Fish story

A new book chronicles the final season of former Patriots coach Bill Parcells. Why does the departed Tuna still grip this city?

by Jason Gay

Is there any rational reason for a person in these parts to read The Final Season, the new book chronicling Bill Parcells's last year as head coach of the New York Jets? Absolutely not. Last year's Jets, of course, finished with a middling record of eight wins, eight losses -- in other words, they weren't great, they weren't horrible. That's not exactly the kind of final season you chronicle, much less pay $25 of your hard-earned money to read about. In fact, if you think the final season described in The Final Season: My Last Year as a Head Coach in the NFL (William Morrow, 235 pages, $25) is compelling material, then you might as well throw down another $50 for Notting Hill: Kind of a Good Movie and The BLT: The Half-Decent Sandwich.

But the freaks and acolytes are surely lining up at Barnes & Nobles around the Hub, because Bill Parcells -- now semi-retired, for goodness' sake -- continues to tantalize Boston sports fandom unlike any other figure of the past decade. Arrogant, eccentric, sometimes brilliant, sometimes grossly exaggerating his own brilliance, but always -- always -- hugely entertaining to watch, Parcells still haunts the city's sports consciousness, years after he abandoned New England for New York. Listen to the lugs on Boston sports radio bark about their old coach -- whom they invariably, but respectfully, call Tuna, Parcells's long-time nickname -- and they sound like guys talking about the first time they got dumped. They loved him, now they hate him, but they'd take him back in an instant.

Why does Parcells grip Boston so? His achievements here, although impressive, weren't the kind that get bridges or tunnels named after people. (Folks, they lost that Super Bowl in '97, and Parcells's overall record in four years here was 32 and 32.) Likewise, he was never much for the town -- Parcells said he was comfortable in New England, but he was always, at heart, a Jersey guy, and he admitted as much. And he never pandered to the locals. Parcells wasn't someone who was going to stroll around Quincy Market, slapping high-fives. In fact, his biggest community venture outside his coaching duties was probably his stint as a pitchman for Dunkin' Donuts.

Parcells made an impact here not only because he was a winner, but also because he succeeded at being an outsize personality in a town that has encouraged quiet conformity in its sports heroes. He could be a jerk, but he was a jerk who could take us to the Super Bowl. He was full of himself, but he was impossible not to watch. When he left, we moaned for months. We will measure all future coaches against him. And years later, when he speaks, we still listen.

IT WON'T surprise you that as sports books go, The Final Season is not a memorable one. This is not entirely Parcells's fault, nor is it entirely the fault of The Final Season's co-author, long-time Boston Globe columnist Will McDonough. When Parcells set out to write The Final Season, he probably assumed it would be a season not only worth chronicling, but also worth commemorating. The Jets were coming off a superb 1998 season, in which the overachieving team (12-4) came within two quarters of making it to the Super Bowl. Expectations for the 1999 campaign were even higher, and in his dreams Parcells probably envisioned winning the big one and going out on top, on the shoulders of his loyal, hulking troops.

It wasn't meant to be. In what would turn out to be the equivalent of losing Tom Cruise on the first day of shooting a Mission: Impossible sequel, the Jets lost several of their most talented players in the first game of their season, including their quarterback, Vinny Testaverde, who was out for the season with a ruptured Achilles' tendon. (In a twist only the most detached of Tuna followers could label a coincidence, the Jets' tragic game was against the Patriots.) As Parcells himself acknowledges in The Final Season, these losses were devastating, and for all intents and purposes, the Jets' Super Bowl dreams became precisely that: dreams.

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Jason Gay, who grew up in Belmont, now works for the New York Observer, where he follows the Tuna closely.