Chaouki Abdallah and Bob Davie

Alumni Connect in the High Desert of New Mexico

Chaouki Abdallah, ’81 BE • Bob Davie, ’77 BSEd

For years, Burger King told its customer to “Have It Your Way.”

For Chaouki Abdallah, the answer was simple – frozen.

It was 1979. Abdallah had just immigrated to the United States from his native Lebanon. He was a 20-year-old freshman at YSU, and Wednesday was the biggest day of the week - Whoppers at Burger King were on sale for 50 cents each.

“We were living under limited funds,” Abdallah recalls with a chuckle. “So, me and my roommates would go and buy like five or six Whoppers each and freeze them. We’d eat them over the next few days. Really, it was the best meal of the week.”

As Abdallah dined on Whoppers, thousands of miles away, Bob Davie’s football coaching career was just starting to take root. A 1977 YSU graduate and three-year starting tight end for the Penguins, Davie was paying his dues as part-time linebackers and strength coach for the University of Arizona Wildcats.

Over the course of the next 35 years, Abdallah’s and Davie’s careers crisscrossed the country, from Pittsburgh to Orlando, Texas to Georgia.

Then, they came together in the high desert of New Mexico.

“It’s kind of bizarre sometimes how this journey that we’re all on works out,” Davie said.

Today, the two YSU Penguins hold top leadership positions at The University of New Mexico’s 27,000-student flagship university in the heart of downtown Albuquerque.

Abdallah, who joined the UNM faculty in 1988 after earning a PhD from Georgia Tech, served six years as provost and in January was named acting president.

Davie, meanwhile, went on to a five-year head coaching stint at Notre Dame, followed by 10 years as a primetime national TV voice of college football. In 2011, he returned to the sidelines as head coach of the UNM Lobos.

“I was provost when Bob was hired, and I didn’t know him, but I did know that we had that Youngstown connection,” Abdallah said.

“We have that in common,” Davie said. “But, and I’ll just take a blind leap of faith on this, one thing we don’t have in common is that Chaouki’s GPA was a lot higher than mine. I can guarantee that.”

Abdallah’s academic record certainly impresses. He was the first recipient of UNM’s Lawton-Ellis Award for combined excellence in teaching, research and student/community involvement. His research in systems theory has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Air Force and Navy. He has published eight books and more than 300 peer-reviewed papers.

He came to the United States to escape the protracted war in Lebanon, moving in with an aunt in Aliquippa, Pa., before enrolling in YSU. He spoke no English, but had relatives in the region, including a brother also at YSU. He quickly connected to the large Lebanese community in the Youngstown region and earned his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1981.

“What was impressive to me was how nice and kind everyone was,” he remembers. “Everyone was always there to help us out. And, we got a wonderful education.”

With nearly 30 years at UNM, Abdallah is liked and respected on campus. As acting president, he’s spoken out on issues regarding the university’s budget, free speech and athletics. A search is underway for a permanent president. But Abdallah, married with two teen-aged sons who will be heading to college in 2018, says he’s not putting in his name for consideration.

Davie, meanwhile, grew up in Coraopolis, Pa. – the heart of the Pittsburgh-to-Cleveland football belt. “There’s something about that blue collar mentality; athletics, and especially football, just permeate and resonate all up and down that corridor,” he said.

Like most coaches, he bopped around quite a bit – from Pittsburgh to Arizona, back to Pittsburgh, then Tulane and Texas A&M. He became defensive coordinator at Notre Dame in 1994, and three years later head coach. In five seasons, Davie posted a 35-25 record, went to three bowl games and was a two-time finalist for National Coach of the Year.

His career then detoured from the field to the broadcast booth, where he became a prominent ABC/ESPN analyst alongside Brent Musberger and Kirk Herbstreit. One of his most memorable games: The 2006 clash between No. 1 Ohio State (coached by Jim Tressel) and No. 2 Michigan, with 21.8 million viewers, was the most-watched college football game ever at the time.

In 2012, Davie worked his way back to the sidelines, taking the head coaching position at UNM for a team that had just finished three consecutive 1-11 seasons. In only five seasons, he’s turned the Lobos into winners, with back-to-back winning seasons and bowl game appearances.

“What I’ve learned from Notre Dame to New Mexico is to just let it rip,” he says. “At Notre Dame, I would hesitate and overthink and over-evaluate because I didn’t want to make a mistake. Now, I go with my instincts.”