Ex-NY Giants coach, Henderson resident Jim Fassel dies

Jim Fassel took what could have been a retirement job when he became coach of the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League in 2009.

But Fassel treated it as if he was still in charge of the New York Giants.

“If you ever spent any amount of time with him in a room, you’ll realize why the guy led the Giants to the Super Bowl,” said Jim Lambright, executive director of the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame. “The championships with the Locos proved it. He took it more seriously than anybody in the league.”

Fassel, who lived in Henderson, died of a heart attack, his son, John, told the Los Angeles Times on Monday. He was 71.

Fassel was named NFL coach of the year in 1997 and led the New York Giants to the 2001 Super Bowl before finishing his career in Las Vegas.

He coached the Locomotives from 2009 to 2012, winning the league championship the first two seasons. The Locos went 16-6 over those four years under Fassel, who also was president and general manager.

Former wide receiver Casey Flair, who played at UNLV and on the Locos’ first title team, said Fassel cultivated strong relationships with players and coaches. He made sure the UFL board gave the players bonus money for winning the championship.

“He really, really fought for the players, and I know the players I was on the team with really appreciated it,” said Flair, president of the UNLV Football Foundation and CEO of The Just One Project. “He was a players’ coach, as you would like to say, but also was a guy that was so well-respected in how he built offenses, and the way that he managed games put him in a different echelon of coaches.”

Fassel is most known for coaching the Giants from 1997 to 2003, leading them to the Super Bowl following the 2000 season. He issued a famous guarantee late that season that might have sparked the deep playoff run before the Giants lost to the Baltimore Ravens 34-7 in the title game.

Fassel went 58-53-1 in his seven seasons with the Giants, coaching the team when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack leveled the World Trade Center twin towers.

His foundation donated more than $1 million to families who lost loved ones that day in the line of duty.

“Jim was a good man and his record as our coach speaks for itself,” Giants president John Mara said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Jim distinguished himself by the way he managed our team and devoted his efforts to the fire fighters and other families following the tragedy of 9-11.”

Fassel spoke to the Review-Journal about coaching the Giants during that time. They had just returned that Tuesday morning following a “Monday Night Football” game at Denver, and at the next gate at Newark (New Jersey) International Airport sat doomed United Airlines Flight No. 93.

He then bussed with the team to Giants Stadium, arriving close to when the first plane struck at 8:46 a.m. Fassel and others watched from the roof of the New Jersey stadium as both towers collapsed across the Hudson River in Manhattan.

Day after day, he would see 50 or more cars in a commuter parking lot that remained in place.

“And after a while,” Fassel told the Review-Journal in 2010, “I realized they belonged to people who had been in the World Trade Center. … I’ve got a million of those eerie feelings.”

Contact reporter Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.