White Fang and the Golden Bear

by Joe Wessel

  David got fired the following day.

  That move stunned all of us.

  David called and told me what had happened. He took the news hard, obviously. He’s an emotional guy. And getting fired from a job you love is a tough deal.

  David left coaching and became the president of Shula’s Steakhouse, and in 2018, he returned to the coaching ranks at his alma mater, Dartmouth, coaching the wide receivers.

  Bruce Coslet, our offensive coordinator, got named the interim head coach. Even though I felt bad for David, I didn’t think I’d have any trouble keeping my job. Bruce and I were more than just coaching acquaintances and golfing buddies; I felt we were friends. Mary Gayle even did some design work in his home.

  We won three consecutive games after Bruce took over as the head coach, and four of our final six games, to finish at 8–8. That strong end to the season prompted the powers that be to take away Bruce’s interim title and make him the head coach.

  Bruce told me after that season that he could only promise me a defensive assistant’s job, which was like a graduate assistant’s job. He added: “There are nine openings out there I know about. If I were you, I’d go ahead and see if you can find something that will guarantee you as a full-time assistant job.” He couldn’t tell me who he planned on hiring to be his defensive coordinator. Whether or not I’d get hired by him for one of the defensive jobs—not a defensive assistant’s job—would be up to the guy Bruce hired to be the defensive coordinator.

  At that point, I had not put two and two together about who Bruce planned to hire to be his defensive coordinator. It was so obvious in hindsight, but when you’re going through the emotions of fighting for your professional career, you become somewhat blind.

  Yet football is a business. And so it was that after the season, I traveled with a Bengals contingent to the East-West Shrine Game in California. Afterward, we went to the Senior Bowl in Alabama. That’s when Bruce dropped a bombshell on me.

  We were standing around on the field in the middle of the first day of practice, when Bruce sidled up to me.

  He had decided to pull my offer to remain with the Bengals. Something went off inside of me, and I ripped into him. I had enough anger running through me at that point that I almost punched him. He didn’t tell me why he pulled the offer, and to this day, I don’t know why he did so. I have not spoken to Bruce since.

  That left me having to hunt for a job once again. In the meantime, I found out that Bruce hired Dick LeBeau to be the defensive coordinator. Of course, that hiring drove me crazy, because I knew that Dick would have hired me to fill one of the defensive coaching positions.

  Yet I couldn’t change the decision, and the fact of the matter was I had to find a job. Nolan Cromwell, the special-teams coach for the Packers, introduced me to Andy Reid, who was close with Ray Rhodes when they both were at Green Bay. He helped me get an interview with Rhodes, who was the Eagles head coach. In March, the Eagles hired me to be their special-teams coach.

  That Eagles team had some coaching talent for sure. Jon Gruden served as the offensive coordinator, and Sean Payton coached the quarterbacks. Bill Callahan was the offensive line coach. They all became head coaches in the NFL.

  Yet perhaps the most exciting part of being in Philly was the fact that it enabled me to add to my list of great golfing experiences with Dad.

  I played golf at Heron Pines in New Jersey, and through that connection, I met and became friends with Bill McGuinness, an accomplished amateur golfer in the area who had played collegiate golf at Notre Dame.

  Bill is a member at Pine Valley and Tavistock, and we shared many rounds together. That friendship opened the door for a great father-son golf trip when Bill connected me with a golfing friend of his, Dennis McCauley, who was a member at Winged Foot and Westchester. Dennis invited his father to round out our foursome. We played Pine Valley in Clementon, New Jersey, on a Thursday. From there, we headed north past New York City, landing at Westchester Country Club in the town of Harrison, New York, and thereafter also played Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York. That trip also allowed us to visit the notorious Greenwich Village in New York City.

  The Village had been the hub of the counterculture movement when Dad roamed those tree-lined streets as a young man. Off-Broadway theaters, restaurants, bars, and cafés were just as prevalent in Dad’s heyday as they are today. Dad showed me the apartment building where he had lived while working toward becoming an entertainer. He’d also worked as a sous-chef and a chef. Being the oldest in a family of ten had taught him to cook. His mother had been a good cook, too, and everything was cooked from scratch back then. That proved to be a nostalgic trip for the both of us. I managed to get a sense of what his life had been like as a young, aspiring singer.

  The downside of my time in Philadelphia came during a Monday Night Football game against the 49ers. Simply stated, their special teams beat our special teams, which made for a bad night for me personally. Particularly when that bad night occurred on national television during a Monday night telecast.

  Since the day I got hired in Philadelphia, I had harped time and again that we needed some of our better players on the special teams. If you want to have quality special teams, you had to have quality players. Special teams are an important component of any team, and some coaches realized that fact more than others. Being on special teams is hazardous duty. Some coaches didn’t want to run the risk of having one of their star players get his knee taken out while covering punts or kickoffs.

  I didn’t get the players I needed, and full protect mode was the rule in Philly. Special teams were treated almost like an afterthought. Boy, did that deficiency ever look glaring during the Monday night game.

  At halftime of that game, the 49ers led, 24–6, even though their offense had the ball just eleven minutes and they made just six first downs. They ended up winning, 24–12, without scoring in the second half. According to others around the league, Dan Dierdorf beat me up with his commentary during the broadcast, which I did not see.

  Philly fans had someone to blame.

  Mike Lombardi, who served as a team consultant for the Eagles that year, told me, “Joe, now you know how Winston Churchill felt.” I didn’t understand, so I asked Mike, “What are you talking about?”

  He explained that Winston Churchill cried for America to help England for two years, and when President Roosevelt visited England, the damage had already been done. That’s exactly what happened to me. I compelled the power that be that we needed “teams” players. But by the time they starting bringing in players during the middle of the season, the buildings and bridges had already been blown up, along with my stay in Philadelphia.

  I wasn’t asked to return to Philadelphia for a second season.

  John Harbaugh followed me as the Eagles special-teams coach, which I find ironic. Harbaugh, who is the current head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, had worked for Rick Minter at the University of Cincinnati. In 1994, Rick had asked me to help his rookie special-teams coach—Harbaugh—institute all the special-team units we used at Notre Dame. My struggles and John’s influence must have given Philly’s ownership a wake-up call to invest in players who could help the special teams.

  Many years later, I saw John on the field during warm-ups before a Ravens-Bears game. John was very cordial and complimentary to me in front of my kids, who were with me. They thought he was so cool. We talked about the Eagles, Cincy, and his success at Baltimore. After twenty minutes, we shook hands, and I thanked him for spending that time with us. He walked away, then turned around and said, “Hey Joe, we special-teams guys have to stick together.”

  My experiences in Cincinnati and Philadelphia, along with the grind of trying to find the next coaching position, started to make me question the life I was leading as a football coach. I felt disenchanted with coaching. Having seen everything that I had gone through, Mary Gayle had grown disenchanted by my profession, as well.

  I had a couple chances to sta
y in coaching at the college level, but I knew I would be chasing future opportunities to get back in the NFL. Effectively, my coaching career had run its course at that point.

  God had a different plan for me, and I needed to start listening.

  CHAPTER 19

  Out of Coaching

  AT SOME TIME DURING EVERY coaching stop I made, I’d sit around with the other coaches and we’d wonder what we would be doing if we weren’t coaches. “What’s the real world like?” we’d ask one another.

  That conversation became reality for me after that disastrous 1997 season. I found myself struggling to stay in the league.

  My contract with the Eagles was about to run out in March, I didn’t have any offers to stay in coaching, and I had a wife and a young child. Talk about dancing on the edge of the volcano! I could feel the heat.

  By March of 1998, I started to think, What next? I felt if I wanted to coach, I needed to have some enthusiasm and passion, but I was losing mine. Part of that could be attributed to always having to fight for a job and, more times than not, missing out on the opportunity—even when I felt like I was the most qualified candidate.

  Two head coaches and two coordinators told me they could not interview me because I was white during a period when a big push was taking place to hire minorities in the NFL.

  The Rooney Rule wasn’t instituted in the NFL until the 2003 season. Once implemented, the rule required NFL teams to interview ethnic-minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs. Still, an initiative to get minorities into the coaching ranks had already begun. My wish for sports and all of society is that one day people are looked at for who they are and what they have accomplished and not because of their skin color or sex.

  As a result of these hurdles, I decided to look for job opportunities outside of coaching.

  When I talked to Dad about the prospect of leaving coaching, he didn’t immediately jump on board to the idea. Instead, he did like he always did. He questioned me. He didn’t want me to make an emotional decision and get out for the wrong reasons—just because I couldn’t get a job. In the back of Dad’s mind, he probably also thought about how he’d given up on his Broadway dream way too soon. Having that regret made him probe to try and find out whether I truly wanted to leave coaching. Surrendering a dream could lead to heartache, something he understood. On the other hand, he understood from our talks over the years about the grind of coaching and the toll that living a coach’s life takes on your family life.

  Ironically (or maybe not so ironically), both of my sisters had been coaches, as well. After Margie played volleyball at FSU, she became the head coach at Clemson for three years. My younger sister, Ann Marie, played volleyball at Clemson and went on to coach at Colorado State before becoming the head coach at Jacksonville University. Both subsequently left the profession.

  When Don Shula first heard I planned on becoming a coach, he passed along the following wisdom: “The day you think you know it all is the day you should retire.”

  I thought about what Coach Shula told me while I pondered leaving the profession. I never felt like I knew everything about football. Retirement came my way anyway. Like Shula, my mother instilled in me at an early age the desire to be a life-long learner, which turned out to be a good thing, since I needed to find a new career outside of coaching.

  Just when I really got busy looking for something else outside of coaching, God began to talk.

  Jeff Fordham, who played with me at Fork Union and went on to play at LSU, lived in Atlanta and was best friends with an old Miami acquaintance, Pat Flood. I had played baseball and basketball against Pat in grammar school and high school. Jeff put me in contact with him. In addition to being CEO and president of HomeBanc Mortgage Corporation, Pat was a salesman. I should be clear here: calling him a salesman would have been like calling Superman a police officer. I mean, Pat could sell ice to Eskimos. And he sold me on HomeBanc. He told me he had followed my career and that he was looking for leaders, not just mortgage people. The offer that followed felt too good to be true. The company would buy my house, give me a six-figure salary, and move me to Tampa. Pat would teach me the business.

  Since I felt like a drowning man looking for a lifeboat. I thought, Why not try this? I can always go back to coaching. I bought into what Pat Flood was selling!

  After training at HomeBanc, I went to work in Tampa. That had been the plan. They bought my house in Cincinnati, I planted roots in Tampa, and I never went back to coaching.

  When people ask how and why I left coaching, I tell them I tried to stay in coaching, but God put Pat into my life because he had other plans for me.

  I do know that if I would have stayed in Cincinnati with Dick LeBeau and remained in coaching, my life would have been completely different today.

  The coaching profession is a selfish profession, particularly where family is concerned. You get promoted or fired, and you move on to the next stop. The coach goes to work with people he or she probably knows or has coached with in the past. The family is left to uproot from friends and support mechanisms, as well as from people you count on every day, like doctors, dentists, barbers, and hairdressers. I think it’s a lot like the military personnel way of life.

  Leaving coaching afforded me more time with my family. In the spring of 1998 while in training for HomeBanc in Atlanta, Mary Gayle became pregnant. Our second child, Andrew Parker Phillips, surprised us by arriving early on January 5, 1999, which happened to be my birthday. What a birthday present, by far the best I ever received! With all that we had been through, we were truly blessed with God’s gift of our second child.

  All felt right with the world, including my departure from the profession I loved.

  I did manage to look in the rearview mirror and saw that I had been blessed with many great players and great coaches during my career. More important, they were all great people.

  Thanks to those people, once in business, I found that coaching and recruiting had brought me a solid foundation for learning how to manage people in regard to process and strategy. I am convinced that many of my successes in business and life have been a result of my foundation of thoughts and processes that the coaching profession instilled in me for thirteen years.

  Lou Holtz treated his position like he was the CEO of a business. Basically, he had ten guys sitting around the table, and each person had an obligation to execute their duties. He laid out the strategies, and each coach had a defined role in the organization. And he held you accountable.

  Following Coach Holtz’s example, I intentionally surrounded myself with smarter people than myself when I got to HomeBanc. I laid out the strategy and tried to hold them accountable while I coached them through the process.

  I knew I could push and lead people. I also needed help, because I had a recognizable deficiency of knowledge of the mortgage business, since I hadn’t come up through the ranks in the business. I got really lucky, with a particularly good operations person in Jo Wall.

  Jo had started way back as a receptionist at Ryan Homes in Virginia and had grown her career, including a stint where she had worked for Fannie Mae. She knew the business backward and forward. Having Jo allowed me to concentrate on marketing, to get out and do what I do best. And that strategy worked.

  Getting back on the golf course more frequently proved to be one of the nicer offshoots of becoming a businessman. I’d always enjoyed golf, and suddenly I found myself playing with customers and building relationships while out on the course. Such outings helped my business immeasurably. Having a football background helped me connect, too. There are a lot of people who enjoy talking football with somebody who has been on the inside of the sport.

  In business—no matter what business you’re in—having the ability to close means everything. Fortunately, I’ve been a good closer, another quality I learned from Dad.

  I think part of my ability to close came organically from watching Dad when I would accompany him to work. His
engagement and his salesmanship when he talked with employees and prospective clients gave me a solid foundation for closing.

  Of course, in football, recruiting is all about closing—finding ways to get parents and players to buy into what you were trying to sell. Also, in the off-season you have to go to booster and alumni functions. Those experiences afforded me the opportunity to meet leaders in the business world and learn from them.

  I strongly believe that people do business with people whom they like. And if you can establish that you’re trustworthy and honest, then people will give you a chance.

  Realtors and builders drive a bulk of the mortgage business. We marketed to them. We were a really top-notch marketing machine with excellent customer service. We built key relationships with many happy hours, drinks, and dinners. We did whatever we needed to do.

  Being successful in business also brought out the competitor in me.

  Coaching involves getting athletes to practice preparing them to perform on game day. I had been selling something every day. Business is the same way. You surround the players/employees with support and personnel to help them achieve. You give them sound game plans for success. Also, in this process, you care for, you motivate, and you nurture. Not only do you want to see the players or associates be successful on the field, but also you want to see them be as successful off the field, or away from the office and giving back to their local communities.

  During my years in business, I’ve recruited, hired, motivated, developed strategy, and been a psychologist and counselor while trying to help the company be successful and helping my associates achieve their goals in life.

  Early in my professional career, I developed a personal mission statement: “If I can help people get what they want in life… then I will get what I need.”