Georgia, at 3-1-1, was a heavy favorite, led by star quarterback Andy Johnson, who often dashed to the perimeter for big gains, and shifty tailback Jimmy Poulos. Any chance for an upset, or even a competitive game, rested on a strong effort from Joe “Buffalo” Reynolds, a linebacker whose athleticism made him one of Vanderbilt’s best players. To Parcells’s chagrin, however, Reynolds rarely maintained his intensity throughout an entire game.
In the first half, the talented linebacker confirmed the negative side of his reputation: on a crucial third-down play Reynolds’s lapse permitted Johnson, a future runner for the New England Patriots, to sprint for a first down. Apoplectic, Parcells ordered the linebacker off the field. As the player trotted back to Vanderbilt’s sideline, Parcells stopped him with enough force to rip the shoestring holding his shoulder pads together. Parcells gave Reynolds a tongue-lashing before the brawny linebacker slunk away to repair his equipment.
Georgia led 14–3 at halftime, thanks to Johnson’s scoring run and touchdown pass. But Vanderbilt’s defense responded with a strong effort in the second half as Reynolds maintained his focus and intensity. The Commodores allowed only two first downs while intercepting Johnson twice. With about five minutes left, Hawkins Golden, a soccer-style kicker, booted his third field goal, giving Vanderbilt a 15–14 lead. The Commodores held on for an 18–14 shocker as Golden finished the game with a school-record four field goals. It was Vanderbilt’s first three-game winning streak since 1963, and its sole victory against Dooley’s Dawgs.
The Commodores finished the season 5-6, the most victories they’d had in five years. And with players suddenly showing an unfamiliar swagger, Vanderbilt seemed poised for further improvement. “We had as much talent as other teams in the SEC,” says Walter Overton, an ex-wideout who became a Tennessee Titans executive. “We just had to believe that we could win. It was all about mental toughness. That’s where Sloan, Parcells, and that staff came in. They galvanized and harnessed every one of us to the task at hand.”
At the outset of its next season, in 1974, Vanderbilt looked galvanized, jumping to a 2-1 start. Sloan’s team faced an early gauge in its next game: home versus Florida, ranked eighth and undefeated at 4-0. For Parcells and senior quarterback David Lee, this first game against Florida as members of the Commodores held extra significance. Lee’s reasons were personal, and while coaching at Florida State from 1970 to 1972, Parcells had acquired a distaste for its interstate rival: his Seminoles had lost all three games versus Florida, including a 42–13 spanking in Parcells’s final season.
The Monday before the Seminoles visited Dudley Field, Parcells strung up a stuffed alligator from the ceiling of the trainer’s room. As Commodore players chatted while being taped for practice, Parcells strolled in. The room quieted down before he suddenly leaped into the air and headbutted the Gator. While it swung from the ceiling, Parcells walked out of the room without a word. Players reacted with alarm and amusement.
Parcells repeated the act every morning leading up to game day.
As team captain, David Lee had developed a Friday morning ritual of stopping by Parcells’s office for a chat. The morning before the big game, Lee walked in as usual.
Parcells collared him. “Lee! Come here, sit down.”
The quarterback obliged.
“Is the team ready? How do the players seem to you? Are we ready to go?”
Lee responded with an anecdote from three days earlier. As team captain he had called a meeting in the players’ dormitory, where, for the first time, he detailed the reasons for his personal animosity toward the Gators. A native of Pensacola, Florida, Lee had been one of the top high school players in the state. After participating in an all-star game in Gainesville as a junior, Lee and his father visited Florida’s football office, where Gator coach Doug Dickey promised him a full scholarship. During his senior season, Lee dislocated his right shoulder and missed several games. When Lee returned to Gainesville for an official visit, he was stunned by Dickey’s parting remarks.
“David, I’m gonna call you next week and let you know whether or not we’re going to extend you a scholarship.”
Lee, taken aback, said, “Coach Dickey, you’ve already offered me a scholarship.”
Dickey responded, “I know, and I’m going to call you next week and let you know for sure.”
Lee steamed. “Hey, Coach, don’t call me. I can go somewhere else to play.”
Hearing the story, the Commodores roared at Lee’s response. When he had finished, safety Scott Winfield rose and said, “Let me tell you what the Gators did to me.” And after Winfield aired his grievance, kicker Mark Adams, a Pensacola native and Lee’s best friend, went next: “Well, them sonofabitches didn’t even send me a questionnaire.” By the time Adams finished, the dormitory rocked with whooping and cheering.
Parcells grinned. His team was ready.
The coach balled his right hand into a fist before extending it to reveal a scuffed copper bracelet.
“Lee, you know what this is?”
“Yeah, it’s a copper bracelet.”
“I only wear this in special, special situations. One time I wore it at Army. We hadn’t beaten Navy—we beat Navy.”
Parcells paused as if giving Lee time to appreciate the powers of the amulet.
“Lee, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m going to let you wear it during the Florida game.”
Lee, in a polite tone, said, “Coach, I think I’ll just wear my wristbands, but I really appreciate it.”
Zipping pinpoint passes, David Lee guided Vanderbilt to a surprising 24–3 lead over Florida en route to a 24–10 victory at a delirious Dudley Field. Lee’s vengeful tour de force dropped the Gators from the top ten in national rankings, and catapulted the Commodores into prominence for the first time in decades. Parcells’s defense in a conference full of high-powered offenses had helped transform Vanderbilt. His unit played with a blend of ferocity and discipline. “They would just knock you out,” Sloan says.
The unit stayed strong as the Commodores defeated several tough opponents, including Mississippi, 24–14, the first time Vanderbilt had done so since 1951. In their next game at Dudley Field, the Commodores faced Parcells’s former team Army. Steve Belichick traveled to Vanderbilt to scout the Black Knights for the Army-Navy game. He brought his kid, Bill, one semester away from obtaining an economics degree at Wesleyan, where he played tight end and center. Father and son visited Parcells before the game, and the Belichicks watched Vanderbilt trounce Army, 38–14, cementing a shift in the fortunes of both programs. In a season of milestones, Vanderbilt finished 7-3-1, earning an invitation to the Peach Bowl. Seven Commodores were named to the All-SEC team, including receiver Barry Burton, who also made the All-America squad. Steve Sloan was named the conference’s Coach of the Year.
The Peach Bowl pitted Vanderbilt against the Texas Tech Red Raiders, who had been ranked as high as ninth in the nation during the season. Before the game at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, Red Raiders coach Jim Carlen announced he would be leaving for South Carolina. But the Commodores also faced distractions: David Lee had scheduled his wedding one week before the game, based on the assumption that Vanderbilt’s season would be over: the bowl invitation was only the second in school history. Also, Texas Tech was secretly courting Steve Sloan as Carlen’s replacement. Coming off Vanderbilt’s first winning season since 1959, Sloan was a hot commodity.
During the Peach Bowl, televised nationally on ABC, Lee appeared uncharacteristically discombobulated, and the contest, a defensive struggle, ended up tied at 6. By the time the team returned to Nashville, rumors were flying about Sloan’s imminent departure. Commodore fans bombarded him with telegrams, and camped out in front of his home. To their relief, on New Year’s Eve Sloan announced his decision to stay. But the following day Sloan stunned the city by reversing his decision.
Rex Dockery agreed to join him in the move to Texas Tech. Sloan also wanted to poach Parcells, but knowing his defensive
coordinator’s strong desire to be top dog, Sloan recommended him for the opening. Already impressed by the thirty-four-year-old assistant, Vanderbilt asked him to be its head coach. It was a great moment for Parcells, the realization of his dreams after sixteen years as an assistant, yet the defensive coordinator felt torn. Although Vanderbilt’s academic credentials were a plus, the school lacked the football tradition and institutional commitment of most conference teams. Because of the distinct recruiting disadvantage in the SEC, Parcells believed that Sloan had made a shrewd move by taking a better gig after a brief, successful stint.
Parcells had a habit of speaking to himself, especially before making a big decision. And in choosing whether to lead Vanderbilt in 1975, he stood at the biggest crossroads of his career.
Parcells #1: Okay, who are you gonna beat?
Parcells #2: Well, that’s the question.
Parcells #1: You gonna beat Tennessee? You gonna go down the road with ninety thousand people in the stands and beat the Volunteers?
Parcells #2: Probably not.
Parcells #1: You gonna beat Alabama? You gonna go into Birmingham or Tuscaloosa and beat Bear Bryant?
Parcells #2: Probably not.
Parcells #1: LSU?
Parcells #2: Probably not.
Parcells #1: Georgia?
Parcells #1 (quickly added): Don’t even bother answering that one. You know you’re not going to beat Georgia, don’t you?
Parcells #2: Yeah, I know.
Parcells and his doppelgänger went through the SEC roster of teams, including Auburn, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Mississippi State. Parcells couldn’t identify one program Vanderbilt would consistently defeat. The only lesser football programs were William & Mary and perhaps Tennessee-Chattanooga. Without a drastic change in recruiting trends, or institutional priorities, Parcells would not only be hard-pressed to maintain Sloan’s success, but might end up with only a few wins per season. Becoming Sloan’s successor, Parcells concluded, had almost no upside.
His career aspirations made the decision excruciating, but soon after the New Year, Parcells departed Nashville ahead of his family for an early start overseeing Sloan’s defense at Texas Tech. The new staff included wideouts coach Mike Pope, who had coached three seasons with Parcells at Florida State, and a defensive assistant, Romeo Crennel, lured from Western Kentucky. “The next thing I knew,” Parcells says, “I was in the middle of nowhere—Lubbock, Texas, is the state capital of nowhere—watching the wind blow and wondering just where the next city was, exactly.”
Not long after Parcells’s departure, his wife got help from some friends with what was becoming an all-too-frequent ritual: packing their belongings into boxes after the family’s patriarch found a new job. Movers arrived early in the morning and spent several hours loading items into a moving van. Judy vacuumed, dusted, and mopped the empty house. “Leaving it spic-and-span,” Dallas Parcells says.
By now, Suzy and Dallas had a baby sister, Jill. The three girls and the family’s golden retriever, Buckles, squeezed into Judy Parcells’s red Gremlin, a small two-door hatchback. Popular during the early 1970s, it looked like a sawed-off station wagon, with its two bucket seats in the front and a rear bench seat designed for three passengers. The family’s three suitcases couldn’t fit inside, so Judy strapped them to a luggage rack and set off on the two-hundred-mile drive to a motel in Memphis, the first of three legs before reaching their new home.
Judy had been driving for less than a mile when Suzy, riding shotgun, glanced in the rearview mirror and shouted, “Mom, the bags just flew off the car.” As Judy pulled over to the shoulder, the girls looked back and saw their clothes strewn all over the road. A passing car pulled over to help, and its driver turned out to be the football coach at the local high school where Judy regularly ran on the track for exercise. Judy set off again a half hour later with the luggage secured by rope. The skies opened, and a blinding rainstorm stayed with the family all the way to Memphis. The next morning, the motel clerk told Judy that a tornado had swept through town overnight.
After another seven-hour drive, Judy Parcells arrived at her sister’s home in Oklahoma City for a brief visit before setting off on the five-hour drive to Lubbock. About 150 miles out, Judy looked in her driver’s-side mirror and had a horrifying feeling of déjà vu. One of the three suitcases had fallen off, although this time it stayed closed. Judy drove at a crawl the rest of the way as everyone in the car wondered what might happen next. When the family reached its new home without any more drama, night had fallen, and Bill Parcells was still at work. Texas Tech’s new defensive coordinator got home late, as usual, to find that his hectic first days at work hadn’t been quite as eventful as his family’s wild ride.
The Red Raiders were considered just a notch below the elite football programs, although in 1973, only two years before Steve Sloan’s arrival, Texas Tech went 11-1 to earn a national ranking of eleventh. The team capped its impressive season by defeating Tennessee, 28–19, in the Gator Bowl. As members of the Southwest Conference, the Red Raiders faced tough opponents like Arkansas, Baylor, Houston, Rice, Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Christian. Sloan’s new school appealed to him by being heavily invested in its football program. The home field, Jones Stadium, contained 50,500 seats, more than twice the number needed to accommodate the student body.
Parcells brought the same approach that he had used to help jump-start Vanderbilt. But several Red Raiders bristled at Parcells’s hard-charging style and disparaging remarks. Upperclassmen in particular, having experienced the 11-win season, hesitated to buy into Parcells’s methods. His linebacker-oriented schemes contradicted what the returning Red Raiders had been taught.
Another factor contributing to the incompatibility stemmed from cultural differences between a Northeastern-bred coach and a defense full of Texan athletes. “We didn’t understand much about him when he first arrived,” recalls former safety Greg Frazier. “He was very brash—what we would define as a Yankee. He really didn’t quite understand how to get the most out of his boys from Texas. His idea of motivating was to embarrass you, try to goad you into doing better.” Former defensive end Richard Arledge put it more bluntly. “His first year, he hated us. And in our view, he was a New York asshole. He was a grab-you-by-the-face-mask-and-degrade-you type of guy.”
One incident in practice highlighted the chasm. The offense on the opposite end of the field was engaged in a spirited session; the defense was sluggish despite its coordinator’s prodding. Suddenly, Parcells screamed: “You guys make me sick! Just get the hell off the field!” The defense, surprised for a moment, obeyed with more alacrity than they had shown all day. Arledge recalls, “I think he was expecting all of us to say something like, ‘Coach, come on; we’ll do better. Give us another chance.’ Well, you never saw [so many] guys disappear so fast in your life. He just kind of stood there gasping. We were gone. It was terrible.”
For the first time in his career, Parcells found himself struggling to rally his players. Before kickoff for the inaugural spring game, players milled around in the locker room or sat by their stalls. Parcells went from locker to locker, shoving each player he came across, or slapping their shoulder pads. “All right, are you ready?” The Red Raiders had never experienced anything like it; most of them acknowledged that they were ready, but Parcells was unaware of defensive tackle Billy Bothwell’s habit of sitting in silence to psyche himself up. When Parcells nudged Bothwell, he rose from his seat and pushed back—hard. Caught off guard, Parcells tumbled to the floor. Defensive assistant Romeo Crennel attempted to defuse the awkward situation, saying, “I think he’s ready, Coach.”
As players watched to see what would happen next, Parcells picked himself up and walked past Bothwell to the next locker, where he continued to bump and slap until he had laid hands on every Red Raider. “I really don’t think he was angry,” Frazier recalls, “because if nothing else, he knew Bothwell was ready to play.”
During the season, ho
wever, the defense performed inconsistently as Texas Tech struggled to stay above .500. Parcells’s misery increased with each loss, limiting his opportunities to show his lighter side. Unlike at Vanderbilt, where he organized basketball games with players, Parcells kept his distance off the field. He drove his Red Raiders even harder, with little to show for it.
Texas Tech finished 6-5, a doubly disappointing mark given the high expectations. An alarming number of defensive players seemed increasingly antagonistic toward Parcells. Realizing that the defensive coach’s talents would be squandered if his players rebelled, Steve Sloan held meetings with the defense, especially its rising seniors, attempting to smooth things over. But the onus remained on Parcells to calibrate his approach. “He was probably trying to figure what direction to take as a coach,” Sloan recalls. “West Texas was still mostly cowboys then, and it was a different kind of life than he was used to.”
Despite the commanding presence on the gridiron, Parcells came across as shy off it. He disliked speaking in front of large groups and preferred to socialize with no more than two people. Parcells declined invitations to staff parties and outings, making it difficult for colleagues to penetrate his personal shield. Some coaches were surprised the first time they spotted Parcells on the tennis courts across the street from the football facility. But he became an almost daily presence, displaying a deep repertoire of shots and excellent hand-eye coordination. Sloan’s staff knew of Parcells’s successful football career at Wichita, but his colleagues were unaware that he remained a well-rounded athlete.
In the off-season, Ray Perkins, a wideouts coach for the New England Patriots, visited Lubbock as part of his duties scouting the western part of the country. During his stay, Perkins spent substantial time with his ex-teammate under Bear Bryant; Sloan introduced the former All-American wideout to Parcells. Perkins spoke with a Southern drawl acquired growing up in Petal, a tiny town on the bottom tip of Mississippi. He and Parcells might as well have come from different planets, but the two men were straight-talking coaches with strong work ethics and reputations for toughness. Perkins thoroughly enjoyed their brief conversation.
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