Allie Sherman
Alex "Allie" Sherman was an American football player and coach who played 51 games in six seasons in the National Football League as a quarterback and defensive back, and afterward served as head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League and of the New York Giants of the NFL. He later worked as a cable television and sports marketing executive and media personality.
Sherman was head coach of the NFL's New York Giants from 1961 to the 1969 preseason. He won three consecutive Eastern Conference titles with the Giants from 1961 to 1963, and coached in three NFL Pro Bowls. Sherman collected two NFL Coach of the Year Awards, in 1961 and 1962, the first time such an honor was awarded to the same person in consecutive years. He was the first "media" NFL head coach, producing and hosting his own shows on television and radio, and becoming a frequent on-air football analyst. After 1963, however, he failed to lead them to a winning record in his next five seasons as coach.
After coaching, he had a long career at Warner Communications, where he developed the first cable television sports networks, pioneered interactive and pay-per-view television and events, oversaw and marketed the New York Cosmos soccer team, and produced for ABC and worldwide syndication Pelé's farewell game event. Later, new New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tapped Sherman to become president of the failing New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation, which, within two years, Sherman made profitable for the first time while revitalizing its tawdry image.
Early life
Sherman was Jewish, and his parents migrated to New York in 1920. Sherman was born in Brownsville in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, then lived in New Lots, East New York, and Crown Heights. He attended P.S. 202, and for junior high school attended P.S. 149, which was also attended by actor Danny Kaye and Henry Cohen.Always playing sandlot sports, especially football, as a sophomore at 13 years old and weighing 125 pounds, he tried out for the football team at Boys High School in Brooklyn. The coach told him he was too small and should try handball instead, and because of his small size and young age his mother refused to sign the required permission slip. Sherman became the captain of the Boys' High handball team, which won division titles. To earn spending money, on weekends he and his doubles partner would "cross over" to the tougher side of Brooklyn to hustle older players who bet big money and hopefully did not recognize them. He graduated in 1939 with a 96 average at the age of 16, and entered college.
Brooklyn College
Sherman entered Brooklyn College, and tried out for football again, but this time coach Lou Oshins took him on as a quarterback, recalling, "His dedication to football was absolute, astonishing." When Sherman's mother saw how violent the game was, however, she made him quit. He and Oshins eventually made his mother relent. During the summer before his sophomore year, while Sherman waited on tables in the Catskills, Oshins mailed Sherman weekly sections of Clark Shaughnessy's book about the new T-formation, leading Sherman to refer to himself as "a correspondence school quarterback". Sherman had also taken a football with him to the Catskills, and spent time throwing it at trees to improve his accuracy.He became the starting quarterback in 1940, and played for the team from 1940 to 1942. One of the few colleges running the T-formation, he captained the 1941–42 Brooklyn College team that upset the favored cross-town rival City College, and completed seven straight passes in a "scrimmage" against an NFL team then called the Brooklyn Dodgers. A teammate was future longtime Boston Celtics play-by-play man Johnny Most. Sherman graduated cum laude in 1943 just have turned 20 years of age, and 5' 10" and 160 pounds.
Sherman is a member of the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Long Island, New York, and the Brooklyn College Hall of Fame.
NFL playing career
After he graduated in 1943, the Philadelphia Eagles' future Hall of Fame coach, Earl "Greasy" Neale, took Sherman on as a "prospect" and to help the Eagles and their All-Pro quarterback Roy Zimmerman convert from a single wing offense into the T-formation. Neale commented, "Never have I seen a player with a greater understanding of the game. He was so dedicated, he insisted on rooming with a lineman. He wanted to absorb the way a lineman thought." He called Sherman "the smartest man in football". In his rookie season, he played with a combined Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers squad. The team, called the Steagles, finished third in the NFL East with a record of 5–4–1.Playing both quarterback and defensive back, Sherman spent five seasons with the Eagles, who finished second in the NFL East from 1944 to 1946. In 1946, he completed 17 of 33 passes for 264 yards, and led the league in yards-per-passing-attempt. The following year, he helped lead the Eagles to the NFL East title with a record of 8–4–0. They tied the Pittsburgh Steelers for first, and then defeated Pittsburgh in a playoff to reach the NFL championship game, which they lost to the Chicago Cardinals, 28–21. In all, he completed 48.9% of his 135 pass attempts for nine touchdowns, while running for four more. After the 1947 season, having played in 51 NFL games, Sherman took Neale's advice and shifted to coaching.
Coaching career
Sherman spent the 1948 season as a rookie head coach and quarterback for the Paterson Panthers, a minor league New Jersey team, and won the championship. In 1949, upon Neale's recommendation, he became backfield coach for the New York Giants under head coach Steve Owen, and converted Charlie Conerly into a T-formation quarterback. In a 1950 preseason exhibition game against the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League, Sherman came out of retirement to play quarterback for the Giants in the first half of a game which New York won by the score of 27–6.When Owen retired as the Giants' coach after the 1953 season, and Sherman did not get his job, he became head coach of the CFL's Winnipeg Blue Bombers. The Bombers made the playoffs three years in a row; and, with the CFL's 12-man squads and broad pre-snap motion rules, Sherman gained a reputation for designing complex offensive schemes that made defenses dizzy. "We had so many guys moving before the snap, it looked like a damned ballet", Sherman said. One of his players was future Hall of Famer Minnesota Vikings coach Bud Grant. In 1957 he returned to the Giants as a scout, and then rejoined the coaching staff in 1959 as offensive coordinator, replacing Vince Lombardi when Lombardi was appointed head coach of the Green Bay Packers. Lombardi, a good friend, wanted Sherman to join him as the Packers' offensive coordinator; but Sherman wanted the Giants' head coaching position.
In 1961, Sherman was promoted to head coach. He traded for a number of younger players to bolster an aging squad, such as star quarterback Y. A. Tittle, swift receiver Del Shofner, and defensive backs Erich Barnes and Allan Webb, and then led the Giants to the NFL Eastern Conference championship, which landed them in the NFL championship game. Although they lost to the Packers on the road, 37–0, Sherman was named NFL Coach of the Year because the Giants had improved from a 6–4–2 record in 1960 to 10–3–1 in 1961. The following year, with running back Frank Gifford returning from injury, Sherman led the Giants back to the NFL title game after repeating as NFL East champions with a 12–2 record. He was again named NFL Coach of the Year, the first awarded that in consecutive seasons, although his Giants again fell to Green Bay, this time 16–7 in Yankee Stadium. In 1963 the Giants won their third straight Eastern title, but lost in the championship game on the road, 14–10, to the Chicago Bears, who injured Tittle's leg, taking him out of the game. It was the Giants' last appearance in an NFL championship game until Super Bowl XXI in 1986–87.
Sherman and his coaching staff coached three NFL Pro Bowl games, from 1961 to 1963. In 1965 and 1966, with the support of owner Wellington Mara, Sherman added two retired Giants to his staff, Emlen Tunnell and Rosey Brown. In addition to being future Hall of Famers, both were African American, the first black assistant coaches in the NFL. With much racial strife in the country at the time, this caused controversy in both the press and parts of the league, particularly in the still-segregated southern areas. In 1968 Sherman and his coaching staff were invited to coach the Senior Bowl's North Team, played in Mobile, Alabama. During the practice week, the Bowl organization held a big banquet at a local country club. Shortly beforehand, Sherman was told that Tunnell and Brown were not invited because of the club's segregation policy. Sherman quickly informed the Bowl committee that no Giants personnel would attend the banquet unless everyone was invited. When it was clear nothing could change his mind, the club relented. That was the first evening in the club's history that two African-Americans were seated and served in the dining room. Sherman remained close friends with both until their deaths.
Sherman coached the Giants for another five seasons, but with an aging defense and retirements of Tittle, Gifford, and others, the team began rebuilding with younger players and went through up and down years. Some fans, used to a playoff club, did not like trades of favorite established players like Rosey Grier, Don Chandler, and Sam Huff. Some trades, however, authorized by Mara, occurred for unpublicized, inside-locker-room reasons. By 1966 some spectators at Yankee Stadium took to chanting "Goodbye Allie", waving banners to that effect and even putting the slogan to song. This never bothered Sherman; he told reporters that his pro philosophy was "They paid their money, and can do what they want," and joked that he owned the rights to the banners and song and made a fortune in royalties. Despite an improved season record of 7–7 in 1967, while being the leading NFL offensive team for much of it, and 7–7 again in 1968, one game away from the playoffs, after a poor preseason performance in 1969, Sherman was dismissed in September, a week before the regular season, finishing 57–51–4 for his Giants coaching career. With a ten-year contract signed in 1965 at $50,000 annually, he was on the payroll through 1974.