They’re Made by Parcells

He looks--and sounds--like a New York Irish cop. He always seems to be irritated and out of patience as if somebody were standing on his foot or he just found out one of the kids had wrecked the car. You picture him saying in exasperation, “All right, move along now. You’re holding up traffic!”

If you built him from scratch, you couldn’t come up with a more perfect blueprint for the coach of the New York Giants. Bill Parcells is as New York as Mott Street in July. The idiom of the town runs through his speech, his mannerisms. He couldn’t be anything else but New York, or in his case, Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, which is the same thing. He’s impatient, outspoken, quick to anger, quick to get over it. If he were in your family, he’d be a favorite uncle.

You get the feeling that, underneath that pie crust of exterior, you will find a ventricle of mush. Or hot fudge. You suspect--and you’d be right--that he can cry easily, but alone, because, where he comes from, he’d be too tough to show it. Sentimental, superstitious but kind of impatient with sensitivity, he views the world as conquerable.

Whatever chemistry it takes to be a successful football coach--or combat lieutenant--he has it. His men would follow him anywhere. Even the ones who don’t like him, respect him. This is very much a no-nonsense guy, fearless, defiant in defeat, exultant in victory, no inscrutable poker face here. If he had aces, you’d know it. Almost in the mold of Napoleon’s general: “If I advance, follow me; if I retreat, kill me!”

The New York Giants don’t belong in the Super Bowl--at least in the opinion of this observer. There are several teams with better talent--the San Francisco 49ers, for example. Maybe, the Buffalo Bills, although we shall see.

Parcells is one of those rare leaders who can extract over-achievement, who can make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. He has a minimal running attack--an average, overused running back who is probably the oldest runing back in the game. He has a backup quarterback. His best game-breaker is out with a broken leg.

The team should have lost in the early rounds of the playoffs, if indeed it got there to begin with. Parcells wouldn’t put up with it.

This is his second Super Bowl and, if he stays in coaching, there’ll be more. In any year, the league will have the Parcells Giants to beat.

Across the field from him Sunday will be a contemplative type, a Phi Beta Kappa, an ex-Harvard scholar, a man who spends his spare time with world literature, the major poets.

Parcells never wanted to be anything but what he is: Coach Parcells. A top kick with a good unit and a mission. The Ivy League was not for him. He enrolled briefly at Colgate, but their cavalier attitude toward winning and losing was not his cup of beer. He didn’t stop running till he got clear to Wichita, Kan., where they didn’t treat winning lightly even though they didn’t have that much to win with.

Parcells preferred to stay west of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon where they didn’t treat football as a game--and an intramural game, at that. He learned his craft well. He made friends along the way with like-minded colleagues--Indiana’s Bobby Knight, for one, with whom he coached for a brief stint at West Point.

Basically, Parcells succeeds because he is himself. This is a more difficult trick than people realize, but Parcells has mastered it. There is no side to him. What you see is what you get.

The son of an Irish father and an Italian mother, the product of the Jersey sandlots, combative and completely unself-conscious, Parcells, if anybody, was born to coach football--for New York. He is the closest thing to Lombardi in the coaching ranks today. Intolerant of mistakes, painstaking in preparation, unable to come to grips with failure, he has made the New York Giants, whose symbol was the goal-line fumble--on their own goal line--the power they haven’t been since the early ‘60s. He did it as much with will as with game plans. He honors his players, but he is not afraid of them. He is the Boss. Not every Giant coach of late could make that statement. Bill Parcells doesn’t beg. He commands. Bill Parcells’ strength is leadership. The Giants’ strength is Bill Parcells.

All football coaches love what they’re doing. Some love it enough to endure indignities from stars. Not Parcells. He was at a news conference Wednesday explaining that he would consult with his quarterback before finalizing tactics Sunday “to see what (part of the game plan) he’s comfortable with.”

Added Parcells: “That doesn’t mean I’m letting the inmates run the asylum.”

And it doesn’t mean the players run the coach.

Buffalo is a six-point favorite in Sunday’s Super Bowl. A team that has scored more than 90 points in two playoff games merits that kind of respect. These are juggernaut credentials.

Bill Parcells doesn’t believe in juggernauts. “Their no-huddle offense?” he asked the assembled press scornfully. “It’s just their two-minute drill they run for 60 minutes. They just run all over the field. But they still got to get past you.”

Someone asked if his assistants were ready for head-coaching jobs. “Yes,” acknowledged Parcells. “I would expect they would. Of course, I’m not running an auction here.”

Finally, someone took note of the juggernaut aspect. “Do you feel you have to concede Buffalo 21 points?” he asked ill-advisedly.

Parcells looked as if he had just found someone rifling through his bedroom drawers. Disbelief was written all over his face. “Twenty-one points!?” he shouted. “Hey! Doesn’t it say 0-0 at the start?! If they got 21 points, I’m not going! Let’s make them earn it first, shall we?!”

No one can count on 21 points from a Bill Parcells team. The bookies give the Giants six. On paper, the Bills look a lock. But you don’t play a Bill Parcells team on paper. You play it out there where you may get a nosebleed. And if Bill Parcells liked to lose, he would have stayed at Colgate.