Frank Gansz Jr., a football coach whose career spanned the NFL, college football, the CFL and several spring leagues, died at 64.
Gansz was the special teams coordinator for the St. Louis Battlehawks of the United Football League. The team and UFL announced his death.
No cause of death was immediately announced.
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Gansz attended The Citadel, where he was a four-year defensive back. He entered coaching in 1987 as a graduate assistant at Kansas, then worked at Pittsburgh and Army before joining the New York/New Jersey Knights of the World League in 1992.
From 1993-97, Gansz coached tight ends and special teams at Houston. His units set school records and helped the Cougars win the Conference USA championship in 1996. The following year, he moved into the NFL with the Oakland Raiders.
Gansz spent two seasons with Oakland, five with the Kansas City Chiefs and two with the Baltimore Ravens. His Kansas City tenure produced the defining stretch of his NFL career. In 2003, the Chiefs led the league in both punt-return and kickoff-return average. Dante Hall made consecutive Pro Bowls in 2002 and 2003 and became one of the NFL’s most dangerous return specialists.
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Gansz later coached at UCLA and SMU, worked with the NFL Players Association, and returned to professional football with the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 2018. He subsequently coached in the XFL and USFL before joining the Battlehawks in 2026.
His father, Frank Gansz Sr., was a longtime NFL and college coach who served as Kansas City’s head coach in 1987 and 1988 and died in 2009. Frank Jr. continued the family’s specialty in an easily overlooked part of the game.
“He taught you about more than football…he taught you about life,” former UCLA coach Darrin Chiaverini wrote on Instagram. “I will forever miss you “Frankie”…Love you always for everything you did for our family and who you were as a person!”
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