Sid Gillman

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Sid Gillman
Date of birth	October 26, 1911
Place of birth	Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Date of death	January 3, 2003 (aged 91)
Place of death	Carlsbad, California, U.S.
Position(s)	Head Coach
College	Ohio State
Honors	American Football League Champion, 1963
Career Record	123-104-7 (including Postseason)
Championships       Won	1963 AFL Championship
Coaching Stats	Pro Football Reference
Coaching Stats	DatabaseFootball
Team(s) as a player
1936	Cleveland Rams
Team(s) as a coach/administrator
1955-1959 1960 1961-1969 1970-1971 1973-1974	NFL Los Angeles Rams AFL Los Angeles Chargers AFL San Diego Chargers NFL San Diego Chargers NFL Houston Oilers
College Football Hall of Fame
Pro Football Hall of Fame, 1983

Sidney "Sid" Gillman (October 26, 1911 - January 3, 2003) was an American football coach and innovator. Gillman's insistence on stretching the football field by throwing deep downfield passes, instead of short passes to running backs or wide receivers at the sides of the line of scrimmage, made football into the modern game that it is today.

[edit] Biography

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Gillman played college football at Ohio State University under legendary coach Francis "Shut the Gates of Mercy" Schmidt, forming the basis of his "West Coast offense."^[1] He was a Team Captain and All-Big Ten end in 1933.

Always deeply interested in the game, while working as a movie theater usher, he removed football segments from newsreels that the theater would show, so that he could take them home and study them on a projector he had bought. This dedication to filmed football plays that made Gillman the first coach to study game footage, something that all coaches do today.^[2]

Gillman played one year in the American Football League for the Cleveland Rams, then became an assistant coach at Denison University, Ohio State University, and was an assistant coach to Earl Blaik of Army, then head coach at Miami University and at the University of Cincinnati. His totals as a college head coach are spectacular: 10 years, 81-19-2.

He returned to the NFL as a head coach with the Los Angeles Rams, leading the team to the NFL's championship game, and then moved to the American Football League, where he coached the Los Angeles and San Diego Chargers to five Western Division titles and one league championship in the first six years of the league's existence.

His greatest coaching success came after he was persuaded by Barron Hilton, then the Chargers' majority owner, to become the head coach of the American Football League franchise he planned to operate in Los Angeles. When the team's general manager, Frank Leahy, became ill during the Chargers' founding season, Gillman took on additional responsibilities as general manager.

As the first coach of the Chargers, Gillman gave the team a personality that matched his own. He was mercurial. Gillman's concepts formed the foundation of the so-called "West Coast offense" that pro football teams are still using.^[3][4]

He had much to do with the American Football League being able to establish itself. Gillman was a thorough professional. In order to compete with him, his peers had to learn pro ways. They learned, and the American Football League became the genesis of modern professional football.

"Sid Gillman brought class to the AFL," Oakland Raiders managing general partner Al Davis once said of the man he served under on that first Chargers team. "Being part of Sid's organization was like going to a laboratory for the highly developed science of professional football." Through Gillman's tenure as head coach, the Chargers went 87-57-6 and won five AFL Western Division titles. In 1963 they captured the only league championship the club ever won by outscoring the Boston Patriots, 51-10, in the American Football League championship game in Balboa Stadium. That game was a measure of Gillman's genius.

He crafted a game plan he entitled "Feast or Famine" that used motion**, then seldom seen, to negate the Patriots' blitzes. His plan freed running back Keith Lincoln to rush for 206 yards. In addition to Lincoln, on Gillman's teams through the '60s were these notable players: wide receiver Lance Alworth; offensive tackle Ron Mix; running back Paul Lowe; quarterback John Hadl; and defensive linemen Ernie Ladd and Earl Faison (Alworth and Mix are Hall of Famers). Gillman was one of only two head coaches to hold that position for the entire 10-year existence of the American Football League (the other was Hank Stram, who coached the Dallas Texans and Kansas City Chiefs from 1960 through 1974).

Gillman approached then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle in 1963 with the idea of having the champions of the AFL and the NFL play a single final game, but his idea was not implemented until the Super Bowl game was played in 1967.

Following his tenure with San Diego, he coached the Houston Oilers for two years from 1973-1974, helping bring the club out of the funk it had been in for many seasons prior, and closer to playoff contention. He later served as a consultant for both Dick Vermeil's Philadelphia Eagles and the United States Football League's Los Angeles Express.

Gillman's influence on the modern game can be seen by listing the current and former coaches and executives who either played with him or coached for him:

• Al LoCasale, an Oakland Raiders executive
• Al Davis, the Oakland Raiders' owner
• Chuck Noll, who coached the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowl titles
• Ara Parseghian, former coach at the University of Notre Dame
• Bo Schembechler, former coach at the University of Michigan
• Chuck Knox, former coach of several NFL teams
• Dick Vermeil, coach of several NFL teams
• George Allen, coach of the Rams and Washington Redskins

Don Coryell, the coach at San Diego State University when Gillman was coaching the San Diego Chargers, would bring his team to Chargers' practices to watch how Gillman ran his practices. Coryell went on to coach in the NFL, and some of his assistants, influenced by the Gillman style, included coaches Joe Gibbs , Ernie Zampese and Russ A. Molzahn.

Besides the downfield pass, film footage, and the idea of the Super Bowl, Gillman also came up with the idea of putting players' names on the backs of their uniforms.

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1989.

On his death in 2003, Gillman was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.

• • Offensive Line Coach, Joe Madro, commented after the game that “All the Patriots had to do before the game to know what was in store for them was to read the Balboa Stadium Scoreboard Sign displayed in large bright letters: 'San Diego – City in Motion' ”.

[edit] Notes or references

1. ^ Peterson, Bill. "Cincinnati's Connection to Football's "West Coast Offense"", City Beat, 2006-08-16. Retrieved on 2006-09-07. 
2. ^ Bach, John. "Sid Gillman used film to change football while at the University of Cincinnati", University of Cincinnati Magazine, 2001-01. Retrieved on 2006-09-07. 
3. ^ "Gillman helped engineer West Coast offense", Associated Press, 2003-01-07. Retrieved on 2006-09-07. 
4. ^ Zimmerman, Paul. "The real West Coast offense", Sports Illustrated, 1999-10-29. Retrieved on 2006-09-07. 

[edit] See also

• American Football League players, coaches, and contributors

[edit] External links

• Gillman's 1960 Fleer football card
• Pro Football Hall of Fame bio
• "Obituaries: Sid Gillman", University of Cincinnati Magazine, 2003. Retrieved on 2006-09-07.