Bum Phillips, Colorful Football Coach, Dies at 90 
Associated Press
Bum Phillips spent six seasons as the coach of the Houston Oilers from 1975 to 1980 and five seasons with the New Orleans Saints from 1981 to 1985.
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Published: October 19, 2013
Bum Phillips, the homespun Texan who was caricatured as a cowboy but possessed a keen football mind that built the Houston Oilers into one of the N.F.L.’s leading teams of the late 1970s, died Friday at his ranch in Goliad, Tex. He was 90. Outfitted in a white Stetson, work shirt, jeans and cowboy boots — including a powder-blue pair to match the Oiler colors — Phillips was a square-jawed, buzz-cut outsized character with a host of one-liners.
Dave Einsel/Associated Press
Bum Phillips in 2012.
When he became the Oiler coach and general manager in 1975, replacing Sid Gillman, who was long renowned as a master of passing attacks, Phillips was charged with rebuilding a downtrodden franchise. He did just that, developing an outstanding defense anchored by Elvin Bethea at end and Curley Culp at nose tackle, and an offense spurred by the brilliant running of Earl Campbell, all of them future Hall of Famers. And he made astute pickups of unheralded players in twice bringing Houston to the brink of the Super Bowl.
Making the playoffs as a wild-card team, the Oilers lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers — the eventual Super Bowl champions — in the 1978 and ’79 season American Football Conference championship games. When they came home on Jan. 7, 1980, after the second of those losses to the Steelers, a capacity crowd welcomed them at the Astrodome in the late night hours.
“Last year we knocked on the door,” Phillips told the fans, wiping back tears. “This year we banged on it.”
He promised to kick the door down the following season, and went on to trade quarterback Dan Pastorini to the Oakland Raiders for Kenny Stabler, hoping that would bolster the offense.
“Me and Bum are as alike as two piles of cow manure,” Stabler, a native of small-town Alabama, was quoted as saying by Sports Illustrated upon joining the Oilers. “The guy is just an unpretentious cowboy who happens to be a football coach.”
But the Oilers were beaten in a December 1980 wild-card playoff game by the soon-to-be Super Bowl champion Raiders. K.S. (Bud) Adams Jr., the Oilers’ founder and owner, fired Phillips on New Year’s Eve, a few days after that loss, citing his refusal to hire an offensive coordinator, thus ending the Phillips era that Oiler fans called Love Ya Blue.
In 1981 Phillips was hired as coach and general manager of the New Orleans Saints, who had gone 1-15 the previous season. The Saints nearly made the 1983 playoffs, but Phillips could not produce a winning team in his four-plus seasons.
When his Saints were dominated by the Seattle Seahawks in the fourth quarter of their Nov. 12, 1985, game, suffering their fifth consecutive loss, Phillips remarked how “the harder we play, the behinder we get.”
He resigned later that month with three years left on his contract and the Saints at 4-8. His son, Wade, his defensive coordinator, finished out the season as head coach.
“There’s two kinds of coaches,” Phillips once said. “Them that’s fired and them that’s gonna be fired.”
Oail Andrew Phillips was born on Sept. 29, 1923, in Orange, Tex., the son of a truck driver. “My name’s pronounced ‘Awl,’ but no one could pronounce it right,” he once told The New York Times. “Even in school, I answered to the name Bum. Oail was my daddy’s first name, too. But he went by the nickname Flip.”
Bum Phillips got his nickname when a younger sister, Edrina, tried to say “brother,” only to have it come out as “bumble” and later “bum.”
“I don’t mind being called Bum,” Phillips once remarked, “just as long as you don’t put a ‘you’ in front of it.”
Phillips played football at Lamar College (now Lamar University) in Beaumont, Tex., served in the Marines during World War II, then played for Stephen F. Austin State College (now Stephen F. Austin State University) in Nacogdoches, Tex. He graduated in 1949, then coached football at Texas high schools.
“‘If you grow up in Texas,” Wade Phillips once recalled, “and your dad is a head coach at the high school, and really successful, he’s the big man in town. You’d go to the barber shop or wherever, and: ‘Ol’ Bum’s a great guy, boy. We all love him.’”
Phillips coached as an assistant at colleges in the Southwest, including a stint under Bear Bryant at Texas A & M, and he was head coach at Texas Western (now Texas-El Paso) in 1962.
He was hired as a defensive assistant with the San Diego Chargers in 1967 when Gillman was their head coach, and became Gillman’s defensive coordinator with the Oilers in 1974.
When Phillips succeeded Gillman as head coach and general manager a year later, his 3-4 defense — three down linemen and four linebackers — proved effective against the run as well as the pass. Wade Phillips became his assistant in charge of the defensive line and linebackers.
Phillips was popular with his players, keeping them fresh by shunning overly long practices and encouraging camaraderie. He had a record of 55-35 with the Oilers, who became the Tennessee Titans in 1997, and he was 27-42 with the Saints. He was later a TV and radio analyst for the Oilers and owned a ranch in south Texas near Goliad.
He is survived by his wife, Debbie, whom he married in 1990, and six children from a previous marriage. His only son, Wade, is the defensive coordinator for the Houston Texans and a former head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, the Denver Broncos and the Buffalo Bills. His other survivors include five daughters and nearly two dozen grandchildren.
Phillips could be generous with praise for a fellow coach. Perhaps his best-remembered line came when he saluted Bear Bryant or Don Shula — perhaps both — depending on the version cited.
“He can take his’n and beat your’n,” Phillips said. “Or he can take your’n and beat his’n.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/sports/football/bum-phillips-colorful-football...
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