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Pitt LBs coach draws inspiration from late brother's cancer battle

Jerry DiPaola
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Chaz Palla | Trib Total Media
Pitt linebackers coach Rob Harley directs his players during practice Tuesday, April 14, 2015, on Pittsburgh's South Side.
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After he left Ohio State, Pitt linebackers coach Rob Harley was determined to remain close to the game.

As close as you can get, literally, without playing or coaching: He became a sideline reporter for the Big Ten Network.

He liked the job, but he couldn't help but think something was missing.

Then, when his older brother Kit died in 2010 at the age of 34 after a three-year bout with brain cancer, Harley's life changed forever.

“I don't know if it was his experience that made me get into coaching or question what I was doing,” Harley said while taking a break from preparing for Pitt's ACC opener Saturday at Virginia Tech. “But it wasn't three months (after) he had passed that I decided to get out of what I was doing and do something that meant something to me.” He quit his job with the networks — he also was a college football analyst for ESPN — sold his car and took a job for no pay, coaching defensive backs, linebackers and special teams at Division II Ohio Dominican.

The school's coach, Bill Conley, a former Ohio State assistant who recruited Harley for the Buckeyes, was honest.

“He said he couldn't pay me,” Harley said. “I said it didn't matter. No car, no expenses. I went and volunteered for two straight years and loved every minute of it.”

Ambition took him to Michigan State, where he was a graduate assistant for two years, working with defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi.

When Narduzzi became Pitt's head coach, he called Harley, who by then was linebackers coach at Florida International. Narduzzi told him to get on a plane and come to Pittsburgh.

“To this day, he hasn't formally offered the job,” Harley said. “It was just ‘When can you be up here?' It was ‘Let's get to work.' Two days later, I was on the road recruiting.”

Harley's passion for coaching often surfaces at Pitt, where he keeps up constant chatter while working and running alongside his players. He describes his relationship with Narduzzi as “two guys cut from the same cloth.”

“We bonded right away (at Michigan State),” he said. “Both of us are very stubborn. We are perfectionists. A lot of his traits I can see looking in the mirror.

“We can butt heads a little bit sometimes, but at the same time, we both know where each other is coming from. It's a matter of wanting to be successful together.”

Harley, two weeks shy of his 33rd birthday, might have been destined to make football his career.

A century ago, his great-great uncle Chic was the first three-time All-American at Ohio State, helping lay the foundation for one of the nation's great college football programs.

Harley, the first member of his family to follow Chic to Ohio State, was a three-year letterman and played on the Buckeyes' 2002 national championship team.

The day Ohio State officials retired Chic's jersey, Harley accepted it while leaning on crutches. He had torn his ACL in the first half of the game.

“I was going to go there either way, hurt or not,” he said.

His playing career gives Harley plenty of pride, but it's nothing compared to the boost he gets from the tattoo on his right forearm that says “Kit Strong.” Harley got it just before Kit died as a way to honor his brother and raise awareness for the Chicago-based Harley Helping Hands foundation.

The foundation — started five years ago and run by Kit's widow Rachel and several of her friends — has raised $450,000 for families whose loved ones are battling brain cancer.

“I think about him every second,” said Harley, who was six years younger than his brother.

Harley said he and his brother played thousands of basketball and street hockey games in the driveway of their Elmhurst, Ill., home.

“There wasn't a time he let me win,” he said. “He destroyed me by 20, and I'd go in the house crying and come back and want to play again.

“A lot of my drive and a lot of my competitiveness comes from him.”

Even in death, Harley's brother pushed him.

“That experience of seeing how short life can be and how small we really are,” Harley said, “you might as well do something you love to do.”

Jerry DiPaola is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at jdipaola@tribweb.com or via Twitter @JDiPaola_Trib.