FASSEL FUELED

If the guarantee wasn’t quite as jolting as when Joe Namath promised the Jets would beat the Colts in the Super Bowl or as dramatic as when Mark Messier promised he would bring the Rangers a Stanley Cup, this was close.

When Jim Fassel stood up the day before Thanksgiving and said that without a doubt the New York Giants would be in the NFL playoffs, the world noticed.

And laughed.

The Giants had just suffered two awful defeats, badly played games in which the Giants seemed barely competitive. It seemed more likely that Fassel would be fired at the end of the season than lead the Giants into the playoffs.

But Fassel isn’t jobless. He’s a hero.

The Giants haven’t lost since Fassel stood up, chest out, fist pumping, and made his guarantee. The Giants have earned home-field advantage from now until the Super Bowl if they keep winning. This week they host the Philadelphia Eagles, who are 0-8 against Fassel-coached Giant teams.

And it is Fassel’s promise, his audacity, which is getting credit for the Giants’ surge.

“Coach Fassel took the heat for us,” running back Tiki Barber says. “We were under a microscope and things weren’t going so well. Once Coach stood up and said what he said, I think it brought us together a little bit. If he was willing to put himself and his job on the line like that, then maybe we should play a little harder, a little better.

Maybe it was a little surprising. None of us knew what was going to happen. But once Fassel said what he said, it made a difference.”

From the time Fassel came to the Giants as head coach in 1997, there have been the whispers. He’s a laid-back California guy. He’s too soft for New York. He’s all offense, no defense. He’s too nice, too sweet, always too something.

“Yeah,” Giant General Manager Ernie Accorsi says. “I heard that. Surfer dude. I’ve even heard that. But it’s a wrong impression. Jim is one of the toughest men I know. What he’s done with us, the whole thing with the guarantee, that was a big gamble.

“You never know how that will come out. He pushed a button, essentially took all the pressure off the players and put it on himself. The only person he told was our PR director, Pat Hanlon. Pat told Jim that might not be a good idea and Jim told Pat he wasn’t asking for an opinion, he was just letting Pat know what was coming.”

If people are surprised, and many are, that Fassel would be so brash, they shouldn’t be. That’s what a 73-year-old ex-football coach up in northwest Montana says. Hal Sherbeck is something of a coaching legend too, a stern, fair, smart man who won national titles at Fullerton College and who took a high school backup quarterback from Anaheim, turned him into a star and then into a coach.

“I knew exactly what Jim was doing,” Sherbeck says. “Jim was taking the heat off his team and putting it on himself. Everybody talked about what Jim said and left the team alone. If it didn’t work, then, yep, Jim would have probably been fired. He knew that. But that’s Jim. People think he’s laid back? He’s not. People think he’s soft? He’s not. What Jim is, Jim’s his father’s son. A tough, fair man and a very good coach.”

The story of Jim Fassel the coach really begins with Jim Fassel the son.

Bud Fassel, the father, had been an assistant fire chief in Anaheim, but the hours were long and irregular and what Bud Fassel needed was to be home for his son and two daughters. Bud wanted to be home for dinner and to play catch with Jim. Maybe Bud would have been a coach too, but World War II had come along, Bud had gone to war and then come home to take any job he could get. Fireman.

Across the street from Bud lived Claire Van Hoorebeke. Van Hoorebeke was the football coach at Anaheim High. Van Horrbeke was in need of an equipment manager. Bud Fassel took the job. Jim Fassel came along.

“How long have I loved football?” Jim Fassel asks. “From forever. Practically from the time I could walk, I would go with my father to the football field every afternoon. I’d pick up socks or polish shoes. I’d touch the footballs and I’ll tell you what. For the longest time I thought my dream job would be as the head coach of Anaheim High or Fullerton College.”

Fassel first became a hero in the neighborhood when he got to polish the shoes of his cousin, Mickey Flynn. Flynn was the first bonafide high school football star in Orange County, a speedy halfback with flair. “All my friends wanted to touch Mickey’s shoes,” Fassel says. “Mickey still calls and asks me to polish his shoes.”

A great shoe polisher he might have been, but Fassel was only an average high school quarterback. He wasn’t even the starter at Anaheim, though he did play at Anaheim Stadium his senior year. Anaheim played Mater Dei in a playoff game in 1966, in front of 33,000 people, as Fassel remembers. “I didn’t start, but I got in the game,” Fassel says. “What an atmosphere. What a football game. We won.”

Sherbeck saw something in the lanky, quiet quarterback and recruited Fassel to Fullerton College. Seven games into an undefeated season, Sherbeck was unhappy with the quarterback play. When Sherbeck posted the starting lineup before warmups, the quarterback spot was blank. After watching Fassel warm up, Sherbeck pulled aside the freshman and said, “You’re starting.”

What Sherbeck liked in Fassel was the response. “All Jim said was, ‘Thank you, coach. I’ll do the job.’ And then he went out and completed 14 of 23 passes for four touchdowns and 310 yards,” Sherbeck says. “That was his first-ever start, high school or college. We won the national title that year. From that time on, I had my starting quarterback. You think that wasn’t toughness he showed? Which is why I wasn’t surprised when Jim made his guarantee.

“And it’s the kind of toughness his father always had. Bud Fassel was quiet, but he always got the job done, did what was needed. If kids were without shoes, Bud would get him some. If kids weren’t getting enough to eat, Bud would bring sandwiches from home. And that’s what Bud always taught Jim. Do whatever it takes to get the job done. I told Jim this last week. I wrote him a letter and I told him how proud his dad would be of him.”

Bud Fassel died in a car crash in 1992. Jim’s mother, Dorothy, died of cancer in 1999, during the football season. While Jim was flying home for the funeral, Giant defensive end Michael Strahan ripped Fassel’s offense. Fassel came home from the funeral and handled the situation. Quietly.

This year, while making the playoff guarantee, Fassel also put his coaching staff off-limits to the media and decreed that his players could speak of nothing but the upcoming game. No talking about coaches, plays, one another. No criticizing anything in the media. The players obeyed.

“I’ll tell you what,” Fassel says, “of all the big wins we’ve had here, of all the stuff that’s happened, I’ve gotten more e-mails, more calls and mail, about making the guarantee. People basically said, ‘Way to go, Coach. Stick up for something.’ ”

Of course, if the Giants had lost the next three games, those same people would have been e-mailing something different.

“Jim told me, ‘I know I have to win. Otherwise I’m gone,’ ” Sherbeck says.

Fassel knows that too.

“When I took this job,” Fassel says, “I listened to WFAN [sports talk radio] here. They were having a debate on what was the hardest coaching job in the country, Yankees or Giants. The decision was that it was the Giants. You see what happened to some of the coaches. Ray Handley, he went away and doesn’t want to be found. Dan Reeves practically destroyed his health. Yes, it’s hard on coaches here, but I wanted this job. I do wish my dad could see me doing this job.”

Here Fassel must pause. Eight years after Bud’s death, Fassel still misses his father. He has started a scholarship fund at Anaheim High in honor of his parents. Jim wants to do what his father always did--come up with a way to sneak some assistance to kids who need it.

Last year Fassel was honored as Anaheim High’s distinguished alumnus of the year. Fassel and his wife, Kitty, who is a Fullerton Troy High graduate, came home to renew friendships and rehash glory days. Then Jim and Kitty went back to New Jersey.

Fassel isn’t a California surfer dude. He is a coach who will do whatever it takes. He guarantees that.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.