Why I root for Coughlin by RetroJint

[MightyGiants]

First published in 2007

I grew up in Syracuse.  I am 51 years old.  Syracuse University sports was a big part of my life.  My Dad was a guy who was hard to know.  He had problems communicating with his two sons because of a fractured childhood that was filled with serious illness and dislocation.  But he could get through to my brother and me with sports.  It was natural then that we all became intense fans.

I grew up in Syracuse.  I am 51 years old.  Syracuse University sports was a big part of my life.  My Dad was a guy who was hard to know.  He had problems communicating with his two sons because of a fractured childhood that was filled with serious illness and dislocation.  But he could get through to my brother and me with sports.  It was natural then that we all became intense fans.

My earliest memories of attending sporting events are from 1963.  The last game that the Nationals played in Syracuse before they moved to Philadelphia and became the 76ers.  Technically, that's not correct.  There was an interim agreement in place that had the Sixers play a couple of regular season games in Syracuse.  That lasted for about 4 years, as I recall.  Yankee Stadium against the Chisox in August.  And then the Giants in the fall.

As far as rooting for the Orange, the sustained memories begin in 1966.  This was the season of the Floyd Little-Larry Csonka tamden at RB and FB, respectively.  That season culminated in a loss to Tennessee in the Gator Bowl on December 31, 1966.  The team's determination to run the football during that era was simply consistent with how the game was being played throughout the country.  Little rushed for 216 yards in the game.  Csonka added another 114.  But still the Orange lost.  They were continually jammed up inside the Vols' ten yardline.  The wingback on that club was #49.  He hailed from Waterloo, N.Y., just west of Syracuse.  He was Tom Coughlin.

Wingback was kind of the pre-historic flanker.  Although it was beginning to be phased out of the lexicon of collegiate football, it was still in use when the great Art Monk played on Piety Hill.  This position required incredible toughness.  Because the fullback frequently carried the football, the wingback's role was primarily as a blocker.  He also caught the occasional pass.

Coughlin played it with exceptional toughness and courage.  As a kid watching him play, I couldn't help but be impressed with him.  He wasn't fast nor big nor strong but he had sure hands and he was willing to drop his headgear into the chest of defenders who outweighed him by 70 pounds.

The coach of Syracuse was the legendary Ben Schwartzwalder. He was the eastern collegiate version of Woody Hayes.  A captain in the army, he had particpated in the invasion of Normandy with the 507th Paratroop Infrantry.  He was awarded a Silver Star for leading his men on a mission to take the LaFiere Bridge after the disastrous consequences of their jump.  Aerial maps had failed to show the extent of the water in the marshes in the drop zone.  Plus the Germans had flooded them.  This harrowing event is well chronicled in the Youman brothers' excellent book on Syracuse's 1959 National Championship team.  Excellent read.  I suggest you do.  Anyway,  many guys drowned in four-feet of water as they got snagged and pulled down by the weight of their equipment.  And most of the radios were lost.  The situation was an absolute nightmare.  From this, Schwartzwalder engineered victory, which is all that you ever need to know both about the man and his abiltities.

As a change up to his brutally effective, straight charging running game, in which the quarterback was also frequently a ball carrier, Coach loved the "scissors" play or "cross buck," which ended up being a hand-off to the wingback.  It was his favorite call.  Properly run, it had the effect of suckering the interior defenders in the 5-2 front, which was the prominent defense of the day. Sometimes the play broke open completely.  I used to watch Coughlin churn through there, kneecaps up, helmet down, offering the would-be tackler nothing soft to hit into.

Little left after 66.  Csonka became the marquee option in 1967. He gained 1127 yards on 261 carries that season.  Coughlin, operating  from half back, chipped in with 256 yards on 42 carries, while setting what was at the time the school record for receptions in a season. He caught 26 for 257, numbers that you would sneeze at today.  But at the time watching the ball being thrown was like viewing the game from another dimension.

That team finished 8-2.  It wasn't selected for a Bowl game.  There weren't many of those around back then.  In fact it would be the best record that a Syracuse team would compile until the 87 team, which went 11-0-1 under Dick MacPherson. We didn't realize it at the time, but the program was beginning a long descent into darkness.

By this time, once venerable Archbold Stadium was falling apart. Literally.  I had a friend who would go on to being a tri-captain on his university's lacrosse program who worked with a construction company on a summer job to prop up Old Archy.  He told me that they found rotting timbers underneath the corner sections of each end zone.  It wasn't out of the range of the possible that large chunks of concrete might have given way during a game, to who knows how much ensuing carnage.  The stadium had opened in 1907. Once considered a pinnacle stadium in the US, it was now crumbling so badly that not even a walk atop the famous arch overlooking Irving Avenue gave much relief.

There was no moral ambiguity with Coach Ben.  Coughlin was a perfect player for him.  Although he played in the sixties, Coughlin was actually from the fifties.  Neither man was consumed by his times.  Schwartzwalder's best years ended with Coughlin.  He had to face the ultimate irony when most of the African-American players on his team in a future season would stage a boycott over the lack of black assistants on his coaching staff.  Ironic in the sense that the school's prestigious football reputation had been built largely by giving African American stars like Jim Brown scholarships in the fifties.  Consider that in the deep south, Alabama's first black player was Wibur Jackson; I think in 1970.

Also Ben had to coach through the tumult centered around the Vietnam protests.  I remember attending a game between Syracuse and Kansas in the early autumn of 1970.  The Jayhawks featured the Riggins brothers.  Junior and his soon-to-be NFL, and ultimately Hall of Fame, bound, brother John.  The game was pretty much a blow out.  Kansas won 31-14.  But what I remember is seeing the oval around the field being ringed by National Guardsman on horseback.  I didn't notice any flare ups inside the stadium.  However when I walked up to the arch, I saw some students engaged in flag burning on Irving.  There were vitriolic speeches being delivered by student leaders by bullhorn.  It must have been difficult for Ben to keep the program together in those days.  Anitquated facilities, black unrest, anti-war demonstrations.  But he was able to at least keep his head above water for awhile.  That season ended with the destruction of the Miami Hurricanes at Archbold, which allowed him to fashion a winning 6-4 season.

Coughlin stayed on as a graduate assistant.  Then he took a job as the head coach at RIT.  He would return to Syracuse as an offensive coordinator for Frank Maloney.  I always kept track of his coaching career.  When Maloney announced that he wasn't returning following the 79 seaon, I signed a petition addressed to the school's athletic director to consider hiring Coughlin as the head coach.  He didn't.  As I recall, Coughlin interviewed, but the job would ultimately go to Dick MacPherson, whose tenure saw a the university's return to national prominence.  Always an anomaly when you consider Syracuse as a football school.  It remains the third-smallest to play Division I football.

For Coughlin it was onto the NFL, first with the Eagles and Packers as an assistant coach, and then joining Parcells and the Giants in 88. He was the receivers coach on the Super Bowl winning 1990 team.  He was regarded as a rising star in the coaching ranks.

That 90 staff was comprised, in part, by Bill Belichick, Romeo Crennel, Al Groh and Charlie Wies, who began his first season in the NFL after leading Franklin Township High School to the 89 state championship.  The point I am trying to make here is that if you have an opening and you decide on Ray Handley, when everybody in the organization was aware for quite sometime that the current guy was seriously entertaining doubts of leaving, then place the blame for what was to follow at the doorstep of the correct person.

Coughin returned to the collegiate ranks, this time as head coach at Boston College, where it only took him two years to breath life into a program that had lapsed into a state of decay under Jack Bicknell, who seemingly lost interest at Chestnut Hill once Doug Flutie graduated.  Coughlin used that job as a stepping-stone to land him where he always wanted to be, which was as a head coach in the NFL, with the start up Jacksonville Jaguars.  He found early success there, in part aided by favorable league rules regarding the formulation of the salary cap for the two expansion franchises.  But unlike Carolina, he chose to play mainly young players.  Ultimately he paid the price for salary-cap manipulations that he and his cap guru engineered. The team's ownership didn't have the deep pockets of Dan Snyder. They were unable to continually restructure contracts the way Washington does.  Coughlin was told that he was going to have to bite the bullet.  Play young guys.  Suffer through the ensuing years of rebuilding.  He did, and ultimately he lost his job.

I mentioned earlier that I think that he's from the fifties.  People will jump on the fact that the description isn't necessarily a good thing, or at least, in the whole not all good, and I recognize that.  But I remembered something that he said after fellow Cuse alumnus, and current Giant player, David Tyree was busted for having a brick of grass in his car, when he was stopped by police authorities.  Coughlin when asked about the situation remarked, "He ruined the family's good name."  Reading this, I was floored.  I hadn't heard somebody speak like that in years.  Certainly not from a guy like Jim Fassel, the previous coach, whom although I greatly admired as a football mind, became increasingly frustrated about because I considered him to be a relativist who told people what they wanted to hear, and wouldn't embrace the tougher and less desirable duties of his job.

Shame still exists in the world of Tom Coughlin.  So does honor and commitment, and a sense that you should be grateful to have the opportunity to play in what he considers to be the greatest professional league in the world.  He can't fathom how it could be otherwise.  And I am sure that the kid from Waterloo, who had followed every directive of the paratrooper Captain when he was playing his college ball, was similarly bewildered when his star player conducted a weekly critique of his coaching style and methods last season.  An ingrate whose best years were played under the same coaching tutelage that he was routinely trashing.  A felow whose fumbles had been becoming the punchline for the various sports networks before the current coach arrived on the scene.

But this is 2007, not 1966.  It hasn't gone as I thought it would.  At least, not yet.  Many Giants fans consider Coughlin to be an anachronism, or at least a coach whose style is more in tune with dealing with college players.  I submit that the only difference between his style and Belichick's are the Super Bowl rings.  Had he won, he'd be getting the same treatment as the anointed Little Bill.

With Coughlin there is no keeping married women on the side.  He's a daily communicant in a faith that he has lived while many of us have sadly faded from the same Truths.  He has the support of a strong, loving family, one of whom plays for him.  He'll need it because he's under siege from hostile elements in the capricious, arbitrary press, who, make no mistake on this, hate him for as much what he is as how he runs his football team.  Remember the mob line? "Nothing personal, just business."  It's all personal with these clowns.  As men, they aren't fit to wipe Coughlin's rear-end.

Ultimately, as my board guru Kat constantly reminds me, all he must do is win.  And I acknowledge that fact.  Nothing I wrote is meant to exculpate Coughlin should the losses mount.  Rather I look at his remaining time with the Giants as sort of a last, best chance for my type of guy to enjoy success.

With the inevitable pendulum swing of policy change, I fully recognize that the next guy will undoubtedly display goo goo qualities that will endear him to the masses.  A people person.  We are in the final days of the Bob Knights, the Tom Coughlins.  When they're gone from the coaching landscape people of a certain age will mourn their absence.  There will always be excellent candidates--true. Especially with the gob that these guys are making now.  It just won't be the same.

Therefore, I hope Tom's run lasts as long as possible.  With great success.  If it doesn't, it doesn't.  The struggle in the good fight is always worth it.  I will remain a fan.

[BlueMoshik]

The great Retro. Where in the hell is he.

[vette5573]

He'll be back someday, just not at this time. This piece is timeless yet it was written at a time when our Coach was on the bubble, just before or around the time of SB XXII.

I hope you all enjoy it!

Thanks to Frank (Somersjoe) for reminding me of this fine article.

[jimv]

OUTSTANDING article!!!!!!  It could've been written yestersday.  Ed, if you're in touch with Retro, give him my congratulations & thanks.

[vette5573]

Why don't you send him a PM Jim, only to thank him for this great article written at a time when it appeared Tom Coughlin was on his last legs and out for the count. Steve was one of the few who truly believed in him.

The Tom Coughlin story is an inspiration to anyone who is at a point in their lives where they need a little something to get them back in their feet.

Now, five years later we look back on his road in retrospect to the point of his crossroads. Only to find that success is a choice we all make battling back with fortitude. Walking that road every day until the rain and clouds give way to the light.

Believe in yourself! Always.

[andrew_nyg]

I miss Retro...and this article is one HUGE reminder as to why. 

He's a good guy, and was always a great contributor...in relation to Coughlin...it takes one to know one. 

[Chris]

Damn. What a great post.

[XNYrnLA]

Great piece ... I really enjoyed reading this.
Values such as integrity, honor, sincerity, toughness, relentless effort and hard work will stand the test of times and I hope those who share these values enjoy watching his success.
I am and have always been proud to have Tom Coughlin as the Giants head coach and am thankful of the owners and management's belief in this man and standing behind him.

[Shoelessjoe]

Thanks Ed for finding the post that we discused on Sunday.  What a great piece of writing.  Perhaps we can get this to the Giants.  I'm sure someone like John Mara would like to read it.

[vette5573]

Thanks Ed for finding the post that we discused on Sunday.  What a great piece of writing.  Perhaps we can get this to the Giants.  I'm sure someone like John Mara would like to read it.

Well actually Rich found it after I brought it up in conversation.