I watched Bill The Cockpuncher Parcells’ appearance on HBO’s Real Sports Tuesday night – all of two times – to bring you this special FinsNation report. Seeing as many of you probably don’t want to shell out the extra $10 or so for HBO per month so you can use it on two more 6-packs of Natural Ice or 10 delicious medium unbreaded wings from Flannigan’s, I thought I owed it to you all to parse on his interview with Andrea Kremer.
Based on a prior interview with 60 Minutes and an excellent piece on him from The New York Times several years ago, I was actually looking forward to this interview as I’ve been a fan of Parcells for some time now, years before his (inevitably brief) tenure with us. Let’s fire away with some bullet points:
• In his 66th year, Parcells is looking downright horse-y. He must certainly feel a physical kinship with the ponies he loves to watch.
• Incidentally, he says he can’t think of a nicer place in America during the summer than a horse ranch in Saratoga, NY at 6am. I, on the other hand, can think of approximately 68,935 nicer places in the Continental U.S alone.
• He likens his current position with the Dolphins to being a “guidance counselor.” I don’t remember my guidance counselor picking my school, professors and classes when I was in high school. In fact, he didn’t do much of anything! Why didn’t you think of trading Jason Taylor for draft picks, Mr. Foster, you horsecock?!
• Parcells admits that what made him quit coaching was after Tony Romo flubbed the field goal snap in that playoff loss to Seattle a couple of seasons ago: “I didn’t want to go through that process again. Too much blood.” Sooooooo thank you for completely fucking up the most mundane play a quarterback can make during a game, Tony Romo!
• Worth the time invested in watching alone: Old clips of Parcells absolutely ripping on players, including him telling kicker Matt Bahr to “throw up on your own time.” I wish I dated Parcells' daughter so I could get that kind of verbal abuse during a friendly game of Marco Polo at a family barbecue.
DRK: Marco!
Parcells: (wandering around the snacks table) Polo.
DRK: Tuna outta water!
Parcells: Go fuck yourself, son.
• Parcells REALLY (Omar Kelly-like emphasis noted) doesn’t like kickers. I don’t think he would even pick one if he played fantasy football [Editor’s note: Any idea how he might feel about shit-talking kickers who wear gloves in 98 degree weather?].
• Both in the 60 Minutes interview and in this one, he mentions confrontation being a good thing. Somewhere - even as I type this - Cam Cameron is hiding under a desk, thinking he’s invisible to the world around him, after having being given the wrong order at a Wendy's and taking it anyway.
• During a portion of the segment filmed on a golf course, Tuna goes back and forth with Andrea about his involvement in the coaching process and his scheduling during the season:
Andrea: So will you be doing much golfing during the season?
Tuna: Well, I may, you know.
Andrea: I find it hard to believe you’d be able to remove yourself.
Tuna: Well, I don’t need to be there for the coaches meetings. I mean, errrr, I’ll be there early in the week to prepare for the next week with personnel changes and such. I mean, I…uhhh…look, I won’t be taking any days off. Well, I’m 66 – almost 67 – and uuuhhhh….
Andrea: You’re lying.
Tuna: I have mantits and an equine mouth.
• New Fins O-coordinator Dan Henning and Bill Parcells are old men. In fact, seeing the pair of Henning and Tuna together is downright creepy. They call each other "caballo" and there’s this Century Village vibe about them that really freaked the shit out of me. A quick a look at some of the offenses that Henning ran as Offensive Coordinator/Head Coach on his respective teams since 1997 doesn’t exactly light your face on fire. Even Year 3 with the Panthers was only slightly above average. Granted, that team was decimated by injuries over the years and played well in spite of all their injuries on offense. Still, from the interview, you get a sense that maybe these two are too close and that the hiring was as much based on Henning’s experience as it was on his very close relationship with Parcells. That’s a bit of a conflict of interest in my book [Editor's note: Kind of the same criteria I used to bring another writer aboard?]. Guess we’ll see.
All in all, the Real Sports interview didn’t do much in the way of giving us any additional information about Parcells. Most of the interview consisted of Andrea Kremer prodding him about a return to coaching at some point in time – a truly ridiculous notion considering the man is turning 67 soon and does legitimately seem through with the full-time coaching aspect of the game. We’d have been better served with some more info about his current job (such as expectations for the season, questions about Ricky Williams, clarification on his role, views on the quarterbacks, and how much pleasure he actually derives from being such a goddamn cockpuncher) than this fluff piece about his past coaching declarations and his attitude problem. We already know the guy is a pathological liar and has a tendency towards insensitivity on the football field. We got that, Andrea. Welcome to the NFL.
Soooo, when it airs again tomorrow night, watch it only if you’ve already jerked it 3 times and you’re tapped out.
-DRK
