Fresh out of college, Todd Orlando was preparing for the Series 7 exam in pursuit of a potential career selling securities. It was the hot thing and people were making good money doing it, he told himself.

But football was always what Orlando really wanted to do.

He was an agricultural economics major at Wisconsin, where he played linebacker for the Badgers, but all these years later when asked what he planned to do with that degree, he quickly clarifies.

"Nah, it was football," he says with a laugh. "It was the best way to spend time learning football was that major. And it ended up being a good degree for me, I guess, because I'm in football."

One way or another, Orlando seemed bound to end up on this track and not sitting in a office somewhere selling stocks and bonds. He perhaps already knew that when he dropped by his alma mater Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, Pa., that summer after college in 1994.

"I was studying for the test and that was going into probably early August so I decided just to run up to my old high school to say what's up to everybody and look at the team and see what they had. Just watching practice, I started seeing some stuff some of the guys weren't doing a great job of and just making some minor mistakes, pulled them aside and tried to help them. I could watch them have success and right there I knew I wanted to do it," he said in an in-depth interview with TrojanSports.com. "If you grew up in the game and had been around the game a long time, just even during the summertime there's just a certain sense, feel, smell to the grass that if you've done it a long time you can never get it out of you."

Orlando grew up around the game as much as anyone could, with his hometown Pittsburgh Steelers dominating the second half of the 1970s with a run of Super Bowl championships led by a defense loaded with Hall of Famers. His father Steve worked the night shift at U.S. Steel and started coaching Orlando around the age of 5 or 6.

"To me he went out of his way. I don't know the true story of it, but I heard a ton of through the grapevine that I think he worked at nights to try to at least be with us in the afternoons when we were practicing," Orlando says. "I've heard my mom and a couple other people say something about it, but I don't know if that's factual, but he cared, wanted to see us develop and always wanted to be around the game."

The key principles taught by father to son all those years ago ring familiar to what Orlando has preached to his Trojans since becoming USC's new defensive coordinator in January.

"It hasn't changed much from when he coached to what we're coaching right now -- a lot of fundamentals, toughness, grit and all those things that go into playing well," Orlando says.

That's what John Fischetti remembers about Orlando as well. He coached him to a state championship at Central Catholic in the 1980s, with Orlando starting at linebacker and offensive guard, and it was Fischetti who brought his former pupil on staff after he stopped by practice that fateful afternoon.

Fischetti doesn't recall now the full mechanics of that reunion, whether he suggested to Orlando that he help coach the defense or the other way around.

"I think I brought it up, but it's been so long. We're talking about the early 1990s -- I can't remember where I parked my car earlier," he jokes over the phone from Pittsburgh.

Yet he does remember some details vividly ...

"A quick story about him, I remember it like it was yesterday," Fischetti says. "We were playing a game out at Hempfield High School. There was a stoppage in play and he came to the sideline to get the next call and I could see his thumb was dislocated. I said, 'Let me get the trainer.' He said, 'No, give me the next call' and he yanked it back in himself. Went right back in the game. I said, 'Oh geez.' Tough as nails."