Bill Parcells was hired by ESPN as an N.F.L. studio analyst on Wednesday. Again.
Parcells’s roster of coaching and TV jobs is nearly as long as the list of game shows hosted by Wink Martindale. The ex-Giants, ex-Patriots, ex-Jets, ex-Cowboys coach and former executive vice president of the Dolphins has slotted network jobs into his coaching hiatuses since leaving the Giants in 1991.
In that year, he held two jobs. He worked on NBC’s studio show, “The N.F.L. Live,” and co-hosted a weekly program with Mike Francesa on the MSG Network, which was canceled after that season.
Late that season, Parcells backed out of an offer to coach Tampa Bay, then snubbed the Packers.
In 1992, NBC shifted him to game analysis with Marv Albert. That soon ended.
From 1993 to 2000, he was too occupied coaching the Patriots and the Jets (where he spent his final year as general manager) to sign TV deals. But in 2001 he was a guest studio analyst for ESPN, which led to a long-term contract with ESPN in 2002.
“This is the end of it,” Parcells declared of his coaching desires at the time. No one believed him, and a late-season report by CBS (where Parcells has never worked) of a meeting with the Cowboys owner Jerry Jones turned into a four-season interruption in his TV career.
In 2007, freed of coaching, he returned to ESPN. That lasted a season before he left to run the Dolphins’ football operations, a job that essentially ended last October. Now, he’s back at ESPN.
ESPN is now home to three former Jets coaches: Parcells, Herman Edwards and Eric Mangini, who was hired last week. Parcells the studio analyst has never been as interesting or quotable as Parcells the coach. But he had the type of credentials (a 172-130 record and two Super Bowls) that ESPN loves. Mangini’s 33-47 record, combined with his blandness, inaccessibility and secrecy as a coach, do not suggest TV greatness.
ESPN’s publicity department created a selective biography for Mangini. In a see-no-failures news release announcing his hiring, it noted that in his first season with the Jets “he led them to a 10-6 record and a playoff berth after the team finished 4-12 the previous year.” But it skipped the 4-12 record he led the Jets to in 2007 or the twin 5-11 records he led the Cleveland Browns to in his two seasons there.
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