First, let us know what you’e been doing lately?
Well, first of all everyone seems to be worried about my health. I had a heart transplant three years ago and it went without a problem. I was very fortunate though – I was in my last hours – maybe minutes of life – when the heart showed up. It had to be the right fit and blood type and I got it just in time. I’m blessed beyond words.
It’s funny – the doctor made a mistake when he was talking to me about the heart. He said it’d take two hours to get the heart and two hours to get back, and I needed it in me by four hours latest. I did the calculation and actually figured that two hours from me was very likely Pittsburgh – so I could have the heart of a Terrible Towel waving Pittsburgh Steelers fan in me right now!
I rode my bike for 15 miles three weeks and five days after the surgery. I have to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of my life now for the heart transplant to stick. They destroy your immune system. I got Melanoma afterwards on the left side of my face and had three surgeries. They had to do another after the Melanoma came back and it’s very hard to do those without nicking a nerve, and that’s what happened. So now the left side of my face is partially paralyzed. I tell everyone now how much money I am saving on Halloween masks! I still have to have another operation on my left eye so I can lift my eyelid enough.
But right now, the people in charge just had me paint my dining room. I rode 20 miles on my bike the other day. I’m doing what I want to do. I have radiation therapy five days a week and hopefully I’ll kill the cancer off, unless it wears me out first.
And you have your speaking engagements?
I’m speaking as often as I can for as long as I’m here on planet Earth. I speak mostly at high schools about the drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse. I don’t turn down requests and do them all gratis. I learned a valuable lesson from Cleave McClearly – a Marine who lost an eye and leg in the military and does speaking engagements as well. He told me that free speakers are always in demand!
I also do color commentary for Furman University – that’s where I played college football.
Tell me about some of the mentors you had as a player and coach that helped shape your coaching style?
I was unbelievably fortunate. I was a rookie free agent going into the NFL after being a walk-on at Furman. I played at a large high school in Atlanta as a defensive back – I never played quarterback. But my senior year at Furman I broke my back and wasn’t drafted because of that. I played minor league football for a year for the Wheeling Ironmen but realized there wasn’t much of a future there.
I went to graduate school at South Carolina afterwards and was assigned to a young defensive backs coach as a coaching assistant. That was Lou Holtz, who was an unbelievable recruiter. I was responsible for getting him the facts and figures he needed to recruit the kids, who he had in the palm of his hands when he met them.
Then I went to Cincinnati and tried out for Paul Brown in 1968. He kept four of us after the tryout – I remember him telling me that “We want you to try out for our football.” I went then and called my wife – we had just gotten married – and told her we were rich. They were paying me $11,000! The next season they gave me a $5,000 raise! And my coach then? Bill Walsh.
After I was done playing, I took a job as Bill Walsh’ quarterbacks coach in San Francisco until I was offered the head coaching job at Indiana. Paul Brown then offered me the head coaching job in Cincinnati a year later, I turned him down four times – we were just starting to improve the program in Indiana – I had replaced Lee Corso there. I finally went to the athletic director at Indiana and he told me it was just too good of a job to pass up. I cried making that decision.
You were such an innovative coach. How did some of that innovation like the no-huddle get started?
At the time it was not a no huddle – it was a quick snap offense I installed at Indiana first. I knew we were in trouble there – we just didn’t have enough talented division one then so it was a way to wear teams down.
Other teams were mad at us when we started using it – the league didn’t know how to handle it. Even our own defense got upset with us.
One interesting note about me by the way, There are only four men who played, assisted coached and head coached in a Super Bowl. Me, Mike Ditka, Dan Reeves, and Tom Flores – who did it all with the Raiders. I was the only one to do it with three different teams. Ditka and I are the only two who also broadcasted Super Bowls as well. Ditka is the annoying on though – he always reminds me he was the one who won all three Super Bowls he played or coached in! Of course Montana beat the Bengals when I was a head coach – and more on Joe later.
Any good memories of Chuck Noll – a guy you faced for eight years?
I was in Cincinnati for eight years and then I was fired after a down year. Paul Brown did the year before and Mike Brown fired me the day before Christmas, That was tough. I bought my wife socks for Christmas that year- she still has those!
Well anyway, a week later I was hired by Tampa Bay.
I was at a league meeting and Chuck Noll and I happened to be walking together. I guess we were walking too close to one another to ignore each other, so we started talking. Chuck then turned to me and told me that I was the only active coach that had a winning record against him. I told he he had got to be kidding. All I remembered was them kicking our butts every year. But he told me I was 10 – 6 against him. I check later and he was right. But I would have missed that if it were a Jeopardy question.
People also had this perception that Chuck and I didn’t like each other, but that wasn’t the case. All coaches want to be familiar with each other, but on game weeks our jobs are on the line. Owners are looking at filling seats and concession sales. So, you do whatever it takes to win. You’re competitive, but you still speak to one another. Heck, even Jerry Glanville and I are speaking to one another now!
And good memories of those Steelers games come to mind?
One comes to mind. We were playing in Pittsburgh and were having a good year. A field goal for us would have won the game but we had no time outs. There were about 45-50 seconds left and we were just at the line where I didn’t know if Jim Breech could make a field goal. It was third and a foot – and I wear a size 14 – so we ran over Munoz at left tackle, but we didn’t make it. Of course all of the Steelers players were piled up on top of the play and weren’t getting off the pile. The crowd was going crazy and the officials were just standing there as time was running out. It was fourth down now and I hesitated thinking maybe we should go for it before finally sending Breech on to kick the field goal. But by the time he got lined up the clock ran out. I just stood there looking like I didn’t know what I was doing.
Later on I heard that Dick Hoak was in the elevator and told someone that that’s Wicky Whacky Wyche for you! That name stuck with me after that. Now when I send players letters, I sign them Wicky Whacky Wyche!
Another good one was a Monday Night game in Pittsburgh. We were seven point favorites and were beating them with less than a minute left. We were winning by one point but were on the Steelers two yard line. It was fourth down and we thought about kicking a field goal but it would have only put us up by four points and given the ball back to the Steelers. So we ran the ball and Icky Woods scored a touchdown on the play.
Well, after the game we run on the field and I look to shake hands with Chuck, but he runs past me and refuses to shake my hand. I think he thought I was running up the score. I guess in that moment I may have contemplated doing the same thing…
And of course the famous “You don’t live in Cleveland….”
Exactly. The week before the league sent out a memo to teams after fans threw snowballs during a game and made a kicker miss a field goal. The referees called it fan interference and allowed the kicker to retry the kick, and he made it. The league didn’t want that to happen again.
So the next week we’re playing Seattle at home, and it’s not a good game for us. Fans started throwing snowballs on the field, so I asked the umpire if we wanted me to get a microphone and tell the fans to stop. People think I had rehearsed that speech or something, but I had no idea what I was going to say. As soon as I said the “We don’t live in Cleveland” line, I thought, uh oh. I thought it could get me fired or be a lifer. I slowly turned my eyes up to the owners box to see if Paul Brown was angry, but I saw him slapping his knees and laughing hysterically!
When the season was over I tried to make amends with Cleveland. I got Bernie Kosar and his dad, and the Big Dawg guy from the Cleveland fans that had the Dawg Pound there. We set up a dunking booth in the middle of the city square in Cleveland and raised money for the Salvation Army there by having those guys throw footballs and dog bones to try and dunk me. It was the middle of March – it was cold! We beat them both times that year, so I got on the microphone and told them all “Ye without wins, cast the first bone!” I’m not sure they understood that – but they dunked me a few times. I can tell you, shrinkage is real!
I always liked to interact with the fans. Before games I’d run a couple laps with the players and sometimes I’d go into the stands and sit and talk to the fans. I’d talk to the guys in the Dawg Pound and the Raiders guys who wore those spiked shoulder pads. I just enjoyed taking to those guys. Oh -and the Raiders guy- he’s a dentist – a really nice guy!
Any thoughts on today’s NFL?
I don’t really like the Kapaernik stuff. My opinion is that a guy who has a political or social agenda on the football field will bring that into the locker room and undermine the team. It’s a team sport – its not golf. You stand for the flag – I wouldn’t allow a player not to do that. If they did’;t, that would be the end of them on the team.
I don’t think the league office and Roger Goodell have done a good job with the leadership in this thing either. They let it go too far.
But other than that, it’s a great sport. Fans are still coming out and they sell a lot of merchandise and ads. I was blessed to have been a part of that for so many years.
Any last thoughts for you?
I actually called the Bengals coach – Zac Taylor – recently. I called Mike Brown to make sure it was ok first. I told Zac that I started off 0-5 my first season, and Joe Gibbs called me and told me that his first year as a coach started off poorly – 0-5 – and they turned it around, and he told me mine could to. I told Zac that story and told him he could turn his team around too – it just takes some time.
We actually ended up 8-8 and almost made the playoffs my first season after that rough start. We needed the Steelers to lose their final game but they won a back and forth game against the Raiders to win the tiebreaker. I had a bunch of the players over my house watching that game – I remember the local media had film crews camped out on our yard.
You can’t lose long in this league. As Paul Brown told me, you better win to get fannies in the seats. If you’re not winning. you at last better have a good offense! We did that then – we had the no huddle which got fans excited.
Oh – and I promised you one more good story on Joe Montana.
Bill Walsh when I was coaching for him in San Francisco asked me to go and work out a wide receiver at UCLA. He told me to find a quarterback to throw to him. So, a scout there told me that there’s a Notre Dame quarterback named Joe Montana that lives out in Manhattan Beach and maybe he could do it. We called him and asked him to come out and he did for us.
Well, I went back to Bill after the workout and told him the wide receiver was ok, but I thought that Montana guy had something to him. He had a certain charisma, and I liked the flight of the ball he threw. He was smart as a tac – he picked up everything quickly and had very good fundamentals. We ended up drafting him instead of a other quarterback he originally likes – Steve Dill.
Well, at the same time I was working out Montana, Bill was working out another quarterback – Steve Fuller at Clemson. They needed a wide receiver to help with the workout so they found some guy – and that was Dwight Clark. You know the rest of that story.