A tale of two Toms: if you think Tom Coughlin is a cold, calculating, demanding control freak, you're right. But he's also a compassionate, caring man whose heart melts for people who are suffering

Sporting News, The, Nov 15, 2004 by Dennis Dillon

At quarter to 8 on a Sunday morning, the telephone rang in the [Brockton, Mass., home of John and Patricia McGillis. It was October 17, the birthday of their son, Jay, who would have been 34 had he not succumbed to leukemia on July 3, 1992. Before she even picked up the handset, Patricia knew who was calling.

"I just want you to know that I'm thinking of lay today aim thinking of you," the voice on the line said.

The caller was Giants coach Tom Coughlin, whose team had an open date that day. It didn't matter. Even if the Giants had a game, Coughlin would have called the McGillises. He always calls them on July 3, October 17, Thanksgiving and Christmas. It has been that way for 12 years.

Jay McGillis was a sophomore safety at Boston College in 1991, Coughlin's first year as head coach at the school. He was Coughlin's kind of player: a small overachiever who played Division I football only because he worked harder than most players who were more physically gifted.

In November 1991, Jay was diagnosed with leukemia and lymphoma. He had to be hospitalized at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Coughlin visited Jay often at the hospital. Patricia recalls, "I can remember Tom coming out of the room one day and saying, 'You know what? He gives me the strength to go in there and encourage him.'"

Coughlin was with the McGillis family the night Jay died. "I remember there was a carnival over at the school, which is not far from where they live," Coughlin recently was quoted on Giants.com. "There was a big explosion, like fireworks going off. And Pat said, 'Well, there's Jay being accepted into heaven. There he goes.'"

A few years later, when Coughlin moved to the NFL and became head coach of the Jaguars, he established the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund Foundation in honor of McGillis. Its purpose is to help families in the Jacksonville area whose children have been afflicted with leukemia and other cancers by helping defray costs for mortgage or rent payments, electricity bills and other household expenses. The biggest fund-raiser is a celebrity golf tournament and a dinner and auction each May. The foundation has raised more than $1 million and recently announced that a branch would be starting in the New York-New Jersey metro area.

After McGillis died, Coughlin paid the expenses for John and Patricia to go to two of Boston College's bowl games. He also assumes the costs each year for them to come to the dinner and golf tournament in Jacksonville, along with their daughter, Kathleen Haley, her husband, Kevin, and the Haleys' three children. Coughlin really admires Kathleen. When Jay got sick, Kathleen gave up an internship in Washington, D.C.--she also had been planning to go to law school--and returned to Boston to stay with her brother in the hospital.

"I'm just so appreciative for all that Tom has done for us," says Patricia McGillis. "He's kind of been our strength. This is the side of him that many don't know about."

This is the private side of Coughlin, one he rarely reveals. He is much more willing to display his public side: a gruff, intense, demanding, inflexible, humorless football coach. A control freak whose face is affixed with a permanent scowl. A TV analyst once said Coughlin looks as though he is constantly constipated. But this is no Tin Man. Underneath that hard-shell exterior beats a compassionate heart.

Coughlin, 57, who declined to be interviewed for this story, really is two personas wrapped into one man. There is Tenderhearted Tom, the humanitarian who reaches out to the unfortunate, the sick, the needy. And there is Tyrannical Tom, the autocratic coach who rules his fiefdom with relentless authority.

TYRANNICAL TOM is a taskmaster who applies persistent pressure on his players and demands they do everything his way. No wonder his two favorite movies are The Godfather and Patton.

"His paradigm was always a crew-cutted soldier, somebody who was going to take orders, not complain, not talk back--just go do his job," says Texans defensive tackle Seth Payne, who played for Coughlin in Jacksonville from 1997-2001. Coughlin has said if he could change one thing in the NFL, it would be taking the names off jerseys.

Like most NFL head coaches, Coughlin works long hours, and he expects the assistants to do the same. When Panthers offensive line coach Mike Maser was an assistant under Coughlin in Jacksonville, he usually arrived for work at 6 a.m. By that time, Coughlin already had exercised and was ready to study tape or work on the game plan. Coughlin usually is the last to leave at night; working until midnight or later is routine. Sometimes in Jacksonville, he would sleep in his office, even though he had only a 24-minute commute home.

"We always thought he was like an alligator; he got energized by the sun," says Fran Foley, the Chargers' director of pro scouting, who previously worked in the Jaguars' personnel department. "The more sun he got in Florida, the more energized he got. When everyone else is wilting around him, he seems to find the strength."