Sid Gillman. Josh Katzowitz
and then by his coaching in the game—was reminded of the day 21 years earlier when, he, as Boston College captain, had been decimated by Holy Cross 55–12. After this latest embarrassment, there was nothing for Holovak to do but smile, shrug his shoulders and say, “We just got the hell beat out of us by a real fine football team.”
Nearly 40 years later, Mix thinks back to that day. He remembers the immense thrill he felt by how perfectly the game plan and the execution had come together. He marvels at something he never experienced before or since.
“Everything we did was perfect,” Mix said. “It was unusual. Sometimes some players—two or three or four players—have great games that result in the team victory. But in this instance, it was freakish in that everybody on the team had their greatest game ever up to that point. It was just amazing how we ran up the score.”
It also gave Gillman a pretty good idea.
George Halas had finished watching the Chargers dominant the Patriots 51–10 in the AFL championship game, and soon after the Chargers celebration had begun, he received a phone call. On the other end of the line was a La Jolla, California, businessman named Bob Smith, who introduced himself and said he was a Chargers fan. Smith asked Halas, by then in his 41st season coaching the Chicago Bears and coming off the 1963 NFL title-winning game, if he had seen the game (apparently, in those days, it wasn’t all that difficult to ring up a Hall of Famer and get him on the line).
Indeed, he had, Halas said. And he had been impressed.
Smith then asked how he would like to play the Chargers to determine which team was the best in pro football.
“A fine idea,” Halas said before disconnecting the call. “I’d very much like to play Sid’s team.”
Easy for Halas to say, of course, because it couldn’t ever happen. The AFL and the NFL wouldn’t merge for another three years, and the first Super Bowl—a title game between the best AFL team and the best NFL team—wouldn’t occur until January 1967. Safe and sound at home, Halas could say whatever he wanted about playing Gillman’s squad, as he knew he would never have to back up his statement.
But Gillman really wanted the game. Even though Gillman must have known it was an impossibility, he sent NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle a telegram the day after the victory, asking for Rozelle to schedule an immediate contest between the Bears and the Chargers. Gillman, in essence, wanted a Super Bowl before anybody knew what a Super Bowl was.
In the note, Gillman referenced the recent decision by Pope John XXIII to declare that Jews should not be presented to the world as rejected by God. Gillman, himself a Jew, pointed out to Rozelle, “Pope John was a great man because he recognized the ‘other league.’” Responded Rozelle soon after: “Yes. But it took 2,000 years.”
So, no Halas. No Bears. No worldwide acclaim for the Chargers. Instead, they had to be content with the $2,498.89 extra they received for the win and an AFL championship ring on which Gillman inscribed: “1963 AFL and World Champions.”
Said Gillman: “If anyone wants to dispute that claim, just let them play us.”
So many decades later, there’s only this reality. January 5, 1964 was Gillman’s day, and nothing—not the Patriots’ blitzers, not Lincoln’s immune system, and certainly not Halas—could take away his biggest triumph. The game was the culmination of Gillman and his offensive genius (the 610 yards was the most any of Gillman’s teams ever amassed). He needed this championship. He needed it so bad that he was willing to take a huge risk in making the passing game a secondary thought and temporarily reinventing his team in the process. He would do whatever it took to win, because that’s the kind of coach—and the kind of man—he was.
People think of Gillman as a passing guru—and there’s no question that he was—but the 1963 championship game raises interesting questions. Here was a game where the Chargers killed the Patriots with the run, mostly because the Patriots were expecting the pass.
Many years later, when Gillman was an assistant coach to Dick Vermeil with the Philadelphia Eagles, he used to tell Ron Jaworski during Eagles quarterback meetings, “You’ve got to be able to pass to be able to run. When a coach says he’s got to establish the run first, he’s full of shit.” And while the Eagles’ offensive line coaches went through the base running plays for that week, Gillman would wait until they left the room and exclaim, “I don’t know why we waste all that goddamn time trying to gain three yards.”
But in reality, without the rushing attack of Lincoln and without the man in motion by Lowe, decoying as a receiver, there’s no telling how the AFL championship game would have changed. Maybe the Patriots, who blitzed 47 percent of the time in that game, would have knocked out Tobin Rote. Maybe John Hadl wouldn’t have had the experience to run such a new offense in such a short period of time. Without Gillman’s reinvention, the Chargers wouldn’t have gained 352 yards and scored four touchdowns on those 28 Boston blitzes.
But Gillman had made the changes, and in the process, he had captured his elusive championship.
“I think it meant the world to him,” Lincoln said. “It had to have, because that stuff isn’t guaranteed. For him to make that commitment for all those years and all those things he brought to the table, it meant an awful lot to Sid.”
Gillman took immense pride in that game for the rest of his life. He needed to win on this day, in this game, and his team had performed spectacularly. His only son, Tom Gillman, remembers a magical day and a showcase of what his father was all about.
“That was the game,” Tom Gillman said, “that opened the eyes of other people.”
Fifty-two years after he took his first breath, Gillman, for the only time in his career, stood high atop the world of football and looked down at those who would worship at his feet in the years to come. He was a guru with a championship. And by God, he had earned every bit of it.
two EARLY LIFE
David Gillman lived a long, fruitful life, and he eventually would pass those survivalist genes down to his son, Sid. David was born in 1885 in Austria, and after he immigrated to the United States, he lived in New York, working as a police detective. He was a strong man with a well-built body, and he was just as strong in his principles (for instance, he refused to let his mother, who lived into her 100s, move to America because he was worried about her traveling in her old age). He would eventually pass all those traits down to his son as well.
David Gillman met his wife, Sarah Dickerman, while in the big city. He was an immigrant marrying a native New Yorker, and he eventually swept her away to Minneapolis. By then, David had left law enforcement, dabbled a bit in the grocery store business, and years after he made his way north, he operated movie theaters. As it turns out, love of movies might have been the most important characteristic David bestowed upon Sid.
David was a friendly sort, and he made many friends when he and Sarah moved to the upper Midwest. Up and down the street, David was well known and well liked. He was basically a politician, shaking hands, slapping backs, and making himself a popular figure in the northern part of Minneapolis.
As a detective, he taught himself how people would act and react in certain scenarios. As a grocer, he taught himself how people wanted their lives organized. As a theater owner, he learned how to separate people from their money and then keep him coming back for more. He knew how to make people happy—or at least happy enough so he could keep food on his table—and that, sadly, was not necessarily a gene he passed down to his son. It was a gene Sid, in his later life, could have used.
Sarah hadn’t finished school and couldn’t read or write, so she’d often bribe family members to read the letters sent to her by letting them scarf down poppy seed cookies as payment. When the Gillmans moved to Minnesota, she was the housewife and the caretaker of the family she helped produce.
First, she gave birth to Irving in 1905, and soon after, she bore Leonard, who