"I Can't Stop—I Just Can't"

Football Digest, Nov, 2000 by Rick Dean

In a sport filled with obsessive-compulsive coaches, Kansas City's Gunther Cunningham is in a class by himself

THE MEDICAL REPORTS actually were pretty good for a man in his early 50s who, quite frankly, hadn't taken the time to undergo a thorough physical examination in years. His cholesterol count was excellent, his blood pressure was acceptable, and the obligatory PSA test showed no signs of the prostate problems common to so many men his age.

But a new, highly specialized heart scan showed evidence of some arterial blockage. And though his cardiologist recommended only medication as the initial treatment, the workaholic patient still heard warning bells when he was advised to consider some lifestyle changes if he hoped to live a long and productive life.

"Tell me this," Gunther Cunningham responded. "Do I have at least the next seven months?"

The cardiologist's expression, as Cunningham remembered later, was one of utter disbelief. Here he was trying to tell the Kansas City Chiefs head coach that with medication, proper diet, any semblance of an exercise program, and a little less Type-AAA behavior, Cunningham could live--hell, he could coach--another 20 years. Yet all Cunningham wanted to know was whether he'd survive the 2000 NFL season while living his professional life the only way he knew how.

Which is to say, right to the brink of exhaustion. Gunther Cunningham, you see, is a man who thinks he's overslept if he dozes for four hours each night during a season.

That's the way Cunningham has approached coaching for all of his 32 years in the profession. Friends who knew him in the boot camp days with Frank Broyles at Arkansas or with Frank Kush on the Baltimore Colts or when he was on the defensive side of the Air Coryell Flying Circus on the San Diego Chargers or during coordinator positions with the Los Angeles Raiders and Marty Schottenheimer's Chiefs will tell you Cunningham worked as long and hard in those positions as he does as head coach in Kansas City. The only difference? Now he worries about both sides of the ball.

His friends tell him to slow down, to ease back to, oh, 120 mph or so. Cunningham thanks them warmly for the well-intended advice, then ignores it. "I can't stop--I just can't," he says with his signature intensity. "There have been times when I've tried to settle down, but I feel like a failure, like I'm not doing justice to the other guys. I'm not making that up. Really, I don't think there's a phony bone in my body."

Nothing his last MRI could detect, anyway.

Maybe someday he'll feel differently--like when he's on an ER table with electroshock paddles on his chest. Right now, though, Cunningham can barely fathom the words "day off," not even after hearing a doctor utter "minor arterial blockage."

Still, there have been some adjustments in his second year as an NFL head coach. His second Chiefs training camp in western Winconsin, for instance, was almost subdued compared to the frenzied one in Year 1, otherwise known as Gunther Gulag. Though he could still fill the air with thunderbolts of blue language, Cunningham's Y2K cloudbursts were less frequent and less vitriolic, more anaerobic than aerobic. His assistants would jokingly tell him he looked a lot like the guy who coached the Chiefs a year ago; this new guy, they said, was more, well, sane.

The initial speculation was that his recent heart scan might finally have scared some sense into the man some people call the Smoking Gun. But those closest to him reject that notion.

"He hasn't changed," his wife of three decades, Rene Cunningham, insisted during training camp. "If people are seeing a difference, it's only because he thinks things are going so well that he doesn't have anything to yell about! But no, his sleep habits certainly haven't changed. At camp he still calls me late at night, and I know he's up before four in the morning."

Having spent three decades preparing for this job, Cunningham isn't about to sleep through the first years of it.

From what corner of a man's soul does such a relentless drive emanate? In Cunningham's case, you must look back to his childhood, back to post-World War II Germany, where much of his time was spent playing soccer amid the ruins near Munich.

Young Gunther never knew his biological father, a German soldier. He was 10 when his mother married U.S. Air Force sergeant Garner Cunningham, who moved his family to Greenfield, Mass. Not yet fluent in English, Cunningham literally fought for acceptance during his first years in America.

It was only after the family moved to Lompic, Calif., that Gunther found a new outlet for his aggression: American football. He became a linebacker and a kicker, and ultimately was recruited to Allan Hancock College by a wild but inspiring young coach named John Madden, who left the school after one season and was replaced by a man named Ernie Zampese.

Cunningham knew he wanted to coach even before his transfer to Oregon, where he began his long-standing relationship with George Seifert. He got his first coaching job under John Robinson, then the Ducks' defensive coordinator, before beginning the typical odyssey of an assistant, which saw him make seven more stops in the college, CFL, and NFL ranks before arriving in Kansas City as Schottenheimer's defensive coordinator in 1995.