There's a lot written about your coaching, but very little about your early life. What about your early years? When and where you were born and raised; your family; where you went to elementary and high school?
I was born in 1933 and grew up [mostly] in Brooklyn, New York. My parents were of Italian descent. My farther was from the town of Bari. My mother was born here and met my father at a wedding. All the people at the wedding had come from around Bari .
I was the middle of three boys and always interested in sports.
I went to Erasmus Hall High School, the oldest high school in the New York. Sid Luckman, a Hall of Famer for the Chicago Bears; Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders; Bob Tisch, owner of the New York Giants; and Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls also went there. And so did lots of entertainers, including Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond.
It was a great school…and no more than a mile from Ebbets Field where the Brooklyn Dodgers played.
You “came of age” during World War II and the post-war years. How do you think that shaped and influenced who you are today…the person you have become? Or did it?
During the war years I was really too young to realize what was going on in terms of the war, though I was an air warden for the neighborhood, checking to see that all the lights on the street were out when there was an air raid drill.
Oddly enough, early on I was living only two blocks away from my wife, Barbara. But her family moved back to Germany in 1937. They were there all during the war, but when it was over, and since she was born in this country and was an American citizen, she came back to the states.
You were a star athlete in high school. Were you good at all sports, or was football it for you?
When I was in high school (1947-1950), I was very athletic. I played basketball and baseball, as well as football. But my father, who came from Italy and was a truck driver – for Ebinger's Bakery – was always telling us to get an education. He'd say: That's what this country is all about.
When and where did you graduate from college, and what was your degree?
When I was a senior in high school and a scout from the University of Tennessee came to the house to offer me a scholarship. When we were sitting in the kitchen my father couldn't believe that football would pay for college. He kept asking, over and over: Just because he will play football at your school you will pay for everything?
I knew from the very beginning, when I got that scholarship, what I wanted to do: coach football.
First I went to University of Tennessee. Then I transferred to the University of Tulsa [in Oklahoma ] and graduated with a degree in physical education in 1956. After I graduated I came back to New York City because I wanted to get my master's in education. I wanted to teach as well as coach.
I got a job at Lafayette High School , in New York City. And I loved the teaching and the coaching
One day my father came out to watch me coach, and when I asked him what he thought about it, he said: You are still wearing short pants. You are still playing in the school yard with kids. I think you'd do a lot better if I got you a union job.
He never got it – that I had a job where I was making good money by doing something that I loved – until I got into the pros. But I'd realized right from the beginning that if you are doing something that you love, which I was doing, you never have to “work” a day in your life.
Why did you choose a career in coaching rather than playing pro football?
I wanted to be an educator, a teacher. And I've always been first a teacher and then a coach.
I spent 8 years as a high school teacher and coach and administrator. I loved teaching [physical education] during the day, but I always looked forward to 3 p.m. when coaching started. So, when I got a call to go to the University of Connecticut as assistant coach, I went. It was a $2,000 pay cut to do it, and that didn't sit well with my wife.
I stayed at the University of Connecticut for two years and then went to the University of Maryland for a year, and when I went I wasn't thinking about coaching at the professional level. But when head coach Lou Sabin, who'd played for the Cleveland Browns and coached professional football, asked me to go with him to coach the Denver Broncos [in 1967], I said yes. And that was the beginning of coaching in the NFL for 18 years: 11 years as an assistant and 7 years as head coach of the Cleveland Browns.
I know I did it the right way. If you get into major league coaching too quickly, you aren't there very long.
I built a [professional coaching] philosophy based on what I learned at coaching camps from people like Paul Brown [founding coach of the Cleveland Browns] and what I learned from coaching high school and college students. And to this day, I've got “kids” I taught calling me….To know that you can and have impacted someone's life like that is a real reward.
No one gets where you are today without mentors and, most definitely, coaches. Who were your mentors and coaches…your role models?
The role models I had were the ones I grew up around. My mother was a saint. She filled my life with love and God. I'm always thankful for her guidance.
As far as my career, there are two: Vince Lombardi, who is probably one of the top three coaches of all time, and Joe Paterno. In 1950, he went to Penn State University as assistant coach. In 1966, he became head coach and is still there. I never wanted to imitate them, but I did want to emulate them.
What's do you think is the most important thing you learned from your mentors?
That kids – whether they are in high school or playing in the NFL – don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. I really think that the thing that's made me as successful as I've been is my ability to communicate and get players to be the very best that they can be.
But it's not only mentors that I learned from. One thing that's had a real impact on my life was that in 1962 Barbara and I lost our 4 ½ year old daughter, Nancy. We'd been driving back from Montréal – we'd gone to see a Canadian football game there – to Poland Springs, Maine, where Barbara and I were working at a sports camp. I fell asleep at the wheel and the car flipped and then righted itself on the road. I was thrown out of the car. Barbara was in the front seat bleeding. But Nancy wasn't in the back. I found her under the rear right wheel of the car. When the ambulance took Nancy to the hospital, I stood there with the doctor when he said Nancy was gone.
That was indescribable experience. And it was at that point that God really entered – and changed – our lives. My life, from that day in 1962, is full of incidents where I've been able to help people who have lost a child because I know the void and the pain they are going through. For me, helping them has almost been like a ministry.
Sometimes something like that breaks up a marriage. But ours was good, so it bound us closer, and we had [besides oldest son Paul] two more daughters, Alison and Kerry.
When and how did you meet your wife, Barbara? And when and where did you marry?
During the summers I'd come home from college and work. I was working nights in a shop and I cut my leg and went to the Norwegian Hospital, which was right up the street. There was this nurse, Miss Abe, who took care of me. I was impressed. She called the house the next day to check up on insurance and when I called her back, I asked about a date. She told me the hospital had a policy about not dating patients. But I pushed it and she finally said yes. We married in May of 1955, and, since I had a year to go in college, we went back to Tulsa and she got a job as a nurse there…And you know, from the day I left the hospital, I've had the safety-pin in my wallet that Barbara used to secure my bandage.
What was your early life together like?
When I graduated [1956], we moved back to Brooklyn with our son, Paul, and lived with my parents until I got a job teaching in New York City and we moved to an apartment in the same neighborhood. Barbara would do some private duty nursing because I was making $4000 as a teacher.
When I left there, I went to Greenwich High School [in Connecticut ] to teach physical education and coach. From there I got an opportunity to become athletic director at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York ….And then, as I mentioned already, I got the opportunity to coach at University of Connecticut and the University of Maryland , and from there I went to the Denver Broncos.
Where did you go from there?
After that, I went to the New England Patriots, in Boston, as offense coach. I was there for three years and got fired. Then I went to the New York Jets for two years, and got fired. Then I went to the New Orleans Saints. I was there three years, when I got a call from Peter Hadhazy, the vice president and general manager of the Cleveland Browns, about “an opening” on the Browns' coaching staff. The week before Christmas I went up to Cleveland and interviewed for the head coaching position, and on Christmas Eve of 1977, Art Model called and said he wanted to speak to the new head coach of the Cleveland Browns, Sam Rutigliano.
I came to Cleveland in January of 1978 and was living in a motel. Barbara came out and – through a tip from Art Model – found our wonderful home in Waite Hill. She and the kids moved here in June.
You know, for a family, the kind of life coaches lead can be tough. We moved 19 times and the kids went to 23 different schools and Barbara bought 13 different houses. So you know I am married to a saint. Divorce was never an option. Murder, maybe—and I'm talking about her murdering me, not the other way around – but never divorce.
What drew you to the Browns' position?
I'd prepared myself – as assistant coach for four other teams for 11 years – and I was now not only ready to be a head coach, but I wanted to be one, too. I wanted to see what I could do, how I could make a difference by hiring the right players.
You know, Brian Sipe was the 330th draft pick. He had two chances in football, slim and none. And three years later he was the NFL's Most Valuable Player. And he'd eclipsed the record of every quarterback who'd ever played for the Cleveland Browns. Today, he's a coach San Diego State University .
And there was the fact that this was THE Cleveland Browns, and all that meant. The team had, and has, history, and there are so many greats connected with the team – including Paul Brown and Blanton Collier and all the other Hall of Famers.
According to my research, you were fired in 1984. Why?
You know, I have to say that right now the Browns have fired so many coaches that people are starting to say I was a very good coach.
But, to answer the question, I was fired for the same reason everyone gets fired. We got off to a bad start that year and we'd lost key games. Ironically, just before the season started I'd just signed a five year contract. Still, eight weeks later, I was fired.
Years later, Art Model apologized to me about the firing and I told him not to worry about it. Getting fired at 53 gave me the opportunity, financially, to do what I wanted to do. I took a job doing commentary on television and I liked it a lot because you got paid well and you didn't have to win. But I missed coaching, so in 1988 I took a job as head coach at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Tennessee and coached there for 11 years.
Two days after I “retired” from there in 1999, I got a call from NFL Europe and took a job coaching in Europe for seven years. Barbara came with me and I coached in Barcelona , Glasgow Scotland , and Hamburg Germany.
When we came back here [to Cleveland ], I got a call from the NBC affiliate to do two television shows connected with the Browns.
I've never really retired and most people shouldn't. What people should be doing isn't retiring, it's finding a new agenda where they are doing things they want, that engage them. That's one of the reasons Barbara and I kept the house in Cleveland: Coming back to Cleveland was on our agenda.
Why did you decide to “plant” your roots in Cleveland ?
Because, when I first came, I realized how unique it was in terms of downtown, the east side and the west side. Coming from Brooklyn , I was impressed with what the east side had, places like Corky & Lenny's [a deli] and Little Italy. But it was more than that. This community is unbelievable because of the people…and because of what I can do here. For instance, every Tuesday night I go to a Bible study class on the west side …And I speak at a lot of churches and to a lot of men's groups. Yes, I'm Sam Rutigliano, the celebrity, but I'm also just Sam here.
You have coached for more than 50 years. How has coaching changed since you started coaching in the '50s?
Butch Davis [Cleveland Brown's coach from 2001-2004] asked me that question, once. And this is what I said: You are making $2,925,000 more a year than I did as a head coach and that the biggest change in football has come from the amount of money that all coaches and players are paid.
And what does all that money get the players? The idea of preparing the athlete for later life is gone because less than a third complete their college education before going pro. And three out of four players you see playing every Sunday end up broke or divorced. And I've seen a statistic that says one out of five ends up a felon. Today – even at the high school level – money's a problem.
What do you consider your greatest accomplishment as a coach? And why that particular endeavor?
I think one of my greatest accomplishments as coach was that I was able to create a team that was able to draw so much response and appreciation from the community. When we [the team] came back to Cleveland in 1980 – after playing Pittsburg and winning the division championship – when we landed, there was Mayor [George] Voinovich and a huge crowd.
Even today, people talk about the Kardiac Kids and what a great era the early-'80s was.
What do you consider your greatest accomplishment as Sam Rutigliano?
When I think of my mom and my dad and where I grew up, I think – always – about what Arthur Ashe said: You make a living on what you get and you make a life on what you give. I'm grateful for what I'm able to give back. Football has allowed me to get to a point where I can help others. And that – giving back – is the key to aging successfully that so many people don't get.
At 78, you may not be out on the field coaching, but you are heavily involved in motivational public speaking and volunteer activities. What organizations are you working with, and why those particular organizations.
As I already said, I do a lot of motivational speaking [with men's groups]. But I also work very closely with Cornerstone of Hope, an organization for those who have lost children. That's why I do a show on Sundays on WHK. It's called Grief Talk.
And I do a lot with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a national organization to help school athletes and pro athletes deal with the pressures and problems they are encountering. And I do a lot with the Browns Backers, too. You know, there are clubs all over the US. I've gotten calls from Guam.
How do you do all that? In other words, where does all the energy come from?
The energy comes from doing and not just sitting around. Every morning people wake up to glorious opportunities that are brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems. I'm a the-glass-is-half-full person, and I believe that once you choose hope – once you reframe things – you can do anything.
You look fit and trim. Are you doing anything specific to maintain your health?
Staying healthy as you age is a mind set, and it's all about what's going on in that six-to-eight-inches between your ears. So Barbara and I are very conscious of our health and weight. We don't have a special diet, but we watch what we eat, and – especially at holiday time – we practice push-backs at the table.
We have a treadmill downstairs, but we'd much rather walk outdoors, even in the cold weather. And we are out every day if possible.
Over the years, you've probably worked with and for some of the “fittest” people on two continents. What did you “learn” from your super-fit colleagues that you've applied in your own life?
Probably that the key to good health is practicing good health behaviors. And the earlier you begin the better.
MythBusters are all about successful aging. What's your definition of, and criteria for, successful aging?
Be aware of all the things that you have to stay away from if you want a good quality of life as you age.
Next, have an agenda, and realize that that's not the same as “just” keeping busy. I don't have the calendar I had as a coach – that was a 168-hour a week job – but I do have the calendar I want.
And you have to feel good in your own skin. You have to be thankful and count all your blessings and make all your blessings count.
[Chuckles] And, you have to have a great marriage. When you are married to the same woman for 55 years and you realize what she had to put up with – me and my goals – we had a great marriage.
And finally, why didn't the Browns kick a field goal in the 1980 game against the Oakland Raiders?
I didn't have a problem with that play because I'd thought it through, but since you asked, it was minus 29 degrees that day and it was very windy. We'd already missed two field goals that day because of the wind. And, it was going to be a 27-yard field goal and I didn't think we could do it given the circumstances.
We had 58 seconds left to play and our strategy – Red Right 88 – was to run the ball on the first down to stop the clock and run the ball on the third down to stop the clock, but with the second down, if an opportunity to throw the ball came up, to throw the ball.
Brian Sipe saw that Ozzie Newsome was open and threw the ball, but it got caught in a cross wind and was intercepted.
[Sigh] It's the press that's made that play what it is today, not the play itself.
|
