From Sport illustrated:
Legendary NFL coach Don Coryell died last Thursday in La Mesa, California after a long illness. He was 85. Coryell is the only coach to have won at least 100 games in both college (at San Diego State) and the pros (with the Cardinals and Chargers). He is considered a forefather of the modern passing attack and helped shape the NFL game seen today. Coryell's offenses were as entertaining as they were prolific--relentless aerial assaults that took teams to Super Bowls and influenced a generation of coaches.
He is probably the reason I still follow the Chargers 30 years later. If Tommy Prothro had remained the head coach of the Chargers back in 1978 when I first started watching football I do not think his “run, run, pass, punt” offense would have retained my interest and I would have soon given up on pro football. But instead he resigned and Don Coryell came to town and installed his own offensive scheme, a scheme that still lives today. One that took advantage of new rules designed to open up the passing game and allowed Dan Fouts to become the Hall of Fame quarterback that he is today and attack defenses relentlessly with a pass first philosophy. Disciples like Norv Turner and Mike Martz continue to use modified versions such as the one that brought the Dallas Cowboys three world championships and St Louis Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf” and a super bowl victory in 2000. It also found a home in Washington under former Coryell assistant Joe Gibbs and helped that franchise to three world championships. To this day teams like the Ravens, Cowboys, Chargers and 49ers rely almost exclusively on the Coryell offense.
In choosing an appropriate place to hide the cache I was mainly thinking football: maybe near Qualcomm or SDSU or perhaps a high school football field. I did not want to hide a bison tube and nothing really seemed right for an ammo can. But then I remembered a recent interview with Dan Fouts. He remarked on how little coach Coryell ever reminisced about football. While he was always interested in what his former players were up to, he left the game of football itself behind him securely in the past. Instead he talked mainly about his second passion: hiking. Coryell was such an outdoor enthusiast that at one point he considered becoming a forest ranger. So instead of a parking lot near Qualcomm the cache rests instead on a trail in one of my favorite hiking locations in Calavera Hills.