How did the term get its name? From Bernie Kosar, when he was a backup quarterback with Dallas in '93. I was doing a piece on the Cowboys. I asked him what the offense was like.
"Oh, you know, the West Coast Offense," he said. "Turner and Zampese and Don Coryell and Sid Gillman. That thing." (Bernie obviously had a good knowledge of NFL history).
I used the quote. It was picked up by a West Coast wire reporter, except that he got it screwed up and he attached it to the San Francisco attack that Bill Walsh had used in San Francisco's Super Bowl run of the '80s. What the hell -- San Diego, L.A., San Francisco -- it's all West Coast, isn't it? And that's where it stuck.
At first Walsh was quite upset by the misnomer. "Call it the Walsh Offense, or the Cincinnati Offense," he said, "but not the West Coast Offense. That's something completely different."