FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2008- "Against stupidity the very gods
themselves contend in vain." Friedrich Schiller

SCENES FROM LAST WEEKEND'S ATLANTA CLINIC

Coach Kevin Latham, on the left, graciously provided the field and several of his players graciously provided their time so that the coaches in attendance could see a well-run Double Wing up close and personal

Friday night dinner before the clinic has become an ann	ual reunion at Malone's
Coaches Brooks Rawson, Boone Parlow and Richie Lowery, from Alamo, Tennessee	Coach W and old friend Bryan Mackell, of Baltimore's Archbishop Curley HS
South Carolinians Jody Hagins and Leonard Johnson confer	The guys from Viera, Florida - From left, Marvin Reece, Joe DeRenzi, Donnie Hayes, Lee Griesemer and Rande O'Halloran
Coach W and Doug Pettit, from Pierson, Florida	Don Tyre, from Appling County, GA - and the Viera guys
Coach Jason Clarke, from Glen Burnie, Maryland, with whom I've had pre-clinic breakfast for the last six years	Coach W and Coach Jody Hagins, from Charleston, South Carolina. 2007 was Coach Hagins' first year as a head coach.
The Maryland guys - Jason Clarke, from Glen Burnie, Maryland, and Bryan Mackell, from Baltimore	Bobby Williams, from Atlanta, and Scott Maxwell, from Suwanee, Georgia
Coach Donnie Hayes, who started out as a highly successful youth coach in Michigan, and now heads a Florida HS program	Kevin Latham, a dear old friend who came to my first Atlanta clinic in 2001 and has attended every one since
Two very important people in my life	Coach Latham says good-bye to the guys from Viera

To give you some idea what a real rivalry is all about... At the far left is the parking permit that the Atlanta Holiday Inn requires, so that your car doesn't get towed. It's orange, as you can see. But wait - Jody Hagins is a huge South Carolina fan, and orange is the color of the Clemson Tigers, SC's archrival. No way was he going to put anything orange on the dashboard of his car, so he insisted on- and got - a white photocopy!

*********** You'd think, after all the Barry Bonds-Roger Clemens stuff going around, that the people in charge of baseball would begin to get it.

But you'd be wrong. Cardinals' manager Tony LaRussa actually went so far as to say he'd take Barry Bonds on his club: "I take these guys as guys who fit into what we're trying to do. If somebody looks at the bigger picture, that's their responsibility, not mine."

Fortunate for the greater good of baseball, Cardinals' ownership, already burned by Mark McGuire, put the kibosh on that idea.

Knowing Bonds' reputation as a surly "Me" guy, which even predates his drug-propelled assault on baseball's most sacred records, I can just hear the Cards' players thanking management.

*********** A sad good-bye to William F. Buckley, Jr., perhaps the most brilliant and eloquent man of my lifetime... to Myron Cope, long-time Steelers' color guy who also wrote a couple of very interesting football books including "The Game That Was," consisting of interviews with pro football old-timers... And to Grits Gresham, a fisherman so famous that he was signed to join other sports stars in the Miller Light "Tastes Great! Less Filling!" ad campaign.

*********** Happy Leap Year Day. One of my all-time favorite shows is Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta, "The Pirates pf Penzance," the story of a young man whose hard-of-hearing nanny was told to apprentice him to become a pilot, but misheard and instead apprenticed him to become a pirate. He looks forward to the day when he finally turns 21 and gains his freedom, but when they day comes, the pirates point out that because he was born on February 29, he's "only five - and a little bit over."

*********** Archie Manning for Father of the Year...

"I never thought about them even playing college ball, much less pro football, much less winning Super Bowls or MVPs. It wasn't in the plan. We tried to raise kids. We raised kids just like other parents raised their kids. I can't explain it."

Archie, you may not think you can explain it, but I think you just did.

*********** I get asked a lot about running option plays, and while I normally caution people not to get carried away to the point where they're running an option attack and not a Double-Wing, I understand that there are going to be conditions under which a little option package can augment a good Double-Wing attack.

There are a few things that I think are absolutes - (1) Unless your QB is a superior athlete, you are wasting your time trying to run any option; (2) Your QB has to be able to know where his pitch man is, and that means you must work really, really hard on pitch relationship. It is tough enough to get it right every time when runniing from the same formation, but it is even tougher when you begin changing formations, because the timing is different from every set; (3) Whatever his initial action, your QB should gain some depth, because he needs to attack the inside shoulder of his option key at an "uphill angle" so that the man has to make a definite move at the QB; (4) You need to make sure that the inside is walled off so that the QB doesn't get his doors blown off when he turns upfield; (5) When the QB pitches, he should look at the pitch man (no blind pitches) and step at the pitch man and "tumble" the ball, and the pitch man should never take his eye off the ball until he catches it or until the QB keeps it and turns upfield; (6) Your QB is going to get hit and he needs to be prepared - he needs to come under control and plant and step at the pitch man, and brace himself to be hit, and give with the hit.

*********** Coach, I know that you run the double wing and are an expert on the offense.  We do not run the offense, but 3 teams we play do.  Is there any information or places that I can get information to learn how to stop it.  I know that I study what people do to me, so I'm sure that you do the same.

Any information would be helpful.  Thanks

I think that over the years I've done a good enough job of generating interest in stopping my own offense that if I did have the poison pill, I would be selling it.   I think I'd do pretty well.

I won't lie to you.  There is no answer.  There will be people on the Internet who will tell you that they have had "great success" in defensing "the Double Wing," but you'll notice that I put it in quotes, because my suspicion is that they have played some poor Double-Wing teams.  I know an awful lot of good Double-Wing coaches - not so many bad ones, because they tend to either go their own way or take bad advice - and I don't know any of them who have trouble consistently with any one defense.

What I find funny is that so few defensive coaches really make the effort to find out more about us.  At the base level, there are those fools who simply dismiss what we do as a "Pop Warner" offense.  They don't know and don't know that they don't know.

Then there are those who have an idea of what we do, but no real knowledge of why we do it or how we do it.  They aren't willing to get their hands dirty.

To me, the essence of stopping an offense is knowing everything there is to know about it, and to that extent, I find most defensive guys to stop way short of what they need to know.

There are very few of them who respect what we do and know us well.  Those are the guys I respect.

In eleven years of putting on clinics all over the country,  I can count on one hand the number of defensive guys who have come to one of my clinics with the intention of learning all they can about what we're doing. 

Maybe you should come to one of my clinics.  In the process of trying to learn enough about the Double Wing to stop it, you might find yourself running it in your program.

I wish you well.

*********** A coaching friend wrote me on the topic of that abomination down in the Bay Area in which a team takes advantage of the punting rule and positions a guy in kick formation (7 yards deep) and then puts eligible numbers on all its players, moving them on and off the line and challenging the defense - and the officials - to figure out who is eligible on any play. I addressed this a few weeks ago, but here's how I answered my friend's question...

While   technically legal, it is borderline unethical and merely waiting for   the rulesmakers to realize that this is one of the unintended  consequences of their acting in good faith to save coaches the   trouble of putting on and taking off "pinnies" with ineligible   numbers on them.

To be blunt, I think it is a  chickensh--  attempt to deceive the   officials. I mean, the offense could have seven ineligibles downfield   on every play and the officials would have no way of being sure.

 I think the beauty of the game is that unlike the rest of our do-your-own-thing society,  there are rules firmly in place  and the real challenge is to beat people within the rules. 

It is not innovation. All it is is a violation of the intent of a rule generously - if questionably -  inserted merely to allow coaches to put faster kids on their punt teams.

By any standard what they are doing deceives officials, whose job of determining whether an ineligible man is downfield on a forward pass play is tough enough under ordinary circumstances.

These guys are no more to be applauded than the guys who discover a loophole in the law that allows them to drink and drive and manage to escape a DUI judgment by refusing to take the breath test.

While I applaud the cleverness of the coach for finding the loophole, I predict that before the game is turned into rough touch,  the rules will be amended within a year or two and then he will have to go back to coaching football again. And this travesty will go the way of the sleeper play and the hidden ball play and brown football-shaped patches sewn on jerseys.

*********** From the Internet...

Up here, in the Dakotas, we just recovered from a Historic event--- may I even say a "Weather Event of Biblical Proportions" --- with a historic blizzard of up to 44 inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to tens of thousands.

George Bush did not come.

FEMA did nothing.

No one howled for the government.

No one blamed the government.

No one even uttered an expletive on TV .

Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.

Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else!

Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.

CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit - or report on this category 5 snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards..

No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.

No one looted.

Nobody - I mean Nobody - demanded the government do something.

Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.

No Larry King, No Bill O'Reilly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.

No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.

Nope, we just melted the snow for water.

Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.

The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny.

Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snowbound families.
Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.

We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.

We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die".

We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks.

Although we rarely get a Category "5" blizzard, we know it can happen and we know how to deal with it ourselves.

In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate.

Maybe SOME people will get the message. The world does Not owe you a living.

*********** To hear Hillary Clinton tell it, she can't go anywhere without someone coming up to her and telling her a hard-luck story. Barack Obama promises to give something a everyone who's suffering.

Now, this is not to say that there aren't people having a hard go of it, but...

If things are as bad as they say they are, where is the $35 million that Hillary Clinton raised in February - and the even greater sum that Obama is said to have raised - coming from?

*********** Several people I spoke to on the way south to Atlanta told me to be sure to look for the "Gaffney Peach." It's a water tank just outside Gaffney, South Carolina, an area famous for peaches. But what they told me to notice was that the "peach" also looked a bit like a bare human posterior. Now, I don't have that sort of filthy mind, but maybe you can see it...

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2008- "We would be a lot safer if the government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope." Kurt Vonnegut

*********** I just finished re-reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions," which I first read in 1973. The guy is a heck of a writer but he is really a wack job, and I thought him worthy of today's quote, wacko as it is.

*********** The Atlanta Clinic on Saturday was a big success. Despite two days of heavy rains (that didn't even put a dent in the horrible drought that's plagued the South), the skies lightened long enough for us to go outside Saturday afternoon. After the morning clinic session, we adjourned and regathered at Columbia High School, in suburban Decatur. There, a group of Coach Kevin Latham's kids, ranging in age and experience from 8th graders to 11th graders, put on quite a demonstration of the latest wrinkles in our system, as well as the basics. Coaches came from six different states - PHOTOS ON FRIDAY

*********** Driving through the rural South on a Sunday, I had to laugh, If you don't like motor sports or old-fashioned preachin', there's not a lot to listen to on the radio.

*********** Bo Pellini sounds like the anti-Callahan. While Bill Callahan gave Nebraskans the unavoidable impression that he really didn't give a rip about their tradition and what had gone on before him (I mean, all those National Championships - big deal), Pellini, the new Nebraska coach, seems to understand that Nebraskans don't exactly take to someone trashing their past.

Pellini told a sellout crowd of 1200 people at a luncheon in Grand Island that Nebraska's storied walk-on program, which Callahan had pretty much allowed to die, was being revived. Under former Coach Tom Osborne, the walk-on program tapped into the cradle-to-grave loyalty of Nebraskans - and incidentally, sent 28 kids on to the NFL This year, he told the audience, the Huskers were bringing in 44 walk-ons.

Pellini said he understands the value in having a lot of native Nebraskans on his roster.

"I've heard Coach Osborne talk about some of the players who came around here from different parts of the nation, and who were huge talents," Pellini said.

"When you surround them with kids who grew up living or dying whether Nebraska won or lost, those talented guys become more committed to the program. The more towns that are represented, the more ownership people feel in our program."

*********** This is a really cool stunt that a group of people in NYC pulled off: http://www.maniacworld.com/frozen-in-grand-central-station.html

*********** NASCAR's roots are in the rural South, where stock car racing got its start on the back roads, sometimes running moonshine to market. NASCAR grew up in the South, in places like Rockingham and North Wilkesboro. But then it took on airs. It became the kid from the mill town who went away to an Ivy League college and came back speaking like a Yankee, and can't figure out why people look at him funny.

Failing to learn from Coca-Cola's ill-fated fling with New Coke (or whatever it was called), when their most loyal drinkers raised bloody hell, NASCAR left its loyal home folks behind and headed off for the lights of the Big City (and big TV bucks).

You won't find NASCAR at Rockingham or North Wilkesboro any more. No, sir. They don't race as often at Darlington, South Carolina, either. Instead, you'll find the good ole boys racing in New Hampshir. And Illinois. And Arizona. And California.

Oh - and they're not good ole boys anymore, either. There aren't many guys left anymore with thick Carolina drawls and names like Junior and Buck. Now, a surprising number of them look like Barbie's Ken, and they talk, well, like guys from New Hampshire and Illinois and Arizona and California. Nothing wrong with that, except that to the folks in Nawth Ca'lina, they just don't sound right. They don't sound like drivers.

Don't act like 'em, either. Nowadays, when somebody cuts them off, they're careful what they say. (NASCAR thinks tough talk is bad for its image.) Needless to say, going after the guy with a tire iron is out of the question.

So, surprise! NASCAR's ratings are down, and those in the know attribute the problem to alienation of its hard-core base of followers. And without them, NASCAR is out by itself in the land of the fickle American public, in danger of one day flaming out like so many other fads.

“I think people thought to nationalize this thing it needed to be part of pop culture and not mid-American culture, and I think that’s where we went askew,” said Humpy Wheeler, president of Lowe’s Motor Speedway near Charlotte, and a longtime auto racing promoter in the sport. “We were playing a little too much rock music and we needed to get back to Hank Williams. We lost some of the Southern core race fans because the changes were made too fast, and I think we alienated a lot of them because they looked upon a lot of this growth as greed and not growth."

It's one thing to recognize that you have a problem, but it's another to do something about it. Some think the damage may be beyond repair.

“We left those people behind a long time ago,” said driver Kyle Petty, whose rural North Carolina roots, as the son of "King Richard" Petty and the grandson of racer Lee Petty, run deep. “So if you’re trying to go back and get them, sorry. You’re going to have to get on the bus and go back a lot of years to get that core fan."

*********** When the NCAA rules restricting the transfer of athletes are overturned - and we will live to see it happen - it's going to be the result a discrimination suit.

The NCAA loves to police recruiting so that prospective "student-athletes" don't get any inducements at attend that ordinary students wouldn't get.

Yeah - like they're going to be treated like ordinary students once they get there. First of all, there's the term "student-athlete" itself - a total falsehood concocted to deflect arguments for paying them.

I'm not even close to arguing for paying athletes, and I understand the counter argument that they really are being paid - that they're getting "a free education." I understand it, but I don't accept the argument that most of these kids are getting even a shot at a decent education. There are few enough major college football and basketball players who are even going to graduate in a meaningless major, let alone wind up as doctors, lawyers and engineers.

You think student-athletes aren't discriminated against? Forget the constraints on their choices of majors - just name me one other type of student who isn't free to change colleges and immediately resume his or her career path at the new schoool.

*********** Steve Lavin, realizing that he might be coaching at a Nike school someday, was careful to eb diplomatic in commenting on Oregon's black basketball uniforms: "With all due respect to Nike designers - and they've come up with a lot of great designs - I'm really not sold on this one."

Uh, Steve, have you seen some of their football uniforms?

*********** She may be every young slacker's fantasy, but Erin the sideline bimbo was at her ditziest on Saturday night when interviewing Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl after the Vols had beaten Memphis and the joyous Vols celebrated in the background.

Bet that'll be some bus ride home, she opined.

Replied Pearl, "Uh, we flew here."

*********** Don King says he loves boxing because...

"You can't call a timeout. You can't run out of bounds. If you're running out of gas, there is no pit stop. And if you don't want a panel of judges to determine your fate, you can settle it inside the ring with a knockout - even if you've lost every round."

*********** A couple of the major political candidates like to talk about how bad things are in America, and their proposed fixes put a taregt on anyone who pays taxes. Very simply, their plan is to raise taxes on the roughly 50 per cent of Americans who pay taxes, to give more unearned goodies to the 50 per cent who don't. (Special emphasis will be paid to the top 10 per cent or so who produce 90 per cent or so of tax revenue.)

Meanwhile, nobody, Democrat or Republican, is paying a whole lot of attention to the group of us described by Peggy Noonan in a Wall Street Journal column Friday:

"So many Americans right now fear they are losing their country, that the old America is slipping away and being replaced by something worse, something formless and hollowed out. They can see we are giving up our sovereignty, that our leaders will not control our borders, that we don't teach the yong the old-fashioned love of America, that the government has taken to itself such power, and made things so complex, and at the end of the day when they count up sales tax, property tax, state tax, federal tax, they are paying a lot of money to lose the place they loved."

*********** A nice tribute to option football...

http://www.sundaymorningqb.com/story/2007/5/7/112826/4569

*********** Coach,

Tom Schmulbach, assistant coach at Augustana College, spoke at the
Peoria Football Coaches Association meeting last night. Coach
Schmulbach started his career as an assistant to Bob Reade at Geneseo
High School in 1971. He stayed with Coach Reade through four state
championships before moving with him to Augustana College, where they
won four national championships. Coach Schmulbach then took over as
head coach for the Vikings and continued the success of that program.
He left due to health issues, but recently returned to the staff as the
running backs coach. It was an awesome presentation and mirrored much
of what you said about Coach Reade's philosophy.

To some in the room it must've seemed foreign when he responded to the
question of how much time did they devote to double dive (their base
play) on a daily basis. He said "all of our group time, every day, was
devoted to double dive when we were at Geneseo. We practiced our other
plays in scrimmage." He showed video of that play, being run to the
left (they only ran it to the left at Geneseo, they ran power to the
right) in four different decades. They were identical and they were
successful. Awesome.

Next on my list of speakers to secure for our monthly meetings - Coach
Bob Reade!

Todd Hollis
Head Football Coach
Elmwood-Brimfield Coop
Elmwood, Illinois

*********** I came across this observation by Dave St. Peter, President of the Minnesota Twins, in an interview in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

"So many of the kids I meet with today seem like they have a greater sense of entitlement. I try to remind them all that, one way or another, you're going to need to get your foot in the door, and it's very rare you're going to start out as a vice-president. So, whether it's volunteering or working part-time or becoming an intern, you've got to find a way to establish yourself. It's rarer and rarer that I find people who are willing to make the commitment and sacrifices it's going to take."

What he says makes the issue of illegal immigration all the more complex, because as we become a nation of idlers, it's harder and harder to condemn people who come here willing to work hard, or the people who hire them. I'd like to believe that if we'd just pay Americans more, we wouldn't need illegals, but I'm beginning to fear that even at three and four times the illegals' wages, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't last.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2008- "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

IT'S A LONGSTANDING TRADITION - ANYONE IN TOWN FOR THE ATLANTA CLINIC IS INVITED TO JOIN US FOR DINNER AT MALONE'S. WE'LL MEET IN THE LOBBY/LOUNGE OF THE HOLIDAY INN AT 6 PM

*********** Were you reading the papers, Mr. Ahmadinejad? No doubt your spies read our papers. Oh, I know, liberal-slanted as they are, that most of them buried the story on page 3 (USA Today put it on page 4), but, uh, in case you missed it, one of our Navy missiles shot a stray satellite from the sky.

Annie Oakley would have been proud to have taken that shot.

The satellite was no bigger than a school bus, it was 150 miles up in the sky, and it was traveling 17,000 miles per hour. And we hit the damn thing. Oh- and the point wasn't just to hit the bus - it was to hit the fuel tank, so that the highly toxic fuel inside it would explode. Bingo. Right on target.

I've heard Mr. Obama say that he would sit down and talk with people like you. (Mr. McCain, of course, has other plans for you.) But you know, chatting with thugs like you does begin to make a little more sense, now that you're aware that we still know WTF we're doing.

(Can you imagine the struggle that must have taken place in the Pentagon over which service would get to shoot the satellite down? Do you suppose the Army and Air Force guys are a little jealous that they weren't the ones?)

*********** I just finished reading a book by NFL Hall-of-Famer Frank Gifford, and the guy has to be clairvoyant. The book was written in 1989, and at the end, he wrote of a threat that the NFL could be facing - "The specter of a congressional crackdown on both television and sports."

*********** Hugh, I must have missed the headlines some how, and I am sure there was a big celebration that I missed as well.  Headlines and celebration for what, you ask?  For the experts who solved Global Warming here in Kansas!  It is freakin' cold today!

Greg Koenig, Beloit, Kansas

*********** A coach wrote me for information on the Lonesome Polecat, and I referred him to the logical place to look, Glenn "Tiger" Ellison's "Run and Shoot football." (Tiger Ellison is the guy who invented it, on his way to inventing the run and shoot.)

Uh-oh.

He did a search and found that used copies of the book now sell for $60-150.

This was the best I could do for him:

Here is the basic alignment and the original play. 

Note that the center is eligible, because he is the end man on the line.  (It is actually your right end). Make sure that your "center" wears an eligible number.

If there is no one in front of the receivers, they go deep.  But if there is, they hook up and then scramble in the direction of the QB's scramble. Those who are running "out" patterns turn up when the QB scrambles.

There are more adjustments to the routes, but that's it in its simplest form.

The QB lines up 10 yards deep and checks the number of men in front of the linemen. If the defense has less than 5 men over there, he should throw to the A Back on the screen.

If they commit a lot of men to the pass rush, somebody - or some zone - will be left unguarded.

Otherwise, the QB scrambles back there, since a couple of rushers can't possibly trap a good athlete who starts out that deep.

*********** Travelling back East, I am willing to accept the fact that there are people out of work, and businesses not dong all that well, but based on the number of trucks I've passed that had "Drivers Wanted" ads on the back, I have to think that there is work out there for people who really want to work.

*********** On the way from Philadlephia to Atlanta, we had the chance to spend a little time at two Civil War battlefields, Gettysburg and Antietam. This is the time of year to visit, when there are no crowds of tourists, and on a weekday you pretty much have the place to yourself. Unlike the highly-commercialized area around the Gettysburg battelfield, Antietam, in Western Maryland near our one-time home of Hagerstown, remains much as it was in September of 1862 when the Union and Confederate forces met in the bloodiest single day in the entire war. (All told, there were 22,700 casualties.)

The great significance of Antietam is that as the long hoped-for first Union victory, it gave President Lincoln the credibility and the political cover to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in Confederate territory as of January 1, 1863.

After Antietam , a war which had been originally fought to save the Union became officially a war to end slavery.

*********** Lincoln remains by far our most written-about President, and ranks fourth among all-time subjects of books behind Jesus Christ, William Shakespeare, and the Virgin Mary.

The late president of Random House books, Bennett Cerf, once said that if a guaranteed best-seller would be entitled, "Lincoln's Doctor's Dog."

*********** http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2008/02/19/Sports/Wrestling.Is.Being.Cut.But.Do.You.or.I.Really.Care-3218598.shtml

(To save you the trouble - it's an article in the U of Oregon student newspaper by some dweeb who has no sympathy for the wrestling program which UO is dropping. HW)

I know you can't reprint the article, but it's funny.

I really don't have any comments, except wow. If I see him on ESPN some day I'll know to cancel cable.

On the same note, Fresno St.'s wrestling program (which was cut last year) will not be replaced despite pretty significant community support; the old coach offered to do it pro bono.

Instead, they are adding... women's lacrosse.

This despite the fact that lacrosse isn't played anywhere within a two hundred mile radius. I have nothing against the sport, but it's kind of funny that they cut a sport that within 5 miles of Fresno St. has 3 of the best high school wrestling programs west of the Mississippi. That they also have to look outside the country to find tennis players makes you if they even realize the community they are based in.

I'm not going to blame football; I'm a football guy. Attendance alone makes them deserve the number of scholarships they have. But as long as the feminists demand the quotas add up (even though they can never hope to have the same attendance) my other sport is doomed at the college level (on this coast at least).

Michael Anthony Burchett, Jr.
Math Teacher, Head Wrestling Coach, Defensive Coordinator, Tulare Western High School
Tulare, California

(One of the things that disappointed me most about George W. Bush, whom I supported, was that he had a chance to bring some sense to Title IX and its stupid proportionality requirement, and he caved. Don't even get me started on the landlocked colleges that actually went out and dredged waterways so that they could add - women's crew! And then they walked the campus looking for tall girls and invited them to try out for crew. The incentive was a full ride scholarship. This is no lie, because I know a girl who got a four-year full ride this way! HW)

*********** I was talking recently with former Stanford QB Todd Husak, who took Stanford to the 2000 Rose Bowl then kicked around the NFL for a few years (including winning the World Bowl.)

I asked him what goes on during timeouts, and he described the protocol. Then I asked "is that where Troy Walters tells you he's wide open?"

[laughs] "It's almost impossible to find a wide receiver who won't tell you he's open. That's why they usually don't get to talk during the time out."

Christopher Anderson, Palo Alto, California

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2008- "Truth must be the foundation stone, the cement to solidify the entire social edifice." Pope John Paul II

*********** On my way to Philly last week I had a brief layover in Minneapolis-St Paul, and of course I bought the two local papers to see what's going on.

You know you're in the Midwest when you open one (in this case, the St. Paul Pioneer Press) and see listed no fewer than 26 places offering all-you-can-eat Friday fish fries. All for an average price of about $10.95. And almost all serving fries and cole slaw on the side.

*********** "Whenever you observe bipartisan cooperation, hold on to your wallet and run for the basement." Economist Arthur Laffer

*********** It pays to be first...

With "Flavor Strips," Welch's Grape Juice is taking a giant step in reality advertising in this month's People magazine.

It's something on the order of scratch-n-sniff. The reader - the first one, anyhow - will be invited to peel off the "Flavor Strip" and then - lick.

Taste the Welch's Grape Juice? Yum.

Despite what some of you are expecting me to do, I refuse to take the low road and take advantage of all the opportunities for vulgar jokes related to certain male-oriented magazines. No, no. Not me. Instead, I prefer to use this space for a lesson in hygiene: to warn you that if you should happen to be sitting in a waiting room, and you should happen to open a People magazine and turn the page to a Welch's Grape Juice ad, and the flavor strip should happen to have been peeled off already... DON'T LICK!

*********** The wise asses on Philly talk radio were planning the victory parade down Broad Street once Senator Specter arranges for the 2005 Super Bowl trophy to be taken from the Patriots and given to the Iggles.

*********** I am waiting for the start of rumors that Uno the Beagle was on Prozac. (By the way, in Philly, he's a "Biggle." I am not kidding.)

*********** I heard Senator Specter being grilled by the guys on Sports Radio 610 (WIP) and I have to hand it to the guy - he wasn't afraid to go on the air with some very tough inquisitors, and he took their best shots. In the process, he answered all the questions I had.

1. On the subject of his "dropping a bomb" at the Super Bowl - he said that back in October, he wrote to Commissioner Goodell, asking him if he'd checked into whether Bill Belichick's love of films had affected the Patriots' win over the Eagles (Specter is an Eagles' fan) in 2005. Goodell did not answer him. Uh-oh. BIG mistake, Rog. Do NOT diss a United States Senator. Ever.

A month or so later, when he learned that Goodell had destroyed the incriminating tapes, Specter, a former prosecutor, wrote him again to ask why he had destroyed evidence. Again, Goodell did not answer him. C'mon, Rog. That's dumb. (Sounds as though the Commissioner may not be as astute as people have been giving him credit for.)

And then at the Super Bowl, a reporter from the New York Times asked him who he wanted to win the game, and from there drew out the story that Senator Specter would like to have a chat with the Commissioner.

2. Why, with all the other issues facing our Congress, is he spending time on this? Senators Specter assured us that after years in the Senate, he is quite competent to attend to many issues at the same time, and that he really isn't devoting that much time to Spygate, anyhow.

3. He indicated that he didn't really need to stay on the case, anyway, because nowit's got plenty of legs. He said that Senator Leahy, chairman of his committee, was interested enough to be willing to commit funds for investigators, and between that and that fact that the New York Times has three reporters on the story full-time, and that there is already one lawsuit underway which will require Belichick to testify under oath, he is confident that the truth will come out.

4. The Senator is smart enough to know that he represents the people of Pittsburgh, too, and he noted Heinz Ward's comments after a Steelers' playoff loss to the Pats that the Pats seemed to know what plays the Steelers had called.

5. Asked whether this is even the business of Congress and oughtn't to be handled as an internal matter by the NFL, he mentioned that the Industrial Espionage Act of 1996 makes stealing industrial secrets a federal offense. He seemed to think that a court of law might find that the law applied here.

*********** Writes Frank Fitzpatrick in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Only in Philadelphia could a fan write to the Phillies wanting to know why the team has no plans to mark this year's 50th anniversary of ex-Phils first baseman Ed Bouchee's arrest on charges that he exposed himself to a child.

*********** These people in Philadelphia even care about baseball! One guy called in to WIP and said that he woke up on Valentine's Day and kissed his wife and told her he loved her.

And when she asked why he had such a big smile on his face he told her that it was a special day for him: "Pitchers and catchers report."

*********** For those of you who are worried that Congress should be dealing with more important things than investigating Roger Clemens and Bill Belichick...

Last week, the House of Representatives managed to find the time to pass a resolution congratulating the New York Giants on winning this year’s Super Bowl “and completing one of the most remarkable postseason runs in professional sports history.”

The vote was 412 to 1.

The lone vote against was cast by Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Patrick Murphy, a diehard Eagles fan who once worked at Veterans Stadium as a security guard.

“As a former 700-level security guard and lifelong Eagles fan, I couldn’t, in good conscience, vote for the New York Giants,” Murphy said. “The only thing worse would have been a resolution honoring the Dallas Cowboys.”

(The "700 level" in old Veterans' Stadium was the location of the highest - and cheapest - seats, and was notorious for being the residence, on Autumn Sundays, of the rowdiest, most disorderly fans in all of Christendom. Remember when they had to install a mini-courtroom in the bowels of The Vet? It was necessitated by the guys in the 700 level. If Congressman Murphy was able to deal with those guys, I'd say he's tougher than the average Congressman.)

*********** Coach Wyatt - I am now in my 8th year coaching youth football.  

I'm getting ready for my third season with my current team.  We've run the Double Wing the last two seasons with tremendous success (20-0-2) and each year I'm adding new dimensions to the offense.

HERE'S MY QUESTION:
Several coaches/videos recommend that the offensive linemens' INSIDE hand be down in his stance, yet others recommend the OUTSIDE hand be down.  None seem to explain why.

Which do you recommend and why? Thanks,

Coach, This is a no-brainer.    I don't "recommend" inside hand down.  I insist on it.  There is no debate.  Smarter guys than I figured this out long before I did.

I'm  guessing that you didn't get your Double Wing info from me, because that is a basic  building block  of my system

I address this in Tip Number 8 - http://www.coachwyatt.com/tips1-25.html

You are free to take any advice you want, so I'll offer this - people who tell you "outside hand down" don't know WTF they are talking about. Pay no attention to anything they say. They  don't know and don't know that they don't know, but that doesn't stop them from passing along their ignorance to people who sincerely want to learn.

Good luck.

*********** I was listening to Mike Ditka, back around Super Bowl time, and in talking to him, someone mentioned that he had once given consideration to running for the Senate in Illinois, which might have meant running against Barack Obama.

Mr. Ditka was very complimentary of Mr. Obama, mentioning his run for the Presidency, but then went on to say, "You know, people get the wrong idea - that the President has all these powers," and then he went on to talk about "the Founding Fathers" and the "balance of powers" among the "Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches," and placing "Constitutional limits" on the powers of the President.

To say the least, I was blown away. I mean, dis was Ditka! Dis was da coach of da Bears! And he's telling us about the separation of powers as if he's James Madison.

I have to wonder whether there's another sports guy - news anchor, even - who could have delivered as concise an explanation.

*********** Those of you who've had young sons will understand this story told by Earl Morrall, who not everybody realizes was QB for part of the season the Miami Dolphins went 17-0.

Before the Dolphins, he'd played for the Colts, where one of his best friends was linebacker Ted Hendricks.

After Morrall was traded to the Dolphins, his son was on hand to watch him play against his former teammates, the Colts.

Morrall had a decent day, but he did throw an interception to Hendricks, of all people.

After the game, when Morall asked his son what he liked most about the game, he said. "I liked it best when you threw the ball to Uncle Ted."

*********** Coach Wyatt:
 
I noticed your comments about college recruiting and how early it starts.  I have some interesting statistics for you.
 
As of today, most D1-A schools have offered scholarships to 95% of their 2009 recruiting class.  Right now, the top 500 football players identified in this country have offers from at least 50 schools each.  The top 10 schools have not offered that great a percentage because they can wait longer because of their big names.  The big time programs identify 60% of their recruiting class by the end of their HS sophomore season.  The remainder are identified by the end of junior year.  You're absolutely right, the junior year is critical for the power conference programs (Pac10, Big 10, Big 12, ACC, SEC, Big East).  Senior year is too late.  (By the way, an interesting historical fact is that this trend was started by Joe Paterno at Penn State in 2002.  Other college coaches quickly followed Joe Pa's lead.)  It's a fact of life. 
 
The good news for high school football players who wish to play in college is that 681 colleges that play football are not D1-A schools.  If a junior is a late bloomer, then they have hope at those schools.  The better their grades are, the more money they'll get to play at those schools. 

Because the recruiting budgets are significantly smaller, those colleges can't go visiting kids in high schools all around the country.  For example, Georgia Tech's football recruiting budget in 2006 was $522,000.  Compare that to Truman State, a good D2 program, whose recruiting budget was $30,000 and Williams (D3) whose budget was $12,000.  So most of those coaches' recruiting is handled by telephone, email, and videos.  And they identify kids later in the process. 

Because of NCAA rules, college coaches are restricted on when they can call potential student athletes on the phone.  So, if a kid truly wants to play in college, he must market himself to a large number of college coaches.  He should build relationships with those coaches by proactively calling them on the phone.  That's his best chance to find a college where he can play.  College coaches at those 681 low budget schools don't have the resources to recruit like the big time programs.  So they'll probably never visit a potential recruit's home or high school. 

By the way, out of the 800 college football programs in these great United States, about 650 of them are located east of the Mississippi River.  There is a lot of athletic talent in CA, OR, WA, AZ, NV, UT, CO, ID, etc. who never get seen because of geography.  That is changing quickly, though, with the advances in the Internet. 
 
A high school coach has NEVER given a college scholarship to a player.  College coaches are not going to recruit a kid on the strength of the recommendation of his HS coach.  There are too many other factors to consider.  Should a HS coach help his players?  Absolutely.  Should he be responsible for marketing his players to college coaches?  Probably not.  A HS coach doesn't have the number of contacts in the college coaching community to provide enough quality introductions for his players.  Also, he doesn't have the time and resources to devote to writing 100's of letters to college coaches on a kid's behalf.  He also doesn't have the time to prep each of those kids on what questions to ask college coaches or how kids should answer the tough questions college coaches are going to ask them. 

So most high school coaches don't have the expertise to prepare their kids in what they should be doing.  There are 1.1 million high school football players in this country.  Only 70,000 get to play in college at any level.  In any one year, about 17,000 players will get the opportunity to play in college.  If that player is identified as a top 500 prospect, he probably doesn't have to do any marketing.  The other 16,500 kids probably should do some marketing to find the best fit.  After all, a college decision is a 50 year decision, not a 4 or 5 year decision.  It takes a lot of effort to find a place that is the right fit.  A lot of talented kids get overlooked because they don't know how to play the game. 
 
By the way, we recently completed a poll of coaches and the results are fascinating:  The number one reason a kid gets recruited is his attitude.  In other words, kids who play hard on every single play.  The second reason that kids get recruited, is they reached out to college coaches by calling them on the phone. 
 
If kids don't think this starts early, consider this.  There is a young man playing basketball in Aurora, IL who is starting on his HS varsity as a freshman.  He was offered a scholarship last August, before he even set foot in high school.  He accepted that offer.  College recruiting is over for this young man.  All he has to do is graduate with decent grades and hope that college coach doesn't get fired.  Who offered?  Tim Floyd, coach of the USC Trojans. 
 
If any of your HS coaches have any questions on the recruiting process, I do know a whole lot about the game.  I'd be happy to contribute any time.
 
Regards,  
 
Keith Babb
Senior National Scout- National Collegiate Scouting Association
Chicago, Illinois
www.ncsasports.org

I have known Keith Babb for some ten years now. Keith had a very good job with a major international bank, but he reached that point in life when a man's gotta do what his heart directs him to do, and for nearly three years now, he's been working as a college scout for the National Collegiate Scouting Association. Most of you know that the woods are full of so-called "Scouting Services," which charge parents an arm and a leg to provide very little service , and if that was what Keith was about, I wouldn't print his letter. And if he offered me money to run his ad, I'd turn him down (I don't take money from advertisers anyhow). But I've gotten to know Keith well over the years as a coach and as a person, and I think very highly of him. He visited us in the Northwest when one of his sons was looking at a college out here, and we spent a weekend with him and wife and their daughter, Melissa, when she was checking out West Point. Keith is very smart and very trustworthy, and seeing an opportunity to provide a service that's beyond my expertise, I asked him if he would be good enough to field any questions you might have regarding recruiting - of your athletes, of your own kids, or recruiting in general. All I asked of him in return is that he would let me print any correspondence on these pages.

So if you have a question for Keith, send it to me and I'll forward it to him.

*********** MEA CULPA (MY FAULT)--- I wrongly attributed a letter from South Carolinian Jody Hagins to fellow South Carolinian Jeff Murdock. Coach Hagins wrote that as a South Carolina fan, he wouldn't get on a plane painted in Clemson colors. But oops - I mistakenly signed Jeff Murdock's name - and Jeff Murdock is a Clemson fan, and I'm sure he'ed be happy to fly in a big orange jet. Apologies all around.