Bill Belichick doesn't want us to love him.
He wants to win football games.
He's directed his Patriots to five Super Bowl victories in seven tries, and came achingly close to victory in the two defeats.
The King of Football is spending the week in Colorado Springs as his Patriots prepare at Air Force Academy for the 7,350-foot altitude of Mexico City, where they will tangle Sunday with the Raiders.
He should be an undisputed American hero, the Vince Lombardi of 2017, but remains _ by design _ a distant, chilly figure. He refuses to enter the perilous realm of introspection. He almost always appears miserable, even in the final seconds of victory.
There's never been anyone quite like him in American sports history. He embraces a unique, thorny style. He's dispensed with the need to be liked. This rejection explains his power on the football field, which verges on mystic. This rejection also explains why he's defined by his eternal frown.
He remains, forevermore, a mystery, even though he's labored for decades in the most public of jobs.
On a sunny, frigid Wednesday morning at Falcon Stadium, Belichick stood in the center of a horde of media types. He was wearing a gray beanie cap and Patriot-blue sweat pants, pulled up to expose white socks and running shoes.
A bad look from a man famed for bad looks.
"Yeah," Belichick said, "it's great to be here. I have a lot of respect for all the service academies _ but Navy first _ but a lot of respect here."
Classic Belichick. Even as he stood near Air Force's end zone, the coach stated his allegiance to Navy.
The allegiance is deep. Belichick grew up in Annapolis, where his father, Steve, labored 33 years (1956-89) as Navy assistant coach. Steve played in 1941 in the infant NFL as a fullback for the Lions. Steve died in 2005.
Every time the Air Force team arrived on the Navy campus, Steve was there to meet the Falcons. He was a talkative, friendly, smiling man.
"He was the face of Navy football," said Fisher DeBerry, Air Force's hall of fame coach. "You could just tell he was so genuine. I was just in awe of him.
"I'll always remember how congenial and how nice he was."
Yes, Fisher is talking about Bill Belichick's father.
Father and son often studied game film, back when coaches watched actual film. In grade school, Bill already was probing deep into football philosophy. He would become a solid, if never spectacular, offensive lineman, but he was destined for genius status in strategy.
"He's intelligent," Steve once said. "He inherited his mother's brains."
As Belichick talked Wednesday, he stood close to Falcon Stadium's stands. Belichick is an obsessive planner, which means he probably plotted the exact location of his news conference.
He was standing close to good memories. He had traveled to Falcon Stadium with his father and the Navy team.
"I sat in this stadium a couple times over here on the visitor's side," Belichick said. "This is a great institution. The discipline and leadership they have here, I hope some of it runs off on me this week. That will be a plus."
A few minutes later, Belichick sat through a winding ride from Falcon Stadium to Air Force's football practice field. The world champs stretched a few minutes in preparation for a closed practice.
Almost all the Patriots wore white jerseys, but Tom Brady had the blessing of a crimson jersey to mark him as a protected man. Soon, Brady was tossing passes in the sunshine, joining a list of distinguished quarterbacks _ Joe Montana, Jim McMahon, Steve Young, Aaron Rodgers, Alex Smith _ who have competed on the Air Force campus.
A barely moving man stood in the middle of the commotion. Belichick, still wearing the beanie and pulled-up sweats, stared intently at the action.
While, of course, frowning the whole time.
