Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  Friday, June 5, 1992, three days after surgery, Parcells was sitting up in his hospital bed when his daughter Dallas came to visit. Hooked up to his IVs, Parcells wore a navy robe with red-and-white piping on the lapels and cuffs. In an upbeat tone, Parcells said, “It wasn’t my time,” and told Dallas the story about receiving an autograph request while being wheeled to the OR. One temporary result of the bypass that Parcells complained about was occasionally odd, rapid pulsations in his chest.

  “They don’t warn you that you’re going to have these extra heartbeats.”

  Later that afternoon, Parcells walked gingerly around his bed a few times. While looking out the window that late spring day, he was interrupted by his first nonfamily visitor: Mickey Corcoran. The sight of his mentor further boosted his spirits.

  Parcells hugged Corcoran carefully, saying, “This was a real ass-kicker, Mick. I won’t be doing any rebounding for you today.”

  Corcoran replied, “I can’t believe how good you look, Billy. I mean, the surgery was just three days ago.”

  “It was something. This place, the people here. They’re unbelievable.” Parcells commented on the irony of receiving world-class treatment in Philadelphia Eagles territory, after having faced so much vitriol at their home stadium.

  He told Corcoran, “I’d hear, ‘Hey, Parcells, you fat-ass.’ That was their way of saying hello.”

  Corcoran laughed.

  Parcells added, “One time, Mark Bavaro was walking with me, and when he heard that he said, ‘Don’t worry, Bill.’ Like he was going to protect me.”

  Parcells added, “When you wake up in the morning, you don’t want to move, but you’ve got to fight it. Now it feels so good to sweat.”

  Parcells sat down in the chair next to his bed and sifted through a stack of cards and telegrams.

  “Everybody’s been great. I got a telegram from Lou [Piniella] that said, ‘Never mind getting well soon. Just get me some damn runs!’ Then there’s one from [Giants safety] Kenny Hill. I used to always get on him. I’d tell him, ‘You can’t play unless something hurts.’ So look what he says in this card: ‘Some people can’t function unless they create illusionary obstacles to overcome for themselves. ’ ”

  Towering above the flowers on the windowsill stood a three-foot elephant figure, trunk raised, facing the door. The gift was from Parcells’s boss at NBC, Terry O Neil, the sports executive producer. Nearby was a framed picture of Matt Bahr’s last-second field goal for the 15–13 thriller over San Francisco in the 1990 NFC Championship, sent by a Giants fan who had shot it from the upper stands of Candlestick Park. Holding it up and smiling at Corcoran, Parcells said, “The three-peat game.”

  In preparation for walking the hospital halls, Parcells asked Addonizio for a distance goal. The surgeon responded that the ex-coach should walk for as long as he was comfortable doing so. Following a bypass the heart usually takes about six months to regain its normal strength, he said, but after being bedridden for two days, Parcells was determined to return to normalcy as soon as possible. And, of course, his competitive streak spurred him to try outdoing the average patient.

  The next day, Parcells kept track of his distance by counting each step on his way to exhaustion. He briskly walked the halls of his floor for a stretch excessive even for a robust pedestrian: roughly two miles. Sweating profusely, Parcells took deep breaths, causing him to wince in pain.

  Addonizio received word of Parcells’s foolhardiness, prompting a visit the next morning.

  “You know, that wasn’t very smart what you did yesterday. But I can see that you’re not going to be happy until you go out and run around this hospital ten times. I admire your mentality but you made a mistake. You need to be your own doctor. Don’t push things too far, because if you go over the line you’re not coming back.”

  Those remarks, Parcells says, turned out to be the best advice he ever got about his well-being. “I’ve taken it to heart all these years,” says the septuagenarian golfer, who exercises almost daily on a treadmill. “I’ve always tried to push it, but I never try to cross the line.”

  Bill Parcells was discharged on June 9, 1992, with an appointment to return in three weeks for reevaluation. Addonizio instructed Parcells to walk twice per day, a stroll in the morning and another in the afternoon. Back in Upper Saddle River, he created a daily rhythm for the regimen: leaving the house by 9:30 a.m. to walk about a mile, or forty minutes; returning home exhausted, and taking a two-hour nap before his next excursion.

  The daily trek began on a shaded downhill path, which made his return trip all the more challenging. So Parcells would head back at a snail’s pace, sitting on a curb to rest for several minutes before continuing home. The second day, Parcells decided to increase the distance despite considerable humidity, adding a two-block loop that included a leafy cul-de-sac. As he got to the turnaround Parcells glimpsed the first sign of life that morning: a German shepherd, without a leash, darted from a driveway and charged toward Parcells, barking stridently.

  During his childhood Parcells had been bitten by dogs. He had also owned them throughout his life. Comfortable with the animals, he understood their body language. “If he’s coming right for you with his ears bent back,” Parcells says, “he’s serious.” As the German shepherd approached, Parcells braced for an attack. What was the best defense? Kicking the dog? Was he even physically capable of doing that?

  Within seconds, Parcells concluded that his best option, his only option, was raising his arms to shield his face and chest, but his sore sternum made this unbearably painful. His heart racing, Parcells didn’t move, couldn’t move. The dog, only a few feet away, abruptly halted and stopped barking. In a surreal scene, man and dog engaged in a staring contest that seemed to last an eternity. The big canine growled but didn’t advance. Finally it turned and trotted away.

  Parcells recalls, “Now, he must have either figured, ‘This sonofabitch isn’t afraid of me ’cause he isn’t moving’ or ‘He can’t hurt me.’ I don’t know which one it was. I was just preparing to get bit. That was the most helpless feeling I’ve ever had in my life. If I’m healthy and that dog comes at me like that, it’s going to be a pretty good battle. I might get bitten a few times, but he’s in trouble if I can get my hands around his neck.”

  After the episode Parcells made his way home, where Judy greeted her husband at the door. She noticed he’d been sweating and possibly crying, but assumed that it was related to the aftermath of surgery. When Judy followed her husband into the kitchen, he conveyed the bizarre story.

  Judy recalls, “He said it was the first time in his life he had ever felt completely helpless. If that dog had attacked him, he couldn’t have fought back. When you go through something major like heart surgery, your system is all screwed up anyway for a while. He was shaking and scared and really upset.”

  Nonetheless, the next day Parcells decided not to alter his exercise regimen; the route was ideal. He never saw the German shepherd again, as his halting pace picked up, turning into long strong strides. Eventually, Parcells started jogging, and feeling like a new man.

  On June 24, 1992, Bill Parcells traveled to Abington Memorial Hospital, forty-five minutes from Philadelphia, for a post-operative visit with Dr. Addonizio. Parcells felt a kinship with his surgeon, recognizing that just as the ex-coach had spent every minute of his day thinking about football, Addonizio was consumed by cardiology. Although Parcells was a famous sports figure, he viewed Addonizio’s as being the higher calling.

  While waiting for his doctor, Parcells spent several minutes trying to find the right words to express his appreciation. “Thank you” seemed an inadequate way to convey his strong feelings. As Parcells rehearsed a few versions of what to say, Addonizio walked into the room. Having run out of time, Parcells spoke from the heart. “Hey, Dr. Addonizio, you must get a great deal of satisfaction from what you do. People like you don’t come along very often. You help mankind. I don’t know whether someone’s gratitude means much
to you. But if it does, I want you to know how much you have mine.”

  Addonizio responded emphatically. “Of course it does.”

  At the end of the appointment Parcells was thrilled to get clearance for coaching. Several weeks later, in late July, Hugh Culverhouse sent Parcells a note wishing the ex-coach a swift recovery. The Bucs owner conceded that he hadn’t realized the extent of Parcells’s health issues until he’d read about the surgery. Parcells appreciated the gesture, and the two men stayed in touch. Within a few months, though, Culverhouse faced his own health troubles in the form of lung cancer. He would die from it two years later at age seventy-five.

  With the advent of football season Parcells returned to NBC as an NFL analyst, but his yearning to coach remained, and was stoked on October 25, when the Seahawks faced Big Blue at Giants Stadium. Two days earlier NBC’s crew had visited Parcells’s old office building in preparation for its telecast, and the ex-coach had engaged in pleasant conversations with Wellington Mara, Robert Tisch, George Young, and his former secretary.

  On game day Parcells arrived at the arena at 9 a.m. While heading to the broadcast booth to cover the game with Marv Albert, his play-by-play partner, Parcells ran into Phil Simms in the stadium tunnel. The coach turned announcer couldn’t resist needling his ex-quarterback. For the second straight season the post-Parcells Giants were underachieving. After having gone 8-8 in Ray Handley’s rookie season, Big Blue entered the Seahawks game at 2-4. Since the roster contained most of the players who had won Super Bowl XXV, blame fell on Handley. As the league’s worst team at 1-6, Seattle seemed as if it would offer the Giants a salve.

  New York clung to a 6–3 lead at halftime as fans sitting beneath NBC’s booth turned around to ogle their team’s ex-coach. Soon spectators started chanting, “We want Bill! We want Bill! We want Bill!” The chorus continued into the third quarter as Seattle, owning the NFL’s worst offense in more than a decade, scored its first touchdown in four games. As the Seahawks took a surprising 10-6 lead, the crowd changed its tune, booming, “Ray must go! Ray must go! Ray must go!” Several Seahawks players gestured with their arms for Giants fans to get louder, and in a strange twist, the home crowd obliged. Big Blue came back to win 23–10, but the home crowd’s vitriol and the team’s struggles against a hapless opponent left the Giants feeling like losers.

  After the clock ran down, reporters swarmed Parcells to inquire about his desire to coach again, perhaps with the Giants. The NBC analyst responded by comparing coaching to a narcotic, the biggest high of all taking place in the tunnel before a Super Bowl game. Although Parcells expressed sympathy for Handley, he coyly added, “There aren’t any vacancies here. The job is not open. I don’t anticipate anything in the future.”

  Several months later the job was open. On December 30 the Giants fired Ray Handley after his injury-riddled team finished the season 6-10. His brief tenure as head coach concluded with an overall record of 14-18. As Big Blue fans and players like Lawrence Taylor clamored for Parcells’s return, the ex-coach remarked in interviews that he would consider the job if asked. Behind the scenes he took the possibility one step farther by conveying interest to Wellington Mara. However, George Young, empowered to pick the next coach, was still angry about Parcells’s flirtation with Atlanta in late January 1987, only days after Big Blue’s first Super Bowl victory. The GM had exhausted his tolerance for Parcells’s behavior. As Young once said, “Bill knows what defense he’ll call during the second series three games from now. But he doesn’t know what he’s doing in his own life three days from now.” More important, Young saw Parcells as power-hungry and difficult to coexist with.

  The Giants GM praised the dismissed Handley for “working within the framework of the team.” For his replacement, Young was targeting the assistant coach who’d gotten away: Tom Coughlin, who had revitalized Boston College in only two seasons. To the GM’s surprise and dismay, however, the forty-six-year-old showed little interest in Big Blue’s overtures. Instead, Coughlin signed a sweetened contract to stay at Boston College, citing the desire to cap his efforts with a national championship. The Giants switched gears by pursuing Dallas defensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt, but Chicago preempted them by naming him Mike Ditka’s replacement. Underscoring his lack of interest in Parcells, Young pursued, and landed, his third choice: Dan Reeves, who had taken Denver to three Super Bowls in twelve seasons.

  Parcells admits about Young, “He didn’t want me back. So what? He probably viewed me as something from the past. ‘Time to move on.’ My youngest brother said, prudently, ‘Why would you go back there? You can probably only do worse.’ And he was right.” As the winner of two Super Bowls in five years, Parcells could still go to almost any other team with an opening, particularly one with lots of room for improvement.

  15

  Billy Sullivan had less than twenty-four hours to finagle $17,000 to reach his elusive dream: a football franchise in Boston. On Sunday, November 15, 1959, the Massachusetts businessman had received a long-distance phone call from Lamar Hunt, the Texas oil scion. Hunt needed one more team in order to create the American Football League, which intended to compete aggressively with the NFL, whose soaring popularity had come to match that of the nation’s pastime.

  Sullivan was informed that paying $25,000 by 4 p.m. the next day would land him the AFL’s eighth and final franchise, instead of its going to a prospective owner in Atlanta or Philadelphia. With less than $8,000 in cash, Sullivan furiously recruited nine investors, mostly family and friends, persuading each of them to purchase a 10 percent stake. Borrowing the remainder, Sullivan placed it in an AFL bank account just in time to beat the deadline.

  During the 1950s, Sullivan, a former public-relations executive, had fruitlessly sought an NFL club for Boston, the nation’s largest city without a football franchise. Beantown’s previous NFL teams had folded or relocated, prompting local sports fans to focus on a budding Celtics dynasty in the NBA and the storybook twilight of baseballer Ted Williams’s career. Red Sox Nation included a rebellious teenager in New Jersey, Bill Parcells, rooting against his father’s dynastic Yankees. Massachusetts’s football followers, like a kid named Robert Kraft, adopted the New York Giants, whose games were broadcast throughout the Northeastern region.

  Boston’s first pro football team, the Boston Bulldogs, had arrived in 1929, relocating from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, but they folded after just one season. The void was filled in 1932 by the Boston Braves, who got their moniker by sharing Braves Field with the city’s pro baseball team. After one season the football Braves changed their nickname to the Redskins. The Boston Redskins reached the 1936 NFL Championship, but poor attendance during the regular season angered their owner, George Marshall. After his team lost the title game, 21–6, to Green Bay at the Polo Grounds, Marshall moved the Redskins to Washington, D.C. Pro football returned to Boston in 1944 via the Boston Yanks, owned by Ted Collins.

  Now Billy Sullivan was filling the void.

  • • •

  Reflecting Boston’s role in American history, Sullivan’s new franchise was dubbed the Patriots before their inaugural season in 1960. Sullivan named himself team president before hiring Mike Holovak as personnel director and Lou Saban as head coach. A former Boston Globe sports reporter whose father had also written for the paper, Sullivan lacked the wealth to buy a stadium in a league whose team owners included hotel magnate Barron Hilton of the Los Angeles Chargers and oil tycoon Bud Adams of the Houston Oilers. So the Patriots started off by hosting teams at Boston University’s football field.

  In Mike Holovak’s second full season as head coach after Lou Saban was fired, the Boston Patriots reached the 1963 AFL Championship. But Sullivan’s franchise lost by 41 points to the San Diego Chargers, marring an otherwise impressive season. After mostly winning seasons in the first half of the 1960s, the Boston Patriots struggled the rest of the decade, while playing in three other “home” stadiums: the Red Sox’ Fenway Park, Boston College’s Alumni Stadium, an
d Harvard Stadium, owned by the Ivy League school. The homelessness of the Boston Patriots was contributing to their financial instability.

  After the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, the reconstituted league required all twenty-six teams to play in a home stadium with a minimum capacity of 55,000. While cities throughout the nation increasingly provided new buildings for their teams, Boston and Providence declined to do so for the Patriots. Instead, relocation offers flew in from Birmingham, Montreal, Seattle, Tampa, and Toronto. Once again pro football in Beantown seemed doomed. Before the 1971 season, however, Billy Sullivan finally landed a new stadium in Foxborough, a town between Boston and Providence, paying only $7.1 million for a 61,114-seat building. In one of the first such instances, Sullivan sold the stadium’s naming rights to the Schaefer Brewing Company for $150,000, spawning its designation for the next dozen years: Schaefer Stadium.

  During the off-season the Boston Patriots tweaked their name to become the New England Patriots, officially expanding their representation to the nation’s Northeastern corner. In Schaefer Stadium’s preseason opener more than 60,000 spectators watched the New England Patriots defeat the New York Giants, but the August 15 contest also revealed significant flaws in the new building. Schaefer Stadium’s 800 toilets stopped flushing, drains overflowed, and drinking fountains were inoperable. Those issues were addressed in time for the regular season, but with its messy field and mostly aluminum benches lacking back support, Schaefer Stadium had instantly became the league’s worst building.

  From 1970 to 1972 the “Patsies,” as they were dubbed by disgruntled followers, won a total of just eleven games. By making the postseason in 1976, New England ended a twelve-year drought that stretched back to its infamous AFL title drubbing. This time, in its second playoff berth, the Patriots lost by a closer margin, 24–21, to Al Davis’s Oakland Raiders, who would go on to win the Super Bowl.