RIP Sam Wyche

I didn’t know Sam Wyche well. He arrived in Cincinnati as the new Bengals’ head coach in early 1984, just a few months before I departed the Enquirer for the San Jose Mercury News. But we did have a couple of conversations before I left and they were really interesting and fun. When he found out I was leaving for the Bay Area–where he had worked as the 49ers’ quarterbacks coach under Bill Walsh–Sam gave me some advice about the region and wished me well. After that, I interviewed Sam a few more times when the 49ers played the Bengals.

Most memorably to me, this included a last-second victory by the Niners at Riverfront Stadium when they got a late turnover with almost no time left and in the confusion, the Bengals’ defense forgot to cover Jerry Rice, leaving him wide open in the end zone where Joe Montana couldn’t miss him. Sam was so stunned that he immediately rushed across the field to shake Walsh’s hand and congratulate him without realizing that the score was just tied because the 49ers still had to kick the extra point to win the game. I was on the field for the final minutes and remember laughing out loud as I witnessed the whole improbable finish. Sam was not laughing. And of course, he later lost to Walsh and the 49ers in the Super Bowl on another famous last-minute Montana drive, another memorable game I was lucky enough to cover.

In my experience, Sam was unfailingly quotable and fascinating and never acted as if he knew the nuclear codes just because he coached football. I was really sorry to hear about his death Thursday after a series of health crises that must have been hell to endure. Crazily and unfairly–because he was a very good X and 0 guy and did get the Bengals to the Super Bowl–Sam is probably best known for an incident in 1989 when he told a snowball-throwing crowd at Riverfront Stadium to knock if off because “you don’t live in Cleveland, you live in Cincinnati.”

It’s indicative of Sam’s personality and philanthropic nature that he later went to Cleveland and allowed himself to sit in a dunk tank to raise money for a charity there, as he explains in this video clip from a couple of years ago. It reminds me of an era when the NFL seemed to be a lot more fun. No one enjoyed that more than Sam. My sympathy to his family and friends.