Drill Sergeant Tom

The quarterback, or the referee, or the running back makes a mistake and Tom Coughlin’s face turns red. The TV camera zooms in to catch the coach barking, and fans get a chance to lip-read words they would never want their children to hear.

Once again, the stereotype is advanced.

Fair or not, Coughlin has carved out a reputation as Drill Sergeant Tom, the rule-making taskmaster who has never found a reason to smile or an excuse to shorten practice.

Coughlin says he won’t change who he is, and there’s not much he can do to make outsiders change their opinions of him.

But he thinks it could be time to update some of the labels that both he and his team earned after their first training camp, when Coughlin took his martinet act to the limit in order to establish control of a first-year franchise lacking in talent.

“It’s foolish,” he says. “It irritates me when people who don’t know the truth and haven’t taken the time to investigate it simply go by a perception that was created in 1995. We have rules, they are enforced. But are they the only recognizable interest today? I don’t think so.”

With the Jaguars two games away from the Super Bowl, their most recognizable interest are their players, most of whom were hand-picked by Coughlin, who left Boston College for Jacksonville only on owner Wayne Weaver’s promise that he would have total control.

“The best decision I ever made in regard to this franchise was hiring Tom Coughlin and putting him in charge,” Weaver says.

Almost all of Coughlin’s most-important decisions have been good.

The original core of the team -- Mark Brunell, Jimmy Smith and Keenan McCardell--were all considered projects at one point. Finding them was a result of intensive study and a willingness to take chances on unproven players.

To this day, the Jaguars bring in as many players each week for workouts as any team in the league. Coughlin is always looking for that hidden gem. Ask him about any player on the NFL roster and he quickly rattles off a number, a team and a short resume of his strengths and weaknesses.

“That’s a Bill Parcells thing,” Coughlin says, referring to his No. 1 mentor and former boss with the Giants. “I remember if you would quiz him on a player, he’d never be satisfied. He’d have to get it. If you were talking about cornerbacks for the Arizona Cardinals, he’d have to tell you who the backups were. It’s cumulative. It’s a virtue of preparation, study, constantly reinforcing how you feel about these players.”

Of course, putting together an encyclopedic knowledge of the league and its players takes time. And that’s time spent away from a family that includes his wife, Judy, and four children.

Those who know Coughlin only through sound bites and highlights might take him for someone who told his family to deal with it and moved on.

But while he concedes the struggle for balance between work and home has never been easy--”I was at the wrong hospital for the birth of our first child,” he says--it’s one he has never abandoned.

“It’s something you constantly go back and forth on,” Coughlin says. “You think, ‘How can I correct this?’ Can I find a way to move back more consistently in their lives?”

His children missed time with their father as his career advanced from that of a travel-weary college assistant, to NFL assistant, to head coach at Boston College, to man in charge of the Jaguars.

But somewhere between the 16-hour days, the working vacations and the never-ending cycle of 31 football seasons, Coughlin figures a lesson likely seeped down to his kids.

“You have to believe that because of who you are, what you represent, the values you believe in, that your children are being raised properly,” he says.

At home and in football, his beliefs have everything to do with work ethic, discipline, consistency and, of course, rules.

Sometimes his way of doing things puts him in awkward situations.

Before the playoffs last season, he drew criticism for fining two players who nearly missed a team meeting. The reason: they were speeding to be on time and had been in a rollover car accident.

Another incident was the reported rift between Coughlin and Brunell after an early loss this season to the Tennessee Titans. Both denied a rift, although neither can deny that Coughlin questioned Brunell’s decison-making, both publicly and in front of the team.

Unlike Parcells, Coughlin does not alter his method of motivation and discipline depending on individual personalities. It’s a commitment to fairness the coach says he’ll never shirk from.

“When a player comes here, he needs to know that there’s consistency, he needs to know that there’s fairness and he needs to know how he’s going to be treated,” Coughlin says. “Mark Brunell is going to be treated the same way as the No. 53 guy on the roster.”

Although some players grumble about the Coughlin system, most seem to thrive in it. For any differences Brunell has had with Coughlin, he has also made a point of saying, publicly at least, that he has tremendous respect for his coach.

Running back Fred Taylor has thrived in the system, as well.

“Coaches are people with split personalities,” Taylor says. “When I got here, I thought he was going to be the tough, hollar-all-the-time kind of guy. But you kind of find out that he’s not like that. He’s pretty cool, in a sense.”

Coughlin? Cool? Even he probably wouldn’t take it that far.

But he insists the drill-sergeant label has got to change.

“You have to give me a rank a lot higher than that,” he says, “or I won’t be paying any attention.”