The eagerness to connect Bill Walsh to everything modern and inventive and fresh about pro football is an understandable accessory to his passing, and no doubt, some sort of trophy or award awaits - just as soon as it can be figured out what best exemplifies him.

Coach of the year seems the most likely honor in Walsh's name, except then, what do you do with Don Shula eventually, and Paul Brown, overlooked for much too long?

There is still Tom Landry's place to be settled and Chuck Noll's achievements not yet fully commemorated, and Bill Parcells is worthy, so if Walsh is not at the head of the honors line, he is in there with a low number.

What we know about Walsh is that he was too important to pro football to just pause for a few kind words and then blow the whistle to run gassers.

The roots of the Walsh coaching tree spread very far, even here to Dove Valley, and for every quarterback who fails to become Joe Montana, there are more coaches who do not become Bill Walsh.

He made it seem as if anyone could play quarterback, and for that matter, that anyone with a ballpoint pen and piece of scrap paper could coach.

On the Walsh coaching tree can be found notable names such as Mike Holmgren and Dennis Green directly, as well as Mike Shanahan, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick and Andy Reid more indirectly, and the one thing they all have in common is that these men can think about the game a whole lot better than they could play it.

Walsh may not have been the first coach to be called a genius, but he was the first not to deny it.

Walsh would never be confused with such sideline grunters, and poor dressers, as Shula or Noll or John Madden or coaches with real player pedigree like Mike Ditka and Dan Reeves and Forrest Gregg.

There was a refinement and sophistication about Walsh, as much in his appearance and manner as in actual practice, but the contrast was always great with whomever he was competing, rather like a snooty headwaiter putting up with fraternity fools.

He was his own invention, the coach as CEO, managing football with an academic and erudite detachment.

For all those who have followed or copied Walsh, none has caught him, never mind exceeded him. And his formula - anchored, after all, by Montana, Jerry Rice and Roger Craig - has never matched the original.

When Brian Griese diligently mimicked the Montana model, he found some success, and when it became apparent Griese may have had the same clerk mentality of Montana, he had not the same special gifts and thus was born the great Jake Plummer makeover, doomed from the start.

If Shanahan sees in the West Coast offense the ultimate pulling of a quarterback's strings by the coach, that might also be the lasting gift and the general curse of Walsh, who micromanaged the game plan out of all invention.

Play-scripting is a Walsh creation, or at least the glamorizing of it is, and what it does is trade inspiration for obedience, not submission in the loud, browbeating way of a Vince Lombardi or a Shula, but a submission of one's will to the coach's superior intellect.

What you had in Walsh, and in almost all of his acolytes, is the stereotype nerd coach rather than the old player turned overseer.

The only case I can think of where any old-school brute did better with a Walsh idea than Walsh himself was in the invention of Refrigerator Perry as running thug and national pet.

The same Bears that would become the Super Bowl winners had lost to the 49ers in the playoffs the year before. And on the last two plays of a rout, Walsh tinkered with a notion of his, putting a big lineman in the backfield.

He called it his "Angus Formation," with big guard Guy McIntyre in the role of bone crusher.

For Walsh, this was a detached experiment, another way to manipulate his resources. To Ditka, it was an insult.

When the two teams met early the next season, Ditka went Walsh one better. He not only inserted his huge defensive tackle, William Perry, in the backfield, he gave "The Fridge" the ball and watched with glee as Perry scored a touchdown.

The rest, as we say, is history, except for this little footnote. On the flight home, Ditka was so tickled to have stuck it to the prig in the pressed sweater that he drank a bit much and was stopped driving home by the highway patrol.

When word was relayed to Walsh that Ditka had been arrested, Walsh immediately responded, "For what, manslaughter?"

That's the way Walsh thought. That's why he was different. And pro football is better for it.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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