San Diego Chargers coach Mike McCoy was making the rounds in downtown Los Angeles on Monday with five months of his first head coaching gig under his belt. (AP File Photo)
There's a new NFL coach in town.
Not for a football team in Los Angeles. Surely you didn't fall for that.
It's been 19 years and a dozen failed stadium plans since an NFL team played in Los Angeles, so it's on to the next closest thing.
San Diego Chargers coach Mike McCoy was making the rounds downtown on Monday with five months of his first head coaching gig under his belt. The first game on his watch is 57 days away.
He's not hustling anyone else's territory. L.A. is San Diego's secondary market -- and the No. 2 television market in the country -- and McCoy is trying to drum up interest for a team that still has Philip Rivers as its quarterback but added rookie linebacker Manti Te'o (and just a bit of off-field drama) and right tackle D.J. Fluker (never mind the Chargers desperately needed a left tackle).
And, a rookie head coach.
He's got his sales pitch down around these professional football-barren parts.
"Obviously, you hear about it and read about it," McCoy said of the saga to bring the NFL back to L.A. "I've got so many other things I'm worried about right now and getting the team ready for the first training camp.
"We are the San Diego Chargers. It's a great market here. Everyone understands
what a team would mean in L.A., this and that. We're very happy with where we are in San Diego."The Chargers know stadium issues, too. With a mayor who is under fire for alleged sexual harrassment and who reportedly will not resign despite pressure, a stadium isn't high on the political priority list in San Diego.
McCoy, 40, is a San Francisco native who played quarterback at Long Beach State. For a minute. He was a part-time quarterback in his redshirt freshman season in 1991 before football was dropped. So he understands how football can be in Southern California one instant and gone the next.
Same thing happened in the NFL three years later with the Rams and Raiders.
"It was something that was always talked about, but you never thought it was going to happen," McCoy said of Long Beach State. "When it finally happened, everyone was in a state of shock. It became a recruiting circus. I remember coming down the halls after the first class the next day; there were hundreds of coaches sitting in the hallways waiting to talk to people. It was a free-for-all trying to figure out who was going to go where."
McCoy transferred to Utah. And the man who never thought he'd get into coaching got his first gig with the Carolina Panthers as an offensive assistant. He became a receivers and quarterbacks coach and tutored Jake Delhomme.
He would become the offensive coordinator with the Broncos and coach Tim Tebow and Peyton Manning in successive years.
He knows how to deal with big stars and big personalities. He won't say much about players like Tebow -- other than wishing him well and remarking on the success they shared in Denver with a memorable playoff win over Pittsburgh -- since he's with New England. The same goes for other non-Chargers.
Manning is the exception. And McCoy gushes about what he learned from him.
"You can never prepare enough. His preparation was unbelievable. Out of this world," McCoy said. "At the beginning of (last) summer he pulled out an old tape from Tennessee. An old play he ran in college. He called their video guy to show us the tape. He wanted to show us exactly how he ran it. He's got one of those memories."
McCoy said he doesn't have a long memory when it comes to criticism. "You're not going to make everyone happy," he said.
McCoy will be problem-solving in San Diego. If only the politicians and those who want to be build a stadium in Los Angeles would adopt that mantra.
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