Dennis Green, coach of the UFL's California Redwoods, hasn't changed a bit. "Not interested, man," Green said politely but abruptly when FanHouse called him Wednesday night in advance of the UFL's season opener on October 8, when the Redwoods take on the Las Vegas Locomotives.
Green, famous for a postgame tirade as coach of the Arizona Cardinals, then let me off the hook.
Click.
No, Green wasn't about to stomp away from the podium like after that famous Monday Night Football loss against the Chicago Bears. Three calls and one voice mail later, Green finally picked up again.
"I don't need any," the coach said when he heard the caller was from AOL. "You must really want to sell me that internet."
Ironically, Green will be the salesman on behalf of the UFL during its inaugural season, when the four-team league jostles for a spot in the sports landscape this crowded fall season. The league, in fact, starts its campaign in perhaps the busiest point on the sporting calendar.
If anyone can make the UFL stand out, though, it is Green, whose inimitable style will serve as an asset to a fledgling league that needs some personality to get noticed. The coach, however, believes that football's popularity will let the UFL stand on its own.
"It's one more day of the week to watch football," said an apologetic Green upon realizing that he was not, in fact, talking to a telemarketer. "I think the fans will respond when they realize that we are going to play pretty good football." Green, 60, has coached some pretty good football as an NFL head man with the Minnesota Vikings and Arizona Cardinals after some time as an assistant with the San Francisco 49ers, with whom he earned a Super Bowl ring while serving under Bill Walsh. He also guided Stanford and Northwestern in the college ranks.
At his apex, Green coached the Vikings to a 15-1 regular-season record in 1998, when the team eventually fell to the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC championship game. In 2001, Green's final season in Minnesota, his squad suffered its lone losing campaign in the coach's decade with the team. Green advanced to two NFC championship games and made eight playoff appearances during his tenure.
With the Cardinals, though, Green hit a speed bump, guiding the team to three losing seasons and garnering more success on Coors Light commercials than anywhere else. That shift landed him on the outside looking in on the NFL coaching fraternity after the 2006 season.
That rapid decline -- whether it was entirely his fault or not -- parallels some careers of the players he will coach in the UFL, which will be a league of opportunity for those looking to prove themselves once again.
Former Buffalo Bills quarterback J.P. Losman, a starter in the NFL just last season, had opportunities to be a back-up on several NFL teams, according to Green, but decided to come to the UFL, where presumably he will get much more playing time with the Locomotives.
"Losman made a great decision," Green said. "There is a lot of skepticism about a player who is not on the field. That skepticism can be erased. There were a lot of players who wanted (to play in the UFL), but weren't sure about the league. I'll tell you one thing ... it gives players a shot."
Green, most likely feeling a kinship with those who were once-prominent, called the decline of running backs over the age of 30 -- when most are considered to have prime years in the rearview mirror -- a complete myth. That belief, however, is responsible for landing some players out of the NFL-- and into the UFL -- in favor of those with fresher legs. The coach said the league welcomes the overlooked, under-appreciated and, most of all, under-served. The UFL's business model will focus on putting teams in cities that are starved for professional football, capitalizing on the country's most popular sport.
"We absolutely hope that teams in Las Vegas and Orlando -- places that always wanted pro football -- will love to have a team," he said. "Of course, New York is the big city, and San Francisco can support another team (other than the 49ers) in a different part of town.
"Other leagues have tried in the winter and fall, but we can get good players. Americans have shown that they will watch good football, period."
The UFL hopes that, unlike the call from FanHouse late Wednesday, the league truly is what Green thought it was.
