Request Line: He Was Who We Thought He Was

Denny Green died this morning due to cardiac arrest.  While most folks remember him for his spectacular tirade after his Cardinals blew a 20 point lead against the Bears in 2006, he should be better remembered for his tenure as coach of the Minnesota Vikings from 1992 to 2001.  In his ten seasons as head coach he accumulated a record of 97-62, led the Vikings to the playoffs eight times, and only delivered a single season with a losing record.  He led the greatest offensive team in his era (and arguably in NFL history) to a 15-1 record in 1998 and came just one heartbreaking field goal away from taking them to the Super Bowl.

You won’t find a much better example of a man pulling himself up by the bootstraps than Denny Green.  Born and raised in Pennsylvania, he lost both his parents by the age of 13, but still managed to graduate cum laude from the University of Iowa before finding his way into coaching and under the umbrella of Bill Walsh at Stanford.  He was only the second African-American to be named head coach in NFL history when the Vikings hired him in 1992.  After being brought on by the Arizona Cardinals in 2004, he wasn’t able to duplicate his initial NFL success, but he still finished his coaching career with a 113-94 record.

In Dennis Green’s honor, I thought we could use today’s Request Line to pay tribute to the man and put together a playlist to send him on his way.  Although Denny Green wasn’t Irish, his name certainly sounds Irish, and nobody does funerals like the Irish.  And nobody’s music is more appropriate for an Irish funeral than that of the Pogues.  So I’ll let them get us started.