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R.I.P. Bill Walsh

Joined
10 April 2000
Messages
6,126
Location
Silicon Valley
excellent football coach and a darn good human being who will be missed by many.

(edit) following is an article written by a close friend of mine in today's oakland tribune. copyright oakland tribune / whatever organization owns them now, all legal mumbo jumbo applies:
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'Genius' Walsh passes on
Legendary 49ers coach dies of leukemia at 75
By Dave Newhouse, STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 07/31/2007 04:30:33 AM PDT

Bill Walsh, who lifted the San Francisco 49ers to greatness and his stagnant coaching career into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, died Monday morning at his Woodside home from the effects of leukemia. He was 75.

"He was the finest coach who ever coached football," said Bill Ring, who played and coached for Walsh. "His ability to game plan, to strategize, he was ahead of the curve."

Walsh didn't become an NFL head coach until he was 47. His opportunity came in 1979 with the futile 49ers, who hadn't won a league championship since their roots in 1946 and had fired three head coaches the previous two seasons.

Three seasons later, the 49ers won the first of three Super Bowls under Walsh, who laid the dynastic groundwork for two more Super Bowl victories in San Francisco through his overlooked brilliant stewardship.

"He was a team builder," said Randy Cross, an offensive lineman on Walsh's three Super Bowl champions. "There's only one person in my lifetime who was like that in building a team, Red Auerbach (of the Boston Celtics)."

Walsh was viewed largely as an offensive mastermind.

"It shouldn't be called the West Coast offense," said Cross. "It should be called the Walsh offense."

Prior to Walsh's influence, offensive football was run-oriented. But Walsh looked at running downs as passing downs, and passing downs as running downs. He basically rewrote the playbook in terms of disproving tendencies.

"Football's a very physical game, blacksmiths pounding the anvil," said Mike Holmgren, the Seattle Seahawks head coach who was a 49ers assistant under Walsh. "Bill approached it differently. He recognized the toughness, but he always said, 'Let's think outside the box.' He saw it as an artist."

Walsh's image was that of a silver-haired man in a white sweater standing on the 49ers sideline, a finger on one cheek, a hand supporting an elbow, talking into a headset, contemplating, always contemplating.

"What's he listening to, Mozart?" columnist Jim Murray wrote.

Walsh was a cerebral figure, hence the term "genius." But his impact on the game, even after a late start, was dynamic in a number of ways, specifically changing the way the NFL thought about the game.

He populated the NFL with head coaches — Holmgren, Dennis Green, George Seifert, Jim Fassel, Sam Wyche, et al. — who trained under him. He won a Super Bowl with four African-American assistants when two NFL teams had none.

"One of the most fitting things you can say about Bill," Cross noted, "and he'd blush if you said it, was that he was completely color-blind. He knew talent."

Walsh initiated the Black Coaches Summer Program at the 49ers training camp, inviting African-American college coaches not only to observe how Walsh ran things, but letting them coach the 49ers as well. Current NFL head coaches Herman Edwards, Lovie Smith and Marvin Lewis went through Walsh's program.

"Marvin Lewis mentions that to me every time I sit down to talk to him — every time," said Cross, now an NFL game analyst.

The NFL adopted Walsh's black coaches summer plan. Though Walsh hasn't coached in the league since 1988, there are reminders of him everywhere.

"If you see coaches with plastic covering their plays on the sideline," Ring said, "Bill was doing that long ago."

"Watch the top teams, and you'll see stuff that Bill brought into the league," Cross added. "There are people still emulating him."

It's difficult to imagine another head coach who influenced the NFL more from an organizational and coaching standpoint other than Vince Lombardi.

"I was the first black executive of the 49ers, and one of the first in the NFL," said R.C. Owens, the Niners' "Alley Oop" receiver of the 1950s who became their training camp director and alumni coordinator under Walsh.

"Bill was a contemporary," said Owens, "very honest, straightforward, concerned. But he was concerned about blacks and whites. It wasn't 'you' or 'them.'

"One summer, I had a family problem and needed to leave training camp. Bill told me to take as much time as I needed. When I had my (kidney) transplant, he was there. When I needed a loan to buy a house, I wanted to go to the front office. Bill said, 'I'll give it to you.'

"I was able to pay him back, but he didn't hesitate," Owens said. "I told him, 'I love you, Bill.' He said, 'I love you, too.' That's not the Walsh you think of, but that's his other side."

Walsh's personality exuded kindness, but also arrogance. He occasionally chastised other coaches and also college programs during his two coaching stays at Stanford. He'd then send the accused bottles of wine as peace offerings.

Walsh was highly complex. He could be most gracious after a loss, but on the attack mode after a win, especially against Bay Area sportswriters.

"People don't understand that all the great coaches have another persona," said Cross. "The current example of Bill Walsh is Bill Belichick. They protect their image. The Bill Walsh we think of — the genius, the professor — it was useful, but that wasn't him. When he was building the 49ers in 1979 and 1980, he came to team parties with (wife) Geri."

And when the 49ers arrived for their first Super Bowl in freezing Michigan weather in January 1982, there greeting them at the hotel and offering to carry their bags was Walsh disguised as a bellhop.

"That wasn't unusual," Cross said.

Walsh enjoyed the mirthful side of life, but he knew misery as well. Geri, his wife of 50-plus years, suffered a debilitating stroke that required around-the-clock nursing care at their Woodside home, even before Walsh was fighting leukemia. The couple had three children, and the oldest, Steve, a onetime KGO reporter, died in 2002 at 46.

Bill Walsh's early boyhood was spent in Los Angeles. His father was an auto plant worker, which required the family to move often. Thus Walsh attended three high schools, the last being Hayward High, where he was a quarterback and running back. He then played quarterback at College of San Mateo before transferring to San Jose State.

His athletic dreams then fizzled. He was a backup end on the football team and a reserve on the boxing team. He said those failures motivated him to succeed as a coach. His football coach, Bob Bronzan, recognized Walsh's mental acuity and gave Walsh and Dick Vermeil, both Super Bowl coaches, the highest evaluation marks of any of Bronzan's graduating players at San Jose State.

After two years in the Army, Walsh built a championship team at Washington High in Fremont before becoming an assistant coach at Cal, Stanford and then the Oakland Raiders in 1966.

"You had to hold them back — Walsh, Vermeil, Mike White — they were going 90 miles an hour," said John Ralston, who was Stanford's coach in the early 1960s when all three were his assistants.

"I've always thought of Bill as being a brilliant offensive coach. When Bill was with the Cincinnati Bengals later on, Paul Brown told him to stay home on Mondays, do the offensive game plan, then come in Tuesday and present it to the staff. He was that brilliant.

"But Bill's legacy," Ralston added, "has to be total organization. He just did it all."

In 1967 Walsh took a position he preferred not to discuss later on and, in fact, had it omitted from his coaching biography. That year he became the head coach and general manager of the semi-pro San Jose Apaches.

"It wasn't the tank town team I expected," said Michael Zagaris, the team photographer for the 49ers and Oakland A's who tried out for those Apaches as a split end. "It was like being on the Colts. On the clock. Everyone had something to do. We had uniforms like the Raiders.

"I was there three weeks, then started law school at Santa Clara. Bill seemed like someone who was consumed by what he was doing. I don't want to say he was remote or aloof, but he was in another sphere. This is a guess, but I thought he felt it was beneath him at that time in his life."

The next year, 1968, Walsh began a seven-year relationship with the Bengals, where his reputation for molding quarterbacks took shape. When Brown retired after the 1975 season, Walsh expected to replace him. But Brown picked Bill "Tiger" Johnson as his successor.

Thirty years later, Walsh made his feelings known that he felt Brown "worked against my candidacy" to become an NFL head coach.

"All the way through (the Cincinnati years), I had opportunities and I never knew about them," he said. "And then when I left (Brown), he called whoever he thought was necessary to keep me out of the NFL."

Walsh moved onto the San Diego Chargers in 1976, where he developed Dan Fouts into a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback. The head-coaching job at Stanford opened up in 1977, and Walsh got the position.

That's when Walsh melded his coaching and organizational skills for everyone to observe, leading Stanford to 9-3 and 8-4 records and victories in the Sun Bowl (LSU) and Bluebonnet Bowl (Georgia).

Meanwhile, the 49ers had become an NFL doormats under Joe Thomas, who created chaos as its general manager, changing coaches three times (Ken Meyer, Pete McCulley, Fred O'Connor) before owner Eddie DeBartolo looked to the Stanford campus for salvation.

Walsh had his NFL opportunity. But a 2-14 record in'79 and a 6-10 record in'80 had Walsh and the 49er Faithful wondering about his coaching ability. One year later, the 49ers were Super Bowl champions. And after the'80s ended, they were anointed as the NFL's "Team of the Decade."

"I think of Bill as more of a mentor," Ring said. "He was the finest coach, but he influenced literally thousands of people."

Not only as a coach of champions, but as an architect of a dynasty.

"I think of Bill as creative," said Tom Holmoe, the former Cal head coach and current BYU athletic director who was a defensive back under Walsh. "I've never seen people who look at things the same way as Bill.

"People called him a genius, and some of it was sarcastic. But the more I get away from him, the more I believe it. The detail of what he does, the vision of what he sees, I've just never seen it anywhere else."

Though Walsh was thought of as cerebral, he was, deep down, the fighter he had been at San Jose State.

"He was part MacArthur, part Bobo Olson," said Zagaris. "When the (49ers) team stretched before practice, Bill would go around shadow-boxing."

Holmoe said: "He was as competitive a person as I've ever seen. I was conservative when I came to the 49ers. He taught me how to fight in football, and for all of us to work hard for something, to lay it on the line.

"Bill was the brains, but people thought he was a cutthroat. He had a big heart, but he was afraid to show it. He touched the lives of many people, helped a ton of people. He was always looking out for the underdog."

Walsh's classic underdog was a third-string 49er tight end named Eason Ramson, whose drug addiction spun his life into poverty and prison. Walsh never gave up on him.

"When I was in prison, my mother passed," said Ransom. "My sister called Bill and said, 'I know you're Eason's coach.' And Bill said, 'No, I'm more than a coach. I'm a friend.' He offered financial help and other help. He wrote me in prison, and then came to visit me in prison."

Ransom envisioned a long imprisonment when Walsh intervened.

"I was facing 'three strikes' when Bill wrote to the judge and said I was worth saving," he said.

Ransom got out of prison, cleaned up his life, and now helps troubled youth turn around their own lives.

"Bill donated money to this cause, volunteered his services," Ransom said. "He was just a coach; he didn't have to do anything. Jerry Rice was to be an emcee for one of my fundraisers, but it fell through. I was panicky and called Bill. He said, 'We're a team.' He showed up with Ronnie Lott."

Walsh was as clever in the draft room as he was at the chalkboard. His 49er drafts are legendary as well, the seeds of a dynasty. Joe Montana was a third-round pick, Dwight Clark a 10th-round selection. And Walsh knew talent. Dwight Hicks was a free agent. Walsh traded for Fred Dean and Jack "Hacksaw" Reynolds. Most everything Walsh touched turned into Super Bowls.

He resigned as 49ers coach after the third Super Bowl, and the second win over the Brown-run Bengals, in 1988. His impact on the team would carry over to Super Bowl wins in'89 and'94 under his successor, George Seifert.

Walsh then became an NFL analyst for NBC, but didn't have similar success in the broadcast booth. In 1992, he began a second head-coaching stint at Stanford, his "bliss." Holmoe and Ring joined him as assistants.

"If everyone in business prepared for a meeting like he did, you'd be well-prepared," said Ring. "He'd tell us we only have 10-minute blocks to teach something, and he'd have us write out in detail how we'd teach it."

Stanford defeated Joe Paterno and Penn State in the Blockbuster Bowl in Walsh's first season back on The Farm. But after a 10-3 beginning, the Cardinal slipped to 4-7 and 3-7-1 and Walsh stepped down. Tyrone Willingham replaced him and started off 7-4-1 and 7-5 with Walsh's recruits.

Walsh returned to the 49ers as vice-president and general manager in 1999 and stayed through 2001, producing one playoff team. He remained with the team for three more years as a special consultant.

He returned to Stanford a third time in 2004, this time as a special assistant to athletic director Ted Leland. When Leland left in'05 to take a position at the University of the Pacific, Walsh was named interim athletic director and oversaw the early stages of Stanford Stadium's renovation before Bob Bowlsby was hired as the permanent athletic director.

In late 2006, Walsh was diagnosed with leukemia. As he began chemotherapy treatments, those he influenced in their football careers took stock of their relationship with their mentor.

"He was the most influential person in my football career," said Holmgren. "He gave me a chance to coach in the NFL five years after being a high school coach. When I was his quarterback coach, I used to get mad at him. He was a perfectionist, a taskmaster, very demanding. But you know, 20 years later, it's exactly what I do."

Holmgren would coach Super Bowl teams in Green Bay and Seattle.

"A few years ago, they were thinking of getting rid of me (in Seattle)," he said. "Bill came out and defended me, and I didn't ask him."

"Everybody gets cut in football," said Holmoe, "and those Bill cut got mad at him. He was extremely emotional, and had sensitive feelings for his players and coaches, but he was afraid to show it. But over the last 20 years, they've all reconciled, and Bill loves having reunions with his players."

Zagaris said: "Bill wasn't the typical coach who'd sit around coaches meetings and spit (chewing tobacco) into a cup. He was a complicated man, multifaceted, a historian, and brilliant not just about football, but about people. He was a great judge of people.

"As a coach, he kept people at an arm's length. When he came back to the 49ers (in an administrative role), he was more human. I told him on the phone not long ago that I loved him."

The love for Bill Walsh extends beyond the 49ers, beyond Stanford. It encompasses the entire Bay Area, and the entire world of football. If it's not altogether love, then its immense respect.

As leukemia worked its way into his body, and before he made his illness public, Walsh was asked what he'd like written on his tombstone. He paused for 10 seconds with that faraway, contemplative Mozartlike look.

"He lived a full life," he said finally. "He loved others, and others loved him."
 
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Yeah I just read that so R.I.P to him.....my condolences.
 
I hated the 49'rs when Walsh was in charge because they always found a way to kick the RAMS butt. :tongue: :biggrin:

But I give the guy props for making them the team of the 80's. Condolences to his family. RIP :frown:

And no I am no longer a RAMS fan since they left for St Louis. :mad: I cheer for the hometown I live in, but since Los Angeles has no team, I have been a football rogue and cheer for the team with the prettier uniform. :tongue: :biggrin:
 
Sports fans have lost a truly good man.
It seems like there are fewer and fewer of them around anymore.
I was shocked and saddened when hearing the news today.:frown:
 
A great coach who has/will continue to significantly influence the NFL. May his soul rest in peace.
 
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