MIAMI -- Football is a brutal game. No one understands this better than Mike Shanahan.

	Mike Shanahan attends to every detail in Denver's Super Bowl preparation.

He was a 21-year-old quarterback at Eastern Illinois University, running an option play, when he made the graceless transition from playing to coaching. He got crushed.

"I went to the locker room. I urinated, and it was bright red," Shanahan remembered. "They called an ambulance. My kidney was split in half.

"They gave me the last rites -- I was raised Catholic -- and my heart stopped beating for 30 seconds. Pretty lucky."

Football, 25 years later, is still a game played in the malevolent trenches, an enterprise in which the prospect of losing a kidney is an accepted part of the bargain.

Shanahan, the head coach of the Denver Broncos, seeks players with that kind of complete commitment. Quite often, he finds them. The Broncos have a number of players -- from Terrell Davis to Bill Romanowski to John Elway -- that will sell out completely to make a play.

But a roster of cold-eyed killers does not alone guarantee a championship season. It takes vision, creativity, intuition and, well, cajones. The usual complement of two kidneys is optional.

In short, it does not take a village. It takes a coach.

Shanahan has the Broncos in position to win their second consecutive Super Bowl, something only six other teams have done. In a violent game, it is his cerebral approach, his mastering of the minutia, that has Denver favored to beat the Atlanta Falcons by a touchdown.

Shanahan doesn't get a lot of credit for this. In this week of mega-hype you are hearing and reading about the heartfelt Dan Reeves, the last voyage of Elway and the mano a mano battle between running backs Davis and Jamal Anderson. Make no mistake, Shanahan is the glue that holds this team together, the straw that stirs the drink.

	"	I didn't like people who yelled at me. If you wanted me to do something, all you had to do was tell me what I was doing wrong. If I knew you cared about me, I'd run through a wall for you. "
		-- Mike Shanahan

He already has a plan, as yet unshared, for replacing Elway. This is a man who had his first eight training camp speeches prepared long before the team reached Greeley, Colo. Topic No. 1: Being on time. This is the anal retentive manager who scripts the first 15 offensive plays of the game and, usually, the first 10 of the second half.

If this all sounds vaguely familiar, it is. Shanahan borrowed much of his offensive philosophy and organizational style from his three years (1992-94) as the San Francisco 49ers offensive coordinator.

He learned from George Seifert, who learned from Bill Walsh. He learned from Mike Holmgren, who learned from Seifert and Walsh. In fact, before Holmgren left for the Green Bay Packers he was contractually obligated to work with Shanahan, his successor as the 49ers offensive coordinator. When they met in the Super Bowl six years later, it is worth noting that the pupil beat the teacher.

Bobb McKittrick, the longtime 49ers offensive line coach, told the Denver Post this fall that Shanahan -- not Walsh, Holmgren, Seifert or Dennis Green -- was the finest coach he had ever worked with.

"I think he might be the best, the finest of the finest,'' McKittrick said. "I don't want Mike Holmgren to think that I don't think he's any good. He's outstanding, and he's proven it. Both of them have. I just think Mike is a touch above all of them because he's so good, because he's in depth in more areas than anybody I've ever seen.

"He's so young, but the way he manages his team and runs a disciplined program is so impressive. He's proven he has grasp and knowledge of how to run an offense and a team.''

The key word is disciplined.

On Wednesday, Shanahan was asked if all his players had made curfew the night before.

"In my four years with the Denver Broncos," Shanahan snapped, "we have not had one player late for curfew."

Shanahan is not a screamer, but he is firm -- to the point of rigid.

During the first week of training camp, an offensive lineman who had been elevated to starter during the offseason was injured. Shanahan attributed the injury to a lack of conditioning. That player never started a game this season.

"I didn't like people who yelled at me," Shanahan said. "If you wanted me to do something, all you had to do was tell me what I was doing wrong. If I knew you cared about me, I'd run through a wall for you. If I had someone who yelled at me for doing something, that wasn't the way to get to me. I try to treat people the way I'd like to be treated, and that's how I coach. Every once in a while you can't do it that way. If they want to be treated like boys, you treat them like boys."

Shanahan is only 46, but this is his 15th season in the NFL. His first was in 1984 when a guy named Reeves hired him as the Broncos receivers coach. Reeves elevated him to offensive coordinator, and Denver reached the Super Bowl the next two seasons.

Raiders owner Al Davis hired him as head coach in 1988, but fired him four games into the 1989 season after Shanahan had compiled an 8-12 record. Reeves took him back immediately and, strangely, the Broncos went to their third consecutive Super Bowl with Shanahan on the sidelines. The 49ers? They reached three straight NFC Championship Games with Shanahan, winning the Super Bowl in 1994.

Be advised that Shanahan has one of the best postseason coaching records ever. He is 6-1, which works out to an .857 percent success rate. If the Broncos win, you can mention him in the same breath as Vince Lombardi, the all-time leader who was a staggering 9-1.

The Broncos players have a name for Shanahan. They call him "The Little General'' behind his back.

"Just as long as they don't call me Napoleon,'' Shanahan says.

To be sure, Napolean had a few good years. But when Shanahan leaves football, Napolean's career might not measure up.

Greg Garber, a regular contributor to ESPN.com's NFL coverage, will write a daily column during Super Bowl week.