The "Bill" feud

[bideau]

Great stuff in Wednesday's Herald from Felger:

Grudge match runs deep: Tuna, Belichick still feel sting

Here's some highlights:

To Belichick, Parcells became a pain-in-the-butt boss to work for, and when Parcells wouldn't repay decades of loyal service by letting Belichick freely pursue a better career opportunity with the Pats, the die was cast. To Parcells, Belichick was the man who turned his back on 21 years of professional friendship and humiliated Parcells on the most public stage imaginable.

``He has no use for Bill Belichick,'' a close friend of Parcells said this week. ``(Parcells) is an old-fashioned guy, and he felt betrayed. So that does it for him. He was disappointed because he felt paternal to him. He felt Bill embarrassed him in front of an organization that was in transition.''

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Meanwhile, those close to Belichick were well aware that he had grown tired of working under Parcells during their years with the Jets. Parcells has a habit of treating his coaching staff as he does his players, and after two decades, Belichick had simply had enough of it. The two began working together with the Giants in 1979. Belichick determined he couldn't make it another year.

``It's like an abusive relationship in a marriage,'' a close ally of Belichick said. ``After a while you get frayed.''

But as much as Belichick had chaffed under Parcells, the clincher was how his boss handled their contract dispute.

The most valuable commodity among NFL coaches is having complete autonomy over a football department - and the financial benefits reflect it. Belichick believed if he stayed with the Jets, he wouldn't have that authority. For one, no one knew what Johnson had in mind for his new team. For another, Parcells had dropped hints he would retain power in his front-office role (which ended up being the case in 2000, with Parcells serving as Jets director of football operations and Al Groh serving as head coach).

Belichick knew he had autonomy waiting for him in New England, largely because the day after the 1999 season, Robert Kraft sent the Jets a fax requesting permission to interview Belichick for head coach and general manager openings.

The request was denied by Parcells.

Simply put, Belichick felt Parcells tried to deny him a better job and a better life. In the NFL coaching world, that's a simple seed of resentment.

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``Bill (Parcells) doesn't hate him. I mean, you don't hate your children who go astray, do you? But he was bitterly disappointed.''

Ditto Belichick, who felt Parcells showed a distinct lack of class by letting his loyalists in the media and other football circles besmirch Belichick's character after the breakup.

It's nearly four years later, and those issues remain. And that begs the obvious question: Does this game constitute a grudge match?

``Are you (expletive) kidding me? Hell, yes,'' said the Parcells source. ``Of the highest order. Not that Parcells is going to say anything publicly, of course. But I know he has his three or four lieutenants in that (Dallas) locker room who he'll get the word to. They'll know what's going on. Now, would he rather win his division and win some playoff games? Of course.

``But just understand what it means to him. It's way more important to him than beating Drew Bledsoe, who he kind of likes by the way. And it's also more than Bill Belichick to him. It's Boston. It's New York. It's huge for him. Huge.''

Added Kessler: ``I'm sure each would like to beat each other - I'm quite certain of that. Both are fiercely competitive people. That was obvious just sitting in the same room with them.''

[Undertaker #59]

Interesting article from Felger.....I wonder how reliable his "sources" are?

[pookie]

Originally posted by bideau
To Parcells, Belichick was the man who turned his back on 21 years of professional friendship and humiliated Parcells on the most public stage imaginable. [/b]

Big Bill wouldn't know anything about turning his back or humiliating people, now would he? What a creep.

Parcells has always demanded blind loyalty but he has betrayed loyalties his whole life. The man is the embodiment of hypocrisy and I have ZERO respect for his ethics or for him as a human being. The man can coach but that is a minor footnote in my opinion. Coaches have the responsibility to shape character, beliefs and values and we must hold them to a higher standard than simply getting the job done. To me the issue trancends his history with the Pats, as I have long since moved beyond Bill Parcells the coach. Regardless of the outcome of this one game, Belichick has proven throughout his career that he is the better, bigger man.

[ramblings]

It's the Grudge Bowl 2003 with Parcells as head coach for the 1st time since Belichick resigned from the Jets.

Cowboys games played:

Losses: Atlanta and Tampa Bay
Wins: Giants, Jets, Cardinals, Eagles, Lions, Redskins, Bills

Sun., Sept. 7, ATLANTA - L 27-13
Mon., Sept. 15, at New York Giants W 35-32
Sun., Sept. 28, at New York Jets - W 17-6
Sun., Oct. 5, ARIZONA W 24-7
Sun., Oct. 12, PHILADELPHIA EAGLES - W 23-21
Sun., Oct. 19, at Detroit Lions - W 38-7
Sun., Oct. 26, at Tampa Bay - L 16-0
Sun., Nov. 2, WASHINGTON REDSKINS - W 21-14
Sun., Nov. 9, BUFFALO BILLS - W 10-6

[Joe Cowboy Fan]

It is still a football game. Throw the ball, catch the ball, knock Drew down a lot. If Bill or Bill did that I might believe a grudge. But I don't expect it will mean anything game time.

[Hawg73]

Originally posted by bideau
Belichick knew he had autonomy waiting for him in New England, largely because the day after the 1999 season, Robert Kraft sent the Jets a fax requesting permission to interview Belichick for head coach and general manager openings.

The request was denied by Parcells.

Simply put, Belichick felt Parcells tried to deny him a better job and a better life. In the NFL coaching world, that's a simple seed of resentment.

This is, to me, the key piece of the entire controversy. After 20 odd years of service to King Tuna, Belichick was denied a chance for a clear career promotion and that is simply not done in sports.

If Parcells wanted his services he could have retained them, but still couldn't help himself from wanting to shop for the groceries.

Bottom line is Parcells wants things the way he wants them when he wants them and defines the term control freak.

Nobody has received a more raw deal from the media over the last decade than BB and it is only through his undeniable success in the past three years that he has recieved anything approacing his just due from them and I relish it every time a writer in this town or others is forced to recognize the truth.

Bill Belichick is one hell of a football coach and a decent human being and the rest is just birdseed.

[bideau]

Originally posted by FallingAlice
Abusive people generally require blind loyalty. They have to or no one would continue an association. And, by nature, they don't understand people who aren't willing to be abused. Instead, they villify.

The phoney promotion to try to help cook Bellichik's chances in New England were transparent.

Bellichik took a step up as a human being and a coach by saying good-bye.

Good point Alice.

When Kraft asked permission to speak to Belichick, Parcells was still the head coach. Parcells could not stop BB from pursuing the Pats job because NFL rules wouldn't allow him to. His only chance of stopping it was to resign and let BB's contract clause (to take over as HC) kick in.

I see two reason for Parcells to do this. First, was to maintain control over BB in the form of the abusive relationship that's already been described. Second, Parcells, better than anyone else, understood how great a coach BB could be. He couldn't allow him to go to a division rival. Is there any doubt that if BB had stayed with the Jets, Parcells would have been a constant source of meddling?

If BB wanted to reach his career goals, it had to be away from Parcells. Parcells duplicitous maneuverings left BB with no choice but to divorce himself from Parcells.

[Bill Parcells™]

4 words:
Bellycheck is a .

CASE CLOSED™

[Steve1]

time for a termination

[Ballbustah]

Originally posted by Bill Parcells™
4 words:
Bellycheck is a .

CASE CLOSED™

Bill Parcells™ has manboobs.

Originally posted by Bill Parcells™
4 words:

Bellycheck doesn't need to wear a BRO™

Bill, Bill, Bill, ™

And here we were getting ready to grant you the Planet's most-favored-troll status, give you the keys to the city, and a brand new Kia Sephia™. You were this close. You were in! Ah, what might have been....

[Hawg73]

Along the same lines as the Felger article that Bideau posted earlier in this thread is this recent one from SI's Don Banks. Pretty interesting stuff.


Link:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...owl/index.html


Ratchet back all the hype surrounding this week's much ballyhooed Bill Bowl in New England, and there's really only one question that intrigues me about these two highly successful and hard-to-crack head coaches: What do Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick mean to each other today?

Beneath their gruff exteriors, are they still close, or merely respectful of one another? Is there bitterness around the edges of their relationship, or do they revel in their history of shared successes and controversies (see departure from New England, 1997)? Is it still, after all these years, a mentor-protégé relationship, or does anyone ever truly attain peer status with Parcells?

This much we know: They'd both rather stick large, pointed objects through their eardrums than expose their real feelings about each other or what this game means to them. So the best we could do was talk to people who know both men and try to get around the edges, painting in broad strokes the background of this unexpectedly significant Bill-on-Bill matchup.

For starters, the unspoken truth is that this game is no small potatoes for either Parcells or Belichick, two of the most competitive animals in the hyper-competitive world of the NFL. They've seen it coming for a long time and rest assured that neither wants to cross the field sometime late Sunday night and shake a very familiar hand in the position of the vanquished.

Clearly Belichick, by nature, is more uncomfortable with the hype factor this week. He can't bring himself to ever frame a game in terms of him against another coach. He keeps repeating that it's about the Patriots and the Cowboys, both of whom are 7-2, and that coaching resumes have little to do with it. But he has his pride, too, and wants very much to strike another blow against the perception that Parcells created him years ago from little more than a handful of mud and an extra rib.

Parcells, boasting one of the larger egos in the Western Hemisphere, is more accustomed to the personal showdown buildup -- and he's never shy about inserting himself into the equation. He's had a whole schedule of reunion games this season, but observers close to the situation say this one means as much as any of them (if not more), including even his triumphant Monday night return to Meadowlands against the Giants in Week 2.

Ever the control freak and a master of psychological manipulation, Parcells has no interest in giving his former assistant coach the mental upper hand at this late stage in his career. Maybe that's why, despite refusing to delve this week into the details of his and Belichick's past, he still saw fit to remind everyone how New England's head coach got his big break.

"When I first went to the Giants, I was the defensive coordinator and Bill was the special teams coach,'' Parcells said innocently enough. "But I could see that he could help us out on defense, so we asked [head coach] Ray [Perkins] if I could start using him a little on defense to help us. That is really how Bill got started. I saw his potential and that is why I made him the coordinator when I got to be the head coach [in 1983]. The rest is history.''

People who have been around both men say there is one foolproof way to get Parcells' goat, and that's to bring up the fact that without Belichick as his defensive coordinator he has rarely -- until this season -- had much coaching success. Parcells bristles at the notion, one reason an upset win Sunday night would no doubt be doubly sweet.

Belichick, on the other hand, has some residual animosity as well stemming from the relationship, which included stints under Parcells with three different teams, the Giants, Patriots and Jets. Suffice to say that Belichick didn't appreciate how things went down at the end of their Jets' tenure, with Parcells walking away from coaching for another one of his "retirements'' in early 2000, leaving Belichick to play the bad guy when he quit after one day as Parcells' replacement.

To that you can add Belichick's lingering frustration that he's tied so much to Parcells' past it's hard to tell where Parcells' legacy stops and Belichick's reputation starts. Even after he took Cleveland to the playoffs in 1994, proving himself as a head coach in his own right, Belichick was treated as something less than a peer when he rejoined Parcells as defensive coordinator in New England in 1996.

Said one observer: "Parcells beats people down, and he just expects guys to take it. And that wasn't easy for Belichick to handle by that point.''

Said another: "When they got back together in New England and with the Jets, it was not out of the realm of the Parcells way to bring up how it had gone for Belichick in Cleveland from time to time. Every once in a while, he'd say something like, 'Boy, you really screwed up the Browns situation,' and make Belichick feel like a guy who had blown his big chance. That's why you won't hear Bill Belichick say a lot of great things about Bill Parcells these days.''

What you will hear is this: Respectful, if tepid praise for his former mentor, but a furthering distance between two men who were once very close. And that's even with Parcells' son-in-law, Scott Pioli, working closely with Belichick as New England's vice president-player personnel (talk about a guy who has to do a delicate dance).

"We have a professional relationship,'' Belichick said tellingly of Parcells this week. "We had a lot of success together. I am proud of our record. We are playing each other. We haven't coached together in four years.''

Three things jump out at you in those comments: There's no personal relationship any more. Belichick considers himself an equal part of Parcells' past success, using "we'' and "our'' to describe it. And their time apart -- from 2000 on -- has served to create drift among old friends.

The truth is, though neither may care to ever admit it, both Parcells and Belichick benefited greatly from their long working relationship. No matter how you assess it, neither would have had the same level of success without each other. Parcells gave Belichick his opportunity to be a coordinator and to mature as a coach; in return the Parcells legend grew substantially from Belichick producing some of the finest defensive coaching in recent NFL history.

For the longest time, their success was interdependent on one another. It's only now that they've become independent of one another that we can start to judge them in their own right.

That's what this Sunday night is about. And that's what makes the Bill Bowl worth watching. Hype and all.


Don Banks covers pro football for SI.com.

[Peg]

Originally posted by NoRespect
Parcells has always demanded blind loyalty but he has betrayed loyalties his whole life. The man is the embodiment of hypocrisy and I have ZERO respect for his ethics or for him as a human being. The man can coach but that is a minor footnote in my opinion. Coaches have the responsibility to shape character, beliefs and values and we must hold them to a higher standard than simply getting the job done. To me the issue trancends his history with the Pats, as I have long since moved beyond Bill Parcells the coach. Regardless of the outcome of this one game, Belichick has proven throughout his career that he is the better, bigger man.

Right on, NR!!!... I agree whole-heartedly on your view point here...
May the best coach/TEAM win tonight!...
BTW--Brian--thanks for posting this article, as it was some of the most enlightening information that I have ever read on the enigmatic relationship between the two Bills... It is something that I have always been curious about and this shed a lot of light on the subject...

[Peg]

Originally posted by Hawg73
Along the same lines as the Felger article that Bideau posted earlier in this thread is this recent one from SI's Don Banks. Pretty interesting stuff.

Ratchet back all the hype surrounding this week's much ballyhooed Bill Bowl in New England, and there's really only one question that intrigues me about these two highly successful and hard-to-crack head coaches: What do Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick mean to each other today?...
...For starters, the unspoken truth is that this game is no small potatoes for either Parcells or Belichick, two of the most competitive animals in the hyper-competitive world of the NFL. They've seen it coming for a long time and rest assured that neither wants to cross the field sometime late Sunday night and shake a very familiar hand in the position of the vanquished.
...People who have been around both men say there is one foolproof way to get Parcells' goat, and that's to bring up the fact that without Belichick as his defensive coordinator he has rarely -- until this season -- had much coaching success. Parcells bristles at the notion, one reason an upset win Sunday night would no doubt be doubly sweet.
...For the longest time, their success was interdependent on one another. It's only now that they've become independent of one another that we can start to judge them in their own right.
...That's what this Sunday night is about. And that's what makes the Bill Bowl worth watching. Hype and all.

Another very interesting article on the subject, Hawg... Thanks for sharing this with us...
P.S.--Because I hadn't clicked on the link, I wasn't sure if what I was reading in your post, was the article or your take on it... You have a similar writing style, so it was hard to tell, until I saw the props that you gave the writer at the end... (BTW, this is meant as a compliment to your writing...)