Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  Charles played dumb as Bill became one of the top scorers in Bergen County. There was only one occasion when Charles made pointed remarks about his son’s performance. After Bill’s uncharacteristically lackadaisical play against an inferior opponent, the Golden Hawks lost by 12 points. Charles told Bill, “If you’re gonna go down there and do that, you might as well give up the game.” Bill was stung, but he saw his dad’s point.

  “He was coaching his son to be somebody,” Parcells says, “to be motivated, to not be an excuse-maker. The expectations were that you were to work hard. You don’t get notoriety or medals for that. That was his expression. ‘You don’t get any medals for trying. It’s results that count.’ ”

  Charles’s laid-back persona masked his high standards. Even as Bill excelled in school or sports, his father warned his boy: “Success is never final but failure can be.”

  He had regular sayings, many of which he coined, to highlight life lessons for his children.

  When Charles heard too much whining, he said: “The complaint department is on the fourth floor.” The family, of course, owned a three-story home. Detecting self-pity, Charles responded: “Too bad, so sad.” When things turned irrefutably gloomy, Charles provided perspective with wry humor: “It’s always darkest before it goes pitch-black.” If a friend did something stupid or offensive, Charles explained the reason for keeping that person in his circle: “A friend is someone who knows all about you, and likes you anyway.” Charles, whose duties included contract negotiations with his company’s union, often explained away inanity: “Never discount stupidity as a factor, because it’s always in there somewhere.” He considered inflexibility to be a human failing, and stressed the importance of being open to alternative ideas: “It doesn’t cost you anything to listen.”

  Charles used these maxims so often that Bill memorized them, decades before he spread them to the NFL and beyond. Bill retained a few sayings from Ida, too, mainly Italian proverbs. After Bill did something inappropriate for the umpteenth time, she’d say, “Il lupo cambia il pelo ma non il vizio,” which means, “A wolf may change his fur but not his bad habits.”

  Despite his many positive attributes, Charles, of course, had imperfections. Of these, the biggest was binge drinking. Charles joined Alcoholics Anonymous, but complained to his family and close friends about the organization’s name: “It’s one word too long.” In a six-degrees-of-separation town like Oradell, plenty of people knew of his personal demons.

  An admirer of his dad’s smarts and strong will, Bill was confounded by Charles’s struggles with the bottle. “My dad was very remorseful after he drank. I asked him to explain it to me several times when he was sober,” Parcells recalls, “and he had a difficult time.” As he tried to overcome his alcoholism, Charles warned his oldest son, “Don’t go there. Don’t start. It’s dark, and it’s miserable.”

  Don Parcells lacked his brother’s overall passion for sports. While Bill starred in the three sports, Don was lukewarm about baseball and basketball. “He couldn’t throw it in the ocean in basketball, but he could play defense,” Corcoran recalls. “If I said to Don, ‘You’re playing this guy tonight,’ he’d shut him down. He was quick as a cat.” Don preferred track, where he thrived in the sprint and quarter-mile. But powerfully built at six-foot-one and 190 pounds, he enjoyed football almost as much as his brother did.

  Although Bill was built like a lineman, his take-charge personality helped earn him the starting quarterback role for River Dell. The head football coach, Tom Cahill, was a disciplinarian who advocated a strong running game. In Bill’s senior season, his younger brother Don earned a varsity spot as a sophomore. Blending speed and toughness, Don was named starting fullback late that same season. One of Bill’s favorite moments in high school occurred against Ramsey High. Late in the scoreless game, Bill handed off to his brother deep in Ramsey territory. Don barreled up the middle and bowled over a linebacker before shifting into high gear for the winning touchdown.

  “I couldn’t believe what I saw,” Parcells says. “He looked like a missile. I would have rather have had him than pretty much all of my teammates.”

  Being married to a Bergen County sports legend didn’t spur Ida Parcells’s interest, and she rarely attended her children’s games. An exception occurred on Thanksgiving Day in 1958. River Dell football served as part of the traditional family gathering. So Ida sat in the stands with her husband. She barely understood the basics of football, yet she knew enough to cheer as her son Bill orchestrated a drive, with Don contributing, that placed the Golden Hawks near their opponent’s goal line. “Of course, having viewed that one game, she knew everything about football,” Parcells recalls, chuckling. “She could collect information quickly.”

  As usual, Coach Cahill sent in the offensive play from the sideline. But this time, after assessing the defense’s formation on third-and-goal, Bill ignored the coach’s orders. His quarterback audible was executed poorly, and River Dell failed to score. When Bill returned to the sideline, the coach beelined over to his quarterback. Aware of Bill’s parents seated right behind the Golden Hawks’ bench, Cahill wrapped his right arm around Bill’s shoulders and redirected him so that the two faced the field.

  “Bill, the next time you make a call like that, your fat ass is going to be on the bench for the rest of your career, which fortunately isn’t too much longer.”

  “But, Coach, I saw something in the defense.”

  Cahill snapped. “Dammit. When I tell you to run a play, you run it!”

  When Ida saw her son later that night, she said, “Wasn’t that nice of Coach Cahill to console you like that?”

  During the late 1950s, Vince Lombardi, now offensive coordinator of the New York Giants, moved from Englewood to nearby Oradell, just a few blocks from the Parcells family. Big Blue’s assistant coach became casual friends with Charles, and Bill often played football with Vince Jr. at a local playground. Some of Bill’s pals were tight with Lombardi’s son, and used the connection to obtain Giants tickets, but Bill never received any free-bies. However, Vince Jr. did give Bill a face mask that belonged to Giants fullback Alex Webster. Elated by the gift, Bill wore it in pickup football games at the park.

  A neighbor with Giants season tickets took Bill to the 1958 playoff classic between the Giants and Browns. Bill’s vantage for the Snow Game was behind Yankee Stadium’s 344-foot sign. He went bonkers after Pat Summerall, a future friend, won the game, 13–10, with the improbable 49-yard field goal. Bill couldn’t land tickets for the iconic championship game between the Giants and Colts, so he accepted an invitation to join high school friends ice-skating at Lake Hopatcong in Jersey. But while his pals ice-skated during the cool afternoon, Bill left to access his car radio nearby. He sat in his ’56 Ford for more than three hours, riveted by Marty Glickman’s play-by-play. When the Colts prevailed 23–17 in overtime, Bill started to cry. He was mute the rest of the day. “I died,” he recalls.

  After World War II, semiprofessional baseball became popular in the tri-state area. Local teams traveled to South Jersey and New York City. Most semipro players ranged in age from their late twenties to early thirties, but after completing his junior year at River Dell High School, Bill was already one of the area’s best players. Skilled at pitcher, catcher, and first base, he considered himself good enough to join their ranks. One day, after watching the Oradell Raymonds taking batting practice, the sixteen-year-old approached their player-manager, Larry Ennis, to inquire about joining the team.

  Having watched several of River Dell High’s baseball games, Ennis was familiar with Bill’s abilities, mainly as a catcher. So Ennis didn’t hesitate to make the teenager the youngest player on the Raymonds. Despite his age, Bill earned the starting job at catcher thanks to his sure hands, quick release, and powerful arm. “He wasn’t interested in dominating players not as good as he was,” says Ennis. “He wanted a challenge, and he related to the older guys real well.” Bill was reminded of his age the first time
the team went out drinking after a game and Ennis told the bartender, “Just Cokes for this guy.” By the end of the season, though, the kid was batting cleanup.

  “If he was coming out of high school now, he would never be in football,” Corcoran says. “He would have signed a huge baseball contract. What a prospect he was. Holy cow.”

  The Philadelphia Phillies considered signing him out of River Dell in the summer of 1959. One of the club’s scouts invited Bill for a tryout as a catcher. But Charles nixed any possibility of a Major League contract. He told his son: “You are definitely going to college. When you get out of college, if you want to go play, you can go play. Not now.”

  Parcells says of his father’s verdict: “I wasn’t on the same page, but I understood what he was saying.”

  Although college baseball scholarships were atypical at the time, Seton Hall—prodded by Corcoran—tried to entice Bill by offering him a chance to play two sports, baseball and basketball. But Bill had zero interest in attending college in the metropolitan area, which included Fordham, from which he had also received a basketball offer. Bill wanted a football scholarship, discouraged by his father’s ban on professional baseball without a degree.

  Bill was recruited by football powerhouses such as Auburn and Clemson, but he turned them down after Charles encouraged him to focus on schools with the highest level of academics. Bill looked into the Ivy League before accepting a scholarship offer from Colgate, a small school in upstate New York with a sterling academic reputation. One factor in his decision was a desire to remain in the Northeast, but not too close to home.

  Ida gave her son an elephant figurine as a going-away gift. She instructed Bill to place it facing his bedroom door, so that the statuette could bring in prosperity and happiness.

  2

  Bill Parcells packed his belongings into his 1954 Ford Fairlane, and drove to Colgate University, reaching the rural town of Hamilton, New York, in half a day. Colgate’s football program lacked the cachet of others that Parcells had turned down, but the Red Raiders offered something he found intoxicating: a relatively tough schedule in Division I, with occasional games against ranked teams. As a member of Colgate’s freshman team, Parcells scrutinized the varsity, coached by Alva Kelley, and often attended their games.

  When the season began, he quickly discovered the downside of a demanding schedule as the Red Raiders lost six straight before eking out a 16–13 victory against Bucknell on November 7. The following week, Syracuse humiliated Colgate, 71–0, behind sophomore halfback Ernie Davis, who would lead his team to the national title. The Red Raiders didn’t earn their second victory until the season finale at Brown, Alva Kelley’s previous team. By this point, Parcells regretted his decision to attend Colgate. “I hated the place,” he recalls. “I was looking around all the time and thinking the same thing over and over: ‘These guys don’t want to win.’ ”

  Parcells joined Colgate’s baseball team, playing catcher in the spring of 1960. Late in the season, he was contacted by the same Philadelphia Phillies scout who had tried to sign him out of high school. Charles happened to be on campus, visiting Bill. When he learned of Philadelphia’s renewed interest, Charles reiterated his position: a college degree had to come first.

  With baseball still on his mind, Parcells returned to Oradell for his summer break. After greeting everyone, Bill told his six-year-old brother, Doug, to grab a Wiffle ball and bat for some backyard action. Although Doug was a natural right-hander, Bill Parcells taught his sibling to bat lefty. “His thinking was this: if I hit lefty instead of righty, I would save a step and a half running to first base,” recalls Doug Parcells, who has an athletic complex in Oradell named after him for decades of service as the town’s recreation director. “And that was it. I was converted. To this day I can’t even swing a bat right-handed, all because of Bill and that step and a half. He also thought it would be better because, hitting lefty, the right-hander’s curve came in to you.”

  After agonizing about whether he should return to Colgate for his sophomore year, Bill drove back to Hamilton, New York, for football camp in the fall of 1960. But it took only two practices to confirm his distaste for the Red Raiders program. He quit the team and the school. That same day Bill returned to Oradell and sought out Mickey Corcoran, who scolded his former star for relinquishing a football scholarship without having an alternative.

  When Bill dropped the bombshell on his parents, they got upset.

  Charles asked, “What are your plans now?”

  Deadpan, Bill replied, “Join the marines.”

  Charles was in no mood for wisecracks. “You either go back to school somewhere this semester, or my financial support ends right now.”

  Corcoran made several exploratory phone calls on Bill’s behalf, including one to Wichita State University. “I’ve got this young man who can play, if you think you might want him.” After Corcoran described Bill’s stellar history at River Dell High, Wichita head coach Hank Foldberg agreed to provide the former Colgate student with free tuition and books for one semester, if he tried out for the football team. Bill Parcells left the Northeast for the first time since he was four years old, unaware that he wouldn’t move back to the Garden State for nearly two decades.

  The largest city in south-central Kansas, Wichita was a magnet for young people in the area, yet to a Jersey native it felt alien. Wichita players were formally known as Wheatshockers, although virtually everyone called them “Shockers.” Given that his scholarship hung in the balance, Bill decided to set aside his baseball dreams and focus on making Wichita’s football team. In the Missouri Valley Conference, the Shockers faced schools with well-regarded programs such as Arizona State, Boston College, New Mexico State, and Tulsa. By joining the Shockers, Parcells would be competing against some of the nation’s top players, including several NFL prospects.

  The player who was once recruited by top teams like Alabama and Clemson easily earned a spot on Wichita’s roster. Parcells only practiced with the Shockers during the 1960 season as their new coach, Hank Foldberg, guided the school to an impressive 8-2 record, including going undefeated, 3-0, in the conference.

  Freshman Judy Goss and a friend were strolling across campus one day when Goss’s female companion discreetly pointed out Bill Parcells. “I think he’s cute. Don’t you?”

  Goss agreed. “Hmm. He is pretty cute.”

  The feeling was mutual. Parcells had spotted Goss at a student party the previous week but hadn’t yet mustered the nerve to approach her. When he discovered that she worked part-time as a secretary in the school’s sports information office, he began regularly stopping by her desk to chat on his way to the locker room. Although Goss wasn’t into football, the two found an excuse to speak almost daily. Their conversations, occasionally flirtatious, led first to dating, and then to a serious relationship.

  Goss stayed close to her man as much as possible. She and a female friend became WuShocks, the team’s twin mascots, wearing a black outfit with a shock of wheat as headgear. “We just ran around, jumping up and down, acting like cheerleaders,” Judy recalls. “I got into it because Bill was playing football.”

  As the Shockers set out to repeat their previous year’s success, Parcells’s versatility made him a key backup. Being one of the team’s biggest athletes at six-two and 235 pounds, Parcells played mostly offensive tackle, defensive end, and linebacker. Once again the Shockers won eight games while going undefeated in the conference, earning them a place in the Sun Bowl at El Paso, Texas. It was only the third bowl game in Wichita’s history, and its first since 1948. Although the Shockers lost to Villanova, 17–9, in a game televised nationally on ABC, Parcells was delighted with his first experience in big-time college football.

  On learning that Bill Parcells had never even been on a horse, teammates decided that he needed to culturally assimilate. A group of players took him to a ranch rodeo near Tulsa, Oklahoma. This was no cowboy bar with a mechanical bull; it was the real deal. Despite h
is death grip on the animal’s bucking rope, Parcells lasted only a moment, far short of the eight-second standard, before being violently tossed off. Fortunately for the bull-riding wannabe, the animal’s horns had been blunted, limiting its goring ability. But, as Parcells recalls, “that sonofabitch could have killed me. I was off in about three seconds. Those were the days: I thought I could do anything.”

  Parcells even thought that he could outwrestle a bear. The cockamamie idea came to him one day when he was walking down a street in Wichita. Following the sounds of hooting and hollering, he came upon a crowd of spectators gathered around a makeshift boxing ring. Parcells couldn’t believe his eyes: a man was fighting a brown bear that weighed several hundred pounds while people cheered. The bear had no claws, and a muzzle covered his mouth, yet the encounter was still lopsided.

  The reason for this insanity? A nearby sign made it clear: “Pin the bear, win a new car.” No longer the owner of a vehicle, and without funds to buy one, Parcells lingered. The rules declared that the first contestant to lift the ursine off his hind feet, or pin him on the mat, would win the car. In superb condition at 235 pounds, Bill felt he had as good a shot as anyone. So he signed up and was scheduled to fight a few days later.

  Parcells spent much of the next forty-eight hours in the crowd, scouting his future opponent. Before every match, to the audience’s delight, the bear guzzled Coca-Cola from a sixteen-ounce jar given to him by a handler. Far more interesting to Parcells was one contestant who came close to winning by wrapping his arms around the bear, although he couldn’t quite lift the animal off the ground. Parcells considered himself fortunate to be fighting the bear at night, when it was probably tired after a full day in the ring. However, the new car didn’t go to the big, blond, curly-haired football player; he gave it his all, but he couldn’t quite pin the bear.