"On the pro level, it's strictly business-the name of the game there is win," he says. But in college, the stakes are different: "The game's a game because both sides have a fair chance to win."
"You really have to have people that are totally unselfish," he says. "They lose their self-identity, and through the team they gain it again, if the team's successful."
And if the team's not successful? "They say the sport builds character, and that's very true, but you don't see it until you lose," Restic says. "That's the great thing about the game of football-it unveils you."
He exudes a respect and love for football itself, and if that attitude has drawn criticism in the past for causing the coach to look more closely at the game than at the players, those charges have died down.
"His door is always open," says Roger Caron, a current pro prospect who quit the program as a sophomore. "I've always been able to go in there, into his office, and talk to him about anything.
"He didn't have to let me play any more," recalls the fifth-year senior. "If I go on to play pro, I owe a lot of it to him, just for letting me play."
And that may be the most telling distinction between Restic and Cozza. Both are personally conservative and unemotional on the field, but off the turf. Cozza makes an effort to reassure his squads, even befriend them.
As for Restic, "He's a football coach, he's not your buddy," Caron says. "If you want to go in and talk to him, go ahead."
Or maybe a quick look at recruiting techniques tells even more. A few years back, Cozza offered to send his daughter to Radcliffe--if Joe Restic Jr. spent four years in New Haven.
Joe St. wasn't exactly wild about the idea. "I didn't think that was going to help me on the football field," he recalls. So while he waited for Joe Jr., who later played in the USEI to decide to attend Notre Dame, he evaluated his options.
"He was in my household and I knew I could recruit him it he looked like he was considering it seriously," the father says of the son May be he even have toyed with the idea of the "exchange."
"I think if we made a double exchange where I gained one on the field and he gained one on the sideline," Joe Sr. says now, "I woulda gone for it."