When he was still a comer in the NFL, Bill Belichick liked to tell people how he'd worked his way out of football's mailroom.
When he got his first (disastrous) head coaching job in Cleveland, aged only 38, he told The Washington Post: "I've done all the jobs in an organization you can do: typing, driving people to the airport, lining the fields, coaching. Everything."
Ten years later, he took over the New England Patriots. He repeated that line to The Boston Globe. It's close enough to verbatim, one suspects he's been deploying it his whole adult life.
"There really isn't a job I haven't done. I made the airport runs and picked up the towels and all that crap. I know what 'entry level' means."
But this week, faced with another slippery scandal, Belichick played the naif.
In last Sunday's game, 11 of the 12 game balls his Patriots used on offence were found to be underinflated – making them easier to throw, catch and carry.
"I had no knowledge of the various steps involved in the game balls and the process that happened between when they were prepared and went to the officials and went to the game. So I've learned a lot about that," Belichick said in a prepared statement.
This is, to put it mildly, hard to credit.
When it turned to questions, Belichick slipped into his primary press-conference mode – swaying slightly in place, lizard-eyed and bored up to and well past the point of contempt.
To most questions, no matter how inflammatory or off-topic, he mumbled either "I've told you everything I know" or "I don't have an explanation."
This is football's greatest coach – maybe the most impactful coach in all of sport. But he is more impressively its greatest dissimulator. Belichick has repeatedly stretched the limits of that tired football mantra – win at all costs. Afterward, he transparently pretends contrition. Yet the more he's caught, the bolder he becomes. As such, he may be the most honest liar in American popular culture.
His refusal to compromise to the sanctimonious tone of the times has made Belichick a hero in New England, and a charming villain everywhere else.
This is no up-by-your-bootstraps story. Despite his look – regal hobo – Belichick is not hardscrabble.
He is the son of a college coach, raised around the Naval Academy at Annapolis, a teenage confidant to the likes of Cowboys legend Roger Staubach.
He was handed every early opportunity by family friends, but managed to maintain a critical sense of thwartedness. He is part Mozart – devising his own plays aged only 10; and part Iago – the overlooked man.
When he was the defensive co-ordinator in New York, he was repeatedly contrasted with Buddy Ryan, and accused of plagiarizing Ryan's set-up with the great Chicago Bears teams of the mid-80s.
When he acted as Bill Parcells's top lieutenant on a Super Bowl team, he was once described as the more bombastic coach's "marionette."
He came to Cleveland in 1994 determined to stand alone. Too determined. His initial team talk lasted over an hour, and descended into accusatory screed.
"I've worked too long and too hard for this chance to let you guys [expletive] it up for me," Mike Baab, a former player, recalled as Belichick's summation.
This was his introduction.
Predictably, they screwed it up for him. When owner Art Modell moved the club to Baltimore, he initially intended to take Belichick along. The players talked him out of it.
To hear tell of it, Belichick verged dangerously on fun as a young man. He dated girls. He studied things aside from game-planning. He played sports. Like most very successful teachers of the game, he played them poorly. He was the guy who knew where everyone else was supposed to be on the field, but lacked the athleticism to get there himself.
He had a temper and could not suffer fools. Despite being a skinny 5-foot-10, he played centre in college. One teammate – a bigger, better, less studious lineman – repeatedly asked Belichick to remind him of his blocking assignment as they came out of the huddle. Belichick eventually snapped. He pointed at the defender and shouted, "That guy over there."
"The guy knew I was coming, and he killed me," the teammate, Kevin Falangus, told an interviewer.
After finishing school, he applied for more than 100 assistant coaching positions at the college level. He kept the letters of rejection. Friends wrangled him an internship with the Baltimore Colts. He was 24.
He's handled the assistant's role at every level, for nearly every position. He's had many mentors, but few real allies. When Parcells resigned as New York Jets head coach in 2000, he tapped Belichick – once again an assistant – as his successor. Parcells intended to remain in the organization as an adviser. At the time, people still referred to Belichick as 'Little Bill.'
Before any change was made official, Belichick was asked to interview for the top job in New England – a more attractive option. He sought permission from Parcells. It was angrily refused.
Minutes before his introductory news conference as the next Jets head coach, Belichick walked into the team president's office and handed him a handwritten note: "I have decided to resign as HC of the NYJ."
Then he went to the podium and, for an excruciating half-hour, explained his decision.
This was probably the last public appearance of the first iteration of Bill Belichick. He was 47 years old. He was wearing a suit. He stumbled through his speech, sweating and over-explaining. Though he was combative – subtly shifting the blame in Parcells's direction – he spent the whole time slowly backing up.
Nobody tried to understand his side of things. Amongst many others, the New York Post rounded on him in a back-page headline: "Belichick Arnold." The lesson stuck.
Belichick was allowed to leave for New England in exchange for a first-round draft pick. He'd never been pursued so ardently. Patriots owner Robert Kraft was the first person who'd ever really wanted Belichick – enough to pay dearly for him.
Belichick and Parcells didn't speak for six years. By that point, the student had won three championships to the master's two, and surpassed him as football's generally accepted genius.
If there is a Belichick style in terms of tactics, it's the lack of one. His schemes are endlessly adaptable, and shift constantly to suit his personnel. He is a brilliant spotter of undervalued talent, and a ruthless trimmer of roster fat. Everything revolves around Tom Brady – the quarterback plucked by New England with the 199th pick of the 2000 draft.
Brady and Belichick share little in terms of personality. They do have one key thing in common. Six quarterbacks were picked ahead of Brady 15 years ago. They've all been forgotten. Brady can still rhyme their names off without pausing to think.
In future, the Belichick style will more importantly be associated with his approach to everything around the game. When he arrived in New England, coaches were still cut in the Parcells/Mike Ditka/Jimmy Johnson mould – folksy motivational speakers, articulate screamers and occasional unhinged maniacs.
Belichick is as ascetic as a Jesuit, but a sinister one. He gave up the suits, preferring a ratty sweatshirt at all times, in all conditions – his version of sackcloth. He doesn't answer questions. He briefly tolerates their existence, and then ignores them.
It was once true that nearly every commercial pilot spoke in a drawl, imitating the West Virginian accent of the most glamorous airman of all time, Chuck Yeager. Belichick is football's Yeager. As the years pass, more and more head coaches have adopted his surly, mush-mouthed manner.
A few years ago, I attended a postgame news conference in the team's cavernous media auditorium. The Patriots had won. It should have been a happy time. Belichick came out and monosyllabled his way through a few queries.
Someone launched into a detailed Xs and Os question – the sort not meant to elicit information, but instead to impress the audience on hand. It's the kind of thing that drives all coaches to distraction. Heads in the room began turning in a worried way. They saw what was coming.
Well into his question/speech, the reporter said something about a "cover two" – meaning the two safeties had deep coverage responsibilities.
Belichick was enduring this soliloquy in a pose of downcast suffering. He suddenly perked up and interrupted.
"It was a cover three."
Then he turned and left. No one looked surprised.
He is also an opportunist of the highest order. In 2007, the team was caught secretly videotaping the signals of New York Jets coaches on the sideline. Belichick shoulder-shrugged his way through the controversy. Finally forced by the league to apologize, he did so, but behind a barricade of caveats.
"I accept full responsibility for the actions that led to tonight's ruling," his prepared statement began. He was personally fined $500,000 (U.S.) by the NFL. The Patriots lost a draft pick.
By the end of his apology, he'd begun dissembling magisterially: "My interpretation of a rule in the Constitution and Bylaws was incorrect."
Belichick insisted that while he'd known that videotaping opponents was illegal, he'd believed the injunction applied only to use during the specific game being filmed. It was a little like arguing that bank robbery is wrong, but not if you don't spend the money right away.
Shortly after Spygate erupted, the Patriots re-signed Belichick to a long-term deal. The next season, they came one win from a perfect season.
Belichick is proof of a perverse kink in human psychology: We don't like people who break the rules. We love people who break the rules and get away with it.
He's brought that same air of detachment to this latest scandal. Who? Me? What balls?
Whatever the NFL chooses to do to him, it's difficult to imagine it mattering much. He's made Robert Kraft the most envied owner in all of sports. He's put Tom Brady one win from becoming the consensus greatest quarterback of all time. His legacy was secure a decade ago. All he can do now is embellish it.
Still, he remains his own greatest work. He began with all the advantages, then spent half a lifetime shedding their weight.
Belichick is that unlikeliest of self-made men – one who managed the trick twice, and perfected it the second time round.
Cathal Kelly