He didn't invent special teams, but anyone who has covered the NFL over the past quarter-century or so knows it was Frank Gansz who personally raised the one-time afterthought profile of the kicking game to a level commensurate with its fancy title.
Gansz, who died Monday at age 70 after complications from knee-replacement surgery, was a special guy. And it is only appropriate that, except for his two seasons as head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs (1987-88), Gansz earned a living at the professional and college levels by making special teams his passion.
Regarded as a legend by those who knew him well, the innovative Gansz elevated the kicking, return and kick coverage games to art forms. Not surprisingly, at the time of his death, Gansz was supervising the special teams for his good buddy, SMU head coach June Jones.
Neither was it surprising that Gansz was working for Jones, because the two are among the finest men I've ever met in 30 years of covering the NFL.
To Gansz, special teams were, well, special. Close your eyes, and you can almost hear Gansz screaming "Two-step redirect!" with his thundering voice, through the portable public-address system he strapped to his back and lugged around with him during every special-teams segment of practice. Unless you've experienced it, you've missed a part of the game that was equally unusual and spectacular. Gansz's voice resonated over the practice fields, but more important, it lent special teams more significance than just a phase of the game that was comprised mostly by the dregs of a roster.
Even his nickname, "Crash," was appropriate because Gansz made special-teams run-ins more than just random collisions.
Gansz worked 24 seasons in the NFL and 38 years overall as a coach. I was fortunate enough to cover him for three of those seasons, 1994-96, when he was the Atlanta Falcons' assistant head coach and special-teams coordinator. The Falcons weren't very good those years, and Jones was dismissed after three seasons, but the demise had little or nothing to do with Gansz's coaching efforts.
Arguably, the best special-teams coach I have known as a mentor and a friend in recent years is Bobby April of the Buffalo Bills. Much of the road that April has traveled, he will readily tell you, is because of the path that Gansz paved for his successors.
A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Gansz relied heavily on the discipline and attention to detail drummed into him at Annapolis. At a time when special teams were viewed mostly as a diversion from offense and defense, he pored over tapes from the kicking game, divining the tiniest edge possible. And he possessed the communication facility to pass it on to his charges.
When Gansz advised, "I've got news that you can use," even the most skeptical veterans paid attention. A few players considered his tactics contrived, but most quickly realized there was nothing phony about Gansz. I can recall that then-Atlanta guard Bill Fralic, whose wry sense of humor and trademark sarcasm were frequently used to demean any person for whom he had little patience, hung on every iota of information that Gansz provided him.
In those days, the special-teams segment of practice was typically limited to a 10-minute walk-through at the end of a workout. Gansz lobbied to expand the segment to 15-20 minutes, and to convene it in the middle of practice, when players were still fresh and attentive. Of course, Gansz, a two-time recipient of NFL Special Teams Coach of the Year honors, won that battle.
In fact, about the only time Gansz suffered a losing record was during his two-year tenure as the Kansas City head coach (1987-88), when the Chiefs won only eight games. There was a brief dust-up in Kansas City, with charges that Gansz had embellished his Air Force résumé, but the matter was short-lived and had little impact on his career.
Following the 2001 season, Gansz retired from the NFL and surprisingly purchased a home in suburban Atlanta. But touring the local winery and golfing daily predictably got old for a guy always a lot sprier than his chronological age. Gansz eventually unretired to coach at the college level.
Whether it was on campus or in the pros, Gansz's message never wavered. Nor did his commitment to special teams.
Through the portable public-address system that became his trademark, Gansz unabashedly delivered the bromides that became so familiar to his players. One of his biggest favorites was "unconscious competence." Translation: Do things so well, and so repetitively, that you master them as second nature.
To his untimely death on Monday, Frank Gansz practiced what he preached.
Senior writer Len Pasquarelli covers the NFL for ESPN.com.