BIOGRAPHY / SPORTS

Wade Phillips with Vic Carucci

Son of Bum: Lessons My Dad Taught Me About Football and Life

Diversion Books

Hardcover, 978-1-68230-808-0, 209 pages, $25.99

May 2017

Reviewed by Carlton Stowers

The remarkable journey began with a seven-year-old accompanying his football-coaching father to Nederland High School practices, neither aware that their partnership was the opening scene of a Texas sports legend in the making. The coach, launching what would become a storied career, was Bum Phillips; the son, Wade, the team’s water boy back then, would grow up to follow in his dad’s footsteps, forging a sterling legacy of his own.

That father-son odyssey, which eventually saw Wade play for his dad in high school and college, then coach with him at the collegiate and NFL level for ten years, is warmly chronicled in Son of Bum, an entertaining and insightful tale the younger Phillips has written with the assistance of Buffalo News sportswriter Vic Carucci.

And what a trip it has been. From the time Wade enrolled in kindergarten until he graduated from high school, his family moved eight times as his father climbed the coaching ladder. Wade, now 70, and recently hired as the defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams, notes that he’s moved twenty-two times and lived in eleven states while pursuing his own career.

Never, throughout his travels to NFL outposts where he has variously served as a defensive assistant (Houston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Denver, Buffalo, Atlanta, San Diego), interim head coach (New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston) and head coach (Denver, Buffalo, and Dallas), was the young Phillips ever far removed from the wisdom and counsel of his iconic father. “My dad was my hero,” he writes. “Pretty much everything I know about life, football, and coaching, I learned from him.”

While Son of Bum is Wade Phillips’ personal story, it is foremost a warm and insightful celebration of his relationship with his late father, liberally dotted with tales of the quick wit and keen insight of the man whose formal name was Oail Andrew Phillips. The author tells, for instance, the story of sportswriters expressing concern that the Oilers’ All-Pro running back Earl Campbell had failed to complete the training-camp mile run.  Bum’s reaction: “Hell, if it’s third-and-a-mile, we just won’t give him the ball.”

Phillips takes the reader behind the scenes of his career, the high points (serving as defensive coordinator for the Denver Broncos when they won the Super Bowl in 2016) and lows (being fired by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in 2010 after posting a 34-22 record in three and one-half seasons). Regularly, it was his father’s advice, sometimes philosophical, often humorous, that provided reassurance and guidance. After irate Denver fans showered Wade with postgame debris, the author discussed the unsettling episode with his father. “Hey, they can’t kill you and eat you,” Bum reminded his troubled son.

And there are poignant moments. It was just hours after Wade made a final visit to the bedside of his ill father that he received word Bum Phillips was gone. “You know,” Wade’s stepmother said, “he waited for you before he died, don’t you?”

Such was the memorable relationship of father and son.

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