Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  Early in 1969, Bill Parcells visited Bobby Knight’s basement to watch Super Bowl III. The pre-merger contest pitted the New York Jets, the AFL champions, against the Baltimore Colts, the NFL champions. As a Jersey native, Parcells was rooting for the Jets, whose training camps he attended in the summer. Knight was going for the Colts, largely because of Tom Matte, an ex-quarterback at Ohio State who had become a Pro Bowl runner for Baltimore. When New York started to move the ball early behind runner Matt Snell, Knight and Parcells looked at each other and agreed that an upset was possible. But the coaches didn’t talk much, engrossed in what would be one of the biggest upsets in sports history.

  Parcells was spending so much time around Knight that he was turning into a de facto basketball assistant. After football season Bill scouted upcoming basketball opponents in the New York metropolitan area, including Fordham, Rutgers, Seton Hall, and St. John’s. Knight provided Parcells with instructions on what to look for. And the football coach turned basketball scout attended the games, took notes, and reported his observations back to Knight. The hoops coach dubbed his volunteer assistant “Walter” because of Parcells’s fondness for the name of a high school basketball scout in New York City, Walter November. “Walter” even attended Army’s road games when his schedule permitted. In one game he got so frenzied that he constantly elbowed Knight by accident, which resulted in his being banished to the end of the bench, next to Knight’s son Tim.

  On February 14, 1969, Parcells was back in his usual seat next to Coach Knight when Army visited Rutgers in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Cahill, who had known Knight since the early 1960s, also attended the critical game at the College Avenue Gymnasium. A small number of cadets sat at the end of the bench, additional support for their school in hostile territory. Behind their tough point guard Mike Krzyzewski, a senior and captain instructed not to shoot, Army was pushing to reach the National Invitation Tournament (NIT). At this point in time the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament invited only twenty-five teams to play, leaving plenty of strong contestants hoping to play in the NIT at Madison Square Garden. And occasionally a top team spurned the NCAA’s invitation. Knight had already guided his teams to two of Army’s four NIT appearances.

  The College Avenue Gymnasium, nicknamed “the Barn,” was set up with balcony-style seating on three sides of the court. The fourth side, opposite the benches, had no seats. That quirky setup gave the 3,200-seat arena one of the most intimate settings in college basketball. “A bandbox gym,” Parcells says. In a physical, defensive battle, Rutgers prevailed 49–47. Several fans rushed the floor, precipitating a skirmish involving cadets, spectators, and Rutgers players. Order was restored only after police officers got involved.

  Army’s players headed to the tunnel as fans booed and heckled. One spectator, leaning from an overhang, threw a punch at Knight, barely missing the stone-faced coach as he walked, oblivious, toward the visitors’ locker room. But Parcells, a few steps behind Knight, saw the swing, so he cocked his fist and sent the fan reeling. Parcells kept walking, but after Knight finished his postgame comments to his players, Parcells came over to him and whispered, “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  Knight directed Parcells to a quiet corner.

  “Listen, while you were walking off the floor, some guy took a swipe at you. He missed, but I reached up and punched him. I think the cops are coming after me.”

  Knight instructed his players to surround Parcells as Army’s group left the building. Parcells crouched within the cluster of basketball players while cadets lined the perimeter, and everyone walked to the team bus. “We got him out of there with his own honor guard,” Knight jokes.

  Spending so much time with Bobby Knight only strengthened Bill Parcells’s desire to become a head coach. Parcells would keep absorbing the best methods and habits whenever and wherever he could, in order to reach that goal.

  4

  The war continued to disrupt recruiting by Army’s Black Knights. In 1969, Cahill’s team dropped to 4-5-1, his worst record in four seasons as head coach. With formidable teams such as Nebraska, Notre Dame, Penn State, and Tennessee on Army’s schedule, the future looked bleak. After the season, Florida State head coach Bill Peterson courted Parcells to join the Seminoles, one of the better programs in college football, coming off a fourth consecutive winning season.

  On taking over in 1960, Peterson had propelled Florida State to prominence, going 55-38-11 with four bowl appearances before he contacted Parcells. At a time when college offenses tended to be conservative and run-oriented, Peterson used a wide-open passing attack. But, being a colorful character, he was known almost as much for his frequent malapropisms: “We’re going to throw the football come high or hell water.” Or, “We’re not going to be any three-clouds-and-a-yard-of-dust kind of team.”

  For all his mangling of the English language, Peterson was spot-on in hiring coaches on the rise. The large group included Don James, who would make his mark at the University of Washington, after being Peterson’s defensive-backs coach, then defensive coordinator; Bobby Bowden, the future Florida State legend, who was wideouts coach from 1963 to 1965; and Joe Gibbs, decades before NFL glory, who oversaw the offensive line from 1967 to 1968.

  Peterson targeted Parcells as another outstanding young coach and urged him to fill an opening overseeing Florida State’s linebackers. Despite enjoying his time at Army, where he had been elevated to defensive coordinator, Parcells was drawn by the opportunity to work for a big-time program without institutional constraints. Though reluctant to part from his pal Bobby Knight, Parcells left Army to join the Seminoles for their 1970 season. While the Black Knights continued a downward spiral that led to Cahill’s dismissal, Florida State enjoyed a 7-4 season as Parcells continued to grow in his profession. He learned important things from offensive-line coach Al Conover, an energetic and affable twenty-nine-year-old who showed an uncanny ability to maximize talent, especially by using props.

  Just before a November 14 game versus Virginia Tech, Conover homed in on the Hokies mascot, the Gobbler. As Peterson gathered the more than fifty players for their pregame talk, Conover slipped out and returned with a wild turkey, which he unleashed in the room. The gobbler strutted around wide-eyed as the Seminoles howled in delight. “He would go to the far reaches to provide motivation,” Parcells recalls. “This turkey was in there, walking around, bobbing its head. Half the players had never seen one before.”

  The motivational madness paid off as the Seminoles trounced Virginia Tech, 34–8, on their way to another winning season. Despite spending only one year on the same staff as Conover, who would leave for Rice, Parcells was influenced by him. Florida State’s linebackers coach saw how Conover balanced toughness and geniality to spur his linemen, adjusting the mix to fit their personalities. That uncanny knack was one that Parcells intended to develop. “He could be a taskmaster and he could be a teacher,” Parcells says of Conover. “He also could be playful and have some fun with the players. I liked that.”

  After the season, Steve Sloan joined Peterson’s staff as an offensive coordinator. From 1962 to 1965, Sloan had played quarterback for Bear Bryant at Alabama, mostly backing up Joe Namath until the sensation entered the 1965 AFL and NFL drafts. One of Sloan’s top wideouts was Ray Perkins, and the talented tandem helped Alabama capture national championships in 1964 and 1965. The Atlanta Falcons, an expansion team, selected Sloan near the middle of the 1966 draft. And after a brief career as a backup, the former All-American returned to Alabama in 1968, when Bryant hired him to oversee quarterbacks. The position placed Sloan on the radar as a promising college coach. Knowing Sloan’s ties to Bryant, Parcells frequently grilled the twenty-seven-year-old about his experiences under the football demigod.

  At Florida State, Parcells became close friends with the team’s wideouts coach, Dan Henning. The Bronx native was easier for Parcells to relate to than most Floridians. During the off-season Henning went with Parcells to visit his parents
in Oradell, New Jersey. One afternoon Henning and Parcells went off to play golf and didn’t get back until after Ida fell asleep. The next morning, she roused them from their beds.

  “So where were you boys last night, and what the hell were you doing?”

  Her son explained that they’d gone out for a few drinks after golf. Henning remembers thinking to himself, “We’re grown men—with kids.” Later, when Ida wanted intelligence from Parcells about her other kids, she demanded his presence in the kitchen and closed the door. Henning sat in the living room, worried about his buddy. Ida didn’t open the door until she was satisfied with her son’s information. “The only thing that was missing,” Parcells says, “was the lamp that interrogators shine in your face.”

  Around this time, Parcells read Bill Libby’s The Coaches. The 247-page volume profiled seventy-two coaches in sports ranging from auto racing to track and field. Parcells had already studied a handful of the college football coaches highlighted, such as Bear Bryant, but the book also interviewed coaches like Red Auerbach, Paul Brown, Leo Durocher, Mike Holovak, Tom Landry, Vince Lombardi, Billy Martin, Ara Parseghian, Adolph Rupp, Bill Russell, Casey Stengel, and John Wooden. The book jacket teased, “In their own words, the men who have to call the shots tell what it takes to survive in the world’s most insecure profession.” The preface detailed the job’s unique challenges, and pressures, while describing seemingly every style and persona, including the religious, the fraud, the laid-back, and the dyspeptic; Parcells, who perhaps fit in the latter category, was so stirred by the preface that within days he laminated a condensed version. “Once I read it,” Parcells explains, “I knew I needed to keep that for the rest of my life.”

  Steve Sloan, Florida State’s offensive coordinator, moved to Georgia Tech for a year at the same position before being named Vanderbilt’s head coach in 1973. At twenty-eight years old, Sloan, who seemed destined to replace Bear Bryant, was the youngest head coach in college football. And his clean-cut looks made him appear to be even younger. While Sloan was assembling a formidable group of coaches, Parcells telephoned him to express interest in overseeing Vanderbilt’s defense. Sloan regarded his former colleague highly and gladly gave him the job. Rex Dockery, a sharp offensive coach, came with Sloan from Georgia Tech as Parcells’s counterpart.

  During the first half of the twentieth century, the Vanderbilt Commodores were one of the most dominant teams in the South. Home games took place at 34,000-seat Dudley Field, the first stadium below the Mason-Dixon Line built exclusively for football. The head coach for most of that stretch, Dan McGugin, was an innovator revered by followers of Southern football who retired in 1934 with a .762 winning percentage. But those glory years were a distant memory by the time Steve Sloan, a native of Cleveland, Tennessee, arrived. Football was no longer emphasized at Vanderbilt like it was at other Southeastern Conference schools. Facing fierce weekly competition from teams like Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, and Mississippi, the Commodores were coming off their thirteenth consecutive losing season, finishing 3-8 under Sloan’s predecessor, Bill Pace. The academically rigorous school, with alumni that included two vice presidents of the United States, had targeted Sloan to turn things around.

  The new staff faced a herculean challenge trying to lift a football program stuck at the bottom of the SEC. Parcells’s duties included running the off-season conditioning program, which spanned six weeks. Strength-and-conditioning coaches didn’t yet exist. Parcells was chosen because the staff felt that he was best suited for the job. Other assistants were given responsibilities including film exchange, recruiting, and high school relations.

  The first thing Vanderbilt players noticed about their new defensive coordinator was his demeanor: it was as if he was looking for a fight. The day before spring practice commenced, Parcells made an unprecedented request of Reno Benson, the student equipment manager. Parcells told Benson, “Listen, we start working out tomorrow. Get me some five-gallon buckets with sand, and set them in each corner of the gym.”

  “What are we going to do with them, Coach?”

  “Don’t you worry about that. They’ll be used.”

  While Benson positioned the buckets around the main gym at the McGugin Center, several players asked Benson what they were for, but the equipment manager was unable to enlighten them. They found out within the hour, when players were rushing to the buckets to vomit from the intensity of the workout. Parcells intended to get the Commodores into optimum shape while purging the program of its losing culture. Being in top condition, Parcells preached, paid dividends in the fourth quarter. “Guys cursed him every single day,” recalls ex-linebacker Preston Brogdon, whose twin brother, Paul, was Vanderbilt’s tailback. “But we were a different team physically after going through it.”

  Parcells also caused some tears with a demanding approach that challenged the players’ resolve. More than a dozen Commodores quit, unable or unwilling to handle the increased demands. “Football’s not for everybody,” says Parcells, who ran weekly boxing sessions for players. “It’s a hard game; it requires sacrifice. You’ve got to have some toughness to play it.”

  A few days into the off-season program, Parcells introduced an activity he’d picked up at Florida State that he believed would foster toughness: stick fighting. As the Commodores gathered around a ring to watch the first two contestants, Sloan observed and Parcells, whistle dangling from neck, served as referee. He patrolled the ring to cajole, police, and determine a winner, but virtually no rules existed beyond one simple goal: gain sole control of the stick. Occasionally the combat was so fierce that it ended with broken noses and black eyes. The winner was permitted to depart and head to the showers; the loser was forced to remain in the ring to face the next contestant. When a fight went on too long without a result, Parcells declared a tie and sent both players out of the ring winners, a nod to their competitiveness.

  The Darwinian contest occurred every Thursday, following a forty-five-minute workout for conditioning and agility. Stick fighting after an intense workout, Parcells believed, taught the Commodores never to quit on the gridiron. He even goaded the equipment manager into practicing: occasionally Parcells inserted Reno Benson into the scout team offense to take snaps versus the first-team defense. And the fact that Benson wasn’t a player didn’t exempt him from running wind sprints at the session’s conclusion.

  “Really, it was a blessing,” Benson recalls. “I loved every minute of it.”

  Steve Sloan spent much of the off-season program observing his new players and checking on their grades. Then he called for a team meeting at the McGugin Center. In preparation for the gathering he had instructed Benson to paint three bricks: white, gold, and black. Each one was placed on a table in front of the meeting room at the facility’s lower level.

  Sliding the white brick forward, Sloan told his players, “This first brick represents some of you guys who go to class and get up in the morning for team breakfast. You show up, but when you come over here for the off-season program, we can tell that football is not important to you. We’ve already lost some white-brick guys: you’re doing the right things, but you can take or leave football. I don’t want a lot of these white bricks.”

  Sloan pushed the next brick forward. “Now, you guys that this black brick represents, you’re doing exactly what we want in football. You love the game; you love the off-season workouts, and the competitiveness of this program. And that’s good. The problem is that a lot of you are cutting class, you’re missing breakfast, staying out late, drinking, and messing around. You’re not doing the right things off the field, and I don’t want that either.”

  Sloan slid the final brick toward his players. “Now, this gold brick here represents the guy that goes to class, he’s doing the right thing, he’s using his tutors, and his grades are good. He’s well-rounded. He comes over here in the afternoon for the off-season program and he’s busting his tail; he’s lifting those weights, he’s competitive, and he loves football.”


  Sloan concluded with emphasis. “I want twenty-two of these gold bricks.”

  After the speech the coaches headed back to their offices on the upper level. As Sloan walked up the stairs, his defensive coordinator trailed him. When they reached the top of the staircase, Parcells said, deadpan, “Hey, Steve, all of those black bricks you got on offense? I’ll take them over on defense if you’ll give them to me.”

  Sloan recalls of Parcells: “He had a lot of funny one-liners, and believe me, he could fire them off one after the other, using the humor to soften his sarcasm and criticism.” So despite Parcells’s combative style, many players, including those on offense, gravitated toward him. He could be fun to be around when in the mood. Occasionally after practice, Parcells instructed a player to find four teammates interested in half-court hoops. The three-on-three contests were based on rough-and-tumble Jersey rules that gave Parcells an edge: when a player went up for a jump shot, Parcells might bump him on the chest, and if the shooter cried foul, the coach would respond, “Hey, that wasn’t a foul. I didn’t hit you hard enough.”

  The hard-fought contests could go on for hours.

  Bill Parcells oversaw a physical, ball-hawking 5-2 defense that befitted his personality. Rex Dockery installed a veer offense, featuring option runs that helped control the clock. Alternating at quarterback, Fred Fisher and David Lee read the movement of defensive players, and distributed the ball accordingly on pitches and handoffs. Vanderbilt’s fortitude seemed to have benefited from Parcells’s steps in the off-season. The Commodores uncharacteristically won two straight for a 3-2 record going into their first SEC game, a home contest against Vince Dooley’s Georgia Bulldogs. On a chilly October afternoon, most everyone in the homecoming crowd of only 16,789 was painfully aware that Vanderbilt had lost twelve consecutive games against SEC opponents.