Some football coaches wore suits and ties. Bum Phillips wore cowboy boots, a ten-gallon hat, and the kind of expression that suggested he’d rather be on a ranch than sitting through another boring press conference.
And somehow, he became one of the most beloved coaches in NFL history.
In the late 1970s, Phillips turned the Houston Oilers into a Texas-sized phenomenon. With Earl Campbell pounding through defenders and the Astrodome rocking to the sound of “Luv Ya Blue!”, Houston became the team nobody wanted to face—and everybody wanted to talk about.
The Oilers reached consecutive AFC Championship Games after the 1978 and 1979 seasons, only to run into the Pittsburgh Steelers dynasty both times. Those losses hurt, but the fans kept showing up. Phillips had built something bigger than a football team. He’d built a family.
And Bum had a way with words.
After one particularly rough playoff defeat, he famously observed, “The harder we played, the behinder we got.”
Honestly, you can’t improve on that.
But the most ridiculous chapter came in 1980. After leading Houston to an 11–5 record, Phillips was fired following a playoff loss to Oakland. Apparently, two AFC Championship appearances and a winning season weren’t enough to keep the cowboy around.
He eventually coached the New Orleans Saints, but his legend was forever tied to those glorious Houston Oilers teams.
Phillips died in 2013 at age 90, leaving behind a legacy of football wisdom, unforgettable one-liners, and a reminder that you didn’t have to look like every other coach to earn respect.
He once summed up the coaching profession perfectly:
“There are two kinds of coaches: them that’s fired, and them that’s gonna be fired.”
Somewhere, a modern NFL coach sitting through a three-hour film session in a team-issued quarter-zip is wishing he could pull that off.
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