This year, a battle of cerebral coaches

When the New England Patriots square off against the St. Louis Rams in this Sunday's Super Bowl, the most interesting clash may take place on the sidelines between two of the best coaching minds in American football.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick insists on old-fashioned East Coast toughness; Rams coach Mike Martz thrives on innovative West Coast speed. The tight-lipped Mr. Belichick directs a defense so well-planned even critics admit it borders on genius. The effusive Mr. Martz runs a high-stakes offense with mad-cap brilliance.

Call them the zen and zang of American football.

Yet, as they gird for the most cerebral of Super Bowl battles, the two also have much in common. They share a near-obsessive passion for excellence, a drive that critics find arrogant and cold, and an up-from-the bootstraps career trajectory that has shaped themselves and their teams.

While famous players and college coaches sometimes vault into the front ranks of NFL coaches, these two earned it the old-fashioned way. They started at the very bottom and moved up step by step. Think Horatio Alger as water boy.

For Martz, life in the NFL began exactly a decade ago with a salary of exactly zero. Martz was so eager to coach in the pros he was just happy to be with the Los Angeles Rams staff. After graduating summa cum laude from Fresno State, he had already bounced around the profession, coaching local high school teams, taking coordinator posts at San Jose State, Santa Ana College, Fresno State, University of the Pacific, University of Minnesota, and Arizona State. Early on, he earned so little he and his wife, Julie, went on food stamps and ate cornflakes for dinner several days a week.

But after 20 years' experience and failing to get the head-coaching position at the University of the Pacific, Martz approached Ernie Zampese, then offensive coordinator for the Rams, looking for work. Head coach Chuck Knox took him on - as a volunteer - with the promise that if he did well, he'd get hired the following year.

Martz agreed, even though it meant leaving his four kids behind in Arizona, where Julie took a part-time job. To make ends meet, they refinanced their house, and he borrowed from his retirement plan and lived with friends in Huntington Beach, Calif. After a full day, Martz would pore over statistics and then return to the office at 6 a.m. After a year, he was hired as an offensive assistant.

He went on to become Rams receivers coach, then quarterbacks coach with the Washington Redskins. In 1999, he returned to the Rams (now in St. Louis) as offensive coordinator and designed a scoring powerhouse that led the team to its first-ever Super Bowl victory.

Immediately afterward, head coach Dick Vermeil stepped down, and Martz got his first head-coaching job and the glittering keys to the most feared offense in the league.

"I've been at the very bottom, and right now we're at the very top," he would say that year. "I've seen every angle of this doggone thing, and I feel good about it."

If Martz worked for free, Belichick's first NFL job didn't pay much better - $25 a week from the Baltimore Colts. It wasn't even his first pick. A merely average football player at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, he had majored in economics and demonstrated an analytical turn of mind that seemed more white-collar than sweat suit.

"We thought he would go on to business school or Wall Street," recalls John Biddiscombe, then position coach and now athletic director at Wesleyan.

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