Gruff Coughlin gave his heart to player he lost

Shaun Powell

January 29, 2008

PHOENIX

Tom Coughlin wants to win Sunday, not today. Today, he doesn't care. Today, he won't even try. Today is when America gets to know the Super Bowl players and coaches up close and personal, and it's a game in which Coughlin doesn't stand a chance, because America is already locked into this image of him as a hard-boiled boss whose heart rarely flutters.

This is partly his creation, because by nature, Coughlin is an old-school football coach who pushes for perfection, demands discipline and doesn't suffer fools easily. Nor does he come across well on TV. He makes no apologies for that, either, and if this makes the public leap to a hasty conclusion, fine by him.

There is one family that knows better, however. There's a family in Massachusetts, of all places, that's pulling hard for Coughlin and the Giants against the New England Patriots because this family knows the real deal. The McGillis family of Brockton, just outside Boston, knows Coughlin will be thinking about them today and tomorrow and especially Super Bowl Sunday, win or lose, all because of Jay McGillis, the player Coughlin will never forget.

He played safety for Boston College in 1991, Coughlin's first year as coach at the school, where Coughlin went shortly after helping the 1990 Giants win the Super Bowl as an assistant coach. Jay was Coughlin's kind of player because he squeezed every bit of ability he had. He was 5-9 and weighed less than Michael Strahan's wallet, yet he put his body on the line for his school and his coach. He constantly tried to compensate for size and strength with eagerness. Jay was the kind of player who would puke, then hustle back on the field, with a smile.

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"As a football player, Jay was a lot like Tom," said Jay's mother, Pat, "a perfectionist who worked very hard and never made excuses, and that's why I think Tom cared for him very much. Tom saw a lot of him in Jay."

You often hear highly paid and pampered professional athletes moan and whine about Coughlin's rigid practices and rules and workouts, which Tiki Barber cited as a reason for retiring, so it's only fair you hear what Jay McGillis told his mother about Coughlin after his first few practices.

"He's great, mom, just what I need. I admire him so much."

Not only did McGillis survive Coughlin's system, he thrived in it and forced Coughlin to keep him on the field. There was a point, however, midway through that sophomore season, after the Syracuse game, when he came home with flu-like symptoms. Everyone thought it was mono. Or the mumps. Jay McGillis kept playing football while awaiting the results of a routine test, which arrived just before Thanksgiving:

Leukemia.

The doctors said it wasn't good. He needed a bone-marrow transplant. Then that didn't help. He needed more tests and soon, prayers. He also needed a good pep talk now and then, and that was the easy part, finding a donor for that. Coughlin was at his hospital bedside, almost constantly, doing what he does best: coaching.

"Tom was unbelievable," Pat McGillis said. "He would encourage Jay. He was steadfast. He was there for Jay and there for us, and that was important to Jay, because he loved and admired Tom Coughlin. From the first day he met Tom, no matter what Tom said, Jay did."

The fight to save Jay McGillis became a team effort by the family. His sister gave up an internship for a law firm to return home. A brother donated the bone marrow. The parents made sacrifices at great financial cost to give their son the best of everything. Then there was the coach, pulling up to the hospital after another late practice, staying for hours, providing motivation.

"I'm gonna beat this," Jay McGillis told Coughlin more than once.

"Yes, you will, son," Coughlin told him.

Pretty soon, it was evident that Jay was helping Coughlin.

"Seeing the way Jay handled the final months of his life, the courage, the dignity, the concern about everyone around him, you can't help but draw inspiration from that," Coughlin said. "I do every day."

Jay McGillis should be 37 today and annoying his New England neighbors by rooting on the Giants, except his life was cut short much too quickly and cruelly at the age of 21, eight months after the initial diagnosis.

The family took it hard, as you might imagine; by all accounts he was a good son, brother and friend. And he was quite a player, because his coach felt sucker-punched, too.

"I still have a vision of Jay and what he meant to me," Coughlin said.

There are at least four days out of the year when the McGillis family phone will ring at the crack of dawn. One is Thanksgiving, the other Christmas. One is Oct. 17, Jay's birthday, and July 3, his death. Each time, the soft voice of a hard-line coach will be on the other line.

"It's been 15 years, and he's constantly checking on us," Pat McGillis said. "He could've forgotten all about Jay and our family. He's a busy man. He has his own family. I just heard from him last Saturday. He says, 'I've been thinking about the virtues that Jay possesses.' He's getting ready for the Super Bowl, and he's calling us."

The Tom Coughlin Jay Fund, formed by the coach, is designed to help families cope financially and spiritually when a child is diagnosed with cancer. It's not designed to make the public think twice about the image of a football coach who comes across tough, although one family thinks it should.

"Most people don't know the man, that's why," Pat McGillis said.

"We were truly blessed when Tom came into our lives, and because of that, Jay's death was not in vain."

For more information on the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund Foundation, go to www.tcjayfund.org.

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