The Shakedown: Best NFL Coaching Mustache (contestant #1)

Welcome back to The Shakedown!

Friday begins “Mustache May,” as our friends at the Hall of the Very Good are reporting.  While that did not stop the Cardinals’ Rick Ankiel from killing an angel in heaven by shaving his lip garment — causing a bout of hysteria on the American Mustache Institute campus –  it’s a fitting time to begin

the newest “Monthly Mustache Shakedown” with an auspicious look at the “Best NFL Coaching Mustache.”

Unlike some other Shakedown compilations, the list of fine NFL coaching mouth drapes is extra-long and very, very hairy — especially since 1982. Indeed, following the 1981 campaign, then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle came to the American Mustache Institute with a request.

At the time, there was some concern within the Mustached American community that the NFL had only clean-shaven head coaches in its ranks. Many players and fans alike felt Mustached Americans were not getting interviewed for these plumb positions, so Rozelle and AMI and forged a partnership. AMI provided training and counseling to all NFL teams, and Rozelle required at least one candidate of Mustached American descent to be interviewed for each head coaching vacancy.

The program has obviously been an overwhelming success, as it has spawned such coaches with lower nasal shag as Mike Ditka, Brad Childress, Denny Green, Bill Cowher, Romeo Crennel, Andy Reid, Dave Wannstedt, Art Shell, Tony Dungy, Herman Edwards, Mike Holmgren, Estelle Getty, and the list goes on.

So with that backdrop we begin our Shakedown with a candidate who is still in the coaching ranks. In fact, he is considered by some to be amongst the best at his craft, and his team experienced great success during last year’s regular season campaign, but ultimately faded in the playoffs.

We refer to none other than Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher, a member of Mustached American coach Mike Ditka’s 1985 World Champion Chicago Bears, and the leader of the free world in Tennessee (which it should be noted lost it’s statehood as a result of low scholastic reading scores in 1998).

What makes Fisher’s mustache unique is that it is a hybrid between a Chevron, Pyramid, and Walrus as you can see in this AMI mustache style guide. And with its great diversity comes tremendous flavor saveability, providing for extra nuts and berries to be stored for the winter hibernation period.

So there it is - your first candidate for the the “Best NFL Coaching Mustache” as part of our latest and greatest “Monthly Mustache Shakedown.” We of course now ask for your suggestions on our final three candidates, whether its from the group above or from another classic lip garment we may have missed.

Bring it.

* As an aside, we once again ask you to take the American Mustache Institute’s poll on the perception of men with mustaches. This is important stuff people!