Bernstein: Jim Tomsula, An Appreciation
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Jim Tomsula is a "good football man."
I have no idea what that term actually means, mind you, but I hear it from broadcasters who default to that description of the 49ers' head coach, a particular damnation with faint praise. When the director cuts to the first close-up of him doing whatever he does on the sideline — shouting at something, pulling a wad of tobacco out of his mouth and almost always losing the game — we don't hear him extolled as a shrewd tactician, inspiring motivator or creative game-planner -- but just as a man in football who is … good.
It's a nice way of saying that Tomsula's a guy who always seems to be around and doing things, who just happens to be an NFL head coach.
From all recent signs, including the 49ers' 4-11 record, it would appear that this lovable old sweater of a man won't have the job much longer, which is both entirely understandable and also too bad. We may not see another like him in this role again, an un-self-conscious lifer so obviously overpromoted to lead a heritage franchise in a major market.
San Francisco has had quite the recent run, too, with the beady-eyed evangelical gobbledygook of Mike Singletary, then the ensuing mad genius of Jim Harbaugh eventually boiling over. It was to be Adam Gase's job, we later learned, but he balked at ownership's insistence that Tomsula be elevated from defensive line coach to coordinator, so Gase bolted.
So there was Tomsula at his introductory press conference, struggling to answer simple questions coherently. He looked and sounded like he had either just been awakened from a deep sleep and dragged to the lectern, had just returned from a rough dentist appointment, had been sampling Jagermeister in his office or some combination of the three. It was a bravura turn that had us paying attention to this rare bird from well out of town as the season dragged on, enjoying his presence immensely.
If votes had been cast for the coach most likely to smash his face into a door on the way to meet the media, Tomsula would have won by a landslide. The fact that he actually did so and stood there, blinking and bleeding, then came as no surprise. Of course, he also lived in his car at one time years ago, along with a dog and a cat. He was a janitor, a woodcutter, delivered newspapers and sold carpets to make ends meet.
Tomsula makes up wonderful words, dismissing reports that he was angling for Harbaugh's job as "ludacrist" and later channeling his inner Lewis Carroll by coining an apt portmanteau to answer a question about Thanksgiving gameday festivities, saying "I really don't pay much attention to the pompenstance." He also refers to self-admitted mistakes as "Jimbos," of which there have been many.
There's nothing phony about the guy. It's not some Everyman bit designed to fit a narrative, because who would put in the effort to design a character quite like this?
Tomsula signed a four-year deal, and here's hoping the Niners let him stick around for at least one more year of it, as unlikely as that seems. This league has enough militaristic martinets, wonkish strategists and playground bullies, with plenty of room for someone this sui generis.
He looks like the guy at the other booth at the diner, poking at scrambled eggs while struggling with the Monday Jumble. He's the guy in front of you at the grocery store, loading the conveyor belt with three packages of smoked sausage, a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, store-brand cola and onion-flavored Ruffles. He's at the door because you called about that noise coming from the air conditioner.
I don't care if Tomsula can coach or not, and I don't have to. It doesn't matter to me how good the 49ers are, but I know the NFL is more fun with him talking and leading than returning to run drills at a back practice field somewhere.
One year of Jim Tomsula, head coach, is not enough.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
