SUPER BOWL XXIV : DENVER BRONCOS vs. SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS : Bum(py) Road to the Top : Football: Wade Phillips, just like his dad, is paying his coaching dues. But he has made the Denver defense a winner.

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be coaches. Don’t let ‘em run projectors till until all hours of the morning, until some scatter-brain running back fumbles or some official leaves his glasses home and some oilman’s kid decides to interrupt Christmas holiday to tell ‘em they’re history.

All that happened to Wade Phillips’ daddy, Bum.

You can forget it, pilgrim. These are the sons of the pioneers.

These are men whose response to fate’s haymakers is to make up things such as, “If you really want to keep the beer cold, put it next to my ex-wife’s heart.”

If you think that is so much country and western bull, check Bum’s career. They foreclosed on his career while he was still a folk hero in Houston and got run out of New Orleans by popular demand. But he is not mad at Oiler owner Bud Adams and told Saint owner Tom Benson he did not have to worry about that $2 million they owed him, he was going home to the ranch.

And when Bum and Helen’s baby boy arrived in Denver--where they munch ambitious assistants like nachos--to succeed a living legend, with the betting that he was going to be torn to shreds worse’n if he was riding Old Dynamite comin’ out of Chute No. 2? Did Bum worry?

“Shoot, no,” Bum says on the phone in the barn on his place in Rosharon, Tex.

“I think coaching is probably the best job in the Yew-nited States. There’s not many jobs, you know, where you can get to the point where you can make more money than the President of the Yew-nited States.”

Thus was Wade Phillips raised to love the game and brave its perils. He grew up to be a defensive coordinator, just like Bum was until Bum got famous and took over for Will Rogers.

Wade has just turned the NFL’s No. 25 defense into the No. 3, which is the next thing to a miracle. Now he is on the verge of the big promotion, which means he could wear rodeo garb on the sideline, like Bum did, if he wanted.

“Wade is very low-key,” said an NFL general manager. “He doesn’t have all that corn-pone bull like Bum. He’s a real good, solid coach. He’s in the batter’s circle now, as far as head coaching jobs, and he deserves to be there.”

Better yet, Wade has been raised better than to fear defeat.

In Broncodom, where they are paralyzed at the thought of another Super Bowl rout, they could learn something from Wade’s daddy.

Before you’re tempted to write Bum off as some country phony . . .

In 1984, when his Saints’ miracle was starting to fade, they went to Chicago, where Walter Payton was about to break Jim Brown’s career rushing record.

Sure enough, Payton did. The Bears won and writers deluged the Saints’ dressing room, asking about Payton. Bum, aggrieved, chased one off.

The man, a total stranger to Phillips, went over to the other side of the dressing room to talk to a player. Then he felt a tap on his shoulder.

It was Bum, who had followed him across the room.

“I’m sorry I got the red . . . ,” Phillips said. “Did you want to ask me about Walter?”

With Bum, what you saw on TV was what you got in person.

Of course, he was a long time getting on TV. . . .

Bum’s career--and Wade’s childhood--read like a Sun Belt road map: Nederland, Tex.; College Station, where he worked on Bear Bryant’s Texas A&M; staff; back to high school ball in Jacksonville, Tex.--”A real hole in the wall,” said Helen--Amarillo, El Paso and Port Neches, Tex; Houston; San Diego for his first NFL job; Stillwater, Okla.; back to Houston; New Orleans.

“Oh dear,” said Helen from Rosharon. “It tires me just to think of it.

“Seems like every time we moved, we got a new kid and a new car. Bum said there were two things he couldn’t stand for the next-door neighbor to have, a new car or a new baby.

“I remember when Sid Gilman (then the Chargers’ coach) called. Of course, Bum wasn’t there. And he said, ‘You think Bum would want to move?’

“My heart hit the bottom, you know. I had one in every school and kindergarten and was expecting a baby.

“He said, ‘You think Bum will come?’

“And I said, ‘I know he will.’ ”

Did the Phillipses, father and son, talk football at home?

“I’d have to talk to myself or my mother,” Wade said, grinning. “My sisters didn’t talk much football. My dad wasn’t there a whole lot.”

Wade was the oldest and the only boy. He helped raise his five sisters, since Bum was gone so much. When they had the youngest, Kim Ann, Wade drove his mother to the hospital and named the baby, too. Bum was out in San Diego, sequestered in a hotel for draft day with Gilman.

Wade went to the football field if he wanted to see the father he idolized. He gathered the footballs, sat in on meetings, you name it. One way or another, he always was on the staff.

“If you grew up in Texas and your dad was a head coach in high school and they’re really successful, he’s the big man in town,” Wade said. “Everybody idolizes him because he’s famous, in that little spot, anyway.

“I don’t think he ever had a losing season. They won like 50-some straight games at Nederland, and he was a hero in that town. He went to two programs that were 0-10.

“Amarillo, he’s still a hero in Amarillo. They still talk about him. They were 0-10 at the old Amarillo High School and they had split up the deal (school district). Anyway, he came in and won the district on a ‘Bumerooski’ and went into the playoffs and the whole deal.

“You’d go to the barbershop: ‘Bum? Oh, Bum’s a great guy. We all love him.’ You can go to his barber shop in Rosharon, Tex., right now and they’d say, ‘Oh, Bum’s a great guy.’ That’s all my life. People that know him, people out at the ranch, people in New Orleans, people in Houston.

“I liked wherever I was. You always made new friends. He always convinced me it was better there than it was the place before. (Grinning,) I kinda do the same thing with my kids.”

Wade played, too. Unfortunately, they moved so often--he attended three high schools--that he couldn’t get eligible.

“Daddy was mad about it,” Wade said. “In Texas in the old days, in Abilene, they had all the oil and they would buy people. Anybody that made all-state, their dad would get a job in Abilene. So they made a rule--you couldn’t transfer without layin’ out a year.”

When Wade finally put in two years at Port Neches-Groves High, father and son had their first--and according to both, their last--discussion about nepotism.

Bum told Wade he’d have to prove to everyone that he was clearly better to play.

Wade started at quarterback and middle linebacker. He played linebacker at the University of Houston, too.

“He was a good player,” Bum said. “They could watch and see he was a good player. Consequently, there wasn’t much (complaining).

“He’s a good coach. I didn’t hire him because I was kin to him. I hired him ‘cause he’s a good coach.”

Consequently, Bum got Wade on his staffs at Oklahoma State and the Oilers. From that vantage point, Wade watched his father’s meteoric rise with the Lov Ya Blue teams of the late ‘70s . . .

And his meteoric fall when Bud Adams fired him after an 11-5 season.

“Well, it was New Year’s Eve, 1980,” Wade said. “I went out to the house and he was out in the back, sittin’ on a tractor. And he was kinda down. So I went over to him and I said, ‘Happy New Year, Pop!’ He started laughin’.

“You know, it was a shock to everybody. We had a heck of a football team. At the time he was fired, people were down because we had been to the AFC championship two years in a row and lost. And then we lost the first game of the playoffs to the Raiders. The Raiders obviously weren’t any good; they were a wild-card team. So they fired us right after that.

“Well, the Raiders went on and beat Cleveland and went on to win the Super Bowl. We’d actually just lost to the team that won the championship three years in a row, is all that happened.”

Ten years later, it’s still a mystery in Houston.

Adams recently told the Houston Post’s Ray Buck that he’d had no intention of firing Bum before their postseason meeting; that Bum made him do it; that Bum already had his New Orleans job lined up.

Could the indecisive Adams, who barely managed to accept the resignation of the controversial Jerry Glanville, have ever moved by himself on the wildly popular Bum?

There are hints of a conspiracy, a story of a meeting the night before among Bum’s assistant and successor, Ed Biles; Ladd Herzeg, then a rising young controller who had become general manager, and linebacker Gregg Bingham.

Wade was offered a chance to stay as Biles’ defensive coordinator, but he said he wasn’t going to work for the folks who had axed his daddy.

Bum bounced back in about 10 minutes.

“Bum wasn’t upset with Bud,” Wade said. “He worked every day as hard as he could work for that guy. The guy paid him for every day he worked. Guy owns the team, he could do what he wants to. If he did that, well, that’s fine. He’s a little different person, now. I mean, he doesn’t look back.

“It changed my attitude about things, it really did. It’s a nice way to live. I don’t know that everybody can do that. Not many people have those principles, where you think people did you wrong and you still like ‘em, you know? But he’s seen Bud Adams since then. I think Bud would say he’s still a friend.

“(Bum) is a great man. No matter what anybody thinks of him as a football coach--’cause there’s different opinions depending on whether you won or lost--he’s a great man. A guy that gives up over $1 million and walks out and says, ‘I’m not coachin’ anymore, I’m retirin’ and you don’t have to pay me because I’m not workin’--I mean, there’s not many of us that would do that. I’m not sure I would.

“He had four years left on his New Orleans contract and he was makin’ $500,000 a year and he just told the owner, he said, ‘I’m retirin’, thanks.’ ”

In five seasons as Bum’s defensive coordinator with the Saints, Wade had three units in the NFL’s top five. But Bum ran afoul of his own generous instincts, bringing in washed-up Ken Stabler and Earl Campbell, probably as much as anything because he liked them.

Three seasons after inheriting a 1-15 team, they gave the franchise its second 8-8 record. Two years after that, Bum left, en route to 5-11.

Wade worked under Buddy Ryan in Philadelphia, then took the Bronco job, where he wasn’t welcome at all.

He was replacing Joe Collier, a 20-year Bronco institution, the mad genius who had run the Orange Crush for Red Miller, who had helped Dan Reeves to the franchise’s second and third Super Bowls, usually with little more than 15 willing bodies, a Polaroid camera and his keen mind.

But the Broncos had just collapsed to No. 25 in defense. Reeves, wanting an assistant who worked for him, cashiered Collier.

Phillips arrived, talking of turning the players loose and an “attacking defense.” Just what did he think he had to turn loose, anyway?

“Big shoes to fill when you succeed ‘God’,” read a Rocky Mountain News headline.

News columnist Teri Thompson wrote that the Southern-born Reeves “hired himself another good ol’ boy he feels comfortable with . . . (who) fits the description of most of Reeves’ other coaches--non-threatening and somewhat benign.”

There were several things Phillips did upon arrival:

--He called Collier to tell him that he meant no disrespect, if any of his quotes in the papers appeared to criticize him.

--He told the players he didn’t want to hear any thing about what they used to do.

--He got bigger linemen, to keep from getting blown off the line of scrimmage.

Nose tackle Greg Kragen, a little 260-pounder, was marked for extinction, as he had been since the Redskins plowed him under in Super Bowl XXII.

“I knew, coming from Philadelphia, he had those guys, basically 300-pounders, across the front line,” Kragen said.

“He came in. He’s a really nice guy, but, the thing he was saying, he didn’t want to hear anything about the old defense, that we used to do it this way or that way.

“That was one of the first things he said. Everybody was kinda, a little bit like, ‘Whoa . . .’

“I don’t know what the word is, but he was real forceful. That’s not the type of person he is. He’s really easy to get along with.”

Suddenly the emphasis changed, from players who could think to ones who could play. A big, fast linebacker named Michael Brooks, who hadn’t been able to pick up Collier’s system, became a starter. They found a rookie star in safety Steve Atwater, another big hitter. After years of talking about it, the Broncos were bulking up.

They started rolling and never stopped. There are more stunners than you can point to.

They finished No. 3 against the rush, up from last season’s 27 .

Their sacks rose from 16th to fourth.

Kragen made the Pro Bowl, along with Dennis Smith and Karl Mecklenburg.

“I owe a lot to Joe Collier and I think the world of him as a coach,” Mecklenburg said. “But it was best for the team that he moved on.”

It would be nice to report that the Phillips family heads into the sunset together. However, Bum and Helen recently separated.

Wade remains close to both. Helen and four sisters are going to New Orleans. The fifth sister, Cicely, would have gone, too, but she’s pregnant.

Bum had already accepted a casino offer to watch in Las Vegas and offer running commentary.

“He says they’re paying him not to come,” Wade said, laughing.

Bum, 66, fades happily into retirement. He tells callers if a man has a windmill and a cow, he has a 24-hour-a-day job because the pump is always breaking and the cow’s always tearing down the fence.

“Now, I mean he’s a real cowboy,” Wade said. “He rides horses all day. He’s always been like that.

“When he started coaching high school and I was real young, he rode in rodeos. That’s what he did. He liked to go rodeo and he’d coach high school football and rope and do all that stuff.

“The great thing about him, he never looks back. He looks forward to everything. He looks forward to going out with his horses and his cattle.

“You know, we had some great highlight films and stuff. I was in Mt. Laurel, N.J., where NFL Films is. And I said, ‘Dad, I’m gonna get you some of those highlight films and show ‘em to you.’

“He said, ‘I don’t want to see all that. I’m not interested in that. I’m not doin’ that anymore.’

“Whereas a lot of people live in the past. He had a great past--that thing with Billy Johnson (the first end zone dancer) and all that stuff. But he doesn’t want to go back, he wants to go forward.”

Wade, 42, warms up for his defense’s greatest test and who knows what opportunities after that?

“It’s really good to go back there this way,” he said. “Because everybody has a certain amount of ego, I think. (The Saints) had a chance to keep me as a head coach. I think they’ve done well since, obviously. But I think I’d have done a real good job if they’d kept me.

“So it’s really nice to go back, a triumphant return. But I’m not going to drive around the stadium and honk the bus, or anything like that.”

Heck no. He’s kin to Bum and there’s a tradition to live up to, one to warm the cockles of everybody everywhere in these Yew-nited States.