Bill Belichick not tormenting Jets in Patriots rivalry will take getting used to
The whole time, Digger Phelps kept staring at the other bench, and after awhile it became distracting.Here he was, carnation in lapel, a full house at Pauley Pavilion, a national TV audience — exactly the kind of moment he lived for his entire professional life — and he had to keep reminding himself:Stop looking.He’s not there.John Wooden had retired the previous March.
He was in the building, but he wasn’t on the bench.Gene Bartow was.
As many times as he kept looking for Wooden — program rolled up in his hands, rarely rising from his seat, quietly coaching his UCLA Bruins — Phelps was never going to find him.“We had a terrific team that year,” Phelps said a few years ago, talking about his 1975-76 Notre Dame Fighting Irish.“We beat them a couple of weeks later, at home.
We could’ve beaten them that night (the Irish lost, 86-70), but we were never quite right.I was never quite right.
Even before I ever faced him, the one constant in the sport of college basketball was John Wooden on the UCLA bench at Pauley Pavilion.”All those years later, Digger laughed.“And suddenly, he wasn’t there.”Thursday, as the Patriots trotted onto the field at MetLife Stadium, Bill Belichick wasn’t there, and it was easy to see why it took Digger a little while to get used to the idea of a UCLA game without Wooden.The last time the Jets played the Patriots and someone other than Belichick was coaching them, it was Nov.15, 1999.
The Jets won, 24-17, a Monday night game at old Foxboro Stadium.In a wonderfully symmetrical set of circumstances, that helped grease the skids for Pete Carroll’s exit from New England, which opened the door there for Belichick — who was actually on the field that night, coaching the Jets defense.Stream the game live on Thursday night on Amazon Prime VideoSoon enough, he would be named Parcells’ replacement, he would leave that job after about 15 minutes, he would show up in Foxboro, and he would begin a ceaseless, 24-seaso...