NFL

Serby’s Sunday Q & A with … Mike Westhoff


The Post’s Steve Serby chatted with the Jets’ 62-year-old special teams coordinator and cancer survivor.

Q: What was it like when they first told you (1988) that you had bone cancer in your left leg?

A: Like everyone else, “Why me?” Why? I’m not a smoker, I don’t drink very much, I have a normal lifestyle — how did this happen to me? But then, I’m pretty much a realist and I always felt, ‘OK, I gotta find a way to keep going.’ I had a brilliant doctor up in Boston, Mass General, Henry Menken, and he used to encourage me, that no matter what you were going through, no matter what braces I had on or what chemotherapy — I remember driving down the street pulling my hair out of my head and throwing it out the car window — he always reminded me to never quit being myself.

Q: You once left the hospital to walk across the street and get a sandwich?

A: (Chuckles) That was up in Mass General. I had a small lesion in my lung. (The surgeon) removed it. It was such an easy surgery, I felt great. I was in intensive care, actually. I went back to my room and I thought, “I feel really good. This is fine.” And I got dressed and got up and went out and got a pastrami sandwich (chuckles) and came back. Oh, when he found out he was mad!

Q: You almost lost your life during a back surgery.

A: During the back surgery, there was a complication. There was an accident where a major artery was nicked and I began to hemorrhage on the table, and another physician came in. Fortunately for me he was there. He opened up my stomach, took out my entire stomach and intestines and repaired the artery. It was miraculously resolved by this brilliant vascular surgeon.

Q: How much pain over the years have you been in?

A: I don’t think anymore than anyone else, but certainly as much as most (chuckles), I’d have to say.

Q: It never got you down?

A: I think I have a high threshold with it. I’m kind of a fighter, and I’m a swing-first, ask-questions-later person. I just found a way to work through it.

Q: What is it like needing no crutches or canes or braces?

A: It’s just like having my life back.

Q: Why have you never been an NFL head coach?

A: Because of some bullbleep, to be honest with you. Here’s the thing — there’s a basic path that it goes. And to be honest with ya, I think you guys (media) have more about directing that path than anything else. You see in the paper, as soon as a couple of jobs (open up), all of a sudden they’re already talking about who the candidates are, and a guy gets hot, they make him a coordinator, they make him a head coach. I didn’t get to follow that path.

Q: Does a part of you feel unfulfilled that you never were a head coach?

A: I actually don’t. I don’t feel that. I don’t look on it and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t get this opportunity.’ I like the way my life has gone professionally. I would have loved to had a chance. But I never, ever look at someone else and say, ‘I coulda done it better than that guy.’ I never do that, because I wasn’t in that situation. So I respect people that have the opportunity. I envy it to a degree, yes. I think I would have done it. But it didn’t happen. That’s OK! And maybe I’m kidding myself, maybe I wouldn’t have been that good at it. But I think I’m a pretty damn good coach.

Q: Don Shula.

A: That’s my man.

Q: Why is that?

A: He’s first and nobody’s second. That’s how I see it. . . . We had Duper and Clayton and Marino — he called the plays from the sidelines with no script. He knew the rules . . . he respected the rules . . . he did things the right way. And he worked hard at the little things. He also was very good at looking at what someone else did, and learning from it. The worst thing that could ever happen from the boss, you’d be sitting there, if he came into your office — I can actually imitate him — “How come we aren’t doing it like that?” Boy, you’d want to have a heart attack if he said that to you. My answer always was, “I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out.”

Q: Your coaching style?

A: I’m probably not for everybody, either.

Q: Why do you say that?

A: ‘Cause I can be pretty tough, and I’m pretty frank. I think I really care about them. I really respect the NFL. I think it’s an absolute privilege to work in this business. So there’s no cheapness about me. There are some coaches, I think, that have that, and they know I can’t stand’ em. I’d beat the (heck) out of ’em just as soon as look at ’em. I really don’t like that.

Q: You don’t like what about them?

A: The cheapness . . . going against the rules — the guys that teach the grabbing and . . . they just violate. I hate that, I just despise it.

Q: Spygate?

A: He (Bill Belichick) didn’t need it! They’re good coaches. He didn’t need to do it. He’s really a good coach, he gets it, he knows how to coach, he doesn’t need that bullbleep. To me, stupid arrogance. Anyway, go back, how I believe in things, I love to be innovative. I’ll steal from someone else, believe me, I will, but I think a whole helluva lot more take from me than I do from them.

Q: Why is there such a bond between Rex Ryan and Jets fans?

A: Because you’re getting what he is. He’s not hiding it.

Q: Would you have been that way as a head coach?

A: 100 percent.

Q: “Hard Knocks.”

A: To tell you the truth, I don’t know they’re here. I haven’t said one single word that I don’t say every single day.

Q: Rex thinks you’re going to be one of the stars.

A: That’s just because I tell good stories in meetings.

Q: You were a linebacker at Wichita State. As a kid, did you want to play in the NFL?

A: Well, you always do, but I wanted to be a baseball player.

Q: Who was your idol?

A: Roberto Clemente, all the Pittsburgh Pirates; I loved all those guys. My dad used to take me to the old Forbes Field, for two bucks we’d sit in the bleachers and watch Roberto Clemente, and eat hot dogs. That was a great time.

Q: Three dinner guests?

A: JFK; Franklin Roosevelt; Winston Churchill.

Q: Favorite movie?

A: “The Searchers.”

Q: Favorite actor?

A: De Niro.

Q: Favorite actress?

A: Natalie Wood.

Q: Favorite entertainer/singer?

A: Stevie Nicks.

Q: Favorite meal.

A: Pasta.

Q: Your son John is 29.

A: Every time I went to Sloan Kettering, he was there.

Q: Best piece of advice your father gave you?

A: (Chuckles) Get tough up there.

Q: What does that mean?

A: Sometimes we’d be in the house and he’d be saying something to me about what I did or didn’t do, and I’d get angry, you know, and he’d say: “Not here, not here. Up there.” In another words, at the high school, on the field. Not here. There.

Q: How’s your golf game?

A: Well I’m gonna go back to playing now. I had to stop for 12 years.

Q: Hobbies?

A: Shark fishing. I caught a six-foot black tip shark. They’re very aggressive. I was about a mile out, by myself, fought it for a half hour, got it to the boat, took pictures of it and released it. I love the challenge.

Q: You always wanted to skydive?

A: That would probably be pretty dangerous with all the metal that I have.

Q: Your titanium femur?

A: Well I have my knee, and my hip, and the rest is prosthesis, the rest is metal. I’ve had nine major surgeries. This (2008) is the most major. And it worked. John Healey from Sloan-Kettering, he’s first and nobody’s second in that business.

If anyone in Manhattan or new York, ever wanted to contribute to some charity, believe me from being there firsthand, write a check to the Cancer Center at Sloan Memorial Kettering, ’cause you get the absolute most for your money. We New Yorkers are so fortunate to have places like that. Every time I walk in, I see the look on some parent’s face, but yet I see the hope that they have because of those people. It’s the greatest. Great place.

Q: What would it mean to you to coach in a Super Bowl?

A: Oh, it would be everything.

Q: You want to write a book?

A: I’ve always thought that I would love to do that, to just tell my story, and the people that helped me and how I was able as a cancer survivor to still live a very happy and successful life.

Q: Your friend Randy White will help you?

A: I’ve always envisioned it, that I’d want to start it by standing on the sideline at a Super Bowl. But I’ve always said I don’t want to do it (chuckles) ’til I’m standing on the sidelines so . . . I damn sure better do it pretty soon.