This is the third feature of a series leading into fall camp focusing on the Panther football coaching staff. Coming Thursday: Jesse Minter.

Every opportunity, no matter the outcome, prepares you for the next one. Jeff Jagodzinski believes that to his core and just by looking at his background, you can understand why. The longtime mentor, who will serve as Georgia State's offensive coordinator this fall, started coaching in Division III and has worked his way up to the highest echelon of football. He has been a head coach for a BCS team that played in consecutive conference championship games, learned from some of the game's greatest coaching minds and molded players into All-Americans on the collegiate level and Pro-Bowlers in the National Football League.

So how does a start-up program like GSU rank on his radar? Pretty high considering all the factors. Take for example:

• He gets to work with a highly respected former colleague (GSU head coach Trent Miles and Jagodzinski coached together with the Green Bay Packers) whom Jagodzinski once tried to hire as an assistant when he was head coach at Boston College.
• He was able to return to Atlanta – a city he once coached in with the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and that he truly enjoys – and recruit in the heart of an area known for outstanding talent at the high school level.
• And his passion for coaching has already allowed him to experience things few rarely get to check off their bucket list: calling Lambeau Field in Green Bay and LSU's Death Valley home on game day; throwing out the first pitch at a Boston Red Sox game; playing golf at Augusta National Golf Club – twice. 
  

1-on-1 with Jagodzinski

What intrigues you about recruiting to GSU? There are so many players in the state of Georgia, so many inside the perimeter even. I think if you look in a 100-mile radius, you can get all the players you want. We needed to get the word out about who we are and what we are about, so Trent had us hit every school in the state. Everyone had a Georgia State coach in it [this spring]. I think you have to build your program. When you get a couple difference makers, and it's a cool place to go, then it takes off. It only takes one guy to get the word out that it could be a cool place to play.

What were you like as a player at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater? I was a try-hard guy. I wasn't the fastest guy, I was really a guard with a fullback number. It was fun. What a great experience Whitewater was.

Now he is at a point in his career where he can take a moment to appreciate the little things. That is not something he always did well before but, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

“I look back and think 'That was really a neat place,' but sometimes I was looking ahead at something else and that's really not the way to go at all,” Jagodzinski said. “Enjoy where you are at. It's going to be a good experience; it's whatever you make of it.

“My wife [Lisa] tells me, 'Just enjoy the journey.' There isn't one thing that I have set out to do that God hasn't given me the opportunity to do. Not one. I don't see that ending. I try do things the right way. Have I always? No, I haven't. But in 25 years' worth of coaching, the good outweighs the bad.”

Making the most of what lies in front of him is his trademark, as Jagodzinski has taken setbacks and turned them into positives throughout his career.

After graduating from Wisconsin-Whitewater, he took that Division III work ethic and applied it like few others. He sent out 116 resumes and after not hearing from a single coach, he lit out on a mission. Jagodzinski drove down to the office of Jerry Pettibone, the head coach at Northern Illinois and sat in his outer office until the coach would see him. They didn't have any paying positions, Pettibone said, but that didn't matter. Jagodzinski took out school loans to go to graduate school and his Division I coaching career was born.

It was a similar site when he went to LSU a year later, only it was an even bigger change. After his persistence with the head coach again paid off, Jagodzinski was working as a graduate assistant in one of college football's hallowed grounds, helping the coaching staff prepare for opponents on the field and 85,000 screaming fans off it. Quite a difference from the 3,000 fans he might see in Whitewater. 

Since then, Jagodzinski has been part of staffs that have churned out award-winning players. Four first-round NFL picks played for him at Boston College, and he has worked staff with five quarterbacks who have been named to the NFL's Pro Bowl (Brett Favre, Michael Vick, Aaron Rogers, Matt Hasselbeck and Matt Ryan).

Quarterbacks are not the only players Jagodzinski has helped groom into award winners. In fact, it was another Pro Bowler who stands out in his mind the most in terms of development.

Tight end Bubba Franks was an unknown quantity when he joined the Packers as a rookie.  Riding a bus to the practice site before their first workout of the season, Jagodzinski asked him what he thought. The reply was as honest as you get.

“He said 'I'm a little bit nervous,' ” Jagodzinski said. “Then he started as a rookie and ended up being a Pro-Bowler three straight years and it was very satisfying.”

Franks wasn't the only player whose development as a player provided Jagodzinski with great satisfaction. Anthony Costanzo – who Jagodzinski said “got recruited by absolutely nobody, nobody. No offers, no nothing” – came in as a 250-pound, little-known offensive lineman with Boston College and left a 310-pound, first-round NFL Draft selection by the Indianapolis Colts.

“I think there's great satisfaction in taking a guy, a really young guy who doesn't really know much, and developing him in a four-year period,” Jagodzinski said.  “You really get a chance to see what that kid can do. It's really the same as taking a rookie in the NFL and bringing him along.

“It's really a great deal of satisfaction bringing a guy along and developing him to be the best he can be.”

And the only way that can happen is to be ready for the opportunity, which Jagodzinski preaches to his Georgia State players daily so they can take full advantage. After all, he knows the story all too well.