All about Bill Parcells

I just read Michael Lewis' article on "What Keeps Bill Parcells Awake at Night" published in the New York Times Sunday sports magazine here.

"Michael Lewis spends eight days with Bill Parcells of the Dallas Cowboys, who has developed a legendary reputation for turning losing teams into winners, and is the only coach in N.F.L. history to take four different teams to the playoffs."


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I got a great sense of the mind games and the motivational practices that get players to push themselves to excel and win (without getting chewed on especially by the likes of old school coach Bill Parcells). There's also the little techniques that a coach like Parcells spots in a player from watching hours of video such as standing slightly turned rather than being set and squared to the line of scrimmage. Not a good thing (the opposing reciever could get a half step on the cornerback and run right by him). And also trying to figure out if a player has lost his nerve and can no longer play under pressure in clutch situations. Like kicker Mike Vanderjagt, after spending 2.65 million as a free agent.

If you're a student of the game of football, or want to get a sense of what a week looks like preparing for a football game, then make time to read this article by Michael Lewis. You don't even have to like the Cowboys to enjoy the read. Good stuff from an excellent writer.

Michael writes: One of the strange things about professional football players is how little time they spend playing football. Their schedules begin at dawn, and their coaches don't have time to sleep. But the players spend more time sitting in meetings, lifting weights and taking showers than they do playing football. If you added it all up, they probably spend more time wrapping various body parts in surgical tape than they do playing the game. Wednesday and Thursday are the two days the Cowboys practice longest and hardest, but even these practices last just a few hours and only faintly resemble an actual football game. Football is the sport in which practice is least like the game. Because the risk of injury outweighs the reward of repetition, they don't hit each other and they seldom run all out. And it's never truly competitive; the players who aren't good enough to start are assigned to imitate the opposition for the benefit of the first-string offense or defense. The scrubs play the role of the Redskins so that the Cowboys' starting defense can pretend to stymie the Redskins' offense, and the Cowboys' starting offense can run up the score on the Redskins' defense. If the coaches didn't scream and yell so much, you'd never guess that any of it actually mattered.

Michael Lewis is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. His new book is "The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game."