In a game of enormous pressure and uncertainty, Dick Vermeil was determined to succeed as a head coach in the NFL by outworking everybody else. He would sell his players on the need to practice harder than they had ever practiced before. And he would outwork all of them by watching film until the middle of the night, then wiping his eyes clear and getting up for an 8:00 AM staff meeting. His first NFL coaching job was with a dreadful Philadelphia Eagles team. Vermeil drove his players hard and drove himself even harder, eventually taking the Eagles to their first Super Bowl in his fifth season. Two years later, overcome by a 57-day players strike and his own emotional distress, Vermeil resigned. The cause: coaching burnout, a feeling that often left Vermeil in tears and sometimes unable to leave the stadium parking lot. Yet Vermeil couldn’t shake the feeling that he wanted to coach again…and he did. After a 14-year television career, Vermeil lightened up and won a Super Bowl with the St Louis Rams. He retired again, but two years later, Vermeil was back on the coaching merry-go-round in Kansas City. Asked why he kept coming back, Vermeil replied, “Because I had to. I couldn’t do anything else with any certainty.” “I don’t think there’s ever been anyone like him, and probably never will be” said Mike Martz, Vermeil’s offensive coordinator in St. Louis. “He’s everybody’s dad. I’m like one of his kids. He calls and checks on you. He’s got a whole country full of kids.” This first-ever full-length biography paints an unforgettable portrait of this unique man and examines the paradox of why so many players and coaches still love the coach who earned the nickname, “the Little Dictator.”
