Dan Dorazio didn’t look like the players he coached — in fact, at five-foot-five and 150 pounds, he looked like the opposite of an offensive lineman.
But that never stopped him from coaching with an intense, fiery passion.
Dorazio passed away on August 13 at the age of 72 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He is survived by his wife Lisa, his two children and four grandchildren.
Dorazio was the UBC Thunderbirds’ football offensive line coach for the 2023 season. The veteran coach helped the T-Birds garner their first Hardy Cup win since 2015, their first-ever Mitchell Bowl win and first Vanier Cup appearance in seven seasons.
“Effort was something that was non-negotiable with him,” said UBC Football Offensive Coordinator Stevenson Bone. “His attention to detail was second to none with any coach that I've worked with.”
Born just outside Pittsburgh in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania on January 22, 1952, Dorazio grew up loving sports. However, his first love was baseball, not football — he was a big fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Dorazio’s family later relocated to Stow, Ohio where he attended high school and post-secondary. He attended Kent State University and it was there he started playing football as a running back.
In 1974, he graduated with his teaching degree, with a specialization in health and physical education. That same year he started on the Kent football team’s coaching staff as a graduate assistant working with the offensive line.
Over the next 25 years, Dorazio would coach NCAA football at 9 different colleges, impacting hundreds of players.
After his 1997 stint with Boston University, Dorazio moved north to the professional league — the Canadian Football League (CFL) with the Calgary Stampeders. As a rookie CFL coach, Dorazio won his first Grey Cup. He returned to the Grey Cup with the Stampeders in 1999 and 2001, winning his second one in the latter.
In 2003, Dorazio followed Stampeders’ head coach Wally Buono to the BC Lions. The pair returned to the Grey Cup three more times, winning two more national titles, most recently in 2011. Dorazio stayed on with the Lions until 2018, aside from one season with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 2015. He spent one year with the Toronto Argonauts before retiring from professional football in 2019 after 22 years.
During his time in the CFL, Dorazio developed four players who won the Most Outstanding Offensive Lineman Award.
“The way I can describe Dan [is] he was a professor that had a PhD in football,” said Bone. Among the football community, Dorazio was often referred to as the “guru” of offensive linemen.
“[Players] really trusted him with everything that he taught,” said Bone. “They were like a sponge when he spoke.”
In 2020, Dorazio's plans to return to coaching at both UBC and SFU were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in 2023, he returned to UBC’s program and made an immediate impact.
“Last year, he said he was having a blast coaching us. And obviously, when the team's doing well … it really reinvigorated him, got him excited about coaching again,” said Bone.
But Dorazio wasn’t just a part of team history at UBC — his mentorship to offensive linemen Giovanni Manu and Theo Benedet landed them in the NFL, with Manu becoming the first UBC player to be directly drafted to the NFL.
Last year was Dorazio’s 50th year coaching, but he was more than just a mentor to his players — he was a role model.
“He always used to quote George Halas — ‘Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it,’” said Bone.
“He was really invested in developing people. And he thought that football was the best way to reach young men and to develop them into future fathers, husbands — stand up men in the community.”
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