Bob McMillen spent the past week in sun-soaked Miami, home of Super Bowl XLIV, but as the New Orleans Saints received the organization’s first ever Vince Lombardi championship trophy on Sunday, McMillen was nowhere near the festivities.
The Arena Football League’s second all-time leading rusher was back in his Naperville home, resting comfortably while watching the game with his 12-year-old son Bobby. And he would not have had it any other way.
Besides, McMillen had not been in Florida for the Super Bowl. He was there as defensive coordinator of Bobby’s Naperville Patriots, the three-time defending American Youth Football Jr. Midget National Champions. The squad played Deion Sanders’ Select Truth youth football team in the first ever Under Armour Future Bowl the day before Super Sunday, and gave their fans an even more exciting finish than Saints supporters got the following day.
Naperville rallied from 14 points down in the final six minutes to score 24 points and take down Sanders’ squad, 46-42.
“I take pride in the kids stepping up and making plays at the end of the game when it counted,” said McMillen, a Hillside native and Immaculate Conception graduate. “You definitely saw in the last eight or nine minutes them starting to believe in one another. Just seeing that as a coach and a parent, that coming out of kids is something that can take them a long way not only in football or in sports, but in life.”
McMillen, who retired from the AFL in 2007 and was recently named assistant head coach and line coach for the Chicago Rush, is relishing these post playing days. He is excited to get back to work with the Rush, where he spent the final five seasons of his illustrious 13-year career. More importantly, though, he is enjoying time with his wife Joan and their three children.
“I’ve been playing football for so many years,” McMillen said, “that I missed a lot of my kids’ lives and I just want to get that back. I don’t want to be the football dad.
“I just want to be a good dad.”
That is what made the Future game and the entire Miami experience so memorable.
The Patriots, which now own a 50-game winning streak, arrived in Florida on Tuesday and took part in a variety of drills and combines that resembled what the professionals go through. The kids were taught by National Football League players, and when they were not on the practice field, they got to roam South Beach and run into Pro Bowl talent like Cleveland’s Joshua Cribbs and former league MVP Marshall Faulk.
“You look back at your days of playing and you see what these kids get today, it’s an unbelievable thing,” McMillen said. “I really believe my son (grew) as a football player this week alone as much as he’s done the last few years because he’s seen the magnitude of this game.”
That magnitude reached an even higher level Friday when Deion Sanders attended the Patriots’ practice and talked to the kids about the great experience they were receiving.
“Nice guy,” McMillen said of Sanders. “Very polite.”
That politeness did not make McMillen forgot the trash talking Primetime put on the day before on ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption.
“We don’t punt and we don’t take knees,” Sanders proclaimed on the show. “We’re running (the score) up. We’re definitely running it up. We score at will. If there’s a second ticking on the clock, we’re going to try and score, I promise you.”
Sanders was correct with that last point. The only problem was his Select Truth squad could not score. After the Patriots’ defense capped the late-game comeback with a fumble recovery for a touchdown, the same defensive unit stuffed Sanders’ squad inside the 1-yard line on the final play of the game.
The former AFL star did not mind Sanders’ pre-game brashness.
“That’s just Deion being Deion, and that’s what made him such a great football player,” McMillen said. “Just his confidence in his team, that’s what you want to pass on to the kids. Be confident on the field.”
He added a little trash talking of his own after meeting Sanders for the first time.
“I thought he’d be bigger,” McMillen said with a laugh.
What is no laughing matter is McMillen’s job with the Rush, a team that is back in 2010 after the league went bankrupt and canceled the 2009 season. Currently McMillen and Rush head coach Mike Hohensee are trying to recruit players to play for the Rush, which finished first in the Central Division its last two seasons and won ArenaBowl XX in 2006.
“I’m looking forward to a great season and hopefully not skipping a beat from what we did two years ago,” the former standout said. “This past year has been dreadful. I hated not having the Rush name out there because the fans deserve it.”
Hohensee believes his former star will bring great things to the organization.
“I can’t think of a better way to build a staff than by adding Bob McMillen,” Hohensee said. “He has an outstanding knowledge of Arena Football … In addition, his ability to teach the game to younger players will make him an asset to my staff.”
Apparently the assistant coach/youth defensive coordinator also has an impressive ability to predict football outcomes. Two days before Tracy Porter intercepted Indianapolis’ Peyton Manning and returned it for a 74-yard touchdown to ice New Orleans’ 31-17 victory, it was McMillen who said the Saints would win thanks to a defensive stand and a late-game interception.
As confetti rained down afterward on the celebrating Saints, New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees became teary eyed as he held his 1-year-old son Baylen. Later the Super Bowl MVP proudly held his son high above his head in the middle of the chaos, just as he would later raise the Lombardi trophy for all to see.
Sitting at home, McMillen simply smiled as he watched the football player cherish a moment with his son and his family.
He knew what Brees was feeling.
