Remembering Mike Giddings and How He Helped Change the NFL
He was not on the list.
Maybe you read about it. Maybe you didn't. But Mike Giddings passed away last week after suffering complications from a stroke. He was 89.
So who was Mike Giddings? Anyone close to football knows, and you should, too..
He was a pioneer of pro personnel, NFL independent scouting and analytics/Moneyball who invented (and copyrighted) a scouting color code system (Blue-Red-Purple-etc.) used by so many NFL teams that NFL analyst Charles Davis once told a group of scouts, "This man created the language we all use."
That language is terminology familiar to most NFL fans today -- words such as shutdown corner, off-ball linebacker, edge rusher and designated pass rusher (later nickel rusher). All were among terms used by Giddings when in 1977 he founded Proscout, Inc., a pro-player evaluation service still in operation and owned by Giddings' son
In addition to providing an "extra set of eyes" to scout NFL players for subscribing teams, Proscout provided an annual Research and Development book -- a binder filled with trends, analyses and statistical breakdowns unavailable from official statistical outlets.
It was a giant leap forward in NFL analytics.
"(Giddings) is just so damn bright", Hall-of-Fame general manager Jim Finks told Sports Illustrated's Paul Zimmerman in 1982, "and he's almost always right on the money."
It was that SI feature that brought national attention to Giddings and Proscout. In the article, Zimmerman llustrated the impact Giddings ... and his firm ... had on the NFL and its movers and shakers, like George Halas, Paul Brown, Jim Finks, Bud Grant and others.
Giddings had devised Proscout to help teams build rosters, but it did more than that. It also helped players after retirement. While grades were confidential to subscribing teams, once a player was retired for a significant time .. with no possibility of returning .... Giddings would share those grades with voters pushing a Hall-of-Fame worthy candidate who may not have had as many post-season honors as more well-known players.
In fact, over the past 25 or so years, the names "Proscout" and "Mike Giddings" were cited frequently by voters presenting candidates for Canton -- a sign of the credibility and respect Giddings established in a nearly 45-year career of scouting and analytics.
IN THE BEGINNING
So how did he get there? A year prior to starting Proscout, Giddings in 1976 became the NFL's first director of pro personnel with the Denver Broncos, focusing on NFL players instead of scouting collegiate players. In football his entire adult life, he coached at every level—high school, junior college, college, and the NFL -- and was a head coach in the collegiate ranks and professionally.
Scouting and evaluation were rooted in his experiences in coaching. He was the head coach of The Hawaiians in the World Football League in 1974 and '75 and at the University of Utah in 1966-67. Recruiting was a necessary requirement for a collegiate coach, but when he joined the Hawaiians in a new league, he had to build a team from scratch.
No problem. He drew from his years as an assistant with the San Francisco 49ers (he was the linebackers coach) to do that.
Giddings was with the 49ers from 1968-73 and coached Hall-of-Famer Dave Wilcox to some of his best seasons. He also worked with Matt Hazeltine, Skip Vanderbundt, Frank Nunley and others.
But he wouldn't have been there were it not for Hall-of-Fame executive Gil Brandt. After Giddings was fired by the University of Utah, he assisted Brandt with the 1968 draft. Pleased with his work, Brandt then recommended him to then-49es' coach Dick Nolan, who'd just left Tom Landry's staff to take the 49ers' job.
It was there that he was also tasked by Nolan to scour the waiver wires and assist the front office in upgrading the team. That duty was the wellspring from which the Proscout idea would originate -- namely, upgrading the bottom of a team's roster.
"I WANNA BE A COACH"
Born in 1933, Giddings began his coaching career at Monrovia High School (a Los Angeles suburb), where he led the Wildcats to the CIF finals in 1959. He'd taken the job in 1957 after two years in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant out of college and assigned to Marine Recon in Quantico, Va.
He later remembered "loving Recon because it’s right up my alley: Jumping out of airplanes, coming out of submarines ..."
Prior to his military service, he played football at the University of California. As a 6-2-1/2, 225-pound pulling guard, he lettered twice under the legendary coach “Pappy” Waldorf and was teammates with Hazeltine, Hall-of-Fame center Les Richter, and legendary NFL coach Jim Hanifan.
After leaving Cal, he played service football for Quantico in 1955 when the Marines were 8-3 and for Camp Pendleton (north of San Diego) one year later. It was there that Giddings found his life's work, calling coach Col. Joseph W. Stribling "the best football coach strategically I’ve ever seen, or been with."
"Colonel," he told Stribling, "you’ve made me just fall more in love with this game than I ever have. I now know what I wanna do in life. After I’m a Marine, I wanna be a coach."
And he was.
Prior to coaching at Utah, he served for five years under John McKay at USC where he was the team's defensive coordinator and helped the Trojans win a national championship in 1962 -- the school's first since 1939. And before that? He spent one year as head coach at Glendale College, leading led the Vaqueros to a 7-2 record in what the school's president called, "one of the finest football seasons in (the school's) history."
Giddings really never left coaching. While running Proscout, he moonlighted as head coach of Newport Harbor High School from 1982-85, leading the Sailors to the CIF Southern Section Central Conference semifinals once and the quarterfinals three times.
He also never quit active sports. Growing up in southern California, he spent a lot of time big-wave surfing, something he continued as an adult. Where he excelled in baseball and other sports as a young man, he was an avid golfer as a senior and would cycle weekly until a stroke felled him earlier this year.
It was a unique and extraordinary life.
Mike Giddings had an enormous impact on the NFL and the game of football. He changed how NFL teams viewed scouting and team building. But he also changed how they managed their caps by not overspending on players to whom Giddings alerted them.
His ideas were original. No one got there first, but many followed.
Rest in peace.
For most of his adult life, Mike Giddings served as a football coach, from high school to the pros, with long stints at USC and with the San Francisco 49ers and head coaching assignments at the University of Utah and The Hawaiians in the World Football League, one of his most memorable stops.
If paradise is the Hawaiian Islands, what could be better for a big-wave surfer and football coach?
Giddings, a popular former Newport Harbor High coach in the 1980s, accepted a dream job, head coach of The Hawaiians in the WFL, but never had time to surf Pipeline, Maui or nearby Waikiki Beach, or any other Hawaiian break.
Thrust into the position of general manager, giving him a duo role, along with his field duties, Giddings learned about upper management and how to deal with football team owners and executives.
The 49ers, Giddings’ longtime employer, were prepared to make him the first pro player personnel director in NFL history. But Hawaii was too good to pass up.
“It’s funny, but I never surfed once when I was there in Hawaii coaching,” said Giddings, busy as a coach and GM, while building a successful system of identifying talent and working as The Hawaiians’ television and radio fundraising pitchman in the offseason.
Prior to The Hawaiians’ first home game in 1974, the team hosted training camp at UC Riverside and played its first two games on the road, one in Orlando to play the Florida Blazers, another against the Southern California Sun at Anaheim Stadium.
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