Tell me if you’ve heard this one before ….
I came across some interesting turns of phrases over the weekend:
“Tony’s a good kid, but he can get a little off the reservation,” Parcells said. “He needs to be kept on a good leash.”
Bill Parcells, former head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, on quarterback Tony Romo.
“Rhetorical equivalent of a Chinese meal. I mean, it was a very pleasant, civil evening, and it had no impact.”
Mark Shields on the president’s State of the Union Address.
“ … a civil war in a leper colony …”
Shields again, on the Scooter Libby trial and a perceived battle between President Bush’s and Vice President Cheney’s camps.
Random thoughts:
Someone needs to get a good Chinese meal into Mark Shields.
I have absolutely no idea what that reference to the leper colony is supposed to mean.
Poor Tony. First Michael Irvin says he’s probably has African American blood flowing in his veins because it’s just not possible for a white man to be athletic. Now Tuna says he can be a wild little Indian who needs to be kept on leash.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled use of the English language.
—————————————————————————————-
Citations:
(I mean, really. You’re not going to believe those statements just because I posted them here, are you?)
Mark Shield and David Brooks with Jim Lehrer on the NewsHour
Putting the entire Parcells story here, otherwise it is cloaked behind the TimesSelect veil:
When It Comes to Parcells, Never Say Never, Ever
By Dave Anderson
January 26, 2007
Sports of The Times
Over the telephone, a voice said, “Coach Parcells is calling.”
Coach Parcells?
Hadn’t he announced Monday that he was retiring from coaching football? Wasn’t he Mr. Parcells now? Or just plain Bill Parcells?
“Yeah,” he said, “and I’m busier than when I was coaching.”
But he’s still in his office at Cowboys Center in Irving, Tex.
“People coming in saying goodbye,” he said Wednesday evening. “Old players calling. Trying to take care of my assistant coaches. It’s worse than when I was coaching.”
Was coaching.
That phrase has followed him around. Once upon a time, he coached the Giants for eight seasons (and won two Super Bowls) before he resigned after the 1990 season. In 1993, he joined the Patriots and coached them until he departed in 1997 to coach the Jets for three seasons (and remained in 2000 as their front-office boss). After joining the Cowboys in 2003, he coached them for four seasons until Monday.
“This is it — no more coaching,” he said. “If I ever seem like I’m even thinking about it, I want you to drug me and put me in a cell.”
He never talked that definitively about retirement before, so maybe this is it. Then again, he has been known to change his mind every few years, if not every few hours. And if some N.F.L. franchise approaches him a year or two from now, he may be tempted to return to the sideline, as he did when Jerry Jones, the Cowboys’ rodeo bull rider, sweet-talked him out of the ESPN studios four years ago.
But Parcells is a lot older now. He will be 66 on Aug. 22 when the horses will be running in Saratoga, N.Y., where he will be living when he’s not at his Florida condo.
When it comes to the possibility of Parcells’s coaching again, never say never. But at his age, it’s all about having the physical and the mental energy demanded of a pro football coach for virtually 12 months a year with the combines, the draft and the minicamps. And last Monday, instead of departing for the Senior Bowl to scout college players, he told Jones about the absence of that energy.
“A year ago, this was the first day of the journey that wound up on the 1-yard line in Seattle,” he said he told Jones, referring to the last second of a playoff loss when Tony Romo botched the hold on a 19-yard field goal attempt that probably would have won the game. “I just don’t have the mental energy to get back to that 1-yard line again.”
What still hurts is that, had the Cowboys won in Seattle, they might have gone on to beat the Bears in Chicago and maybe the Saints in New Orleans in the National Football Conference championship game. If they had, Parcells and the Cowboys would be packing to go to Super Bowl XLI in Miami.
Instead, he’s packing to go to Saratoga and weigh various television offers to resume being a pro football studio analyst.
It has also been reported that Parcells may join the Jets as a consultant to Mike Tannenbaum, the general manager who was his salary-cap guru there, and Coach Eric Mangini, an assistant on Parcells’s staff there.
“I don’t know,” Parcells said. “I like Mike Tannenbaum a lot. I like Eric Mangini a lot. I don’t have to be on the Jets’ payroll for them to call me if they want my advice on something.”
Parcells also sounded as if Terrell Owens, for all the distractions he created, had not been a factor in his decision to stop coaching. Parcells would not have signed Owens a year ago, but Jones wanted him and Parcells went along. Parcells never threw any gasoline on the fires Owens lighted; he seemed to ignore, at least publicly, whatever Owens said or did.
“I tried not to let it disrupt anything,” Parcells said.
What annoyed Parcells more was Owens’s tendency to drop too many important passes, his mental errors and his disregard for blocking assignments. Parcells also never had what so many Cowboy historians had predicted: a blowup with Jones in a clash of powerful personalities. They worked together well.
If only Romo, whose passing lifted the Cowboys to an 8-4 record before three losses in their last four regular-season games, hadn’t botched that hold in Seattle.
“Tony’s a good kid, but he can get a little off the reservation,” Parcells said. “He needs to be kept on a good leash.”
As for the Super Bowl that the Cowboys won’t be in, Parcells agreed that the Colts are the obvious favorite, but “it reminds me of us,” meaning the 1990 Giants against Buffalo.
He added, “If Chicago happens to play the right game, they could win like we did” in grinding out a 40-minute-to-20-minute ratio in possession time for a 20-19 victory in Super Bowl XXV, in which Scott Norwood’s 47-yard field goal sailed wide right at Tampa Stadium.
“As Buffalo lined up,” Parcells said, “Matt Bahr, our kicker, told me, ‘Norwood hasn’t made one this long on grass all year.’ ”
That was Coach Parcells talking, not Mr. Parcells or just plain Bill Parcells. And if he never returns to the sideline, he will always be Coach Parcells.
