Jim Salgado is 33 years old and just received his first Division I-A football coaching position.

His assignment came recently when he was hired to coach cornerbacks at Syracuse University. Salgado is 11 years into his career in coaching, where the number of minorities is low.

Salgado will worry about his chances of running a program later down the road. For now, he wants to take advantage of this opportunity and prove himself.

Part of his training for his new job included going through the NCAA Coaches Academy, which is designed to give people like Salgado an opportunity to climb the coaching ladder more quickly. He was one of 20 coaches selected to participate in the Advanced Coaching component of the program in Orlando, Florida, in January 2004 and one of 12 to participate in the Expert Coaches course in Indianapolis last June.

"The academies I attended were great," said Salgado, who served as an assistant coach at Northeastern University, Hofstra University, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, Boston University and Western Connecticut State University before going to Syracuse. "I learned a lot about becoming a head coach. Some were things that never crossed my mind as an assistant. You learn about the little things behind the scenes. You have a chance to meet a lot of great coaches and administrators, too."

Salgado already knows the importance of networking. A relationship he built with a former coach during his playing days at Hofstra helped lead to him being hired by new Syracuse head coach Greg Robinson, formerly the defensive coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin and a veteran assistant coach in the National Football League.

Robinson followed Salgado's career and after interviewing, Salgado became the latest member of Robinson's staff.

Salgado feels more prepared for the latest phase in his career after completing the Coaches Academy, during which he broadened his perspective on the profession.

"You learn about the things that go into place when it comes to hiring a staff," Salgado said. "You learn about budgeting, about the everyday demands on a head coach beyond the Xs and Os. You learn how to conduct interviews and deal with the media and news conferences.''

Salgado said the mock news conferences even involved incidents that make coaches cringe.

"We dealt with crisis management," he said. "They put us in groups and had people play different roles. One person was the AD, one was the coach and one was a sports information director. They give you a scenario in which you have a press conference coming up, and you're dealing with one of your kids being charged with a crime and you have to decide how you are going to handle it."

The question-and-answer sessions were videotaped so coaches could see how they performed. The results yielded some surprising results for Salgado.

"It was intense," he said. "You didn't know exactly what to expect, and you had to respond. You got to see your facial expressions. You may not even know that your facial expression may be showing something that you aren't talking about.

"As a young assistant trying to work your way up, some of those things you don't think about. I never had the privilege of doing things like budgeting at the schools I've been at. That takes a lot of experience."

Besides learning the skills necessary to being a head coach, Salgado also met several influential people at the sessions. Those are the types of relationships that can lead to bigger and better things in the future, Salgado said.

"The networking definitely helps," he said.

The Expert Coaches program was a three-day seminar that included appearances from hall of fame coach Bill Walsh, who coached the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl championships (and who also coached at Stanford University), and Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick, who also has a Super Bowl ring. Tyrone Willingham, now at the University of Washington, and University of California, Los Angeles, coach Karl Dorrell also talked to the aspiring head coaches.

"All of them were telling us all the things they went through, both good and bad," Salgado said. "We heard about the tough things they went through that can help us down the road. For people like that to spend their time talking to us will always stay with me."

Salgado said his academy class included coaches from Division III schools to the major-college level.

"To me it was about what I learned, the people I got to meet and how I can use this down the road," Salgado said. "Will this help me land a great job as a head coach in the near future? I don't know. I'm a young coach and (Syracuse) is my first I-A job. I'm just thankful for that. To me it's about learning the Xs and Os and all of the other things that come along with being a head coach. It's been invaluable.

"Do I think I have to get a Division I-A head coaching job (any time soon)? No, but if it happens down the road, that would be great. Unfortunately, not everyone becomes a Division I-A head coach, no matter who you are."