Mike Holmgren: Why My Greatest Victory Was Not Super Bowl XXXI

Mike Holmgren is one of 12 finalists in the coach/contributor category for the Pro Football Hall-of-Fame’s Class of 2024, and it's easy to see why.

He won three Super Bowl rings as a coach, including one as the head coach in Green Bay. He helped develop Hall-of-Famer quarterbacks Joe Montana, Steve Young and Brett Favre. He put Seattle in its first-ever Super Bowl. He's in the Seahawks' Ring of Honor and the Packers' Hall of Fame. And he gave Andy Reid his first pro coaching job.

But let's not forget where he started. He also won a high-school championship as head coach at San Jose’s Oak Grove High School.

So what, he was asked on the latest “Eye Test for Two” podcast, does he consider his greatest accomplishment: Winning the 1978 Central Coast Section title with Oak Grove or Super Bowl XXXI with the Packers?

Neither, he answered.

“The number-one game,” Holmgren said, “my best memory … my absolute best memory … and I’m telling you the truth: When I started my coaching ... it wasn’t at Oak Grove High School; it was at Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco.”

Wait. What? 

Yes, Sacred Heart.

Holmgren grew up in San Francisco, played for Lincoln High and quarterbacked at USC. After graduation, he returned to Lincoln in 1971 where he taught history and served as the football team’s offensive coordinator. One year later, he moved on to Sacred Heart High (also in San Francisco) to join high-school friend Steve Ellison coaching football and experience the greatest accomplishment of his career.

But don't take it from me. Let Holmgren tell the story.

“We were 0-22,” he said. “I lost the first 22 games. I wasn’t the head coach. But my friend and I were coaching. And I said, ‘Steve I can’t come back.’ And he goes: ‘Try it one more year.’ I came back for a third year and in the fourth game, we played Piedmont Hills in San Jose and we won … a game (13-10).

“I was crying. The parents were crying. The kids were crying. People were falling down on the field. That was the single best game feeling I’ve ever had. The Super Bowl was second, and I think I would say the Oak Grove game was third.”

Presumably, Piedmont High players were crying, too.

“They were in shock,” said Holmgren. “(It was as if they were saying), ‘How did this team do this?’ But we won a few games that third year. Then the next year I went to Oak Grove.

"But growing up in the city and coaching … we didn’t have a football field at Sacred Heart. We’d go out to Golden Gate Park (a five-mile drive away in Holmgren's VW) and practice in the cold. They were great kids.”

Ellison would go on to coach Petaluma High for 33 years and was so successful (204-126-7) that the school named its football field after him. Holmgren went on to win two Super Bowls as an assistant with the San Francisco 49ers, then another with Green Bay where they named a street after him.

And now? Now he’s a candidate for the Hall’s 2024 coach/contributor finalist, an honor that – if realized – probably would still take another back seat to what happened at Sacred Heart.

(Ellison) had a reunion of that team,” he said. “The first tee shirt (read), “0-10 never again. Then we got another ten. We had a reunion, (and) we all were there.

"My first quarterback was Danny Fogarty. He was about 5-8 and later became a policeman. He wasn’t there, but they had a video. And he said in the video, ‘I want to say hello to everyone. I want to have a special say to coach Holmgren. Listen: I gotta say, You know he coached Montana. He coached Young. He coached Favre. I was his first quarterback.”

Some people never knew. Mike Holmgren never forgot.