Bill Belichick: Author
Do Your Job: 8 Ways to Win in Life From 8-Time Super Bowl Winning Coach Bill Belichick
This past week was the NFL owner’s meetings, where things are legislated out of the game of football, coaches drinks orange juice and pose for an awkward team picture. There are typically a few notable quotes throughout the week, but for the most part it’s one small stick of NFL news tossed on the smoldering fire before the inferno of the NFL Draft engulfs us at the end of April.
But the biggest news that was hip dropped this week, was that former Patriots coach (I’ll never get used to saying that and I refuse to, so let’s try it again) Patriots coaching legend, the one-man Mount Rushmore of the profession, the greatest coach to ever blow spittle through a whistle, Bill Belichick, is writing a book.
Of course, once the Boston Herald’s Andrew Callahan released this news, pundits everywhere immediately started speculating that this was going to be Coach Belichick’s rebuttal to The Dynasty documentary. It was quickly refuted and is believed to be a book on leadership. A lot to unpack here:
1. Can you imagine if Bill Belichick wrote a book in retaliation against a docu-series? That feels like the most un-Belichickian thing to do, though it would be a best-seller in this region for the rest of time. We’ll never know how much or how little the Coach feels about that show, but I can’t imagine that his first writing credit would be responding beat by beat to a 10-part documentary, but what if it was?
“Wes Welker says I let Hernandez get away with murder? He’s mad because he made a bunch of stupid jokes about the Jets and I benched him for a series in a playoff game, that we eventually lost. But I don’t expect him to comprehend at that high level, I mean I can think of 46 other times things went over his head. Like why Danny Amendola has two Super Bowl rings and he has none. Or why Julian Edelman and Deion Branch have Super Bowl MVPs and the Broncos got their teeth kicked in by the Seahawks. Wes has never been able to grasp the finer points.”
“Where did they find Brandon Lloyd?”
“Matt Cassell wasn’t on the screen as much when he started 15 games for us as he was in the 5th episode of this (bleeping) show.”
2. I would love it if Bill Belichick bought a cabin in the woods and on typewriter paper just pounded out a gigantic autobiography, twice the girth of those written about historical figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Ulysses S. Grant. I don’t think Coach could write a book too long. 5,000 pages? “Let’s go!” 10,000 pages? “I need to burn 90 hours of vacation time, now I have a reason.” 20,000 pages? “Mike & Mully, hoist that thing up onto this alter of palates I built and put on another pot of coffee. I’m about to become a scholar!”
It would be great if only for the deep dive rabbit holes Bill Belichick would travel down about long snappers, the pooch punt, the modern application of the Wing-T formation and 1,000 pages on Lawrence Taylor. (On second thought, maybe the book Bill Belichick is writing is just about Lawrence Taylor. Most of the time when an athlete or coach writers a book about one figure or relationship during their career is feels like a cash grab, but a book by Bill Belichick about coaching Lawrence Taylor would be a classic. Like Brian’s Song, except nobody dies aside from Ron Jaworski, Joe Theismann and Bam Bam Bigelow. (RIP.))
What we will likely get is a book on leadership, sort of like the one I’m reading right now “Elevate and Dominate: 21 Ways to Win On and Off the Field” by Deion Sanders. These books are so common, anybody with a modicum of success and or notoriety gets offered this book deal. As a collector and a reader, I pre-order signed copies of a lot of these for relatively cheap. And for better or worse, before I add them to my signed library, I always read them.
Most are okay and typically quick reads (like Coach Prime’s.) Some are actually very good (like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life). Some are horrendous and never needed to be written, ever (Just Show Up: And Other Enduring Values from Baseball’s Iron Man by Cal Ripken Jr. Best I can say is this book is, it is aptly titled because all Cal did was show up to the photo shoot for the book jacket, because at 208-pages, this book is 205 pages too long. This could’ve been a pamphlet. Just Show up is the Gigli of bad sports-leadership books.)
Bill Belichick’s book will be a success, all of these leadership books go to #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. People love buying them as gifts or for themselves. Like just having this on the book shelf in their office, even if they don’t read it, by some sort of osmosis they’ll soak up the knowledge of that person because its a book with a glamour shot of an athlete or coach in a suit and a title that features both a colon and a number. The hope is that Belichick gives us the management parables and stories from his 49-year career in the NFL and his life time around football. That’s where the true gold will be mined in a book like this.
But more so, this will be a success because it is one of the first times that Bill Belichick has ever let us in. The first time was when he partnered up with Rich Eisen and they did the NFL 100 series. (Coach won an Emmy for his work on that show by the way.) Even if this book is short and lacking details, (I’m looking at you Cal) I’ll probably read it twice the month it comes out. Bill Belichick has refused to give us more than breadcrumbs for 25-years, if this book is a crouton I’ll be thrilled. If it’s a whole slice, I’ll hand these books out at Christmas like I’m Oprah.
The only question is, what title do they go with? Do Your Job or No Days Off? I think the former for the first offering and the latter for the follow-up, because this thing is going have more sequels than Fast and the Furious. Bill Belichick is about to become the new Tony Robbins.