CANTON ? We were standing outside the hotel, waiting for the bus to take us to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the last stop of the journey that took Mickey Corcoran and his Jersey guy prot?g? from Oradell to the shrine of football immortals, when his mind began drifting back to that summer of 1956 when he first laid eyes on Bill Parcells.
The occasion was a summer basketball camp, which Corcoran had organized in an effort to get a head start on his program as the head basketball coach for the new regional River Dell High School from the towns of Oradell and River Edge. ?I had already done my homework,? Corcoran, 92, was saying now. ?I?d asked around to find who were the best athletes in Oradell and River Edge and everyone I talked to said the same thing ? the Parcells kid. So I?m watching him working out on the court, and I could tell immediately they were right. He was just physically better ? he wasn?t that fast but he had great quickness, agility and instincts.
?He was just so much better than everyone else.?
Nevertheless, Corcoran was warned Parcells might be in need of an attitude adjustment. A week or so into the summer basketball camp, he was paid a visit by Parcells? dad, ?Chubby,? a legendary football player at Hackensack High and then Georgetown. Corcoran who himself had played high school basketball at St. Cecilia?s in Englewood ? where his coach was Vince Lombardi ? knew all about Chubby and was both surprised and honored he had taken the time to check in on his son?s new basketball coach.
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?Chubby showed up unexpectedly and took me aside and said: ?Sometimes Duane (Bill?s birth name) needs a boot in the ass. Feel free to take care of business.? At the same time, Bill was checking me out to see what I was doing. It wasn?t until the football season was over and Bill came over to basketball that we started really getting to know each other. I threw him out of the gym two-three times that first year for not controlling his emotions. But he always came back the next day because I knew he?d come back. He was too much of a competitor. ?In a JV game his sophomore year, we?re up 17 points in the second half and he got a (technical). I put him on the bench and now the lead goes from 17 to nine to six and down to none. I was not going to put him back in, though, and we wound up losing by one. If I?d have put him back we probably would?ve won the game but I would?ve lost Parcells.?
As Corcoran recounted the story we were suddenly joined by Parcells himself on the sidewalk. Grinning and embracing Corcoran, Parcells said: ?We?re a long way from Hagler?s (the landmark Oradell bar and restaurant where Parcells hug out as a kid and later held court all through the ?80s and ?90s when he came home to coach the Giants). ?I was telling Billy here about the Park Ridge game . . . ,? Corcoran said.
?Never mind,? Parcells said, interrupting him. ?Your job was to win. It was a good thing you had the principal in your back pocket.?
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In the summers, Parcells played baseball, mostly catching, in every age limit league he could get himself into ? and Corcoran followed him around all over Bergen County, as did major league scouts. After graduating from River Dell, he went to Colgate on a football scholarship, and in the summer of ?59, he was playing baseball in a semi-pro league when a Phillies scout named Ben Marmo offered him a bonus of $50,000. But when he told Chubby, the old man told him he couldn?t take it, that he had to finish college.
?Bill was crushed,? Corcoran said. ?He really wanted to play pro baseball. I have no doubt if they?d had a baseball draft in 1958 when he was graduating from high school, he would not have ever been in pro football ? and we wouldn?t be standing here in front of this building waiting to see him inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.?
Once again, however, it was Corcoran, through his college coaching connections, who got Parcells headed back into football. Furious at his father for not allowing him to sign with the Phillies, Parcells proceeded to quit Colgate after his sophomore year, whereupon Chubby kicked him out of the house in Oradell and told him to get a job.
?Bill shows up at my office at 8:30 one morning in September and says: ?I need your help,? ? Corcoran said. ?He told me he?d committed himself to football and wanted to upgrade to a stronger football program. So I called Hank Foldberg, the head coach at Wichita, who I?d known when he was at West Point, and arranged to get Bill a partial scholarship there.?
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Upon graduation from Wichita, Parcells was selected as a linebacker in the fourth round of the NFL draft by the Detroit Lions. But as he said: ?I realized I wasn?t good enough for the NFL. I was married and I needed to get a job. So I went right into coaching.? His first coaching job was as a defensive assistant at tiny Hastings College in Nebraska. After that first year, he called Corcoran and asked him if he?d look into the assistant coaching vacancy at Army, where the head coach, Tom Cahill, had been his former coach at River Dell. ?I called Cahill and told him of Parcells? interest and at first he was a little skeptical,? Corcoran said. ?He asked me why he should hire Bill and I told him: ?For one reason. He?s one of us!? That fall, Corcoran made regular trips to West Point to watch the Cadets? practice sessions. ?I just watched the way Bill interacted with those kids. All the things I tried to instill in him ? the discipline, the coach/player relationships, it was there. You either have it or you don?t. And he had it from the very beginning.?
Theirs would remain a lifelong bond, mentor and prot?g?. In all his years as one of pro football?s most successful coaches in history ? without a doubt the most successful ?turnaround? coach in history ? Parcells surrounded himself with some of the most astute and respected assistants in the business, coaches such as Bill Belichick, Romeo Crennel, Dan Henning, Sean Payton and Tom Coughlin, but on the plane rides to the Super Bowls, the coach who sat next to him, the coach he used as a sounding board, was the coach who threw him out of the gym at River Dell all those years ago. ?I never knew anyone as superstitious as Bill,? Corcoran was saying as we strolled the room of the Friday night enshrinees? Gold Jacket dinner, where Parcells had arranged for a table for him right in front of the dais. ?We?re flying out to California for the first Super Bowl (XXI) versus Denver (in 1987) and I take out my briefcase to do some paperwork for my job as an evaluator of the Big East officials, and what do I see, right on top, but a little ceramic elephant with its tail up. ?What the hell is this?? I say. ?Where did this come from? I didn?t put this in here. (His wife) Delores must have put this in here.? Bill turns to me and says: ?No. I put it in there. It?s an Italian thing for good luck ? an elephant with its tail up.? ?
He was on the sidelines, right behind Parcells, for both the Giants? victorious Super Bowls under the now Hall of Fame coach, as well as all the other championship games, and now, 57 years after that summer basketball camp in Oradell, Mickey Corcoran, the coach?s coach who?d been there for him through all of it, was here for the final chapter in his prot?g??s career: immortality.
?On the plane flight home from that first Super Bowl,? Corcoran recalled, a tear filling in his eye, ?he told me: ?I?ll never let them forget you.? ?
And in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech Saturday night, Parcells kept his word. Looking down at Corcoran sitting in the front row, he told the crowd: ?I want to tell you about a special guy. He?s here tonight. He?s 92 years old. He?s my high school basketball coach. His name?s Mickey Corcoran. He was everything a 14-year-old guy needed ? coach, teacher, disciplinarian, butt-kicker. He?s been like a second father. He knows the love I have in my heart for him. As I said, he?s 92 and I?ve got to get 10 or 15 more years out of you, buster, so let?s go.?
Corcoran waved, and at that moment they were indeed a long way from Hagler?s.
Bill Parcells isn?t the only Hall of Famer that Mickey Corcoran mentored. He also guided a young Bill Madden, the author of this column, who was inducted into the sportswriters wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010. And like Parcells, whom Corcoran helped get a football scholarship to Wichita State, Madden also got assistance from Corcoran in securing a track scholarship to the University of South Carolina.?
Source: http://feeds.nydailynews.com/~r/nydnrss/sports/~3/gkBj1km5kVU/story01.htm
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