[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 33 (Wednesday, March 22, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E381-E382]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO BOBB McKITTRICK

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 22, 2000

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to invite my colleagues to join 
me in paying tribute to the memory of Bobb McKittrick of San Mateo, 
California. Mr. McKittrick, the longtime offensive line coach of the 
San Francisco 49ers, passed away last Wednesday after a lengthy battle 
against bile duct cancer. He leaves behind a loving family and a 
reputation as one of the premiere leaders and motivators in the 
National Football League. His legacy includes the affection of the 
hundreds of athletes whose lives he touched with his passion, 
determination, and commitment to excellence as well as to tens of 
thousands of devoted fans, for whom he was an example of dedication and 
public spiritedness.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that an article by Michael Silver from the April 
26, 1999, issue of Sports Illustrated about the courage, inspiration, 
and example of Bobb McKittrick be placed in the Record. It chronicles 
his extraordinary coaching record with the 49ers, his positive 
influence on the careers and lives of his players and friends, and his 
characteristically tenacious fight against cancer. Mr. Speaker, the 
story of Bobb McKittrick is an inspiring one.

   One Tough Customer: Outspoken Niners Assistant Bobb McKittrick Is 
 Battling Cancer and Liver Disease With the Same Fierce Determination 
           That Made Him One of the Best Coaches in the Game

       They were embattled behemoths in big trouble, and they felt 
     like the smallest men on earth. Late in the third quarter of 
     a game against the Eagles on a chilly September afternoon in 
     Philadelphia 10 years ago, Harris Barton and his fellow San 
     Francisco 49ers offensive linemen trudged off the field with 
     their heads down and their ears pricked. Joe Montana, the 
     Niners' fine china, had been sacked eight times. The Eagles 
     led by 11 points, and censure was a certainty: Coach George 
     Seifert's face was convulsing like Mick Jagger's, offensive 
     coordinator Mike Holmgren was growling into his headset, and 
     offensive line coach Bobb McKittrick was preparing to vent 
     his frustrations. As the linemen took a seat on the bench, 
     McKittrick stared down at veterans Guy McIntyre, Bubba Paris 
     and Jesse Sapolu and said calmly, ``You three might want to 
     start praying about now.'' Then he turned to Barton. ``And 
     Harris,'' McKittrick added, ``if you know a Jewish prayer, 
     you might want to say it.''
       Without swearing, getting personal or raising his voice, 
     McKittrick, a former Marine who makes Chris Rock seem vague 
     and indirect, had delivered a sharp motivational message. The 
     linemen buckled down, Montana threw four touchdown passes in 
     the fourth quarter, and San Francisco won by 10. The next day 
     McKittrick called Montana into an offensive line meeting and 
     apologized for the breakdown in protection. Montana shrugged 
     it off, but word got around, giving players another reason to 
     respect a man who may be the most successful position coach 
     of his era.
       In a business in which coaches get relocated, recycled and 
     removed as a matter of course, McKittrick, 63, has been the 
     Niners' offensive line coach for 20 seasons. During that time 
     San Francisco has won five Super Bowls and put together the 
     most successful two-decade run in NFL history, and the fact 
     that McKittrick has been entrenched in the same job 
     throughout that span, under three head coaches, is not 
     accidental. In addition to routinely milking exceptional 
     production out of players overlooked or cast off by other 
     teams, McKittrick has been the glue that has held together 
     the Niners' vaunted West Coast attack. Bill Walsh, recently 
     rehired as San Francisco's general manager, says McKittrick 
     ``has developed more offensive line knowledge than anyone, 
     ever. The continuity of the line, its consistent ability to 
     protect the quarterback and open running lanes, has been the 
     cornerstone of the 49ers' success over the past 20 years, and 
     without Bobb, I don't think it happens. His men have played 
     longer, with better technique, more production, fewer 
     injuries. In every possible category you can measure, he's 
     right at the top.''
       The Niners are so queasy about the notion of ever working 
     without McKittrick that they told him he'd have a job for 
     life when he was mulling an offer to become the St. Louis 
     Rams' offensive coordinator after the 1994 season. He 
     recently signed a two-year deal, and in the weeks leading up 
     to the draft, he was busy breaking down film on top line 
     prospects--an endeavor that in most years is about as 
     fruitful for McKittrick as Academy Award voters viewing Brian 
     Bosworth movies. The San Francisco brass concentrates on 
     drafting talent at other positions and relies on McKittrick 
     to excel with lesser-regarded linemen. Few coaches have done 
     so much with so little, but no one is taking McKittrick for 
     granted anymore.
       In January, four days after the 49ers were eliminated from 
     the NFC playoffs by the Atlanta Falcons, McKittrick received 
     a medical double whammy: Doctors told him that he had cancer 
     and that he needed a liver transplant. McKittrick, whose 
     colon was removed 17 years ago after precancerous cells were 
     detected, has a malignancy on his bile duct. He has begun 
     undergoing radiation and chemotherapy at Stanford Hospital in 
     Palo Alto. He needs a liver transplant because he is 
     suffering from cholangiocarcinoma. He is on a waiting list 
     for a new liver.
       While his relatives, friends and colleagues are worried 
     sick, McKittrick, predictably, has been calm, even upbeat. 
     Though down 20 pounds from his normal 200, he insists on 
     keeping the bulk of his coaching responsibilities, faithfully 
     reporting to work with the catheter used to administer 
     chemotherapy treatments sticking out of his left arm. ``It's 
     a difficult situation,'' he says, ``but I went through six 
     weeks of boot camp, and it can't be any worse than that. I 
     think I can go through anything--and it sure beats the 
     alternative.''
       On a mild Monday afternoon in late March, McKittrick walks 
     into the three-bedroom house in San Mateo where he and his 
     wife, Teckla, have lived since 1979. ``You've got this place 
     freezing,'' he tells her before leaving the room to turn up 
     the heat. ``He's cold,'' Teckla says to a visitor. ``Now can 
     you tell something's wrong?''
       Raised in Baker, a northeast Oregon farm town where the 
     winters are frigid, McKittrick developed a stubborn 
     resistance to cold at an early age. He unfailingly wears 
     shorts and a T-shirt to even the most bone-chilling practice 
     sessions, and when the 49ers travel to colder climes, 
     McKittrick packs lightly. During a Monday-night game played 
     in freezing rain at Chicago's Soldier Field in October 1988, 
     McKittrick wore a short-sleeve shirt but no jacket. At one 
     point his teeth were chattering so much that he was unable to 
     enunciate a running play to Walsh, who subsequently decreed 
     that all coaches must cover their arms during harsh weather. 
     When the Niners returned to Chicago the following January for 
     the NFC Championship Game, McKittrick complied with the new 
     policy by donning a windbreaker--on a day in which the 
     windchill factor reached -47[degrees]. At such moments 
     McKittrick, with his shaved head and stocky frame, seems to 
     be as much caricature as character. ``Everybody notices the 
     physical part, but when it comes to emotional strength, he's 
     probably the toughest person I know,'' says Seifert, who now 
     coaches the Carolina Panthers. ``He has an ability to deal 
     with things that would shatter most people.''
       After having his colon removed, McKittrick wore a colostomy 
     bag for a year before a second operation allowed him to 
     discard it. ``He had this device strapped to his hip,'' 
     Seifert says, ``and I'll never forget the sight of him 
     running onto the practice field holding that bag so it 
     wouldn't fall. How devastating and emotionally trying that 
     must have been. Had it been me, I don't know that I could 
     have coached again.''
       McKittrick's toughness is rivaled only by his bluntness. 
     ``He's brutally honest with me, too,'' says Teckla, who 
     married Bobb in 1958. ``It's one thing when he tells me my 
     hair looks funny, but I'm constantly worried he's going to 
     get fired [for speaking his mind].'' Barton says he and other 
     linemen used to write down some of McKittrick's more eye-
     opening statements. ``One of the classics was when we drafted 
     this 6'7" guy named Larry Clarkson [in '88],'' Barton says. 
     ``Every day in training camp [defensive end] Charles Haley 
     would run around him, then so would the second-teamer, and 
     Larry would end up on the ground. Finally we're in a meeting 
     one night, and Bobb says, `Jeez, Larry, I don't think you 
     have the coordination to take the fork from the plate to your 
     mouth.' ''
       As harsh as he sometimes sounds, McKittrick gets away with 
     it, partly because he can take criticism as unemotionally as 
     he dishes it out. He regularly challenges his bosses in 
     meetings, but, says Seifert, ``after a while, that becomes 
     part of the charm of the man.'' McKittrick says one reason he 
     has not sought jobs with bigger titles is the political 
     correctness he associates with such roles. ``I'd rather teach 
     than be an administrator,'' he says. ``I don't like a lot of 
     the things that administrators have to do.''
       While some head coaches might view vocal dissent as a 
     threat, at least one of McKittrick's friends--a man who had 
     some pretty decent success as UCLA's basketball coach from 
     1949 to '75--believes it's invaluable. ``An assistant coach 
     who's afraid to speak his mind isn't very helpful,'' says 
     John Wooden, who grew close to McKittrick during the latter's 
     stint as a Bruins football assistant from 1965 to '70. ``A 
     head coach should never want a yes-man: He'll just inflate 
     your ego, and your ego's probably big enough as it is. An 
     assistant as bright as Bobb could only be an asset.''
       Honest as he is, McKittrick could not bring himself to tell 
     Teckla about his cancer. He

[[Page E382]]

     found out shortly before they embarked upon a nine-day trip 
     to visit their two sons, in Oregon and California and, not 
     wanting to spoil the vacation, stayed mum.
       For all of Bobb's sensible stoicism, Teckla is his polar 
     opposite, an emotional worry-wart who sheds tears as readily 
     as some people clear their throats. They met as Oregon State 
     undergrads at a study table, conversing for 20 minutes in a 
     group setting. ``The next day,'' Teckla says, ``he told 
     someone he had met the woman he was going to marry.'' 
     Together they've had more of a life together than most 
     coaching couples, sharing a passion for history that has 
     inspired vacations to places like Normandy and Russia as well 
     as cruises on the Danube and the Baltic Sea.
       In late January, McKittrick returned from his vacation and 
     went back to work, figuring he'd break the news to Teckla 
     that evening. Before he could, however, he received a frantic 
     call from her: An oncologist's assistant had phoned the 
     McKittrick house to confirm an appointment. ``My wife was in 
     tears for the next two weeks,'' Bobb says. ``She hears cancer 
     and immediately thinks, You're going to die. That's not the 
     way I'm approaching it.''
       McKittrick's approach to life has never been orthodox. In 
     seventh grade he added a third b to his first name because, 
     he says, ``I just wanted to be different.'' A high school 
     valedictorian who was also a decorated student at Oregon 
     State, McKittrick was persuaded by Tommy Prothro, his coach 
     when he walked on as an offensive lineman for the Beavers, to 
     return to his alma mater as an assistant after his three 
     years of service in the Marines. McKittrick followed Prothro 
     to UCLA, the Los Angeles Rams and then to the San Diego 
     Chargers, where he and fellow assistant Walsh became friends. 
     When Walsh was hired as 49ers coach in 1979, he asked 
     McKittrick to come along.
       McKittrick compares Walsh's recent return to the 49ers, who 
     had been reeling from front-office turmoil, to Churchill's 
     reign as Britain's prime minister during World War II. ``He 
     had been out of favor,'' McKittrick says, ``but when the 
     Nazis were threatening to overrun Europe, they turned to him 
     for his dynamic leadership, and he held them together.''
       McKittrick is not only a voracious reader of nonfiction but 
     also a genealogy freak who serves as an unofficial historian 
     for his hometown. He also keeps a meticulous journal designed 
     to ``give my [two] grandkids an idea of what my life was 
     like.'' According to his good friend, Loring De Martini, 
     McKittrick's life is easy to describe: ``Bobb is almost a 
     saint. He's a guy who has never willfully done a wrong 
     thing.''
       Not everyone would nominate him for sainthood. Drawing on 
     some of the blocking methods he learned from Prothro, 
     McKittrick recruited relatively small, agile linemen and 
     taught them techniques--the cut block, the reverse-shoulder 
     block, the chop--most of which were legal, at least when 
     executed perfectly, but which infuriated opponents. After a 
     1985 game, Los Angeles Raiders defensive lineman Howie Long 
     charged after McKittrick in a tunnel at the L.A. Coliseum and 
     vented; the two haven't spoken since. In his book Dark Side 
     of the Game, former Falcons defensive lineman Tim Green 
     referred to McKittrick as Dr. Mean. McKittrick notes that in 
     recent years, at least a third of the teams in the NFL have 
     adopted his controversial techniques. ``Those big, tough guys 
     on defense want to play our strength against their 
     strength,'' he says. ``I'd rather play our strength against 
     their weakness.''
       McKittrick's supporters far outnumber his detractors. 
     Holmgren, 49ers coach Steve Mariucci and Denver Broncos coach 
     Mike Shanahan credit him with helping them assimilate Walsh's 
     concepts, and Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who began his NFL 
     career breaking down film for McKittrick in 1990, refers to 
     McKittrick as ``my idol, the best coach I've ever been 
     around.'' Shanahan says McKittrick, with whom he worked for 
     three seasons as a San Francisco assistant, ``has forgotten 
     more football than I know, but what really stands out is his 
     incredible work ethic. He leaves no stone unturned, and 
     that's why everybody considers him the best in the 
     business.''
       Alas, McKittrick's prowess as a coach is not at the 
     forefront of his friends' minds. Call someone looking for a 
     quote, and instead of answers you get questions: How's Bobb? 
     Is he going to get his liver? The answers are unclear, but 
     things could be better. The chemotherapy has sapped 
     McKittrick, and last weekend he was hospitalized with a 
     104[degree] temperature. He has another worry. In mid-March, 
     Teckla was rushed to Stanford's emergency room with what 
     doctors feared was a heart attack. It turned out to be a 
     problem with her gallbladder, which is scheduled to be 
     removed in early May. The doctors would like Bobb to finish 
     fighting the cancer before replacing his liver, but he's one 
     of many on a waiting list, and the timing is largely out of 
     their control.
       Recently McKittrick was at Stanford shuttling between 
     appointments when a team of physicians tracked him down. They 
     ushered him and Teckla into a room and informed them that a 
     liver had become available. The chief transplant surgeon, 
     Carlos Esquivel, then explained the various risks, including 
     the possibility that Bobb could die on the operating table. 
     The doctors said they needed a decision within two hours. 
     Teckla broke into tears. Bobb stroked her hand, calmly 
     questioned the doctors and finally said, ``Let's do it.''
       He was told to return to the hospital later that afternoon 
     for surgery. Teckla worried that he had rushed his decision, 
     but Bobb said, ``I made a life-altering decision 40 years ago 
     in 20 minutes, and I haven't regretted it.'' He was sitting 
     in the living room of his house when the phone rang. A nurse 
     told him the doctors had found the liver to be unsuitable. 
     When he repeated the news, Teckla's knees buckled and she 
     fainted. Bobb took the news in stride.
       ``He has incredibly tough skin,'' Barton says of his coach. 
     ``It's a crisis situation, but he won't show a weakness.''
       Barton lets his thought hang for a moment; it occurs that 
     he might want to say a Jewish prayer right about now. 
     ``Believe me,'' Barton says, ``I will.'' He won't be alone.
       ``When it comes to emotional strength, he's probably the 
     toughest person I know,'' Seifert says of his former 
     assistant.
       ``Teckla was in tears for two weeks,'' says Bobb. ``She 
     hears cancer and immediately thinks, You're going to die. 
     That's not the way I'm approaching it.''
       McKittrick ``has forgotten more football than I know,'' 
     Shanahan says, ``but what really stands out is his incredible 
     work ethic.''

     

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