The author remembers San Francisco's coaching icon

Remembering Bill Walsh (1931-2007) • OBIT: Hall of Famer Bill Walsh dies at 75 • SILVER: Niners' Walsh was truly a genius • Q&A: SI with Walsh in March 2007 • KING: Walsh's ways transformed NFL • DR. Z: Pioneer Walsh changed the game • DR. Z: Hard-driving Walsh burned to win • REACT: Your thoughts on Bill Walsh • GALLERY: Remembering Walsh's career

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Best of all I remember the dinners with Bill Walsh, usually the night before a game. No, we wouldn't discuss the team the 49ers would play the next day. Game strategy? Absolutely not. Check that. Once before a Redskins game he casually said, "Watch the tight end tomorrow." I watched him. He caught his usual two or three passes. Maybe he meant the 'Skins' tight end.

I don't kid myself that I occupied a special place in coach Walsh's life. It was just that he liked to get away from the grind late in the week, swap generalities with someone who had, basically, the same frame of reference. I'm sure those occasions meant very little to the coach, but they formed an indelible part of my memory. Best of all were Walsh's general observations about the game itself, the philosophy of it.

"You know how I'll know I'm getting old?" he once said. "I won't be wearing a head set on the sideline. Watch the coaches on the sideline. If I see one who's not wearing a head set, I know he's not in the game."

He was 52 at the time, but he had seen what the aging process had done to coaches.

"At 60 you begin to slow, physically, especially in the Midwest, where there's a tough climate," he said. "It's not so bad out here on the West Coast. The key to professional growth is natural inquisitiveness. When you lose that, you're not going to grow at all.

"The energy is the critical area. This job or any other can become a bore if it's the same basic life routine. First you get rather bored with practice, with the film breakdowns, everything but the game itself. Before long you're not a detail man; you're just waiting for the game. And some of them are not even game coaches."

Nobody could put an idea or a concept in a capsule the way Walsh could. Once I asked him why he'd never hired an offensive coordinator.

"That's step four," he said. "Step five is out the door."

Once at a press conference, they were needling him because he never considered putting his quarterback in a shotgun formation. He held up his hand. "We're considering it," he said. "The way we'll handle it is to just put 'gun' after everything we call."

He was not above pointing out to you when you appeared ridiculous. Once in his office we were having a pretty intense talk about the upcoming draft. I found that we were agreeing on a lot of things, especially the heart and desire players, the overachievers. Finally I got so carried away with my own astuteness that, in a burst of lunatic egotism, I asked him if I could ever, possibly, land a job on someone's personnel staff.

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