Florida Gulf Coast coach Andy Enfield, who is married to former supermodel Amanda Marcum, sure has a lot to celebrate after his unheralded team knocked off Georgetown and San Diego State en route to this week’s Sweet 16 meeting with Florida. (
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Admit it. Florida Gulf Coast busted your bracket, but after you saw the Eagles play, you didn’t even care. You loved the team.
Tell the truth. You’d never heard of Andy Enfield. But after you heard his story —and saw his wife — you envied the man.
The Harbaugh family – with brothers John and Jim coaching their teams into Super Bowl XLVII — have long asked “Who’s got it better than us?” Well, now we know: It’s a former Manhattanite who has millions in the bank, a supermodel wife in the stands and his fast-rising team in the Sweet 16.
Forget about the Miami Heat, or the Florida Gators — whom Florida Gulf Coast plays Friday night at the NCAA Tournament’s South Region in Arlington, Texas — the country’s hottest basketball story resides elsewhere in the Sunshine State. The Eagles are the nation’s favorite team, Enfield its most talked-about coach, and wife Amanda Marcum one of its most-photographed fans.
A tiny school few had even heard of much less had in their NCAA Tournament bracket dunking all over Georgetown and San Diego State en route to Friday’s meeting with the Gators? Sounds believable compared to the former NCAA Division 3 player co-founding and selling a $100 million company and marrying a Victoria’s Secret model.
“We fully expected to play well, and we’re not surprised where we are. But we respect the teams we beat, and we know we have another Top 10 team waiting for us in Texas, right up I-75 in Gainesville,’’ Enfield, 43, told The Post last night by phone.
After his team had routed the No. 2 seed Hoyas, their Dunk City style captivating the country, Enfield said “I aim for the stars.”
Apparently he has reached them.
He has coached a No. 15 seed into the Sweet 16 for the first time ever, working at a school with a beach in the middle of campus, and has enough money to be doing it for the love of the game, not the need of a paycheck.
“My wife’s so humble; she keeps me grounded,’’ Enfield said of Amanda, the 5-10, green-eyed blonde who turned heads in the stands during their first two games. Small wonder, considering she has walked the runway for Chanel and Jean Paul Gaultier, and been on the cover of Elle, Vogue and Maxim.
They met a exactly decade ago, when — introduced by a friend — Enfield gave the stunner from tiny Mustang (Okla.) a ride from a Manhattan Starbucks to Boston to watch her beloved Oklahoma State Cowboys play in a second-round NCAA Tournament game.
“Our anniversary was 10 years ago this weekend, when I took my wife up to Boston, so it’s very ironic. It was a great feeling to have her in the stands to see those wins now, see her and [the kids] smiling,’’ Enfield told The Post.
Yes, the Big Dance has been kind to Enfield, long before he got to Florida Gulf Coast.
“I thought he looked like a great driver that would give me a free ride,” Amanda had told the Naples Daily News two years ago.
A week after that Boston trip, the couple had their first date. But it wasn’t at Cipriani, or Peter Luger. It was a Taco Bell in the St. John’s student union on the way to a Red Storm NIT game against Virginia. The Johnnies won, but he won even bigger.
“Hey, she’s a sports fan,’’ Enfield said. “She’d rather have a good basketball game than steak!”
So he wooed the supermodel over a burrito. Six months later, he proposed at The Plaza on Fifth Ave. Ten years later, they have three kids and an amazing story.
After playing at Division 3 Johns Hopkins, Enfield got an MBA from Maryland, but parlayed his court cred from his then-NCAA record career 92.5 percent free throw shooting to become a shooting consultant to NBA players. Eventually he got an assistant coaching gig with the Celtics.
In 2000, he moved to Manhattan and developed AllNetShooting.com, then became involved in the early stages of a company called TractManager, an information management system for health care contracts. He sold most of his shares in a company that was then worth over $100 million, about double Florida Gulf Coast’s endowment.
But he couldn’t shake the basketball itch. So he took a job at Florida State in 2006, packing up Amanda and then 9-day-old daughter Aila for Tallahassee. During his five seasons there, he helped the Seminoles to three NCAA tourney bids and the couple had another daughter, Lily.
Florida Gulf Coast athletic director Ken Kavanagh noticed and gave Enfield his head coaching shot. Son Marcum was born eight days later on April 8, 2011 and now — with Brett Comer lobbing passes for high-flyers like Sherwood Brown, Bernard Thompson and Chase Fieler — Enfield has one of the country’s most exciting teams.
Now Kavanagh wants to double his coach’s $157,000 annual salary, and with Enfield having come through the Villa 7 program, a forum where athletic directors have the opportunity to meet up-and-coming assistant coaches that was founded by Minnesota athletic director Norwood Teague — and with the Gophers having fired Tubby Smith yesterday — some wonder if Enfield could be lured away.
But if quality of life counts for anything, ask yourself: Who’s got it better than Enfield?
brian.lewis@nypost.com