Great Article on Bill Walsh and His Way

[HoustonFrog]

One of my best friends is a Bill Walsh disciple and was a player and grad asst under him at Stanford. He is still coaching now. He always talked about how he loved Bill. Despite the rivalry with the 49ers I always admired him. I didn't even know, until reading this, that this book is so revered (go look at the prices it is fetching) and that he was such a perfectionist. I love reading stories like this because it makes you realize how much these guys sacrifice. Long article but worth the read.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/88...-espn-magazine

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL football coach of the past 30 years hated his legacy. He hated it from the moment he retired at age 57, in January 1989, days afer winning his third Super Bowl as head coach of the 49ers. Bill Walsh had ftelt fried for years, and during that last season he was in "a claustrophobic panic," as a friend later described it. Or "just eking by," as his son Craig recalls. That 1988 season had been the most wrenching of his career, because the 49ers were not a great team. They were a 10-6 team that happened to win it all, and the grind swallowed Walsh to the point that he was, as his son says, "like a zombie." So he secretly decided to retire during the season, and in the whooping and wet locker room after the Super Bowl, Walsh wept alone, head in his hands. He wasn't happy. He was relieved. It was over.

THE BOOK WAS published in December 1997. All 36,000 copies quickly sold. Coaches would approach Billick before games and ask whether he could get them one. Nearly a decade after Walsh retired from the NFL, his influence on football had never been greater. Seven of his former coaching pupils had become head coaches; nearly every team ran at least some West Coast offense concepts. For those who coached under Walsh, Finding the Winning Edge was a study of the genius beyond his playbook. For those who coached against him, it was a window into the mind of their nemesis. For Belichick, it was validation. It was published during the crossroads of his career, while he was working as a Jets assistant. The book reinforced Belichick's own belief in detailed planning, which is why he calls it and Jack Welch and the GE Way the two most influential books of his career.