Man behind scenes never seen

The lights in the room aren't always dimmed, the seats aren't always theater-style, and the clicker isn't always in his right hand. As talented as Bill Belichick is in places where football films are studied, the head coach of the Patriots didn't become who he is by spending all his time in the dark.

He is more A to Z than X and O.

He is the prankster who once hid a slice of pizza in Scott Pioli's desk drawer. That was when he worked for the New York Jets and a group of guys -- Belichick, Pioli, Berj Najarian, Mike Tannenbaum -- were all in an office competition to drop a couple pounds. They had official weigh-ins and everything. To get a competitive advantage, Belichick tried to tempt Pioli with the scent of a delicious pie.

He is the kid from Annapolis, Md., who still smiles when talking about his odd jobs in his hometown. He worked for a moving company. He was a busboy getting generous tips at a restaurant, Middleton's Tavern, overlooking the city docks. He was a caddie who, if you listen to his father, was unlucky enough to chase down the errant shots of Spiro Agnew. Agnew, a Maryland native, was the state's governor who eventually became vice president of the United States.

"Spiro was an awful golfer," Steve Belichick said recently. "And he was cheap as hell."

He is the serious music fan who doesn't have a predictable listening pattern. Walk by his office on some days and you'll hear Tina Turner. His collection includes the Beatles, Santana, U2, Bob Dylan, and his friend, Jon Bon Jovi.

"Bill is a closet drummer," said Bon Jovi, who should know: he purchased a stylish drum kit for his friend. He also wrote the song "Bounce" because he said he was inspired by Belichick's resiliency.

The two talk often. Bon Jovi even sends advanced copies of his releases to Foxborough so the coach can review them.

"I think he enjoys getting the early copies," Bon Jovi said. "I can tell if he really likes a song, because he'll want to talk about it a lot. If he doesn't like it, he won't say, `Jon, that's not so hot.' He just won't talk about it as much. That's how I know."

He is the son who followed the path of his father. Everyone knows that. Steve Belichick is a coach and so is his only child. But how many times have you heard someone say Bill Belichick also followed the path of his mother?

He did.

Jeanette Belichick is a gifted educator who met her husband at Hiram College in Ohio. She was a language instructor there; he was a football coach. At one time -- when she says she was still in practice -- she had an understanding of seven languages.

Her mind is sharp and curious. There are pictures of Bill, mementos, and NFL game balls on the mantel in Steve and Jeanette's Annapolis home. But there are books everywhere. Jeanette is a longtime reader of The New Yorker and has back issues stacked in the basement. She considered canceling her subscription once, when she believed the magazine became too risque under the leadership of Tina Brown. She softened when David Remnick took over.

It will take a special cook to match her in the kitchen. Her husband is willing to drive 10 or 15 miles away from their home to get a deal on crabcakes because he loves the way she prepares them. He likes the way she thinks, too.

She was the one who told Steve to rewrite his book on football scouting because it contained too much technical language. He initially disagreed and then conceded she was right.

Like her son, Jeanette Belichick cringes at the thought of uninspired or improper instruction.

"I'm telling you, I'm No. 3 in our family when it comes to brains," Steve Belichick said. "And I'm a distant third. My wife and son are kicking dust in my face. I used to be able to say I was No. 1 in football, but I can't even say that anymore."

Born to coach

Oh, football.

Bill Belichick is the football coach who always seemed to have the temperament and mentality for the job. His fascination with breaking down film at a young age is just part of the story.

There were early indications that Belichick was a step ahead of everyone else, even if he wound up taking some of those steps unwittingly. It didn't take the football coach and schoolteacher long to notice how quickly their son absorbed information.

The family used to spend winters in Florida and summers in Ohio. With lots of time to drive, they would play recognition games with their son on the road. Buicks, and Chryslers, and Fords would pass them on the highway and the parents would point out the different cars to their child.

After a few minutes, he would point out cars to them a few seconds before they could see them. That was one clue. The deep football comprehension as a preteen was another clue. Yet another one was the sound logic that always appeared to be at work. The parents would ask their son a question and he always seemed to have an answer and an explanation for why he thought the way he did.

He was an excellent student and an enthusiastic sportsman. He played golf. He played football. He played lacrosse. During one of his last trips to Annapolis, Belichick was told that several of his lacrosse sticks were still scattered about the house. The sticks were there because the coach-to-be used to take broken equipment -- his and his teammates' -- and fix it at home.

He was always thorough, but that's not to say he didn't know how to have a good time as well. He met his wife, Debby, at Annapolis High. The grins come easily when he talks about the time Debby parked her father's sports car in front of a friend's house.

The friend happened to live on a slightly hilly street with a small pond at the end of the road. Debby forgot to put on the parking brake and went inside for a short visit. When she returned, the car was at the end of the street. No one was hurt and, no, the car did not become a mechanical swan in the lake.

Belichick has always appreciated a little mischief. He has been known to crack up laughing in his office, listening to the tapes of "The Jerky Boys", a group of notorious jokesters from New York. He enjoys retelling some of the stories from his fraternity house at Wesleyan. He remembers seeing some of his brothers creatively use the fire escape when they had visitors in their rooms and received surprise visits from their parents or girlfriends.

Those days may have somehow prepared him for the lighter side of coaching, but his junior high and high school days provided the most significant groundwork. He went to school in the 1960s, when the country had violence -- philosophical and physical -- over civil rights.

Belichick was part of the first integrated classes at Annapolis High. He saw then how damaging it was to divide the country -- and, in his case, the neighborhood -- along racial lines. He was the son of an educator. He was the son of a Navy man who, at the end of World War II, roomed with an officer named Sam Barnes. That was unusual because Barnes, an Oberlin College graduate, was a black man and Steve Belichick, obviously, was not.

"I remember a lot of people asking me at the time what it was like to room with a black man," Steve Belichick said. "I told 'em it didn't matter and it wasn't a big deal. I was a man and he was a man. Simple as that. Bill was raised along those lines."

He would eventually become a leader who would work with, befriend, and earn the trust of men from all nationalities. That's part of coaching, too. It's probably just as important as holding that clicker in your right hand and knowing when to rewind, fast-forward, and stop.

Inside consult

"In order to do a lot of different things defensively, you have to be an outstanding teacher," Jimmy Johnson says into the telephone. "There are some decent coaches who are just OK teachers. Bill is able to teach a variety of things that a lot of coaches would either be too intimidated to teach because it's out of their comfort zone, or they just don't have the talent to do it."

Johnson, the former Cowboys and Dolphins coach, became friendly with Belichick in the early 1990s. They made a couple deals together. They saw each other at the Kentucky Derby (when you grow up in a state that Pimlico calls home, you learn to love horse racing). They respected one another's passion for football.

Last spring, Johnson invited Belichick to visit with him in Miami. The plan was for the men to fish and talk football. The weather had other plans. It was extremely windy and the two sailors didn't get the sense that they would be successful pulling in fish.

So they talked.

Belichick told Johnson that he was concerned about the number of 2003 draft picks he had with the Patriots. He didn't know if he would be able to find playing time for all the picks.

"Draft picks are like money," Johnson told him. "You can use them, you can trade them for future picks, or you can use them to acquire players."

The beauty of a good student, whether he is a football coach or not, is his ability to listen. Maybe Belichick and Pioli had already planned to become draft traders, so much so that they left the two-day festival with Eugene Wilson, Asante Samuel, Bethel Johnson, a fifth-round pick named Dan Koppen, Ty Warren, Dan Klecko, and extra first- and second-round picks for 2004.

Belichick will listen to three or four people tell him the same thing. Or similar things.

"He's a sponge," said Pat Hill. "It's amazing how much information he can absorb and then turn around and organize that information. I can't tell you how much he has helped me."

Hill is the head coach at Fresno State. He was part of Belichick's all-star staff with the Cleveland Browns (Pioli, Hill, Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, LSU coach Nick Saban). He has resuscitated a Fresno program that is now capable of competing against Top 25 teams, winning bowl games, and -- in 2002 -- producing the No. 1 pick (David Carr) in the NFL draft.

Belichick has said that he learns as much from his assistants as they learn from him. "He says that," Hill said, "but I can't imagine it. When I worked with him, I watched him evaluate our team and then turn around and evaluate the other team. And he was doing that in preseason games. He wanted to make sure he knew everybody on the other team just in case someone became available."

Not only is Belichick learning from his assistants, he's tracking them. Steve Belichick was recently in Massachusetts for 11 days, visiting his son's family for the holidays. He said Belichick was out of the house each day at 5. On one of those days, he called his father with a question.

"How's my boy Kirk doing?"

He wanted to know if Ferentz's Hawkeyes were doing well against Florida in their bowl game.

"They're killing 'em," Steve Belichick replied. "They're up big."

"Good," Bill Belichick said. "Good."

Multifaceted man

No one was sure Belichick would end up here. He is one day away from trying to lead his team into the AFC Championship game.

He still is the kid who marked a line on his basement wall and practiced his long snapping.

He is the young man -- really, he and his bride look almost the same as they did in '77 -- who got married under the bronzed dome of the Naval Chapel. He is the father -- and the coach -- who in October quietly arrived at the Dexter School in Brookline (John F. Kennedy's alma mater) and watched his youngest son, Brian, play football the way he likes it. There were no numbers or names on the jerseys. No facemasks, either.

He is the educator -- Johnson calls him a "progressive teacher" -- who sat in a quarterbacks meeting last season and gave an impromptu demonstration on the difference between arthritis and tendinitis. Damon Huard had casually mentioned arthritis and asked the coach a question. As Steve and Jeanette learned years ago, he had an answer.

Talking about Belichick's defensive analysis later, Tom Brady said, "He's pretty smart, huh?"

He is the economics major, golden in today's numbers-crunching NFL, who shrugs off his 715 score on the math portion of the SAT. "What's important," he once said with a laugh, "is that I know how to count to 11." If he wasn't coaching football, he said he would work with a big business for a little while before going into business for himself.

He is someone who continues to empathize with the little guy behind the scenes, because that's how he came into the league. "He walked in the NFL as a dishwasher, so to speak," Hill said, "and worked his way up." Last year, he tossed a Reebok catalogue to a few of the 20-somethings on his office staff and told them to pick what they wanted.

He remembers the days when he was a long-haired kid, sneaking off to New Orleans for Mardi Gras (his father once scared a roommate into telling him where Bill was). He remembers being pulled over by the Mississippi State Police, presumably because of his hair.

He remembers -- well, no he doesn't. He doesn't remember a time when he was ever about style at the expense of substance.

"Let me ask you something," Bon Jovi said, beginning to laugh. "Have you ever seen him wear his bling-bling? Really. Have you ever seen him wear any of his Super Bowl rings?" The answer would be no.

"You see all these old coaches wearing their rings. They could have won them in the 1970s and they're still wearing them. I work with Jaws [Ron Jaworski] and he wears his NFC Championship ring like it's his wedding band. And he won that thing 23 years ago! You're more likely to see Bill's boys wearing his ring than him."

Bon Jovi and Belichick are close for a couple reasons. They both love football. Bon Jovi, a co-owner of the Arena Football League's Philadelphia Soul, is into the sport so much that he says he doesn't "give a [expletive]" about anything else. They also are nostalgic for the purity of their professions.

For Bon Jovi, that is New Jersey in the 1970s. He was into Bruce Springsteen and the formed-in-Boston J. Geils Band. He was wild over good lyrics, good times, and concerts that took place in theaters, bars, and small venues.

Belichick is all about football. He is about seeing teams come together and do something significant. He is out for what the rings symbolize, not the rings themselves.

Bon Jovi has co-written a movie that has been picked up by Universal. He was asked if he wrote in a character for Belichick.

"That would be the strong, silent type," he said. "Right?"

It's a start. But it's only a small percentage of the movie.