KANSAS CITY, Mo. #### Vermeil has been coach of the year at every level of football from Pop Warner to the pros. He's got nothing left to prove.
That may explain why the man who won a Super Bowl with the Rams in 1999 is looking to try something different now that he's retired from the Chiefs, and will take a position with Lifetime Television for Women writing sob-story screenplays.
"Football has been great to me, but it's time to follow my dream," Vermeil said with a lump in his throat at a press conference here today. The emotional California native has worn his emotions on his sleeve throughout his career, often bursting into tears when his defense forces a turnover, or a kick coverage team pins an opponent inside its twenty-yard line.
"Our kids and our grandkids are grown, so this team became my kids," Vermeil said as he fought back sniffles. Quarterback Trent Green came up to complain that Tony Gonzalez wasn't sharing the Legos, and Vermeil warned the tight end to play nice or he'd tell team owner Lamar Hunt to trade him to Buffalo.
Lifetime TV is 50% owned by The Walt Disney Company and targets female audiences with "disease-of-the-week" films, real-life accounts of husbands who forget their wives' birthdays, and other domestic tragedies.
Vermeil, the oldest coach in the NFL until his retirement at 69, holds the state record for the longest distance driven by a senior citizen with a turn signal on according to the Missouri Highway Patrol. Vermeil traveled the length of Interstate 70 from St. Louis to Kansas City, a distance of 250 miles, with his right blinker flashing when he took over as head coach of the Chiefs in 2001.
"I came out of the clover-leaf at St. Charles and just completely forgot about it!"
FOXBORO, Mass. In a sharply-worded warning, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue cautioned New England head coach Bill Belichick to "keep his offense out of the single-wing era" after the Patriots used a long-moribund technique to score an extra point against the Miami Dolphins today.
Belichick called aging Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie's number for a dropkick extra point, and in his post-game press conference threatened to revive other early twentieth-century plays if necessary to reach the Super Bowl for the third year in a row, and fourth in the last five.
"We're looking at the quick kick, the Statue of Liberty, and the student-body sweep," Belichick said. "We'll use every socket wrench in the tool box."
There had not been in a successful drop-kick in the NFL since 1941 before Flutie connected in the fourth quarter of New England's season-ending loss to the Miami Dolphins. Tagliabue said he would ask league officials to monitor the Patriots' offense next week against the Jacksonville Jaguars to ensure that they are not unfairly reviving plays that have fallen into well-deserved disuse.
"Belichik thinks he's a genius because he's read a couple of football books instead of just the waffle-house menus other coaches carry on the sidelines," Tagliabue said. "We have a pro football Hall of Fame in Canton for people who are into history. Fans don't want to watch that stuff on TV."
Tagliabue particularly cautioned Belichik against using the Flying Wedge, which was outlawed by President Theodore Roosevelt after several student fatalities in the early years of his administration.
For his part, Belichick was unapologetic. "As Victor Hugo used to say when we were assistant coaches with the Browns, 'There's nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come and gone.'"
Con Chapman is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and "CannaCorn", a novel about minor league baseball to be published by Joshua Tree Publishing in 2009. He has written a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His articles and humor have appeared in newspapers and magazines including The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and The Atlantic Monthly, among others.
