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*********** "I recently found a video telling the story of football at Aquinas High School located in Rochester NY. The story, " When Football Was Bigger Than Life", is fascinating as it tells the school's football history from the early 1900's to the present. As the video moves along they mention some names I recognize. The first was a man whose name was Henry McDonald. I remember an old man that was the plate umpire at my little league games in Geneva, NY. This man was probably in his late 70's or 80's at the time and walked with a shuffle. His trade mark was his call on strikes when he yelled "That's ahhhh dandy". As the story is told he was a great football player for East High in Rochester. He later played for the Rochester Jeffersons, a pro team in the 20's. The Jeffersons helped formed a league called the American Professional Football Association, with others like Chicago, Akron, and Canton. Jim Thorpe was the first commissioner of this league which a few years later became the NFL. They say that Henry McDonald of the Jeffersons was the first African-American to play in the NFL. It later tells of Henry coaching the Catholic High School, Geneva Desales High in 1945. I went to the public Geneva High and Desales was our big time Catholic rivals. It's the same guy, Henry McDonald called me out on strikes when I was a kid. I never knew anything about this kind old gent who everyone liked. He always had candy for all us kids after the games- with a smile. I never knew who this man was and how much history he had in football, until a few weeks ago. Wow! Glade Hall- Seattle, Washington *********** At a clinic I did last Sunday for a program outside Worcester, Massachusetts (that's "WUSS-ter" for you outsiders; "WUSS-tuh" if you're from Massachusetts), I was introduced to a young coach in the youth program named Gordie Lockbaum. I told him his name sounded familiar. I told him I'd known a guy in Maryland by that name, but that wasn't it. I asked him where he was from and he said Glassboro, New Jersey, which I knew fairly well since one of my first jobs with the WFL Philadelphia Bell in 1974 was finding a training camp site, and I settled on Glassboro State (now Rowan College). But that wasn't it, either. I still couldn't place the name. Boy, did I have egg on my face when I opened this past Thursday's USA Today to read that Gordie Lockbaum of Holy Cross had just been elected to the College Football Hall of Fame! A little research showed me what Gordie had been too modest to tell me when I said his name "sounded familiar": in 1986- the year Vinnie Testaverde won the Heisman Trophy - Gordie Lockbaum finished fifth in the voting, just behind the much-hyped Brian Bosworth. Today, he is giving back to the game, coaching a Pop Warner team in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Congratulations to a very impressive young man.
*********** It seems to me that when you tell someone you can't help them because you "don't have any money," it is important not to spend what money you do have frivolously, so as to make you look like a liar. The state of Washington has provided an excellent example of what I mean. The Evergreen State, which claims to be in such a financial bind it can't honor a cost-of-living increase for teachers that its voters authorized in last November's election, has money to squander erecting signs on its roads that say, "DRIVE FRIENDLY." Yeah, drive friendly. Like I really care whether that 19-year-old twit in the little red car who won't get off my rear end has a warm smile on her face. Like it'll make everything okay if the idiot who crossed three lanes and cut me off because he was talking on the phone and nearly missed his exit waves to me. Personally, I liked it better when I lived in Connecticut year ago. They had a governor named Abe Ribicoff who was hard-core. When you crossed the state line, a sign said, "WELCOME TO CONNECTICUT - SPEEDERS LOSE LICENSES!" Drive friendly? Those state troopers could care less. They kicked ass and took names.
His bill is aimed solely at Nevada, the only place where it is legal to gamble on such things. I'm guessing the Las Vegas casinos didn't contribute enough to his failed presidential campaign, and it is now payback time. His bill also is about major college semi-pro sports. Period. It is not about the Olympics and it is not about high schools. I know, it will create a lot of interest, shocking soccer moms into thinking that those evil bookies are corrupting our Olympic figure skaters and our virginal high school children, but get serious - who's going to bet on the luge? or synchronized swimming? And who's going to fly to Vegas to get something down on the big Thanksgiving Day game? I am all for purity in sports, and I prefer to have everything on the up-and-up, but a few things occur to me: (1) Where there have been gambling scandals involving college players - Boston College and Northwestern come to mind - I don't recall any evidence that the money involved ever made its way into or out of the legal betting channels in Nevada. People who will attempt to fix a game somehow seem not to be too worried about whether it is illegal to bet in their state. (2) In a sense, the fact that Nevada's sports books openly publish odds and point spreads keeps sports cleaner than the government ever could. The Vegas guys have a strong interest in keeping things clean. They have the most to lose if a fix is in, so whenever there is the slightest hint that there might be something screwy going on - when they see large sums of money being bet counter to conventional wisdom - they take a game off the board. No more betting on it. Now, if the Vegas books think a game is too risky for them to handle - should you be betting on it? Shouldn't the FBI be on the case? (3) The NCAA is Big Business, and no more deserving of this kind of "protection" than the NFL is. The NCAA will try to sound like Snow White in testifying on behalf of Mr. McCain's bill, with all its garbage about "student-athletes," blah, blah, blah, but the fact is that major college sports are very big time - make that very professional - and very widely exposed and reported. That is why they are attractive to gamblers. As the president of Tufts University (small-time) said recently, "somehow, I don't see many people ever betting on Tufts vs. Bowdoin." (4) Australians are known to gamble on just about anything, and, conveniently, in Australia it is legal to gamble on just about anything. That includes all of the sports that Australians are passionate about. At least one Australian rugby team depends for funds on the gambling revenue generated inside the team's own club house. Yet betting scandals in Australia are practically unheard-of. (5) Will this mean shutting down the Final Four office pools, Inspector McCain? Good luck. And if my son-in-law sets one up, and your goons come after me the way they did Little Elian, I will squeal on my whole family if I have to, to keep from going to jail. *********** Now that the Pacific Northwest has had the driest winter on record, and we've pushed all that water through our turbines to make electricity for power-poor but voter-rich California, we have discovered that - duh - the water level behind our dams is so low that now we are being asked to conserve power. So I guess the Portland newspaper thought it would be cute to identify for us the largest users of electricity in our county. Although it struck me as the sort of thing that might have been commonplace were this the Soviet Union, I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do with that information. Picket their homes? Throw garbage on their lawns? Find the switch, and plunge them into darkness? Write my congressman? The leading residential bad guy, it turns out, is a local builder with 12 children, whose 10,000 square foot home used 215,040 kilowatt hours in 2000, at a cost of $10,140.68, or 4.7 cents per kilowatt hour. His monthly bill is about what the average county resident pays in a year. Back when he built his house, though, power was cheap and the local electric utility was encouraging people to splurge on electrical devices. (Safe! Convenient! Non-polluting!) Now he sounds repentant, and while not going so far as to issue a full "apology", he did express "regrets," admitting to the paper that he knows he pays a lot for his electricity, and expressing interest in learning about ways to cut back on his power usage. (Does anybody else see the need here for another giant federal program to educate people like him?) But while the newspaper was slyly depicting homeowners like him as greedy sorts, the "wealthiest one per cent" despoiling our precious resources, not much was said about the really big users, the high-tech industries who dwarf residential users like our builder. The number two user of electricity in our county, a foreign-owned company named WaferTech, is located in our little town of Camas. IN an effort to diversify its industrial base, Camas, long a one-industry, paper-mill town, made considerable concessions to lure Wafer Tech, and some citizens may now be having second thoughts. Last year, WaferTech used 128,044,300 kilowatt hours of electricity, nearly 600 times what Mr. Public Enemy Number One used. It paid a bill of $3,094,221.13, which works out to a bargain-basement 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour, half of what the ealthiest one per cent (and the rest of us) pay. In other words, those turkeys were given incentives to use a lot of power - and run a lot of water through our dams to generate it - while we are being asked to conserve electricity and water. In return for tax breaks and the right to use so much low-cost power that we poor proles are being threatened with blackouts this summer, WaferTech gives us unsightly power lines and lots of jobs paying in the neighborhood of $10 an hour, which result in government do-gooders now telling us that since we've attracted people to come work for that kind of money, we have to provide them "affordable housing" (used to be called low-cost housing) in our community. So what's next for the newspaper? I can see all sorts of possibilities. I suggest a county-wide survey of the empty bottles in peoples' recycling bins, to identify - and expose - the largest consumers of beer in the county. Or, better still, who doesn't recycle at all! Maybe the people at the 7-Eleven will tell us who's buying all the cigarettes. And let's get the Department of Licensing to tell us who's driving all those gas-guzzling SUV's. Let's get the names of Ruth's Chris' most frequent diners - I want to see who can afford to gorge himself on huge steaks, taking the leftovers home in "doggy bags," while all over America, children are going to bed hungry! I'm sure there's a way to count how many times people flush. And although I know our state is strapped financially, and can't afford to give its teachers a raise, what with the earthquake and Boeing leaving and all, I'll bet it can find the money to hire inspectors to rummage through our garbage - I want to know who didn't finish his vegetables. *********** I know that NBA coaches are well paid, and I know they know what they're getting into, but nevertheless, I feel for Mike Dunleavy. I like the guy, and I admire his composure, because his general manager, Bob "Nitwit" Whitsitt, has saddled him with some of the biggest pukes ever to put on a head band or submit to the tattooist's needle. Said NBC's Jim Gray, "Mike Dunleavy has the most difficult job of anybody in the NBA. He's a standup guy, an honorable man, an excellent, excellent coach, But he's been given a Rotisserie team." *********** "Hey Coach, I really enjoyed meeting you at the Detroit clinic. I learned a lot about the offense that is not in the playbook and got quite a few tips on how to approach installing the system next season. The only problem is that I have to wait until August!" Donnie Hayes- Farmington Hills, Michigan *********** "I was surprised to see a little clip about Blaine Bennett (new QB coach at Purdue) in your "News" site. I worked for Blaine for three years at Western Oregon, and I have to tell you, he knows the one-back offense very well. He started as a 5th string qb for Dennis Erickson at Idaho, later would GA for him at Idaho and WSU. He also worked with Mike Bellotti (now head coach at Oregon) at Chico State. I have always considered him as one of the brightest offensive minds in the Northwest and I know WOU is sad to see him go. Blaine is also a very classy guy, a character trait not shared by enough coaches. You met his brother Mark, another genuinely good person. As for his dad Shorty (or as I call him "The Short-Dog"!) I was lucky enough to have been his roommate for one season as I was a GA for WOU's last conference title team in 1997. As you can guess, I owe so much to the Bennett family for my professional development and learning how to coach the best game in the world-football. I was just glad to see his name mentioned." Mike Putnam, Albany, Oregon *********** Deer and elk must consider Viagra their Little Blue Friend, too. No, they aren't walking into pharmacies during the rut, prescriptions in their hands, while eager does graze outside. Actually, it may just be a coincidence, but in the last few years, since the introduction of Viagra, the price of ground-up antlers has plunged dramatically from a high of hundreds of dollars for a few ounces. Elderly Asian men had been buying the powder, mixing it with their food in the belief it cured, uh, "E.D." *********** Money Talks and B-S Walks Department, Women's Pro Soccer Category: Mia Hamm's triumphant return to North Carolina as a pro was greeted by a huge throng of 6,021 adoring fans in Chapel Hill. |
A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: Sports Illustrated called him "The
Best College Football Player of All Time"; Pop Warner,
who coached them both, said he was better than Jim
Thorpe; he outgained all four of the famed Four Horsemen
combined in the Rose Bowl; in college, he won 11 letters
in four different sports in three years; he played
professional basketball, baseball and football; as a
major league pitcher, he served up two of Babe Ruth's
home runs on the Bambino's way to his record-setting 60
home-run season; in his first year of pro football, he
and just 15 teammates played on a team that played 29
games, 27 of them on the road; he set an NFL scoring
record that still stands.
*********** Football "films" have come a long way since the days of whirring, clicking, back-and-forth 16-millimeter Kodak Analysts. At least one team, the Baltimore Ravens, is so heavily into digital video editing that there is said to be a server at their headquarters capable of storing more than 90 hours' worth of game tapes. Using a rule of thumb of 5 minutes per gigabyte, that works out to 1,080 gigabytes of storage! (Put another way, you could roughly figure the cost by using a price of $10 per gigabyte.) After every game, the team's video director and his staff edit game tapes - their own and their opponents' - by first feeding the tape into the computer, then creating a digital "clip" of each play, and finally adding to each clip such additional information as down, distance, and the result of the play. Each clip is actually capable of carrying more than 30 separate items of information - criteria - some of which are added later by the coaches. What they have created, in effect, is a visual data base: when you call up "1999 Buffalo punt," you don't get just a list of Buffalo's 1999 punts, as you would with a conventional data base - you also get video clips of every one of Buffalo's punts that season. If you'd like to sort it down further, so you get only clips of Buffalo punting from its own end zone, you have that capability, too. The clips you requested are viewable on a monitor screen, and they're also capable of being transferred to tape. But why even bother with tape? What's interesting here is that it is not technically necessary for coaches or players to watch actual tapes. Instead, hooked up to the server is a network of smaller computers - Macintoshes, by the way - at which they are able to do all their viewing, calling up specific clips or groups of clips, as determined by the criteria that interest them. A defensive back, for example, might want to watch every route run by a specific wide receiver in a specific formation; the offensive coordinator might want to see what defenses next week's opponent has used in every third-and-long situation so far this season. The beauty is ths speed with which the computer can retrieve and deliver this video-on-demand. There is no looking for the right cassette, no waiting for tape to roll - no searching, no fast-forwarding or rewinding between the specific plays they want to see, no having to change cassettes. If they want, they can easily have tapes made of the video clips they've been watching. This has obvious implications for personnel people, too. You digitize the kid's college tapes and "file" them in the computer, and then if you want to see how well he plays in certain situations, against various opponents, you specify those criteria, and - voila! There it is. *********** According to a study done in 1998 by the National Center for Educational Statistics, 32 per cent of U.S. fourth-graders that year had switched schools at least once in the previous two years. A study by the Washington Post found that 20 per cent of all students in the D.C. area had moved at least once during the 1999-2000 school year or the summer before. In Alexandria, Virginia, sixty-five per cent of fifth-graders were found to have changed schools at least once last year. In some cases, it is the modern-day migration of poor inner-city families, constantly on the move from rental to rental. In other cases, it is the product of affluence, as well-to-do kids move into new housing developments in the far-out suburbs. And, all too often, it is the inevitable reflection of a society in which marriages break up and the kids come last. Whatever the reason, though, it is one of the biggest problems modern education faces, yet it is one that proponents of school reform and uniform testing seem not even to have considered. Figure it out: the whole idea of "accountability," according to its proponents, is preparing a "report card" for schools - finding out and reporting which schools - and which teachers - are "getting the job done." It is based on how their kids are doing over a period of time. Just one problem- what and whom are the tests comparing? It is not unusual in many schools around America to find that only a handful of the kids who took a standardized test two years ago are still around to take it again this year. How can "growth" or "improvement" in a kid be measured if he's no longer there? The transience of all these kids has a greater effect on attempts to improve education than just invalidating the tests, because not all kids take the moving all that well. Many of them are bringing a lot of baggage with them. Finding themselves strangers in new schools, many kids undergo personality transformations, either withdrawing or acting out. "One student can add to a class or just change the whole room," a fourth-grade teacher told the Washington Post. (Any teacher who has ever had a new kid walk into the classroom in the middle of a semester understands what she means.) These newcomers often arrive in schools with special needs to be addressed, but all too often they bring no records from their previous school. Sometimes, especially when kids move around a lot, it is difficult to chase their records down. Refusing admission to them is not an option, so kids frequently step into strange, new situations in which their needs are totally unknown. Research has shown that kids who move four or more times by eighth grade are four times as likely to drop out; students who move even once during high school are twice as likely to drop out without graduating. A 1999 study of schools in suburban Wheaton, Maryland found that after adjusting for disparities in income, fifth-graders who had moved three or more times scored 32 points lower on the CRT (Criterion Referenced Test) than those who had attended the same school since kindergarten. And, yet, if those "run-the-schools-like-a-business" types have their way, schools and teachers will be "held accountable" for the performance of those kids. In Virginia and Maryland, two states served by the Washington Post, kids enrolling in school on the day of the test are still expected to take it; their results will be included in their school's scores - and on its "report card." It's a scary prospect for teachers. As one Virginia teacher, frustrated at seeing one of her students leave just as he had begun to do acceptable work, told the Washington Post, "I'm concerned about the kid who will replace him. How much will he know?" *********** You would have to know Portland, Oregon to read this without shaking your head. Last May Day, an assortment of anarchists and professional protesters took to the streets of the Rose City, celebrating the great Communist International Workers' Holiday by tying up traffic downtown and generally raising hell. (Forget that it is highly unlikely that any of the protesters could ever in their lives have even remotely resembled a "worker.") When the police - who as I understand it are charged with making the streets available to all its citizens, even motorists - attempted to get the spoiled children to move on, violence ensued. As a result, the police have had to spend the better part of the last year apologizing for even thinking of using force against the lawbreakers, and promising to do better next time. Well, "next time" is almost upon us. The Portland city leaders (motto: "I've got it - why don't we make believe we're actually running a real city?") figured this year they'd be proactive, and require the demonstrators to get a parade permit. Not necessary, said May Day organizers - the right freely to assemble is right there in the first amendment. You need a permit. No, we don't. You need a permit. We're not getting one. Back and forth they went until, as always happens whenever spoiled children go up against weenie parents, they arrived at a compromise which the kids won. The demonstrators will still need a permit (although they still don't agree) - but the city will pay for it. *********** Not that Portland isn't used to paying for things it shouldn't have to pay for. An business organization calling itself "Portland Family Entertainment" offered to bring Triple-A baseball to town and offered to fix up crumbling old Civic Stadium, if the city would only pay the pay for the cost of renovations and give it the keys to the stadium and allow it to sell the naming rights. The city jumped at the offer. Huh? It gets worse. The stadium wasn't ready by football season, which meant that Portland State - for years, the stadium's only tenant - had to go elsewhere to play. There being no place else suitable in the entire metro area (Portland is easily the largest metro area in the country without a stadium capable of holding a major outdoor sports event), the city of Portland had to spend $300,000 of its taxpayers' money to upgrade a high school stadium in Hillsboro, Oregon so PSU would have a place to play. Now, the city fathers (and mothers - this is, after all, very-PC Portland) are aghast, embarrassed, shamed to learn that the hot dog vendors at the minor league baseball games won't be making as much under private ownership of the stadium as they would have if the city still owned it. Well, duh. I think that's the point of privatization. So they have voted to set aside another $300,000 of the taxpayers' money to make up the difference between what Portland Family Entertainment will pay its peanut salespersons and the $9.50 an hour the city thinks they should make. Such a deal! *********** A coaching friend whose name I can't use wrote me, indignant. He made me promise I wouldn't name names, but he was fuming: "A friend told me that his new head coach said that they will spread it out and throw the ball. My friend had no trouble with this new philosophy. The trouble was with the new blocking techniques. The old coach taught shoulder blocking like we do. The new coach teaches holding. He demonstrated the techniques of pass blocking, and it is to hold. "My friend pointed out that that technique was holding and against the rules! The new coach said, "it's not holding if they don't call it." "My friend told me that he can't work for this guy. Jim even went and got out a rule book and read to the new head man what holding was. The new coach said that he "taught it at (his last place) and that will be the way that it will be taught here." "This guy has no class and will cheat at every turn. I can't stand this type of coach. It's a good thing that I am not a head coach anymore." (My reply was, basically, "I will quote you without quoting you, if you know what I mean. No one will ever be able to trace this to you and no one will ever know where this guy is - unless you want them to - but this is such a gross violation of coaching ethics that somebody ought to put this sucker on report. He is a turd." Now, I personally would have no problem with printing the guy's name - but doing so means dragging others into it. It is a shame, though, that our silence will allow a creep like this to continue coaching. Once more, permit me to quote from the AFCA Code of Ethics, which is quite clear on the matter (If you'd like to give your friend's new head coach my phone number, I'll be happy to read it aloud - and very slowly - for his benefit): PREAMBLE: "Coaches unwilling or unable to comply with the principles of the Code of Ethics have no place in the profession. ARTICLE THREE, point 4: "Coaches who seek to gain any advantage by circumvention, disregard, or unwillingness to learn the rules of the game, are unfit for this association. A coach is responsible for the adherence of the rules by all parties directly involved with the team. The integrity of the game rests on the shoulders of the coach; there can be no compromise." Obviously, this misfit is not a member of the AFCA. It is every coach's right not to belong. But who would want to hire - or work for, or have his kid play for - a coach who wasn't fit for membership? This sort of guy endangers our game, because when football is being used to teach kids lessons like this, we can't justify the cost.
|
A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: Every American should know the story
of Paul Robeson.
Well, shoot, I knew that family. His dad is "Shorty" Bennett, a well-known Washington coach at Walla Walla, an avid football town, whose best-known product was a guy named Drew Bledsoe. Brother Blaine Bennett was until recently the head coach at Division II Western Oregon, until Joe Tiller, whom he'd worked with at Washington State, hired him to coach his QB's. Mark, his wife and his brother's wife were on their way back to the Northwest from a visit to Purdue and the Boilermakers' spring game. And a successful house search - accompanied by an investigation of schools for their three kids - by Melissa Bennett, Blaine's wife. Not enough credit can possibly be given to the wives of college coaches, who have to handle most of the messy details of relocation, postponing any hopes of ever having that dream house, because in the up-or-out business their husbands are in, they tend not to stay in one place too long. Talk about the dream job for a QB coach - a team that lives and dies by the pass! On the other hand, talk about pressure - all Blaine Bennett has to do is get a guy ready to replace Drew Breese. The guy he has to work with is a Californian named Brandon Hance. It sounds as if he is the anti-Breese - flashy and flamboyant, with a real set of wheels on him. *********** Now I'll bet they're sorry they blew up the Kingdome. Tired of going to all that work to lure mainlanders to Hawaii over the holidays and getting only 25,000 or so people to their game, the Oahu Bowl people have decided - on the basis of what has to be the flimsiest research ever done - to move their game. To Seattle. On December 26. Outdoors. Put me down for at least 100 seats. *********** We are looking for assistant coaches again ( one of ours was the Head Basketball Coach and he has taken another job after our kids made it to the state finals.)and our teaching fields are P.E., science, English, math, business and special ed.Love to find a DW guy. Let me know if you know of anyone." Don Davis-Athletic Director/Head Football Coach- Danbury, Texas - 979-922-1611 (Danbury is not far from Houston, not far from the recreational opportunities of the Gulf.) Let me know if you're interested or contact Coach Davis directly ***********Referring to the "group hug" supposedly scheduled to be a part of the groundbreaking ceremonies for the Lambeau Field renovations in Green Bay, Adam Wesoloski, of nearby DePere, Wisconsin, wrote in to defend - sort of - Wisconsin manhood. "Coach, I really haven't heard too much about this one. All I know is that the renovations strarted a month a half ago or so and the official groundbreaking is just a formality. Real Green Bay Packers fans probably will not participate in the group hug thing. It might be a flowery way to smooth over the .05% sales tax increase. Maybe it's the local soap box talkers' way of saying, "we're all one big, happy family. God we love da Pack" mentality. Don't expect true die hards to buy into this one - at least I hope not." (I want to see what kind of hugging goes on when you've got a beer in one hand and a brat - as in bratwurst, for you non-Wisconsinites - in the other.) *********** I'm just glad he wasn't flying my plane... A columnist in Sunday's Detroit News-Free Press made reference to a certain biblical villain as "Pontius Pilot." *********** Dog fighting is becoming popular among the bottom feeders of our culture. Just in case you were tempted... in Michigan, at least, it is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison to even attend a dog fight. *********** Combining the passing of Tommy Maddox, Greatest Quarterback in the History of the XFL, the receiving of Jeremaine Copeland, Finest Receiver in the History of the XFL, and the running of Saladin McCullough, possibly the Greatest Runner in the History of the XFL, the Los Angeles Xtreme established itself as the Greatest Team in the History of the XFL, earning itself a permanent place in sports lore as the very first winner of the Whatever-They-Finally-Decided-to-Call-It Game in league history. *********** The NBC channel in Detroit - the one carrying the XFL games - is WDIV, channel 4. But network loyalty didn't prevent Bernie Smilovitz, channel 4's sports guy, from taking some well-deserved shots at the ex-FL. One week, he introduced the "highlights" of the previous weekend's games - then showed a blank screen. On another occasion, following the same sort of intro, he showed a heart monitor going flat-line. Last week, he told viewers he'd be showing XFL "Plays of the Year," then showed stripper/cheerleaders, drunken fans, and that shot from the back of the guy using the locker-room urinal, all set to Barbra Streisand's Memories. *********** An eighth-grader in Arkansas called his teacher a "bitch." For that he was prosecuted under Arkansas state law making it a misdemeanor for "any person to abuse or insult a public school teacher who is performing normal and regular or assigned school responsibilities." Forget it. The Arkansas Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional. See, it was an unconstitutional limitation on his free speech. According to the court, the only speech not protected is "fighting words." In the opinion of Bruce Miller, a Detroit labor lawyer, "The refusal of the courts to support society when it tries through the law to regulate uncivil conduct (a category into which calling a teacher a "bitch" would seem to fit) in the classroom contributes to a lawless atmosphere. Sure, kids have rights, says Miller. "the right to be nurtured, the right to a decent education, and the right to protection by society from those who would mistreat them. "The problem with the courts," he says, "is that they have lost the distinction between the rights of adults who are emancipated from the authority of parents and the school, and those of children who are essentially dependent on that authority." *********** "Hi Coach, thanks again for a great clinic! Like I mentioned at the clinic, I got so much more out of this year's clinic after running the system for one year. I knew what I was looking for. Last year, I took in the whole picture, and tried to skim off as much as I could about each play. This year, I looked for fine details on how to coach each phase better, looked for tips on stances, teaching progressions, line communication (simple "off/on" and "reaching for the far hip"), keeping shoulders square to the LOS, having the Fullback watch the line on the 3 trap at 2, etc. Also, a great time to chew the fat with fellow Double Wingers!" -Paul Smith, Bullard Havens Tech, Bridgeport, CT. *********** Just in case you think that we ought to support China's bid for the 2008 Olympics because it provides us an opportunity to bring China into the circle of civilized nations... stop and ask yourself whether Hitler got better or worse after the 1936 Olympics were held in Berlin. *********** I can't remember the last time I heard of a fire in a school anywhere in the United States. But still, in the interest of safety, our state requires its schools to have at least two fire drills - unannounced - every month. Once, when a small, private airplane crashed near a school somewhere in Washington, teachers around the state were required to watch a video on what to do the next time. It was so simple I still remember it: if the plane crashes outside the school, keep the kids inside; if the plane crashes into the school, take the kids outside. I used to joke with my classes about all the drills we were required to have. We used to make up new drills, like "When the Cows Get Loose" drill, and so forth. The kids' favorite - this was years before Columbine made it, uh, unacceptable - was the "crazed gunman drill." One of the kids (the "gunman") would go out in the hall with a "rifle" (a yardstick) and wait. Then, while the class was supposedly attentively listening to me lecture, the "gunman" would burst into the room. Another of the kids, assigned to the job, would call out "CRAZED GUNMAN!!!" and everybody would hit the deck. Big laughs all around. Those were simpler times. Now, the big safety thing is eliminating bullying, since as every do-gooder knows, that's the real reason why all these screwed-up kids keep bringing firearms to school and killing classmates. Just put an end to the bullying and you watch - those kids will stop making pipe bombs and before you know it they'll be playing touch football, riding bikes, collecting baseball cards and working on their merit badges. But you know what? Based on what I've been reading lately, if we really want to save some kids' lives, we'll require one more drill: the "STOP! FREEZE!" drill. First, we'll teach all the kids, even those new to America whose English is limited, what the words "STOP" and "FREEZE" mean. Then, one of them will be designated to play "police officer," and the kids will practice - over and over and over, until they are very good at it - coming to a complete stop (not running away) when the "officer" tells them to. In order to catch all those kids whose attendance is sporadic, I suggest doing it at least twice weekly. *********** Westerners are normally quite surprised to find that those wonderful Interstate highways that they are used to riding for free sometimes cost money to travel on back East. There are a few money-grubbing states back there - states such as Maryland and Delaware, whose toll roads are hard to avoid when you're driving from, say, Washington, D.C. to New York - which somehow have figured out a way to charge the American taxpayers for using roads that their taxes helped to build. Whatever, having to stop periodically to pay tolls can be a real pain in the butt, especially on a big weekend, when enormous backups occur at the tollbooths. I'm sure it's not fun for the toll collectors, either. I've often sympathized with those people, who except for occasionally having to make change for a large bill have probably the most boring, repetitive jobs in the world, and so I can understand why a toll collector in Delaware thought it might help break the monotony if he had a little fun. A TV camera caught him in the act of reaching out to scoop some snow off a car - evidently with the intent of throwing a snowball at a fellow collector. Unfortunately, he was snagged by a passing truck, and, unbeknownst to its driver, dragged to his death. *********** ESPN SportsCenter's Kenny Mayne, commenting on Rasheed Wallace's throwing a towel in a teammate's face: "They're so cute at that age." |
*********** While in Providence on Friday, I had the good fortune to talk with two very interesting people. The first was a lady named Martha Mitchell, who is the chief archivist at Brown University (I was looking to borrow and copy some old football films but, being the arch-defender of everything historical that belongs to Brown, she understandably stood firm and wouldn't consider letting them out of her sight.) She is a delightful lady, bright and witty, who told me she's been at Brown for nearly 50 years. We got to talking about the old days of Brown football, especially John McLaughry, Brown's coach when I was at Yale, and she told me that Coach McLaughry still lived in Providence. In fact, she gave me his phone number and suggesting I give him a call. I did just that, and found Coach McLaughry to be as cordial, and as bright and witty, as Mrs. Mitchell. Coach McLaughry has got to be in his 80's. He captained the 1939 Brown team, playing for his dad, the late Tuss McLaughry, who went on to coach at Dartmouth and then to become the first executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. Coach McLaughry the younger coached at Amherst College before moving to Brown in 1959, where as I recall he did not have a superabundance of talent, but ran a "side-saddle T" offense that drove our coaches nuts. Needless to say, we spoke at some length about his offensive thinking, and he was kind enough to agree to let me call him again so we could talk in more detail. Coach McLaughry is also a talented artist, it turns out. Mrs. Mitchell showed me some of the drawings that he has done over the years for the athletic department, drawings mostly of Bears - the Brown mascot - in various poses. Brown's football programs over the years have featured Coach McLaughry's bears illustrating the officials' signals. I look forward eagerly to our next talk. *********** In the very small world department came this e-mail: "Coach Wyatt, This is a long shot, but here goes. Are you the husband of the former Connie Cunningham from Abington Pa.? If this is so, this is amazing. I was with Tom Hinger and Don Holleder on Oct. 17. I was A Co. XO and led the rescue effort to bring in the dead and wounded. I took Tom Hinger out with me that day and I was the one who wrote his Silver Star citation. If you are in fact Connie's husband give her my regards. I lived two doors away on Highland Ave. and still see her Mom and brother Wayne." Tom Grady (Tom is right. This is truly amazing. My wife did in fact grow up just two doors away from the Gradys, and was excited to learn of this incredible coincidence.) *********** Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber is what they used to call a drugstore cowboy. He likes to play the Wild West bit to the hilt, with big belt buckles and cowboy boots. He has been known to wear jeans to the most stately of affairs. But in my opinion, based on his political stands, he is a wussie, and evidently quite a few ranchers and farmers in Southern Oregon agree. Essentially, he told them at a meeting in Klamath Falls that he prefers to use the state's scarce water resources to preserve salmon, even if that means cutting off irrigation to their fields. One woman, the granddaughter of a rancher and now an alfalfa grower and mother, brought down the house when she stood up and said to the Guv, "If you're not going to help us, take off the proud rural symbols - those cowboy boots - because you don't deserve to wear them." *********** Jim Hagen called me the other day while I was out of town, and left a message on my answering machine, Said he had a little job for me. It would pay $800 for 15 minutes' work. Or less. I turned him down. Actually, I don't think he was serious. He was looking for somebody to go four rounds (or less) at the Lucky Eagle Casino. I once taught with Jim, a retired school counselor who has always been a huge fan - student - of boxing. He has made the pilgrimage to the Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York. He instantly recognized scenes in photographs I once took of Muhammad Ali's training camp in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania. I have never been able to stump him with a boxing question. Once, when I was teaching a group of "at risk" freshman boys, I brought Jim into class to tell them a little about Muhammad Ali. Jim got really wound up, and when he started describing big, bad Sonny Liston, he told the kids, "Now, this guy was one bad f-cker..." I was sitting at my desk when I suddenly realized what he'd just said, and I looked around at the kids. They didn't even bat an eye. They were in their element. This wasn't some schoolteacher droning on; this was a guy talking to them, man-to-man, and I'm quite sure they were used to hearing things described in those terms in their social circles. But whew! I pretended it never happened and hoped for the best, and I never heard another word about it. Now that he's retired, Jim is into boxing full-time. And boxing, at least in our part of the country, seems to be enjoying something of a revival at the grass-roots level, fueled in part by the proliferation of Indian casinos and boxing's ability to draw the precise type of crowd that casinos want to attract. Fight fans long-used to being ripped off by pay-per-view farces (how about $39.95 for the recent Prince Naseem Hamed fight, a 4-1/2 hour show which involved maybe an hour of actual boxing?) are pleasantly surprised to find that $40 at the Lucky Eagle buys them a ringside seat and a couple of hours of real, up-close hardcore boxing action. Jim has managed a couple of fighters, and when he has a night free, he works the corner for various other fighters. He has even promoted a couple of cards of his own in Seattle. He says a friend of his has a very promising young heavyweight named Cody Gray - "remember the name," he tells me - who is a native of Iowa, where he supposedly was a very good high school football player and wrestler. If you're an Iowa guy and the name rings a bell, tell me what you know about him. ***********At the recent Final Four, Arizona's Lute Olson recalled 1980, when he took Iowa to the Finals. Following the tournament, he was riding in an elevator with the late Al McGuire, who asked him, "Well, what are you going to do next year?" "What do you mean?" Olson asked him. "Well, you're not going to stay at Iowa, are you?" McGuire asked. "Why wouldn't I?" said Olson. McGuire, who was out of coaching by then, having abruptly retired following his Marquette team's winning the national title, said that if he'd remained in coaching, he would have taken over a program in need of building, built it - and then moved on, while he was still appreciated. One step ahead of the critics. "He said if you stay on," recalled Olson, "You'll wind up having higher expectations every year, and you're going to make more enemies every year."
*********** I am currently reading a book entitled "Bragging Rights," by Richard Ernsberger, Jr. He's writing about the SEC and the 1999 season, and he takes a fairly close look at a couple of the programs and their coaches. One story he tells is about Florida's Steve Spurrier and how hard he is on his quarterbacks. The rule, all of them who have ever played for him agree, is DO NOT BUMBLE. Coach Spurrier is intense, and he has a quick hook. He expects his QB to be READY. This particular story deals with Mike Cohen, a 5-9, 175-pound walk-on who spend his entire career as a Gator running the scout team. For that, he was finally rewarded by being given a scholarship his senior year, but he remained the number four or five guy, and by then he harbored no illusions of ever starting. Of ever even playing, for that matter. But one day, there came the moment every guy like Mike Cohen dreams of. It was a practice, back in 1992, and the starter, Shane Matthews, was having a bad day. Get the hook. But the number two man, Terry Dean, had his problems, too. Get the hook. In went QB number three, Antwan Chiles. More of the same. In desperation, Coach Spurrier turned to the nearest quarterback, who happened to be little Mike Cohen, and said, "Can you do it?" Here was the backup's big chance. His moment of glory. He looked at the coach and replied, "I... can... try." Uh-oh. Wrong thing to say to a coach who wants results and wants them NOW. As author Ernsberger says, it was equivalent to answering an order from General Patton by saying, "Uh, I guess I can try to march up that hill, sir." To this day, Cohen told the author, he still doesn't know what possessed him to say what he said, but he remembered the scornful look that Spurrier gave him. Anyone who's ever seen a Florida game on TV knows the look. "I can try, too," Spurrier said, as he turned away to find another quarterback. And there chance to quarterback the Florida Gators. *********** Joe Soucheray, one of my favorite columnists, likes to poke fun at the liberal idiocy found in his native Minnesota. But I think out in the Pacific Northwest, I can match him nut for nut, fruit for fruit. For example, there is the subject of "tent cities." Unlike Minnesota's, our winter is relatively mild, making homelessness a viable year-round pursuit. But it does tend to rain a bit, and rather than live in huddled masses under the bridges, the homeless have taken to squatting on other people's property in squalid tent cities, virtually defying the authorities to drive them off. So along comes this nut, writing to the Portland Oregonian. He says that tent cities serve a useful purpose. In his words, they "contribute to the larger housed community in an important way." How do they do that? Well, he writes, "by making our obscene disparity of incomes (I feel guilty already) visible and graphic, with humble tents alongside overbuilt mansions." No more sweeping the homeless out of sight. "Now," he writes, "it is out there for all to see." "Tent cities," according to this guy, "help us face our own collective selfishness (now he's hitting close to home) and our own inner homelessness." (Huh? These guys just can't resist psychobabble) *********** The Little Blue Friend That's Always There. Viagra, the little male helper that brought us a new disease known as "ED", and markets itself shamelessly in commercials that sing "I'm ready, ready, ready..." has taken its act to ballparks. A shot of the batter from behind the pitcher shows a prominent Viagra sign on the wall behind the catcher. *********** Cadillac, once the symbol of autmotive excellence - or excellence in anything for that matter - has fallen on tough times. Luxury imports such as Lexus, BMW and Mercedes are beating its brains in. What research shows is that 70 per cent of Cadillac's purchasers are male (as opposed to 48 per cent of Mercedes buyers and 60 per cent of Lexus buyers) and their average age is 63, as opposed to 45 for BMW and 52 for Lexus and Mercedes. As a former marketing whiz myself, I see a natural tie-in to simultaneously breathe new life into a tired brand and into its market. I can just see the roll-out now: The all-new, completely redesigned, 2002 Cadillac Viagra! (Light blue, of course.) |
The "girl," who last year graduated from a local high school as a 17-year-old senior, was discovered actually to have been a 31-year-old imposter. It really wasn't that hard for her to do, in this day and age in which kids are encouraged to run away and homelessness is just another alternative lifestyle. She had no address - she was homeless - and she arrived in school without any records; but that, she told school officials, was because she'd been home-schooled. A succession of well-meaning families attempted to take her in and help her, but the arrangements always seemed to end with the girl charging the man of the house with some sort of sexual misbehavior. It turns out that the girl/woman had been doing this same sort of stuff in Alabama, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas before finally being nabbed in Washington. What finally led to her capture was when for some reason it was necessary to do a check of her fingerprints. So once she was unmasked, so to speak, the local TV types got right on the story. One perky little reporter-type located the guy she'd gone to the Prom with last spring, and asked him if he was going to file rape charges against her! At the very least, she has been charged with defrauding the state of educational dollars (it is illegal in Washington for anyone 21 or older to attend high school), and of bilking the local junior college out of scholarship money. Hard to say how the news was received by a 47-year-old guy now serving time in the clink for having sex with a minor, back when she supposedly was 17. Yes, he's going to be freed, because, you see, he didn't have sex with a minor after all. She was 31. But the downside is he's getting far more notoriety from his being freed than ever he did at the time he was arrested, convicted and sentenced. As well he should. Because before they return that guy to the streets, there's still one thing I'd like to know - one thing that bothers me:
*********** A Seattle man, on trial for breaking into a Ridgefield, Washington home and climbing on top of a woman whom he'd gone with briefly 20 years ago and been stalking ever since, chose to serve as his own attorney. That gave him one last chance to stalk the woman, as he kept her on the stand and interrogated her over the course of two days, finally picking up an engagement ring waiting on a nearby table to be used as evidence and asking her to marry him. I guess her answer was "No," because she bolted for the door. He tried to follow, but was restrained by law officers. He lost his case. Now he will probably appeal, based on the claim that he had incompetent counsel. *********** Back in 1998, Prairie View A & M ended an 80-game losing streak. Prairie View long the symbol of football futility, may very well become the latest symbol of NCAA idiocy. The NCAA put another notch in its belt, placing Prairie View on probation because a former coach paid for a kid's tuition and housing from a fund set up to pay for football-related expenses. Evidently there was scholarship money available because players had left the program, but it was too late in the school year to use it for this kid. The coach said he didn't realize it was wrong. I know, I know. If we let Prairie View do it, what's to stop the big guys from doing the same thing? Come on. The big guys are far more clever than that. Besides, let's not kid ourselves. Prairie View makes a great example without getting everybody upset with the NCAA. It's like a coach suspending a third-stringer while overlooking all the starters who got caught at the same party. So life goes on. The rich get richer and the Prairie Views get ground into the dust.
With bowling shoes, especially the authentic rental kind (the ones with the large size numbers on the heels) now fashionable, kids "rent" the shoes, then conveniently leave the bowling alley, shoes and all. They seem to have no compunctions about stealing. The Wall Street Journal this week quoted a 28-year-old woman named Melissa Scales, who works for the National Merit Scholarship Corporation in Evanston, Illinois. She came back from a Christmas visit to her mother in Florida with bowling shoes that she admitted swiping. Would you please listen to this woman's f--king mentality? (God forbid, you could be teaching or coaching her kid some day.)
Think of it, Sheridan wrote: as soon as Sean Combs, aka Puffy or Puff Daddy, was acquitted in his recent trial, he announced he was changing his name to P-Diddy or some damnfool name like that. And when Mark Chmura went on trial, it was "Chewy" there in the courtroom. It wasn't Rasheed Wallace who got thrown out of all those games, and threw a towel in a teammate's face. It was "Sheed. It was "Spree" who choked his coach. And "Junior" who angered the fans in Cincinnati. And "A-Rod" who stiffed the fans in Seattle.
The pressure is on in Minnesota to build a new stadium or two and just blow up the Metrodome, a la the Seattle Kingdome. But in the meantime, because what the hell - it's only money, right? The Metrodome is getting two new Sony scoreboards, at a cost of $950,000 each. *********** Michigan State is altering - ever so slightly - its football helmet for the upcoming season. There will be just one white stripe down the center of the traditional green helmet, in place of the three formerly used. Gone also from the sides of the helmet will be the profile of the Spartan, replaced by a white block "S" which coach Bobby Williams claims "is the most recognized symbol of Michigan State University." Uh, coach - it's your call, or course, but have you seen Stanford's helmet lately? Or North Carolina State's? They sure do look like "Block S's" to me. Messing with a helmet is not a decision made casually. Try to think of the last time a solid, established major college program changed its helmet. I'm not talking about the perennial also-rans. I'm talking about the Tennessees, the Michigans, the Nebraskas. Good teams that don't have identity crises don't mess with their helmets. Yes, Oregon did, but considering the kind of research Nike had put into the new-look uniform, designed especially to appeal to the young players Oregon would be recruiting, and considering the money that Nike founder Phil Knight has poured into the Oregon program, well... would you like us to change the name of the university while we're at it, Mr. Knight? But I am always reminded of the Jim Lambright "era" at Washington. Coach Lambright, a good man and a loyal Husky, inherited a sound program from Don James. Washington was not a program in need of a gimmick to kick-start it. But Coach Lambright just couldn't resist the urge to tinker, and he had the audacity to change the traditional gold helmet with the purple-and-white striping and purple "W" on the sides back to the stupid-looking all-purple, no-stripes design that he wore when he played at Washington. Maybe he was trying to put his personal stamp on the program. Maybe as an long-time Husky himself, he harbored some deep-seated resentment toward Coach James' helmet redesign back in the 1970's, when Washington's program desperately needed a kick in the butt.
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Seen at the Detroit clinic last Saturday: Don Capaldo, of
Keokuk, Iowa (Left) and Doug Gibson, of Naperville,
Illinois
Don't look for the Double-Wing to hit the Ivy League any time soon, though. This was the staff from Yale, Michigan. Coach Don Smeznik, Jr. brought his staff along, including his most experienced assistant, Coach Don Smeznik, Sr. I hadn't seen Don, Sr. since the very first Double-Wing clinic I ever put on, in Mount Vernon, Indiana back in the spring of 1997, and it was great to see him again. When we first met, he was the head coach at Dryden, Michigan, and he had already jumped on the Double-Wing bandwagon the year before. I was impressed then with how quickly he had sensed the offense's potential, and how many intelligent questions he asked.
*********** At Saturday's Detroit clinic, one of the coaches from the Troy (Michigan) Cowboys' youth organization was introduced to me as "Reg Cavender." That name rang a bell. It had been some time since I'd seen or heard it, but I had to ask, "Would you by any chance be Regis Cavender?" The same, he admitted. His name is memorable among serious football fans because he scored Michigan State's only touchdown in the 1966 "game of the century" in which Michigan State and Notre Dame went into the final game of the season unbeaten, and played to a 10-10 tie. (A tie, incidentally, that has haunted Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian all these years because of the way, with Notre Dame in possession of the ball in the waning moments, he chose to take the tie, rather than take a chance on winning - or maybe losing. Actually, with time for just one more play and an inexperienced quarterback who had just been sacked, Coach Parseghian called for a sneak to end the game.) I enjoyed hearing Reg's recollections of Spartan Coach Duffy Daugherty and his way of always looking for something humorous to do or say.
John Elway was a good enough athlete that he probably would have become a pro football player had he been raised by wolves, but there's no question that his path was made a lot straighter and smoother by his dad, Jack. Jack Elway, who died Sunday at the age of 69, was a football coach. He was also a Washington guy. Born and raised in the coastal logging and pulp-mill town of Hoquiam, he graduated from Washington State, where he played quarterback. Following graduation, he taught and coached at Port Angeles, Washington High School, where John (and his twin sister, Jana) were born, and in 1961 he became head coach at Grays Harbor Community College in Aberdeen, Washington. Following the 1966 season, he left Grays Harbor to join the staff of his former high school coach, Jack Swarthout, at the University of Montana. While there, his recruiting skills brought him to the attention of Washington State's legendary Jim Sweeney, who said he hired him because he was tired of losing good Montana players to him.. His first college head coaching job was at Cal State-Northridge in1976. It was a major family move which would profoundly affect son John's career, because in southern California Coach Jack arranged for his son to have the opportunity to play for Jack Neumeier at Granada Hills High School. Coach Neumeier was way ahead of most high schools - most colleges, for that matter - in his passing ideas; much of the credit for the one-back, multiple-spread-formation "West Coast" attack which we see today belongs to him. In Coach Neumeier's system, John Elway began to develop into the all-time great quarterback the world would one day come to know. At about the same time John went on to Stanford, Jack Elway moved to San Jose State, where he coached from 1979 through 1983. There were a few anxious times then for Mrs. Elway - the times when Jack and San Jose State played John and Stanford. (Dad was 2-1 in their three meetings while John was a starter for the Cardinal.) In 1984, two years after John left college, Jack got the job of his dreams, succeeding Paul Wiggin at Stanford. Sadly, though, he didn't have a John Elway at quarterback. He stayed through 1988, when a 3-6-2 record and a ninth-place Pac-10 finish doomed him and he was replaced by Dennis Green. He served the 1991 and 1992 seasons as coach of the Frankfurt Galaxy in the World League of American Football, then joined the Broncos in 1993 as a scout, serving from 1995 through 1999 as director of pro scouting. Broncos' coach Mike Shanahan said Coach Elway played an essential role in building the Broncos' two Super Bowl champions. "Jack was happy to stay in the background and let others get more public attention, but his position with us was truly invaluable," he said. Undoubtedly Jack Elway's loss will be felt keenly by his wife, Jan, and their two other children and eight grand-children, but if it is at all possible, he will be missed most of all by his son, John, who named his oldest son, Jack, after his dad. Father and son were described as "best friends." Colorado State coach Sonny Lubick, who served under him at Stanford, remembered Jack Elway as a "classy, loving person. He was as fine a coach as there was and, more important, as fine a man as there was." *********** Next time you run into one of those parents who irrationally defend their kid even when he's clearly done wrong and everybody knows it, remember Pat Croce. He is the owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, and one of the few real standup men among all owners of pro sports franchises. He is the guy who basically told Allen Iverson "I'm through screwing around with you. You either change your ways or you're gone." Any other owner would have kissed up to Iverson and fired the coach. It's a lot easier to do it that way. So it had to be one terrible blow when Croce was confronted with videotape showing that his own brother, John Croce, the Sixers' strength and conditioning coach, had been taking money from Iverson's pants in the locker room. It all came to light back in January, but the story of what actually happened only became public in the last few weeks. It seems that Sixers' GM Billy King had asked for - and received - authorization from Pat Croce to videotape the locker room; King said he had "reasons." Did Pat Croce scoff at the evidence? ("How do you know that was real money?") Did he make excuses? ("John's been having a lot of problems at home lately") Did he attack Billy King? ("This was a personal vendetta.") Or blame Iverson? ("He shouldn't have left all that money in his pockets.") No. When King showed him the videotape, Croce said, "Call John in. Ask him pointed questions. Investigate this. If this is true, we'll have to take immediate action." Following his meeting with King, John Croce left the team immediately, the Sixers announcing that he had "resigned." When the Philadelphia Inquirer broke the story earlier this month and asked Croce what was on the tape, he said "The actions speak for themselves," adding, after a long pause, "I felt sick." Members of the organization say that Pat Croce "apologized profusely" to Iverson, who as a result of his high regard for the owner seemed to be most understanding. The amount taken could very well have been quite large, since Iverson is known for carrying large sums of money, but because he is also known for being rather generous with it, the true size of the loss may never be known. Club sources say that Pat Croce hasn't spoken to his brother since his dismissal.
*********** Q. What do MLS (Major League Soccer, if you can believe such a thing actually exists in America) and the XFL have in common? A. Neither one played a game this past weekend that drew as many as 20,000 people. Finally, though, after weeks of wondering who would be playing in the XFL's Big Game at the End of the Season (oops- Million Dollar Bowl or something like that), we now know. "Crowds" in the neighborhood of 14,000 rattled around in stadia this weekend to watch San Francisco upset Orlando and Los Angeles put Chicago out of its misery. This means there will be an all-California battle for the coveted Vince McMahon Trophy, named for the beloved founder of the XFL.
The teammate was Arvidas Sabonis, who just before the timeout had fallen backward after contesting a rebound, accidentally hitting Wallace in the face.
*********** Uh, oh. Fred Smoot, Mississippi State's highly-regarded cornerback, came up a little short in the bench press at a recent scouting combine, managing exactly one rep at 225 pounds. One. *********** Stay in school, fellas... Yeah, right. Check it out - the top 12 scorers in the NBA all left school early. Two of them went straight to the NBA from high school. *********** From his very first day in high school, when he head-butted a special-education teacher, it was obvious that the kid was going to be high-maintenance. The teacher said that the kid also grabbed a knife and went after his mother, who managed to wrestle it away from him and get him to let go on the command, "give." The kid threw such fierce and unexpected tantrums, and was considered such a threat to students and teachers alike, that for long periods of time he had to be kept isolated in a padded room. Finally, the Seattle School District called it quits, and after fourteen months, decided to cut its losses by paying the kid's mother $180,000 to take him someplace else. That didn't please her. To her, the school district, which like most in the US is not exactly rolling around in money, did not do enough. "For all the money they spent trying to get him out," she said, "they could have made a perfect program for him. They didn't even try."
*********** There was a time when a football team couldn't win without a hoss at middle linebacker - a guy who, if he wasn't kicking opponents' asses, was doing the same to his teammates to get them going. There was never any question about his ability: he had it. Or about his determination: he consistently gave his best, and he expected no less from his teammates. I didn't say anything about Willie Stargell's recent passing, and I should have. Memories of him took me back to the days when baseball was still a team sport, and baseball players still cared about their teammates. Imagine baseball players nowadays even singing something as corny as "We Are Family", let alone trying to sound convincing while doing it.
*********** There goes Joe Soucheray again. It's a good thing that most of his enemies are liberal, politically-correct weenies who don't believe in violence, because he sure roughs 'em up regularly in his column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. His Easter column was devoted to St. Paul's "noncompetitive Easter egg hunt," held at one of the local "nature centers" which, he says, "I think they used to call parks." He said he was driving along last week listening to his radio when he heard about it. "Rather than being engaged in an actual hunt for Easter eggs, the kids were going to collect rocks or clues or some such thing," he recalled. "Then, I guess they were going to get in a circle, remove their helmets, and talk about the experience. As he pointed out, we have about done away with "playground games that involve throwing or kicking a ball in such a way that somebody could get smacked in the kisser," and now he ponders a world in which musical chairs is played without chairs, "which certainly protects some slow kid from not getting one." "The way things are going," he writes, "our kids are headed toward a noncompetitive future, so they might as well start out at a young age learning that everybody is a winner." As he sees it, this is the modern parents' way of making sure that their kids grow up to have "issue-free lives," lives in which "everything will have been ironed out along the way so long as every kid finds the same number of eggs, or rocks or clues." There must be something wrong with him - and a lot of us - he adds, because he never saw anything wrong with hiding eggs from kids. Or beating them in board games. He didn't believe in leaving the training wheels on too long, either: "Get out there and ride, kid. You can do it." Now, though, the approach seems to be, "You may or may not wish to learn to ride, precious, but don't worry if you don't know how, because lots of kids don't know how, and you are the same as all the other kids." *********** "Coach Wyatt, I just got back from Easter vacation and thought I would chime in with some baby news. I took my 5 month old son to the doctors for a check up last Friday. He checked in at 20 lbs. and was off the charts for both height and weight!! Can you say football?? The funny thing is that my 3 year old daughter weighs 30 lbs. She is only 10 lbs. heavier than my 5 month old son! Go figure!" Mike Lane, Avon Grove, Pennsylvania |
***********
John Elway has long been an admired figure in our family.
One of our prized possessions is the autographed poster
at left of Number 7 in a Stanford uniform, given us by
our son, Ed, who was two years ahead of Elway at
Stanford.
The top-tier sports - football plus men's and women's basketball - would be fully-funded with sufficient grants-in-aid (athletic scholarships) to allow UVa teams "to compete at the highest intercollegiate level." The second tier sports - men's and women's lacrosse, men's and women's soccer, field hockey, rowing, and men's and women's swimming - would be supported by "full or substantial grants-in-aid and operating budgets to contend for a national championship." Third-tier sports - softball, women's tennis, women's cross-country, women's indoor and outdoor track and field, and volleyball. and women's golf (which is proposed to be added) - would offer limited grants-in-aid or need-based aid, with minimal staffs and operating budgets. Fourth-tier sports would include baseball, wrestling, men's golf, men's tennis, men's cross-country, men's indoor track and field (if it is notdropped) and men's outdoor track and field."These sports would provide only need-based financial aid to their participants. Teams would have limited coaching staffs and although they would continue to compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference would otherwise be restricted to regional travel. (Anybody else notice where baseball and wrestling rank, relative to field hockey? and rowing?)
According to Joyce Julius and Associates, an Ann Arbor, Michigan firm that researches such matters, the final-round advertising exposure given to the winner's primary sponsor in a typical golf tournament is between $600,000 and $700,000. But the Masters is not a typical tournament, and Tiger Woods is definitely not your typical golfer. Combine the two, and Joyce Julius estimates that based on the cost of TV advertising time on the recent Masters broadcasts, the exposure that Mr. Woods gave the Nike swoosh logo was worth approximately $3.2 million. Here's how they broke it down: swooshes on the cap (Nike is smart enough to put them on more than one location): nine minutes and six seconds= $2,730,000; on the shirt: one minute and 23 seconds= $415,000; on the golf ball: nine seconds= $45,000; on his glove: two seconds= $10,000. And that's only counting those times when the swoosh was "clear and in focus." Add in the exposure that number two finisher David Duval also gave the swoosh, and Joyce Julius and Associates figures the total advertising bonanza for Nike to be about $4.6 million. *********** A flight attendant I was speaking with recently told me about working a Detroit Pistons' charter flight earlier this season. She said it wasn't too bad - when they were all sleeping. But when they were awake- well, it wasn't that they were particularly obnoxious - just that they she was surprised to discover, as anyone who has ever associated with professional athletes knows, that they have been pampered to the point that they have become unable or unwilling to do even the most trivial of life's little everyday chores for themselves. You see, taking care of the needs of professional athletes is the job of other people. That's what God put them on earth to do. She thought it was hilarious that one player, handed a turkey, lettuce and tomato sandwich, complained that he "didn't like" lettuce and tomato. So he did what any professional athlete would have done: he summoned her and asked her to remove the lettuce and tomato. (What makes me so certain he didn't say, "please?") ***********CLINIC- There was a lot of talk at Saturday's Detroit clinic about my "Safer and Surer Tackling" tape. One coach said several other coaches in his league approached him, curious to know how his kids had become such good tacklers. But there are other youth coaches who remain frustrated because they just can't convince the dinosaurs who run their leagues to abandon their beloved "put-the-shoulder-into-the-belt-buckle-and-the-face-mask-on-the-ball" method of "teaching tackling" The first thing I like to say to guys like that is, "Wow! No lawyers where you live, huh? Cool." Of course, those old-timers probably also think it's a good idea for the kids not to drink water - just to rinse out their mouths and spit it out. Otherwise, they might get cramps.
*********** Give the people who run the NBA credit. Their game, like pro football, pretty much sucks, but unlike their rich and complacent counterparts in the NFL, at least they're willing to pull their heads out of the sand and admit it needs fixing. for the most part consists of a bunch of big guys standing off to the side while one or two of them play their own little game of one-on-one or two-on-two. "The game is about passing and cutting and moving, and there has been a lot of standing." Doug Collins, former player and coach and now an NBA analyst on NBC. "We weren't satisfied with what the game looked like." Jerry Colangelo, owner of the Phoenix Suns and chairman of the rules committee. Keep defensive men out of the lane; reduce the amount of time allowed to bring the ball across half-court, possibly encouraging teams to press; legalize zone defenses. They're taking a big chance. Among others, a chance that a series of box-and-one defenses will deprive fans of the excitement of Allen Iverson. *********** The Milwaukee Bucks' George Karl says he could have saved the NBA all that trouble. "Coaches overcoach," he says. "We over-control. And it works." Want to make the game more exciting? he asks. Give the coach a bonus any time his team scores 100 points. *********** Poof! Just like that, the University of Arizona's basketball team, which made it to the NCAA final game, is no more. Its fourth- and last - underclass starter has just declared himself eligible for the NCAA draft. It's a damn shame. I feel sorry for Coach Lute Olson, and I deplore the degeneration of our society to the point that disgusting sums of money are thrown at professional athletes, and I deplore the constant devaluation of the concept of the team.... BUT - before you condemn those kids, remember that nobody had offered them a "loyalty bonus" comparable to the one that Louisville will pay Rick Pitino if he stays for the full six years of his contract. Think of it! A five million dollar bonus - and all he has to do is keep his word and honor a contract he entered into voluntarily! *********** "The information from Mr. Plisk regarding creatine is interesting. However it is now ILLEGAL for any coach in the state of Michigan for any High School coach to recommend creatine to any High School athlete. Oh well." Mike Hause, Kalamazoo, Michigan *********** The Portland Beavers of the Class AAA Pacific Coast League will play their first eight "home" games in Pasco, Washington, a 3+ hours' drive east of Portland. See, the "extensive renovations" (technically known as "applying lipstick to a pig") to the former Civic Stadium, will not be completed on time, as promised. (This despite the warmest, driest winter the Pacific Northwest has ever recorded.) Technically, the park is now known as PGE Park, thanks to a generous grant from a local utility company (motto: "Use More Electricity") whose timing, now that we are all being asked to conserve electricity use, was questionable at best. Come to think of it, Pasco might be a good place for the Beavers. The pedestrian-friendly Portland City Council (motto" "We Hate Cars"), in an effort to force people to ride all those empty trolley cars (sorry- "Light Rail") being propelled around town by electric power, has passed an ordinance imposing two-hour limits on parking within a mile or so in any direction of the stadium. By the time those people old-fashioned enough to think that a car is still the best way to get places manage to find a parking place and get to their seats, they'll wish they'd driven to Pasco. *********** After six seasons in the NFL, one of my favorite pro football players, Napoleon Kaufman, has announced his retirement. I appreciated the fact that Kaufman passed up instant pro bucks to remain at the University of Washington for his senior year. I felt at the time - still do - that all the money in the world wouldn't have bought him the lifetime of respect from Huskies' fans that he earned by deferring the NFL money for one year. And now, he's turning his back on the money again. He was scheduled to make $3 million this season. But Kaufman, only 27 years old, is an ordained minister, and apparently is ready to "get on with his life's work," (as Chuck Noll used to say when announcing that he'd cut a player). *********** There is expected to be a nationwide lifeguard shortage this summer. There just aren't enough fit, trained young people available to watch our pools and beaches. I am not able to speculate as to why this is, other than to note that before the "sexual liberation" of our young females, back when it was a whole lot tougher for guys to find willing women, they didn't have any trouble finding lifeguards. |
"Cartons of Marlboros were stacked on the floor at Hornung's house, freebies that he received from the tobacco company for advertising them. The boys often took little give-away four packs downtown to hand out to young women in the bars. They smoked the rest themselves. Before every game Hornung sat alone on his stool, puffing away, gathering his thoughts. There would be time for two cigarettes during halftime, when the clubhouse was dense with smoke: Marlboros passed around (none for Starr, who never smoked), Lombardi dragging on his Salem, Henry Jordan bumming a Camel from Phil Bengston, Jimmy Taylor pulling out a cigar." Toddwent on to write, "You know, while I agree today's prima donna athletes could use some Lombardi discipline, it became apparent to me after reading this book that, like most teams, the personalities stay the same, but the names change. The Packers of the 60's were by no means choirboys, and in today's hi-tech media would have fit in fine." You're right about those guys not being choir boys. I think the big difference between then and today was that the coach was in charge - his authority was still absolute, the players were brought up to recognize authority, and at some point far short of today's athletes, they were under control.
Presto! Like one giant Oprah Winfrey show. that was all it took, and they forgot immediately - if it ever bothered them - that we were dealing with a nation that has so little regard for the value of an individual human life that it compels women to undergo abortions as part of their duty to keep down the population. If you are a conspiracy guy, it doesn't take much to suspect that the Chinese staged the whole thing - even though it meant risking the precious life of one of their pilots - just to test our national resolve. Now that they know how weak it is, they have probably begun to prepare for the invasion of Hawaii. *********** My son (3) always watches the TV before he goes to sleep, he usually watches Toy Story or Blues Clues or Rugrats....last night you won't believe what he asked to watch........... REMEMBER THE TITANS..... I was shocked....... I usually have to beg him just to catch the darn football.........So there he is last night... He wanted us to fast fwd to the part where they start their mini camp..... So William is doing "up downs" and then he starts pacing back and forth like Denzel and William starts to say words that have no meaning to adults but he is obviously copying Denzel and his "barking of instructions"
Recommendations: 1. Rule changes initiated for the 1976 football season which eliminated the head as a primary and initial contact area for blocking and tackling is of utmost importance. Coaches should drill the players in the proper execution of the fundamentals of football - particularly blocking and tackling. SHOULDER BLOCK AND TACKLE WITH THE HEAD UP- KEEP THE HEAD OUT OF FOOTBALL. 2. Athletes must be given proper conditioning exercises which will strengthen their necks in order to be able to hold their heads firmly erect while making contact during a tackle or block. Strengthening of the neck muscles may also protect the neck from injury. 3. Coaches and officials should discourage the players from using their heads as battering rams when blocking, tackling, and ball carrying The rules prohibiting spearing should be enforced in practice and games. The players should be taught to respect the helmet as a protective device and that the helmet should not be used as a weapon. Ball carriers should also be taught not to lower their heads when making contact with the tackler. 4. Football officials can play a major role in reducing catastrophic football injuries. The use of the helmet-face mask in making initial contact while blocking and tackling is illegal and should be called for a penalty. Officials should concentrate on helmet-face mask contact and call the penalty. If more of these penalties are called there is no doubt that both players and coaches will get the message and discontinue this type of play. A reduction in helmet-face mask contact will result in a reduction of catastrophic football injuries. 5. All coaches, physicians and trainers should take special care to see that the players' equipment is properly fitted, particularly the helmet. 6. It is important, whenever possible, for a physician to be on the field of play during game and practice. When this is not possible, arrangements must be made in advance to obtain a physician's immediate services when emergencies arise. Each institution should have a team trainer who is a regular member of the institution's staff and who is qualified in the emergency care of both treating and preventing injuries. 7. Coaches must be prepared for a possible catastrophic head or neck injury. Everyone involved must know what to do. Being prepared and knowing what to do may be the difference that prevents permanent disability. Have a written emergency plan and give copies to all personnel. Areas that should be covered are, 1) an evacuation plan, 2) available transportation, 3) portable and open communication, and 4) game/practice schedule awareness in local hospital emergency department. 8. When a player has experienced or shown signs of head trauma (loss of consciousness, visual disturbances, headache, inability to walk correctly, obvious disorientation, memory loss), he should receive immediate medical attention and should not be allowed to return to practice or game without permission from the proper medical authorities. 9. Both past and present data show that the football helmet does not cause cervical spine injuries but that poorly executed tackling and blocking technique is the major problem. Football catastrophic injuries may never be totally eliminated, but continued research has resulted in rule changes, equipment standards, improved medical care both on and off the playing field, and changes in teaching the fundamental techniques of the game. These changes were the result of a united effort by coaches, administrators, researchers, equipment manufacturers, physicians, trainers and players. *********** "Coach...I walked away (from the Chicago clinic) with so many ideas in my head. From the complex to the simple (shifting a little more, and with some other people ex. TE with tight to overtight or undertight). Also LOVED the spread 38 reach. We don't have the "speed" that Rich Central has (they are truly incredible) but I think if we shorten the corner we can run it and have success. I am very excited about side saddle...never thought of that (were my exact words). I would love to just sit with you for an all day session of Double-Wing stuff, and as well the many other great things you said. You said you wouldn't "motivate" us, but you did exactly that. My two assistants walked away "knowing" why it is we run this crazy offense ( guess 7 wins wasn't enough for them to figure it out).
*********** Greg Stout of Thompson's Station, Tennessee is a Michigan State guy, and naturally he was a little upset to hear of the early departure for the NBA of some of the Spartans' underclass basketball players. But unlike some people, he does not blame the kids. "I read newpaper articles that they made the commitment to go to school and they should honor it, they have no loyalty, and they have been lured by the instant riches. Why shouldn't they go? If it is OK for coaches to leave after a year or two, when they have contracts, why isn't it OK for the players to do the same? "I can name a few college coaches off the top of my head that signed multi-year contract with schools, only to leave after a year to take a higher profile, higher paying job. Matt Doherty left ND after a year to go to NC. Bill Self left Tulsa after a year to go to Illinois (replacing Lon Krueger who jumped to the NBA). Buzz Peterson left Tulsa after a year to come to UT. Why is it when coaches do it, "He has a better opportunity to provide for his family," and when players do it, "they are ungrateful and dis-loyal?" Sounds like the old double standard trick to me. "What kind of message does it send to kids when they have been recruited and decide to go to a program and the coach leaves for another program? "Hey, I can do the same." And they can, and they do. I guess I am only asking that we treat them equally. Seems to me the motivations are the same, but maybe the age and background (including race) are different. What are your thoughts?" Well - ahem - since you ask... I think that a coach who leaves for another job while still under contract should be dealt with the same way as a kid who transfers: make him sit out a year before he's eligible to coach again. The NCAA could easily enforce such a policy. To me, the sleaziest part of this whole very sleazy process is the way Ole Massuh can take off, while leaving the field hands chained to the program that he recruited them to. It is a major disruption in kids' lives to require them to sit out a year of ineligibility if they decide to take the same road to self-improvement as their coach, and move on. About the only recourse they do have - if they're good enough - is to go out early. *********** Can Major League baseball or the NBA be far behind? In an effort to escape the insane bidding that takes place when the rights to the NFL or the Final Four come up for renewal, the trend now is for TV networks to try to own and control the sports they broadcast. That explains why an otherwise-levelheaded NBC got into a soiled bed with WWF to co-promote the XFL. ESPN has even gone as far as to create and keep possession of its own events, such as the "X Games."
*********** "Hugh: I noticed there was an email regarding John Bothe (now head coach at Oregon, Illinois High School). When I was younger, I didn't really look up to too many people but it was tough not to be in awe of the work ethic that John Bothe showed at Augustana. I was a freshman at Augie during the 1988 season there and Bothe was one of the three senior captains on that team. We had 128 football players there for doubles and there was only about 1,000 males in the whole college. I am sure he doesn't remember me but I was in his "station" during Bob Reade's pre-practice conditioning segment and I always tried to match up with Bothe for "Boards" - I won't go into what the Boards entailed but any Augie or Geneseo, IL High School player knows what they were about.
So what do they do? They pay close to $15,000 a year in tuition to send their son to a private school. Not because the local public school is deficient in any of the things that matter. It's just that it's so... so small. See, he's very good in lacrosse, and if he goes to this private school, he'll have a better chance of being seen by colleges, which means a better chance of getting - a scholarship!!!! Now, when this kid graduates from high school, Mom and Dad will already be some $45,000 or more in the hole, and there really isn't that much money being thrown around on a sport - great though it is - that doesn't bring in squat in revenues. It has got to be an ego thing - something for Mom and Dad to brag about at the Club -because these are people who don't need the money!!! Now do you see why some people think you're coaching?
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A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: Nowadays, you can't even walk the
streets of some of our cities and smoke a cigarette, for
fear some poor child somewhere will (gasp!) suffer from
the second-hand smoke, but in less-enlightened times, it
was considered quite acceptable for perhaps the
most-recognized player in professional football to be
seen kicking back in front of his locker, wearing his
team jacket and preparing to take a relaxing drag on a
Marlboro. I know you've seen this ad before,
and I know some of you think that Big Tobacco is
paying me large sums of money to show this again but
let's see how many of you recognize this legend of the
game.
This, the first of two reports on the subject of serious football injuries and their prevention, appears by permission of Dr. Fred Mueller, director of the National Center: In the past 23 years there have been a total of 208 football players with "incomplete neurological recovery" (they haven't fully recovered) from cervical cord injuries. One hundred and seventy of these injuries have been to high school players, twenty-seven to college players, four to sandlot (youth) players and seven to professionals. The data indicate a reduction in the number of cervical cord injuries with incomplete neurological recovery when compared to data published in the early 1970's. While the 1995, 1996, and 1997 data suggested a gradual increase in these types of injuries, the 1998 data showed a reduction. The 1999 data show an increase to eight. The numbers remain in single digits, but the increase to eight is a concern. The three cerebral injuries with incomplete recovery is a reduction from the eight in 1997. Since 1984 there have been 69 cerebral injuries with incomplete recovery. These numbers also are a concern, and if the cervical cord injuries and the cerebral injuries with incomplete recovery are combined, the number of incomplete recovery injuries is 277. That is an average of 12 for the past 23 years. Coaches, players, trainers, physicians and administrators must continue the emphasis on eliminating paralyzing injuries to football players. The latest figures show 1,500,000 players participating in junior and senior high school football and 75,000 in college football. The rate of spinal cord injuries per 100,000 participants is less than one per 100,000 at the high school level and 1.33 at the college level. When comparing cervical cord injuries to offensive and defensive players, it is safer playing offensive football. During the 23 year period from 1977-1999, 147 (70.7%) of the 208 players with cervical cord injuries were playing defense. A majority of the defensive players were tackling when injured. In 1999, four of the eight injured players were tackling. Coaches have indicated that their players have been taught to tackle with the head up, but for some reason many of the players are lowering their heads before making contact. Fifty-three or 25.5% of the injured players were tackling with the head in a down position (chin to chest and contact with the top or crown of the helmet). These are the only players we are sure had their heads down, but it is possible that there were others tackling with the head down. In addition to tackling with the head down, ball carriers are being injured with their heads in a down position while being tackled. It is important for coaches to emphasize head up tackling, but it is also important to emphasize head up blocking and head up ball carrying when being tackled. Many coaches teach their ball carriers to lower the head before being tackled and to run over the tackler, but this can be a dangerous activity and can cause cervical spine and cerebral injuries with incomplete recovery.
*********** Ron Timson has been named head coach at Umatilla High School in Umatilla, Florida. When head coach Tim Smith resigned to accept another position, it took the school exactly two days to come to the conclusion that Coach Timson, who'd been Umatilla's offensive coordinator the past two seasons, was the right man for the job. Coach Timson, who moved to Florida after a successful stint as head coach at Bennington, Nebraska, had been a major part of the overhaul begun by Coach Smith when he took over the program. Umatilla had gone 1-8 in 1998, but in two years he took it to a 6-4 record, its first winning season since 1995. Coach Timson first began coaching during his 22 years in the Air Force, serving as offensive coordinator for the varsity team at Rhein-Main Air Force Base in Germany, and spending three years as an assistant coach at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, while working in the school's ROTC program. Following his retirement from the service at Offutt Air Force base near Omaha, he took the job at Bennington, 10 miles from Omaha, and while there, discovered the Double-Wing. Coach Timson was one of my earliest converts, and he has twice spoken at my Denver clinics. In fact, it was at my 1998 Denver clinic, after he showed some of his game tapes, that one coach in the audience, so impressed by what he had just seen, asked, skeptically, "That was your first year running it?" Coach Timson's Bennington Badgers went 14-5 in his two seasons running the Double-Wing, making the state playoffs both years. Coach Timson originally moved to Central Florida to be closer to his wife's family in Wildwood, Florida, and while scouting out opportunities in the area made it a point to introduce himself to Coach Smith, who was new to Umatilla himself, but had already become a Double-Wing convert at his previous school. Coach Smith wound up hiring him to run the offense, and now, two years later, Coach Timson is in complete charge of the program. I am willing to bet that he will continue the building process without even breaking stride. *********** Governor Jesse the Joke (aka Governor Manhunter) has begun to catch a lot of heat in Minnesota from people who, like me, seem to have noticed that most real combat veterans don't seem to like to talk about their experiences. They were there, they had a job to do, it wasn't pleasant but they did it, and now their lives have moved on. But Jesse? As one man wrote to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "from what the Governor constantly implies, you'd think he singlehandedly turned back the Communist tide. Forrest Gump couldn't have done better." Wrote another man, "Before my dad died I asked him why he didn't talk more about the war. He said, 'That's for bullsh---ers.'" Governor Ventura has evidently been more than willing to boast that he's been in combat, but reluctant to disclose anything specific about his service record. While not a service veteran myself, and not one to deny any combat veteran the right to boast of service duty that the rest of us can only admire, I think it would be really cool if some enterprising newspaper reporter were to do some digging and discover that Jesse was actually a cook. Or maybe, like Fightin' Al Gore (who, we were told, volunteered because he knew that unless he did, some other poor fella from Carthage, Tennessee would have to go in his place), he was a journalist. On second thought... if you've heard Jesse what Jesse does to the English language, you know that's out of the question. *********** In Minneapolis, the semi-finals of the world's championships of women's ice hockey, pitting the US against Russia and Canada against Finland, drew 2,582 spectators. In Albany, New York, the finals of the NCAA men's hockey championship between Boston College and North Dakota State drew 13,252. (For the record, BC won in sudden-death overtime, capturing the title for the first time since 1949.) *********** The University of Minnesota's basketball program is under investigation. Again. As the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Dan Barreiro writes, a pager routinely goes off in the pocket of an attorney in Overland Park, Kansas - the one who handles tough NCAA cases - and, knowing who it's from, he immediately returns the page and says, "I'm on my way. And would you reserve my usual corner room at the University Radisson?" This time, though, after the mess the Gophers went through with men's coach Clem Haskins and all the players who got caught getting academic credit for work they didn't do, it's the women's program that's coming under investigation. There are allegations of recruiting violations. The news of this latest investigation prompted a certain Ron Edwards, who identified himself in the Star-Tribune as a "civil rights activist and cable television commentator," to declare, "I think their (Minnesota's) intention is to jettison all the head African-American coaches." (Clem Haskins and women's coach Cheryl Littlejohn are both African-American.) Sure, writes Barreiro. "This vast conspiracy apparently called for the University to hire Haskins and Littlejohn so that it would then have the opportunity to fire them down the line. The stuff of genius." People are, of course, free to believe what they will, but is worth noting that at a time when women's basketball is beginning, in some places at least, to approach the men's game in its intensity, Coach Littlejohn's Big Ten record is 7-57. "It is heartening to know," writes Barreiro, "that Title IX is having the desired effect."
************ While in North Carolina, I heard someone on the radio talking about some sort of poll that had been taken, in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was declared the most influential southerner of the 20th century. No argument from me there, but second, supposedly, was William Faulkner. William Faulkner? Are you kidding me? Would you mind telling me who he influenced? I mean, bright guy and all that. Great command of the language. Good story teller. But influence? You ever tried reading his stuff? His sentences seem to go on for pages, defying you to remember what he started out to say by the time you got to the period. Elvis Presley was third. I'm not sure what sort of "influence" he had. North Carolinian Billy Graham was fourth. I can understand that. I thought of George Wallace, the belligerent little Alabama Governor who stood firm for segregation, survived an assassin's bullet, and in his last years underwent a complete reversal from his earlier segregationist days. To me he symbolized in one person the South's hard-nosed resistance to change, and yet its ability ultimately to adapt to it.
"I like what you said before that 3 TD's is not enough but 5 is too many. So do you think a difference of 40 stops the counting? We have a league meeting Monday. I would like to bring this issue up. Thanks, Kyle Wagner, Edmonton, Alberta I would suggest that in using comparative scores, the winning team be given a maximum of 28 points more than the losing team's score (just choosing 28 points as an arbitrary figure because it isn't that ugly a beating, and yet it certainly is proof of dominance). That would mean that even if Team A were to beat Team B 42-7, the record, for tie-breaking purposes, would show it as 35-7; if the final were 66-14, the record would show 42-14. I suspect that the point differential thing is something inherited from soccer or ice hockey, where goals are few, where "running-it-up" is not normally possible, and where the score doesn't necessarily reflect a physical beating or the humiliation of an opponent.
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Coach- It is useful, if for no other reason than to work on your pass coverage. But even if yours is a run-oriented offense, I still think it is a great opportunity to get the kids together and work on stuff that can benefit your offense. I think we can be effective in 7-on-7 with our basic passing game, even though, being based on play-action, it normally depends heavily on surprise. I don't believe in turning it into a grab-ass session, but I don't think you have to, because our system - and the Delaware Wing-T from which it originated - provides enough flexibility that we can give them all sorts of sets and motion and still familiarize kids with our terminology and our basic stuff. It is also a chance to take a look at new ways to exploit the one or two dependable receivers that most of us seem to be limited to. It is also a chance to take a look at some kids in different positions, and also to let some of them have the fun of playing in positions they wouldn't normally play. Best of all, though, it is a great chance for the kids to be together. I remember Bob Reade saying at a clinic that the important thing to do in the off-season is to provide opporuntities for your kids do things together. I think we have to be up-front with our kids and explain to them that while we will be seeing half the opponents' real offense, the opponents will only be seeing about 10 per cent of ours.
Meanwhile, while they were racking the bats and wringing out the Speedoos in Ames, Iowa, the women's rowing team at North Carolina was on its way to a regatta in San Diego. They have a full-time coach (of course) and they are flying to the West Coast (of course) and their boats are being transported cross-country for them to row. And, in all likelihood, most of the girls are on some sort of scholarship. All of this so that women who have never rowed in their lives, in a place that's miles from any navigable body of water and couldn't care less about rowing, can be provided enough athletic scholarships to balance out the number awarded to football players. Shoot- for all I know, they may have dredged out a canal to give them a place to row. See, they've got to make up sports like that in order to create scholarships for women. Because if men receive more scholarships than women - even if the men bring in the money that supports all the other sports, and even if there aren't any women in the state (that's who supposedly are being disciminated against) who qualify for athletic scholarships - then surely the school must be in violation of Title IX. (Gasp!) And if we have to balance things out, then kill a men's sport. Who'll miss wrestling? Or baseball" Or swimming? I would be willing to bet that if you followed the money far enough, you would come to a men's sport at UNC - either football or basketball - to which the parasitical women's programs have attached themselves. Just one more argument for eliminating athletic scholarships entirely. After they do, there'll still be guys playing baseball and wrestling. But somehow I have my doubts about women rowing at the University of North Carolina. *********** Am I the only one angy at the way we tiptoe around the Chinese, those great benefactors of the Clinton regime, seemingly content to "make progress" in freeing the American servicepeople now being held hostage ("detained") by them? Back and forth we go, expressing "regret" while the Chinese hold out for an apology. What really pisses me off is the apparent fact that influential in the President's own party are businesspeople terrified to think that he might do something to anger the Chinese, costing those businesspeople either markets or cheap sources of goods. To me, it is the next thing to wartime profiteering, the way they are putting profit ahead of country. Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times, said that if he really wanted to, he could issue an apology to the Chinese for the plane incident. But why stop ther, he asked? "We should apologize for being the market for $40 billion a year of Chinese exports. We should apologize for the fact that US companies are among the largest foreign investors in China and have been instrumental in China's economic takeoff. We should apologize for the fact that 54,000 Chinese students study in the US every year, more than any other nationality. We should apologize for the fact that the United States has shown restraint in weapons sales to Taiwan. We should apologize for the fact that that United States paved the way for China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Yes, we should apologize for all these things, and promise to stop all of them immediately." *********** "I have always been concerned about the score of games getting severely out of hand and, as a result, having the remainder of the game shortened or completed dropped. The more I see of this, the more I wonder about the "makeup" of the coaches on the dominating team. I have always felt that the games were just that and the kids were the ones who were supposed to be benefitting most from the athletic experience. I am not suggesting that every game should be kept within one or two scores, etc. but something certainly has been lost in terms of playing the reserves and keeping your "alternate starters/reserves/back-ups" involved with the contest while the outcome is still in doubt. "With this issue, I have been on both sides of the field in football although we have not completely been destroyed by anyone nor have we cold heartedly embarrassed anyone in terms of outlandish scoring. It certainly appears that class and integrity among coaches have not taken a "back seat" but rather have been left completely at home. Unfortunately, it is the players who have suffered the consequences. Many upcoming team members have had their playing time significantly reduced because some "jerk" has chosen to keep his regulars on the field too long in hopes of burning out the scoreboard. In my opinion, the game then becomes a painful experience for everyone involved except for the few "slugs" who wouldn't be able to understand the situation regardless of how it was explained to them. At the same time, valuable playing time has been taken away from the players who may need it the most. "While I understand the intent of the "slaughter" rule, I am disappointed that the actions of a few people require one to be in place. Just a few thoughts. Thanks." Mike O'Donnell, Pine City, Minnesota *********** "Coach Wyatt, I just had to make a comment on "slaughter rules" before I leave on break. When I was a youth football coach there was a rule called the "18 point rule." This simply meant that if a team should take a lead of 18 points or more it was mandatory that the team leading the ball game had to remove all of its starters and replace them with second or third stringers. The only way a starter would remain in the game was if, and only if, there were no replacements for that particular player(s). If the other team scored on you as a result of placing second and third stringers in the game and got the lead to under 18 points, then the leading team could put in its starters. "However, when I was a head middle school football coach there was no such "slaughter rule" in place. Despite the absence of such a rule, I still played and abided by those rules regardless of whether or not the other team did or despite whether or not they knew I was doing it. Yes, I wanted to win, but I was not going to embarrass anyone in attempting to get the victory. Sometimes around these neck of the woods its kind of like a gentleman's rule that you do this. Unfortunately there are those Jimmy Johnson "wannabees" that don't follow such rules. Sincerely, " Mike Lane, Avon Grove, Pennsylvania *********** "Our league has a 24 point rule". I think calling it the slaughter rule demerits the purpose of the rule. The intent is not to embarrass the athletes in any way, but as you know any rule can be bent or have loop holes. I'm addressing Youth ball because I don't know of any high school slaughter rule in New Jersey high school football. Contrary to the perception that the officials are asked to curtail the game, the responsibility for rule enforcement is placed on the coaches. We feel the officials have enough to do running the games. "Our rule is simple. When we get a 24 point lead we are expected to substitute a second team. If we don't have a second team, that may mean letting a Guard play running back or an End play QB., etc. This lets us give the kids different learning experiences, build confidence, and skills for the following year. The main purpose is to not embarrass the opposing players, but to let them have fun also. When the opposing coach is down 24 point he must also take out his big guns and let his second team players play. This rule lets the opposing second string kids play and enjoy football. "The rule must not be used to as we say, "get back in the game". If the opposing team does score then the rule is "off", and you may put your first team back into the game until there is a 24 point difference again. "If there is a problem and a coach does not adhere to the rule, we meet twice a month or can call a special meeting. The coach that abused the rule will be brought before all the head coaches of the league to be judged and disciplined.. This could result in banning him from coaching in our league. "I have been coaching junior high age kids for almost 30 years and in that time have not won more than 3 or 4 games by more then a 3 TD. difference (understand that could be 24 points counting the PATs). If we put our second team in and the other team is still unable to match up we will punt on first downs or maybe throw a poorly aimed pass, etc. "Anything to let them have fun without rubbing their noses in it, or embarrassing them. "Bottom line. The rule is only as good as the coaches using it." Frank Simonsen- Cape May, New Jersey *********** "Concussion presentation. Great! something that makes sense and gives suggestions as to what to do to get the kids back into play safely. Not that I don't feel concussions are not something to be taken seriously, but all too often we get kids that are just told to lay off for a month. When I ask if there is anything we can watch for or test or rehab or anything, I get "no- just let them sit". Well if our season is only 2 1/2 months and the kid sits for a month when they may be able to get back early and start having fun again, I am all for that, even if it means extra work. So with this presentation I going to sit down with our trainer and develop an evaluation sheet that we can track and progress our concussion injuries for players. I'll forward a copy to you to get your opinion." Kyle Wagner, Edmonton, Alberta *********** While the XFL has gotten all the attention with its steep nosedive, MLS (that's Major League Soccer, which in the US is kind of an oxymoron) has been really tanking. Between 1996 and last season, average attendance at MLS games is down some 3,700 a game, from 17,406 to 13,756. I suspect that a large percentage of its following is immigrants from countries where soccer is big. The league has reported losses of $250 million. Let's face it - soccer's only hope in the US is open immigration. TV ratings are down there with the Sunday morning televangelists, .34 on ESPN (that's "point-three-four"), .22 on ESPN and .80 on ABC. (NBC is probably going to drop the XFL for ratings double those figures.) Just goes to show that these loudmouth soccer boosters are long on the talk, but when you get right down to it, nobody much wants to pay to watch the Sport for People Who Can't Play a Sport. *********** My crack Twin Cities correspondent Jeff Huseth, whose assignment is to track Governor Jesse Ventura'a every move, sent me an almost unbelievable article about Good King Jesse. His churlish reactions to criticism have been noted numerous times by Minnesotans who know him well, but this latest incident is weird even by Jesse's standards. It seems that Dennis Anderson of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote an outdoors column last Sunday with which the Guv disagreed. The column was critical of Ventura and Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Allen Garber for what Anderson said was inadequate support for conservation. Anderson implied, but did not state, that Ventura was not himself a hunter. Stung nevertheless, the Governor summoned Mr. Anderson to his chambers last Tuesday, the better to fill him in on his qualifications. The meeting was taped. "It's wrong for you to insinuate that I don't know how to hunt," transcipts of the tapes have him telling Anderson, "because when you hunt the ultimate foe, which is man, who can shoot back, you're the best hunter on the planet." Garber, he told Anderson, "has two tours to Vietnam and I have one as a Navy SEAL and then 17 months in Southeast Asia ,and I'll just tell you this: Until you've hunted man, you haven't hunted yet," Ventura said. "Because you need to hunt something that can shoot back at you to really classify yourself as a hunter. You need to understand the feeling of what it's like to go into the field and know your opposition can take you out. Not just go out there and shoot Bambi." According to the tapes, this exchange took place: Anderson: "Have you hunted deer?" Ventura: "No." Anderson: "That's my point then, I guess." Ventura: "My point is the deer can't shoot back. Have you hunted man?" Anderson: "No." Ventura: "Then you have no basis to talk from, pal. Because hunting a deer, big deal. Big deal. There's no thrill for me to go out and shoot Bambi. ... I can't speak for Al (Garber), but for me, I can't draw down on Bambi. I can't shoot him." "Try not ridiculing me as an ignorant fool that doesn't know the outdoors at all and doesn't know a thing about Minnesota wildlife," he told Anderson. He didn't say anything about ridiculing him as an ignorant fool who doesn't know a thing about broadcasting a football game. *********** Hi sweetie! You'll never guess what I'm doing... My wife came out of the ladies' room yesterday to tell me that while in there she'd heard a voice from the next stall saying, "Hi! I'm in Minneapolis and I'm getting ready to leave. Flight 371 to Portland..." My wife swears that it was just a coincidence that she happened to pick that time to flush, but I know her better than that.
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This, the first of two reports on the subject of serious football injuries and their prevention, appears by permission of Dr. Fred Mueller, director of the National Center: In the past 23 years there have been a total of 208 football players with "incomplete neurological recovery" (they haven't fully recovered) from cervical cord injuries. One hundred and seventy of these injuries have been to high school players, twenty-seven to college players, four to sandlot (youth) players and seven to professionals. The data indicate a reduction in the number of cervical cord injuries with incomplete neurological recovery when compared to data published in the early 1970's. While the 1995, 1996, and 1997 data suggested a gradual increase in these types of injuries, the 1998 data showed a reduction. The 1999 data show an increase to eight. The numbers remain in single digits, but the increase to eight is a concern. The three cerebral injuries with incomplete recovery is a reduction from the eight in 1997. Since 1984 there have been 69 cerebral injuries with incomplete recovery. These numbers also are a concern, and if the cervical cord injuries and the cerebral injuries with incomplete recovery are combined, the number of incomplete recovery injuries is 277. That is an average of 12 for the past 23 years. Coaches, players, trainers, physicians and administrators must continue the emphasis on eliminating paralyzing injuries to football players. The latest figures show 1,500,000 players participating in junior and senior high school football and 75,000 in college football. The rate of spinal cord injuries per 100,000 participants is less than one per 100,000 at the high school level and 1.33 at the college level. When comparing cervical cord injuries to offensive and defensive players, it is safer playing offensive football. During the 23 year period from 1977-1999, 147 (70.7%) of the 208 players with cervical cord injuries were playing defense. A majority of the defensive players were tackling when injured. In 1999, four of the eight injured players were tackling. Coaches have indicated that their players have been taught to tackle with the head up, but for some reason many of the players are lowering their heads before making contact. Fifty-three or 25.5% of the injured players were tackling with the head in a down position (chin to chest and contact with the top or crown of the helmet). These are the only players we are sure had their heads down, but it is possible that there were others tackling with the head down. In addition to tackling with the head down, ball carriers are being injured with their heads in a down position while being tackled. It is important for coaches to emphasize head up tackling, but it is also important to emphasize head up blocking and head up ball carrying when being tackled. Many coaches teach their ball carriers to lower the head before being tackled and to run over the tackler, but this can be a dangerous activity and can cause cervical spine and cerebral injuries with incomplete recovery.
*********** Ron Timson has been named head coach at Umatilla High School in Umatilla, Florida. When head coach Tim Smith resigned to accept another position, it took the school exactly two days to come to the conclusion that Coach Timson, who'd been Umatilla's offensive coordinator the past two seasons, was the right man for the job. Coach Timson, who moved to Florida after a successful stint as head coach at Bennington, Nebraska, had been a major part of the overhaul begun by Coach Smith when he took over the program. Umatilla had gone 1-8 in 1998, but in two years he took it to a 6-4 record, its first winning season since 1995. Coach Timson first began coaching during his 22 years in the Air Force, serving as offensive coordinator for the varsity team at Rhein-Main Air Force Base in Germany, and spending three years as an assistant coach at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, while working in the school's ROTC program. Following his retirement from the service at Offutt Air Force base near Omaha, he took the job at Bennington, 10 miles from Omaha, and while there, discovered the Double-Wing. Coach Timson was one of my earliest converts, and he has twice spoken at my Denver clinics. In fact, it was at my 1998 Denver clinic, after he showed some of his game tapes, that one coach in the audience, so impressed by what he had just seen, asked, skeptically, "That was your first year running it?" Coach Timson's Bennington Badgers went 14-5 in his two seasons running the Double-Wing, making the state playoffs both years. Coach Timson originally moved to Central Florida to be closer to his wife's family in Wildwood, Florida, and while scouting out opportunities in the area made it a point to introduce himself to Coach Smith, who was new to Umatilla himself, but had already become a Double-Wing convert at his previous school. Coach Smith wound up hiring him to run the offense, and now, two years later, Coach Timson is in complete charge of the program. I am willing to bet that he will continue the building process without even breaking stride. *********** Governor Jesse the Joke (aka Governor Manhunter) has begun to catch a lot of heat in Minnesota from people who, like me, seem to have noticed that most real combat veterans don't seem to like to talk about their experiences. They were there, they had a job to do, it wasn't pleasant but they did it, and now their lives have moved on. But Jesse? As one man wrote to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "from what the Governor constantly implies, you'd think he singlehandedly turned back the Communist tide. Forrest Gump couldn't have done better." Wrote another man, "Before my dad died I asked him why he didn't talk more about the war. He said, 'That's for bullsh---ers.'" Governor Ventura has evidently been more than willing to boast that he's been in combat, but reluctant to disclose anything specific about his service record. While not a service veteran myself, and not one to deny any combat veteran the right to boast of service duty that the rest of us can only admire, I think it would be really cool if some enterprising newspaper reporter were to do some digging and discover that Jesse was actually a cook. Or maybe, like Fightin' Al Gore (who, we were told, volunteered because he knew that unless he did, some other poor fella from Carthage, Tennessee would have to go in his place), he was a journalist. On second thought... if you've heard Jesse what Jesse does to the English language, you know that's out of the question. *********** In Minneapolis, the semi-finals of the world's championships of women's ice hockey, pitting the US against Russia and Canada against Finland, drew 2,582 spectators. In Albany, New York, the finals of the NCAA men's hockey championship between Boston College and North Dakota State drew 13,252. (For the record, BC won in sudden-death overtime, capturing the title for the first time since 1949.) *********** The University of Minnesota's basketball program is under investigation. Again. As the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Dan Barreiro writes, a pager routinely goes off in the pocket of an attorney in Overland Park, Kansas - the one who handles tough NCAA cases - and, knowing who it's from, he immediately returns the page and says, "I'm on my way. And would you reserve my usual corner room at the University Radisson?" This time, though, after the mess the Gophers went through with men's coach Clem Haskins and all the players who got caught getting academic credit for work they didn't do, it's the women's program that's coming under investigation. There are allegations of recruiting violations. The news of this latest investigation prompted a certain Ron Edwards, who identified himself in the Star-Tribune as a "civil rights activist and cable television commentator," to declare, "I think their (Minnesota's) intention is to jettison all the head African-American coaches." (Clem Haskins and women's coach Cheryl Littlejohn are both African-American.) Sure, writes Barreiro. "This vast conspiracy apparently called for the University to hire Haskins and Littlejohn so that it would then have the opportunity to fire them down the line. The stuff of genius." People are, of course, free to believe what they will, but is worth noting that at a time when women's basketball is beginning, in some places at least, to approach the men's game in its intensity, Coach Littlejohn's Big Ten record is 7-57. "It is heartening to know," writes Barreiro, "that Title IX is having the desired effect."
************ While in North Carolina, I heard someone on the radio talking about some sort of poll that had been taken, in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was declared the most influential southerner of the 20th century. No argument from me there, but second, supposedly, was William Faulkner. William Faulkner? Are you kidding me? Would you mind telling me who he influenced? I mean, bright guy and all that. Great command of the language. Good story teller. But influence? You ever tried reading his stuff? His sentences seem to go on for pages, defying you to remember what he started out to say by the time you got to the period. Elvis Presley was third. I'm not sure what sort of "influence" he had. North Carolinian Billy Graham was fourth. I can understand that. I thought of George Wallace, the belligerent little Alabama Governor who stood firm for segregation, survived an assassin's bullet, and in his last years underwent a complete reversal from his earlier segregationist days. To me he symbolized in one person the South's hard-nosed resistance to change, and yet its ability ultimately to adapt to it.
"I like what you said before that 3 TD's is not enough but 5 is too many. So do you think a difference of 40 stops the counting? We have a league meeting Monday. I would like to bring this issue up. Thanks, Kyle Wagner, Edmonton, Alberta I would suggest that in using comparative scores, the winning team be given a maximum of 28 points more than the losing team's score (just choosing 28 points as an arbitrary figure because it isn't that ugly a beating, and yet it certainly is proof of dominance). That would mean that even if Team A were to beat Team B 42-7, the record, for tie-breaking purposes, would show it as 35-7; if the final were 66-14, the record would show 42-14. I suspect that the point differential thing is something inherited from soccer or ice hockey, where goals are few, where "running-it-up" is not normally possible, and where the score doesn't necessarily reflect a physical beating or the humiliation of an opponent.
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*********** "Your comments on Charles Barkley were right on. You may not always agree with what he said, but you certainly had to respect the man's work ethic. The writer's that covered him, wherever he played, certainly had no problems getting a story around him. "While at Phoenix, I remember the furor surrounding his comment about not being a role model. At the time I really disagreed because I felt that, like it or not, athletes are revered by our children. Right or wrong it is a fact. As I've matured (at least I think so), I think the message he was saying was that I shouldn't have to be a role model to your child, the parents should. Don't lay it on me to be your kids role model. I'll be a role model to my kids. "One thing Charles does is tell it like it is or as he sees it. That's all you can ask of a person. He also never backed down from anything he said. I think it is refreshing to see a high profile athlete trying to be a regular guy. God knows that we've all been brutally honest and if it gets us in trouble, so be it. I look for him to run for the Governer of Alabama someday. He'd be a thousand times better than Jesse V. "I think we need more guys like him in sports. It surely wouldn't be boring for the fans or the lawyers." Greg Stout, Thompson's Station, TN. *********** When Philadelphia built its new arena, now known as the First Union Center (what- you thought maybe they'd pass up the bucks and honor a bunch of veterans or something?) somebody very wise decided to keep the old building, The Spectrum, and not tear it down. Good thing. Between them, in the month of March alone, the two arenas hosted 59 events, drawing 617, 119 spectators. That included Flyers games, 76ers games and the NCAA East Regional, plus indoor lacrosse and soccer, and the Harlem Globetrotters. "When you really think about it," writes the Philadelphia Inquirer's Phil Sheridan, it's mind-boggling: 617,119 people, and only one of them went after Tie Domi." *********** "I am able to answer very few of the "Our Legacy" questions without doing some research, but this week I can. I happen to remember that the most lopsided NFL game was a 73-0 playoff game, with the Bears prevailing over the Giants. Therefore, I knew your man played for the Bears, and had to be Sid Luckman. "I can go this score one better. In my sophomore year (1971) at Fitch High School in Groton, CT, we lost at Weaver High School of Hartford (the Weaver Beavers...no kidding) by a score of 74-0. The week prior to that, we lost 61-6 at Norwich Free Academy, and the week before that by a score of 60-0 at home to Hartford Public High School. That's a total ass-kicking of 195-6 over a three-week period! Some things you just never forget (much as you try!). Five years after that, in 1976, Fitch was the Connecticut Class LL champion. You are aware, of course, of their more recent successes. (Fitch, a Double-Wing team, has won two straight state titles under coach Mike Emery. HW) If there's a lesson in all that, it beats the heck out of me. "I'm looking forward to meeting you at your Providence clinic in a couple of weeks. See you in Warwick." Alan Goodwin, Warwick, RI *********** Those interested in further educating themselves on the subject of concussions - and that ought to include all football coaches - might want to pay a visit to this site: http://www.aan.com/public/concussionsportsindex/ppt.htm *********** Charles Oakley and Tyrone Hill have got a big problem. Back in the early part of the season, Oakley, of the Toronto Raptors, smacked Hill, of the Philadelphia 76ers - right in the face. Out on the basketball floor. A couple of nights ago, before a game in Toronto, Oakley threw a ball at Hill when he wasn't looking, hitting him so hard it dazed him. Turns out, it's over a gambling debt. Reportedly, Hill owes Oakley some $64,000 which he lost playing cards. Anyhow, the league stepped in and suspended Oakley for one game. That means he doesn't get paid. His pay per game works out to about $73,000. Are you doing the math? Was Charles Oakley? *********** A coach responded to my tirade about overpaid colege basketball coaches, saying that their salaries are, after all, determined by the market, and that none of us would turn the money down. I had to agree with him that I wouldn't turn the money down. But as for their salaries being determined by "the market" - it is an artificial market that sets coaches' salaries. The market is rigged. If we were truly to let the market operate, I doubt that players would go as cheaply as they do. And if colleges had to pay players, they wouldn't have as much money lying around to pay coaches the sums they do. My personal preference, I told him - the high horse that I'm going to be getting on - is to eliminate athletic scholarships entirely and go to a need-only basis. I don't know if you are aware, I said, of the way the perceived opportunity for athletic scholarships is impinging on high school sports, but it is behind most of the ugliness that's now taking place - in high schools and at the youth level, too. And he wrote back... Yes, I am aware of the perceived opportunities for a scholarship. I'm in my second year at a high school that has won one game over the past three years; yet I have senior-to-be football players that think they will be getting scholarships to play college football. I have one that will be going to a camp--not the one that I recommend; for the reason that the camp advertises itself as a way to get a scholarship. I have a second player who has a chance of playing at a scholarship school, who just doesn't understand the recruiting process and really how many scholarships are realistically available compared to how many high school seniors play football. It's a challenge to be realistic with players and parents with out coming across as negative or worse being perceived as saying"you don't think my son is any good!!??!" I'm 51 years old, have coached for 25 years at every level from middle school to NCAA Div. III and owed and operated a football camp for more than 9 years and it really amazes me how out of touch with reality many parents are today. As you are well aware, coaching today means that you must coach parents as well as players. Thanks! *********** I would pay for tickets to this trial. Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino is on trial in Philly, as the state tries to connect him to various mob-related activities. Much is being made of the bloody rivalry between the Merlino people and those of mob rival John Stanfa. A good part of the state's case is based on the testimony of one Ralph Natale, a former mob boss himself who has now turned government witness. Natale told of being visited while in prison by Merlino "associate" Steven Mazzone, and being told of his taking part in an ambush on a South Philadelphia street of Stanfa "associate" Leon "Yonnie" Lanzilotti, back in 1993. Natale told the jurors about something "funny" that happened, according to Mazzone's account of the hit. It seems that Michael Forte, who was with Lanzilotti at the time, panicked (a perfectly normal reaction, I would say) and ran. "He turned to run," Natale told the courtroom, "and ran right into a utility pole. He broke his nose and fell down." Can't you just see the Merlino fellas down at the social club, fresh from the hit, laughing hysterically? *********** Coaches have told me about different "slaughter rules" used in their jurisdictions, all of them expressing dissatisfaction with their version. I'm not sure whether I've heard of any good ones, but as important as they may be at the youth level, they certainly do conflict with the equally important goal of letting kids play. I don't think anyone except the officials is served by curtailing play - by shutting the game down. So long as we're going to tamper with the rules of the game, which is what various "slaughter rules" do, I might suggest considering one of several possibilities: (1) Immediately start a second game - same rules. (2) Limit the team in the lead to three downs to make 10 yards. (3) Allow the team in the lead only three downs per series, before requiring it to punt. (4) As long as a team remains ahead by a certain number of points, its touchdowns are devalued. Maybe not counted at all. (5) Shut off the scoreboard and continue to play. (6) Prohibit coaches on the team that's ahead from doing any coaching, other than to make substitutions Anybody else have any ideas? *********** Those pro sports teams peddling their luxury boxes at exorbitant prices might do well to keep this is mind: according to John McIntyre, writing in Southwest Airlines' in-flight magazine, only three per cent of business executives say that their best, most successful business meetings - outside those at the office - take place at sporting events. Compare that with nine per cent who say they take place on the golf course, and 49 per cent who say the best, most successful off-site meetings take place in restaurants. Who knows? If that three per cent figure gets any lower, the day may come when the IRS takes another look at sports tickets as a legitimate, deductible business expense. As it is, some of those corporations which paid enormous sums for the luxury boxes - which then gave them the right to buy tickets to the seats inside them at outrageous prices - are sometimes unloading those tickets at discount prices. It is a dirty little secret that pro sports teams don't like to admit to. With potential hard times ahead, who is to say where pro sports tickets rank as a budget priority for big companies? *********** "Last year our c back gained close to 1200 yards rushing. The kid was the real deal. During football season he was a perfect angel and has never caused the coaches any trouble. However, he is in and out of trouble in his other classes and always went right to the line never quite getting into enough trouble to be dismissed from the team. The attitude of the staff was, if we have him good, but don't count on him. We talked to him constantly, disciplined him, everything short of adopting him. Every college coach that saw film on this kid had a good remark. He is only in the 10th grade. "About half way through the season many of the fans started accusing the coaches of being "playa haters" With a kid with that kind of talent and a great fullback the fans thought we should be in an I backfield. They did not know the whole story. "Fast forward to today: "Our star was arrested for (a serious offense) and is awaiting expulsion hearings. We have two more c backs licking their chops for a chance at c back. The same "fans" that had to eat crow when we installed this "rec league offense" are eating crow again. This offense allows us not to miss a beat because all of our eggs were not in one basket. I know this is long but I thought you might appreciate the story. This speaks well of the offense as good as anything." (Name withheld) |
*********** "I thought your earthquake picture was hilarious...you should see our coaches office desks...now we can just say a small earthquake hit and made the mess!" Steve Davis - Danbury, Texas *********** It was near-overflow at the Philadelphia clinic in Fort Washington, PA, with coaches on hand from the Junior College level (I'm not saying who) to high school to all levels of youth football. Coach Gordon Leib, of James Madison High in Vienna, Virginia, was there for the third straight year, this time with six members of his staff. A contingent of six coaches from the Cape May, New Jersey youth program was there as well. It was the third straight year for Cape May's Frank Simonsen and Floyd "Flash" Hughes. Also on hand for the morning was my high school coach, Ed Lawless, who lives nearby. Ed's getting over a bout with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy, but he looked good to me, and I know he enjoyed meeting the other coaches. We got to talking about how different it was when I played for him - how none of us would have even dreamed of defying him, nor would any of our parents have dreamed of questioning him. I said to him, "watch this," then called out to a group of coaches - youth and high school - gathered around the coffee: "how many of you guys had at least one run-in with a parent this year?" Every one of them stuck up a hand. Ed's jaw dropped.
*********** I never thought I'd find myself taking up the cause of compensation for big-time college athletes, but something has begun to take place in big-time college sports to convince me that any college that can pay its basketball coach a million dollars can pay its basketball players, too. I am pissed. The major colleges and the NCAA are beginning to resemble the International Olympic Committee. An NCAA manual several inches thick describes the things that can't be given to college athletes. Petty things like cheeseburgers and phone calls home. Meanwhile, Rick Pitino is going to be paid a million or so a year, and given the the opportunity to reel in a $5 million "loyalty" bonus if he stays at Louisville for six years. Win a national championship and Louisville's players get free caps and tee shirts; their coach pockets up to $550,000 in "competition bonuses." Anybody else besides me smell the mackerels? There is no way that anyone can ethically justify paying a college basketball coach that kind of money. If you try to tell me that college sports is a business - that, after all, they're competing for the entertainment dollar - and it 's just good business to pay a good coach that kind of money, I would like you to name me another business as labor-intensive as big-time sports, that makes so much money off laborers that it pays so little. Is there any "business" in the world in which there is such a gross disparity between what the workers make and what their immediate superivisor makes? (I know, I know - they're getting a "free college education." I've already counted that.) There is no way in hell that the NCAA can preach amateurism to its athletes while enabling their coaches to enrich themselves beyond anyone's reasonable expectation - including ordinary faculty members. There is also no way in hell that the NCAA can continue to limit what colleges can give to "student-athletes," while standing idly by and allowing them to pump huge sums of money into the pockets of coaches. I know, I know. They can't pay just the players in the sports that earn the money - the football players and men's basketball players - without also paying women's synchronized swimmers. The law says they can't. So change the law. Or simply ignore it, the way they seem to do in those states where state employees aren't allowed to take money from people who do business with the state, yet the basketball coaches at the state universities still manage to rake in extra money from Nike or Reebok in exchange for serving on their "advisory boards." Change the law so that whatever a Division I college pays its coaches, it must contribute the same sum to a national fund. Administered by a neutral party, the fund would provide all Division I players a reasonable stipend, take care of extraordinary expenses such as occasional trips home, and provide graduate school tuition grants. Players signing pro contracts before graduating would be required to reimburse the fund for all stipends paid.
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*********** People aren't sure what to read into it, but for the first time in anyone's memory, Joe Paterno began spring practice with three brand-new assistants, new not only to the Lions' staff, but to Penn State itself. Coach Paterno has long been known for the stability of his staff and the long tenure of his assistants, and new additions to the staff have been rare. Also unusual is the fact that the three are "outsiders" - non-Penn Staters. Normally, it has been Coach Paterno's practice to hire former players. *********** Charles Barkley was back in Philly, where he spent eight exciting years, giving the Philly people everything they ever asked for an sometimes a little more - okay, sometimes a lot more - and Friday he was back in town to have his jersey retired. A sellout crowd was on hand, and it became very emotional as Kenny Rogers was on hand to sign "Through the Years." He brought the crowd down when he told them that if he's "ever fortunate enough to be voted into the Hall of Fame" (like who's going to vote against him?) he wants to go in as a 76er. Barkey thanked everyone under the sun, including Harold Katz, the owner for whom his dislike was so intense that he practically begged to be traded. Barkley was very careful - characteristic of him, as it turns out - to take the time to honor and thank the equipment men and trainers. I say characteristic, because Charles was known among the 76ers as a guy who always took time to be friendly and courteous to the security people and custodial people and various other workers. And characteristic because to believe the radio call-in shows, this guy was some sort of undercover saint, doing good works and being a genuine good guy all over the Philly area without ever soming to the public's attention. All day Friday the shows had nothing but Barkley callers, as one after another told of some little kindness that Barkley had done, some act of graciousness that he had performed, out of the public eye. A caller told about Barkley spending 10 or 15 minutes in a restaurant talking with a 10-year-old kid (now grown) who had initially been terrified to ask him for an autograph. In another case a woman told about her sister's wedding reception at a country club: as the bridal party posed for pictures on the 18th green, a foursome approached, and someone recognized Charles Barkley as one of the players. This woman said that on a dare, she asked him if he'd be willing to have his picture taken with the newlyweds. She said he acted as if it were the greatest honor ever bestowed on him, and posed for photos, then stood around for another half-hour or so signing autographs and talking. Another guy remembered hanging with Barkley at a local watering hole near where a lot of the Sixers lived (back in the days before they lived in gated communities). Barkley moved away, and several years later the guy happened to be a spectator at a celebrity golf tournament in which Charles was playing. He called out to Barkley and asked if he remembered, and Barkley instantly said, "Yeah! How you doing? Come on - jump over that rope and come on and walk a couple of holes with me and we'll talk about old times." The Sixers once asked him if he'd give a call to a little boy who had cancer, hoping it might cheer him up. A year or so later it was discovered he'd been calling the youngster at least once a week, sometimes talking an hour or more with him. In Philly, at least, he's been forgiven everything. When he left Philadelphia, he called it a "racist town." Some people now understand. If they don't understand, they still forgive. The little girl he is supposed to have spat on? He says he was aiming at people well beyond her, but it had been a tough game, and he was too tired to spit that far, and besides, all he could muster was some foam. And so... But he admitted he was sorry. He was man enough to do that. And he invited the little girl and her family to a game on him. Not one bad comment did I hear. In fact, they paid the native of Leeds, Alabama, the greatest compliment Philly fans can pay a guy. Charles Barkley, everyone agreed, was "a Philly guy." *********** Of course, Chris Falcone is a Philly guy, too. I disagree, but that's what most of the sports callers seemed to think. I think he's an idiot. They're proud of him. I think he's an embarrassment to the city; they say, who cares what other places think? You may not know the name, but you know who he is. It's the First Union Center in Philadelphia last Thursday night, and the Maple Leafs' Tie Domi, a special ogre to Flyers' fans, is sent to the penalty box. Some of the fans sitting near the penalty box start flipping him some crap. That's why they sit there. Domi, tired of their garbage, shoots them a couple of squirts from a water bottle. The targets of his squirts seem to take it in stride, but sitting behind them is Mr. Falcone, and this is too much for him. He leaps onto the glass separating the fans from the players in the penalty box, putting on his best "Lemme at him!" act, when - ulp! - the glass collapses, depositing Mr. Falcone in the lap of Mr. Domi. Uh-oh. As Mr. Falcone quickly found out, when teasing the animals it is highly advisable to stay on your side of the moat. Suddenly finding himself in the bear's den, Mr. Falcone wound up, jersey pulled over his head, being hammered by Mr. Domi, whose professional qualifications include being able to handle himself against people far tougher than Mr. Falcone. Before he was rescued, Mr. Falcone suffered a cut on his forehead. He was ejected from the building. Mr. Domi was fined. So these cretins (sorry - Philly fans) start calling in the next day, defending this fool! Domi, you see, is a professional athlete- he should have been able to practice restraint. At least three lawyers called a show I was listening to, outlining the bases for the various suits Mr. Falcone might consider filing. I would imagine his answering machine was maxed out with messages from other lawyers. He'll probably sue and settle for a substantial sum of money. Philly guy my rear end. MORE BARKLEY... ***** "This is the kind of game that, if you lose, it makes you want to go home and beat your wife." That was Barkley, and it was ten years ago, following an ugly game in which the 76ers had narrowly beaten the New Jersey Nets. Noting that "quoting someone minutes after a hard game is occasionally like quoting a drunk, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Robert Ford remembers giving Barkley a chance to take it back. "Charles," he recalls asking, "do you really want to say that?" "Yeah, write it down," Barkey replied. "Piss off them women's groups!" That was Barkley. The next Sixers' home game was picketed by the National Organization for Women. ***** "They called me and told me we got Shack, and I started jumping around. Then they told me it was Charles Shackleford. We got the wrong Shack." ***** Critics used to demean Barkley by saying he didn't make his teammates better, the way Magic Johnson supposedly did. "Oh," he once said, "I wish I had to make James Worthy better. That's real tough. I have to make Shelton Jones and Ben Coleman better." ***** It was 1992. He'd been making all sorts of noise about wanting to be traded from Philadelphia, and had been led to believe a trade was imminent. The NBA trading deadline that year came on February 20, his 29th birthday. He was in the locker room in Houston and hadn't even dressed - he was that sure of being traded, either to the Lakers or the Clippers - when a telegram arrived for him. "Thank you, my man," he said, as he took the telegram. "This is it," he told everyone around him, and ripped it open eagerly. He read it, then read it again, then stared at it a while, before finally slumping back on his stool. "BIRTHDAY WISHES FROM YOUR BIGGEST FAN?" he moaned. "Oh, no! I don't believe this!" ***** "Most professional athletes are jerks who want you to think they're good guys. Charles is a good guy who wants you to think he's a jerk." Dave Coskey, Philadelphia 76ers' executive. *********** Welcome to the world to Ryan Michael Benton, whose dad is coach MIke Benton, of Colfax, Illinois. Ryan is the Bentons' fourth child, but their first boy! Dad writes, "I think we are done now! he was 9 lbs 5 oz and looks to be a future B back!" *********** "I wanted to let you know about a colleague who is struggling with an ignorant school board. They were rated #2 in the state when the season opened, but they suffered some key injuries and things didn't go their way. They missed the playoffs, but they should be strong again next year. Out of the 68 boys in the school, the coach had managed to convince 53 to play football last season. "Well, last week the school board "non-renewed" his coaching contract but kept him on as an instructor. It turns out that back in September some of the football players attended a party where alcohol was available. There is no evidence that any of the players consumed, but who knows? Anyway, nothing was said until last week's board meeting. Now the board is saying that this coach did not have sufficient control of his players and that he should have been able to keep them from attending the party. "He gets a chance to tell his side of the story at a board meeting next week. "I am left wondering why it is the coach's responsibility to monitor the behavior of his players outside of school and football hours. What has happened to parent responsibility?" Isn't this bizarre? Granting that the kids may not even have consumed alcohol but still knew they shouldn't have been there, remember when everyone used to feel sorry for the coach whose kids decided to go party? Was it all that long ago that it was still considered a betrayal of trust when kids got caught at a kegger? Are some people so desperately in need of someone to blame for their own misdoings that they can actually blame a coach when kids break training rules? When did it suddenly become the coach's fault? Did someone read in the papers that some college coach was let go because of "lack of institutional control" or some such? I mean, we are not talking here about scholarship athletes living in athletic dorms. What is the deal with these parents? They don't have the guts to control their own kids, but they expect the coaches to do so. Right. Until the first time the coaches try to discipline the kids, and the first thing out of the parents' mouths is, "what my kid does on his own time is none of your business." What a bunch or worms. *********** The Haka ("HAH-Kah") is a ceremonial dance performed by the Maori people, the original people of New Zealand, traditionally in front of an enemy just prior to commencing to do battle. Think of it as pre-game woofing to the tenth power. The Maori have a warrior tradition, and Maori men, typical of many Pacific Islanders, tend to be large and muscular and fond of contact sports. So it should be no surprise that Maoris playing on New Zealand's famed national rugby side, the All Blacks. And, in tribute to the warrior culture of the Maori people, it is an All Black tradition to perform the Haka before every match. There is nothing like it in sport. And since they don't play all that many matches anyhow, and New Zealand is a bit far to go for a rugby match, and there's no international rugby on TV, even at 3 AM on ESPN2, I don't get to see it often. I find it thrilling. It is a very fierce, warlike challenge to do battle while at the same time an intimidating hint of the things in store for the enemy. It is done on the field just prior to opening kickoff as the opponents look on, in bewilderment, in awe, or, I suppose in the case of teams like Australia's Wallabies that have seen it a lot and are used to it, a sense of "are you blokes about ready to play the game?" I am working on the script of a Crocodile Dundee-type movie starring the All Blacks, as a bunch of guys who play frequent games of recreational rugby in New York's Central Park, while playing a Guardian-Angels-type role as crime-stoppers. In one episode, a bunch of punks filters in off the streets and grabs a female jogger (blonde and beautiful, of course) and throws her to the ground. She screams, but she's unable to resist the mad dogs, as they leeringly prepare to... but wait - suddenly they're surrounded by a bunch of big guys in black shirts with white collars, black shorts and black knee socks, who begin to act as if they're crazy. They're doing some kind of dance and stomping and making fists and chanting in some kind of strange language! The street punks, one by one, turn and look at them, and then, wide-eyed, at each other. One of them says, "Who the $%$#% are they?!?" Without waiting to find out, another one shouts, "I'm gettin' outta here." And the stampede is on. But not so fast. First - they've got to get past the All Blacks, who encircle them. Uh-oh. And now the fun begins. Afterward, though, in true rugby tradition, the All Blacks pick up the punks they just stomped and drag them to a nearby pub where they all sit around a big table and hoist a few and start singing songs. The street punks, agreeing among themselves that "these dudes are cool," confess to having led criminal lives and promise to reform, if the All Blacks will agree to show them how to play rugby. Rated R for violence, but bring the kids anyway, if you want to show them that good occasionally triumphs over evil. I am still working on the spin-offs... Bring the kids to McDonalds for their All-Blacks dolls. Collect all 15 of them! All Blacks pajamas and lunch pails - look for the display at your Wal-Mart. All Blacks cartoons on Saturday morning. All Blacks video games. All Blacks trading cards. Kids doing the Haka at raves. All Black parties, at which adults do the Haka. Teenagers playing rugby in the park. Next adventure: the All Blacks wander the streets of Seattle during Mardi Gras. *********** I enjoyed watching Jackie Stiles, from Southwest Missouri. The girl is a super basketball player, and comes across as a great kid, too. I even heard some of the women's announcer types, comparing her to the great Oscar Robertson, the Big O, in terms of career scoring. Stop, already. She's a very good woman's basketball player. Can we let it die there? No, we can't. ESPN's Mike Patrick actually has the audacity - probably sucking up to the women - to say, "Jackie Stiles could go up against a bunch of guys on a playground and kick their butts." Uh, Mike - now, granted, you may have certain guys in mind, and they might be chumps, but I wonder if you've ever seen some of the action on the playgrounds of Philadelphia. *********** I have nothing against women's basketball. At it best, it is a good game. I congratulate Notre Dame on winning the Women's NCAA title. Their center, Ruth Riley, is tough. But based on one very unscientific survey I performed Sunday night, the women's game does not seem to be resonating with the general public. I was in a pub in a college town - Newark, Delaware - and only one of the TV sets was tuned to the Notre Dame-Purdue game; the other had some sitcom on. Not a soul in the place was watching the basketball game. |