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Farewell to the Big Tuna

Bill Parcells was seldom smiling, often growling, eas'ly pissed,
Still there is no sense denying he will be most sorely missed...
Not by players he exhorted to stop playing the game like girls,
Not by owners he extorted, not by those who don't like churls,
But by those who feel that football should be coached by angry men,
Men who do not suffer gladly fools who raise their hands and then
Ask of godly football coaches questions lacking any worth,
Hence provoking from said coach such caustic comments as the earth
Has never witnessed or endured, and as the other scribes look on,
The fool who asked the question weeps and stands up, stumbles, then he's gone.

Sometimes Bill has won the marbles, often he has taken teams
That had fallen on bad times and pushed them toward the land of dreams...
Though it's fair to say the dreaming comes up short when, lacking touch,
The holder fumbles on the snap and leaves the kicker thinking such
Dangerous thoughts that I can't put them into words that you might hear...
Is that why Coach Bill Parcells has said that now he'll disappear?

I don't think so. Nor do I believe for even half a sec
That Bill Parcells is really gone, for even now some hapless wreck,
Some team in shambles, some sunk franchise looking for the quickest fix
Is poised to call and offer millions for his cranky coaching tricks.
"Sure," you say, "but sixty five is time to leave, and that's his age."
And I tell you not in football. For this Lear has still to rage
Against the players who are stupid and the owners who cannot
See that he, the coach, should be controlling all the stuff that's got
The smallest bearing on the team, and all should bow before his might...
Guys like that do not, my friend, go gentle into that good night.
No, we'll see him back again, atop some team that's humbled now,
Plotting how it might rebound and thinking as he does of how
He will humiliate the guy who, with his pad upon his lap,
Is so dumb or self-destructive that he opens up his yap.

Rest, old Bill, if rest you must, but when you've rested, you'll return.
Football is a big old world and there are bridges still to burn.

This program aired on January 24, 2007. The audio for this program is not available.

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