Posted by Mike Sando

The Los Angeles Times' Sam Farmer and I spent probably 30 minutes getting Brian Billick's thoughts on Bill Walsh during the NFL's spring meetings down in Arizona. Billick started out in the NFL as a PR guy with the 49ers back when Walsh was running the franchise. Billick had helped Walsh write a book ("Finding the Winning Edge"), so he knew the subject matter better than most.

I'll pass along part of that interview in the wake of Walsh's passing at age 75.

BILLICK: "Where I don't think Bill gets his full due is, it's not just offensively. In every aspect of this industry, Bill had a tremendous intellectual capacity to size up each of the components and how they interact. When I did the book with Bill, and sat with him for a couple weeks, I put a 150-page outline together about what I wanted to know. It was, 'OK, what does Joe Fan, Joe Coach, Joe Owner want to know about this industry?'

"And then as the book was going forward, Bill's secretary, Jane, and I became good friends, because you're constantly on the phone. And I knew his schedule. Because any time he'd come near where I was, we'd try to hook up. Any time he had an extended phone call, I'd say, 'Uh oh, the faxes are coming tomorrow.' Because he'd get on a plane for four or five hours, and I knew the next day I was going to get a fax of six, eight, 10 pages.

"It would be 10 pages, and the first three pages would be on the depth of the receiver on 22-Z-in and the drop of the quarterback. 'Point 4' would be what the PR guy needs to do during the draft, and then 'Point 7' would be on the importance of the cap. It was, 'Thank God for computers and drag and drop.' It was, 'That goes over there, that goes over there.'

"He was like a web site that you'd hit, and then all of a sudden that triggered this, and that triggered this...

"The thing I remember about Bill as a teacher is, no matter what the situation, he was a consummate teacher. He was meticulous in his presentation. He never rushed himself. When he would sit and present a concept - even if it was a concept that had been presented 1,000 other times - there would be a couple salient points that he would come back to. He made sure the players understood: 'We have to do this.'