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Florida Gulf Coast head coach, Andy Enfield, and his wife, Amanda Marcum Enfield, a former Maxim model, have gained notoriety during Florida Gulf Coast's cinderally run during the NCAA basketball tournament. (Rob Carr; Elsa/Getty Images)
Florida Gulf Coast head coach, Andy Enfield, and his wife, Amanda Marcum Enfield, a former Maxim model, have gained notoriety during Florida Gulf Coast's cinderally run during the NCAA basketball tournament. (Rob Carr; Elsa/Getty Images)
Florida Gulf Coast University basketball coach Andy Enfield's team has risen from oblivion to become the darlings of the NCAA tournament while his supermodel wife cheers them on from the stands.
As if that wasn't enough, the 43-year-old coach of the South Florida school has spent time in the NBA and is a former basketball star at Johns Hopkins University.
Oh, and he's a self-made millionaire, too.
"I aim for the stars," Enfield told reporters Friday, the same day his team routed Georgetown, which had come into the tournament as the No. 2 seed and boasted the league's coach and player of the year.
On Sunday, the Cinderella story continued when the Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles beat San Diego State 81-71, becoming the first No. 15 seed in the 75-year history of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament to score a coveted spot in the Sweet 16.
For a school of 13,000 students in its second year of eligibility for the NCAA tournament, some may call it a stroke of luck. For Enfield, it was all part of the plan.
"We don't take ourselves too seriously,'' Enfield told reporters after Friday's game. "We try to have fun, get serious when we have to."
"Our goal was to make history and we did it," he said.
Enfield's Supermodel Wife
Not only has Enfield's team turning heads, but so is his wife, supermodel Amanda Marcum, who has graced the covers of Maxim and Vogue, to name a few, and has walked runways for Chanel and Jean Paul Gaultier.
Rob Carr; Elsa/Getty Images
Florida Gulf Coast head coach, Andy Enfield,... View Full Size
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Introduced by a friend, the 5-foot-10, blonde haired, green-eyed Marcum hitched a ride with Enfield from Manhattan to Boston in 2003 to watch her beloved Oklahoma State Cowboys play in a second-round NCAA game.
"I thought he looked like a great driver that would give me a free ride," she told the Naples Daily News in 2011 after her husband was named head coach at Florida Gulf Coast University.
The two hit it off, and on their first date, Enfield, who is nine years older than Marcum, took her to a St. John's National Invitation Tournament game. Unfamiliar with restaurants in the Queens area, Enfield took his date to Taco Bell in the student union.
"I got her a nice burrito, and we sat behind the bench," Enfield told Newsday. "I figured if she still likes me after Taco Bell and a basketball game ..."
Six months later, the couple was engaged.
Making Millions in Manhattan
After a college basketball career at Johns Hopkins, Enfield earned a master of business administration degree from Maryland and began working as a shooting consultant for NBA players, capitalizing on his record as one of the best free throw shooters in NCAA history.
Enfield's roster and expertise got him jobs in the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks and the Boston Celtics.
But in 2000, Enfield decided to shift gears.
He moved to Manhattan and developed AllNetShooting.com, which offers shooting consultations, camps and training materials.
He also pursued an entrepreneurship opportunity alongside two partners that he felt was too good to pass up.
Together, they built Tractmanager, an information management system for health care contracts, and made millions.
The private company is now mostly based in Chattanooga, Tenn., and employees between 100 and 250 people, according to Zoom Info.
Tractmanager has not released its profits, but Enfield, a minority owner, told the Naples Daily News in 2012 that the company is a "market leader, by far."
When Enfield, a millionaire, married his supermodel bride in 2004, it may have seemed as though he had it all. But the kid who grew up shooting hoops with his dad, a junior high school and high school coach, in Shippensburg, Pa., just couldn't shake his desire to be around basketball full-time.
So he went back to the sport he loves.
Enfield and Marcum had a young daughter, Aila, when he joined the staff at Florida State in 2006 as an assistant coach. He found college hoops more conducive to family life and he quickly made his mark.
During his five-year tenure , Enfield helped lead Florida State University to three consecutive NCAA tournaments, including a run in the Sweet 16 in 2011.
ESPN Magazine took notice, naming him one of "Five Super Assistant Coaches in College Basketball."
He also added to his family with a daughter, Lily, and, later, a son, Marcum.
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Enfield's youth, experience and success was noticed by Florida Gulf Coast University athletic director Ken Kavanagh.
On March 31, 2011, days after Marcum was born, Enfield was named the second basketball coach ever at the university, which was established in 1991 but didn't hold its first classes until 1997.
"We look forward to him providing energized daily leadership to our student athletes, quickly getting engaged with our growing fan base and rapidly putting us in pursuit of the upper echelon of the Atlantic Sun Conference and beyond," Kavanagh said at the time.
It's only his second season, but it's fair to say Enfield has done that and more -- taking Florida Gulf Coast University from an unknown and turning it into a household name and the biggest Cinderella story the NCAA has ever seen.
The Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles will face off next against the University of Florida Gators on March 29.
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