Thanks coach, for everything

When the San Francisco 49ers hired Bill Walsh to be their head coach just a year prior to my birth they shaped my life as a football fan before it even began. More importantly however they managed to impact my development as a person when they hired the man known simply as "The Genius". I'll get to that in a little bit, but this is a sports blog and the football has to come first.

Growing up in the Bay Area there was only one certainty in the sports world, and that was that the Niners were going to make a run at the Super Bowl every year. The cast of characters were impressive and included names like Montana, Rice, Craig, Lott and so on. But it was always Walsh who stirred the drink and allowed all those great players to work as the finely tuned machine that they were during the 80's.

I'll be the first to admit that I grew up a spoiled football fan and given how bad my beloved San Francisco Giants were during that time ('87 and '89 not withstanding) I always felt like I deserved to have one of my teams dominate. Had it not been for Walsh's brilliance I might have grown up even more jaded and sarcastic than I already am. Trust me, no one that knows me wants that.

Everyone knows about the West Coast Offense and Walsh's ability as a play-caller and game-planner, but in a strictly football sense his eye for talent may have been what set him apart and kept the Niners so good for so long.

Montana and Rice are easy, but consider the cast of complimentary players that Walsh hand picked throughout the years. Guys like Dwight Clark(10th round), Eric Wright(2nd round), Jesse Sapolu(11th round), Guy McIntyre(3rd round), Charles Haley(4th round), Tom Rathman(3rd round), John Taylor(3rd round) and Bill Romanowski(3rd round).

It was the ability to build teams and not just collections of individuals that made Walsh stand out in my eyes and was the biggest reason why even after he retired from his post as head coach of the Niners the team kept going back to him for advice.

Of course players weren't the only thing Walsh had an eye for, he also mentored and developed a long line of coaches that continue to have an impact on the NFL today. Mike Homgren, Dennis Green, Jim Fassel, Andy Reid, Mike Shanahan, Jon Gruden, Tony Dungy, Brad Childress, all of them come from the vaunted Walsh coaching tree which will only continue to grow as the years go by.

Three Super Bowls and an immeasurable impact on the way the NFL game is played today will be Walsh's lasting impact on football fans everywhere, but for this son of the Bay Area his influence runs deeper.

My dad is a coach, and even though he hasn't strolled the sidelines in years, he will always be a coach. Now anyone who grew up with a coach for a father knows that the coaching philosophy employed by dad will invariably creep into the countless lessons about life passed down to the son.

This was absolutely the case in my house as the majority of my childhood was spent tagging along at practice, watching the game on Saturday and Sunday mornings and generally soaking up all the knowledge that dads tend to give when they spend time with their sons. The man is my best friend, lets just say we've spent quite a bit of time with each other in my 27 years on this earth.

My dad makes no secret of the fact that as a coach he was influenced greatly by Walsh as he attended Walsh's "Coach of the Year" clinics, and being the studious man that he is let no lesson pass him by.

I didn't know it at the time, but many of the life lessons I received from dad growing up came straight from Walsh in a not so round about way. Lessons about organization, hard work, attention to detail and the importance of punctuality and preparedness were all things I simply picked up from watching my dad go about his daily business. It took me years to realize that those lessons were the real genius of Walsh's teachings, and the X's and O's of football simply took care of themselves as a wonderful byproduct.

Now this is not to say that my dad didn't embody these traits to begin with, but through the hours of discussion we've had about the game of football it's become clear that Walsh's influence on him in no small way influenced me as well.

He could of course never know how much he impacted my life, but like all great coaches that's exactly what he did. I never met the man, but I feel like I've always known him and now that he's gone I simply wanted to say thank you to an exceptional coach and an even better man.