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The Casablanca system, made by Draco, of Boulder, Colorado, is quite nice and easy to use. Basically, it is a stand-alone, dedicated computer system that contains editing software. I have worked with one. I didn't realize that you could get one that cheap, but Casablancas come in several sizes. Perhaps the prices have come down, as they often do when a field becomes competitive as computerized video editing has. Check the size of the hard drive on the model you're talking about and and make sure it is large enough to do the job. You will still need a good camera if you are going to get good results. I would strongly suggest digital (DV for Digital Video). You will also want to make sure that the Casablanca model you are looking at has FireWire (IEEE 1394) input and output, because without it you can't send or receive digital signals. As I recall, only the top-of-the-line models had FireWire ports. This is really important if you're going to make near-professional looking stuff, because if you are not connecting a digital camera to your Casablanca with FireWire, you are not going to be operating at the digital level, and your finished product will just not look as good. To edit in this fashion, you shoot the game in digital, then you input (import) the video to the Casablanca (or a properly-equipped computer) where you do whatever you need to do - rearrange plays, cut out extraneous footage, etc - and then you output (export) it back to your camera, which records your edited work (on a fresh tape, of course - you don't want to record over your original game tape). The result is a digital master tape from which you can then make all the VHS copies you want - and they'll look pretty good. A lot better than if you had done all your editing at a lower level than digital.
*********** From one of Governor Ventura's worshipful subjects: "... his interaction with Rusty Tillman was exactly how his honor frequently communicates with the working press. It appears to me that if Gov. Ventura is asked a question to which he does not want to respond, then he "short changes" the interviewer by making some comment that, I feel, degrades the person asking the question or the topic. So, if you want to ask Governor Ventura a question, just make sure it is the one he wants to answer at the time or be prepared to receive little more than an off hand, trivial, unrelated comment." Mike O'Donnell, Pine City, Minnesota *********** Not that Jesse or "The Boz" have a monopoly on bad taste on WWF - oops, XFL - telecasts. Color analyst Jerry "The King" Lawler told us about the difference between the winning team's bonus (rouhgly $2500 per man) and the losing team's (nada): " without the money, they have to stay in places that not only leave the light on, they leave a little hair in the shower and a little stain in the middle of the sheet." *********** "One comment on the EX-FL. I only watched through halftime of the first game. I was interested in finding out what a supposed pro coach might say in the locker room by way of adjustments. My disappointment at their lack of specific coaching points actually made me feel proud of the job that we have done at New Berlin West in the last twenty years. When we go in the locker room at half we actually take pride in coaching our boys and having something more substantive to say to them than 'we gotta get fired up and play Football next half'". Jeff Grabo- New Berlin West HS, New Berlin, Wisconsin
*********** Did anybody notice the number of references to the Ravens' winning the Super Bowl "for Maryland?" You don't suppose, do you, that that was a shot at the Redskins' being allowed to build their palace in Maryland, midway between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore? Unless things have changed radically from when I lived in Maryland, I have news for anybody who thinks the Ravens did any big favors for all those Marylanders in Prince Georges and Montgomery Counties, more than a million of them, and nearly all of them Redskins' fans. We have lived in Baltimore, where at the time everybody loved the Colts, and farther west, in Frederick and Hagerstown, where things were pretty evenly split between the Colts and the Redskins. And in far western Maryland - Cumberland and westward - there used to be an awful lot of Pittsburgh Steelers' fans. By no means are all states united by something like Nebraska's love of its Cornhuskers. There is often something that divides them rather than unites them. This came to mind the other day when John Grimsley, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, wrote to ask me about an article he'd read in which it said that Eastern Washington was talking about seceding from the rest of the state. I told him, yes, the folks in Eastern Washington (the dry side) are not happy with the folks in Western Washington (the wet side). They are divided physically and culturally. From the Canadian border on the north to the Columbia River and Oregon on the south, roughly 230 miles, the Cascade Mountains divide the two sides. There are only five passes through the Cascades, and one of them is closed for the winter. (As fast as they get it plowed, avalanches close it again, so why bother?) West of the Cascades, it rains a lot. There are plenty of forests and streams, and there are still lots of small logging and fishing communities scattered here and there. But neither logging nor fishing has seen good times in quite a while, and so the heartbeat of the West Side is urban. It is Seattle. Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, the University of Washington and Rose Bowls, world trade, BMWs stuck in traffic, high wages and astronomical real estate prices. And tolerance and sensitivity. They believe in health care benefits for demostic partners and they voted for Al Gore. East of the Cascades, it is relatively flat, and except around the lush farmlands and orchards of a few oases like the Yakima Valley, it is dry. Where it isn't sage brush and rattlesnakes, it is wheat and cattle ranches. It is cowboys and Copenhagen, formerly-migrant agricultural workers who've decided to settle, Washington State University and parties, miles and miles between trees, and towns so small and far apart that they sometimes have to consolidate two or even three high schools to get enough boys to play 8-man football. They voted for George W. Bush. It is a classic case of the city folks and the suburban folks against the rural guys. It is SUVs against pickup trucks, chardonnay against Busch Beer, soccer against rodeo. The two sides will never get along. There was always a perception that the West Side didn't listen to the East Side. With the growth in population that has taken place on the West Side as its economy boomed, it is no longer a perception. But separate? It ain't gonna happen. Only Texas has specifically been given the legal right to subdivide. An act of Congress admitting it to the Union provided that it could split into as many as four other states. But just because Congress hasn't made provisions for it doesn't mean it isn't talked about a lot in a lot of places. Maryland is a classic example: years ago (before Alaska and Hawaii were admitted), the Eastern Shore was separated from the rest of the state by the Chesapeake Bay, and was sometimes called "The 49th State." Upstate New York would love to leave New York City stranded. Question: Who would get Hillary? Downstate Illinois would be happy to do the same to Chicago. Most of Pennsylvania would just as soon not have to support the big spenders in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Aroostook County (the northernmost county) in Maine talks about seceding from time to time. Nantucket has talked about seceding from Massachusetts. Louisiana thinks of itself as two states - Protestant, Bible-belt North Louisiana and Catholic, "let the good times roll" South Louisiana. South Jersey has very little in common with North Jersey. Florida's panhandle has more in common with South Georgia and South Alabama than with South Florida. West Virginia , which itself broke away from Virginia, has two panhandles which do far more business with nearby states - one hooked up to Pittsburgh, the other to Washington, D.C. - than with the rest of their state. What more can you say about Michigan's Upper Peninsula, aka "The U.P.," and whose people take pride in calling thmselves "Yoopers?" Idaho is two separate states, divided between north and south by two different cultures, and by some of the most rugged mountains in the US, with no highway connecting them. Northern California talks from time to time about separating from Southern California. Oregon is pretty much the Willamette Valley (Portland-Salem-Eugene) against everyplace else in the state. Anybody know of any others? *********** SOME MORE RADICAL EDUCATIONAL REFORM! President Bush's educational reforms seem certain to call for some form of educational voucher, a sort of check drawn on the federal government and payable to the school - public or private - where parents choose to send their child. I am amazed that no one has yet proposed a sure way to improve American education - the teacher-awarded voucher. I call it the HRV - The Hit the Road Voucher. Here's how it would work. Every teacher knows that there are a couple of troublesome kids in every classroom who make it very difficult to teach the rest of the class. Any time those troublemakers stay home sick (sadly, they seem as a rule to be in extremely robust health ) the teacher finds the class doing things and learning things she never thought possible. I would address this phenomenon by giving every teacher a pad of HRV's. Whenever a student and his or her parents made it clear that they planned on continuing to make a teacher's life difficult, the teacher would merely reach into the desk drawer, pull out the pad, and tear off an HRV for the kid, good at any school that will take him (or her). Should a student have difficulty finding another school that would take him (or her), the student and parents could return to their original school at the start of the next year, but for the rest of the current school year they would be SOL. In order to ensure that teachers did not use their HRV awards indiscriminately and arbitrarily, they would be given cash rebates for all vouchers they returned unused at the end of the year. Good for education? I guarantee you, there aren't many teachers in America who won't tell you that being able to get rid of just one or two jerks in an ordinary classroom is like breaking a log jam. *********** "After reading some of your comments on the Army's new slogan, I couldn't help but think how times have changed. When I was in the Army we were taught to do things on the buddy system, not alone, and if one guy stepped out of line we all paid the price but this did teach us to work as a team." Doug Gibson, Naperville, Illinois |
A LOOK AT OUR LEGACY
*********** Jon Newman, the big 240-pound fullback from my LaCenter videos, called me the other night. He's now a 280-pound guard at Weber State, in Ogden, Utah. He seems to be really happy and enthusiastic about his choice of schools. He's now a redshirt freshman, pencilled in at starting right guard. He rents a house with four other players, and knowing how much a normal young guys eats, much less one who weighs 280, I worried about whether he was getting enough to eat. He said they were eating well - they had a freezer full of elk meat. Jonny's a hunter himself, but playing football pretty much precludes his getting an elk, so I asked him where it came from. He said from one of his roommates, a guy from Ten Sleep, Wyoming. The guy's dad got an elk. So did his mom. And so did his sister. *********** Seen any of the gold Sacagawea one-dollar coins? Didn't think so. Neither have I. Humorist Joe Lavin (http://joelavin.com) noticed the same things, and wrote, "From the creators of the Susan B. Anthony coin that nobody wanted or used comes another coin that nobody seems to want -- the Sacagawea golden dollar. The US Mint recently announced that one billion of these coins are now in circulation, which is exactly 999,999,996 more than I've seen over the last year. Where are these one billion dollars? Has anyone seen them? Quick! Everyone check behind the sofa cushions, because I think almost a billion dollars of coins have gone missing." He noted that other than Wal-Mart's suckup agreement to circulate them (Hillary Clinton used to sit on the board of WalMart, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas), he hasn't been able to find them anywhere. Not even at his bank. "Eventually," he writes, "I decided to continue my search online. I ended up at the US Mint's web site, which offers free shipping on all golden dollars. It sounds like a great deal, but there's only one problem. The Mint is selling a roll of 25 golden Sacagawea dollars for -- get this -- $35.50. Wow, it's great to see that the kids who used to extort my lunch money at school are now gainfully employed at the US Mint. Since when did $25 suddenly cost $35.50? The Mint is also selling a bag of 2,000 golden dollars for only $2,180. If you ask me, the people behind this deserve a serious promotion. Let's send them up to the very highest echelons of government. With their skills, I'm sure they could eliminate the national debt in no time. "When I saw the price they were charging, I had but one thought: Hey, I can beat that price! And so as a special offer to subscribers of this column, I'll send $25 to anyone who sends me $30. That's right. You send me $30 in the mail, and you'll immediately get $25 back. That's a savings of over 15% off what the government charges. Act now, and I'll also throw in free shipping and handling. And if you send me just $2,100, I'll gladly send you $2,000 back. I'll even express mail it. Because, after all, I care." *********** Tomorrow's Fat Tuesday - the big day in New Orleans - and assorted other places in Dixie such as Mobile. Although it's the world's largest party, it is actually religious in its origins, with people traditionally raising a little hell - well, actually, more than a little hell - before having to give up assorted pleasures of the flesh for Lent (which begins the following day, Ash Wednesday). For an interesting look at the festivities, check out MardiGras.com, and look at "BourboCam," a robot camera fixed on Bourbon Street which takes live snapshots every 20 seconds. *********** 40 or so of Butch Blue's former players gathered recently to help him celebrate 25 years as head basketball coach at Battle Ground, Washington High. Butch is a legend of sorts in our corner of the state. You will never outcoach him. Your kids will never be better prepared or better conditioned than his, and when there's a ball loose on the floor, they'd better be ready to dive for it. "He's a bulldog," former player Elroy Miller told the Vancouver Columbian's Paul Danzer. Miller graduated from Battle Ground in 1989 and played four years at Weber State. "Honest to God, we practiced harder in high school than we did in college. it was always physical, and it was always intense." Butch has had some awfully good teams - his 1990 team won a state title - and he's had a few bad ones, but as he says, "My perspective on the whole thing is, it's just like playing poker with your friends. You want to compete and you want to do your very best. You play the hand you're dealt and see how well you can do with it." He told the Columbian's Danzer that he remembers the exact moment it hit him that he wanted to be a coach. He was in college, at Washington State, in the middle of a discussion of religion and philosophy with some of his pals, and "All of a sudden I realized that the thing I wanted to do was go back and coach and teach in high school, and show other kids the same good time that I had." To hear his former player tell it, he's done that and more. "This is a guy who created passion for the game," said one of his players from back in the 1970s. "All the guys who played for him, I guarantee you they love it more now than they did before they played for Coach Blue." *********** "I was a part of that great offence (Double-Wing) too. In my senior year, we got a new coach, and he brought to us his offence. He said that he made it up, except he called it the Double wing T. This might be old news now, but I just saw your page.His name was DON MARKHAM, don't know if you heard of him. My high school name was "LEUZINGER", located in LAWNDALE, CA. We used that offence that season, when everyone said that it would not work in that high of a division. We were in div.II, so we had a big school, well kind of. But boy did we show them wrong. We put up some yards, and averaged well over 40 points a game. We thought we were going to take the d-II championship, but the ref's screwed us, I think they did not like our offence, no one did. But that is another story in itself. Well I think its great you run that offence. I am happy that I was part of it. I loved every second playing in that offence (I played center, All C.I.F div.II). But good luck on all your seasons to come." Steve Austin Dear Steve: Thanks for the note. I'm glad you came across the site. I first came saw the offense when I coached against Coach Markham in Finland. I guess the Double-Wing is like an ugly baby that only a mother can love, but man, it is effective. Let the other people think what they want. Coach Markham is a great coach and you are fortunate to have had the chance to play for him. Best wishes, Coach Wyatt
*********** A youth coach noted that I have mentioned that we ran single-wing in high school, and asked why I chose to run the Double-Wing with a T-formation quarterback under center, rather than the single wing. Here's the gist of what I wrote to him: There was never any choice for me regarding the single-wing. Back when I might have made such a decision, the single wing was considered to be nearly extinct. I couldn't have told you of more than one or two people in the US still running it. Any advantage to be gained by running something unique was offset by the lack of resources to support you. I would truly have been an orphan. Now, years later, thanks to the Web there are some single wing resources you can turn to, and far-flung single-wingers have been able to hook up with each other, but I have too much know-how with the Wing-T and the Double-Wing to throw it away without a very good reason to do so. Although it is exciting and it would give defenses all sorts of problems, there are three reasons why, even starting over, I would not likely commit to running the Single Wing (my HS coach concurs): (1) If your center goes down, you are dead. We had one center my senior year in HS and my coach now says, "If he'd gotten hurt, we'd have had to call the game off." (2) You are dependent on having a very talented, very durable tailback. Or two. Or three. In a college, you can recruit people like that. In a high school or youth program, you are at the mercy of the gene pool. To me it is the equivalent of needing a great tailback if you plan on running the I, or a talented T-formation quarterback if you plan on running an option or passing-oriented attack. If you don't have those people, you won't have much of an offense. (3) You will drive some defenses crazy, but until you really know the offense well, you may see some defenses that will drive you crazy.
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*********** I have two words for the XFL, and for any other organization that attempts to build something permanent based on an audience of 12-year-olds: TOMMY HILFIGER. Seen much of Tommy lately? Didn't think so. Tommy, no longer hot with the young 'uns, is trying to re-gear and aim at an older, more stable market. One bad side effect of our nation's incredible properity is all the money it has put in the hands of teenagers, and all the homage advertisers have been paying to a group like that, with that kind of spending power. As a result, teenagers virtually run the worlds of music, and fashion, and TV. Certain sports competititions have been invented just for them, in order to deliver them to the advertisers who crave their money. The danger of catering to teenagers is how fickle they are. Whatever is hot for them today is dead next week. Already there are signs that younger teenagers are tuning out the XFL, because they really believed all those ads that promised the sort of violence they'd never seen before. They were expecting blood. Now that it has dawned on them that it is not wrestling, they will tire of whatever it is and move on to something else.
The young player's coach, Scott Russell, passed my story along to his player's dad, who evidently passed it along to his dad, Fred Kriss. "Thanks for the really cool information you got from your mentor about Woody Hayes," he wrote. "That same game, I believe, my father kicked a field goal that hit the upright and went in. Some of the headlines were "Kriss Cross" . "I believe he scored 11 points against Michigan that game. According to the El Paso Texas Hall of Fame (where my dad went to school and was inducted), the writer claimed he led the Big ten in points (mostly from field goals/extra points and occasional touchdowns). You also would love this since you stress school as you should...he was an Academic All-American. "Later in that same book, there is an interesting story about how AFTER graduation, my father thought he was failing at Harvard Medical School. (Back then, they did not receive grades until the VERY end of the school year - so you had no idea where you stood). He called Woody to tell him he was quitting. Woody yelled at my dad to stay put where he was calling from and Woody bought - with his own money - a plane ticket to fly out of Columbus to meet my dad in Boston a few hours later. Woody stormed into his dorm room and yelled, "Fred, you have never been a quitter...and Goddammit, you are not going to quit now!" and then a few minutes later he left back for Columbus. (that is a rough sketch as I recall...but it is in the book). "That reminds me to get the book from EBAY.com since I do not own it. My dad has a signed copy from Woody of course. Very cool to share that with me. My dad and mom were tickled that you came across information about him from your mentor. "
*********** Adam Wesoloski sent along the following job posting and asked, "Any coaches interested in moving to Green Bay, WI area?"
*********** Remember back when the Russians were telling us that if we didn't send them money to prop up their economy they might turn communist again, and we'd be right back in the Cold War? So now it turns out that, going all the way back to 1985, they've been slipping large sums of money to an FBI agent to provide us with inside information. Now, if Hanssen, this rogue FBI agent caught passing along our secrets to the Russkies is guilty, I'm for hanging him. But what really ticks me off is that basically the $650,00 or more that he got was our money ! They certainly didn't pay the guy in rubles. Trace the money all the way back and you'll find it was provided by American taxpayers to buy the friendship of our dear Russian brothers. *********** I read a headline calling Eminem (for those of you who don't know, he's a white rapper) "a cultural force uniting black and white worlds." I've heard him called a lot of things, but a diplomat? A bridge builder? Sheesh. I sure hope black people don't judge the rest of us white folks by him. According to his official bio, he attended Lincoln High School in predominantly white, blue-collar Warren, Michigan, dropping out partway through his sophomore year. I think I may have discovered why. One former classmate recalls that the first time he saw Eminem (known then by his real name, Marshall Mathers), "he was wearing a plastic kitchen wall clock held around his neck by a fake gold chain." Now, knowing the tolerance of typical high school boys for freak shows, why do I think he found it difficult being accepted?
*********** In Florida, a 36-year-old former assistant youth baseball coach has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for sex acts involving a male teen-ager, who once lived with the man from the time the kid was 15 until he was 17. The man was convicted by a jury last month of lewd or lascivious assault on a child and two counts of attempted sexual battery by a person in familial or custodial authority. Of course what this guy was convicted of is sick. But does anybody else think there is something strange about the living arrangement? I'm sorry - the kid was living with this guy! Anything strange there? I mean, yeah - maybe the kid was seemingly living with this guy to escape an abusive home life. Maybe. But I know 15 year old kids. Especially the ones who don't live at home. They are normally, shall we say, worldly. I am willing to bet that there might have been a certain quid pro quo element at work here. What is really sick is the way we have legitimized "homelessness" as if it's just another lifestyle choice that kids are free to make, allowing "homeless" kids to wind up in situations like this. It used to be a crime to be a runaway - back when families stayed together and parents were permitted to raise their kids. It's just one of the unintended consequences of making it easy for parents to divorce, and all the"liberation" we've provided for our "children." *********** RADICAL REFORM IN EDUCATION: I have heard from several people in the last week who have told me that they have thought for some time about becoming teachers. The problem is, these are always people with families and careers well under way, and they look at starting teachers' salaries and gag. Maybe it's time the people in charge of our schools - including the teachers' unions - step aside for a minute so we can do away with some of the policies that prevent good people - the kind of people who would be good in our schools and good for our kids - from making mid-career switches into teaching. You simply can't expect to take a college-educated person with valuable work experience (including being a stay-at-home mother) and start him or her out at a beginner's salary - same as the 21-year-old right out of college. The expectation of $1,000-a-year salary increases makes a living wage a distant dream. I believe it's time to do away with the year-by-year steps by which teachers creep up those salary scales (so meticulously designed and negotiated by teachers' unions), and establish two ranges of teacher's salaries: (1) Apprentice teachers. They would earn what a beginning teacher earns now. They would be assigned to a fellow faculty member who would serve as a mentor, and would be carefully supervised and evaluated. They would be subject to termination without cause at the discretion of their supervisor at any time during their probationary term - which, depending on their performance, would range from a minimum of one year to a maximum of five. At the end of five years, the apprentice teacher would either be granted journeyman status or terminated for further consideration as a teacher; (2) Journeyman teachers. They would all earn the same base pay - I would use the top pay on the current scale as my starting point - regardless of seniority. They would be additionally compensated by such other factors as total number of students taught, difficulty of subject matter (yes, I would pay the advanced physics teacher more than the PE teacher. Sorry - I've taught PE, and advanced physics is tougher), required work beyond the school day (good English teachers spend inordinate amounts of time reading students' papers), difficulty of students (20 "assist" or "remedial" students can be far more exhausting than 35 college-prep students), difficulty in obtaining people to fill a position, undesirability of location or conditions, and willingness to serve as mentors for apprentice teachers. The usual stipends for assisting students with extracurricular activities would, of course, continue. Notice, though, that a gifted person who had just spent 20 years as a police officer or 10 years at home with her kids could conceivably earn journeyman status - and top-of-the-scale pay - after as little as one probationary year. Having once attained journeyman status, teachers would not be free to coast, as so frequently seems to be the case with today's ironclad union contracts and the protective "tenure" they provide for. The "accountability" that society demands - and the authority that school administration requires - would be provided for by stipulating that journeyman teachers whose performance has continued to slip over a period of time - as documented by a series of evaluations - could be returned to apprentice/probationary status. You may have noticed that there is no such thing as a "master teacher" category, which seems to be all the rage these days. We are hearing a lot about the "master teacher" concept, usually as a way to try to justify paying teachers more; but mostly it is based on some kind of "master teacher" status conferred for taking a bunch of classes and passing a bunch of tests. I have yet to see such a designation based on the only thing that matters - actual results. That is, a teacher's classroom performance and his or her effect on students. Here, I must confess to a prejudice: I am not a fan of "Teacher of the Year" awards and the sycophantism (sucking up) they sometimes promote, and I am not for creating a category that fosters elitism on a staff based on little more than the extra degrees a person has earned. The little old lady who does the same thing she's been doing for years, without any glitz or fancy light shows or the most up-to-date teaching techniques, may still be the best teacher in the school. Who can prove otherwise? Who has yet figured out a way?
Anstey, 26, played three seasons in the NBA, with the Mavericks and the Bulls, mostly sitting on the bench; but he earned far more than he could ever hope to earn in Australia - in his last year in Chicago, he made $1.1 million, which is about $2 million Australian. He says it doesn't bother him - there's a great difference in the sporting cultures of Australia and the U.S., he says, and after experiencing them both, he prefers Australia's. "Here, you're playing with nine of your mates and you get along well with the coaches," he told Stephen Howell, of the Melbourne Age. "I've never had a problem just visiting anyone on the team out of the blue or dropping past any of the coaches' places, and if you have a night out, then everyone's invited and everyone enjoys each other's company away from basketball. "Over there I wouldn't have known where probably nine out of the 12 guys lived. That was in Chicago, Dallas was a little bit better, I had a couple of good mates (Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Hubert Davis) but for the most part it's very individual and I think that's reflected in the style of basketball as well. "There's a lot of one-on-one stuff, a lot of individual accolades for people who are the high scorers and high rebounders, and probably not enough recognition for good teams and good team players." Back home, though, he says, "The thing I enjoy most here is the day-to-day work with all the guys. It is not only yourself getting better, it is the whole team getting better. It's great going to work with 15-20 guys that you're good friends with and, at the end of the day, coming home and saying you've done a job that you really enjoy doing with your mates. "The games are really just a reward for the day-to-day work." |
***********You are correct in your assessment of the reverence of NASCAR in the South. Having lived in the North and now the south(TN), it is truly bigger than most can imagine. My wife was at a Wal-Mart in east TN yesterday and they made an announcement that they were completely sold out of any Dale Earnhardt memorabilia. His passing will rival Elvis'." Greg Stout, Thompson's Station, Tennessee *********** "The 'a hundred years from now' quote is a good one.....several years ago my daughter presented me with a plaque with that saying on it.....it is labled priorities and includes a picture of my daughter when she was in elementary school.....I start off each day reading that saying, knowing that what I do today as a teacher is important.....I often tell people I have the greatest job in America." Kevin McCullough- Lakeville, Indiana *********** The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, set up primarily to counter charges that Mr. Gates was stingy, racist, uncaring, etc., has been giving away large sums of Mr. Gates' money, and those of us who live in Washington, the state where Mr. Gates makes his money, have been the beneficiaries of a lot of his largess (generosity). Now, the Foundation is offering to underwrite a true educational reform: it proposes to reward schools which downsize. On the theory that large schools tend to be impersonal, uncaring places in which a lot of kids - especially low-income and minority students - get lost, and based on studies showing that "controlling the size of the school can lower poverty's impact on achievement by up to 90 per cent," the Gates Foundation is offering incentives of $500 per student to as many as 15 Washington schools that will agree to chop themselves into smaller schools of no more than 600 each. Furthermore, the foundation will set aside $100 million to provide scholarships to graduates of those schools. To be eligible, 20 per cent or more of a school's student population would have to be low-income. The plan will not necessarily entail construction of new buildings. A model for the Gates idea is New York's Julia Richman Educational Complex, which actually contains four separately-run, independent high schools within the same building. I believe I have mentioned this before, but at Ridgefield, Washington High School, where I taught for eight years, there were 400 kids in four years. Practically every teacher knew practically every kid. Since I taught freshman geography, and it was a required course, there was a span of time during which I had had every kid in the school in class. Ridgefield was not an uncaring place. We looked for kids who were having a hard time of it. Our principal, Chris Thompson, would write a personal note - either congratulatoiy or exhortatory - on every kids' report card. And even though 400 students is a small school, that's a lot of writing. It would take Chris the better part of a weekend to do it, but I know it made an impression on the kids. (Chris is now at Bremerton High, more than twice the size of Ridgefield, but the last I heard he was still trying to do it.) *********** I read an interview in last Friday's Wall Street Journal with a former police officer. He'd retired after 21 years on the Phoenix police force, and to hear him tell it, he's glad he did. "Being a policeman is a dangerous occupation," he told the Journal, "not because of any physical threat but because of the way it distorts your perspective. At first, you think you're John Wayne, out to right all of society's wrongs, but then you see you can't do that, and slip into cynicism. You begin to look at the world in terms of 'us' - the good-guy cops - and 'them' - the crooks - and pay no attention to the other 98% of the population." Maybe that's why we see a lot of police officers coaching youth teams - it's their way of staying in touch with the other 98 per cent. *********** A new book, "The Game of Life," by James Shulman and William Bowen (Princeton University Press - Mr. Bowen is a former president of Princeton), takes dead aim at college sports and the harmful effect they are having on the universities they claim to represent. Among their findings: (1) An "athletic culture" in most colleges tends to segregate athletes from the rest of the student body; (2) Athletes in general are academic underachievers; (3) Winning teams do not cause alumni to donate more; (4) Sports programs do little to contribute to racial diversity in a college; (5) The so-called leadership skills that sports are supposed to promote are, at the college level at least, a myth. *********** While Rick Pitino hovers over Las Vegas like a vulture, and the higher-ups at UNLV - which already has a coach and theoretically isn't in the market for another one yet - debase themselves and their institution by trying to see how sweet they can make the pot for Mr. Opportunity, maybe the guy they should be going after is Jim O'Brien. Since Pitino deserted Boston in despair over his inability to win, the Celtics are 12-7 under O'Brien. *********** My daughter, Julia, wrote to say, "By the way, I was listening to NPR and they were discussing Canada's decision to ban Brazilian beef, citing Mad Cow Disease as the reason. A Brazilian official was being interviewed, and accused Canada of using this as a way to get back at the advantage Brazilian aircraft had in the past. (he also says the concern is ridiculous, because Brazilian cattle are exclusively grass- and grain-fed and never eat feed with animal parts, the basis of Mad Cow). But what interested me was that, in making his point that this was unfair of Canada, he said, 'The Canadians are guilty of, as they say in American football, unnecessary roughness.' How'd he know that one?" *********** "After the War it was a rougher game. The attitude of the 1940s was so much different than it is today. We were part of the American tradition in the old-fashioned meaning. We were raised to love your God, respect your elders, and fear no son of a bitch that walks. That's why we won World War II. In the 1940s, right into the middle of the 1950s, you couldn't be an athlete and not have been in the service. Those guys who came out of World War II were different kinds of people. I knew them and played with them and they were fearless. After all, most of them didn't have easy duty. They were in the infantry, something like that. A lot of our players didn't come back, and you can check the list of pro football players who died in the War. A lot came back wounded and lame and were never able to play again." Frank "Bucko" Kilroy, NFL All-Timer *********** "It pained me to watch the XFL on Sunday. The "Boz" was in "Boz" form. He commented on one of the players turning down a job as a drug salesman to play in the XFL saying that he must be crazy to turn down a job that allows you to legally sell drugs. While I ignore most of the comments, this one is absolutely unforgiveable. No more XFL for me." Greg Stout, Thompson's Station, Tennessee *********** Dave Potter, of Durham, North Carolina, wrote to say that I should take it easy on Jesse Ventura and turn my guns on Brian Bosworth, who, he says, makes Jesse Ventura look like Lindsay Nelson. (For you younger guys, Lindsay Nelson was one of the greatest ever to step behind the mike). He's got a point. Bosworth really is bad. But everybody knows he's a bozo. He's not the elected governor of a state. Dave also mentioned liking some of the changes the XFL has made, and I agree with him to a point. But for the most part they are trivial changes, with little effect on the overall game. Yes, the XFL has made some interesting changes, and if all the NFL did was adopt the "one-foot-in" rule it would be a vast improvement. But in my opinion, the XFL made three serious fundemental marketing mistakes that $40 million of WWF huff-and-puff couldn't overcome: 1. The hardest lesson in marketing seems to be the one that says that success in selling one product doesn't necessarily translate into success in selling a completely different one. The wrestling types are, so I'm told, very good at selling whatever wrestling is. What wrestling is not, though, is something that millions of Americans have grown up with as a mainstream sport. Something that young and old care passionately about. Wrestling is not a sport with millions of purists who take a proprietary interest in its welfare, as football people do. As a result, even before the XFL kicked off, its bragadoccio had already alienated millions of potential fans who didn't want it to succeed. 2. They oversold their product. They promised things they couldn't deliver (such as good football or exciting football), and the public was amazingly fast to recognize it. They join a long list of products that promised to get girls, grow hair, burn fat, lose weight, restore lost virility, build great abs and enable you to hit the ball long and straight. 3. They didn't do enough to set themselves apart from the NFL. Violence? Hard-hitting? Smash-mouth? Already got that. When you peel everything away, the booze and the broads, it is too easy to make direct comparisons with college football and the NFL, and, side-by-side, the XFL is bad. Really bad. Look at the only successful new "football" venture to come along since the 1960's - Arena Football. It is a different game - barely football - and it is by no means "smashmouth," but it has found a niche for itself, and it has developed a following of sorts. *********** You know the XFL's in trouble when only 17,000-some people show up to watch it play in Birmingham, possibly the most passionate football town in America. *********** Robert Grady Ford, who died last week at the age of 94, was an unsung American pioneer. When he was hired in 1945 by the Portland Public Schools, he was their first black teacher. A graduate of Baltimore's Morgan State College, Mr Ford was teaching in his native Oklahoma during World War II when he heard that there were good-paying jobs in the shipyards in Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland, and headed west. Until Mr. Ford and others like him migrated to the Northwest to work in the shipyards, there were few blacks in the Portland area. When the War ended, Mr. Ford applied for a job teaching in the then all-white Portland Schools, and to his surprise he was hired, embarking on a career that lasted until he retired in 1972. He taught high school social studies, English and journalism, and in 1970 was named Teacher of the Year. Interviewed at the time, he said that he had encountered little discrimination in the school district, and always tried to stress equality in his dealings with students. "This country was made by men of all colors, and in my classes, I don't make the distinction," he said. |
*********** Jerry Frei died Friday in Denver. He was 76. If you've never heard of him, you should. He was head coach at Orgeon from 1967 through 1971, succeeding the legendary Len Casanova. His teams, with players such as Dan Fouts and Bobby Moore (aka Ahmad Rashad) played wide-open, exciting football, and he weathered the turmoil of the Vietnam years by letting his players wear their hair long. He was loved by his assistants - who included John Robinson, Bruce Snyder and George Seifert - and by his players, but he never beat Oregon State, and that, combined with his seemingly-lax approach, cost him dearly with the alumni. The alumni put pressure on the AD, and he gave in to them, issuing an ultimatum to Coach Frei to fire most of his staff. Coach Frei, loyal to the end, chose to resign rather than do that to his assistants and their families. He was never a head coach again. He caught on with John Ralston at Denver, and spent the rest of his career in the NFL, moving on to coach at Tampa Bay and Chicago and retiring as a scout for the Broncos. "He was a real stand-up guy," John Robinson told the Portland Oregonian's Ken Goe. "He, Cas (Len Casanova) and John McKay were the three people I tried to pattern myself after when I became a head coach. He was a big-time guy in the way he dealt with people." Following his fifth and final loss to Oregon State, with the pressure mounting, he said his main regret was that he couldn't get players his players the win."This game is blown into strange shapes and proportions," he said. "But the game is still for the young people, and I wanted our young people to have the experience of winning this game. It's not to settle a bet... or what the coach wants... or what the alumni want. It's still for the young people." The Oregon student body president at the time said, "The Oregon program will be all the poorer for his departure." You can say that again. It wasn't until Rich Brooks (an Oregon State alum, by the way) came on the scene five years later that the Ducks' program began to recover. The student body president went on to say that other than totally restructuring college athletics, the only way to prevent such an occurence in the future would be to hire an athletic director with guts and integrity: "He must have the courage to say to an alumnus who demands, 'Fire Frei, or no money' - 'keep your money.'" *********** Hey, Minnesotans- there was some guy on TV Saturday night, and somebody said he was your governor, but I don't see how that could be because governors are usually educated people, and they all love to talk about how much they support education, and here are some things I heard this guy say: "He don't look no 205 (pounds) to me." "He sure don't go down easy." "The clock's runnin' and they're not callin' no time..." "Go to school so you won't sound to people on national television as if you're uneducated." (I lied about that last one. I made it up. This guy would have said, "Don't miss no school if you want to talk good.") *********** This is what Vince McMahon's "Our Brand of Football" looked like Saturday: Los Angeles 12, Las Vegas 9. One touchdown. Four field goals in five attempts. 326 yards total offense - by both teams combined. Exciting game-winning field goal kicked with one second on the clock. San Francisco 13, Memphis 6. One touchdown. Four field goals in four attempts. Wow. A total of two touchdowns in two games. And eight thrilling field goals. Saturday's rushing totals in the "smashmouth league": Las Vegas, 70 yards; Los Angeles, 39 yards; San Francisco, 33 yards; Memphis, 29 yards. Lessee - that's 171 yards total. Not that the passing was anything that would resembled good high school football: the four teams threw a combined 125 times for 627 yards- a puny 5 yards per attempt. But punts! Talk about exciting! There were 19 punts returned, for an average of 8.3 yards per return. Gee, Mr. McMahon. Thanks for showing us football the way it should be played. *********** You know they're in trouble when Dick Butkus and announcer "J.R." have to spend halftime gushing over the excitement of the XFL's punting rules. *********** Other than Jesse, there wasn't a wrestler type in sight Saturday night. I'm guessing somebody at NBC took a look at the ratings (or somebody at WWF took a look at the stock's price) and suggested that Vince McMahon, Rock, Stone Cold Steve and Company go take in a movie. ************ This LA-Las Vegas game was big. Really big. If Vegas won, it would jump out to a two-game lead over Los Angeles in their division. It was so big, that LA even brought its cheerleaders along, and late in the game, while an injured player was being administered to down on the field, we were treated to another sort of competition - a "dance-off." Fans displayed their "scores" by holding up numbered cards, like so many figure-skating judges. The camera caught one bozo doing something very clever (nyuk, nyuk) with two cards - one a "6" and the other a "9." *********** You can learn a lot from watching XFL games. Saturday I learned that if you want to get XFL cheerleaders you gotta get you some fat burner called Stacker 2. *********** Jesse is absolutely the most useless "color analyst" I have ever heard. He is far worse than any of the ex-jocks the NFL keeps trotting out every Sunday. His banal utterings - "defense versus offense - you gotta love it"... "right now, LA's winnin' the battle of field position" (a little premature, I would say, seeing that there was 10:40 left in the first quarter)... "You gotta love the spirit goin' on out there"... "He's gonna keep it!" (the QB was already across the line of scrimmage)... "We're gonna see which team wants it more" - sound less like those of a paid analyst and more like what you'd expect from some old geezer kicked back in his La-Z-Boy. *********** I asked a 12-year-old I know what he thought of the XFL. He didn't know my biases, and he isn't a wise guy. He answered, in all seriousness, "I'd rather watch football." *********** Uh, actually, I'd prefer a bit more humility in my pastor. We were told that the Los Angeles player on the receiving end of a 65-yard pass play was a preacher, so I was a bit surprised when the sideline reporter asked him what happened, and he said, "I just made a great play." *********** Remember back in the first week when Mr. Macho Jesse was implying that the New York-New Jersey quarterback was faking a concussion, and suggesting that it might just be a case of his not wanting to go back in? Saturday night, Dr. Ventura told us that he spoke to Las Vegas quarterback Ryan Clement, and, in view of the shoulder separation he suffered last week, "I told him 'maybe you'd be better off sittin' out a week.'" *********** The most exciting part of the night for me came when Jamel Williams of Las Vegas set a new modern professional football record by recovering his third straight scramble. Make room in Canton. *********** I sure wished we had the the Old Army, or better yet, the Marines, when I heard "Jermaine," a "recruit" on one of those new US Army commercials, who confessed, "personally, I don't think I have no weaknesses." Oh boy. Would he be in for a surprise, right from the moment that barber laid the clippers up against his skull. *********** Announcer J.R. told us that "He Hate Me" is "the most popular nickname in sports." I think he was serious. Right. Who's ever heard of Shaq? And then Jesse kicked it up a notch, saying, "he gave himself the most famous nickname in the world." For the record, Las Vegas tailback Rod Smart, who insists on displaying his difficulties with the English language as well as his bragadoccio - not to mention making a target of himself - with that stupid name on his shirt gained 24 yards rushing in 15 carries. I suggest he try something a little less ridiculous. Maybe vertical-striped socks. ************ The All-Access XFL, which Vince McMahon promised would take us places we've never been before, (sounds like something you'd expect one of the "cheerleaders" to say) evidently decided after two weeks that we've seen enough of the locker rooms. Twice before, the TV dweebs took us there live, and twice they found out, as any of us could have told them, that a halftime locker room is actually a pretty dull, businesslike place. So Saturday night, they took several steps back, and did what countless other telecasts before them have done, and showed us taped "shorts" of some of the locker room "action." If I didn't know that the people who put on the WWF are above such a thing, I would have suspected that what we saw was staged to show us how exciting it really is in there, because LA coach Al Lugenbill seemed much more animated than he normally does, and Las Vegas' mild-mannered, soft-spoken Jim Criner (called "Joe Criner" by one of the announcers) didn't even do the exhortations himself. Instead, we heard one of the team leaders doing his best to pump the guys up. *********** Anybody notice how the cameras at the Chicago-Birmingham game studiously avoided showing us the (empty) upper deck of Legion Field? *********** Not that they're crazy about football in Baton Rouge or anything, but last week the LSU people threw their annual "Bayou Bash" for the sole purpose of allowing anyone interested to listen to coach Nick Saban discuss the 27 players the Tigers had just signed. All of the 27 had already been thoroughly written about and discussed at length by the highly-interested local media. 4,000 people showed up (that was all the room could hold). *********** "I found your piece on Allen Iverson and Pat Croce very interesting. However, what jumped out at me most was that in a 90 minute meeting, Croce spoke for approximately 10 minutes. Certainly one of the larger problems when communication breaks down between people (political parties, countries, etc.) is that both sides want to speak but neither side wants to listen. It would appear to me that one of Mr. Croce's strengths as an owner and as a businessman would be his ability to listen to his "employees" and evaluate what they have to say before making a decision." Mike O'Donnell, Pine City, Minnesota *********** "Coach - When I finished my first year at Castaic, the parents gave me a plaque with this saying on it. I don't know if I told you but that first year, I was supposed to assist another team, however the Club president called me the night before practices were to start and asked if I would take the position. The previous HC quit abruptly that day." Coach John Torres, Manteca, California: "A hundred years from now it will not matter the sort of house I lived in, what my bank account was, or the kind of car I drove. But the world may be different because I was important in the life of a CHILD" (Darned if it wasn't the same thing Coach Scott Barnes in Texas had written about just last week!)
*********** John Carver was my freshman coach at Washougal, Washington, and he has been the varsity wrestling coach there for years. He is a great person and he runs a great program. Saturday, Washougal won the state Class 2A championship, its first since 1971, without having a single individual champion. It took solid performances throughout the team: two of the Panthers finished second, one finished third, and three finished fourth.
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He said Iverson told him, "Pat, if you're going to trade me for someone to make the team better, I can understand that. But if you're going to trade me because I'm late for practice or because I don't want to go to shootarounds or because I don't want to strength train or I give the coach lip because I want more minutes on the floor, I can change all that." Croce said his response was, "Bubba, you have to change all that. You got to follow the coach's direction and his rules. I don't want to see you go, but this decision is Coach Brown's, and you have crossed him. You have demonstrated that you won't listen to him." Iverson's response? "Yes, I will. I will." As Croce told Greg Boeck, "the rest is history. That was the best trade never made." *********** I learned what busy work was back in my first year of teaching. An English teacher used to have the kids sit in class and write long essays which, most of them soon learned, she never read. She evidently sat up at her desk and read a novel, and collected everybody's work at the end of class and then wrote some arbitrary grade on them and passed them back the next day. A couple of the football players took to writing nonsensical things in the middle of their essays, and even got to the point where they would compose a first page in their own words, and from then on, merely copy right out of a magazine (it was a Field & Stream kind of town). They were never caught. As a teacher faced with more and more paperwork, I often thought about doing something similar whenever the state required us to fill out some stupid form that I knew no human being would ever set eyes on, but I never did it. I was reminded of this tactic by an article in Monday's Wall Street Journal. An owner of a company in South Carolina told of the time he was running a plant in Alabama for Boise Cascade Corporation, whose headquarters are in Boise, Idaho. He felt overwhelmed by the paperwork, and began to suspect that no one back in Idaho was reading any of his reports anyhow, so he began to insert random messages throughout his reports: "If you're reading this, please call me." No one ever did. Occasionally, he would just leave a page out of a multi-page report. If anyone in Boise complained, he'd just say that he'd made a mistake, and send them the missing page. No one ever did. That was when he decided that it was time to go to work for himself. *********** The honeymoon ended fast for the XFL. After an opening weekend in which its TV ratings were high enough to make its founders giddy, the second week's ratings fell by half, making it apparent that those first-week ratings reflected the enormous money and energy spent on promotion. It generated a lot of curiosity and a lot of lookers - but an awful lot of those first-time customers tried it and didn't like it. And didn't come back. Nor, in all likelihood, will they ever come back. What could possibly bring them back? A key matchup, you say? A big game? This isn't the NFL, where the ratings jump whenever they match up two teams that people want to see. This is the XFL, where they don't have even one team - or one player, for that matter - that the American public is even mildly interested in. NBC (my favorite comedian, Mark Russell, says that, where the XFL is concerned, it stands for No Body Cares) made a lot of noise about not expecting a whole lot, saying that it would be happy with a 5 rating (meaning that 5 per cent of all the TV sets in America are tuned in, as opposed to a "5 share" which means that 5 per cent of all the sets that are turned on are tuned in). But just a week after the much-ballyhooed opening games, in which NBC's XFL broadcasts beat the other three networks in the Saturday night ratings, the second Saturday's ratings had NBC dead last, behind ABC, CBS and Fox. ABC's movie, "The Parent Trap," more than doubled the rating of NBC's "The Bozo Trap," oops, sorry - the XFL. What's sorriest news of all for the XFL is the way people are tuning out - ratings declined every half-hour from 8 PM to 10:30 EST. *********** Speaking of news - the good news about last Saturday night's XFL ratings - if you're an NBC or WWF guy - is that after a steady decline following the opening of the broadcast, they did pick up at the end of the telecast - which the NBC-WWF folks attributed to the fact that the Los Angeles-Chicago game, late in starting as it was, had gone into overtime. The bad news is that the spike in viewership was probably caused by people in the Eastern time zone tuning in expecting to watch Saturday Night Live, whose start was delayed 45 minutes by the extra-long game. In Los Angeles, the NBC station's half-hour local news show was wiped out by the XFL game. A TV station's local news show is one of its biggest moneymakers (which explains all those billboards around your town with the anchorpersons' smiling faces looking down at you). To try to keep games within reasonable time limits, future XFL productions are going to be trimmed. Pregame introductions will be cut by at least five minutes (could that possibly mean no more stirring pep talks by professional wrestlers? One can only hope) and the halftime breaks, short enough already, will be shortened further. No more automatic timeouts following incompletions. The time clock will start as soon as the ball is placed on the line of scrimmage after incompletions and changes of possession, instead of waiting for the ball to be snapped. (Yes! Yes! Yes! So much for spiking the ball to stop the clock! That stupid stop-the-clock-for-incompletions rule heavily favors a passing offense, and at times rewards deliberate incompetence by giving a team the equivalent of a time out for an incompletion.) At least give the XFL credit for being openminded and being willing to make adjustments on the fly. If they can get the wrestlers out of it and get rid of the skin show and get their focus off the drunken bozos in the stands, they may yet come up with a better product than the NFL's. *********** Adam Taliaferro, a 19-year-old freshman defensive back from Penn State, was seriously injured in the Lions' game against Ohio State in September, left paralyzed followng a tackle in which his head was struck by the runner's knee. He is making a miraculous recovery. "The first few weeks were very difficult, because I didn't know if I would ever be able to walk," he told the Philadlephia Inquirer. "Then my left toe started to flicker one day, and it was at that point that I felt I could come back." Come back he has. He left a Philadelphia hospital on January 5, walking with the aid of crutches. He now walks with a cane, but during therapy sessions he is able to walk unaided. He is able to write his name, and his doctors have scheduled a driving test so that he can drive once again, and he plans to return to Penn State for summer session. *********** Tom Hinger, a friend and retired Army corpsman who now lives in Florida, makes it back to a West Point football game every year for a reunion with his buddies from Viet Nam. He wrote, "Army finally released the football schedule for this season, and our group is going to the Tulane game in late October. No doubt about it, West Point is the greatest place to attend a college game." I mentioned that it was hard to argue the latter point, given the history and tradition of the Military Academy and of Michie Stadium, and the scenic beauty of West Point itself, especially on a Saturday afternoon in autumn. "And," Tom added, "no obnoxious drunks falling over you." *********** "Once, working the 1977 Christmas season at a hardware store in Cockeysville, Maryland, Jim Palmer came to buy some decorative lights. When I asked if he wanted his receipt he replied, "Na, if anything goes wrong, you'll remember me." In my own New Jersey style, I could not resist the Siren's call of the wise crack (my dad always said, "No body likes a smart-ass!") and said, "Bert Jones, right?" NEVER came back." Scott Russell, Sterling, Virginia *********** I wrote earlier that Scott Barnes, of Rockwall, Texas, had made a decision to get his teaching credentials and try his hand at teaching and coaching. He writes, "Hey Coach - I was getting all the application materials for Texas Teacher certification (wow, what a bureaucratic quagmire!) - and I came across this - I'm sure you've seen it, but WOW - It's going on my desk! "A hundred years from now it will not matter the sort of house I lived in, what my bank account was, or the kind of car I drove. But the world may be different because I was important in the life of a CHILD." Anonymous *********** I recall thinking how strange it was when my students at a small, rural, all-white high school in Washington were all tired and beat one morning, and I found out it was because they'd gone to a rap concert - Puff Daddy - the night before. And then I remembered that my friends and I were into somewhat the same thing, devoted as we were to the music of black artists such as Fats Domino, Little Richard, LaVerne Baker, Chuck Berry, etc. I guess the big difference was, our involvement with them didn't go beyond the music; it never occured to anyone to try to emulate their lifestyle - certainly not Little Richard's - as today's kids seem to feel the need to do. And, of course, we wouldn't have been allowed to go to a concert on a school night. *********** Think I ain't proud! Seppo Evwaraye became the first product of Finnish football to receive a grant-in-aid to a Division 1-A college, when he signed with Nebraska. This is straight from the Cornhuskers' official web site: "Seppo Evwaraye DL...6-5...325...Laurel, Neb. (Laurel-Concord) Finland native Seppo Evwaraye (pronounced SEP-oh Ev-vwar-AYE-yea) came to the United States and Laurel, Neb., as an exchange student in 1999. He had played just one year of club football in Finland before joining coach Michael Halley's Laurel-Concord Class C2 team. But in just two years, Evwaraye earned enough attention to be named an All-American by PrepStar on offense and an All-American on defense by SuperPrep. He was listed as PrepStar's 18th-best offensive lineman in the midlands and 24th overall in the midlands by SuperPrep. Evwaraye earned All-Nebraska offensive first-team honors from the Omaha World-Herald and super-state honors from the Lincoln Journal Star in 2000. The biggest signee in the class at 6-5, 325, Evwaraye helped Laurel-Concord to a state title in 2000 and to the second round in 1999. He played defensive tackle as a junior and started on both sides of the ball as a senior. He is expected to be a defensive tackle for the Huskers. Evwaraye missed the first three games of his senior season while appealing a Nebraska School Activities Association ruling that allows foreign exchange students just one year of eligibility. His eligibility was restored on Sept. 18. Evwaraye attended the Big Red Football School after his junior season, and only visited Nebraska, although he was also recruited by Iowa, Iowa State and Nebraska-Omaha. He said: "I chose Nebraska because the people, facilities and the staff are all wonderful. Nebraska has great legends, past glory and tradition and has a good academic program. Another factor was that Jim and Carla would be close by to support me." Jim and Carla Erwin were his host parents in 1999 and now share legal guardianship with Seppo's mother, Sirpa. His father is the late Frederick Evwaraye. Seppo was born on July 1, 1982 in Vaasa, Finland. He has an older brother Ari and a younger brother Efe. Evwaraye, who can bench-press 400 pounds and squat 600, has a 4.9 second time in the 40-yard dash. He intends to try his hand at throwing the shot put this spring for Laurel-Concord." *********** Jerry Lelli can get back to teaching and coaching now. Jerry teaches at Ferrucci Junior High in Puyallup (for those of you who are not from the Northwest, that's "pyew-OLL-up") Washington. Two years ago at about this time, he was coaching wrestling, and when he noticed that one of his wrestlers wasn't at practice, he went looking for him. He found him in a classroom where he had been kept after school to do a little work, and because he didn't appear to be concentrating on the job at hand, Jerry told the young fellow to stay focused and get his work done so he could get to practice. Another kid - we all know the type - chimed in and said, "Mr. Lelli - how can he stay focused when you're talking to him?" Now, I'm willing to bet that the kid didn't say "Mister" and I'm also willing to bet that it was not the first time he'd crossed swords with a teacher or a coach, but at any rate, Jerry grabbed the kid by the hair, picked him up and stuffed him headfirst into a trash can. The lawsuit filed by the 14-year-old kid's parents for "future medicals costs," "physical pain," and "emotional strain" (the incident was witnessed by other students, one of whom supposedly held the can upright) was just settled for $100,000. Jerry received a letter of reprimand and is still teaching at Ferrucci. The kid is probably driving a Ferrari. *********** A 17-year-old soccer player in Ohio was charged with felony assault after allegedly delliberately kicking the opposing goalie in the face moments after their youth game had ended. *********** The XFL - Bringing the fun back to football. Albert Trevino, 46, was sitting in his wheelchair, in a special area reserved for handicapped people, trying to watch the XFL game in Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Saturday night, when he got caught in a crossfire of sorts. Mr. Trevino is paralyzed, and so was unable to protect himself when fighting broke out between two groups of young men drinking beer (talk about profiling) and spilled into the handicapped section. Mr. Trevino's wheelchair was pushed from behind, and although it was kept from rolling too far by a two-foot-high metal plate installed for that purpose, he was launched headfirst out of his chair, and fell helplessly into the seats down below. He was hospitalized with bruises over much of a his body and a cut on his head. He told the Los Angeles Times that it took first-aid people 10 minutes and paramedics 20 minutes to get to him, largely because they had to fight their way through the unruly "spectators." The paramedics told him they had to use their equipment as shields. Do you believe in omens? Mr. Trevino lives in Ventura, California. |
A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: Not everything in football's past is
noble and glorious. Some things are downright ludicrous,
like the uniforms at left. Which brings us to the
XFL. There is an area where the League That McMahon Built
could be especially vulnerable. Especially in football,
you'd better be careful how you look if you are
bad. For want of a better term, I would call it
the "vertical stripes" phenomenon. Probably not too many
of you remember this team. They wore vertical striped
socks that made them look like court jesters. Certainly
not like any pro football team any living American at
that time could remember seeing. They went ahead and
decided to be different before they were good, which is
always dangerous, and as a result, they became laughing
stocks, and endangered the credibility of an entire new
league. Of course, if they had been really good, they
could have worn any socks they wanted. Little kids would
have worn them to school. By now, everybody might be
wearing them. Fortunately for us and for modern dress
standards, though, this team sucked, winning a total of
seven games in their first two seasons.
"... (Dave) Leggett, after faking to (Hubert) Bobo, hit right end Fred Kriss in the end zone for a touchdown, and the halftime score was a 7-7 tie, although the Buckeyes had been outgained something like 190 yards to 42 yards. Kriss, a Phi Beta Kappa, is now a neurosurgeon." (Coach Hayes always took enormous pride in such distinguished achievements by his former players.) Coach Hayes was writing about the 1954 Michigan game, won by the Buckeyes, 21-7. Asked to name his greatest victory, Coach Hayes wrote, "Without question, this one is it, because it brought us our first undefeated season, it brought us a national championship, it brought us seven straight Big Ten victories, and only one other team had ever done that. The great Mr. Amos Alonzo Stagg led his Chicago team to seven in a row in 1913, the year I was born." *********** My wife received a copy of a memo sent the other day to a number of teachers in her building, attempting to prepare them for a student with "special needs" who had just enrolled. "Recess concerns include the following: (he) is not to climb on the equipment or use the slide. If he should climb and get stuck (he is described elsewhere in the memo as "large"), please assist him in getting down safely. He is afraid of heights and falls easily. The swings are okay but please watch him closely. Also, he is susceptible to sun burns and should not be in the hot, direct sunlight between 10 AM and 3 PM. Fortunately, we will not have to deal with this until later this year." (Uh, have the kids' folks heard about sun screen?) *********** "I was at local clinic for High School coaches this weekend and had the pleasure to sit in on some really interesting stuff. Friday, the Northwestern staff went over their "Run Gun" offense. They seem to overscheme the blocking rules but they really only have 5 core plays out of that no huddle gun - their Zone play (Ran it 182 times) a trap, a naked bootleg, QB trap and the Tackle trap counter. I guess it helps to have Damian Anderson to pick holes on the zone block play. The NU guys didn't like it when one of the old timers in the audience suggested that Zack Kustoc was basically just a "spinning fullback" and they were running a form of the single wing. I had to laugh." Bill Lawlor, Hanover Park, Illinois (Perhaps you had a chance to watch what Northwestern, hopelessly out-talented against Nebraska, did offensively to try to make a game of it. The old-timer was right - it definitely was single-wing stuff, even if the guys at Northwestern think they invented it.) *********** Is a WXFL next? My wife called my attention to an article in a recent copy of Smith College's alumni magazine about Smith's rugby team. There are 70 players on its roster. The Smith rugby team plays a full schedule of games against teams from other colleges all over New England. Smith is an all-women's school. Women's rugby could catch on in the US, for the same reason women's soccer and women's ice-hockey have: they have a chance to win a world's championship. Mainly, that's because, although many might argue that we still don't pay enough attention to our women's sports, most nations don't pay any attention at all to them. I mean, look who our women have to worry about in soccer. Norway. Norway? As a result, unlike American men, who stand little chance of ever competing in rugby on a world scale against Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the like because most Americans typically don't begin to play the game until they get to college, American women can wait that long and still dominate the world. "Women can learn rugby at 19 when they enter college," the article said, "and still compete on the world scene, because women's rugby is socially unacceptable in so many cultures." Well, more power to the ladies. I noticed that they may be upholding one noble rugby tradition. "At the conclusion," the article noted, "they gather for food, songs and bonding." "Bonding?" Are you kidding me? Shows how old I am. I played rugby in college, but when we got together with our opponents afterward, in the grand tradition of the sport, and drank beer and sang, uh, off-color songs, the feel-good folks hadn't invented the word "bonding" yet. *********** In writing the story of Tom McHugh, the kid who chose Penn State, partly because, as he said, "God forbid, if anything ever happens to me, a blown knee or whatever, where am I going to be happier? I'm going to be happier at Penn State," I was taken back to a conversation I had several years ago with a young man named Jason Palumbis. Jason was an outstanding quarterback at Lakeridge High School in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and he was the cousin of Ben Jatos, a student in one of my classes at the school where I taught. Ben told me that Jason was being recruited by Stanford, among several other schools, and since my wife and I had a son who had graduated from Stanford and a daughter who was attending there at the time, I said I'd be happy to try to answer any questions he might have about the school. Jason did call, and told me that he'd cut his list of schools down to Iowa, Pitt and Stanford. Nothing against the football programs at Iowa (This was when Hayden Fry was coaching there) or Pitt, and nothing against the schools themselves, but I told Jason that in my opinion, if all things were relatively equal, it wasn't even close. I told him that there were wealthy people in places like Beverly Hills who would kill - well, hire somebody to kill - to get their kid into Stanford. But it still wouldn't matter. Stanford had become by then far and away the toughest school to get into west of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and not even death threats could budge its admissions people. Bribe your way in? Might as well try getting a presidential pardon for Charles Manson. You say he was just pardoned? Oh. Never mind. Anyhow, here Jason was, being offered admission to Stanford. Just for playing signing a letter of intent to football. My advice was to go there - even if he broke his leg, God forbid, and never put on a football uniform, he would still be way ahead of the game. I doubt that my advice swung his decision, but Jason did wind up going to Stanford, and despite a few injuries, he did manage to play some QB for the Cardinal. But when all was said and done, as it usually is for most college players after four or five years, he got an education. And a Stanford diploma. Eat your hearts out down there in Beverly Hills. *********** If they ever find the cancer cure, it will take the FDA ten years before it approves the drug for use by humans. But on the other hand, if it's sold as a "dietary supplement," we'll be able to buy it in malls. From vending machines, maybe. I am not a Big Government guy, but I have to be realistic: if ever something was screaming for government regulation, it is the gray area of "dietary supplements," the handy disguise of all sorts of herbal concoctions, some beneficial, many utterly worthless, some potentially lethal. One example of the problem of unregulated dietary supplements that coaches have become aware of is the use of creatine by high school kids. Another example hit our area recently when three students were expelled from Washington's La Center High School (you may remember that I once coached there) for violation of the school's "drug policy." Their offense was using and distributing a "diet supplement" sold legally to adults at nearby convenience stores. Known as "Yellow Jackets," the yellow pills with the black stripes contain an herbal ingredient known as ephedra, a natural stimulant of the central nervous system. Combined with caffeine, either in the "supplement" itself or in coffee or popular soft drinks, it can, according to kids, make a user "really hyper." Another student described Yellow Jackets as "like legal speed." (With word of mouth advertising like that, its popularity is understandable.) They aren't technically legal, but they are about as hard for kids to get as cigarettes, which also can't legally be sold to minors. Trouble is, says Dr. Joshua Boverman of Oregon Health Sciences University, "In high enough doses, ephedra is an intoxicating herb and can have potentially serious adverse reactions," including, he said, "heart problems, inflammation, increased blood pressure, strokes, seizures." That's over and above such nasty side effects as dizziness, nausea, rapid or irregular pulse, and painful or difficult urination. High doses of ephedra can also cause psychosis, mania, anxiety, panic and insomnia. Wow. Pass the Yellow Jackets. The message the expulsions were supposed to send seemed lost on at least one La Center student, who told the Vancouver Columbian, "They were expelled for something they can buy at the Texaco." *********** And the NBA wonders why it has problems. Rasheed Wallace of the Portland Trail Blazers is one of the best basketball players in the NBA. He also is one of its most immature, which is saying quite a bit. He has been called for 27 technical fouls so far this season, and has been tossed out of four games. So far. Last year he led the NBA in technicals. His technical problems mostly stem from the fact that he is always right! He is never wrong! The referees are! They're out to get him! He'll show them, though. Just watch what happens when he has a foul called on him, and suddenly you're carried back to those days of teaching spoiled eighth grade girls, who roll their eyes whenever you tell them something they don't like. Rasheed doesn't roll his eyes, though. He glares. He scowls. He's actually picked up "T's" for the nasty look he can give a ref. Talk about pouting. Talk about sulking. Talk about tantrums. He's the complete package. He's also completely uncooperative with the news media. All the time. If he refuses to talk with a reporter, he's having a good day. Normally, it's "get outta here." He's what everybody said the NBA would turn into if it continued to reward overgrown children with so much money that they are beyond the reach of any civilizing influence in our society, from being fined for swearing at an official to being arrested for assault, DUI, drug possession or even murder. In his own words, he really doesn't care what you, and I, or those less intelligent forms of life who actually pay good money to watch him play. In his own words, "I don't care what they think about me. It doesn't matter to me. Your're not in my inner circle. The only people I care about are my wife and kids, my mother, my brothers and close friends to the family. (No teammates, 'sheed?) I just care about what they think about me. If you're outside my circle, I couldn't care less." Just in case anybody might have thought he did. *********** Nate McMillan is in an argument with the Commissioner, and he isn't going to win. Too bad, because I think he's right. At a time when the NBA is considering any suggestion - including, some say, going to four-on-four - to try to bring excitement back to a game which often looks like eight water buffaloes grazing while two jackals fight it out, McMillan, coach of the Seattle Super Sonics, has an idea worth investigating. The major reason so many players loaf and defy coaches, he maintains - and who can argue with him? - is that they are far too comfortable and secure just the way they are, and there is no incentive for them to hustle or conform. His solution? Limit everyone to one year contracts. Idiotic, says Commissioner David Stern - the agents will love it, because every player will become a free agent every year, and they'll have a field day playing teams off against each other. Entire teams could be depleted in a day. To which I say, so? You telling me that isn't happening now? Doing it McMillan's way, we would see better basketball, because if every player knew he would be going on the block at the end of every season, he would hustle his tail off and make it to every practice, or else when it came time for the annual free agent shuffle, there wouldn't be a lot of interest in his services. No more long-term contracts - which always wind up being renegotiated to the player's benefit anyhow. No more lifetime security for 18-year-olds. Combine the one-year contract with a real, honest-to-God salary cap, which, since money couldn't be deferred, would be a whole lot easier for the rest of us to understand, and small-market teams would have a chance. For a year at least. To cope with the sheer number of players who would have to be signed or re-signed, I have a suggestion - Player Fairs! Free agent combines! Four or five of them around the country! Charge admission! Put 'em on TV! If you can convince advertisers to sponsor something as inane and uninteresting as the draft, I know you could sell the TV rights to the combines. Mr. Stern, before you dismiss Nate McMillan as insane, give his idea some thought. *********** Joe Isuzu is coming back! It's hard to believe that it's been 10 years since that sleazy car salesman lied to us about his cars' top speed, gas mileage, value, and so forth, but he's coming back! Watch for the first ad in the campaign, where he's shown sitting on the couch, maybe 20 pounds heavier than back in his heyday. He's watching an Isuzu ad on TV, complaining that "they haven't done a decent commercial since they cut me loose," when b-r-r-r-ing! the phone rings. It's Isuzu, and they want him back. *********** Three of the 10 busiest corporate directors as listed by the Wall Street Journal last week are black men. One is Vernon Jordan (the former Clinton golfing buddy who was assigned to find a job for Monica and get her out of D.C. - notice how quickly Mr. Jordan became an ex-FOB?). The other two are former football players: Willie Davis, Green Bay Packers' great and a graduate of Grambling, and Jesse Arnelle, a lawyer and Penn State alum, who played both basketball and football for the Nittany Lions. *********** FROM OUR CRACK EDUCATION STAFF: Think for a minute about the best kids in your school. How many of them are planning on going into teaching? Not many? Well, talk about all the education reform gimmicks you want, but if we're not going to get at least some of the top kids to go into teaching, how can we expect education to improve? I really do think that one of the biggest problems in convincing the top kids to go into teaching is money. Not money in the sense of how much they can buy with it - money in the sense that that's the way that everybody in our culture keeps score. Kids are smart enough to see that society talks big about education but doesn't respect teachers. I believe they've figured out that if they're going to settle for a teacher's pay, they're going to be seen as losers. Respect is important to these kids, and nowadays respect, sad to say, walks hand-in-hand with money. I know, I know - if they don't sincerely feel the call to teach, they shouldn't be teaching. But what about the kid who does feel a call to teach, say, chemistry - but has an offer in hand to do research for a big pharmaceutical company, for twice the money? |
*********** A few more random observations on the XFL, after its second week (yes, I watch, for two reasons: (1) they are playing football and they're the only game in town; and, (2) I was once part of a new league that tried to make it, and I do sympathize with the players and coaches and I'd like to see them keep their jobs. I know their chances aren't good.) *** For the second week in a row, a WWF "superstar" (to the rest of us, that rates either a big Ho-Hum or a big Who-He) played on the us-against-them theme, slamming the NFL, which wisely has had nothing to say about this flea of a league. Last week it was Stone Cold Steve Austin, warning NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue that this new league, which he has referred to as a "non-issue," telling him that the "non-issue" might "bite him in the ass." This past weekend it was "The Rock", called out to deliver the opening convocation. The "NFL suits" pulled football out of Los Angeles, he told the crowd (Yeah! Yeah!)... The "NFL suits" didn't think you needed pro football... blah, blah, blah. So now, "we say to you, the NFL suits, and to everyone else around who wants to tell us, the people, what we should have and what we should not have, we respectfully tell you to take your bags and turn 'em sideways and stick 'em straight up... " You get the idea. He wasn't mincing words, but after all, it was the XFL's target audience of 12-to-24-year-old males that he was addressing. Who asked you to listen in? I do have another concern - what is it with these wrestler types and their fixation with rear ends, anyhow? *** If "The Rock" is really correct, and not exaggerating, in saying that, after six long years, pro football has come back to Los Angeles... will Al Davis sue the XFL? *** Other than the young yahoos we see in the stands, I see absolutely no carryover value from WWF to football, no evidence that the WWF's unique ability to appeal to adolescent boys is anywhere close to the challenge of selling to the masses. The pro wrestling types have absolutely no clue how to market a real sport - that is, anything that isn't scripted - to the general public. And, as Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune writes, the audience that tunes in looking for sex and violence is bound to be disappointed: "you can see better sex on cable, better violence on pro wrestling or the news." *** It was 5:45 Pacific Time Sunday when the WWF guys came on at halftime and introduced "The Cat," an attractive little lady who proceeded to take off her overcoat and show us that she was, uh, underdressed. I know your wife won't be watching anymore. What abouot your teenage boys? *** The XFL would have a better chance of success if it had no connection to the WWF. The WWF brings absolutely nothing of value to the XFL. Most of the criticism of the league that I have read can be traced directly to the gross conduct of the pro wrestling types and the WWF's unmistakable influence on the bizarre, non-football aspects of the "show." And, of course, the "audience" that they are obviously cultivating. *** People really do seem willing to give the XFL's brand of football a chance, even knowing that at this point it isn't all that good. If NBC really was looking just to fill a programming hole with something that - for it - is a whole lot cheaper than developing and shooting a sitcom, it didn't have to sully itself (remember when it was the Network of the Olympics?) by getting in bed with those scuzzballs from the WWF. *** The XFL is football. It is not very good football. Yet. It has at least one good player - William Avery, Chicago running back - and undoubtedly a few more. Its coaches seem to be career types who know that while the league talks entertainment and being different, they will lose their jobs if they don't win, which unfortunately for us means doing the same things offensively that we see in the NFL. *** It is not "smashmouth" football. Not even close. Not by any football man's definition of the term. Only one of the four teams playing on Saturday ran for more than 100 yards. Same on Sunday. Los Angeles ran the ball only 18 times while throwing it 66; San Francisco ran it just 16 times and threw it 53. *** For some reason, even though no members of the punting team can release downfield until the ball is punted, they still have punts blocked. *** We were told by the geniuses on the Sunday game that Mike Cawley, Las Vegas's backup quarterback, came out of James Madison University (which is true) in Washington, D.C. (Not even close. Try Harrisonburg, Virginia, about 120 miles away from the nation's capital.) *** The XFL's elimination of the the conversion kick is a blessing to football fans. Perhaps they should consider giving a team the option of going for two from the five yard line. I personally liked the World Football League's making a touchdown worth seven points, because there is no way that two field goals should be the equivalent of a touchdown. *** I am still waiting to experience the thrill of the new punting rules that Jesse keeps telling us about ("Dontcha love it? No fair catches!") every time fourth down rolls around. And after the ball's punted, perhaps to see if our hearts can take any more excitement, they keep reminding us that "IT'S A FREE BALL!" *** Brian Bosworth made fun of Memphis running back "He Hate Me" for trying to create a persona around that name. Uh, isn't that what a guy named Brian Bosworth did in creating a character he called "The Boz?" *** I am tired of XFL/WWF people playing themselves - Jesse Ventura starring as Jesse Ventura (guess Hulk Hogan wasn't available). Do you suppose Jesse would sound like Pee Wee Herman if you woke him up in the middle of the night? A person known as the Rock, starring as The Rock. Don't you love the way he takes off his sunglasses and defies you to "bring it?" Isn't he impressive? The kids all think so. Don't you love a guy who constantly refers to himself in the third person? Wouldn't you like to stand down on the floor of Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and shout vulgarities up into a microphone held overhead, like a dog baying at the moon? Dick Butkus, starring as Dick Butkus. Isn't it pathetic when an ex-NFL great has to lower himself to shilling for a new league by biting the hand that fed him? Hey, Dick - if this XFL is so much tougher, how come your knees are so banged up from playing in that other wussie league? Brian Bosworth plays The Boz. We're talking lowlife here. From the time he opened his mouth and told us that the Memphis players were "pissed off" at finding out how much the IRS took from their paychecks, to the really cool joke about the Chicken Ranch and all the bangin' (nyuk, nyuk), degrading the sport of football, the female sex, and the English language, not to mention the broadcasting profession. He was such a great actor, he played The Boz so convincingly, that he made me want Jesse Ventura to return. Vince McMahon is Vince McMahon. Who else could play a guy so full of himself that he really believes he can move in with absolutely no football credentials and singlehandedly redefine the sport that so many people built, and so many of us will fight to defend against the likes of him? *** Talk about a crisis of leadership - how bad must Jesse's opponents in Minnesota have been? *** I did discover a way to shut Jesse up: Turn on a coach's mike between plays. There were 13 seconds left in the half Saturday, and we overheard Los Angeles calling for "Trips Right 15 Charlie," followed by several seconds of dead silence from Governor Gridiron, the resident expert. Now, if I could just find the off switch to Brian Bosworth... *** How cool! Rashaan Salaam of Memphis tried one of those reach-out-and-lay-the-ball-down deals down on the goal line, but he lost control of the ball and Las Vegas' Kurt Gouveia returned it 99 yards for a score. *** What would you have done if you had taken your two little kids to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and there you were, sitting in the middle of that crowd of loonies, darkness coming on, when the power went out? *** The Los Angeles-Chicago game looked like an intra-squad game, with the guys in the home uniforms (dark shirts with white shoulders and pants and silver helmets) against the guys in the away uniforms (white shirts with dark shoulders and pants and silver helmets). *** From a distance, the Los Angeles logo looks disturbingly like a swastika. *** Was I hallucinating, or did I see Mark Chmura in that hot tub down in one corner of the field? Probably not. The girls looked to be in their twenties. *** Quote of the week came from "J.R." whoever he is, the announcer who replaced the hopelessly football-challenged Matt Vasgersian on the A team: "He contributes his mother to a great deal of his success." *** Second-best (or worst) came from "King" whoever he was, doing the "color" on the Orlando-San Francisco game. As the camera scanned the Orlando bimbos, he said, "I gotta call my mom and tell her I've just met the girl of my dreams." *** The league that wasn't going to hold anything back from us, that wasn't going to spare us any of the violence (who, after all, are those NFL suits to tell us what we should have and what we shouldn't have?), nevertheless declared that it would not be showing us "exactly what happened" when 330-pound Chicago lineman Octavious Bishop broke two bones in his leg. Yeah. Right. They were really taking the high road. How much you wanna bet they just didn't have it on any of their replay machines? *** If they really want to put some action in their "scramble" that takes place in lieu of a coin toss, they will have the guys approach the ball from opposite directions. *** The sideline mike caught Los Angeles' quarterback Tommy Maddox in a great display of team leadership following a missed field goal. We were treated to a replay of him loudly second-guessing the coach's decision to kick. "He can't make it!" we heard him shout. "Let's don't kick it!" Later, although part of his comments were bleeped out, we didn't have to pass Lip-Reading 101 (the "F-word" is probably the easiest word in our language to lip-read) to know that he'd said "Why the F--- did we kick it?" Later in the game, with Los Angeles struggling to overcome a Chicago lead, Maddox threw a stupid inteception into the end zone. When he came off the field, I didn't see a single coach or player go over to him with any words of encouragement. Or anything else. If it had been me, I'd have put my loving arm around him and said, "Now will you stick to quarterbacking and leave the coaching to me?" *** Jesse and his announcer buddy happened to mention that Los Angeles receiver Jeremaine Copeland had been working as a janitor before he caught on with the XFL. One of them also happened to mention that he was a graduate of Tennessee, and the other said, "what's that say about graduates of the University of Tennessee?" I was ticked. I wanted to call. What it says, I wanted to tell them, is that one of their graduates wasn't too proud to go to work to earn an honest buck. Since when is a pro football player any better, or more useful, than a janitor, anyhow?
*********** Speaking of skateboards, how about this for a stereotype? We have skateboarders everywhere I look, but they are always white and male. (Used to be young, too, but increasingly, downtown Portland at least seems to be infested with skateboarders in their 30's.) A couple of weeks ago I saw my first girl skateboarder. I remember when I saw a black skateboarder. It was about this time last year. It was a kid on a street in Ventnor, New Jersey. Actually, I don't know for sure if he was a skateboarder. He wasn't dressed for the part, and he was only carrying the skateboard. Maybe a friend gave it to him to hold. I couldn't wait to see. The light turned green.
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He was known for occasionally doing unconventional things, like the time he allowed his players to play volleyball (with a football) the day before a game. Such antics were considered heresy in most parts of the football world of those times. But make no mistake: his teams were well conditioned and well-drilled. Bobby Dodd was as hard and tough as he had to be. It's just that he was certainly not a stereotypical coach of the time. "We don't scrimmage after the season opens," he said. "We don't drive our boys. We don't try to get them up psychologically for a particular game, and I think that's one reason we don't have many flat Saturdays. Every game is the same to us." Coach Dodd was way ahead of his time in recognizing that fans wanted more than win - his teams were known for playing entertaining football (remember, his Belly-T was at that time considered the height of deception) "The fans pay for entertainment," he once said, "and it is our job to give it to them. Nowadays (this was 1952) a spectator is not satisfied merely to watch a winner. You have to thrill him. He wants to see the unexpected. We give that to him - within bounds." Bill Curry recalled at the time of Coach Dodd's death in 1988 that Coach Dodd always stressed the advantages of being able to outthink opponents. "He told us, 'we have an advantage because we're smarter than they are.' The amazing thing was, we were stupid enough to believe him." To show just how highly regarded he was, around Atlanta the people used to say, "In Dodd we trust."
*********** "Hi Coach. When my wife and I saw those 'die-hard' Packers fans outside the court room, lending their support for Chewy (Mark Chmura) we burst into laughter. We guessed they probably tailgated while they waited. And then the local news dorks interview these people. It was like a scene from the movie 'Fargo'. "Ya, we luv Chewy, we're behind him all da way. He's awaze a Packer to us. The team shood bring 'em back cuz we need a good tight end still. Go Pack go." His attorney was a piece of work too. Did you hear when he commented that Mark's behavior was only exemplified by Congressional Medal of Honor heroes. I'm sure our veterans loved that one. He's also the guy who was Jeffrey Dahmer's attorney. Only in Green Bay. Adam Wesoloski, De Pere, Wisconsin. (I have heard a few people mention hearing the lawyer make some reference to Chmura's courage being comparable to that of a Congressional medal of Honor winner, but I didn't, and I'm glad. There is no higher honor conferred on an American than the Congressional Medal of Honor. The only people whose courage could possibly be compared to that of a Medal of Honor Winner would be those large numbers of our service people whose equally brave deeds were never recognized. Several years ago, the Medal of Honor Society held its annual convention in Vancouver, Washington. With the help of my principal, Chris Thompson, an ex-Marine, I managed to get a couple of the medal winners to come out to our school and talk with my freshmen. One of the men was an Army Air Corps bomber pilot from Montgomery, Alabama. He died just last year. The other man was a combat infantryman from Pittston, Pennsylvania, who told me that his biggest joy at that point in his life was riding to the local high school football team's games on the team bus. I told my kids that meeting those two men was a far greater honor for me than meeting any Super Bowl coach would have been. Mark Chmura. What an insult to those men.) *********** If you want to see a great web site, go to www.cracksmoker.com and see their version of the Survival game, asking people to vote which of 64 pro athletes they'd least like to see at their door to take their daughter out on a date. *********** "While the media throngs were inside the locker rooms, trying to confirm the rumor that cheerleaders shower with the players in this new extreme league, the crowd found its best thrill of the day in the fight outside. This was what they had come to see. Soon police with riot gear were there, and an English soccer match broke out. "This was a crowd unlike your average 49ers crowd, or even the AC/DC-listening, knight-of-death-dressing Oakland Raiders fans. This was a wrestling crowd. Young, white, drunk, tough. Looking for excitement. "In the midst of all this, a game was played. Not much of a game, though the Demons managed to win with a last-second field goal. The football was sloppy, and too many penalty flags were thrown for a game that was billed as a blood-and-guts extravaganza. "The crowd didn't care. It was into the beer, the stripping cheerleader commercial on the park's big screen TV and the trash-talking players. A raucous time to be sure, but this is not how the new league will survive." David calloway - CBS Marketwatch
But guys- I think brewers had better be very careful about their involvement with the XFL. We keep hearing that the XFL isn't really interested in you and me. Screw us old geezers and our idea of football. And women. They want those"12-to-24-year-old males." The kind that pin posters of cheerleaders on their walls. That is what they keep saying. That is why they have designed the show they way they have, with minimal football and an emphasis on snarling, tough-talking pro wrestler types, and silicone-enhanced exotic dancers euphemistically called "cheerleaders."
*********** Wow. Talk about leadership. Mookie Blaylock, of the Golden State Warriors, skipped practice last Sunday. To play golf. He was their captain. *********** When a snowstorm hit the Philadelphia area Monday, several of the 76ers had their problems getting to the First Union Center for their scheduled game against the Denver Nuggets. So when Allen Iverson arrived at 7:05 for a game originally scheduled to start at 7:00 (the start was delayed to 8:00), and looked around and saw only six teammates ready to go, he sounded like one of those linemen we all have, the ones who always want to run the ball. Said the 5-11, 170 Iverson, "I'm playing power forward, man!" *********** Cliff (Clifford, whatever) Robinson played for the Portland Trail Blazers, and he was, to put it mildly, a bit of a knucklehead, even by NBA standards. But he was young, and very unsophisticated. Add riches beyond most people's imaginations and stir, and you've got the makings of a first-class jerk. Cliffie eventually moved on to Phoenix, where we haven't heard a lot about him other than the fact that he seemed to have cleaned up his act, and settled in to being a pretty steady basketball player. Now he has been arrested for DUI, and the police also found a pipe and some pot in the car. I was actually saddened, because I do like to think that people can grow up. But my hopes rose once again when I saw him interviewed at a press conference. First of all, he had the guts to face the press (Rasheed Wallace won't even do that after he manages to avoid getting any technicals, scores 25 points, pulls down 16 rebounds, and the Trail Blazers win). He wasn't hiding behind dark glasses or the brim of a hat. He didn't apologize conditionally ("if I offended anyone..."). He apologized. Period. Said he was sorry. Said he was wrong. Acted contrite. Humble, if you can believe that in a professional athlete. Didn't blame anyone else. Didn't accuse the police officers of going after him because he was rich and famous and black. I know it's a small step, and it took a violation of the law to bring it about, but I think he showed a lot of maturity, and I hope kids saw it. *********** If there were no worthwhile articles in Sports Illustrated, I'd still take it for Rick Reilly's weekly essay on the back page, and Steve Rushin's "Air and Space" column. Last week, Rushin wrote about how much he loves February, with its "wonderful once-a-year extravaganzas like the Daytona 500 and the NBA All-Star Game, both so entertaining yet so different. (One is a high-octane gathering of the tattooed, the tank-topped, the poorly educated; the other is an automobile race.)" *********** A youth coach I know told me he has been offered a chance to be a volunteer coach at a nearby high school. He hopes eventually to be a high school coach, and asked me what I thought. Here's what I told him: It would be a good idea for you to listen to what is expected of you. And then, of course, before making a commitment, make sure that you find out all you can about the head coach as a man and whether you can serve on his staff without compromising your principles. This is important, because once you commit, you have to support him 100 per cent. *********** It was interesting watching Commissioner Paul Tagliabue dealing with the loutish Ray Lewis following the Super Bowl, pretty much forcing him to pull back the hat under which he'd been hiding so they could get on with the presentation of the Super Bowl MVP award. Now, Ray Lewis is Rich beyond the dreams on most Americans, and the way he makes his money doesn't depend on civility or manners but it does make you wonder how, exactly, he might have made his living had he broken his leg his rookie year. I've taught in a number of schools where the faculty has wrestled with the subject of students wearing baseball caps in class, and there has never been a consensus. I personally have gone back and forth between an it-doesn't-make-a-bit-of-difference-to-me approach to one of somebody-has-to-teach-them-and-it-might as-well-be-me. As a general rule, I came down on the side which said, "I want you to be prepared to succeed anywhere you might go, and there is a big world out there, in much of which it is considered bad form for a gentleman to wear a hat indoors." I also found that it was a way to get things off to a good start by letting the guys know who the boss was right off the bat. But as I say, I coould go whichever way the vote of the faculty went. So I was interested in a letter written to the Yale Alumni Magazine by a former professor, Henry Albers, class of '51, now living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was writing in response to an article by a current professor of economics, who said that whether or not students wore hats in class was not high on his list of priorities. "In my years as professor," he wrote, "I always asked students who wore baseball or other caps or hats to remove them - partly because I did not consider wearing such attire in a classroom as 'good manners." "Another reason was that I wanted my students to learn to accept authority, mine for a time and others later in their careers. I wanted them to learn to accept social normas or proper dress within my classroom, as they would need to know these norms for the future - in corporate offices and board rooms, in private clubds, in the homes of business executives, and in other social enclaves. "The act of removing baseball caps (including those reversed) would make a good point of departure for the first lecture in intermediate economics. It would reinforce the authority of the professor, teach the facts of economic life, and help some students gain a measure of civility." *********** Jesse Ventura notwithstanding, current medical research has taught us that despite TV announcers' use of the term "mild concussion," there is no such thing. A brain injury - which is what a concussion is - is like no other sports injury. You can ice a shoulder, knee or ankle, but you can't "ice the brain." It is now known that repeated concussions can have devastating affects on young athletes, and can lead to cumulative brain injury. Therefore, in the interest of helping promote anything that might make our game safer, I have consented to notify my readers about a seminar for coaches, athletic directors, recreation directors and interested parents on young athletes entitled "Managing Concussion in Sports and Recreation." Bancroft NeuroHealth's Institute of Professional Development and Research, whose stated mission is "to disseminate current knowledge and promote best practices regarding acquired brain injuries and developmental disabilities through applied research, education and training of personnel throughout the world" will be putting on the all-day workshop on Friday, April 27 in Blackwood, New Jersey (near Philadelphia). The seminar, which costs $95, will feature a number of physicians speaking on topics ranging from "What Happens to a Brain When Concussed" to continuing symptoms (after-effects) of a concussion and how a young athlete is affected, to an overview of grades 1,2 and 3 concussions to on-the-scene assessment of concussions. Everyone attending the workshop will be given the full Standardized Assessment of Concussion (SAC), including palm card and injury assessment cards. For further information check www.bancroft.org, or call Helen Fiorentini at (856) 429-5637, extension 149 |
A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY... We are looking at one of the
greatest college coaches of all time. Robert E. Lee Dodd
(there was a time when it seemed half of all southern
white men were named for Robert E. Lee), better known as
Bobby Dodd, spent 22 years as head coach at Georgia Tech.
It was the only place he ever coached: he spent the first
13 years of his coaching career there as an assistant to
his predecessor, Bill Alexander. He retired with a record
of 165-64-8. In an era when there were basically four
major bowl games (Rose, Cotton, Orange and Sugar) plus
the Gator Bowl, and both spots in the Rose and one in the
Cotton were locked up by conference agreements, Bobby
Dodd managed to take his teams to 13 bowl games, winning
nine of them. Bear Bryant, Wally Butts, Frank Howard,
Shug Jordan, Bob Neyland - you name the great southern
coach - Coach Dodd's teams played 'em and beat 'em.
*********** "I absolutely LOVED your comment about the XFL coin toss! I'm still laughing! A knife fight would have been entertaining, however what if they had a mud wrestling event (Maybe with the cheerleaders) or they even could have decided the toss by having some chicken fights. They may have to resort to such practices because I don't think this league is going to be around very long. Honestly, I was not real impressed with the XFL." Mike Lane, Avon Grove, Pennsylvania *********** In the San Francisco Demons/LA Extreme game, just before halftime, did you hear Brian Bosworth refer to the locker room as a "sanctimonious" place? It almost reminded me of the Damon Wayans character Oswald on "In Living Color" Steve Tobey, Malden, Massachusetts. (Although I didn't pay much attention to the reincarnation of The Boz, I did happen to hear that. I guess he meant "like a sanctum," which is a private place of retreat. That certainly is how most people think of a team's locker room. Perhaps he meant to say "sacrosanct," meaning sacred. "Sanctimonious," meaning "pretending to be pious," scarcely describes any locker rooms I've ever been in. *********** "I'm 23 and I left the XFL after 10 minutes and when to the The Learning Channel and A&E to watch programs which I will get more out of. It's good being a History major, I can watch all the shows that help my mind grow. The sad thing is my 17 year old brother and his friends love the XFL. I'm going to work on him." John Grimsley, Gaithersburg, Maryland *********** "I'd watch a couple more XFL games. If I don't like the XFL, I'll go to camping somewhere in Colorado mountains just to get away from all." Jim Kuhn, Greeley, Colorado *********** Two questions I have, were those actual Cheerleaders or working girls from some of the infamous Nevada Ranches? And, whatever happened to Class and Good Taste in our society? Doug Gibson- Naperville, Illinois *********** Dang! This guy knows his minor league football! Whit Snyder, of baytown Texas, writes, "Okay, but could the Hitmen beat the San Antonio Toros? How about the Wheeling Ironmen?" Shoot! I completely forgot about the San Antonio Toros! I knew a guy named George Pasterchik who was their coach, and I owe him an apology. Same with Lou Blumling and the Wheeling Ironmen! *********** I caught a few questions about my reference to East Baltimore Street in connection with the XFL's "cheerleaders." East Baltimore Street, known in Baltimore simply as The Block, is (or at least was) absolutely the sleaziest concentration of strip clubs and dives in the Free World. Scott Russell, of Sterling, Virginia, revived a few memories when he wrote, "In my 9 years in "Charm City", I can attest to the fact that only ONCE did I ever go to the Block, AND the only establishment I went into was ... Polack Johnny's! My virtue remains intact." (Polack Johnny's! How well I remember his annual Polish sausage-eating contest. How could such a politically-incorrect place survive any place but East Baltimore Street? Johnny's slogan: "Polack Johnny... is my name... Polish sausage... is my game.") Actually, from what I have since read about the mobs of young men who spent an entire XFL game standing shoulder-to-shoulder and salivating around the back of the stage on which the "cheerleaders" performed, I was reminded not so much of East Baltimore Street as the Delaware County Fair of my high school days. It was turned into the stuff of legend by two of my buddies who went there - all the way to Chester - and came back and swore to us up and down that they had seen a completely naked woman, up on a stage surrounded by drooling, rowdy guys, doing neck bridges. Right then and there my next-door-neighbor George and I vowed that we would go for sure the next year, but when the time came, we were grounded, for unspecified violations of good conduct, and we never did go. Oh, well. Maybe I can still go to an XFL game. *********** Wow. Mark Chmura's free. What a country. But I saw him on TV, and he looked pissed! "I don't want to call it a vengeance," he said. "But I have a fire under my you-know-what to show people what I can do. I'm ready to go back to work. I plan on suiting up for someone next year." You hear that, Brian Billick? See, he's gonna show all those people who put him through all this! I mean, just because a 30-year-old family man with kids of his own who ought to be home with them is at a high school graduation party, drinking with teenagers and making suggestive comments to his 17-year-old babysitter and getting in the hot tub with her - at 4 AM - while in his skivvies - do we have to be so judgmental? Just because the prosecutor says, "The evidence clearly indicates there was sexual contact [in the bathroom]," what right do we have to judge? Just because, as he says, "The real issue became if it was consensual or not. That was an issue for the jury to decide. The jury found we were not able to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt," who are we to judge? "He put himself in a bad situation by being drunk with kids and in a hot tub in his underwear," said the jury foreman. But there we go, being judgmental again! Who among us will cast a stone at him? Well, Jay Marriotti of the Chicago Sun-Times, for one. "For that blunder alone," he writes, "Chmura should be run out of the NFL. Just as we'll always look cockeyed at Ray Lewis for associating with the wrong people that bloody Atlanta night, we'll wonder what Chmura was doing with his trousers down at a prom bash." Outside the courthouse, the same dementia that took over Baltimore, whose fans were quick to forgive Ray Lewis, was evident in signs that read. "You'll always be a Packer." (Actually, it is possible that the sign was misread, and that was an "e" between the "P" and the "c.") Hey, Mark Chmura! What are you gonna do, now that they couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you had unlawful sexual contact with a teenager? "I'm going to Disney World." *********** Meanwhile, I'm going to venture a guess. I may be wrong, but I'm going to guess that Mr. Chmura's accuser (remember when girls that age were called "jailbait?") does not live with her father. Why do I say that? Well, first of all, studies show that girls who grow up with a father around are less likely to engage in that sort of activity (she wasn't exactly acting chaste) ; second, I can't prove this, but my experience has been that mothers are far more likely to allow their daughters to put themselves in potentially compromising situations (maybe it's a feminine version of Little League dads' wanting to relive their lives through their sons); and third, I think at least some of the fathers I've known, given the happenings described in court, would have got down the shotgun. *********** Against all odds, Tom McHugh beat the system. Despite all the recruiting services and the supposed sophistication of college recruiters who begin hitting on kids in junior year or earlier, he was off everybody's radar screens going into his senior year. Nobody even knew who he was. So he marketed himself, sending videotapes out to colleges in November. November of his senior year! Get serious, kid. They know everybody. Besides, by that point, most of them have committed all their scholarships. If not, they know who they want. Nevertheless, within a couple of weeks, McHugh had not only heard from schools, he had scholarship offers - and not just from hamburger schools, either. We're talking Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, Vanderbilt , among others. McHugh, a 6-4, 280-pound offensive lineman at Monsignor Bonner High, in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania made an "early" oral commitment to Syracuse - in December - but changed his mind last week when Joe Paterno visited his school. And that was all it took. He is expected to sign a letter of intent with Penn State today. "I've always wanted to go to Penn State since I was little," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I just fell in love with it. In my heart, it's what I felt. God forbid, if anything ever happens to me, a blown knee or whatever, where am I going to be happier? I'm going to be happier at Penn State." Hoo boy! Is that gonna teach those recruiting coordinators. They didn't have enough to do already, now they're going to be up till all hours next year looking at hundreds of home videos of 5-10, 190-pound guards who run 5.0. |
When
I opened my latest alumni magazine and read that Levi
Jackson had died, I said, "Whoa! How did I miss that?" As
a fellow alum, I knew about him, of course, but I
determined to learn more. That, I certainly did.
South Valley Panthers - Gremlin Division (8,9,10 yr olds) Valley Youth Conference, San Fernando Valley, California The Panthers went 7-3-1 running the DW for the first time with a first year coach. Everything that I experienced this year was a first and I hope, coach, that I can hold onto that for the rest of my years. When I first set out to coach this team with your DW I had this uncanny confidence in the system. Everything that you have written in your tips and corresponding with me personally came to fruition. I met with should I say "skepticism" regarding this offense. I recall having a confrontation with the president of the club and a coach who was, if you could say in youth football "applying for the position" of Offensive Coord., because as a young coach I believed that I needed one (foolish me).. Well they both thought I needed to change the numbering system of the way the plays were called, wanted me to call the plays "the normal"(34 Power, 28 Blast, etc.) I stood my ground and told both that If I was going to coach this team I was going to have to coach it the way it was taught and learned. I couldn't justify changing the system for the sole reason that players that would end up leaving my team at the end of the year and playing for another team would be "confused" learning the different systems. To make a long story short the president ended up apologizing for taking the other coach's side and sort of "disrespecting" me (for lack of another word) and consented in letting me run the system the way I needed to. You've written about these things Coach, probably numerous times and I learned that on the youth level especially you don't need to have a defensive and offensive coord., you don't need to have 10 asst coaches. If all you have is yourself and some time and passion then, yes, it will be difficult but you can do it alone if you have to (with a couple of dad coaches to help you of course).... My staff at the end of the year consisted of 4 coaches including myself, of which 3 (including me) were there 95-100% of the time. Even with that the Panthers went 7-3-1 made it to the play-offs (the only team in our entire organization to do so). We lost the play-off game 7-2 to the team that went on to lose the championship. We lost our league title game 6-0, when a XX-47C TD of 85 yds. was called back for an open field clip that everyone including opposing coaches, fans and players knew was a legit block, they came up to me afterwards and said as much (15 yds. from the end zone the flag was thrown, the reward for my tackle running downfield with the back). But on that day we grew so much as a team and I can't wait till the next season. We will have 12 returning players most of whom were starters on offense and/or defense. The kids learned the system so quickly and installing new plays, it didn't feel like you were installing new plays...Once the core of the system was done everything grew off of that. I have Coach John Torres to thank for almost all of the "wrinkles" that we threw in the game. I remember JT telling me to get that XX play in, week after week. I confess I was nervous in putting that play in, didn't know if my young guys would grasp it...But we worked on it in practice and in no time they had it down. Looking back on it now if I would've had some more "oomph" in the repping of it we could've run it better. But I guess all coaches say that at the end of the season. All in all I could've never imagined the season we had and what I learned as a coach and man. I see things different now, things that don't have anything to do with football, just life and I believe I am a better person for that. Well this e-mail was meant to be about our stats and stuff but the gist of it is, we as a team and I as a person exceeded in what I set out to do. Thanks Coach for being there to be found.- Coach Bill Shine. South Valley Panthers, Van Nuys, California |
A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY... We are looking at one of the
greatest college coaches of all time. He spent 22 years
at the same school (name partly hidden in the photograph
by clever cropping), and retired with a record of
165-64-8. In an era when there were basically four major
bowl games (Rose, Cotton, Orange and Sugar) plus the
Gator Bowl, and both spots in the Rose and one in the
Cotton were locked up by conference agreements, he
managed to take his teams to 13 bowl games, winning nine
of them. Bear Bryant, Wally Butts, Frank Howard, Shug
Jordan, Bob Neyland - you name the great southern coach -
this guy's teams played 'em and beat 'em.
Coach-
I know you receive tons of info on teams so excuse me if I
am doubling up on info you already know re: my 1st year
team.
"Buck Ortega thought it was his final interview," wrote Plaschke. "It was, instead, his first class. Lying 101. Ortega, an all-state quarterback for state champion Miami Gulliver, was completing his official visit to the University of Miami. It had gone well. He had orally committed to the Hurricanes in October and was not going to change his mind. The only thing remaining was this one last chat with Coach Butch Davis. It happened Sunday afternoon in Davis' office. 'We're going to have fun here,' Davis told him. 'We're going to accomplish a lot of things here. We're going to be great.' Ortega happily returned home. Just in time for Davis to finish negotiations with the Cleveland Browns. "By Monday morning, Davis was gone. So, forever, was a bit of the brightness in the eyes of a 19-year-old kid. "'I still can't believe how many times he said, 'we,' ' Ortega said in a phone interview Tuesday. 'It was 'we, we, we.' Everything was 'we.' '" Just the day before, Ortega had been working out in his high school weight room, when a coach came in and told him Davis was going to the Browns. "I said, 'No way, you're joking, get out of here,' " Ortega told Plaschke. The coach left to confirm the story and returned to say that it was true. "I was shocked, I couldn't believe it, I just couldn't," Ortega said. "I was thinking, just yesterday. . . ." He was thinking back to when the Washington Redskins' job was still open. "My dad and I specifically asked him back then whether he was interested in the NFL," Ortega told Plaschke. "He told us, 'I took this job to be my last job. I took this job to retire. I'm not going anywhere.' " "Why did he have to be that specific, why did he have to promise to stay here?" Ortega said. "He could have just told us he loved Miami and hoped to never leave. He could have been less specific." Sure he could, wrote Plaschke. "But then, Ortega might not have bought it. And if Ortega didn't buy it, he might not have agreed to attend Miami. And if Ortega doesn't come to Miami, maybe some other offensive stars from around the state don't come to Miami, and then . . Butch Davis spent the last several months covering his hide with no thought of how exposed his deceptions would leave others." Plaschke went on, "On Jan. 20, he said, 'I will have a new contract, and I will be the coach at Miami next year.' On Jan. 29, he wasn't. Before Monday, he said, 'Never once have I said I ever wanted to go to the NFL. . . . There's no interest at all.' By Monday night, he was one of the league's highest-paid coaches at about $3.5 million a year. "At no time in recent history has such a highly visible and popular coach--the Hurricanes were ranked second nationally this season--changed jobs with such questionable timing and morals." Plaschke went on to mention another interesting element of deceit in Butch Davis' program. Evidently, Greg Schiano, then the Hurricanes' defensive coordinator, passed out a preseason contract to his players, a pledge to stick together through the season. Wrote Plaschke, "Everybody signed it, apparently, except Schiano. He was later named the coach at Rutgers, and abandoned the team before the Sugar Bowl." Scott Russell, the friend who sent me the Plaschke column, added, "all salemen lie." I told him I didn't believe that, because I was a salesman once, and I didn't lie. Maybe it's because I started out working in a corrugated box factory, where rush orders would come through and disrupt all our plans and machine setups, all because some salesman had lied ("we can have it for you next week"), and I determined that I was going to be different. I also learned that customers could deal with the truth if you gave it to them early enough. And finally, the oldest truism of all - if you lie it's hard to remember what you said.
*********** As readers know, I don't have a lot of use for the NFL and I don't get very passionate about it, but it does sound, from the following bit sent me by Chris Davis, in Slayton, Minnesota, that some people in the Northland are taking the Vikings' fall very hard: Dear Football Fan:With the end of the 2000 pro football season here in Minnesota, we are excited to offer the following items in our annual end-of-the-season closeout sale. Order fast, these items are sure to move! * 40 hearts (like new, many not even used) * 40 spines (still in the box) * Two outside linebackers (D. Rudd, E McDaniel ... make offer; 20% discount if you order both) * One former All-Pro defensive lineman (J. Randle ... no decent offer refused ... can play tackle or end with equal inefficiency; terrifying face paint included) * Entire defensive secondary kit ... this all-in-one solution is perfect for college teams finishing in the middle of the BCS standings who want a quick upgrade; pro teams who want a complete defensive secondary taxi squad; or XFL teams looking for slow, confused d-backs to get burned (resulting in high-scoring games, thereby boosting their TV ratings) * One baseball cap with Christian cross logo (didn't work) ... actually worn by future hall-of-famer Cris Carter * Genuine autographed Denny Green game plan ... great novelty item, always good for some laughs; note: some pages have authentic food stains SPECIAL OFFER! Free with each order, your choice of the following: * David Palmer or Troy Walters bobble-head dolls (actual size) ... these cute little guys make great gifts or dashboard mementos of an actual NFL season * Wassa Serwanga jersey ... slightly torched despite all-asbestos material * Robert Tate poster ... showing #28 in his classic "hands-on-hips because I just gave up six" pose * Todd Steussie autographed penalty flag ... with all 47 of his holding and illegal motion penalties this year listed on both sides * Randy Moss mouth guard ... size extra large; not guaranteed to prevent gagging * Tube of Mitch Berger groin pull ointment * Classic Cris Carter "first down" pose statuette ... like new (not used since January 7) * Robert Smith knee cartilage chips * Miniature Armen Terzian whiskey bottle ... a replica of the bottle tossed from the stands that brained back judge Armen Terzian during the classic Vikings-Cowboys playoff game in the 1970s, after Terzian failed to call Drew Pearson for offensive pass intereference against Nate Wright ... a must-have for any true Vikings fan To order, call Winter Park, headquarters of the Vikings in Eden Prairie. Red McCombs is standing by to take your order now! Thank you. Look for more great items next year. *********** I once heard someone say about basketball that it's "easy to play, but hard to play well." I used to use that expression when teaching English, because the English language is the same way. Go anywhere in the world, and you'll find people saying "Okay," or "See you," or "No way." But the number of people who can speak it well and write it well is rapidly dwindling, at least if you go by the number of freshmen at our colleges who were admissable in every other respect but still have to take remedial English. One of the things that makes English tough to speak well is words that aren't pronounced the way you'd think they should be. An example of that is the frequently-mispronounced word "affluent", meaning wealthy. It is correctly pronounced AFF-loo-ent, but it is frequently used as uh-FLOO-ent. I was reminded of all this when I heard one of the latest class of electees to the Pro Football Hall of Fame saying how proud he was to be part of such an "august' group. He pronounced it like the eighth month, but the word he meant, which means inspiring awe and reverence, and might more appropriately be applied to a group of nobel laureates, is pronounced aw-GUST. *********** Regarding my article on President Bush and a football coach I once worked for, neither one of whom was afraid to hire people more experienced than he was, Frank Simonsen wrote from Cape May, New Jersey: "Coach, With regard to the article in your news letter this morning, about assistants... I was born on the waterfront and grew up working on boats of all types. This was in the days before a school education was needed to be a fisherman. On the job experience, seamanship, net mending, boat handling, learning weather, the yearly migration of the fish, and a strong back were the most important things. When fishing got poor I switched professions. After eventually obtaining my captain's license, I quickly learned that managing in the merchant marine industry required more then a strong fist. Due to the lack of an education I found it essential to surround myself with good people, especially in the areas of my deficiencies. I always tried to get maritime college graduates to be my mates, as I had a lot to teach them, and they had a lot to teach me. I feel this made a very efficient managing ( coaching ) relationship, and I think this theory applies in coaching football as well. As you know, I feel good business managing is one of the most important ingredients in coaching. I would bet that Jack Welch of GE would make a great head coach." *********** Tom Compton, of Durant, Iowa, sent me a column written by "draft expert" Mel Kiper, Jr., in which he calls Ray Lewis "The best linebacker ever to play the game." First of all, I don't give Mel Kiper a lot of credence as a football expert. He is a draftnik, who works the phones and summarizes what his sources tell him and wouldn't know a football player if he were in the huddle with 11 of them. Ray Lewis may very well become the best. I think to be the best of all time requires top performance, year in and year out. Let's give him the test that everybody seems in too big a hurry to give these days in their rush to designate someone the best this and the greatest that - let's see if he can stand the test of time. Mr. Kiper also lauded Brian Billick, calling him "one of the elite head coaches in the game right now." Maybe. Maybe not. Apart from the fact that there isn't much of an "elite" in the game right now (Mr. Kiper would have a hard time naming for me three of today's coaches who would rank with the best there ever were), let's at least be fair to Coach Billick and give him the same test we need to give Ray Lewis - the test of time. Unfortunately, he may be around for the final, because the way the NFL works nowadays, Super Bowl or no Super Bowl, he could be fired if he has a couple of bad years. The half-life of a football coach isn't what it used to be. Tom Landry was 18-46-4 after five years. And unlike a few of the writers I've seen, I sure don't give Coach Billick any gold star for "overcoming adversity." I think he used that "adversity" as a motivator, playing the "us against the world" thing to the hilt. (Remember the Super Bowl press conferences?) Why else would we hear Ray Lewis, right after the game, telling us "nobody gave our defense any respect?" Right, Ray. No respect. Now, can you maybe tell us how it was you came to be named the NFL's defensive MVP? (And before we bronze the entire Ravens' defense and send it off to Canton as the "greatest defense of all time", maybe we should wait and see how they do next year against the kind of schedule a defending Super Bowl champion normally faces. This season they did have a, shall we say, soft schedule: six of their games were against three offensive powerhouses in their own division: Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Add in games against the "Big C''s - Cardinals, Chargers and Cowboys - and you've got a schedule that makes Joe Louis' Bum of the Month Club look like the Bataan Death March.) *********** After I mentioned the Army's new recruiting slogan ("An Army of One") which is replacing the old one, "Be All That You Can Be, " I began to wonder - was it just me, or was something amiss here? I thought I'd ask General Jim Shelton, now retired, a former Little All-America guard at Delaware (Wing-T guy!) and a combat veteran of Vietnam, what he thought. No problem getting an opinion from him. "You asked me about the new Army slogan, or whatever it is," he wrote. "Without being exposed to all the research that went into it I can still say it is without a doubt the most ridiculous typification of what the Army is all about that I have ever heard. I predict it will be gone soon. I don't know any old soldiers yet that I have talked to who believe it is the right tack. An Army is a team. Selfless service is what makes it work. No Army will succeed whose people believe that each one is an Army of one. Thanks for asking me since my wife is sick of hearing me gripe every time I hear it." *********** Coach - Re the below mentioned reprint from your news page, YOU DO THIS TOO? So do I. I had to explain to parents every year that I never kick deep for this reason. I never realized you did this also. I even had to explain to my wife why I did this when she mentioned after one game, "you need a new kicker...". Yeah right. The lovely Mrs. Torres is wrong once a year and that was her one chance for that season to be wrong and second guess the coach. John Torres, Manteca, California Coach- I got that from my college coach, Jordan Olivar. It used to make me sick watching our college team kick off. I used to laugh watching our "kickoff men" (who were definitely not the best kickers on the team) practicing being bad. To me it was like going to a driving range and practicing hitting bad shots. After I graduated, I took a job selling (trying to sell) life insurance, and I went to a dinner at which Coach Olivar was the speaker. I was seated next to him, I guess as a courtesy to him because I was the only person in the place he knew, and in the next hour or so I got to know my college head coach better than I'd ever had a chance to know him in three years of football. I finally got up the nerve to ask him about the kickoffs. He sort of chuckled (guess more than a few alumni had asked him that already), and told me that since he'd started doing that - I forget how long that had been - no one had ever returned a kickoff all the way against one of his teams. Made sense to me at the time. But when I got into coaching myself, with the kind of players I started out with - guys who were nearly good enough to make NFL squads - I did the same thing the pros did. I mean, I had a guy named Henry Brown, from Missouri, who had led the nation in kick scoring, and another guy named Duane Carrell, from Florida State, who went on to punt for the Rams and the Cowboys. Kicking it out of the end zone - we were still kicking off from the 40 back then - was not a problem. I had been in coaching quite some time, and I had had my share of looking for kickoff men, and I had spent my share of time teaching kickoff coverage, and I still had kicks returned against me for touchdowns before I finally hit myself in the forehead with the palm of my hand and went, "duh!" Why not do it Coach Olivar's way? Since going to the squib kick, we have had one kick returned past the opponents' 40. That was in 1996, the opening kickoff of our final game, and with 15 second gone, we were down, 7-0. I know, I know - doing it our way, we are giving up a lot of yardage. On average. I also know that football is largely a game of morale, and it is hard to gauge the effect on a team's morale when you have just busted your buns to score a touchdown, and they come right back in 15 seconds or so and completely nullify everything you just did. You telling me it didn't take something out of the Giants last Sunday? *********** Like irony? "His record demonstrates a long personal struggle to bend the rule of law to fit his views." Senator Hillary Clinton, describing John Ashcroft *********** John Torres, of Manteca, California, wrote to tell me that the XFL San Francisco Demons had sold out their first game (this Sunday), something it took the Raiders and 49ers years to do. Of course, I felt constrained to point out, the Raiders didn't have cable TV or the WWF and weren't part-owned by a TV network; and the 49ers, starting up back in 1946, didn't have TV at all. And neither the AFL (Raiders) or AAFC (49ers) had the $40 million that the XFL has already spent promoting itself. The XFL will be successful at the start, and is likely to remain successful until people determine whether or not the product is good. Advertisers, for the most part, are flitting around it like moths around a flame. They are very interested, because if it's real football, it's going to cost a lot less than the NFL, and they want to get on board. But they're aware of the heat large advertisers took for backing the gross antics of the WWF, and they want to see just how far the XFL will push it. Their biggest concern, said the Wall Street Journal, is not what the "X" stands for (it does not stand for "Extreme", Vince McMahon tells us - it stands for nothing), but what the "F" stands for. Will it come to stand for Football? Or Farce? McMahon says it is going to be real football and it's not going to be scripted, and the Vegas boys seem to have conferred the stamp of legitimacy on the league by taking bets on its games. But advertisers are wary of the distractions we're being told about - all the extra cameras and microphones, and announcers in the stands and "comedy skits" (whatever they are), and in the words of the Journal, they're "wanting to make sure this isn't theatre before opening their wallets." The XFL's promoters seem to be trying to have it both ways - they invite us to compare them to the NFL when it suits them - when they want to tell us how nuch more exciting they are - but we are not supposed to compare them to the NFL in the talent area, because they're not paying their players as much. I frankly don't think the talent disparity is that big a deal. I said it back when we were trying to make a go of the WFL more than a quarter-century ago - if these teams are well coached and the games are well officiated and the talent is at least fair, the average fan won't notice the difference. I frankly think they will succeed, and the part of me that wants the NFL to get a good kick in the ass says "yeah!" But with the baggage the XFL is bringing with it in its naked appeal to teenage boys, I'm afraid it may be like the old joke of watching your mother-in-law drive your new car off a cliff. THE XFL ON TV - Stick this on your refrigerator or just keep it as a souvenir - It could be the last positive, objective thing you see written in here about the XFL -- All Saturday games are 8 PM ET, All Sunday games except Feb 4 are 7 PM ET
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A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: Ollie Matson, the guy in the middle,
and Gino Marchetti, the guy on the right, were teammates
at the University of San Francisco back in the early
50's. (That's Ace Parker on the left.) When Matson and
Marchetti were inducted into the Pro Football Hall of
Fame, it was the first time two players from the same
college team had ever joined the Hall on the same day,
and it hasn't happened since. Needless to say, their
college team was good. Very good. ELEVEN guys from that
team went on to play in the NFL: besides Matson and
Marchetti, they were Roy Barni
(Cardinals/Eagles/Redskins), Ed Brown (Bears/Steelers),
Mike Mergen (Cardinals), Merrill Peacock (Cardinals), Bob
St. Clair (49ers), Joe Scudero (Redskins) , Dick Stanfel
(Lions/Redskins), Red Stephens (Redskins), Ralph Thomas
(Cardinals/Redskins). St. Clair is also member of the Pro
Football Hall of Fame. Another team member, Burl Toler,
was said to be the greatest of the whole bunch, but he
injured a knee in college, and his NFL career was
restricted to officiating. "If we had been at Notre Dame,
they'd still be writing books about us," Marchetti said,
20 years later. Instead, by the time these two men
entered the Hall, in 1972, USF was no longer even playing
football. Ollie Matson was an all-time great runner and
kick return man. He was big and very fast - a two-time
Olympic bronze medal-winner in the 400. He was involved
in one of the most famous trades in pro football history,
acquired by the Rams from the Chicago Cardinals in
exchange for nine players. Talk about bad luck: in
only two of his 14 seasons with four different teams
(Chicago Cardinals, Los Angeles Rams, Detroit Lions, and
Philadelphia Eagles) did he play on a team with a better
than .500 record. He is still in the record books for
most career kick return touchdowns with 9. Gino "The
Giant" Marchetti spent his rookie year with the
travelling Dallas Texans, but when Carroll Rosenbloom
obtained the franchise for Baltimore he came along with
it, and spent the rest of his long career there. Playing
on the defensive line alongside such greats as Art
Donovan, Billy Ray Smith and Gene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb,
he is considered by many - at least oldtimers - to be the
greatest defensive end who ever played. Tough? He broke
his leg in the 1958 NFL championship game but refused to
go to the hospital until the game ended, watching from a
stretcher as the Colts won in sudden-death overtime.