Hisn with Yourn, Jon Gruden Super Bowl Style: A Modern Shula

The great Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips, assessing Miami's Don Shula, bestowed the finest and most succinct praise one coach can offer another: "He can beat yourn with hisn, and hisn with yourn." 

With these ten words, Bum tells us everything we need to know about what a coach needs to be. With Super Bowl XXXVII, Tampa Bay Coach John Gruden showed us what that means. The season before, Gruden had been the coach of the Oakland Raiders. Dissatisfied with the organization, Gruden asked permission to "look around," even though he had time left on his contract. He looked around, found Tampa Bay, had his contract bought out, and went to work.     

Oakland, meanwhile, went to work as well. With league MVP Rich Gannon racking up season records at quarterback, and throwing to not one, but two, certain hall-of-famers, the smart money all season was for them to take it all the way.

Even without their erstwhile coach, the team put impressive numbers on the board all season long, and deserved to go to the Super Bowl. No doubt they had mixed feelings about facing the man who could have taken them there, had internal conflicts not put them off their game.

As it turned out, those mixed feelings should have been undiluted dread.

Yes, Super Bowl XXXVII was a disappointing blowout. In a lot of ways, it was disappointing no matter which team you rooted for. We've had them before, these much-touted ratings monsters decided three minutes into the second quarter, never mind the second half. Sure, we all like the nail-biters, the seesaw leads. Super Bowl XIII was immensely satisfying even to Cowboys fans, because Dallas took it down to the wire and outplayed the Steelers even if they couldn't outscore them.

There are satisfying games and there are blowouts. Yet when they write in years to come of great Super Bowls, and particularly about great Super Bowl coaches, they will be obliged to recall the very satisfying day when John Gruden showed up against his former employers to play a little game of Hisn With Yourn.