Gunther Cunningham arrived at the stadium at 5 a.m., just as he has virtually every day for 30 years. He likes the chill of early mornings. And he can’t sleep much anyway. That’s a lousy feeling, you know, tossing and rolling in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to your mind whir. He’d rather just go do some work.
He arrived at Arrowhead, and as always, his was the first car in the parking lot. He has always taken pride in that. Gunther Cunningham never had a single thing given to him in his life. He wasn’t some hot-shot quarterback whom cheerleaders swooned over. Nobody ever called him “genius.” He got the Chiefs’ job by being loyal and true, by outworking every son of a gun who came along. His car was always first in the parking lot.
Cunningham walked up to his head coach’s office and turned on the light and turned on the computer. He signed on to the Internet. And there, Cunningham saw that Dick Vermeil was going to be the Chiefs’ new coach. He would be fired the next day.
There were plenty of good reasons for the Chiefs to fire Cunningham. He made mistakes. He lost some of his players. He said weird things. Football’s a cold business. And if they wanted to fire Cunningham, well, they should fire the man.
Everyone knew he was fired. It was in the papers. It was on the radio. It was on all the television stations. Friday, they finally did it.
Even in his best moments, after victories, Cunningham’s mind whirls a million miles a minute, and his mouth can’t keep up, and that’s why his news conferences seem like Monty Python sketches. He’s talking about, say, Chester McGlockton, then he’s off on Vince Lombardi, then George S. Patton, then his wife, Rene, then some backup tight end he loved in 1983.
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No road map could ever guide you through a Cunningham news conference.
So can you even imagine the sadness and fear and bitterness that crisscrossed in that mind of his in his final hours as the Chiefs’ coach?
He wanted to be a head coach so badly. He wanted to show all those people who said he did not have the right stuff. He wanted to strike a blow for all those longtime assistant coaches, the working men who had given up their lives to football, the lifers who dragged their families from town to town, team to team, like Old West cowboys looking for the next cattle drive.
“I’m going to give this town the best football team they’ve ever seen,” he used to promise. “I can see it in my mind. All I have to do now is get it on the field. People have no idea what kind of football team I’m going to give them.”
But Gunther Cunningham felt invisible for 30-plus years. He felt like a lost soul. Nobody wanted him as a head coach–he was just Gunther, good old Gunther. Have clipboard, will travel. He used to say to Rene, “I’ll never get my chance, will I?”
And Rene, who fell in love with him when they were children, said, “Yes, you will.”
When he finally got the big job, as the Chiefs’ head coach, he was so happy, so grateful, and he wanted to tell everyone about the great job he was going to do, how much he was going to work, and it sounded a lot like bragging.
Then when the team struggled, he told everyone how he was going to fix it, how he was going to get more involved, how hard he was going to work, and it sounded even more like bragging. Some players got turned off. Some coaches, too. And some fans.
Still, Cunningham figured he would survive.
He thought he would get one more year to make it all right. Shouldn’t a coach get three years, especially one who has had to deal with death and crime and the Chiefs’ running game? Last week, President/General Manager Carl Peterson talked with him about next year. That seemed a good sign. Cunningham made plans. He would still give Kansas City the team of his dreams.
How could he know the Chiefs were simply toying with him? How could he know that Peterson was buddying up with his old chum, Vermeil, and that he was simply using Cunningham as a fall-back position, a stand-inuntil Peterson could finish the deal?
Cunningham won’t come to the phone right now. There’s nothing to say. There’s too much to say.