Photograph courtesy RESLV
A two-year journey to explain and celebrate Miami University’s unique place in American sports history culminates August 17 when the documentary film The Cradle of Coaches debuts nationally on the Peacock network. The 1-hour, 55-minute film, produced by Cincinnati-based RESLV, will air exclusively on Peacock for a year and stream at peacocktv.com.
The term “Cradle of Coaches” was coined in 1959, when a young Miami University athletics staffer noticed that the season’s top-ranked NFL coaches (Paul Brown and Weeb Ewbank) and college coaches (Paul Dietzel and Ara Parseghian) had all graduated from Miami. The university would later commission bronze statues to honor eight Miami grads who went on to coach championship college or pro football teams, including Ara Parseghian and Bo Schembechler. The decorative plaza at Yeager Stadium now features 10 statues after adding recent Super Bowl–winning coaches John Harbaugh and Sean McVay.
Count the film’s director, Scott Thompson, and producer, Jesy Herron, among the new generation of sports fans diving into the compelling Cradle of Coaches story. They embarked in August 2024 to distill the school’s 130-plus-year football tradition down into a “secret sauce” that could explain how this small public university in tiny Oxford, Ohio, produced some of the game’s most successful coaches. After 84 on-camera interviews, they’re still amazed at what they found.
“Miami’s current football coach, Chuck Martin, put it well, saying that there’s only a handful of universities you can attend and become a millionaire two ways,” says Thompson. “He mentions Miami along with Notre Dame and a couple of other schools where, if you’re a football player, you can make it to the NFL. But if you don’t make it to the pros, you can still be a millionaire in whatever field you go into because of the high level of education you receive there.”
Thompson says his interview with NFL defensive end Dominique Robinson, who graduated from Miami in 2022, opened his eyes to Miami’s culture. “He’d been drafted by the Chicago Bears and was making good money. We’d looked it up. He’s an NFL player. We went to his house in the Chicago suburbs, and it was no bigger than my house. You could tell he wasn’t living beyond his means. He didn’t have a Lamborghini. That approach is part of your ecosystem of life, and Miami is part of his ecosystem. I was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s different. Why is he different?’ Miami. Everyone we met during filmmaking just had a different feel to them. I’d been working in network sports for years and interviewed everybody, and some of them were jerks and some of them were nice. Everyone we met who was connected with Miami was just so great.”
Herron recalls her own a-ha moment in deciphering Miami’s culture. After interviewing Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton, who was an assistant coach at Miami in 1994–95 before becoming head coach of the New Orleans Saints and winning the Super Bowl in 2010, the RESLV crew spoke with with Broncos head strength and conditioning coach Dan Dalrymple, a 1988 Miami grad. Dalrymple served as director of athletic training during Payton’s time in Oxford, and Payton hired him in New Orleans and then in Denver.
“Out of nowhere, Coach Dalrymple explained the connection among Miami players and coaches as Mother Miami,” says Herron. “He said the first time you visit Oxford you’re driving through these cornfields and don’t know where you’re going, and all of a sudden you see these red brick buildings and you’re just like, ‘Oh my God what is this place?’ You’re surrounded by this really warm, cozy town. We spent a lot of time in Oxford over the past two years, and I watched the students and they’re happy and feel supported and loved. So there’s just something about Mother Miami, as they call it.”
The documentary spends a lot of time exploring Miami connections within football’s coaching ranks, such as Payton and Dalrymple. Herron and Thompson enjoy recounting how McVay and the Los Angeles Rams became key players in the film. McVay played wide receiver for Miami, graduating in 2008, and his teammates included Joe Coniglio and Chris Shula, current assistant coaches on the Rams.
When RESLV approached the Rams about doing interviews with the three for the documentary, the team put them off until after football season and then said they could have 15 minutes with McVay. Thompson says Herron made it her mission to break through the team gatekeepers and have McVay understand the interview was for Miami University. She even contacted his father, Tim McVay, a longtime TV executive, to plead their case.
“We eventually got through to Sean, and he told us we could have an entire day with him and his staff,” says Herron. “Once he said, ‘If they’re with Miami, they’re good people,’ the Rams organization opened its doors to us and became the project’s best advocates while we were in L.A. We ended up sitting down with some of the coaches for lunch, including McVay, just because we were in their cafeteria. They provided us with their own game footage, including from the 2022 Super Bowl win over the Bengals. They brought in [retired players] Andrew Whitworth and Aaron Donald to be interviewed.”
Photograph courtesy RESLV
Their experience with Harbaugh was just as positive, with one major glitch. After completing an hour-plus interview with him at the Baltimore Ravens facility, Harbaugh was fired at the completion of the 2025 season—one of only three losing seasons in his 18 years as Ravens head coach. He was hired as head coach of the New York Giants shortly afterwards, and Thompson felt he needed to interview him again wearing Giants gear so the film wouldn’t immediately feel dated. Herron tentatively reached out, not wanting to insert RESLV in the middle of Harbaugh’s move to New York.
“Jesy had established a crucial relationship with Harbaugh’s assistant, Megan Rosburg, who went with him to the Giants,” says Thompson. “She picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey, we need to come to New York.’ And Megan was like, ‘Absolutely, you have to do this.’ ”
“Megan could have easily said, ‘We’re moving to a new city, and Coach Harbaugh has to buy a new house. They’ve been living in Baltimore for 20 years, he does not have time for this,’ ” says Herron. “It was not like that at all. She ended up telling me all the things that Coach Harbaugh has done for her and other women in the NFL, and we included her in the documentary. Filmed her while we were in New York.”
Thompson got more time with Harbaugh, a 1984 Miami grad, when he came to Oxford in May to give the commencement address. Harbaugh was filmed walking among the Cradle of Coaches statues, including his own, and talking about each man’s coaching highlights and Miami connections.
Photograph courtesy RESLV
Earl “Red” Blaik is the oldest of the Cradle members, graduating Miami in 1918. He was head coach at the U.S. Military Academy for 18 years, where he led Army to three straight national championships in the 1940s and coached three Heisman Trophy winners. Ewbank played quarterback at Miami and graduated in 1928, and he’d lead the Baltimore Colts (1958 and 1959) and New York Jets (1969) to NFL championships. Brown also quarterbacked Miami, then coached state champions at Massillon, Ohio; national champions at Ohio State (1942); and NFL titles with the Cleveland Browns (1950, 1954, 1955). He’d later launch and coach the Cincinnati Bengals, of course.
The next five Cradle of Coaches members overlapped as Miami football players between 1947 and 1952: Parseghian, who coached Notre Dame to two national championships; Schembechler, who led Michigan to 13 Big Ten titles; Dietzel, who coached LSU to the national championship in 1958; Carm Cozza, who led Yale to 10 Ivy League titles; and John Pont, who coached Indiana to the 1967 Big Ten title. They were coached at Miami by either Woody Hayes or Sid Gillman, two of the game’s biggest names; neither is part of the Cradle of Coaches because they didn’t attend Miami as a student.
Besides Herron and Thompson, credits for The Cradle of Coaches include Troy Blome, director of photography; Jaime Meyers Schlenck, editor; Greg D’Amico, motion designer; Molly Henderson, colorist; and Jay Livingston, executive producer. Associate producers are Alecia Lipton, Miami’s director of media and public relations, and Bailey Williams and Cooper Wood at RESLV.
