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Whenever the discussion of great coaches in the NFL is the topic, one of the measuring sticks is always the “coaching tree” of each individual.  For instance, the great Paul Brown’s coaching tree includes Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh and Lou Saban, among others. Coaches who worked under Tom Landry include Mike Ditka and Dan Reeves. Sid Gillman, considered the father of the modern passing game, had an impressive list of people who worked under him, including Noll, Al Davis, Chuck Knox, George Allen and Dick Vermeil. Walsh’s coaching tree included Mike Holmgren, George Siefert, Mike Shanahan and Jon Gruden. I often wondered why the greatest coach of them all, Vince Lombardi, didn’t produce a lot of future coaches. He was known as a great teacher, yet the only Lombardi “disciple” who really had success was Forrest Gregg, an offensive lineman on Vince’s Green Bay teams who coached the Cincinnati Bengals to a Super Bowl. Bart Starr coached the Packers after he retired but didn’t do very well. Lombardi’s successor, Phil Bengston, coached the proud franchise into mediocrity during his short tenure. My theory about this revolves around the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which states that any franchise must give a minority candidate an interview before hiring a head coach. Whether the rule works in helping minority candidates get hired or not is debatable, but the fact is that in Lombardi’s time the rule didn’t exist, and hiring African Americans as head coaches was unthinkable. Looking back at that era, and taking into account the profile of people who have the traits to become head coaches – backup players, players who show leadership on the field,etc. – here is a list of players who may have been the members of Lombardi’s “coaching tree”, had they been given an opportunity:

Emlen Tunnell, a Hall of Fame defensive back who played in the secondary for the New York Giants under the coordination of Tom Landry. He was such a leader in the Giants’ secondary that Lombardi made it a point to acquire him when he took the head coaching job in Green Bay, to help develop the young Packer defensive backfield. He played his last 3 seaasons with the Packers. He was the first black player elected to the Hall of Fame, the first black player to play for the Giants and even served as a scout and a defensive assistant coach with the Giants later in his career. He clearly had the pedigree to be a great head coach in the league.

Elijah Pitts, a backup running back with the Packers in the Lombardi era, actually did get an opportunity to be a head coach, for 3 games in Buffalo when Marv Levy had to take time off after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was a long-time assistant with the Bills, and, former Bills’ running back Thurman Thomas often credited Pitts, his running backs coach, for helping him develop into the player he became. During his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, Thomas said this: ”  Elijah Pitts, you are definitely here with me today. I know Eli, if he were alive today, would definitely be a head coach in the National Football League.”

Willie Wood, a defensive back on Lombardi’s Packers, also served as a head coach, but in the now defunct World Football League and the Canadian Football League. His coaching record with those teams wasn’t impressive, but to counter the argument that makes him not qualified to be an NFL head coach, I submit as evidence Bill Bellichick’s coaching tenure in Cleveland.

Herb Adderley, like Wood, was a defensive back in the Packer secondary. Late in his career Tom Landry acquired him to help in the Dallas secondary with the young players and add some championship experience to a team that was struggling to “win the big one”. The Cowboys, with Adderley anchoring their “Doomsday Defense”, finally won the Super Bowl in 1971. He joined Wood as an assistant in the WFL and also briefly in college at Temple.

If only the opportunities had been there for these men during their coaching primes, I believe they could have built long and impressive legacies.

If you’re a football fan and you’ve never been to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, it’s a pilgrimage you really need to make. Whether you plan to go for the induction ceremony weekend, when there are all kinds of Hall of Fame players and coaches roaming the grounds and lots of parties and great activities going on, or you just stop in any other time of the year, it’s an experience that isn’t forgotten. There are all kinds of inter-active games for fans of all ages, and the NFL Films Theater is not to be missed. The last time I was there one of the Hall’s many friendly workers put on a display of some of their lost treasure items, including some wiring for the heating system from below Lambeau Field that had been turned off the morning of the 1967 NFL Championship game, which then created the conditions that brought on the “Ice Bowl” game, and an elevator sign salvaged from Pittsburgh’s demolished Three Rivers Stadium. The story behind that sign was that Steelers owner Art Rooney was in the elevator headed down to the locker room to console the players for a tough playoff loss to Oakland, just as the “Immaculate Reception” play involving Franco Harris was happening, giving the Steelers an improbable win. I was astonished to hear that the Hall at any given time is really only displaying about 7% of the items they have, and because of that it is a real “living museum”, constantly changing and offering fresh displays. It is most definitely a trip worth taking for any avid sports fan. Here are a few highlights in pictures of a couple of my visits:

My grandson Josh giving his “acceptance speech” at a HOF podium set up inside the building.

My grandsons and I posing with the Lombardi Trophy.

My younger grandson Connor really thought this display of Red Grange was coming out to run over him and wanted to “make the tackle”.

This photo of Y.A. Tittle, battered and bleeding after a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the early 1960s, was voted The Sporting News sports photo of the century, and in my opinion is the greatest sports photograph of all time. It was during the era that Tittle played that I became completely addicted to NFL football. I’m not sure today’s players realize or appreciate it, but it was the players in that golden era of the 1960s who built the game into what it is today. Tittle played in the San Francisco 49ers “All-alphabet” backfield along with J.D. Smith, C.R. Roberts and R.C. Owens in the wild and wooly 1950s, then was traded to the New York Giants, a perennial title contender. I was a Cleveland Browns fan back then, and at that time the Giants were the Browns’ biggest rival, with the two teams regularly fighting for the Eastern Division crown. This means I enjoyed seeing Tittle get beaten and battered every week, but as time passed I grew to have a great appreciation for Tittle the warrior, whose career was a Don Quixote-like quest for an NFL title, which he never achieved. There were no rules protecting the quarterbacks back then – if anything they were bigger targets for large, mean defensive players than any other players on the field. After being traded to New York, Tittle’s career flourished, as he was twice named NFL MVP and led the Giants to 3 consecutive championship games. They lost all three, the first 2 to Vince Lombardi’s emerging dynasty in Green Bay, and the last to George “Papa Bear” Halas’s Chicago Bears in 1963. Tittle took a particularly brutal beating in that game, and retired at age 38 not long after. He is now remembered as a guy who fought hard and played hurt his whole career, and his story is told in his autobiography “Nothing Comes Easy”. Also, his daughter Diane Tittle de Laet wrote a poignant book “Giants and Heroes: A Daughter’s Memories of Y.A. Tittle”  in which she shares her memories of her father’s quest for a title. In my mind Tittle is Exhibit A in the argument that winning Super Bowls should not be the only measuring stick for players to be voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and thankfully he was inducted in 1971.