Written by Thomas Moore

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Hello Mr. Haslam and Mr. Banner and welcome to Coaching Depot. How may we help you?

Oh, you’re looking to decorate your new purchase with a shiny new head coach? Let’s see what we can find for you. (Too bad you were not here a few months ago; we could have offered you a special two-for-one deal with a Mr. Dolan).

What’s that? You really prefer a college coach? Sorry, looks like that is not going to happen as we are out of stock for this year. We thought we were going to carry Chip Kelly and Bill O’Brien, but we had to send them back to Oregon and Pennsylvania as they were not quite ready.

Sorry? You were asking about Nick Saban? We don’t stock him, he’s really more of a Southern regional item (like Sweet Tea) and, actually, we just received a report yesterday that confirms that won’t be changing anytime soon.

“How many times do you think I’ve been asked to put it to rest?” we were told when we talked to the manufacturer in Alabama. “And I’ve put it to rest, and you continue to ask it. So I’m going to say it today … I think somewhere along the line you’ve got to choose. You learn a lot from the experiences of what you’ve done in the past.

“I came to the Miami Dolphins, what, eight years ago for the best owner, the best person that I’ve ever had the opportunity to work for? And in the two years that I was here, had a very, very difficult time thinking that I could impact the organization in the way that I wanted to or the way that I was able to in college, and it was very difficult for me.”

We used to have a Doug Marrone in stock, but some old guy from Buffalo stopped by last week and picked up the last one – must be some kind of upstate New York thing as he was pretty excited about the Syracuse connection. But fear not, it’s been a long time since anyone stopped by looking to copy what Buffalo is doing.

If you’d like to come this way, we can show you something from our vintage department.

Here we have a Bill Cowher – sorry he’s a little dusty, but he’s been here for six years. We may have a VHS tape of him coaching laying around here somewhere in case you want to show your players some of his work; weren’t most of them in junior high the last time he coached?

We get a few people in every year around this time to look at Cowher but they always walk away muttering to themselves. We were on the phone yesterday with the sales rep in New York City and he asked us to just hold on for another five or six years and then maybe we can finally move him out of here.

If you want, we can talk about some layaway options if you think you’ll be back here in a couple of years. What’s that? Oh, you have a succession plan in place so you won’t be back anytime soon? Good to know.

Over here we have our returns department where we are running a special on some new items from our national franchises. We have to warn you, though; these come “as is.”

Here we have a Ken Whisenhunt, who recently came in from our Arizona store. Let’s see what the tag says: Whisenhunt, who had a 41-45 record with the Cardinals, took the team to the Super Bowl in 2008 where he lost to the Steelers (so he knows what that feels like). He followed that up by going 10-6 with Kurt Warner, but then Warner retired and the Cardinals made the mistake of trading for quarterback Kevin Kolb.

After a 4-0 start this year, the Cardinals went 1-11 with four different quarterbacks, so he’s also familiar with riding the quarterback carousel.

Next is Lovie Smith from our downtown Chicago store. Smith also made the Super Bowl (losing in 2007) and went 76-58 in nine years as coach of the Bears. He knows how to run a bad offense, as the Bears have ranked above just the Browns in total yards over the past nine years (sorry about that, Mr. Haslam). It does say that he is good at defense, however, as he’s coached a Top 5 defense four times in his career, dating back to his days as an assistant with the Rams.

If you are looking for something more exotic, we have a rare Marc Trestman import that just arrived from Montreal. It has a lot of miles on it – he’s been with seven teams in 17 seasons in the NFL – but it says that twice he was the offensive coordinator for the league’s No. 1 offense (although the last time was 10 years ago with the Raiders).

He is currently the coach of the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League, where some consider him the “Bill Belichick of the CFL” after winning titles in 2009 and 2010.

Like we said, it is very rare that we have one of these in stock. In all of our years in business we’ve only had two others of these on the shelves.

Still looking? OK, we have one last section, our new arrivals.

Over here is Mike Zimmer, current defensive coordinator for the Bengals and someone who, as your grandmother would have put it Mr. Haslam, is “outspoken.” Zimmer’s defense was ranked No. 6 in the NFL this season, but why are we telling you that? You saw that defense first hand when the Browns put up 34 points on them. (Are you OK Mr. Banner? You look a little constipated).

It says here that this was Zimmer’s 13th consecutive year as a defensive coordinator and he has only been asked to interview for a head coaching job twice in his 19 years as an NFL assistant coach. That may be due to his reputation for “telling it like it is.” But you’re not afraid of a little tough talk, are you Mr. Haslam?

Just today we received a Rob Chudzinski from our Carolina store. He may be familiar to you from his time running the Browns offense in 2007 and 2008. Yes, you’re right; it may be a good idea to not remind your customers of that.

Finally, we have a Ray Horton, who came in with Whisenhunt from our Arizona location. Says here that Horton is a defense guy (after firing an offensive coach, it never hurts to change things up to keep the fans guessing, right Mr. Banner?) who helped the Cardinals give up the ninth-lowest point total in the league this year (don’t worry about those 58 points that Seattle score). The Cardinals also beat New England this year, which seems to resonate high with segments of your customer base, Mr. Haslam.

Oh, but the tag also says that Horton is a 3-4 guy; it would be shame to start over again on defense after spending three years acquiring players for a 4-3 defense, don’t you think so, Mr. Banner?

That looks to be all we have in stock right now. No, Mr. Banner, generally if we have something in the back we tend to put it out in the front, but let me check our inventory list one more time.

Let’s see … we had a Bruce Arians model, but it looks like it had to go back for some repairs; we may have that one back in stock sometime next week. Oh wait, we still have an Eric Mangini buried deep in the warehouse somewhere. No, you’re right Mr. Haslam. Successful NFL teams don’t rehire coaches that they fired for going 10-22. Very good point sir.

Did you gentlemen see anything you like?

What’s that? Oh, you may be taking up to a month to make a decision? Hey, no worries. We’ve been at this same location since 1964 and we’re not going anywhere.

By all means, take your time.

And sorry, Mr. Banner, but you can’t return a purchase made by someone else – even if you still have the receipt.