Insider | Notebook
A tree is usually planted with the idea it will be wonderful once it matures, a thing of beauty. Sometimes, though, the tree sprouts too many branches and it becomes nothing but trouble, perhaps interfering with the electrical wires or getting too close to a roof for comfort.
That tree, then, has to come down.
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| Bill Belichick's success in New England reinforces the Bill Parcells media approach. (AP) |
The Bill Parcells coaching tree has to come down. Not the coaches themselves, especially since most of them are outstanding, top of their profession. But what makes the tree a problem is the way they conduct their business, a combative, you're-on-a-need-to-know basis with the media. They rule with fear with their players and they try to do the same with the media.
Pete Rozelle, the public relations-oriented former commissioner, would have hated it.
Paul Tagliabue should too.
Parcells was and is an outstanding coach. But along with his ability to coach football, Parcells brought something else with him when he became the head coach of the New York Giants, that being his desire to control everything, including the flow of information.
With his success, including two Super Bowl victories, it became worse. The media was choked off. Players were warned about disseminating information. Injuries were handled like trade secrets.
The idea behind it was this: The less an opponent knew, the better it was for Parcells and the Giants.
When he won, others also came to believe it to be the right way. His assistants, who would later go on to become NFL head coaches, soaked it all in. Their assistants did the same when they became head coaches.
So now we're left with a league populated by coaches from the Parcells tree, their disdain for the media and the job they do making for a combative mentality.
It might only get worse.
