Joe McMullen and Bill Johnson were the names and they are the answer to the ultimate trivia question.
Unless you know something about the life and times of Bill Walsh, you won”t get it. And when I tell you these two men were selected for head coaching jobs over Walsh when circumstances clearly dictated that he was the best choice, the first thing you”re apt to say is, “I don”t get it.”
I don”t, and I”ve known about the scenarios involving them since the times in which they occurred in San Jose and Cincinnati. More about that later.
First, though, pardon me if I sound like a Walsh worshipper. The truth is I am. Having known him for almost 40 years, my esteem for Bill Walsh matches what I feel for Joe DiMaggio, whom I also was fortunate to know personally. Esteem doesn”t get any higher than that.
Of course, I can”t understand why everyone who knows the shape of a football doesn”t have this level of admiration for Walsh. If they are truly going to build a stadium for the 49ers in Silicon Valley, let me be the first to say that it should be the Bill Walsh Stadium, or complex, or whatever. That”s due. And if the Vince Lombardi trophy is a coveted award in the Super Bowl, a Bill Walsh award say for the team with the best regular season record or the No. 1 offense should be no less revered. That”s overdue. This, after all, is the genius whose offensive schemes brought pro football out of the dark ages.
A diagram of “The Catch,” the play that launched the 49ers” dominant era in the 80s, hangs in a favored place on my wall. Unsolicited, Walsh simply drew it up, signed it with a personal note, and sent it to me one day not too many years ago. The diagram is framed in a montage that includes some stuff I wrote during “The Catch” era, a Sports Illustrated cover of Dwight Clark”s amazing leap to make it, a photo of Walsh and a letter he sent to me in 1967.
The letter is the most intriguing piece not because of what”s in it, but what”s on it. The logo of a Continental Football League team named the San Jose Apaches, which disappeared soon after. The Apaches, in fact, existed only one season. Except in the mind of Walsh, who tried to forget that they existed at all. The implications of that would be that I didn”t meet him that year, or cover a team that he coached to an 8-4 season, or watch that team play in a near-empty junior college stadium against the likes of the Orange County Ramblers and the Victoria Steelers.
The CFL, also long gone, was a nationwide minor league for the NFL and AFL of that period. But it was kind of strange. It actually had a team named the Charter Oaks in Hartford, Connecticutt. More than one of the franchise owners were unscrupulous people. The Akron Vulcans folded after only one preseason game when their owner absconded with the proceeds. The Apache owners were guys who were in trouble with their creditors.
Walsh, in fact, had to rush to the ticket window to grab the proceeds for his players before the sheriff got them. But even in these obscure circumstances little things Walsh did indicated that he knew he was bound for greatness. One of those things was personally seeing to it that his San Jose press corps (me) was flown in someone”s small Cessna to cover road games.
His college coach at San Jose State knew he was destined, too. The coach predicted that both Walsh and his teammate, Dick Vermeil, would make names for themselves as coaches.
Who didn”t know it was the Spartan Foundation, the San Jose State booster group which then held a tight rein over who would coach the Spartan football team. Heavily influenced by Penn State alums who paid the bills, it dictated that one of its own, the aforementioned Joe McMullen, would be the head coach over the logical choice, Walsh, who by then had the credentials of a winner.
The San Jose Mercury News didn”t print the reason McMullen abruptly resigned and disappeared less than halfway into his first and only season. There were rumors.
Shortly after the Apaches folded, the legendary Paul Brown summoned Walsh, who would become the next legend, to be his quarterback coach with the Cincinnati Bengals. It was there that Bill began to become a known entity and the Bengals began to be a reckoning force consistent with Bill”s conversion of quarterbacks Ken Anderson and Virgil Carter as NFL passing leaders.
Which would make it logical that Brown, an offensive strategist, would name Walsh, who would say he learned much of what he knows from Brown, his successor when he retired in 1976. But again logic did not follow a logical path. Bill (“Tiger”) Johnson, the line coach whom Brown inexplicably promoted to head the Bengals, resigned two seasons later and lived out the rest of his football career as Cincinnati”s tight end coach.
Walsh moved on to the San Diego Chargers and one day, out of the blue, called me and asked that I write a column about him to support his bid for the head coaching job at Stanford. The column would be the first public indication that Walsh was interested in the position. I like to think it helped him get it. Who knows?
His trip to the top of the mountain proceeded steadily from there. With the 49ers he would begin by vanquishing the hold the Dallas Cowboys held over San Francisco, followed by the vindication of defeating Brown”s Bengals in the first of five Super Bowl triumphs in Walsh”s tenure as coach and then as president.
One day we talked about why the season with the San Jose Apaches was never mentioned in his bios at Stanford or with the 49ers. It had been omitted, he said, because it had been a pivotal year for him. If not for the call from Paul Brown, he said he would have given up coaching and spent the rest of his life as a teacher.
The fact is, Walsh did become a teacher. You can ask any number of present and past head coaches in the NFL who copied his style.
So, finally, we get to the most recent obstacle in Walsh”s life. His possible death. It”s an obstacle he may not overcome. But in the days ahead he”ll be teaching us all something again.
About courage.
Editor”s note: John Lindblom is a former Bay Area sports beat writer who now covers local sports and a column for the Record-Bee.
