O.A. ‘Bum’ Phillips
Born: Sept. 29, 1923 in Orange, Texas
Died: Oct. 18, 2013
Coach O.A. “Bum” Phillips attended high school in Beaumont and played football at Lamar Junior College. Bum got his nickname when his little sister’s attempts to say “brother” came out “bumble” and later “bum.” Of his nickname, Bum has joked, “I don’t mind being called Bum, just as long as you don’t put a ‘you’ in front of it.”
Phillips started his coaching career at Nederland and Port Neches-Groves High School. While at Nederland, Phillips took the Bulldogs to the state playoffs in 1955. He went on to coach college football at SMU, Texas A&M, Houston, Texas-El Paso, and Oklahoma State.
Phillips began working as defensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers before going to the Houston Oilers in 1974. The team had just suffered through consecutive 1-13 seasons, but Bum created a defense that turned the team around. They finished the season 7-7.
In 1975, Phillips was named head coach and general manager of the Oilers. The team went 10-4, defeating every team on their schedule except Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Bum remarked, “FDR said the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. Well, the Steelers are fear itself.”
Phillips served as the Oilers’ head coach through 1980 and was the winningest coach in franchise history with a 55-35 record.
He became the head coach for the New Orleans Saints from 1981 to 1985. Asked what he is doing in retirement, Bum replies, “Nothin’. And I don’t start doing that until noon.”
Bum remains one of the all-time most popular Houston sports figures and worked as a football analyst on radio and television until his death in 2013.
Everybody loved Bum Phillips, a man who, as the Houston Chronicle‘s David Barron wrote in his obituary, “spent half his adult life as a football coach and every waking moment as the personification of all things Texan.”
The Orange native’s death was not merely that of a football great, or a great Houstonian, but that of a great Texas icon, as surely as Willie, LBJ, or Gus McRae. As Texas Monthly‘s Joe Nick Patoski noted in 1991, Phillips was voted one of the “all-time top ten Texans” in a Houston Post poll.
“It has been said that if Phillips and Lyndon B. Johnson walked into a room at the same time, no one would doubt that ol’ Bum was a big shot,” Brian D. Sweany wrote in Texas Monthly‘s September 2002 football issue.
His son Wade Phillips went to school in Nederland until 5th grade then played football in high school at Port Neches-Groves before starring at the University of Houston.
Wade served as the Oilers’ defensive line coach and has gone on to head coach several NFL teams including the Dallas Cowboys, winning a Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos after the 2015 season and being named the Associated Press NFL Assistant Coach of the Year.
Wade is now defensive coordinator of the Los Angeles, Rams.
Phillips passed away in 2013, while the PNG-Nederland game was in progress. It was the 90th meeting of the two teams and Bum’s 90th year. Fittingly enough, the game was tied at 7-7 in the third quarter between his two favorite high schools at the time of his passing.
“This is what my dad would have wanted, his two favorite schools tied when he took his last breath.”
In 2014 the annual game between Port Neches-Groves and Nederland was coined as the inaugural Bum Phillips Bowl in honor of the late great coach.
The trophy that is now given to the game victor is a cowboy hat on top of a football symbolizing Bum’s signature cowboy hat on the sidelines.
| Bum Quotes: “Last year we knocked on the door. This year we beat on it. Next year we’re going to kick the sumbich in,” Phillips said after the 1979 season. “I always thought I could coach. I just thought people were poor judges of good coaches.” “The Dallas Cowboys may be America’s team, but the Houston Oilers are Texas’ team.” “I don’t mind being called Bum, just as long as you don’t put a ‘you’ in front of it.” “I’m not saying Earl [Campbell] is in a class by himself, but whatever class he’s in, it don’t take long to call the roll.” “He can take his’n and beat your’n, or he can take your’n and beat his’n.” “The road to the Super Bowl runs through Pittsburgh, sooner or later you’ve got to go to Pittsburgh.” “You fail all the time, but you aren’t a failure until you start blaming someone else.” “How do you win? By getting average players to play good and good players to play great. That’s how you win.” “There’s two kinds of coaches, them that’s fired and them that’s gonna be fired.” “You don’t win by making sensational plays; you win by not making mistakes.” “Respect all. Fear none.”
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