Luv Ya Bum!

I was there seven years and it was the seven

happiest years of my life.

Not because we won but because of the way we won

and the--and the way the kids acted,

the way the players and the fans reacted.

Just to get that city

and that group of kids together,

oh...

great memories.

If I could play for any coach in the NFL,

I'd play for Bum Phillips.

I mean, that guy was like unbelievable.

He was like the perfect dad

everybody thought they would love to have.

The way that players talk about Bum.

I mean, he's a legend not only because he was a great coach

but I think, more importantly, he's a great person.

Kind of an odd-looking guy for a football coach.

Cowboy boots and belt buckles

and man with a big cowboy hat,

had a big smile most of the time.

My next guest is one of the most outstanding

and colorful coaches that the NFL has had in years.

-Bum Phillips. -

Texas is a football state

and Houston is a football city.

And he's a legend. They had a team that was legendary.

And they were dominating and the fans,

the city, everybody was behind it.

It seemed like football heaven to me.

Well, they are--they are a great team in Houston.

They're a great team.

Bum Phillips was an icon.

Every man get a man, every good man get two.

All right.

He was an authoritative figure

but yet they loved him.

It was the personalities

of men like Bum Phillips

that gave me my greatest motivation to be in the NFL.

His ability to relate to people

in a commonsensical way is something special.

If he said something, you listen,

and everybody paid attention to him.

Everybody in this room deserves a game ball,

but I don't believe anybody deserves

-one more number seven. -Yeah!

He never ever failed to end with this,

"You just remember, guys,

that when you don't think anybody loves you,

you just remember Old Bum loves ya."

We had a bunch of misfits.

He made a difference in the player on the field

and off the field.

I know that, off the field,

he saved a lot of players

from going to jail.

He didn't care whether you're a veteran, a rookie.

When you're on that field,

you were there to do a job,

and he made it easy to do

because of his approach.

He said, "Look, we're gonna come under fire

because we don't do things

that they normally do in the NFL."

"The way we practice, the way we train."

That meant a lot.

I don't think there was any coach

that was more loved than Bum Phillips.

I played against guys that said,

"Man, how is it playing for that guy?"

I said, "It's like playing for your dad, you know?"

"A nice dad."

Houston is skyline after skyline,

innovative and striking.

Emerging of greenery and glass,

fountain and mortar, bayou and freeway.

In the 1970s,

Houston, Texas was a boom town.

Coming into its own as the fourth largest city

in the nation, it was the Energy Capital of the World,

and people all across the country

were moving to Houston to find opportunity

and prosperity.

Everywhere you went in Houston,

there was excitement.

Everybody was doing well.

The economy was great.

People outside of Texas, they thought everybody

in Houston had an oil well in their backyard.

And it was the place to be

in the late '70s and early '80s.

The city of Houston was really coming into being

as to what it is today.

We're just about to have Urban Cowboy,

Gilley's.

You have music. You have culture.

You have Nolan Ryan coming to the Astros.

The Rockets are great.

It was a wonderful time.

And the Astrodome.

Astrodome, eighth wonder of the world.

It's a home run.

Nobody had an indoor stadium.

The Astros built it for the baseball team

but, you know, you could play football here on AstroTurf.

I mean, it was crazy.

But for all its growth and prosperity,

Houston still lacked one crucial element...

...a winning football team.

In the early '70s, the Houston Oilers

were the worst team in pro football,

maybe any kind of football, in terms of winning.

One season, they won only one game.

Did fall into the basement of the NFL,

literally and figuratively.

They started off very well in 1960

when Bud first started his team.

Bought the AFL franchise for $25,000.

They win the first two AFL Championships

and played for third in 1962 and lost in double overtime.

And so the Oilers got off to a tremendous start.

And then when the wheels came off,

I mean, they came off big time.

Football, it needs to be fun.

And there wasn't a lot of fun happening.

During the 1972 season in a

shutout loss to the Raiders,

the Oilers delivered what was widely considered

the worst performancein Monday Night Football history.

Right there is a vivid

picturization of the excitement at--

Upon this game.

They're number one in the nation.

Bud Adams had gone through

eight coaches in 15 years.

So we had Ed Hughes that we were 4-9-1 with,

my rookie year.

We had Bill Peterson, who, to this day,

I have no clue how he ever got a job,

but we were back-to-back 1-13 seasons.

So, you know, I didn't know how much lower you could go.

I was definitely considering my other options--

I wondered if it was too late to call the Mets

to see if I could still try out as one of their pitchers.

The fanbase had been so frustrated for so long.

There was probably a 11-year period in there

where they had ten losing seasons.

Bud Adams decided to go out and get Sid Gillman

to come in and try to organize the program.

Sid brought Bum in

to help get the defense straightened out.

Sid came along and Sid was kind of a--

well, he was a dictator.

He walked into the first day of camp,

and it was a strike year and the strike was over,

and he says, "We don't have a democracy here."

He said, "I'm a dictator and I'm the guy."

So he said, "You, you, you and you and you, out."

And he cut guys that were either

representatives at one time or player representatives

for the players association or whatnot.

You see a guy come in one day and that afternoon,

somebody else would get cut.

After just one year as head coach,

Sid Gillman resigned.

Head coaching responsibilities were handed

to an East Texas cowboy,

the team's defensive coordinator, Bum Phillips.

That started things rolling in Houston.

The 1975 football season

was getting ready to start.

The Oilers had come up

with a brand-new head coach

that nobody ever heard of,

a good old boy named Oail "Bum" Phillips.

Folks down in Houston didn't know what to expect.

I actually bucked it.

I went to Bud Adams and said,

"I think you're making the wrong choice."

Fortunately, Bud didn't listen to me.

And then unbeknownst to me,

the first time I met Bum Phillips,

I fell in love with him.

First time in, he says,

"Okay, I want you guys to get to know each other,

get to know them, get to know their family."

He said, "Because you guys want to be like a family."

"You'll fight harder for your family

than you will your teammates."