Tuesday, two days after winning his first Super Bowl and after a long talk with his wife, the St. Louis Rams' head coach decided to retire at age 63.

His eyes filled with tears and voice choked with emotion, Vermeil said it was "an unbelievable feeling" to leave as a champion.

		Tuesday, Feb. 1 The timing couldn't be better for Dick Vermeil to step down as the Rams' head coach. The last time he left the game because of burnout, but he came back to coaching almost two decades later to coach a team to a Super Bowl championship. Vermeil has survived through adversity, changed his coaching personality when most coaches wouldn't, and came up with one of the greatest NFL stories ever in Kurt Warner. He won the Coach of the Year award. You couldn't write a story about your football team better than this. When Trent Green went down, nobody gave his team a shot to even sniff the playoffs. What better way to go out? Why wouldn't he finish this way? I'm very happy for Vermeil. He has handled himself like a true gentleman. After last year, when everyone said he was old and washed up and needed to retire, this year he proved he was innovative; he did it his way. Now, Vermeil has his life back. He's turning the Rams over to offensive coordinator Mike Martz, a person he trusts. I think Martz will make a great head coach. It's a wonderful situation for Vermeil and the Rams.

Vermeil made a quick decision because he didn't want to be involved with the free-agency period that starts Feb. 11. He leaves with two years to go on a five-year, $9 million contract.

"I don't want to participate in that," Vermeil said. "I don't want to cut the squad. These are my guys."

Owner Georgia Frontiere tried to talk Vermeil out of it, team president John Shaw said he should at least wait to make sure and special teams coach Frank Gansz made an impassioned plea. Rams players just wanted the best for the coach who made it a point to get to know all of them.

"I feel indebted to coach Vermeil," said linebacker London Fletcher, who also urged Vermeil to stick around. "He gave me an opportunity that maybe nobody else would have and I'm very grateful."

Linebacker Mike Jones, who made the game-saving tackle on Tennessee's Kevin Dyson, said looking back that Vermeil dropped a few clues on the flight back from Atlanta but "I never put it together."

"It's a great legacy," Jones said, "going from worst to first."

San Francisco general manager Bill Walsh, a longtime friend of Vermeil, agreed with the coach that the time was right.

"At this stage of his life, he's accomplished everything," Walsh said. "Now it's time for him to thoroughly enjoy the rewards of what he's accomplished."

	With the Lombardi trophy at his side, Rams coach Dick Vermeil announces his retirement.

"I told everyone before the season that Mike Martz was the type of coach who would go after it -- from the first game to the last," said Isaac Bruce, who caught the winning touchdown pass in the Super Bowl.

Vermeil, who coached two Super Bowl teams 19 years apart, began his career in 1959 as a high-school coach in San Jose, Calif. He coached high-school and small-college football in California until the mid-1960s, then was an assistant coach with Stanford, UCLA and the Los Angeles Rams through the early '70s.

After a successful two-year stint as UCLA head coach, capped by a 23-10 victory over Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, Vermeil took over the woeful Eagles in 1976. He led the Philadelphia to its one Super Bowl appearance in 1981, and that 27-10 loss to Oakland fueled his return to the profession in 1997, after a 14-year hiatus from coaching that saw Vermeil serve as a television analyst for NFL and college football for CBS and ABC.

He leaves the Rams with nothing left to prove after his Rams defeated the Tennessee Titans 23-16 on Sunday in Super Bowl XXXIV.

Vermeil was close to not being around for the 1999 season because of his disastrous beginning with the team. After the Rams went 5-11 and 4-12 in his first two seasons, there was talk that he could be fired.

His players weren't happy. Most of it was only grumbling, because of extremely hard practices that often left the players exhausted before they stepped on the field on Sundays.

But four prominent players, including cornerback Todd Lyght, boycotted the final team meeting of the 1998 season. That sent a message to the coach, who described it at the time as a "shot in the back."

	Going out on top
	Dick Vermeil is the fifth coach to leave his team after winning a Super Bowl. The other four are Vince Lombardi, Bill Walsh, Bill Parcells and Jimmy Johnson. All but Walsh returned later to coach another NFL team.

Vermeil, however, weathered the problems and led the team to an incredible turnaround.

In his first stint as an NFL coach with the Eagles, which ended in 1982, Vermeil called the plays and basically ran the whole show with an iron fist. He left the game with burnout, and when he returned he became a benevolent overseer.

As is his trademark, Vermeil fought back tears throughout the news conference. Sometimes, he lost the battle and choked up, especially when he talked about his players and the Rams organization.