Bum Phillips:
Coach, Cowboy, Christian – Bum Phillips, w/ Gabe Semenza (2010)
In Texas, there are two
legendary professional football coaches.
One is Tom Landry, a favorite of mine, who was a long-time coach of the
Dallas Cowboys (who are NOT a favorite of mine. Boooooo!). The other, and my own personal favorite NFL
coach ever, is Bum Phillips, who coached professionally with the Houston Oilers
and the New Orleans Saints and helped create the phenomenon known worldwide as
the Luv Ya Blue era of Houston sports. A
true Texan original through and through, in word, deed, and spirit, Bum
Phillips brought an energy and mindset to professional football coaching that
went directly against the hard-ass, in-your-face, overly-demanding, workaholic,
military-asshole “ideal” for football coaches.
In all my years as a fanatic of Bum Phillips, both as a coach and as an
awesome human being, I have yet to hear, see, or read of anyone anywhere who
has any type of negative comment about the man, including former opponents! This is a rarity in the world. My lovely wife knows of my deep admiration
for coach Phillips, and surprised me with this book (a signed copy too!). What a great gift for a football loving book
nerd such as myself!
I normally approach
biographies and autobiographies with trepidation, having been burned before by
self-aggrandizing, superfluous, and wildly rote works co-authored with ghost
writers. I was very excited about this book,
however, because the co-writer aiding Mr. Phillips, Gabe Semenza, is someone
who knew Coach Phillips for years. I was
pleasantly surprised to hear Bum Phillips’ voice in my head as I read this
book. Much like Coach Vince Lombardi,
another legend of professional football, Bum Phillips’ voice lives on in my
head, so when I read this book, I distinctly hear it in Coach Phillips Texan
drawl. Because of this, reading this
book was an immense pleasure. I
immediately lost myself in the pages as I heard Bum’s voice inside my head
while I read. Gabe Semenza did a great
job putting this book together, not covering up Coach Phillips’ voice, and
allowing his natural cadence to exist on the page and propel the story of his
life.
The byline of this work
states that Bum Phillips was a coach, a cowboy, and a christian. Besides family itself, these are the three
pillars upon which Coach Phillips built his life. Coaching came natural to Bum Phillips, and he
rose through the ranks of high school, Jr. College, Universities, and
professional teams due to his love of the game itself, his ability to learn and
apply wisdom gained while working for legendary college football coaches, and
his own particular philosophy about how to lead men. This personal belief stemmed from his
experiences as a Marine in the second world war. The verbally abusive drill sergeants taught
Bum that their way was not the correct way to teach and train a grown man. Yelling insults, demeaning a human being,
essentially abusing them until they act as you want, these things seemed
patently ridiculous to Bum Philips, and he swore that, if he ever got the chance
to lead men, he would do it differently.
To paraphrase Coach Phillips, if you have to yell and cuss at someone to
make them learn they will NOT learn.
They will just appease you until you shut up. It was this core value that, through his
professional life, made Bum Phillips stand out and be appreciated by those who
worked for him. He truly cared and loved
about his “kids” as he called them. He
treated each one individually, as a human being, and achieved great things
because of it, not the least of them being that nearly every single human that
ever worked for or was coached by Bum Phillips feel they gained a
father-figure, not just a coach.
One great example of how
Bum fostered a family atmosphere around the Houston Oilers was his policy for
Saturdays. Most NFL games are held on
Sunday, and Saturday is usually treated as a dress-rehearsal of sorts. Bum’s mindset was that, after working hard
Tuesday through Friday, installing the gameplan for the upcoming Sunday, there
was not much that could be changed or added on Saturday without messing
everything up. He treated these men like
men, not like overgrown children.
Respect was given AND earned. On
Saturdays, Bum would tell the team, coaches, and staff to bring in their
significant others and family to the Saturday practices. For those players too young to have families,
he encouraged they bring their pets! The
team would do a quick, pad-less run-through of the gameplan, then the rest of
the day was spent listening to live music (famous country & western stars
would come hang out and jam with the players!), playing dominoes, cards, and
goofing around, and feasting on Texas barbeque or delicious Mexican or Tex-Mex
food that Bum would have catered in. The
footage of these times seems ridiculous in its looseness and carefree
nature. No other team had such
conviviality ingrained into their very essence.
This made the Oilers a family, and the City of Houston immediately
understood it, loved it, and latched onto it as their defining trait. Once Bum Phillips drafted the legendary Earl
Campbell from the University of Texas, everything coalesced into the collective
dream/fantasy we all know as the Luv Ya Blue era in Houston.
Coach Philips takes us
through his life, his efforts to learn more about football, and the endless
job-hopping that is required of a sports coach in Texas. He details his travels as he sought to always
find work in the state of Texas. He was
either a head or an assistant coach at so many places, from West Texas State
(Now UTEP), to high schools in Nacogdoches, all the way to an assistant
coaching position with my alma mater, the University of Houston, where he was
fortunate to coach his own son Wade Phillps, himself eventually becoming a
respected and Super Bowl winning NFL defensive and head coach. He discusses how his work life superseded his
family life, and even though his children seem to understand and to accept who
their father was, it still manages to draw a lot of regret and pain in Coach
Phillips. He understood the conflict
that exists when the passion within you helps you succeed at your chosen
profession to the detriment of your family life, and time spent with the very
people you are working hard to provide for.
In the mid-1980’s, Coach Bum
Phillips retired from coaching and went back to the original love of his life,
ranching and raising cattle. Houston
grew so fast and so big that what used to be a quaint ranch outside the city
limits was quickly encroached by civilization.
Bum and his wife found a beautiful ranch property in South Texas and
that is where he chose to spend the remaining decades of his life, with his
friends, family, and animals. It was
around this time that a fateful phone call from an old Oilers player, Mike
Barber, drew coach Phillips to a greater relationship with his
spirituality. Bum Phillips, along with
many men of his generation, was a good man who sought to only do good in the
world, and who wished no ill on anyone for anything. However, he was not a “religious” man. Coach Phillips lived a christian life, a true
christian life, and did so because he felt it was right, not because of any
religious or dogmatic requirements.
Everything changed when Mike Barber invited him to join him on one of
his prison ministry visits. Mike Barber
had ministered to the incarcerated for a long time, and he knew that hearing
from someone as respected and loved as Coach Bum Phillips could help start the
healing for inmates. Coach Phillips
joined Mike as he visited the maximum security prison in Beeville Texas. It set the course for the remainder of his
life. Until his dying day, Bum Phillips
joined Mike Barber’s ministry and visited countless small and large
correctional facilities.
Coach Phillips truly lived a
life of service. All coaches are
teachers, and the very best coaches become family. Bum Phillips wanted to live life the right
way, and through his example he shaped not only countless high school, college,
and professional athletes, but also the very essence of Houston Texas, a city
much misunderstood by the nation at large.
The City of Houston took on Bum’s persona, and it has never left. This is still a humongous melting pot, and
through good times and bad, the citizens of Houston try to treat each other
like human beings. This state of mind
was reinforced by our beloved sports coaches, all of them more concerned with
fostering family as a way to win than with winning itself, whether it be Bum
Phillips with the legendary Houston Oilers, Rudy Tomjanovich with our beloved
Houston Rockets, or DeMeco Ryans with our latest craze, the Houston
Texans. Bum Phillips did more good in
the world in his 90-something years trodding the Earth than most people can
imagine doing, and his method was human love and honesty. There is no greater tribute to a man than to
say, without any hyperbole, that he was universally loved, admired, and
respected. Sadly, it may seem that there
are not many of those men left in our world, but we are out here, seeking to
help those we can, support those we can, and attempting to foster brotherhood
and community rather than rancor or divisiveness. There are few true saints in our world, and I
am very fortunate to have shared this life with Bum Phillips. We all are.
(This wonderful book can be purchased used and new here: https://www.abebooks.com/9781935909026/Bum-Phillips-Coach-Cowboy-Christian-1935909029/plp )
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