Jan. 29, 2008

AMHERST, Mass. - The Philadelphia Eagles announced the hiring of former UMass football coach Mark Whipple as the offensive assistant coach.

Whipple is a 1979 graduate of Brown University where he was starting quarterback for the Bears from 1977-78, where he lead the team to a 13-5 record. In 1996, Whipple was inducted into the Brown Athletic Hall of Fame.

In 1980, Whipple began his coaching career as an assistant at St. Lawrence University. For the next seven years, Whipple worked at Union College (1981-82), Brown University (1983), Arizona Wranglers of the USFL (1984), and New Hampshire (1986-87) before becoming a head coach at New Haven where he remained from 1988-93.

After moving back to Brown from 1994-97, Whipple came to UMass to take over a team that had gone 2-9 during the 1997 season. During Whipple's rookie season at UMass, he led the Minutemen to a 12-3 record and the 1998 NCAA Division I-AA Championship against previously unbeaten Georgia Southern. That same year, Whipple also earned the American Football Coaches Association's Division I-AA National Coach of the Year Award. Whipple remained at UMass until 2003 and posted an overall collegiate level record of 121-59 (.672).

Whipple has been a coach for the past 26 seasons with the last three being spent as the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback coach. With the Steelers, Whipple played an important role in the development of the 2004 first-round draft pick Ben Roethlisberger. Roethlisberger became the youngest starting quarterback to win a Super Bowl the following year when the Steelers defeated the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL.