Jim Tomsula hardly made a good first impression as the 49ers head coach. But it’d be a mistake to write-off someone who once lived in his car (with a dog, cat and litterbox) just so he could be a volunteer college coach.
The most recognizable man in San Francisco is going unnoticed in his hometown. It’s an overcast Friday in late June, and new 49ers coach Jim Tomsula is nursing a 31-ounce coffee on the patio of a Starbucks in Homestead, Pa., just on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. He’s packing a wad of tobacco in his left cheek (a regular habit), wearing a nylon tracksuit (his sartorial preference) and sporting the kind of thick, dark mustache that harkens back to the leading men of 1980s TV shows (“a mustache to be reckoned with,” according to his mustache’s parody Twitter account). A group of teens loudly gossips at an adjacent table, and a steady stream of shoppers walk through the strip mall. Nobody stops to look twice at Tomsula.
If he had his way, this would be the norm. No fame, no media attention, no conjecturing about who he is or what his team will be.
“I don’t care about perception, I care about reality,” Tomsula says in a husky voice that sounds like the natural bark of football coach. “I try not to read what’s out there, but sometimes I do and just laugh. I mean, some of the reports out there couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s the exact opposite of the reality that I’m dealing with. The exact opposite! Seriously, the exact opposite!”
He spits out the tobacco.
“But, I guess, that’s the NFL.”
Rae Rae!
I skipped the article to say that Tomsula will be COTY.