Giant Steps : Super Bowl Champions Make a Smooth Transition From Parcells to Handley, From Simms to Hostetler

The teams that have won most of the Super Bowls lately are coached by two friends from the same early-1970s Stanford football staff.

They are Ray Handley of the New York Giants and George Seifert of the San Francisco 49ers, who often talk about the old days, particularly the time they went out to a late gourmet dinner with the rest of the coaching staff at Palo Alto.

In an hour or two, Seifert recalled recently, a party of 14 ran up a $510 tab.

“Then we handed the check to Ray,” Seifert said. “That was our standard operating procedure in those days, part of the routine. Ray always got the check.”

Taking a quick look, Handley mentally computed the exact charges for each person. And when they anted up, there was precisely $510 on the table--plus tip.

“The man is a mathematical marvel,” Seifert said.

He’s sound on football, too, his associates say. So at 46, Handley, a former Stanford running back, has succeeded Bill Parcells as the leader of the Giants after coaching their ballcarriers in two winning Super Bowls, XXI in 1987 and XXV last winter.

He also has inherited a quarterback controversy that could become the noisiest ever if the club doesn’t win most of its early-season games with Handley’s choice for No. 1: Jeff Hostetler.

The new backup is the club’s former No. 1: Phil Simms.

Remarkably, Simms and Hostetler are the only two quarterbacks who have navigated the same team to Super Bowl victories: Simms in XXI, Hostetler in XXV, when the Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills, 20-19.

Again this fall, both surely will lead the Giants at times during a long, arduous season. But who should do most of the leading?

That is the question that makes New Yorkers nervous.

At Giants Stadium this summer, they have been booing Simms, Handley and even Hostetler, their most recent Super Bowl winner and therefore the most popular, though by no means immune to criticism.

The first regular-season game has yet to be played. In a triumph of NFL scheduling, the 49ers open at Giants Stadium Monday night, and Giant fans--unlike 49er fans--are uptight already.

The curious thing is that Simms isn’t and Hostetler isn’t. And most assuredly, Handley isn’t.

The three Giants with the most to lose have been taking the summer in stride.

Before practice the other day, Simms and Hostetler were clowning around like old buddies.

And afterward, when Simms couldn’t find his car for the long ride back to his dormitory on the Fairleigh Dickinson University campus, he found a backup lineman, instead, waiting around to tell him what happened.

The player said that Hostetler and center Bart Oates had ridden off in Simms’ vehicle--leaving Simms to hitch a ride, if he could.

Happily, he could.

“Nobody got mad,” Giant executive Harry Hulmes said. “The only players who play practical jokes on other players are guys who respect each other.”

As the boss of a team of veterans, Handley, who has never served as a head coach on any level, seems more serious than his employees, although his one-liners tend to keep everybody loose.

Asked to pose one day with two young female fans, Handley obliged, chatting with the women cordially, if briefly.

Then he told the photographer: “Don’t bother to send a print to my wife.”

Handley served only a few days as the club’s offensive coordinator this spring after Parcells made the offer to keep him from defecting to Yale Law School.

Later, when a radio reporter asked why the Giants wanted him as Parcells’ successor, Handley said: “It’s obvious. I was a great offensive coordinator.”

Exactly why Parcells quit the Giants--after only eight years as head coach--remains a mystery to the ballclub.

In the most plausible Eastern media theory, Parcells is described as a coach reluctant to chance another traumatic post-Super Bowl letdown of the kind he experienced after winning Super Bowl XXI, when the Giants tumbled into the Eastern Division cellar.

Financially, he’s well enough off to indulge himself. They say Parcells wisely invested a lot of his 1980s Giant income and can live nicely on his reduced 1990s TV income.

As for his old team, many Giant-watchers give Handley a better chance than Parcells to win this year with the same bunch.

One reason is Handley’s intellect, which is on display every time he encounters a mathematical or analytical problem.

Second, most Giant players have the same respect for Parcells and Handley that the 49ers exhibited toward their coaches, Bill Walsh and Seifert, several years ago. Presumably, the Giants will be motivated to “show Parcells” in the same sense that the 49ers “showed Walsh” they could win without him.

One difference is that the 49ers are a lively, modern ballclub, whereas Parcells, with Handley’s enthusiastic help, built the Giants into an old-fashioned team, the most conservative in the league.

In particular, the Giants have been coached to distrust every football tactic except power running.

Now, Parcells can joke about it.

Just before training camp opened, he found himself across the room from Handley at a crowded football party. Cupping his hands, Parcells shouted: “Tell that guy he ought to throw more!”

It was a suggestion that fell, no doubt, on deaf ears.

TWO CHAMPIONS

Out of sight, down the path and through the trees, is Fairleigh-Dickinson University’s gym, where the NFL champions are dressing for afternoon practice.

Each summer, the school converts its basketball floor into a giant locker room for the Giants, who dress in front of a block of vacant seats.

“On winter nights, the gym is packed with screaming basketball fans,” university spokesman Tom Bonerbo said. “It’s amusing to think of Lawrence Taylor running around naked in the same place.”

At 6 feet 3 and 215 pounds, Simms has the bearing of a splendid quarterback--unlike Hostetler, whose measurements are similar, 6-3 and 210, but who seems much thinner and taller.

On the tree-lined practice field, the football difference between the club’s two quarterbacks is soon evident:

--Hostetler, 30, the player they call Hoss, is the better passer and a more mobile operator.

--Simms, 35, is more poised and more obviously confident.

“It’s no wonder there’s a big quarterback controversy,” said Oates, the veteran who centers them the ball. “They’re both good enough to win the Super Bowl. In fact, they already have.

“I just hope you aren’t comparing them statistically. This isn’t baseball. The quarterback with the best ERA isn’t the ace of a football staff. In football, you decide starting pitchers on the intangibles.”

After three exhibition games, Handley concluded that Hostetler, who won the statistics, had the edge in the intangibles, as well.

The decision was a courageous one for a new coach. Choosing the old pro, Simms, would have been safer. Most of the Giants expected Handley to pick a 12-year veteran over a player who has been a backup for most of his six seasons.

Publicly, until last week, the coach seemed to encourage that view.

Privately, he said: “Hoss is ready now. At some point there has to be a changing of the guard, and I’d rather make the change belatedly than prematurely. But I don’t think this is premature.”

Translation: Hostetler is the better quarterback, and Handley wants to win now.

“The quarterback controversy doesn’t bother me at all,” Simms said. “Naturally, I think I should play, but I’m not going to make waves.”

Said Hostetler: “Frankly, I thought I was the underdog.”

The position they have been fighting for is so injury-vulnerable that each easily could be on the field less than half the time this season.

Simms has a history of injuries, and Hostetler always seems to be one play away from the hit that could break him in half.

Said Oates: “(The Giants) wouldn’t have a thing to worry about if we could count on one of them--either one--starting all 16 games.”

THE INTELLECTUAL

During the April draft a year ago, club executives, sitting around a conference table at Giants Stadium, were split on whether to take an offensive lineman or a defensive player in the first round.

In an ultraconservative organization, nobody was pushing wide receivers, although, then as now, the Giants were weaker there than anywhere.

Ten minutes before they drafted, Parcells, who had been listening closely to his scouts and others, turned to Handley and said: “What do you think, Ray?”

Said Handley: “I think the best prospect is (running back) Rodney Hampton.”

And so they drafted Hampton.

Club President Wellington Mara, who was there, said recently: “Bill always listened to Ray if it was a close call--at the draft or doing anything. To me, it was clear years ago that if Bill ever left, Ray was our next coach.”

That was doubtless also obvious to Parcells, who, on work days, used to keep Handley near him on the sideline.

Two years ago at the finish of one closely played game--as the Giants, a point behind, moved down the field to what could become the winning field goal--there was a time question, as there always is in such predicaments.

Should the Giants kick now or send in another play or two?

But Parcells didn’t have to worry about it. He could, and did, concentrate on sending in plays until Handley tapped him on the shoulder and said: “Now.”

The kick won the game with two seconds left.

Said Mara: “Time management is one of Ray’s specialties. He always did it for Bill. He’s a mathematical genius.”

Actually, Handley was a history major at Stanford, not a math student, though he has taught mathematics, as his brother still does. Their father, a rancher, was a math major at Nevada.

A New Mexico native, the Giants’ new coach spent his boyhood on a ranch near Lovelock, Nev., and went to high school in Reno, where, fascinated by the numbers at the gaming tables, he participated conservatively for a while, and then, one night, got up and walked away.

From San Francisco, Seifert said: “What happened was, they barred him from the tables because he had the whole thing figured. He was about to break the bank.”

Turning to the stock market, Handley built up his net worth while also maintaining an interest in cards, dice, dominoes “and anything else involving the (quick) addition and (correlation) of numbers.”

He even resembles a stockbroker--a somewhat overweight stockbroker, to be sure--or a professional card player. Or perhaps, a middle-aged math teacher. At graduation, after setting a career yardage record for Stanford running backs, Handley carried 208 pounds on a 6-foot-1 frame. He struggles “to keep it under 240 now.”

His wife, JoAnne, who has a master’s degree from Seton Hall, is a pediatric nurse in a Newark hospital. They have homes at West Orange, N.J., and Lake Tahoe. Their children, a girl and a boy, are both entering graduate schools this fall.

As an NFL coach, Handley, who said he will call the plays for the Giants this season, has begun by striving for fairness and equality for all--unlike Parcells, according to some of their associates.

“Bill was known as a players’ coach,” Mara said. “He was always talking about ‘my guys,’ and used to name some of them. But the ones he didn’t name resented it.”

Among the displeased were two of the club’s most productive starters, cornerback Mark Collins and defensive end Leonard Marshall, who, along with several teammates, have formed a Not My Guys Club.

“They’re going all out for Ray,” Mara said.

But then, so is linebacker Taylor, the most conspicuous of Parcells’ guys. Distraught when Parcells left, Taylor criticized the club. “They should have done anything to keep him,” he said.

That led to one question this summer: How will Handley and Taylor get along? “L.T. answered it beautifully,” Mara said. “He had his best training camp.”

Professionally, Handley also has made a fast start, pending, of course, his first game. But personally, the demands of a 16-hour-a-day job have somewhat changed his life.

An intellectual who for years averaged at least a book a week during a career as a hard-working assistant, Handley was reading Scott Turow’s “Burden of Proof” the night the Giants telephoned last spring to make him their 13th coach in 66 years.

What is Handley reading now?

“I haven’t had a free half-hour in four months,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s still ‘Burden of Proof.’ ”