To anyone who can remember back to 1989 - a veritable eternity in the coaching profession - the name Jim Fassel has a certain bittersweet ring to it. Football coaches come and go, and especially so at the University of Utah during the turbulent '70s and '80s, but few come and go as mercurially as Fassel. One day he was as hot as a Palm Springs summer, the next he was a Siberian winter.
When the Utes came to fire Fas-sel in the fall of '89, at the end of his fifth season, he thought they were about to pat him on the back. He didn't see the knife until it was too late.Well, thank goodness for time, and if not for short memories, at least other football fields, because here it is eight seasons later and finally Jim Fassel again has the lead whistle around his neck. That's not Dan Reeves commuting to New Jersey to coach the New York Giants anymore, that's Jim Fassel, the ex-Ute. All things really do come to those who wait - and make a lot of friends.
Fassel has never had trouble making friends. He's always been as popular as a vacation in Maui; the polar opposite of Mike Ditka. The most perplexing part about his Utah ouster was that right up to the end, you thought the university president was going to adopt him, not fire him.
Even eight years later, Fassel will admit the day the Utes let him go, not long after a 70-31 pummeling at the hands of, surprise! - BYU - ranks right up there with a blindside crackback across the middle - with the linebacker also carrying a two-by-four.
He remembers sitting at his house that night, the remaining years on his contract not much consolation right about then, and Ute booster Richie Smith, a close friend, putting his arm around his shoulder.
"He told me I'd get past this and I'd move on to bigger things," said Fassel this past week as he took a break from practice at the Giants' training camp in Albany, N.Y. "I've gotta tell you, at the time, I didn't believe him."
Fassel made an attempt to leave football behind. But he wasn't the first coach to come to the realization that despite the occupational hazards, you wake up one day, look in the mirror, and stone cold realize you're as hooked as you ever were.
So he got over it and went back. The pros looked more appealing. He first worked with the Giants as quarterbacks coach to new head coach Ray Handley. When Handley was fired, he moved on to Denver, where he was Wade Phillips' offensive coordinator and was reunited with quarterback John Elway, whom he once coached at Stanford. When Phillips got the boot, it was on to the Raiders staff as quarterbacks coach until Art Shell got fired, and then it was on to Arizona last year as offensive coordinator.
Even though Fassel was reportedly on Al Davis' short list as a future Raiders head coach, he did not hesitate when New York called. As he put it, "How can you NOT go to New York and coach the Giants?"
His family acted out their own version of one of those old Ute duck formations of Fassel's, doing a quick left-coast, right-coast shift. They left one son, John, in Utah, where he's currently battling for the starting quarterback job at Weber State. No matter how you slice it, football is competitive.
None of it is more competitive than head coaching. Fassel said he understands that now more than ever. Not only has he personally been fired, but he's watched the first three bosses he's worked for in the NFL go through the same ignominy.
The irony that, for his second go-around he's landed in very possibly the hottest coaching seat in the universe - now that the USSR has gone out of business - has not escaped him. It's easier to find a cab when it's raining in New York than local coaches who haven't won lately.
"You really have to accept the fact that you could be gone at any time; it's part of the business whether you like it or not," he said. "I try to remember what Wade Phillips said when he got fired at Denver: `I'd really be worried if they only fired bad coaches.'
"I think that's a real truism," said Fassel, enjoying the one-liner as only those who are employed can enjoy it. Then he said adieu and hung up the phone. Out on the field, his new team awaited. And Richie Smith was right - these guys are bigger.