Biggest Victory : Ram Assistant Vitt Pledges Allegiance to Knox and Football After Overcoming Cancer Twice

This is a story about an emotional Joe Vitt, most ardent admirer of a stoic Chuck Knox.

Knox, the Rams’ 61-year-old coach, stands and watches practice with hands on hips. Vitt, the 38-year-old assistant head coach, screams and curses.

They are different, but to know one is to know the other.

It begins with a fight to live, seven years ago in Seattle, where Vitt was an assistant coach with Knox’s Seahawks. Vitt’s narrative starts with what transpired a few days before the team’s first-regular season game in 1986:

“I’m taking a shower on Tuesday night. It’s about one in the morning. I got the soap on me, and I feel the lump. I knew right away what it was because I had the same thing nine years earlier, and they told me I might die.

“So, I know what I’m going to have to go through--surgery and chemotherapy--but I don’t tell anyone because there’s practice on Wednesday and practice on Thursday, and I don’t have time to see a doctor until Friday.

“I’m taking an ultrasound test, I’m looking into the doctor’s eyes, and I can see him saying to himself: ‘Geez, he’s got it again.’ The doctor can’t believe it, says it’s one of those one-in-a-million things, but I have a sizable tumor and he’s making plans for me to have surgery the next morning.

“ ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ I’m saying. ‘No, we have a task at hand. We have to focus on beating the Pittsburgh Steelers.’

“I tell the doctor this is what we’re going to do: ‘We’ll play Pittsburgh Sunday; on Monday we’ll show the players the film; on Tuesday we’ll get the game plan ready to play the Chargers. Tuesday night, I’ll check into the hospital.’

“First person I tell is Chuck. It’s a beautiful Friday afternoon, and Chuck and Shirley are barbecuing. I had been flying back and forth from back East, watching my father die from cancer, and I had just buried him, and bam, I have cancer.

“I’m turning to Chuck for advice. I no longer had a father, but Chuck’s there for me. If I don’t have Chuck and my wife. . . .

“Hey, I was the kind of kid that my parents would literally give me money for D’s; they were just so happy I didn’t get an F. I get ready to leave high school, and colleges are looking at me, and then they see my transcripts and all I’ve taken is wood shop and mechanics.

“If I want to play football in college, I have to go to this military academy in Virginia to get some college preparatory classes. I wasn’t a good student and probably wasn’t a very good person, and now my head’s shaved. I’m walking in formation, saluting, guns and the whole bit. Best thing that ever happened to me, but I wouldn’t have done any of it if it wasn’t for football. I do it, or I don’t play football.

“I have aspirations to go to the pros after a good career at Towson University. I’m an undersized safety and slow, but every team is looking for one slug to hustle and beat up people. But then I find out I have (testicular) cancer, and all that’s out the window.

“I’m engaged to this wonderful girl. She’s Italian and comes from a large family, and the doctors are telling her we’ll probably never have children. She sticks by me the whole way, and if she doesn’t, I’m probably back on the waterfront in Philly unloading Toyotas with four tattoos on my chest and smoking a pack of Pall Malls a day.

“We fight the cancer. I go from being a 212-pound college senior football player to a 170-pound prune. It gives you an opportunity to get your priorities straight, I’ll tell you that. It’s what Chuck is always preaching to our football team: There are more important things than football.

“But football and my family are everything to me. We beat the odds, and we have Joey and Jennifer. I become a strength coach (with the Colts) and work with some great people. Then Frank Kush takes the job in Baltimore, and the room was way too small for the both of us.

“I get the chance to work with Chuck in Seattle and things are going great, and then I get a second episode of cancer. I got two big scars running down my chest. I’m all bent over and they want to pump chemo into me 12 to 18 hours a day.

“I remember going into the hospital the first night, and we’re going to be playing the Jets in two weeks. The Jets are on Monday night TV, and I’m diagraming plays on TV. They’re pumping chemo into me, and then reality sets in. I’m not the hard ass I think I am. I start getting violently sick, and I could care less what Joe Walton is doing with the Jets. Only thing I’m trying to do is run to the toilet.

“You sit around feeling sorry for yourself, and you are licked. You don’t have a prayer. I keep working. I’m throwing up, but so what?

“I’m taking chemo up to Friday each week. I got no hair and I’m losing weight. I remember flying to Cincinnati and being sick all Friday night and Saturday, and then we get crushed by the Bengals. It’s our fifth straight loss. I’ve got cancer, I’m getting chemo, we’ve lost five in a row and we’re up in an airplane when the pilot comes on and says, ‘There’s a bomb on the plane.’ At that point I said, ‘I don’t give a damn; let it blow up.’ Enough’s enough.

“But we hang in there. We beat Philadelphia and Buddy Ryan, and then we go to Dallas for Thanksgiving with one day of preparation. Now Dallas has us cooked. They got the fork in us. We’re done, and they’re going to eat us for Thanksgiving. We kick the hell out of them, finish the year 10-6 and along the way I find out I no longer have cancer.

“It’s like Chuck always said, ‘When a man’s ass hits the ground, a man gets back up again.’ When I was in that plane in Cincinnati, (I) was on the floor, but then things got better.

“That’s what Chuck is all about. He was an underdog. He was born in Sewickley (Pa.), married Shirley while still in high school and had two kids before his first job. The victories don’t always go to those with the fastest feet or the strongest people. That’s what Chuck is all about; that’s what this football team is all about.

“It’s important, because you’re never going to hear it from anybody else. You have to know what he’s done since he’s gotten here. This is the only job he’s ever taken because he didn’t have to feed his family. This is where he started, and this is where he wanted to come back to. He still has that burning desire in his gut to win a Super Bowl.

“He’s redone the whole weight program. He’s redone the locker room, the video staff, the scouting department; we got Fred Stokes, Shane Conlan, Henry Rolling. What this guy has done in one year is unbelievable.

“Can he win? He’s won everywhere he has ever been. The players know that, because what he tells them every day is true. There’s no question we’re going to get this turned around.

“Working with Chuck, you get excited about coaching, excited about being around players, excited about the game. The whole time I’ve been with Chuck, there hasn’t been a game that we truly didn’t expect to win. It’s attitude. It’s winning football games. It’s fighting cancer.

“No inspirational little phrases. I don’t have the answer to what is life. One time I was close to death. I was 22, and I thought I was invincible. The next time, I was 31 and getting ready to face the Chargers.

“I know I’m appreciative of every day I have. I’m healthy now, no cancer, no problems, and I’ve learned this: You’ve got to dance every dance. There’s no guarantee about tomorrow.

“You ask me about dying and football and what it all means, and I can’t tell you. I’m not that deep. I know when I lose, I’m crushed. I know when we don’t practice well, I feel like crud. I know when I have time to spend with my wife and children, I enjoy every moment of it. I know I’m fortunate to be working with the absolute best. But I don’t have time to sit around and light candles, go in a trance and rationalize all these things.

“Hell, we open with Green Bay.”