GREEN BAY – Tom Coughlin has been this far before, a stop away from the Super Bowl, a step shy of the game’s grandest stage. Twice while with Jacksonville, his Jaguars played in AFC Championship games. They lost once on the road. They lost once at home. The difference in geography matters little when the final score turns out wrong.
“You work awfully hard to get into position to do something special with a season,” Coughlin said early yesterday morning in his Giants Stadium office, 60 hours shy of the NFC Championship showdown between his Giants and the Packers. “You prepare for every possibility, and then you have to hope that preparation is meaningful when you need it most. Like Sunday.”
Those are Coughlin’s words, told in Coughlin’s football voice, but they are rooted in another coach, a basketball coach, a man Coughlin has spoken to but never met, a man who helped alter so much of what Coughlin thought he knew about the business of coaching. And he continues to shape the version we see on the sidelines each Sunday.
It was while he was in Jacksonville that Coughlin first picked up the blue-covered book with the simple title spelled out in yellow lettering: “Wooden.” That caught his eye. The subtitle – “A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court” – caught his attention.
The words inside, to a large degree, changed his life.
“His words are so simple but profound, and you can’t help but be attracted to the way the man thought and to his philosophy,” Coughlin said. “And that’s how I think of him: As a great philosopher. He has very simple explanations for a lot of things.”
Wooden states very clearly in the book he is not Vince Lombardi, he is not Bob Knight. Coughlin had already attained a level of coaching success with many believing he was trying to channel those two patron saints of bluster and belligerence. In truth, Coughlin had already embraced another way. It just took awhile for some to notice.
One man already had.
“Coach Coughlin is a thoughtful man who so clearly cares about doing things the right way,” John Wooden himself said over the telephone not long ago. “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.”
Coughlin can sound like a bashful teenager whenever the 97-year-old refers to him by his courtesy title: Coach Coughlin. That is Wooden, though: Coach as gentleman, coach as scholar, inspiring through quiet words rather than loud oaths.
The remarkable thing that Wooden achieved during his epic career at UCLA – and what has continued in the 33 years since his retirement – is how completely he touched so many of his players, acolytes now who spout Woodenisms involuntarily:
“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”
“Be quick but don’t hurry.”
But the one that struck Coughlin the hardest, and the one that might best explain what has happened at Giants Stadium during this most satisfying of seasons, is this:
“You can make mistakes, but you are not a failure until you blame others for those mistakes. When you blame others you are trying to excuse yourself. When you make excuses you cannot properly evaluate yourself. Without proper evaluation, failure is inevitable.”
“Just think about that,” Tom Coughlin said quietly, reverently.
For Coughlin, heeding the words of the Wizard did more than make him look at football differently, it allowed him a fuller picture of his own life. We rarely get a glimpse of the human Coughlin, the one family and friends insist has a wry sense of humor and a distinctly human touch. Some coaches lose those things altogether. It’s an easy thing to do.
“It’s so difficult in this business, after you strive your whole life to reach a certain place to come to grips with who you are,” he said. “Coach Wooden says if you prepare, and give your effort, you win no matter what the final score says.”
He paused, then chuckled briefly.
“Of course,” Coughlin said, “he also won a lot of important games, too.”
It was seven in the morning. It was time to get to work. Tom Coughlin had another important game of his own to start trying to win.