HANOVER – As a boy growing up in the Detroit suburbs, Jordan Belfiori learned a lesson he values to this day. Not that it was easy.
“My father has worked for a company in the Midwest called Belle Tire for around 40 years,” the first-year Dartmouth defensive coordinator said. “He was store manager, and the moment I turned 18 and was no longer playing sports, he said I was going to learn how to bust tires. I was going to learn how to do alignments. I was going to learn how to do oil changes and fix spares and put tires on rims. I was going to learn how to be a mechanic/tire technician.
“Every summer and every winter I would come home from college, and that's what I would do. My dad said, ‘I’m going to make you do this job because you are going to be working with guys who are going to be making $8 an hour for the rest of their lives. I want you to understand the value of the education you are getting so you don’t mess it up.’ ”
A few years later, after Belfiori had earned his degree from Central Michigan in 2012 and taught and coached three seasons at L'Anse Creuse High School, he was offered a graduate assistant coaching job at Wayne State University. Taking it would mean walking away from the steady teaching job workers at the tire shop would have loved in favor of a position that paid a paltry $2,000 a year. And with no guarantees that it would lead to a coaching job that would ever pay the rent.
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“It was a buddy who was the D-line at Wayne State who asked if I would be interested in the job,” Belfiori recalled. “I told him, ‘Let me talk to my dad.’ “
The son explained to the father what kind of grind the job entailed, and how little it paid. And then the father, who had made sure his son appreciated everything his education could do for him, gave him the go-ahead to step out of the classroom and chase his dream.
“He was like, ‘Go experiment,’ “ Belfiori recalled. “He said I could live at home and all that for two years.”
With his father’s blessing and his family’s help, Belfiori learned the college game the way he learned the tire game. By kicking the tires.
“It was really a great experience,” he said of his time at Wayne State. “A lot of that was because at the lower levels, you have to wear multiple hats. So I learned how to do video, how to coach my own position. How to run my own room. How to recruit my own area. How to do video and graphics, and all that stuff. I was able to learn a lot that would make me marketable for the next job.”
Belfiori believes in five-year plans, and the idea was to spend two years at Wayne State, then score a position as a grad assistant at a MAC school, and then be a GA at Michigan State before finally landing a full-time college coaching job.
It didn’t work out that way, and as it turned out, that was a good thing.
After two years at Wayne State and one as a graduate assistant under linebackers coach Dave Duggan at Western Michigan, Belfiori saw on a football website there was an opening for an outside linebackers coach at someplace called Colgate. A lifelong Michigander, he knew nothing about the Patriot League school and didn’t give it much thought until Duggan, a former New Hampshire assistant who had been on staff at Colgate from 1995-97, suggested he might want to take a closer look.
“I did my research, and it checked a lot of boxes for me,” Belfiori said. “Number one, it was a full-time job. I actually was going to be able to make money. It was a winning program, and it emphasized high academics. Everything I read about Colgate said it would be an absolute home run for my first full-time job.”
With Duggan and a few others putting in a good word for him, Belfiori landed the job and found immediate success. In his first season, he helped the Raiders to a 10-win season highlighted by a seven-game stretch that saw them allow just six points total. And in 2019, his second season with the program, Colgate led the nation in scoring defense, allowing 9.3 points per game.
Promoted to co-defensive coordinator in 2021 and to full-time defensive coordinator in 2022, Belfiori never once in his seven years in Hamilton thought seriously about moving on. For the young coach and his growing family, the little college town of 6,400 was the perfect home.
“It was a special place, and I wouldn’t trade my time there for the world,” he said. “The staff was awesome. The community was awesome. It was a great place to raise a family, and we had our first kid there. I had envisioned being there a long time.”
But college coaching can be cruel. After several losing records capped by a 2-10 mark in 2024, the Colgate staff was let go, and Belfiori was in the job market.
While with the Raiders, Belfiori had twice coached against Dartmouth, striking up a friendship with Big Green defensive coordinator Don Dobes, and developing an appreciation for the hard-hitting, blue-collar nature of the Big Green program.
He had flirted with the Dartmouth nickels position that opened up when Joe Castellitto moved on to UMass after the '24 season before ultimately being hired as defensive coordinator at Butler.
He had just finished his first season in Indianapolis when he learned Dobes was retiring and Dartmouth was hiring again. This time, not for a nickels coach, but for a defensive coordinator.
It was his dream job, but raised by a father who worked for the same company for upwards of 40 years, Belfiori had learned about more than changing tires. He also learned about loyalty to an employer, which made the idea of moving on so soon difficult. That said, after carefully weighing his options, he ultimately decided to pursue the position at a school where he'd long hoped to one day work.
“I’m loyal to my players,” he said. “I’m loyal to the program. Being from Michigan, being four hours away from family in Indianapolis, it was the first time in my career that my son was able to see his grandparents all the time. I’m from the Midwest, and being raised in that type of environment, it was special being back.
"But I knew the opportunity to work at the best football program in the league isn’t going to come around very often. There was always one Ivy League job I wanted, and this was it.”
Dobes was heavily involved in the search for his successor and after finishing his due diligence with all the applicants, he told McCorkle he thought Belfiori would be a great fit.
Hearing that, and knowing that former Big Green defensive back Onye Onuoha had played for Belfiori as a grad transfer, McCorkle gave his former player a call. What he heard pretty much sealed the deal.
“The first thing Onye said was, ‘He’s our type of guy,’ McCorkle said. "He liked his energy, his passion, and his mindset.
“That was very important. I lean on our players and am always asking for their feedback, and the first thing he said is, ‘Coach, he fits. He’s just like you guys.’ "
When McCorkle offered, Belfiori was sold: “I told my wife, ‘I just don't think this is an opportunity we can pass up.’ "
Belfiori's wife, Samantha, didn’t need much convincing. While living in the Indianapolis area, the couple had come to appreciate even more the small-town lifestyle they had left behind in Hamilton. And raising a family in the Upper Valley had a few perks compared to their home in Upstate New York.
“I actually joke that it is a metropolis compared to Hamilton,” Belfiori said. “I told my wife, because she hadn’t been here, that they have a Target. They have a BJ’s, and they have everything within like a 10-minute drive, opposed to the hour drive to Syracuse. She said, ‘Sign me up. I’m good.’ ”
His first Dartmouth season is still a couple of weeks away, but Belfiori is happy in Hanover, and while it would only be natural for the players he inherited to miss Dobes, All-America safety Harrison Keith feels the transition has been relatively seamless.
“Honestly, I see a lot of Coach Dobes in Coach Belfiori,” he said. “There's obviously an age gap, and they have their own twists to things. It's definitely big shoes to fill, but I don't think it's going to be something that is going to be a challenge for Coach Belfiore.
“He's really personable, and he brings a ton of juice, the same type of juice that Coach Dobes brought. There's a reason Coach Dobes brought him in, and it's because Coach Dobes believed in him to fill those shoes.”
And as his father would appreciate, maybe even put a little air in Dartmouth's tires while he's at it.