Hi everyone,
It’s your old pal Beerguy, here once again for our annual tribute to “Big Game Week”©®™, otherwise known ’round these parts as “[DFO] Hate Week”.
As per usual, we are going to tie Hate Week into the Open Threads, combining the Kommentists love of hate with their love of complaining. For example, some orange retard & his trade policies.
This year, in a surprise twist, I have decided to keep the theme the same the whole way through the week. It may not be as hatey as usual, but it will hopefully be interesting.
Inspired by Dok Zymm, we are going to hate on… NFL Coaching Trees and associated bullshit therein.
Now, you might ask, “Hey Beerguy – why are you devoting the whole week to Coaching Trees, when there is so much else that also gets the blood boiling?” And, my response to that would be equally cogent and proposed,
We are doing this because the whole playoff run has been defined by where all these fuckers came from, and who has left an organization to strike out on their own.
And some have struck out multiple times.
Plus, Dok Zymm expressed a particular hatred for a particular coaching tree. So out of respect for her, and our eventual need for her to arrange or perform bypass surgery on most of us, I have chosen to do a deep dive into the topic for the week.
But if will make everyone happy:
FUCK ROGER GOODELL!
Not that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to bid’ness.
(And before we get going, a special shout-out & thanks to my Hate Week Comrade-in-arms Low Commander for the effervescent photoshops that always accompany this event.)
Wikipedia defines a coaching tree as, “similar to a family tree except it shows the relationships of coaches instead of family members.”
And this is why Wikipedia is stupid.
Anyone who has spent any time looking at a coaching tree knows how close they are to actual family trees. If you have the last name of a current or former coach, that makes you more likely to at least be interviewed if not actually hired. Hell, I’m still convinced DeMeco Ryans got hired by the Texans because Bob McNair thought he was getting Rex Ryan’s kid, who is the Lions WR coach.
The resemblance is UNCANNY!
Lineage means something in the NFL. If you served time under a so-called master, or simply have a famous father or grandfather (see above, right), that gives a resume credibility in the eyes of a desperate rich man looking to join the club of Super Bowl winning owners. Because once you’ve become a billionaire there’s nothing left but participation ribbons to collect. Jerry Jones hasn’t won a Super Bowl since the Clinton Administration, but don’t think he never red-assed Dan Snyder about it.
This heady bullshit dates back to the original NFL coaching tree.
If you want to start with the modern NFL coaching trees you have to go deep into the archive. Ladies & gentlemen, I give you…
Jim Lee Howell, who gave us Lombardi & Landry,
and Paul Brown, who (barely) gave us Don Shula, Weeb Ewbank & Bill Walsh.
Jim Lee Howell was a New York (Football) Giants lifer. He played eight years for them between 1937 -1948; the math works out if you add in the three years he spent serving in the Marines during World War II (Drill Sergeant – USA; combat – Pacific theatre). [During his playing years of 1940 & 41, he was also a sitting member of the Arkansas State Legislature, representing his home county of Lonoke.[ After retiring as a player, he eventually became an assistant & then their head coach in 1954. Howell won a championship coaching the Giants in 1956. He also coached in what was then called “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, losing the 1958 NFL Championship game versus the Baltimore Colts, who were coached by one Wilbur Charles “Weeb” Ewbank (someone I’ll get to later). In his seven years as head coach Howell finished 53-27-4, a winning percentage of .663. When he was done coaching the Giants, he was kept on as a Director of Player Personnel until he retired in 1981.
While he was Giants head coach, his most famous proteges were Vince Lombardi & Tom Landry. Both need no introduction, but do need to be mentioned together because without them you don’t have the makings of the 1960s & 70s NFL.
The story was that Howell believed in delegation. He let Lombardi do what he wanted on offence, and did the same for Landry with the defence. Both sides got better because they competed against the other in practice,
with each coach trying to outdo the other. The two squads were in such capable hands that Howell was sometimes accused of stealing a paycheque. It got to the point that he once joked that all he did was “just blow up the footballs and keep order.’’
By all accounts he was a decent man who gave people chances & opportunities. He made Landry a player-coach for two years before he retired, and then gave him full coordinator powers once he stopped playing. He wrote reference letters for Lombardi when he applied for vacant coaching positions, to help Lombardi overcome what he feared would be anti-Italian prejudice. When Lombardi & Landry got their own teams he never stood in their way, even though their departures – Lombardi in 1959, Landry in 1960 – likely contributed to his resignation as Giants head coach after the 1960 season. A selfless act by someone you could actually call a true mentor.
Then there’s this asshole.
Paul Brown was by all accounts a control freak. The stories about his dictatorial control over his teams are legendary. He tried to remove the benches on the sidelines because he wanted the players to stand all game. He introduced intelligence tests to gain insight into how well a player would be able to learn his playbook. He even told players they were not allowed to have sex for the five days before any game.
In terms of a coaching tree, it all depends on how you look at it.
Don Shula played for Paul Brown in 1951 & 52 in Cleveland before being traded to the Colts. He’s not a true member of the Brown tree, because he never worked on the sidelines for him, but he’s listed on some Browns & Bengals fan sites like Maury guests claiming that man is their baby daddy.
In fact, Shula was more of a protege of George Wilson, who gave him his first assistant’s job when Wilson coached the Detroit Lions. Shula was the Defensive Backfield coach, and in those three years worked with the “Fearsome Foursome”. It was this success that got him hired by the Colts as the then-youngest ever NFL head coach at 33 years old. (His hiring was aided, in part, because the owner liked him as a player & some of the guys he played with were still on the team, giving him immediate rapport.) After seven successful seasons with the Colts, he replaced his old mentor George Wilson in Miami in 1970.
Weeb Ewbank was a coach who encountered Brown on a couple of occasions, and managed to never really piss him off until he left. In 1943, Ewbank arrived at the Great Lakes Naval Station in North Chicago, having been the head coach at tOSU prior to his service. Over the final two years of his three-year commission as an assistant coach for the naval football team, Ewbank was under the command of Paul Brown, a lieutenant both literally and figuratively.
After his discharge he coached at Brown and Washington U, before joining Paul Brown in Cleveland in 1949 as an assistant. In 1954, Ewbank moved on and became the head coach of the Baltimore Colts, a move Paul Brown tried to stop and led Brown to accuse him of using the Browns confidential draft info against his old team.
Bill Walsh started his pro coaching career with the Raiders, under Al Davis and with Tom Flores as QB, before joining Paul Brown’s 1968 expansion Bengals and inventing what became known as the “West Coast Offence”. He quit in 1975 after being passed over for head coach when Brown resigned, and found out after he went to Stanford that Brown had shit-talked him to every owner who ever called looking to sign him away, and allegedly called teams after Walsh quit to further keep him out of the league. (Now I understand why he enjoyed winning those two Bowls against them.) But we will talk more about him tomorrow.
None of these men succeeded because of Paul Brown, but are claimed under him due to some questionable lineage & blind choices made by foaming mouth breathers.
Anyway, to sum up:
Jim Lee Howell – Giant for life; beloved but (mostly) unknown; good coaching tree.
Paul Brown – asshole; fathered Mike Brown; tenuous links to famous coaches.
Winner – Jim Lee Howell
Tonight’s sports: all times Eastern
We are in that lean period where all other leagues bow down to the NFL and its media-hogging of the spotlight.
NHL:
- Ottawa Senators at Nashville Predators – 7:30 PM – Amazon Prime Video, NHL Center Ice
- You’ll get to hear the Canadian anthem booed!
NBA:
- Houston Rockets at New York Knicks – 7:30 PM – NBA TV; Sportsnet
- Milwaukee Bucks at Oklahoma City Thunder – 8:00 PM – TSN
- Orlando Magic at Golden State Warriors – 10:00 PM – NBA TV; Sportsnet
NCAA:
- Virginia at Pittsburgh – 7:00 PM – ESPN; TSN2
- Iowa State at Kansas – 9:00 PM – ESPN; TSN2
Wrestling:
- WWE – Monday Night Raw – Netflix – 8:00
- I have to say, the Netflix experience hasn’t been all that game-changing for me. I don’t watch the weekly shows much now, but did enjoy the Rumble on Saturday. That’s where it’ll fit into my watching wheelhouse.
Prime:
- MXC – Season 1
- Prime has the whole first season available on their site. Looking at the choices available, I’m going to piggyback (not a category, sadly) Balls’ AVN Awards post from earlier today & recommend Episode 12 – “Adult Entertainment vs. Home Improvement (AKA Porn vs. Construction)”
That’s it for today. Tune in tomorrow for more coaching trees & stories about what assholes narcissists can be.
