1/28/2004 - Football
A Friendship Formed By Fate
By Bob Socci
The game tickets were already purchased, the plane reservations made.
And Joe Bellino was fully prepared to be in Houston for his alma mater's first appearance in the college football postseason in seven years.
Yet, despite his best intentions, he never made it.
In fact, as he recently recalled over the phone in a voice still weaker than usual, Bellino could barely get out of bed on that December day the Midshipmen met Texas Tech in the Houston Bowl.
His seat at Reliant Stadium was vacant because Bellino was back home in the Boston area under the covers and under the weather, with the bronchitis he'd developed a few weeks earlier while attending the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.
This weekend, though, he'll get another chance to see a football game in Houston. And unlike before, Bellino expects to be there.
Not that he'll see the kids who've followed in his footsteps to the Naval Academy more than 40 years hence.
No, this time it's for the team of his post-Academy days, the Patriots, who'll confront the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII, and for the little boy who literally followed his footsteps on the run to the Heisman Trophy in 1960.
That same little boy who, as the son of a coach raised in part on the practice fields, in the film room and on scouting trips with his father grew into the man now considered one of football's most brilliant coaches, Bill Belichick.
“Back then Bill was 8 years old when I graduated,” Bellino recalled of the precocious kid with a remarkable intellect, fed in great part by the Midshipmen he observed in his youth. “There were a lot of young kids at the field. I didn't see anything unusual at that particular time.”
Just as there was nothing out of the ordinary regarding Belichick's admiration of Bellino.
At least in Joe's mind.
”I was questioned (about being Belichick's favorite player) by a sportswriter,” he said, referring to an interview two years ago, prior to the Patriots' upset of the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. “I said, ‘To be truthful, I'm not surprised.'
“What do you think it would be like to grow up around the Naval Academy and the Midshipmen? Naturally, as a young boy you would turn to the star of the team to be your idol.”
But there was more to it then even if unbeknownst to either.
And, as fate would have it, there is much, much more to their relationship today.
Sure, it makes perfect sense that any young Navy fan would pull for the All-America and future Hall of Famer in the since-retired number 27.
However, in the case of this particular fan and his favorite, there is a confluence of circumstances that defies logic.
It begins on the day Bellino and his classmates were commissioned as officers in 1961, when they upheld the tradition of hurling their covers to the sky.
Among the hundreds of hats raining down, the one that just happened to find its way into Belichick's hands was that of Bellino.
He held onto that white cover for the next four decades.
In the meantime, Bellino went off to serve in the Navy, play in the pros and begin a new life in the private sector.
As for Belichick, he eventually left Annapolis for prep school and college in Massachusetts, before cultivating a coaching career that would return him to New England. Initially as an assistant to Bill Parcells, later as his own head man.
Upon first joining the Patriots staff, he and Bellino developed a friendship they've since strengthened, even as Belichick's become a genuine sporting icon to the Patriot nation.
“He's in the zone,” Bellino says before rattling off names like Ted Williams, Larry Bird, Bill Russell and Bobby Orr. “You can put him right up there with the top athletes who played up here.
“He is held in such high esteem, it's beyond imagination.”
Much of why New Englanders have taken to the coach who roams the sideline in a hooded sweatshirt only to occasionally give in to a fleece headband on those snowy Sundays in Foxboro is the way he has built and prepared his team.
Readily apparent in both the makeup and performance of the present-day Pats is the influence of Belichick's Annapolis upbringing.
“There's not a player on the team that can be considered a hot dog,” says Bellino. “It is all about winning and how you do it. And you do it with respect.”
“He's found a way to get the absolute maximum out of his players.”
Among whom, you'll find few marquee names. Nonetheless, they're but a win away from the franchise's second Super Bowl title in three years.
“It's all about preparation,” Bellino says. “He's a leader. (Bill feels) if his troops aren't well prepared, he's letting them down.
“(The players) feel they're going into a game with the best ‘General' and the best chance to win. He's a chip off the old block.”
In this case, that rock-solid block is Steve Belichick, the father who came to Annapolis as an assistant to Eddie Erdelatz in the mid-fifties.
For years, his fall weekends were spent on the road, scouting Navy's upcoming opponents, with an eye for every detail.
“(Steve) ran our Monday-evening skull sessions,” said Bellino, thinking back to the weekly meeting when the Midshipmen would learn of the team's strategy for the following Saturday. “The game plan for the upcoming game was designed to beat that team.
“We were convinced going into every game that we had the right game plan to win. (Steve) would pick out the weakness of the other team and exploit that weakness.”
Often, the means of doing so were plays suited specifically for the Mids' star running back.
“Bill saw that attention to detail,” says Bellino.
At a place like the Naval Academy, he also understood the absolute necessity of character, leadership and teamwork.
All of which helped this year's Patriots overcome an uneasy September to win 14 consecutive games on the way to Sunday's showdown with Carolina, earning Belichick the utmost respect of others in the game.
Especially those who play for him.
Bellino tells of the recent visit he made to the team's complex, shortly before New England forced the Indianapolis Colts into submission in the AFC Championship.
Chatting with Belichick, he noticed that the Patriots players, in order to exit the building, had to pass by the open door to the head coach's office.
“Virtually every player stuck his head in and made it a point to say, ‘Good night,'” marveled Bellino. “Most players try to avoid the coach.”
Now it is the national media poking its collective head into the life of New England's head coach often to find Bellino and his Naval Academy contemporaries right there as central figures in the Belichick story.
“It's quite ironic,” Bellino offers with a laugh. “Personally, I think it's wonderful. Periodically, it keeps my name in the newspapers. I owe him a lot of favors.”
Maybe, maybe not. From afar, the Bellino-Belichick connection seems to be one of give and take.
When the head coach sought someone to counsel the Pats rookies, he turned to the old Boston-bred halfback. And for each of the last three summers, Bellino has showed up to address those first-year players on a variety of topics.
At the same time, Belichick responded when Bellino asked the coach not long ago to join him at a Lawrence, Mass. center to cook and serve meals to the homeless.
“He dug right in,” Bellino says. “He does things low key.”
Long before he was branded a football genius, the inquisitive young Belichick had a player he could look up to at the Naval Academy.
And long after Bellino stopped running over and around defenders in his Blue and Gold, he had someone who could literally give him back a small slice of his youth.
Belichick did just that last year, when he made sure the hat Bellino had tossed away the moment he stopped being a Midshipman in the spring of '61 was returned to its original owner.
Today that cover rests on a shelf in Bellino's office.
Belichick never forgot.
Which is why, Bellino believes, Annapolis has a right to root for the kid who's since become an adopted son of New England.
“Annapolis can be proud of Bill, because he refers to the city and the Naval Academy quite a bit,” Bellino says. “He's very proud of where he grew up.”
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