So Long, Bum

He had a real name but nobody knew it. He was known universally as “Bum” Phillips and he was one of the best loved football coaches never to win a championship. Never, in fact, to play in one. His teams came close. They were one game from the Super Bowl in successive years. After the second loss, Phillips told fans of the Houston Oilers, “One year ago we knocked on the door. This year we beat on the door. Next year we’re gonna kick the sumbitch in.”

Didn’t happen. And he knew what to expect having observed, famously, that “There’s two kinds of coaches: them that’s been fired, and them that’s gonna be fired.”