Coughlin's story straight out of Hoosiers

INDIANAPOLIS

At first the players hate him. Then the fans and media turn on him. His archaic ways don't make any sense, and worse than that, they are not producing victories. Surely the coach must be fired.

But then, when all seems at its most bleak, the players respond. They transform the lessons he has been preaching into wins. They make it into the playoffs, knock off some teams considered much better than they are, and eventually head to Indianapolis and win the . . .

Well, don't spoil the ending just yet. There still are some who have never seen "Hoosiers,'' the 1986 movie about Indiana high school basketball and stubborn coach Norman Dale's insistence that things be done his way or else.

Oh, you thought that was the story of Tom Coughlin's season with the Giants?

Well, here in the land of Hoosiers, Coughlin is enjoying his own Dale-like turnaround. It wasn't long ago that the Giants were 7-7, in the middle of another second-half slide and with Coughlin on the verge of losing his job. Now he's one win away from another Super Bowl title.

It took about two hours for that swing from one extreme to the other to play out in the movie. It took just over a month of real time for it to happen to Coughlin. It's enough to give a coach whiplash . . . if he noticed it.

When asked about the polarity of his perceptions -- from "Fire him!'' to "Enshrine him!'' -- he held both hands up to the side of his face to act as blinders.

"I respectfully pay little attention to it, thank you very much for asking,'' he said. "I just try to do the best job I possibly can, put the blinders on, go to work and be the best you can possibly be. Once you have done everything that you possibly can -- you've put forth your greatest effort -- then I can live with whatever's next.''

Coaching in New York -- like coaching in the fictional town of Hickory, Ind. -- can be exhausting. Coughlin has been at it for eight years now and seems nothing but energized by it. Perhaps that is most because of the connection he has with his players, several of whom had no qualms about saying that they wanted to win some of these last five victories in a row to save his job.

Offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride, who also worked under Coughlin in Jacksonville, said that for Coughlin's ways to work, there needs to be a certain personality on the team.

"If you get the right guys, they appreciate those things,'' he said of Coughlin's rules-and-regulations approach. "They don't see the tough guy, the hard-nosed disciplinarian, the taskmaster. They see the other side and they realize that what he's demanding of them is to make us a better team. It takes a quality guy to see that. If you have the wrong guys, then they resent it and it turns them off.''

Even Antrel Rolle, once a non-conformist and agitator on the team, became a Coughlin disciple this season. He was one of the players leading the charge to save Coughlin's job.

Said Justin Tuck, "Playing for him is golden for me. You know exactly what to expect from him, you know what he expects from you, and it's easy to go out and do your job . . . I love playing for the guy and I hope I get to play the rest of my career for him.''

Blinders or not, surely some of the questions about Coughlin's job security bothered him.

"The only time this bothers me,'' he said, "is when I think my family has been affected by it, and if in fact some of the allegations are far-fetched. That bothers me as well.''

The one person who might know for sure exactly how close Coughlin was to getting axed is team president and CEO John Mara. And this past week, he said that in his mind, Coughlin "epitomizes'' what a Giants coach should be.

"Our faith never wavered in him,'' Mara said. "In this business, it's a week-by-week business. You're on top of the world one week and you lose a couple games and you're at the bottom, but you can't let that affect your decision-making. You have to let the season play itself out because a lot of crazy things can happen. As long as you believe in the coaching staff, which we do, you have to have the faith to let them do their jobs. Fortunately, it's worked out for us.''

And just like in the unofficial state film of Indiana, if Tom Coughlin does come away with a championship, he'll be holding tight to the rolled-up game plan that never escaped his grip -- physically or otherwise. Coughlin will have won, but more importantly, the Coughlin Method will have been proven successful once again.

Norman Dale would be proud.