about how Millville football and my father influenced my life,” said former Cincinnati Bengals coach Bob Surace, who just completed 15 years as head coach at Princeton University, where he has led the team to five Ivy League titles.
As a child, Bob was immersed in everything about the game. He was a water boy, managed the equipment, and put playbooks together. He even taped motivational slogans on the locker room wall. “I was the ultimate “tag-a-long,” he recalled. He was a manager, statistician and eventually became a Thunderbolt, playing football with his father as coach. “I sat in classes all day as a kid and I couldn’t wait for the final bell to ring so I could join the team at practice. Those Millville practice fields and meeting rooms provided me with the best education for my life skills, my values and for any tiny bit of success I’ve had in my coaching career,” he said.
Son Brian also spent his childhood immersed in his father’s football program and credits the experience with making him who he is today as a father and coach. “The values of teamwork, hard work, pride, toughness, family, discipline, resilience, commitment, integrity that I learned on the football field at Millville were the same values he instilled in me as his son,” he said. “It is what attracted me into the coaching profession for 25 years and I’ve tried to instill those same values to those I coached and into my children.”
The legacy has, of course, continued as all four of Tony’s grandchildren are athletes. Bob’s oldest daughter Ali is a senior at Columbia where she’s been a four-year starter in lacrosse and her brother AJ, as mentioned, is a quarterback at Rutgers after a stellar high school career.
Brian’s two boys, Will and Taylor, are 13 and 11 and play football, basketball, baseball and softball outside of Boston. Grandson Will says his grandfather’s work-ethic has influenced his life “He tells me to work hard on every aspect of life—especially on academics, sports and in football,” he said. “He can also give me pointers on the game to help me get better at football.”
To be fair, the football legacy went back one more generation to the 1930s when Tony’s father Anthony played football and basketball. He recalls a funny story his father shared about those early days of competitive school sports. At the time, it was not common for players to continue to play on the team for four or five years after they graduated high school. “My dad’s team was undefeated for like five years until the State Athletic Association caught up with them and wondered how this little school—Mayfield High School in Pennsylvania, with an enrollment of 100, could be undefeated all these years,” he recalls, adding that the wins were voided by the athletic association and the players, including his father, were expelled from state association.
When looking back at his coaching career, the elder Surace is most proud of the relationships forged with players and other coaches. “The bond developed in sports is not uncommon,” he explains. “The big wins are great memories—winning the Diamond Classic in baseball, winning the State Title with an undefeated 11-0 team, first in New Jersey at the time. But it’s the bond that makes it special.”
Surace retired from baseball in 1991 after 19 seasons. He became the supervisor of K-12 Health and Physical Education, while continuing to coach football until 1996 when he resigned to also assume the duties of athletic director.
After a 37-year career, Surace left Millville High School and became vice president of Salmon Ventures, working for lifelong friend and a former Millville teacher and coach Ed Salmon. He is most proud of having a role in the building of the new Bridgeton Stadium—the Robert Thompson Athletic Complex.
One of his great joys in retirement was doing commentary for Millville High School football games on QBC TV for lifelong friend Jim Quinn. He is also fortunate to have seen hundreds of his grandkid’s games and see his sons carrying on the coaching tradition.
But as with all sports, sometimes the game does not go as planned. In 2020, Surace was diagnosed with Large B cell lymphoma. He thought he had beat it, but it is a recurring cancer that came back in 2024. He was going for weekly treatments but now travels monthly to MD Anderson, driven by his former coaching colleagues and players. “That’s what I mean about relationships,” he explains. “The love I have of them, and them for me, is unparalleled.”
Today, Coach Surace is focused on beating another adversary—cancer. He also encourages others who are fighting this fight and supports his wife’s battle with Parkinson’s. Through it all his spirit remains intact.
“I’ve been truly blessed,” he says “and consider myself the luckiest man in the world.”
