If Walsh's offense was a natural byproduct of Cook's strange turn of fate, the misnomer was a natural byproduct of a monumental lapse in judgment at the end of Brown's Hall of Fame coaching career.

Having essentially invented modern football over five decades of coaching, Brown moved from the sidelines to the owner's box in 1976. It was clear, even then, that Walsh was the brightest mind on the staff.

As Brown saw it, however, the progressive-thinking Walsh was too soft to assume head-coaching responsibilities. When Brown tapped Bill "Tiger" Johnson as his successor, Walsh instinctively understood that he had to flee his mentor's pervasive shadow -- or risk being typecast as an assistant.

"His heart had been broken. He contemplated getting out of football," Walsh's son, Craig, said on NFL Network's "Bill Walsh: A Football Life." "He was just absolutely devastated and didn't know if he could continue. ... He learned later that Paul Brown had blocked him from a number of different coaching opportunities, by giving him a bad review, by saying things that flat out weren't true."

Armed with the belief that he was being blackballed as an intellectual lacking toughness, Walsh spent one year on the Chargers' staff, then settled for the head job at Stanford. Soon thereafter, the DeBartolo family purchased the San Francisco 49ers and immediately began searching for the next Paul Brown.

"Eddie DeBartolo grew up in Northern Ohio, in Youngstown. He idolized Paul Brown," former Bengals safety Solomon Wilcots said. "Paul Brown had gone to Miami of Ohio, he had won a national championship at Ohio State. After World War II, he started the Cleveland Browns and went to the championship game in 10 straight years. So the DeBartolo family admired Paul Brown. If they can't get Paul Brown, they decided to get Paul Brown's protégé. And they went and got him. That's how Bill Walsh ended up there, and the rest is history."