Bill Walsh

Bill Walsh (born November 30, 1931, died July 30, 2007) is a former American football head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and Stanford University. He is currently the Interim Athletic Director at Stanford. He has a home in Pacific Grove, California.

Walsh attended San José State University in San Jose, California, and his first coaching appointment was with Washington High School in Fremont, California. He then served as an assistant coach in college football, first under Marv Levy at the University of California, Berkeley, then with John Ralston at Stanford.

He entered the professional coaching ranks with the expansion Cincinnati Bengals in 1968, serving under Paul Brown for seven seasons as one of the architects of the team's offense.

When Brown retired as head coach following the 1975 season and appointed Bill "Tiger" Johnson as his successor, Walsh resigned and served as an assistant coach for Tommy Prothro with the San Diego Chargers in 1976.

Walsh then moved for the first of two tenures as head football coach at Stanford, from 1977 to 1978.

In 1979, Walsh was appointed head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, and under him the 49ers won Super Bowl championships in 1981, 1984 and 1988. Walsh served as 49ers head coach for twelve years and during his tenure he and his coaching staff perfected the style of play known popularly as the West Coast offense.

He was responsible for drafting Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, Charles Haley, and Jerry Rice. Walsh's successes with the 49ers were rewarded when he was elected to the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1993.

The 1981 season saw Walsh lead the 49ers to a championship and marked the team's rise from the bottom of the NFL. While the 49ers were accused in the late 1980s of trying to 'buy' championships, Walsh's 1981 team won the Super Bowl with the lowest payroll in the league. Important in that season were two wins each over the Los Angeles Rams and the Dallas Cowboys. The Rams had dominated the series with the 49ers up to that point in time, and the 49ers two wins over the Rams in 1981 marked the beginning of a long run of dominance for the 49ers in the series that lasted until the late 1990s.

In 1981 the 49ers blew out the Cowboys in the regular season. On Monday Night Football that week, the 49ers' win was not included in the halftime highlights. Walsh felt that this was because the Cowboys were scheduled to play the Rams the next week in a rare Sunday night game and that showing the highlights of the 49ers' win would potentially hurt the game's ratings. Walsh used this as a motivating factor for his team.

The 49ers faced the Cowboys again that same season in the NFC title game. The game was very close, and in the fourth quarter Walsh called a series of running plays as the 49ers marched down the field against the Cowboys defense, which had been expecting the 49ers to mainly pass. The 49ers came from behind to win the game, propelling Walsh to his first Super Bowl. Walsh and the 49ers defeated Cincinnati in the title game, which was played in Detroit. Walsh would later write that the 49ers' two wins over the Rams showed a shift of power in their division, while the wins over the Cowboys showed a shift of power in the conference.

Among great football luminaries, perhaps none have had the same lasting impact or impeccable record. He is known as an offensive mastermind and his dramatic turnaround of the 49ers in the 1980s established the franchise as latter-day football's symbol of continual dominance and success. After he steered the team to 3 Super Bowl victories, Walsh's hand-picked successor George Seifert took the reins, winning two more Super Bowls.

Many of his assistant coaches went on to be successful coaches in their own right, including Seifert, Mike Holmgren, Mike Shanahan, Ray Rhodes, and Dennis Green. These coaches in turn have their own disciples who have utilized Walsh's West Coast system, making it the offensive system of choice for more than half of today's NFL squads.

After leaving the coaching ranks immediately following his team's victory in Super Bowl XXIII, Bill went to work as a broadcaster for NBC. In a note of irony, Walsh's first regular season game as color analyst featured the team which his 49ers had defeated in the previous Super Bowl, the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals lost to the Chicago Bears in Chicago, 17-14. Walsh returned to Stanford in 1992 to once again serve as head coach for the school, until 1994.

Walsh would also return to the 49ers, serving as Vice President and General Manager from 1999 to 2001 and was a special consultant to the team for three years afterwards. In 2004, Walsh was appointed as special assistant to the athletic director at Stanford. In 2005, after then-athlete director Ted Leland stepped down to take a position at the University of the Pacific, Walsh was named interim athletic director.

Bill Walsh is also the author of several books, is active as a motivational speaker, and taught classes at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In November of 2006, Walsh announced that he was battling leukemia. Walsh died from the disease on July 30, 2007 at the age of 75.