Rough Magic: Bill Walsh's Return to Stanford Football

Walsh gained a reputation as a coaching genius during his tenure with the San Francisco 49ers (1979-1988), winning six NFC Western Division titles and three Super Bowls. For the first three years after he left the NFL in 1988, he served as a football analyst for NBC, purportedly a job he did not enjoy. Although he had been head football coach at Stanford in 1977 and 1978, many were surprised when he returned to the Palo Alto campus in 1992. Cohn, a San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist, covers Walsh's homecoming season in this spirited book, which is as much about the coach as about that season when the team won 10 games for the first time in more than 50 years. Walsh battled to appear dispassionate about games in which he was passionately involved, and people almost invariably failed to recognize his low-key, ironic wit as humor. Gridiron fans will find both the individual and the book ingratiating. Photos not seen by PW. (July)