It was a darn good column. A little depressing for those of us in the business. As sportswriters, we concede that the coaches and players know more about sports than us. They make more money, drive better cars, and own bigger houses. When it turns out that a professional football coach also does what we do better than us, that hurts.
He was pretty humble (very un-sportswriter-like) about his writing talents when I asked him about it the other day.
"I got a request from somebody asking if I would do it," said Belichick. "It took me a while. Several days. You know how it is in this business. You write something and then they edit for you and tell you how it's going to come out. They made a few grammatical corrections to say the least."
Au contraire, said Bill's editor at the Times, David Shipley.
"We called him and asked him if he wanted to do something and he came back with this perfect document," said Shipley, editor of the newspaper's op-ed page. "It needed hardly any editing. It was one of those rare moments when he hit it out of the park. He wrote a terrific piece and it was all his idea."
A Wesleyan grad, Belichick isn't one for glib quotes, especially when he's talking about an upcoming game. He comes across as almost intentionally boring. When he met with the media Monday, he actually said, "I truly believe that the team who plays better on Sunday is gonna win."
Even worse, I saw people writing down the quote. I wrote it down. Just to have proof that he really said it without grinning.
The Patriots' coach is a deep thinker and a virtual renaissance man compared with some of his self-important contemporaries. Belichick knows that this is an election year. He knows the price of higher education and health care. He's got a variety of interests and uncommon intellectual curiosity. But he chooses to be careful with his words. He's a skull-imploding bore at the podium and his players are encouraged to follow the leader. There'll be no cocky Patriot quotes taped to the walls of the Panther locker room Sunday night. The Patriots speak in the image of their leader.
That's why it was so revealing to read Bill's column a few hours before last year's Super Bowl. We get a sense of what's going on in his mind this week.
