He's a reforming control freak in his 60s who came out of the broadcast booth after 15 years away from coaching to take over a moribund franchise. And almost no one thought he'd be able to relate to a new generation of players, and coaches, and schemes.

"I never felt out of touch," says Dick Vermeil.

Like Hubie Brown, Vermeil never got coaching out of his blood, even after a generation of players had forgotten he'd ever diagrammed a play, or won a game.

	Dick Vermeil, left, proved in St. Louis that you can return to coaching.

"I'd had many opportunities to go back and I never did," Vermeil said by phone from Kansas City, where he's now running the Chiefs after resurrecting his reputation with the St. Louis Rams. "John Shaw (the Rams' president) and Mrs. (Georgia) Frontiere (the Rams' owner) had offered me the opportunity in the past and I'd just said no. I felt at 60 years old, if I didn't accept, nobody else would ask me ... they were the losingest organization in football at the time, and I knew it wasn't a quick fix. I had experienced it in Philly and I thought I could do it better."

Vermeil was 60 when he left the comfort of ABC's college football booth to jump back into the fray as head coach of the Rams. The way that fairy tale ended, with Vermeil and Kurt Warner and the Rams winning the Super Bowl in 2000, a lot of folks have probably forgotten that that was Vermeil's third season with the Rams. His first two years, St. Louis went 5-11 and 4-12, and the Rams' players were on the verge of a mutiny against his still-long practices when he decided something had to change.

"The first two years were the toughest," Vermeil says now. "I think the age helped me (with internal problems). I had a better understanding of the individual way to think and I had a better understanding of how they collectively thought. These guys are older than my kids. I think of them as kids. I knew who to take serious and who not to take serious."

And did he ever think he'd made a mistake coming back?

"Every time I had my ass kicked," he said.

Vermeil had to learn how to delegate more. (Some of it was forced on him by Rams' management, which convinced him to peel back some of his player personnel duties.) After coaching the whole team and being the offensive coordinator and teaching the quarterbacks during his Philadelphia days, he gave up the playcalling and quarterback coaching to Mike Martz. But at times in those first two seasons, Vermeil felt out of place, like he wasn't doing anything.

"I never had any trouble delegating defense," Vermeil said. "I had trouble delegating offense ... it was hard to let go of it, but I did. I learned to listen better. I learned to trust another opinion. I learned another way. The biggest thing is developing trust. It's an ongoing process and you're never finished earning it. You can lose it quickly. But once you have it established you can keep improving your communication system. I donated and dedicated much more into the leadership and communication this time around. Because I just didn't have the time (before) to be first class in everything. When you're running your own offense, coaching the quarterbacks, it doesn't leave you a lot of time to plan your leadership role. Coming back, I invested more time in the leadership role."

	“	Hubie's got to be a focal point, but they've got to work with him. ”
		— Dick Vermeil

But Vermeil still had to trust his gut when he put Warner in the starting lineup after a season-ending knee injury in preseason shelved his hand-picked starter, Trent Green. If Vermeil had been wrong about Warner, he likely would have left the game with the same reputation as he'd had for two decades. Instead, Warner led the Rams to a 13-3 regular season record and the Rams won the Super Bowl by a yard over Tennessee.

"You tend to be optimistic and enthusiastic when you go back into something," Vermeil said. "I felt very confident I would be able to do it. I had been doing television in the booth and I had spent 14 years watching other people doing it. A lot of things had changed. They were all bigger, faster, stronger and were making more money. The schemes that people were running on both sides of the ball were much more complex. Everyone was doing so much more. It was nothing you hadn't seen before, but there was so much more of it."

When he was in his 40s, Vermeil would spend 20 hours at the office from Monday through Thursday. In his 60s, he takes siestas.

"I can't do that (80-hour schedule) any more," he said. "I'll sneak away and take a half-an-hour nap two or three days a week. Because I get exhausted. You don't have the stamina you used to. A loss is a loss. That's all there is to it. I know in the NBA you have a lot more games and a lot more losses, but in football you have 16 games and each loss is very intense."

If Brown will take any advice from a fellow senior citizen, it is to let others help, especially now, when the Grizzlies aren't very good.

"Everybody was saying, 'He can't come back, he won't be able to relate to the players, they should fire him,' " Vermeil said. "I said, 'Hey, good, go ahead. I didn't apply for the job.' What we did (in St. Louis), we did together. It takes that kind of organization. Hubie's got to be a focal point, but they've got to work with him."

David Aldridge, who covers the NBA for ESPN, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.