Jackie Sherrill had a live bull castrated during practice at Mississippi State.

Jimmy Johnson stomped on some Flutie Flakes to inspire his Dallas Cowboys .

Old-school coaches all, with old-school sensibilities, who ruled with iron fists and, some say, a counterculture way of lighting fires under their players.

But perhaps none were as wacky as the antics displayed by Mike Singletary three weeks ago when Samurai Mike showed he was no mere interim coach for the 49ers who would simply serve out the string in San Francisco.

Not only did he pull his starting quarterback with 30 seconds remaining in the first half, showing up UC Davis' J.T. O'Sullivan by not allowing him to hand off the ball to kill the clock. Singletary also dropped his pants in the halftime locker room to better illustrate how the 49ers were getting their tails kicked by Seattle.

Then Singletary banished mercurial tight end Vernon Davis to the locker room ... with more than 10 minutes remaining in the game before peeling the paint in the locker room with a blue tirade that could be heard three doors down before making like a preacher on a bully pulpit during his postgame news conference following the embarrassing 34-13 loss.

"Our formula is this," Singletary barked, the hair standing up on the collective neck of the Fourth Estate. "We go out, we hit people in the mouth, No. 1. No. 2, we are not a charity. We cannot give them the game. That's No. 2. And No. 3 is we execute, from the very start of the game to the very end of the game."

And those selfish players?

"It is more about them than it is about the team," Singletary said, his voice rising for added emphasis with every word. "Cannot play with them. Cannot win with them. Cannot coach with them. Can't do it. I want winners."

On the surface, it appeared Singletary was auditioning for not only a Coors Light commercial but a Hanes underwear ad.

But here's a more pertinent question as Singletary returns today to Candlestick Park, site of Pants-Around-Samurai-Mike's-Ankles-gate -- can an old-school coach with his somewhat dated motivational tactics not only survive but thrive in today's NFL?

"I don't know," said former Raiders coach Tom Flores, a decidedly old-school coach with two Super Bowl rings as a head coach, a third as an assistant and a fourth as a backup quarterback who was anything but a fire-and-brimstone screamer. "It's getting harder and harder for that type of coach to succeed."

Mostly, Flores said, because of the star status afforded so many players today and the guaranteed contracts that weren't around in Flores' prime.

"Fear was a big motivator," he said. "With these contracts, they can just go someplace else now, and there's no real fear of being released. In the old days, guys were getting cut."

Flores, again a preliminary nominee for the Hall of Fame, sounded wistful as he waxed nostalgic.

"These guys today, they're like, 'You don't like me here, and I'll just go someplace else,' " Flores said. "In order to sign guys, you've got to guarantee certain monies, whether they deserve it or not."

Suddenly, the image of DeAngelo Hall with $8 million in his pockets for eight games of playing like Elvis "Toast" Patterson for the Raiders this season comes to mind, what with Hall signed immediately by the Washington Redskins .

Guaranteed contracts, seen as humane in certain corners, take an important bargaining chip away from old-school coaches when dealing with players. No wonder Flores would like to see an NBA-inspired salary scale come into effect with the next labor agreement.

Just don't hold your breath.

"It's like CEOs of companies," Flores said, "with their golden parachutes."

And somewhere, Vince Lombardi is spinning.

Because what Singletary, a Hall of Fame linebacker for the Chicago Bears , flirted with in his first afternoon as a head coach was becoming a parody of himself.

"Just got to be careful," former NFL defensive end Marcellus Wiley said on ESPN's "NFL Live." "You don't want to become a coach that is a gimmick (with) too many antics, because then you start to lose your voice in that locker room."

In illustrating that the apple does not fall far from the (coaching) tree, Singletary played for tough guy Mike Ditka, as well as noted old-schooler Buddy Ryan, in Chicago, and won a Super Bowl.

In fact, Singletary is one of 11 Hall of Fame players to become a head coach in the NFL, including Ditka and the Raiders' Art Shell. Singletary, though, is only the second such defensive player, with Detroit linebacker Joe Schmidt.

So it really was no surprise to Wiley that Singletary dropped trou.

"That's what you get when you got an ex-player, now a coach," Wiley said. "Sometimes that line is blurred."

Wiley laughed. As did former 49ers receiver J.J. Stokes, now a sports-talk radio personality in Modesto.

"I agree with what Mike Singletary said," Stokes said with a chuckle when asked what crazy things he witnessed in his career. "Some things should stay in that locker room."

Especially if that coach wins. Then, he has carte blanche to pull whatever tricks from up his sleeve he sees fit.

Tom Coughlin reined back his reign of terror as an old-school disciplinarian in Jacksonville and won a Super Bowl with the New York Giants last season.

Bill Belichick, a failure in Cleveland, became a New England folk hero by winning and is more cold war intimidator than loquacious locker room legend.

"I've seen it at its best when I was in New England," Stokes said. "Everybody there polices everybody.

"Guys may complain, but they like knowing they have a direction," Stokes said, recalling Steve Mariucci as a laid-back players' coach.

"Had we been a young team," he said, "it wouldn't have worked."

Coughlin (16 percent) and Belichick (11 percent) garnered the most votes in a recent Sports Illustrated players' poll as the coaches for whom they would least like to play. Interestingly enough, Belichick was third in the poll of coaches for whom they'd most like to play.

Bottom line is the coach, whatever his method, must win, lest the players pay no mind to a simple barking coach.

"If his formula does not breed success, he can get tuned out," Stokes said. "As long as the core players, the foundation of the team that's not going anywhere, buy in, then it works.

"I'm talking about guys like (Frank) Gore, (Patrick) Willis, (Eric) Heitmann, (Joe) Staley, Justin Smith. If those guys buy in, it trickles down to the rest of the team."

It better, lest an old-school Singletary and the 49ers get caught with their pants down.

Call The Bee's Paul Gutierrez, (916) 326-5556.