Recent Coughlin remark shows why he’s difficult to like

By Anthony Bialy  |   Thursday, April 05, 2007  |  Comments( 0 )

New York Giants
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Tom Coughlin needs to get with the times: Comparing the media's contempt for oneself to the way they portray Adolf Hitler is so 1944. Coughlin would have been better served by drawing up a parallel with Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein; or, he could have scored points with either anti-communists by dropping Stalin's name or history buffs with a reference to a slightly more obscure monster like Pol Pot. Of course, he could have not compared himself to an all-time villain, either, but his attempt to articulate why the media gives him a hard time illustrates precisely why he gets a hard time.

Coughlin compared himself to the somewhat controversial former German leader during the Phoenix owners meetings. After being asked about how he's treated by the press, he opined, "You know, (the Giants' vice president of communications, Pat Hanlon) tells me about it, what's going on. Hitler and then me, in that order. Unfortunate, but it is."

The good news is that at least Tom recognizes that some people in the world don't like him. Still, even members of the routinely vicious New York press have to be surprised by a self-comparison between a man whose leadership led to the deaths of millions and a man whose leadership has killed nothing more than halftime momentum. Is it even necessary to point out that the coach just may have overstated things?

Part of the reason Coughlin gets treated roughly is that, while he's accomplished quite a bit, he's only accomplished so much. For one, he did the best job coaching an expansion team ever, but he couldn't get the Jaguars to a Super Bowl. For all their success, one has to bring to mind games like when his team surrendered a home halftime lead to allow the Titans to beat them for the third time in the 1999 regular season and ensuing playoffs. Then there's his current gig. He's done things like having the conviction to make, and stick to, a decision to play Eli Manning even though he knew that, sans Ben Roethlisberger, rookie quarterbacks will inevitably flail at least a little; still, while it helped the less-famous QB brother develop, he's still struggling to be more than mediocre under his coach.

And overall, he turned around a Giants team that was struggling, but now blows leads or gets blown out a little too frequently, often to the consternation of his own players. There's Jeremy Shockey, of course, and also the now-retired Tiki Barber, who called Coughlin out during his several thousand interviews, appearances, and hosting gigs. This, after Coughlin resuscitated Barber's career with nothing more than getting him to carry the ball upward. Gratitude apparently only lasts so long.

Exacerbating his portrayal in the media is the fact that Coughlin is basically a version of former boss Bill Parcells, only somehow more gruff. That might be why he got a ridiculous level of criticism for the most overblown non-issue in recent memory, his decree that players show up five minutes early to meetings. Any professional in any field should know that, when a meeting starts at, say, 9 a.m., it doesn't mean you walk through the doorframe at 9 a.m., saunter over to the snack table, and fix yourself a coffee and grab a bagel; it means the business to be conducted commences at 9 a.m. It's hard to be sympathetic to players who turn on a coach in part because he wants discipline, order, and control. No, not like Hitler, to quell the obvious sarcastic comparison, but any success achieved by Coughlin's teams has come from him being as strict as a Catholic school nun.

At the same time, that sternness means he'll never be cuddly with journalists, and Coughlin's sunshine-free demeanor also means this story will hound the coach for the remainder of eternity. Of course, Coughlin shouldn't have compared himself to the all-time evil king, even if he was willing to put himself in second place.

The statement is nothing to freak out about, including Anti-Defamation League director Abraham H. Foxman announcing, "Giants coach Tom Coughlin appears to be ignorant of who Hitler was and what he did when he likens criticism he received for a losing football season to that against the man who caused World War II, murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and millions of others."

Um, Coughlin obviously knows who Hitler is, which is why he made the comparison. But of course it was, let's say, a bit of a stretch, even for an exaggeration.

Coughlin's lack of lovability, a positive quality for a coach, has gained him some triumphs but not much success in getting the press to embrace him, and it would be a lot easier for them to like him if he were less willing to make silly comparisons to the treatment afforded to a very bad man.
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