PC fires Spangler after inaugural PFL season
Presbyterian head football coach Tommy Spangler was fired Tuesday after a 4-3 spring season.
Less than 72 hours after Presbyterian College put the final stamp on its first winning football season since 2014, Tommy Spangler was fired as Blue Hose head coach.
Sources at the college confirmed Spangler’s firing Tuesday evening.
Greg Hartlage, PC director of athletic communications for new and creative media, said in an email that the athletic department had no comment at this time.
Neither Spangler nor PC Athletic Director Ron Acunto immediately returned calls seeking comment.
The Blue Hose went 4-3 during a spring season shortened due to COVID-19. The 2020 fall season was canceled due to the pandemic. PC traveled 32 hours round trip by bus to Des Moines, Iowa and defeated Drake 28-24 Saturday afternoon.
The team arrived back in Clinton around noon Sunday, and Spangler said Monday that he had been unable to sleep on the long bus ride back from Iowa.
“I didn’t sleep on the way home because I was just reminiscing and thinking back about all the things we’d been through – the highs and lows,” Spangler said Monday. “I told the team Friday night that it was my pleasure coaching them because they made me feel all the emotions and that’s what makes life.”
Spangler, who received a contract extension through the end of the 2021 season in January of 2020, was in his second stint as head coach and has spent the past three years shepherding the program’s transition to non-scholarship NCAA Division I and the Pioneer Football League. PC previously competed in the Big South Conference in football.
During his first stint as head coach from 2001-06, the Blue Hose tallied a 42-24 record, competing in NCAA Division II and the South Atlantic Conference (SAC).
Spangler left to take over as defensive coordinator at Louisiana Tech as PC began its transition to NCAA Division I.
He returned to PC as defensive coordinator under former head coach Harold Nichols in 2012 and returned to head-coaching duties in 2017. In 2017-19, PC was a combined 8-25 as it was no longer to offer football scholarships and continued to compete in the Big South.
Spangler played defensive back for legendary Georgia head coach Vince Dooley, where he was part of the 1980 National Championship team, and coached with former Georgia defensive coordinator Erk Russell at Georgia Southern and helped the Eagles to two NCAA Division I-AA (now the Football Championship Subdivision) national titles.
