Column: Golden oldies are a hit on the pros' dial

By By TonyKrausz/assistant sports editor
January 17, 2004
Needed one coach to help rescue plummeting professional franchise.
Searching for candidate who brings a strong work ethic and understanding of the game, ability to teach players and oversee the day-to-day operations of coaching staff. Under 60, need not apply.
Okay, that may be a little harsh. Under 59, need not apply.
Suddenly, it seems fashionable for every professional team to search not for a father-figure for its players but a grandfather-figure.
The latest case, recently hired New York Knicks president Isiah Thomas going way out on a limb and hiring 66-year-old Lenny Wilkens.
Sure Wilkens is the winningest coach in NBA history, with 1,292 victories, but let's not forget he is also the losingest, with 1,114 defeats, a good chunk of which came during his previous coaching stint before North of the boarder in Toronto.
We're talking about a guy who is so old he remembers the joy of seeing the first wheel, not car wheel, roll of the assembly line.
Heck, the dude wrote a book title "Unguarded: My Forty Years Surviving in the NBA." That's right 40, you know that birthday age when your friends give you black balloons, start calling you gramps and stop putting candles on the birthday cake because it has just become a fire hazard.
Wilkens did coach a team all the way to the NBA title in 1979.
In other words the year the Knicks' "He's new to us" coach took the Seattle Supersonics to basketball's promised land, two of his current players hadn't even been born yet. Point guard Frank Williams was born in 1980, and forward Mike Sweetney was born in 1982.
Heck, Wilkens took on his first head coaching job with Seattle before any player on his current roster was even born 1969.
But the Knicks are not the only culprit in the recent raids on retirement homes and the Boca Raton golf course to find coaches.
Memphis' Jerry West, no young man at the age of 65, decide it was time to go "old school" last year when searching for a coach and landed on grizzled television analysis Hubbie Brown, who is 70.
Brown coached his first NBA game in 1976, and prior to his Memphis stint, he coached his last season in 1986.
In regards to his players, three players, Bo Outlaw, born in 1971, Jason Williams and Lorezen Wright, both born in 1975, were born before Brown's first head coaching job.
Check out the NFL's list of "long-in-the-tooth" head honchos.
You have 60-something Bill Parcells with his "Billy Idol" hairdo, which must be an attempt to remind people of the 80s when he was something of a young man.
There's also everybody's favorite weeper this side of Susan Lucci, Dick Vermeil. Who entered the professional coaching ranks as a spry-young whipper snapper of 33 in 1969 and is still going strong at 67.
Daniel Snyder followed the "grandfather clause" in coaching hiring, after Steve Spurrier took his "fun-and-gun" offense and left for the golf course.
In order to forget the two-year debacle that was the Spurrier era in Washington, the Redskins owner reached back into his own franchise history to hire Joe Gibbs.
The average age of these three NFL coaches 64.
Apparently, sports franchises are trying to go back to the "Good ol days."
You know the time we're talking about. Before there was a plethora of ESPN channels bringing you sports 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Before the internet gave you instant access to a team's stats, potential trades and most recent games with just the click of a button.
Before satellite television offered viewers package deals so people could watch the teams they wanted to watch, no matter where they are.
When NFL games were interrupted in the closing seconds so network television could bring its viewers the classic "Hedi."
Of course, as in all things, there has to be some rebel bucking the trend and going against what is quickly becoming the norm of coaching hirings.
The Buffalo Bills, of four Super Bowl appearances not a ring to show for it fame, went and hired some youngster named Mike Mularkey.
At 42 years old, Mularkey is currently the youngest NFL head coach. What was Buffalo thinking? Didn't somebody in the Bills' offices have Marv Levy's number?
It's the age of Gerital and hip replacements in the coaching ranks, you just can't hire some kid of 42. Come on, it's time to bring back Jack McKeon. Oh wait a minute, he's already in, with a World Series ring to boot.