INDIANAPOLIS — He had just guided his boss through the maze of cameras and klieg lights and fans and family members, given him a lift onto a podium, and now Mike Murphy was standing off to the side, grinning a grin you couldn’t remove with a sand blaster, thrilling for the man who’d just boosted the Giants to the top of the football world. Again.
“Sometimes, the good guys win,” Murphy said softly, the ex-Jersey cop and longtime Giants security man shaking his head, nodding at Tom Coughlin, who’d just kissed the sky for the second time in four years. “The world needs more Toms.”
Still, if the world only gets one, it is the Giants’ great good fortune that he works for them. He has been fired more than anyone ever can be without actually being fired. He has survived, he has imbued his team with every ounce of resilience and defiance that defines his career. And yesterday, all of that was in evidence at Lucas Oil Stadium.
COMPLETE GIANTS SUPER BOWL COVERAGE
As confetti fell and fans delighted and victorious Giants danced and vanquished Patriots limped away, Tom Coughlin’s plan blossomed for good and forever in this 21-17 victory in Super Bowl XLVI, the fourth such title in franchise history, the second under Coughlin.
“I asked these players to believe in each other because I believed in them, even when we were 6-6, even when we were 7-7 and fighting for our lives,” Coughlin said. “I asked them to love each other. And they did. And they have. And look at what they’ve done.”
He’s been up and down and over and out, time and again, yet now, after this, after these two improbable championships, there is little question that whenever Coughlin decides he is done — and that will be entirely his decision now, make no mistake — he will take the passing lane to Canton, to the Hall of Fame, to a bronze bust and immortality.
In so many ways, this was the season he came as close as he ever has to channeling his hero, John Wooden, the old UCLA basketball coach. As late as Saturday night, gathering his team for one last meeting, Coughlin preached an old football psalm.
One last time, he told them, “Championships are won by teams who love one another.
“Just like this team does.”
Then Coughlin referenced Wooden’s famed “Pyramid of Success,” one of the guiding principles of his own life as a coach. The Pyramid’s original top level was this: “Competitive Greatness.” But late in his life, Wooden replaced that with a simpler word.
Love.
“Coach Coughlin is a thoughtful man who so clearly cares about doing things the right way,” Wooden himself said of the Giants coach not long before his death in 2010. “His success on the field is a reflection of his principles, and I can think of no greater thing you can say about a coach than that.”
Those principles, transferred from coach to team, were on display all year, and they were brilliantly backlit all across this night.
“All year, Coach has been nothing but positive,” Eli Manning would say. “And if he believes in us, you know we are going to believe in each other.”
And Coughlin’s players proved it. They didn’t play a perfect game, but damned if they didn’t devour the game when it was theirs to take. Damned if they weren’t good enough to be champions, again. Good enough to be remembered forever.
They got there through their hearts, and driven there by a great coach. A forever coach.
Sometimes the good guys win.