The Unsung — George Seifert.

George Gerald Seifert (born January 22, 1940)

Coached for: San Francisco 49ers (1989–1996), Carolina Panthers (1999–2001)

George Seifert Football Reference ([coach]) statistics 

Regular season record: 114–62 (.648), Postseason record: 10–5 (.667), Career: 124–67

2× Super Bowl champion (XXIV, XXIX) as head coach, six NFC West championships

George Seifert was born in San Francisco and was practically destined to be a 49ers guy, even serving as an usher at old Kezar Stadium when attending San Francisco Polytechnic High (across the street from the stadium). He played football at the University of Utah because he apparently was offered a scholarship at the last minute due to a cancellation that saw him choose Utah over Cal Poly. His first coaching position was as a graduate assistant for Utah in 1964 (Seifert was no slouch as a student, graduating with a degree in biology, and he actually entered a master's program in physical education after graduation). He coached in a string of places: NAIA's Westminster College in 1965, Iowa as a graduate assistant in 1966, defensive backs for Oregon (1967-1971) and later Stanford (1972-1974, 1977-1979) and head coach at Cornell (1975-1976). He entered the pros at age 40 as the defensive backs coach of the San Francisco 49ers in 1980, the year after Bill Walsh went from head coach at Stanford to the same position in San Francisco. Seifert was promoted to defensive coordinator in 1983 and served the position for five years.

Days after the 49ers won Super Bowl XXIII (their third in the 1980s), Bill Walsh retired (in a move he regretted later) and recommended that Seifert become head coach, describing him as a "the best technician in football on the defensive side" (as for defensive coordinator, LB coach Bill McPherson was promoted). Despite worries about needing a "name coach" from ownership and despite the possibility of the Cleveland Browns trying to hire Seifert, the 49ers went with Seifert in January 1989. The 1989 season was likely the smoothest possible for any rookie head coach in NFL history (well, at least when compared to Don McCafferty, the only other rookie head coach to win the Super Bowl), as Joe Montana had the first of consecutive MVP seasons with a passer rating of 112.4 as the 14-2 49ers allowed a mere 26 points in the postseason and dominated the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV 55-10 in a game where, well, they never trailed. The 1990 season was almost nearly better. Montana was the MVP again, they won 14 games and had another NFC Championship Game at home. A late fumble and a late injury to Montana saw the 49ers defeated 15-13 on a game winning field goal by Matt Bahr of the New York Giants. Plan B free agency saw the departures of Ronnie Lott and Roger Craig to the Raiders after the year ended and Montana suffered an elbow injury in preseason that knocked him out for the entire season. Amidst injuries and wavering play by Steve Young and Steve Bono, the 49ers won their last six games after starting 4-6 but missed the playoffs. It was the only time Seifert's 49ers missed the playoffs in his tenure (incidentally, Walsh's teams missed the playoffs the year after winning Super Bowl XVI).

Described as an intensely focused coach, the pressure was clearly on for Seifert to win games. With Young set as the starter for the team (and Montana essentially out the door), the 49ers went 14-2 in 1992, 10-6 in 1993, and 13-3 in 1994, with Young winning the MVP in '92 and '94 (the latter saw him have a 112.8 passer rating and a fiery rant about being taken out by Seifert, incidentally). Each time saw them play the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC Championship, where Dallas defeated them twice. As insane as ring culture might be, Seifert apparently was on the hot seat in 1994; management decided to go for a litany of free agents such as Deion Sanders. San Francisco would get their revenge and won the 1995 NFC Championship Game versus Dallas to reach Super Bowl XXIX and deny the Cowboy chance of a three-peat. The Super Bowl was a 49-26 rout of the San Diego Chargers in a game where they never trailed after the first 1:24. The next two seasons saw Seifert's teams lose to the Green Bay Packers in the Divisional Round. When the 49ers did not elect to extend Seifert's contract beyond the one year he had left on it and favored Steve Mariucci (the then coach at California that management wanted to name as coach in waiting), Seifert instead resigned in January 1997 after eight seasons as head coach. No coach has won more games with San Francisco than Seifert's 98 wins, with current coach Kyle Shanahan at 82 in nine seasons.

After trying his hand at television, Seifert was named head coach and general manager of the Carolina Panthers in 1999 to replace Don Capers, who had coached the first four seasons of the franchise that had a surprise run to the NFC Championship Game in 1995 only to win 11 combined games in the next two years. The Panthers went 8-8 in 1999 with as 34-year-old Steve Beuerlein led the league in passing yards with 4,436. Sure, Carolina started out 3-6, but the Panthers only missed the playoffs due to point differential. The 2000 season did not see improvement, never rising above .500 before being shellacked by Oakland in the season finale to finish 7-9. The 2001 season was meant to be a rebuilding year, and Seifert elected to release Beuerlein in March with the intent to have Jeff Lewis (on the roster since 1999) get the starting job to go along with new draft picks such as Steve Smith (with a bit of convincing done by WR coach Mike McCoy to get Seifert convinced to pick him). It did not go well: Lewis was released in August and Carolina thus went with fourth-round draft pick (and 29-year-old Heisman Trophy winner) Chris Weinke* to sling the ball for the season. The team won the first game of the year against Minnesota before a halftime tie against Atlanta saw them lose 24-16 on the way to 15 straight losses. Sure, not all of them were bad (nine of the games were decided by one score, including two in OT), but it was not a pretty sight for team owner Jerry Richardson, who fired Seifert right after the final game. Two seasons later, with a foundation that had elements built by Seifert, the Panthers reached the Super Bowl. Seifert has not coached again, but the 49ers inducted him into their team Hall of Fame in 2014.

I would like you to compare a litany of head coaches and guess which one is a Hall of Famer:

	Overall record	Playoff record	Championships	Playoffs	Seasons coached	Division titles
Coach A	97-87	8-3	2	5	12	3
Coach B	80-64	9-4	2	6	9	2
Coach C	170-150	12-7	2	8	20	5
Coach D	170-138	8-6	2	9	20	4
Coach E	104-75-9	3-1	2	3	15	3
Seifert	114-62	10-5	2	7	11	6

The answer is just two of them. 

A: Tom Flores - inducted 27 years after his last game as coach*

B: Jimmy Johnson - inducted 21 years after his last game as coach. 

Yes, you heard that right, C (Tom Coughlin), D (Mike Shanahan*), and E (Buddy Parker) are not in the Hall. The Pro Football Hall of Fame has failed inducting to an actual standard of players and coaches, point blank. Seifert is 38th among the 44 coaches with 100 wins in NFL history, but managing to win 114 of 176 games (eight games shorter than Flores) for a .648-win percentage is nothing to scoff at. In fact, it is 18th in NFL history, ranking above sure-fire HOFers in Bill Belichick and Andy Reid. But what about the second act, clearly there had to be something sad about the way he went. This would hold water if it wasn't for the fact that Seifert's 16-32 (.333) record with Carolina is better than Flores' record with Seattle of 14-34 (.292). Saying that a coach won with a different guy's players is ridiculous, as it assumes that Seifert just swooped in and never interacted with any of them prior to becoming a head coach rather than, well, coaching with the team for nearly 10 years - besides, Seifert won more games in less time than Walsh did (who won 92 games in 10 seasons). George Seifert should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame before he is dead. He has never been a senior finalist for the Hall of Fame and is 86 years old. Good grief.

On behalf of the Unsung Hall of Fame, it is my privilege to welcome George Seifert to the Hall.

N O T E S

Photo credit: The Best of George Seifert

*Seriously, Weinke was a 29-year-old NFL rookie. He had played minor league baseball for six years before going to Florida State to play football.

*Please note that I listed Flores as division champion for three seasons: the 1982 AFC, 1983 AFC West, and 1985 AFC West. The 1982 season had only 9 games played due to strike but the Raiders finished 8-1 in a 14-team AFC with no divisions. As such, I list them as a champion because it would be stupid not to. Also, the Parker "division" ones are actually him just finishing 1st in the "Western Conference", which was tantamount to making the NFL Championship Game in his era.

Incidentally, Shanahan was the offensive coordinator for the Super Bowl XXIX winning 49ers.

The Unsung — Billy Reay.

William Tulip Reay (August 21, 1918 – September 23, 2004) 

Played for Detroit Red Wings (1943, 1944), Montreal Canadiens (1945-1953)

Coached for: Toronto Maple Leafs (1957–1959), Chicago Black Hawks (1963–1977)

Billy Reay Hockey Reference ([coach]) statistics 

Regular season record: 542–385–175 (.571), Postseason record: 57–60 (.487), Career: 599–445–175 

Five division titles (1969-70, 1969-1973, 1975-76), best record in NHL (1966-67), 12 Stanley Cup playoff appearances in 14 full seasons as coach

Win, lose, or draw, Billy Reay had a happy and long life in hockey. The Winnipeg native entered the leagues of hockey with the St. Boniface Seals in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League in 1936 when he was 18 years old. For nearly a decade, he would play in four different minor leagues (Albert Senior Hockey League, American Hockey Association, Quebec Senior Hockey League) and won a few championships. He became a major league NHL player for brief spurts with the Detroit Red Wings of two games in the 1943-44 and 1944-45 seasons (with the former season seeing him score two goals). He finally made it stick in the NHL with the Montreal Canadiens in 1945 and played there for eight seasons, which saw him do four 40-point seasons. He won the Stanley Cup in 1946 and 1953 before closing out his career with the Vancouver Canucks of the Western Hockey League. As a player, Reay had 105 goals and 162 assists in 479 games while playing in 63 playoff games. 

Billy Reay was a player-coach as early as the 1950s with Victoria in the WHL and coached in the AHL in Rochester in 1956-57. He was hired to be the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1957. In the then-six team league, they finished last place in Reay's only full season. In the summer of 1958, Punch Imlach got hired as an assistant general manager for a team that had a multiple man committee to oversee business. In November, he got himself named a fulltime GM and proceeded to fire Reay with a team that had won five of its first 20 games of the 1958-59 season. Reay made the best of it as a coach in the minor leagues with the Sault Ste. Marie Thunderbirds of the EPHL in 1960 and the Buffalo Bisons from 1961-1963. The Chicago Black Hawks saw what they liked from him and asked him to replace Rudy Pilous (who had won the Cup for Chicago in 1961 but apparently was fired by Tommy Ivan in a letter) as head coach in the summer of 1963.

As headlined by players such as Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Glenn Hall, the 1963-64 Black Hawks narrowly finished in 2nd place to Montreal with 36 wins (and one less tie) but were upset by the 4th place Red Wings in seven games. The Black Hawks finished 4th the following year but got revenge in some small part by defeating the Red Wings in a seven-game semifinal victory to reach the Stanley Cup Final versus Montreal. Unfortunately, the home team that won all of its games benefitted Montreal, who won the decisive seventh game 4-0. In the final two seasons of the six-team era, the Black Hawks lost in the semifinal round each time, which included a 1966-67 season where they had more points than anyone (94, having won a club-record 41 games). The 1967-68 season, the first with 12 teams (and therefore eight playoff teams) saw them narrowly finish 4th. They made it to the Semifinals only to lose to Montreal. The 1968-69 team finished out of the playoffs (dead last, actually), the only time in a full season that Reay did not reach the playoffs with Chicago. The 1969-70 team began a torrid run for Reay as the Black Hawks won the first of four consecutive division titles (even when being moved from the East to the West in 1970), with the first season seeing them be the regular season champion for the second time ever (and last until the 1990-91 team). The Black Hawks flip-flopped runs to the Cup, making it in 1971 and 1973 (the latter without Hull) while losing in the semifinals in 1970 and 1972.

The home team won each of the first six games in 1971 (which included an overtime win by Chicago in Game 1 on rookie goaltender Ken Dryden*), and Chicago had a 2-0 lead at one point in Game 7 before Jacques Lemaire (on what was reported to be a 60-foot shot or 75 feet out) and Henri Richard evened the game in the second period that led to Richard's go-ahead winner 2:34 into the third period. The 1973 Final went six games as Scotty Bowman's first Cup win came with a team that beat Chicago 6-4 in Chicago. Chicago made the postseason three more times with Reay (with the 1975-76 squad winning the Smythe title) but never got past the Semifinal round. In December of 1976, with the team at 10-19-5, he was apparently fired by a note left under his door and replaced by former player Bill White. At the time, only Dick Irvin (691) had more wins than Reay and only Irvin (190) and Toe Blake (119) had more playoff games coached than Reay's 117. Reay never coached again and died in Wisconsin in 2004 at the age of 86. The Chicago Tribune called him "wasn’t one to polish apples or lick boots, either, and perhaps this is why he has been denied a place in hockey’s Hall of Fame."

Researching from the NHL Coaching Register, the following NHL coaches won 300 games but have never won the Stanley Cup (please note that all but six of these names started their career after 1980, as win totals have exploded with expansion):

		Regular Season							Playoffs
Coach	Yrs	GP	W ▼	L	T	OL	PTS	PTS%	G	W	L	W-L%
Lindy Ruff	25	1917	936	737	78	166	2116	0.552	132	71	61	0.538
Alain Vigneault	19	1363	722	489	35	117	1596	0.585	155	78	77	0.503
Pat Quinn	20	1400	684	528	154	34	1556	0.556	183	94	89	0.514
Peter DeBoer	17	1261	662	447		152	1476	0.585	179	97	82	0.542
Todd McLellan	18	1253	659	450		144	1462	0.583	88	42	46	0.477
Ron Wilson	18	1401	648	561	101	91	1488	0.531	95	47	48	0.495
Dave Tippett	17	1285	648	475	28	134	1458	0.567	82	34	48	0.415
Jacques Martin	18	1350	639	507	119	85	1482	0.549	111	50	61	0.45
Bryan Murray	17	1239	620	465	131	23	1394	0.563	112	52	60	0.464
Bruce Boudreau	15	1087	617	342		128	1362	0.626	90	43	47	0.478
Billy Reay	16	1102	542	385	175		1259	0.571	117	57	60	0.487
Terry Murray	15	1012	499	383	89	41	1128	0.557	101	50	51	0.495
Roger Neilson	16	1000	460	378	159	3	1082	0.541	106	51	55	0.481
Brian Sutter	13	1028	451	417	140	20	1062	0.517	68	28	40	0.412
Michel Therrien	12	814	406	303	23	82	917	0.563	71	38	33	0.535
John Hynes	11	809	399	325		85	883	0.546	25	6	19	0.24
Emile Francis	13	778	388	273	117		893	0.574	89	39	50	0.438
Bob Berry	11	860	384	355	121		889	0.517	33	11	22	0.333
Gerard Gallant	11	705	369	262	4	70	812	0.576	60	31	29	0.517
Rod Brind'Amour	8	594	363	176		55	781	0.657	89	47	42	0.528
Bob Pulford	12	829	363	330	136	0	862	0.52	71	28	43	0.394
Michel Bergeron	10	792	338	350	104		780	0.492	68	31	37	0.456
Andy Murray	10	738	333	277	58	70	794	0.538	28	10	18	0.357
Rick Bowness	15	818	322	410	48	38	730	0.446	59	28	31	0.475
Rick Tocchet	10	698	314	286		98	726	0.52	22	11	11	0.5
Craig MacTavish	8	656	301	252	47	56	705	0.537	36	19	17	0.528

Only three of those people have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder*: Quinn, Neilson, Francis, although the future is unwritten for Ruff (900 wins and counting) or DeBoer (are we kidding?) or even with Rod Brind'Amour (who could just make it as a player). Compare Reay to Quinn/Neilson/Francis (please note the season count is not all full as each were fired at one point) in regular season record and playoff record.

	Season	Games	W	L	T	OTL	Pts	Pts%	Playoff Games	W	L	Win %
Billy Reay	16	1102	542	385	175		1259	0.571	117	57	60	0.487
Pat Quinn*	20	1400	684	528	154	34	1556	0.556	183	94	89	0.514
Roger Neilson*	16	1000	460	378	159	3	1082	0.541	106	51	55	0.481
Emile Francis*	13	778	388	273	117		893	0.574	89	39	50	0.438

By no standard is Billy Reay lower than one, let all alone all three of those names. As such, his continued omission from the Hockey Hall of Fame is a mistake that should be rectified if the Blackhawks had the stones to actually mount a campaign for Reay, whose 516 victories is still the most in franchise history.

On behalf of the Unsung Hall of Fame, it is my privilege to welcome Billy Reay to the Hall.

N O T E S

*Yes, people like Bob Pulford and Sid Abel made it, as players.

*The late Ken Dryden won his first six regular season games and won himself the goaltender position for the whole playoffs, going 12-8 and winning the Conn Smythe Trophy for his postseason play.