Former Giants coach Tom Coughlin keeping busy in retirement by watching his 12 grandkids play sports

Tom Coughlin hasn’t coached from an NFL sideline in over a decade now but there are still things that drive the 80-year-old crazy cranky and make that familiar face boil red when he watches games. Sloppy technique and poor effort remain at the top of his list of no-nos. Bad calls by officials? The only things worse are the accurate calls when players actually do commit those evil infractions for penalties. He definitely can’t stand those. And when coaches make strategic decisions he doesn’t agree with, he’ll often wince with second-guess disgust. Or worse.

“I have been known to throw a water bottle here or there,” he admitted with a chuckle regarding his behavior these days.

Yet none of this has to do with the job that made him famous, made him a three-time Super Bowl champion coach with the Giants, and as of last week made him a two-time finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It doesn’t even have anything to do with pro football. It’s about how he is tackling his latest role, one he is embracing with as much Coughlin-esque gusto as any endeavor he has ever taken on.

After a lifetime in athletics, he has a new title on his business cards: Sports Grandpa.

“It’s interesting as heck,” he told Newsday of the transition from being at the center of just about every sporting event he was ever at to now sitting in the aluminum stands or finding quiet spots along the fenceline to watch any of his 12 grandkids play any number of sports in any of three different states. “I enjoy it a lot. I look forward to it. Right now, that’s my fall. That’s what I do.”

From Shea, who is a junior midfielder on the men’s soccer team at Lehigh University, to 10-year-old Hartley, who is cheerleading when not playing lacrosse or basketball in New Jersey, Coughlin is constantly on the move, watching them perform. Even when he is at home in Jacksonville there are always events to attend.

And of course there are football players in the family too, including two grandsons in New Jersey and one in Jacksonville who all play at the high school level (although Walker Snee, a sophomore quarterback and pitcher at Paramus Catholic who already has several Division I offers, just recently suffered a season-ending ankle injury that will keep him from participating in the state playoffs). Walker is the son of former Giants offensive lineman Chris Snee. Another, Dylan, played football at Tufts University before he graduated in the spring.

Coughlin tries to time his numerous trips north so he can get to multiple events on a single weekend. Maybe a game on Friday night and two on a Saturday. Then he heads back to Florida for more.

“You want them to play well, you want them to have great experiences, you want them to be one of the key reasons that their team wins,” Coughlin said of the dynamic of his current place in the family’s sports hierarchy. “All those emotions run through you as a grandparent. You of course want them to be safe and healthy and stay injury-free. But ultimately, it’s a granddad looking at it through his children as we watch them play.”

The actual parents — in this case his two sons and two daughters and their spouses — are the ones who “live it every day,” Coughlin said. They do the practices and the transportation and the scheduling and the drama. Him? He just drops in and enjoys the fun parts.

“I come in from a little different viewpoint,” he said.

Supportive. Attentive. Unconditionally proud. Even — gasp! — understanding.

“But,” he added, the gruff Coach Coughlin we got to know during his 12-season stint with the Giants flaring up, “just as aggressive in terms of the desire to see them win and play well.”

“He definitely has the coach in him and looks at whatever game it is from a coaching perspective and a lessons-learned perspective,” said his daughter, Keli, of her dad’s new hobby. “But he can relax and have fun too.”

Coughlin also stays very busy with the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund, the organization he started 31 years ago to give money and support to families dealing with childhood cancer. It has raised over $41 million since its inception. This is a very special year for that pursuit because 31 was the number that Jay McGillis, the namesake of the foundation, wore at Boston College where Coughlin coached him before he died from leukemia at age 21 in 1992.

Last month Coughlin hosted the Jay Fund’s annual Champions for Children Gala in Manhattan. It raised $1.6 million. The keynote speaker was Knicks coach Mike Brown, fresh off his NBA title.

“He’s the talk of the town!” Coughlin gushed about the coup of landing Brown for the event.

Coughlin should know. He was that too. Twice.

Now he does something else. He watches and roots and occasionally gripes and complains. “I hold my tongue most of the time,” he said. He lends an ear and a few hugs and some advice. He still cites John Wooden theories on sports and life whenever they seem apt, which is often.

It’s what he didn’t always get a chance to do when he was coaching in the NFL and college over parts of each of the past six decades before he retired in 2019.

“There were lots of things I missed,” he said of watching his own children when they were playing. “I could get to see them play baseball in the spring, but the other things were tough. The football conflicts were tough. I felt bad about that.”

This is how he makes it up to them. And maybe to himself.

“It’s nice now to see him be able to make this more of a priority and be able to schedule all the other things around being present at the games,” said Keli, who remembers those crazy 20-hour workdays that kept her dad away all those years. “He loves sports and he loves his grandkids. Watching them compete and do it with his values and his grit, I think he really takes a lot of pride from that.”

Pretty soon this fall season will wrap up. Football and soccer will come to an end. But Coughlin’s new job won’t. There will be basketball and cheerleading over the winter. And in the spring comes baseball, softball and lacrosse. Unlike the NFL, there is no offseason for this new gig.

“Yeah, there’s a lot going on,” Coughlin sighed. “It’s busy. But it is fun.”