Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [91]
“I think he’ll make a great coach,” Taylor said after he learned of the hiring. “When he want to be, he’s tough. You know when Bill’s in a bad mood that you’d better get in gear.”
Eight years later, Taylor was the last remaining player (Phil Simms was inactive) from the roster Parcells inherited in December 1982. For most head coaches, the presence of Taylor—arguably the finest defensive player in NFL history—would have been enough of a good luck charm; not for Bill Parcells.
He carried a “lucky towel” in his bag. Prior to Super Bowl XXI, New Milford (N.J.) High School head coach Rich Conti sent Parcells a red towel, with a note reading, “Dear coach, this towel has never lost. It won two state championships in New Jersey; you take it to Pasadena with you.”
Parcells’ wife even participated in the superstition. At the urging of Giants fan Dan Paulino, who sat behind the coaches’ wives’ section at home games, Judy Parcells wore the same white Giants hat during the team’s last twelve games of the 1986 season. New York won each game, including Super Bowl XXI. But because the Giants began the next year 0-5, Judy permanently stuffed the hat in a drawer.
After the Super Bowl victory over Denver, Parcells returned the lucky towel to coach Conti, who won the state title again in 1988. Conti mailed it back to Parcells before the NFC Championship Game, and the towel was present for Super Bowl XXV.
The rituals continued even before the team landed in Tampa. For the trip from California, he demanded that United Airlines pilot Augie Stasio fly them. “Augie from the Bronx,” as Parcells called him, had flown the team plane to Pasadena the week of the Super Bowl XXI victory; he also flew the team to San Francisco for the NFC Championship Game.
And, of course, for Super Bowl Sunday, Ottis Anderson was again ordered to wear the same set of practice pants he wore during both playoff victories.
“We had a lot of superstitious guys: myself and Ottis and Lawrence,” said Parcells. “We weren’t tempting fate in those days.”
Those superstitions comforted Parcells while he was standing in the visitors’ locker room at Tampa Stadium during the halftime of Super Bowl XXV. So did the collection of football minds he counseled with.
After he took the Giants head-coaching gig, Parcells pursued continuity within his staff. He retained his former boss, offensive coordinator Ron Erhardt, and promoted the team’s special assignments coach, Romeo Crennel, to special teams coach. Crennel and Parcells previously coached together for three seasons at Texas Tech.
Parcells also promoted the youngest member of the Giants staff. Thirty-year-old Bill Belichick moved from special teams to coaching the linebackers. That 1982 season was Belichick’s fourth with the Giants and his seventh as a full-time coach. And he brought much more experience to the job than the lines on his résumé indicated.
Belichick’s father, Steve Belichick, played fullback for Struthers High School and Western Reserve Academy, both in eastern Ohio. Like his son’s future boss, he too dabbled briefly with a playing career for the Detroit Lions. During the 1941 season, Lions head coach Bill Edwards—the former coach at Western Reserve—promoted Belichick from “towel boy” (more accurately, equipment manager) to play fullback. He scored three touchdowns—including a seventy-seven-yard punt return against Green Bay in the season finale—during his only year as a professional player.
Following service in the navy during World War II, Steve took the head coaching job at Hiram College, then moved on to assistant positions with Vanderbilt and North Carolina.
“He was a lot like Bill in his younger years,” said Don Gleisner, a defensive back and team captain at Vanderbilt. “Steve was the kind of a guy who was loyal to his family,