Goodfellas is one of the greatest movies of all time.
If you don’t agree with that statement, then I will never trust your suggestion on any movie, television show or ice cream flavor.
One scene that stands out is when Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, hears on the radio that his pal Jimmy Conway, played by Robert De Niro, and his gang pulled of the Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport.
I the scene, Hill is shown in the shower — from the torso up. He starts screaming and slapping the shower wall. “Ahhh ha ha ha, Jimmy! Those son of a bitches. Oh, Jimmy!”
That was basically my reaction when I got about 13 minutes into the Waddle & Silvy Show on ESPN Chicago radio last Monday. During their “crosstalk” session with the Carmen & Jurko Show, Mark Silverman and Tom Waddle talked with Carmen DeFalco and John Jurkovic about how boring it is to listen to Chicago Bears coach Matt Eberflus talk.
Waddle is a former Bear and my favorite NFL receiver of all time. Jurko played for the Jaguars, Browns and some team I never heard of from Wisconsin.
The guys were talking about how much more fun Jim Harbaugh would be as a head coach when former Montana Tech coach Bob Green was brought up.
They didn’t know Coach Green’s name, and they surely didn’t know he is a Bears fan. But they knew of the “Geriatric Coach” thanks to the videos of his clips that have gone viral once or twice a year since he retired following the 2010 season.
Green says he is like a comet in that his video clips come around every so often.
Carmen, Jurko, Waddle and Silvy were talking about a quote in which Harbaugh said something like, “I like my locker room like my mom’s bathing suit. In one piece.”
That’s when Carmen brought up Green, who coached 24 years at Montana Tech.
“Who’s the college coach who has all the lines?” Carmen asked. “You see it on social media. He says ‘That’s a little bit of a double-edge sword. It’s like watching your mother-in-law go off a cliff in a Cadillac.”
Carmen got the line wrong, though I am sure there are several versions of the quote by the coach. The first time he busted it out came after the NAIA Orediggers made a strong showing but lost at NCAA Division I-AA North Dakota State in 2004.
“I have mixed feelings,” Green said. “It’s like seeing your mother-in-law driving off a cliff in your brand-new Cadillac.”
Carmen’s version, though, shook the memory of the other guys.
“Is this the old guy?” Silvy said. “I forget who this guy is. He’s a legendary coach.”
Carmen: “He’s like a Division III coach.”
Silvy: “Division II or Division III. He’s got all these good ones.”
Carmen: “He said, ‘Today we played like the third chair on the French horns.’ He’s got these, weird, like witty-little metaphors for everything, and they’re hysterical. I lost it when I saw him say the one about the mother-in-law in the Cadillac. I thought ‘Oh my God.’”
Waddle: “That’s good. That’s good.”
Then, the conversation turned back to Harbaugh possibly leaving Michigan to coach the Bears next season.
After I stopped screaming, I texted Coach Green to tell him that he was mentioned, if not by name, on the radio in Chicago. I told him Silvy referred to him as the “old guy.”
Green, of course, replied like you would expect him to.
“Happy to be ‘that old guy,’” the coach said. “Better than being ‘that no good son of a bitch.’”
The guys were right about one thing. Green is a legend. He hasn’t called a play — other than from the stands — in more than 13 years, and he is still talked about more than 1,400 miles away and in the third-biggest market in the United States.
Unfortunately, Green retired back when social media was new. If he was in his coaching prime today, there is no way we would have been able to keep him for so long in Butte.
He would have been a household name across the sporting universe.
Much bigger universities and maybe even professional teams would have come calling for the coach who has owned every room he has ever walked into.
One of the tragedies of Green’s remarkable coaching career was that his audience was so small.
Sure, he was a hit with the viewers when his funny clips were played on television. But Butte is the 186th largest television market — and that is when it is combined with Bozeman.
For most of Green’s career, the news was broadcast mostly in Butte.
Also, Green rarely had a press conference. Most of his media interaction after games came either on a one-one one interview with one TV reporter on the field or in his office with one reporter from The Montana Standard.
Sure, there was always a bit of a crowd because Chaz Jeniker, Ed “Scuby” Skubitz and the “Big Boy,” Jack Ferriter, were always there. While they often grilled the coach, they were not reporters.
They didn’t have any notebooks or cameras.
Green’s line about the Cadillac was definitely one of his best. But coming to a consensus to which Greenism is the best is like coming to a consensus on the best flavor of ice cream.
There is simply no wrong answer.
Later in 2004, Green pointed out how excited his players were to learn that they received an at-large bid into the NAIA playoffs.
“Our guys are bouncing around like they’re on Viagra-powered pogo sticks,” he said.
Green didn’t come up with all of his lines. When he hears someone say a funny line, Green will usually say, ‘Consider that stolen.”
Then he’ll wait until the perfect time to bust it out. Green has is a great memory. His mind is like a giant database of funny lines, and he as an uncanny ability to find the right funny line at perfect time.
My favorite Green lines were the ones that came off the top of his head. I got a lot of those in my decade or so covering his teams. I would sit in a chair across from his desk when I interviewed him.
When a funny line came to him, he would point at me and tilt his head as he acknowledged that he just came up with a good one.
My favorite Greenism of all time was one he didn’t even mention to a media member.
One year late in his career, I watched practice from up high as the Orediggers struggled to line up for conditioning drills on the practice field south of the HPER Complex.
“It’s a good thing you weren’t with me in ’69,” a frustrated, yet still-joking Green said to his players, referring to his time in Vietnam with the Marines. “I wouldn’t be here.”
It was always amazing to see how much Coach Green cares about his players — even players he hasn’t coached in decades. Even better is seeing how much love and respect those players have for the coach.
I can honestly not think of one player having a bad word to say about him. I’m sure there are some out there who didn’t like him as a coach. I have just never heard a bad word.
You certainly never heard of a single media member who dislikes Coach Green.
For so many years, covering the Orediggers was an absolute dream job for this old writer. Writing about his team never felt like a job. Never.
That is why those four Chicago radio guys wish they had Coach Green in Chicago, coaching the Bears.
Coach Green is one of the top three or four charismatic coaches of all time. At any level. He should have coached in the NFL. Chicago and the Bears would be better if they had him today, when he’s in his mid 70s.
If you don’t agree with that statement, then I will never trust your suggestion on any movie, television show or ice cream flavor.
— Bill Foley, who always goes for chocolate ice cream, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74. Listen to the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
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