They kept coming down pathways that lead to the Church of the Presentation in Upper Saddle River last week. Super Bowl winners and All-Pro linebackers; team managers and security guards. Inside the vestibule, they viewed the remains of Bill McGovern’s football life.
To the left were purple and white jerseys worn by McGovern, an All-American free safety at Holy Cross who picked off Doug Flutie on the day Flutie won the Heisman Trophy in 1984; to the right were all 11 helmets of the teams he played for or coached. Between game balls was a sign McGovern’s widow, Colleen, posted at the homes they kept along the way.
“WE INTERRUPT THIS MARRIAGE TO BRING YOU FOOTBALL SEASON,” it read.
The game sustained McGovern, 60, until cancer claimed him on May 30. Leveled by a seizure last July, shortly after becoming UCLA’s defensive coordinator, he coached the Bruins to a 6-1 start from the sidelines, but missed five weeks as he grew sicker in season. He returned to the field for the Sun Bowl before transitioning to a non-coaching role this spring. He died surrounded by family in Redondo Beach, Calif.
The final leg of his odyssey was a posthumous flight cross country for his funeral, where his convening power was on display in wooden pews. Those at his mass included Giants owner John Mara, Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores, retired All-Pro linebacker Luke Kuechly and Ohio State head coach Ryan Day.
They paid respects to a gravelly-voiced recruiter who answered to “Whitey” in his towhead youth and referred to Woodford Reserve as “brown water.” UCLA coach Chip Kelly called him “the best non-verbal communicator I’ve met” because of his signature grunts, shrugs and eye rolls.
Few negotiated the niceties of North Jersey’s colorful recruiting trail with greater skill, and players appreciated his approach. Above the fireplace in his homes hung an oil-on-canvas portrait of his face on an aristocrat’s body that NFL linebacker Connor Barwin gifted him when McGovern oversaw his lone season as an All-Pro.
Between hymns, the organist played “My Way.” On the altar, Kelly noted that when he checked out of the Marriott in Park Ridge, he heard about the bar tab McGovern’s Holy Cross teammates had run up the night before. It topped $2,000. They had stayed past closing time to keep Billy McGovern’s Irish wake flowing.
“You set a food-and-beverage record last night,” Kelly said. “I know Billy’s smiling.”
‘We Can Do Hard Things’
McGovern was one of nine siblings. His father, Howie, a Marine sergeant who served in Korea, ran a trucking business, and his mother, Terry, worked at Bergen Catholic. They lived in Oradell, and their house backed up to the fourth green at Hackensack Golf Club. Stray golf balls were occasionally found in an upstairs bathroom.
But visitors were more likely to find the seven brothers configuring their own 3-4, 4-3 and 5-2 schemes as they engaged in regular games of “goal line” in the living room. Success was launching over would-be tacklers down on their knees, clearing them and landing softly on a couch for a touchdown. Defeat was being caught mid-air and slammed to the floor.
“I knew he was a good big brother when he would bloody my nose in the carpet and then I would help him conceal the crime from my mom by moving a chair over it,” said Rob McGovern, who played in the NFL. “He was pretty persuasive.”
When McGovern enrolled at Bergen Catholic, Vic Liggio, an accounting teacher and the freshman football team coach, explained the bottom line.
“If you’re small and slow, I don’t really have much use for ya,” he said. “If you’re small and fast, I’ll find something for you to do. If you’re big and slow, I’ll find something for you to to. If you’re tall and fast, God bless you.”
McGovern made do with modest dimensions. At 6-foot-1, 180 pounds, he won two state titles at Bergen Catholic but couldn’t secure a college scholarship. He walked on at Holy Cross, started the fifth game, earned a scholarship and worked in a warehouse sorting beans during the summer. As a junior, he intercepted Flutie twice in a game. By senior year, he finished his career with 24 picks, a Division I-AA record.
“I cried because we weren’t going to be able to replace him,” said Mark Duffner, the defensive coordinator.
McGovern was always looking for the right alignment. When his brother, Jimmy, played on the PGA Tour, Billy stationed friends and family on both sides of the fairway.
“Just in case Jimmy sprayed one,” their brother, Michael, said.
McGovern coached anyone who let him. After a season as a graduate assistant at UPenn, he returned to Holy Cross, where his coach, Rick Carter, had committed suicide. McGovern was a steady hand before hopping to UMass, then back to Holy Cross, then Boston College, then Pittsburgh and back to BC. As a prospector, he found B.J. Raji, a 6-foot-2, 295-pound lineman with a dancer’s footwork at Westwood High. To pursue linebacker Brian Toal, McGovern regularly grabbed drinks with his father, Greg, the coach at Don Bosco, at the Fair Lawn Athletic Club.
“No human being was more honest,” Greg Toal said. “Billy didn’t B.S. you. Not too many Oradell guys came to the club.”
McGovern was acerbic. If a player repeated mistakes, McGovern said, “Mix some of the good in with the bad every now and then.” He was also supportive. Mark Herzlich was the ACC Defensive Player of the year when diagnosed with bone cancer. “He’ll be an annoying S.O.B. in the chemo room,” McGovern said then. “The nurse will hear about our Fire Zone and Cover Two.” Herzlich returned to play for McGovern with BC.
“His daily calls to ‘talk ball’ during my cancer treatments were my link to the game when cancer tried to take it away,” Herzlich said.
In winning times, McGovern relished Ashton Double Magnum cigars at Caffe Vittoria in Boston’s North End; by 2012, BC fell to 2-10, and the staff was fired. Kelly hired McGovern with Philadelphia, where he spent three seasons before that staff was dismissed. McGovern drove up the turnpike to join the Giants. While his family remained in the Philadelphia suburbs to finish school, he moved into his childhood bedroom in Oradell, where his sister, Patti, lived. When that staff was fired, he hopped to Nebraska. In 2021, he lived in a Residence Inn as he coached the Chicago Bears’ inside linebackers.
“I was in witness protection for a while,” he said. “Hard man to find.”
He re-emerged in 2022 at an unlikely location: Los Angeles. Kelly’s defenses were woeful; McGovern signed on as the corrector. He rented a house one block from the ocean, and as he readied to move, he grabbed lunch at State Street Pub, a favorite haunt in Media, Pa., where he experienced a seizure. Cancer followed.
Once out west, he hung a sign in the house that read: “WE CAN DO HARD THINGS.” McGovern mapped therapy sessions between meetings, practices and recruiting visits.
“I’m fine,” McGovern told Kelly. “Don’t worry about me.”
“If it’s not about you, who is it about?” Kelly said.
McGovern started the season on the sideline, but cancer took its toll. Relegated to watching from home, mentees and colleagues visited. He struggled to adjust.
“All of a sudden you think you have a headset on at home, but you don’t,” he said. “You might be yelling at somebody in your house rather than somebody on the other end of the line.”
He vowed to be back next season, but transitioned to an administrative role this spring.
In eulogizing McGovern, two days before her high school graduation back in California, his youngest daughter, Mackenzie, noted she would carry on her father’s schemes.
“Most dads teach their kids how to drive, do math, change a tire and all of that other normal stuff,” Mackenzie said. “My dad also taught me about the 4-3, the 3-4, the 5-2, zones and blitzes.”
‘If not for Billy McGovern’
A piper played “Danny Boy” as members of McGovern’s family and the coaching fraternity laid red and white roses atop his casket at Maryrest Cemetery in Mahwah. Flores removed his sunglasses as he approached; Kelly cried. They embraced as funeral home workers gathered floral arrangements and grave diggers lowered McGovern’s casket into his plot, 20 yards from where his brother, Jack, was buried in 2019.
“Thank you for coming,” McGovern’s brother, David, told Flores.
“He touched my life so many times in such an incredible way,” Flores said. “If not for Billy McGovern, I’d probably have quit football. If not for Billy McGovern, I’d probably not be coaching football.”
“He was that kind of guy,” David’s wife, Melanie, said.
“And more,” Flores said.
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Kevin Armstrong may be reached at [email protected].
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