What drove Vermeil - to the brink

Whistle in His Mouth, Heart on His Sleeve

By Gordon Forbes

Triumph Books. 235 pp. $24.95

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Reviewed by Kevin Noonan

He's probably the most popular man ever to coach a professional sports team in Philadelphia, even though he didn't bring home a Super Bowl title and left town burned out.

Failing to reach pro football's pinnacle doesn't seem to matter when it comes to Dick Vermeil, as Gordon Forbes relates in his detailed biography, Dick Vermeil: Whistle in His Mouth, Heart on His Sleeve.

Forbes certainly has the credentials to tell this tale. He was the Eagles beat writer for The Inquirer during almost all of Vermeil's tenure with the team, and then for 20 years he was the top NFL writer for USA Today. Forbes has covered more than 900 games in his career, including 39 Super Bowls, and he was so knowledgeable about the game that the other beat writers covering the Eagles gave him the nickname "Coach."

But this isn't just an X's and O's tribute to Vermeil. Forbes goes behind the scenes to find out what made the complex coach tick and eventually what made him a ticking time bomb. Vermeil declined to be interviewed for the book (he told Forbes he didn't feel his life story was worth telling), so the author fell back on an old journalist's trick - if your subject won't talk about himself, find other people who will. And that's what Forbes did, interviewing coaches who worked with and against Vermeil, as well as dozens of his former players with the Eagles, St. Louis Rams and Kansas City Chiefs.

Even though Vermeil finally won a Super Bowl with St. Louis and ended his coaching career with Kansas City, this is definitely a Philadelphia story. Of the book's 14 chapters, 10 deal with Vermeil's rise and fall with the Eagles.

The book begins at the beginning, Vermeil's formative years growing up in Calistoga, Calif., in the heart of the Napa Valley wine country. But that's not just a convenient and chronological way to structure this book. Vermeil's impressive work ethic and never-ending quest for perfection have their roots in his hometown, where his father, Louis Vermeil, worked long hours in his car repair shop and expected his sons to do the same. Louis Vermeil never counted the hours he worked and often toiled late into the night, a trait for which his son would become famous - or, depending on your perspective, infamous.

Vermeil was an overachieving athlete in high school and college, and he paid his dues as he climbed the coaching ladder, from high school to junior college to college to the NFL. And no matter what the level, his burning desire to succeed was the same.

Forbes goes into great detail in relating how Eagles owner Leonard Tose and general manager Jim Murray fell in love with Vermeil when they watched him on television as his UCLA team upset Ohio State, 23-10, in the 1976 Rose Bowl. And he chronicles each year of Vermeil's tenure with the Eagles as the coach practically willed his team to its first Super Bowl berth following the 1980 season.

Forbes also delves deeply into the problems that eventually forced Vermeil to walk away from the thing he loved, his Eagles. The long hours and endless grind were bad enough, but when the players went out on strike in 1982 and the aging Eagles started to fall apart, Vermeil fell apart, too.

Whenever possible, Forbes allows Vermeil's contemporaries to tell the story, and all of them speak of Vermeil with unabashed affection while also acknowledging that his fanaticism and long, long hours could be tough to live with.

And that might be the most fascinating thing about Dick Vermeil - how he was able to work his coaches and players so hard and still inspire so much loyalty and, yes, love.

Perhaps the most telling quote about Vermeil comes from Stan Walters, a Pro Bowl tackle on the Eagles' Super Bowl team of 1980-81: "He was the kind of guy you'd run through a wall for. At the same time, there were times when you'd want to put him through a wall."

Forbes doesn't pull any punches when he describes Vermeil's over-the-top approach, but he also doesn't try to mask his admiration for Vermeil and the way he not only worked with other coaches and players, but forged lifelong relationships with them. And that's why this book is more about Dick Vermeil the man than it is about Dick Vermeil the coach.