Sid Gillman

Sid Gillman (October 26, 1911 - January 3, 2003) was an American football coach and innovator. Gillman's insistence on stretching the football field by throwing deep downfield passes instead of short passes to running backs[?] or wide receivers[?] at the sides of the line of scrimmage made football into the modern game that it is today.

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Gillman played college football at Ohio State University under legendary coach Francis "Shut the Gates of Mercy" Schmidt. He was an All-Big Ten end in the early 1930s. Always deeply interested in the game, while working as a movie theater usher, he would remove the football segments from newsreels that the theater would show, so that he could take them home and study them on a projector he had bought for his own use. It was this dedication to filmed football plays that made Gillman the first coach to study game footage, something that all coaches do today.

Gillman played one year in the National Football League for the Cleveland Rams, then became an assistant coach at Denton University[?] and Ohio State, then head coach at Miami University of Ohio[?] and at the University of Cincinnati[?]. He returned to the NFL as a head coach, with the Los Angeles Rams, where he led the team to the NFL's championship game, then he moved to the American Football League, where he coached the Los Angeles and San Diego Chargers to five Western Conference titles and one league championship in the first six years of the league's existence. Gillman approached then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle[?] in 1963 with the idea of having the champions of the AFL and the NFL play a single final game, but his idea was not implemented until the Super Bowl game was played in 1967. His final coaching job was in the 1980s, when he coached the Los Angeles Express[?] of the now-defunct United States Football League.

Gillman's influence on the modern game can be seen by listing the current and former coaches and executives who either played with him or for him:

• Al LoCasale[?], an Oakland Raiders executive
• Al Davis[?], the Oakland Raiders' owner
• Chuck Noll[?], who coached the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowl titles
• Ara Parseghian[?], former coach at the University of Notre Dame
• Bo Schembechler[?], former coach at the University of Michigan[?]
• Chuck Knox[?], former coach of several NFL teams
• Dick Vermeil[?], coach of several NFL teams

Don Coryell[?], the coach at San Diego State University[?] when Gillman was coaching the San Diego Chargers, would bring his team to Chargers' practices to watch how Gillman ran his practices. Coryell went on the coach in the NFL, and some of his assistants, influenced by the Gillman style, included NFL coaches Joe Gibbs[?] and Ernie Zampese[?].

Besides the downfield pass, watching filmed footage, and the idea of the Super Bowl, Gillman also came up with the idea of putting players' names on the backs of their uniforms.