Sid Gillman. Josh Katzowitz
tell me all the time, “Vermeil, you work too damn hard trying to make four yards. No matter how many hours you study opponent films, there’s only going to be 11 players on the other side of the line of scrimmage. You would be better off getting more sleep.” Sid was smart enough to know when to turn off the projectors and get some rest.
Sid was always looking for or trying to create something for the offense that hadn’t been done. He loved to be the first coach to do something new, something creative. If he got a good idea from someone else, with very little effort he would improve on it, install it in one of his packages, and begin teaching it as soon as possible. He never lost his thirst for knowledge. He was continually working on expanding his offensive concepts and packages, even after he retired for the last time.
Sid taught us all: the Bill Walshes, the Don Coryells, and many of the other great coaches of that era and beyond. Sid’s greatness isn’t all based on his wins and losses; no, it is more about his overall contributions to the hows, whys, whens, and wheres of the game. He researched what to teach like a mad scientist, then broke it down and defined what to teach, how to teach it, and when to teach it. From there, he proceeded to coach coaches how to best coach it themselves, how to fit it into their scheme and get it executed at the highest level on game day.
You really had to be there to appreciate Sid. You had to be with him. Sid Gillman touched the entire National Football League, just like Vince Lombardi did with his leadership greatness and his Green Bay Sweep. The concepts, schemes, and techniques are ingrained somewhere within the 32 offenses running in the NFL today, though there are only a handful of us left who can watch a game on Sunday and recognize where that specific concept originally came from. The 18-yard comebacks, the shifting, motion, the multiple formation packages, all either were originated by Sid Gillman or came across his desk for improvement. It all started with Sid!
Like any great scientist, his mind never rested. He was still thinking X’s & O’s the very last time I talked to him on the phone a couple of weeks before he passed away. Thank God he is in a place of honor, in Canton, Ohio’s NFL Hall of Fame, among so many NFL greats whose careers were enhanced by Sid Gillman’s contributions to the game they all loved to play and/or coach.
INTRODUCTION
The stadium rises from the side of Interstate 30 like a spaceship that just happened to crash-land in north Texas. The behemoth cost Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and the citizens of Arlington, Texas, a cool $1.2 billion, the most expensive sports construction of all time, and, in turn, the stadium looks like it was built on a different planet.
This immense structure is a symbol of what the NFL is today. Like everything else in Texas, it’s humongous, and no expense was spared to make the stadium’s patrons as comfortable as possible. At the same time, Jones reaches as deeply as he can into those same fans’ pockets.
The stadium sits off the interstate named for legendary Cowboys coach Tom Landry, but this is not the kind of football stadium he would recognize. Inside, the centerpiece is the video board that hangs like a Boeing 747 over the turf. It’s the biggest TV in the universe, and with its high-definition capability, it’s like watching real life above what is, in fact, a real, live game.
Actually, it’s tough to decide where to look when you’re watching a game at Cowboys Stadium—the field or the video board—because they both look so spectacular. Do you look at the gorgeous sun setting over the Caribbean Sea, or do you focus on those beautiful blue waters that shimmer underneath? Same problem here. The entire viewing experience is almost too eye-popping to comprehend.
Today is Media Day for Super Bowl XLV, and with Jones serving as the maître d’, this event is as big as big can possibly get. That’s the way he’s lived his life and the way he’s built his team. Going bigger than humongous is a way of life in Texas, and it’s a way of life in Jerry World.
Before the game, Jones talked about his desire to set an all-time Super Bowl attendance record (for the record, he would fail), and he sold expensive tickets to those who wanted to stand outside the stadium and watch the game on large HD screens.
Yet, by God, Cowboys Stadium is a magnificent structure, light years away from Super Bowl I, which was played in cavernous—not to mention, old—Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in front of a 60 percent-full crowd and which featured a halftime show with a trumpeter named Al Hirt and two college marching bands. (Super Bowl XLV, by contrast, featured the Black Eyed Peas, tragically one of the most popular bands in the world.)
Five days before the championship game, I stood on the turf at Media Day, the largest TV in the world precariously hanging above my head, and all around me, the worst part of the modern game was on display. The part where the clowns rule the afternoon, where entertainment means more than the game.
On days like this, knowing it’s hardly ever a good idea to bring your laptop to the circus, you can forget about getting any work done.
Put Sid Gillman in a scene like this, and it’d be like putting a football coach on the moon.
During Gillman’s era, mostly during the heyday of the American Football League when a band of upstart owners and players tried to break through the NFL’s monopoly in the 1960s, teams desperately tried to draw attention to themselves. But their ideas weren’t usually insulting to the viewers.
Many aspects of Super Bowl XLV week were exactly that, and though Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers outdueled Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger as Green Bay won its fourth championship, the winner these days is really a secondary issue. For fans—and, let’s face it, the corporate sponsors and bigwigs who fill the stadium to watch two teams they most likely care very little about—it’s all about the experience.
This is the NFL of the 21st century. Money rules all. Sponsors and advertisers are worshiped. The fans pay exorbitant ticket prices, especially if they’re forced to buy on the secondary market. Hell, they pay ridiculous prices just to stand outside. Everybody but the owners gets shortchanged.
The game is different from the time Gillman coached, and most who play the game today wouldn’t recognize Gillman’s contributions.
Since I started this project, one of the most interesting obstacles I’ve run into is the lack of name recognition for Gillman, one of the game’s most important coaches. Most fans of my generation who were born after Gillman’s head coaching days were behind him wouldn’t have ever heard his name. To be honest, I knew nothing about him before I started researching my first book, Bearcats Rising, but the more I read about him and the more I talked to people who played for him, my fascination grew.
Simply put, Gillman was an innovator. On the field, off the field, in preparing for games, in preparing for a season, on social issues, and on rule-bending. He’s the most important person in professional football that hardly anybody remembers.
I’ll give you an example.
During Super Bowl Media Day, I asked 10 offensive players—5 from the Green Bay Packers and 5 from the Pittsburgh Steelers—if they had ever heard of Gillman. I asked offensive linemen and running backs and tight ends and wide receivers. I asked stars and scrubs. Nine of them said no, they’d never heard Gillman’s name.
The one player who said yes is a Packers tight end named Tom Crabtree. He happened to play at one of the colleges where Gillman once coached. I asked him if he knew anything about Gillman, and his eyes lit up. “He coached at Miami Ohio, didn’t he?” Crabtree asked.
Among other places, I responded. You know anything else about him?
“Um, that he won a lot of games?” Crabtree said in less than confident terms.
Yet if I’d asked those players about Gillman’s more famous contemporaries—say, Vince Lombardi or Paul Brown or Woody Hayes or Bill Walsh—a lot more than one of them could have given me a usable answer.
So, I ask: Why has Gillman fallen through the cracks of NFL history? Why do we lose sight of him in the glare of today’s ever-flashy Super Bowls? Gillman was just as innovative as any of the coaches I mentioned above (hell, Gillman helped tutor