The Score Takes Care of Itself

The Score Takes Care of Itself

The locker room in Miami smelled of sweat and champagne. It was the night of January 22, 1989, and the San Francisco 49ers had just beaten the Cincinnati Bengals 20-16 in Super Bowl XXIII at Joe Robbie Stadium. The game was settled in the final 34 seconds. Joe Montana drove 92 yards on 11 plays and hit John Taylor on a crossing route in the back of the end zone to win it all. The dynasty was confirmed. Three Super Bowls in eight years. The most dramatic finish in Super Bowl history. Bill Walsh walked into the corridor beneath the stadium, away from the noise, and started to cry. It wasn't joy. He was crying because he already knew what he had to do, and doing it was going to be the hardest decision of his life.

He was 57 years old. He'd spent a decade rebuilding an NFL franchise from rubble, pouring every thought, every nerve, every hour of every day into the machine he called the Standard of Performance. He'd invented an offense that would rewrite football for the next thirty years. He'd spotted talent nobody else in the league could see. There was a skinny quarterback from Notre Dame taken with the 82nd pick, and a wide receiver from a tiny Mississippi school that nobody wanted. He'd put together a coaching staff that would go on to win seven more Super Bowls after he left. And now, standing under that Miami stadium, alone with the sound of celebration seeping through the walls, he felt something he hadn't expected. He felt empty. The score had taken care of itself. He had nothing left to give.

That moment ended one of the most consequential coaching careers in American sports history. First came the crying in the corridor, then the retirement announcement four days later, when the world learned he was done. In a sense, it was also the beginning of the book he'd spend the next eighteen years writing in his head. "The Score Takes Care of Itself" was published posthumously in 2009, two years after Walsh died of leukemia at 75. He wrote it with his son Craig and his longtime collaborator Steve Jamison. It isn't a football book. It's a manual for building something extraordinary out of almost nothing and sustaining excellence under pressure. It's also a guide to the dark truths about leadership that most leaders aren't willing to say out loud.