who's in the kitchen: judy joszef

On Black Monday, it’s Black Cod for Coughlin

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For those of us who love football there is Draft Day, Kickoff Weekend to Super Bowl Sunday, and, unfortunately, Black Monday, the day after the regular season ends, when a dozen teams prepare for the playoffs and some of the rest announce that they have fired their coaches or general managers or both.

The league doesn’t include Black Monday on its schedule, but to NFL insiders and fans around the country, Black Monday is a critical part of football culture.

In researching Black Monday, I at first could not find much information. It was difficult to determine who coined the phrase, which the NFL does not endorse. Some of the earliest references were in the late 1990s, including a story in the Chicago Tribune about several college coaches being fired at one time. In 1998, the Associated Press ran an article with the headline, “Black Monday for NFL coaches,” which began: “The next time a group of NFL coaches gets together and someone says ‘Black Monday,’ nobody should ask him what he’s talking about.”

While the term’s roots are uncertain — Black Monday is known in England as the first Monday after a long vacation — it is clear that a handful of coaches, assistants and front office personnel are going to receive pink slips today, Monday, as I write this article. In fact, I just heard that a golden era in Giants football has come to an end as the bell tolled for a good man and the grim reaper claimed Giants coach Tom Coughlin. 

Coughlin evolved from an old-school authoritarian coach, initially hated by many of his players, to a coach who was much loved. The former Giants centers Shaun O’ Hara said “he was always very old-school about his approach … he had to be Scrooge.”

He was almost fired as Giants head coach in 2007. It was then, at age 60, that he decided to transform his approach. He began to spend considerable time to learn about the lives of his players and their families outside of football, evolving from being coercive, to becoming inspirational and personally committed to his players.

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