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Bill vs. Bill

There have been at least three stories in the press this year, the latest coming yesterday from the Dallas AP, recording meetings and/or dialogue between noted football coaches but not exactly buddies Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick.

These exchanges of information and possibly even homely human interaction should come as no surprise, but they wouldn't be in the paper if they weren't supposed to be a surprise. Parcells and Belichick aren't buddies. Neither is a hail-fellow-well-met, to put it mildly. Since Belichick was once Parcells' assistant and is now his peer, and has one more Super Bowl to his credit to boot, there's a jump to assume their relationship is built on professional enmity and jealousy.

It is, a little bit, but mostly not. The Parcells-Belichick relationship is really a novelist's fodder, not a sportswriter's. It covers over two decades of interaction between two gifted, demanding, and at times difficult men. It's easy to see the points of friction on the surface. What matters is the bond no friction can erase.

Belichick was Parcells' chief henchman for many years. Galley slave would be a better job. Belichick returned to that position after failing as a head coach in Cleveland, and Parcells treated him like galley slave in charge of cleaning the heads. Now the shoe's on the other foot. Belichick has surpassed his former boss' accomplishments, and will likely keep on doing so this season. Parcells' best player is Terrell Owens. Belichick's is Tom Brady. It's not difficult to guess which coach sleeps easier o' nights.

In the course of duty, yours truly has attempted to get each Bill on the record about his feelings towards the other. It wasn't the most pleasant of chores. Each man intensely disliked the subject, but upon prodding, oddly enough, both Belichick and Parcells, as different as they are, used the exact same words to summarize their personal history.

"We won a lot of games together."

If only cold type could convey how FINAL both coaches made that declaration sound. It was a line in the sand, and outsiders would either get it or they wouldn't, the more fools they.

Victory is the bedrock tie that'll bind these two guys together no matter how they regard the other. It's beyond like, dislike, love, hate, or any other emotion. Winning is the point of each man's career. Shared victory is eternal. The other baggage of the Parcells-Belichick relationship is just part of the crap that every coach endures in the pursuit of even more victories.

For normal people, the saying is, "you can choose your friends, but not your relatives." In the NFL, it's "you can choose your friends, but not who stands next to you in the Super Bowl team photo."

posted by Michael Gee @ 2:54 PM