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Freeman: Jackass Bowl?
Tom Coughlin was my obsession for nearly seven years.
"You were his, too," his wife, Judy, told me last week.
He was the Yin to my Yang, two men doing a job they loved to do, yet adversaries in so many ways.
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| Coughlin was even more of a control freak running everything during his Jacksonville tenure. (Getty Images) |
It was as unique a relationship as you can have in this business. In a one-newspaper city like Jacksonville, there wasn't much other media covering the Jaguars on a regular basis, which meant it was mostly Tom and myself. He was the start-up coach and I was covering my first NFL beat.
Coughlin, who has his New York Giants readying to play in Super Bowl XLII next week and is squarely in the national spotlight, controlled everything in the Jaguars' organization until his firing after the 2002 season. He picked the players, he coached the players, he ruled with an iron fist and his inflexible ways made him feared in the building.
Control freak would be a kind way to describe him. But there were two things he never could control: What happened on game days and what I wrote about his team.
That meant in his world, it was always me against him.
The battles we had are some of my fondest memories in the business. The guy was maniacal in his job, which made it a challenge every day. I used to watch his players walk down the hallway and cross paths with him and lower their heads to avoid eye contact.
But underneath that turtle-hard shell was a soft, good man. He was a family man, who took endless amounts of ribbing from his four kids. He loved it, too. They loved watching him try to figure out how to work the television remote. Yet he was so demanding when it came to football he once made his youngest daughter, Katie, now married to Giants guard Chris Snee, stand up while watching one of his practices. She was a teenager then.
Coughlin was also kind and caring to people in the community, starting the Jay Fund Foundation for one of his former Boston College players who was struck down by leukemia. A golf tournament goes on every year, too. His visits to sick kids, rarely ever publicized, were commonplace. Those who saw those visits found it hard to believe it was the same tough football coach, his dealings with the kids bringing joy to their faces.
His players rarely saw that other side. But when they did, it came through clearly. When receiver Jimmy Smith, one of his favorite players, suffered from a stomach disorder so serious that some were speculating he would die, Coughlin went to his hospital bedside nearly every day.
When Smith later lied to him after being pulled over by police and testing positive for cocaine, Coughlin was as hurt as he ever was by a player, according to sources.