*********** "At the Providence clinic, I remember you quoting some coach (Woody Hayes?) as saying, "When you pass, three things can happen, two of which are bad." Then you added there are really four things that can happen, and three of them are bad: interceptions, incompletions, and sacks. Those poor odds certainly happened to the Giants tonight! And I'm a Giants fan. Well, I'd like to add a fifth thing that can happen when you pass a lot: boredom. That's bad, too. "I kept thinking that the Giants could have been more patient with the run, and not given up so quickly. I wonder how those huge Defensive Linemen would have stood up to the down blocking, trapping, and kickout blocks of the Double-Wing Offense. What if they had tightened up the splits, and forced the defense to tighten up also? Imagine the guard and tackle pulling down the line and sealing Ray Lewis inside, the tight end doubling with the tackle on those beefed up DTs and Ron Dayne kicking out the DE? Paul Smith, Bridgeport, Connecticut *********** I am not an Apple employee and I receive nothing from Apple for writing this. I have been working my way up the Apple food chain since 1985 or 1986, and for the last year I have been using an iMac DV-SE with extra RAM (256 meg). When I go on the road I take a Powerbook 1400c, which seemed lightning-fast when I bought it three years ago but now seems like it's got bubble-gum stuck inside when I compare it with what's out there. For two years, though, the Powerbook was my only computer and it served me pretty well in that capacity. In fact, given the need to be able to do certain things when I am out of town, if I could have only one computer it would be a laptop. But I like my iMac a lot, and use it for a lot of things - e-mail, word processing, data bases, graphics (including my playbooks), video production and web site management. I am not pushing this. It works for me, but everybody's different. For those who might be interested, though, Apple is offering a $200-off rebate on sales of the iMac DV-SE until February 12. That would bring the price down to $1299 from the $1499 where it's been since the model was first introduced. Check it out at http://www.apple.com/promo/imac/ *********** "My 11 yr. old boy and I ended up playing a game of Football on our Dreamcast afterwards, and you know what? It was more entertaining than the Super Bowl was." Kevin Thurman, Tigard, Oregon *********** I heard from a coaching friend in the Washington, D.C. area who told me he and his wife just celebrated their first wedding anniversary on Super Bowl Sunday (I don't think they planned it that way, but who knows?). Actually, what he didn't know was that I already knew, because his wife had e-mailed me and, knowing that it was their paper wedding anniversary, asked me to recommend a good football book that she could surprise him with. When he wrote me to tell me about her present, he mentioned that they met when she was the cheerleading commissioner in their league, and he was a rookie coach. Among other things, they share a love of football and the Redskins. When he added that she probably knows the Double-Wing better than any of his assistants, I dared to mention the unthinkable: if you ever get in a pinch, consider making her an assistant. Figure it out: (1) if she can work with cheerleaders and their parents, football will be a snap; (2) she knows some football and is obviously interested in learning; (3) she won't begrudge you the time you spend on football: and (4) you can trust her. I am only half joking, by the way. I am not in favor of boys and girls playing collision sports against each other, but I wouldn't rule out a woman assistant merely because of her sex. (No, my wife is not looking over my shoulder as I write this. But she would make a good assistant.)
*********** From my faithful Australian correspondent (me lad, Ed) who knows how much I appreciate seeing phonies get theirs... "Aussie tennis star Patrick Rafter is known for a lot of things. His long hair and scruffy beard, his generous donations to charity and his love of drinking beer with his good mates. But at this year's Australian Open, Rafter achieved a bit of fame by saying no to tennis queen Anna Kournikova. Apparently, there was a long line for taxis following a tennis function and Rafter was at the head of the line. When a cab pulled up, Kournikova and her entourage came from nowhere, cut in front of Rafter and got in the cab. Rafter, in true honest Aussie fashion, told Kournikova to get out of his cab and go to the end of the line."
So it was, when Oak Crest High, of Mays Landing, New Jersey lost a hard-fought wrestling match at home against Egg Harbor Township High. Just 15 seconds into the 215-pound match, the two wrestlers had gone out of bounds, and when Oakcrest's man shoved his opponent, the referee blew his whistle, preparing to assess a one-point penalty. And then, things escalated. "I was going over to assess the one-point penalty for him shoving the Egg Harbor wrestler after the whistle," the referee told Robert Bemis of the Atlantic City Press. "The kid then made an obscene comment either directed at me or the other wrestler. Either way, that's a flagrant misconduct." Which means immediate ejection, without any warning. The result was an eight-point swing, with two points deducted from Oakcrest, six points awarded to Egg Harbor Township. Oh, yes - and because it was his second disqualification from a contest in the last 365 days, another result was a four-week, state-mandated suspension for the offender. (The earlier ejection had come in a tournament in December, for head-butting his opponent.) The Oakcrest athletic director pointed out that, although these two particular ejections had occured during wrestling season, the first one could have occured in any other sport within the last 365 days and this one would still have counted as a second offense. "NJSIAA rules are specific about the consequences," he said. "This is his second misconduct within a 365-day period, meaning he will have to serve a four-match suspension. There are no appeals for this. A third means he will have to face the NJSIAA board and could be expelled from competition." The school plans action of its own, beginning with a course in anger management.
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A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: The guy in the middle and the guy on
the right were teammates at the University of San
Francisco. When they 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. Eight or nine guys from
that team went on to play in the NFL. "If we had been at
Notre Dame, they'd still be writing books about us," the
guy on the right said, 20 years later. Instead, by the
time these two men entered the Hall, in 1972, USF was no
longer even playing football. The man in the middle 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 once acquired by the Rams - one single
man - from the Chicago Cardinals in exchange for nine
players. The one on the right spent his rookie year
with the travelling Dallas Texans, but came to Baltimore
when the Colts did and spent the rest of his long career
there. He was - is - considered by many the greatest
defensive end who ever played. He broke his leg in the
1958 NFL championship game but refused to go to the
hospital until the game ended. He watched from a
stretcher as the Colts won in sudden-death overtime. Who
are they?
"We came in as the dark horse, we will leave as number 1," said WA head coach Glenn Hall. Little was known before the tournament about the Raiders, since this was a Western Australian team's first appearance in the tournament itself in seven years. Unlike American Super Bowl players, Australian players are responsible for their own transportation, meals and lodging - not to mention time off from jobs - and the expense of bringing a team more than 3,000 miles had in the past several years proved daunting. In the third-place game, the ACT Monarchs defeated the South Australia Dragons, 28-26.
*********** Jeff Huseth, faithful Twin Cities correspondent is back at work, either shocked by the Vikings' devastating loss to the Giants or revived by the heartening news that Cris Carter will be returning for another year of end zone dramatics. " 'our' Cris Carter," he writes, "is going to bless us with his presence one more year or so. We're happy for ya Cris! I know nobody got any sleep the night before when he said he was going to hold the press conference concerning 'his' (our) future. I think Greenspan even delayed his financial report in case the news was bad, like CC might not be back."
In a nomination letter to the Nobel Committee, which awards the Peace Prize, a Swedish lawmaker named Lars Gustafsson wrote that "soccer has and will continue to play an important role in the global arena, when it comes to creating understanding between people." Something like 20 people or so would be alive today if it weren't for soccer-related violence over the last year. Are you telling me, Mr. Gustaffson, that if it weren't for soccer, it would have been worse. *********** A Northridge, California father who attacked and threatened to kill his son's Little League coach for taking the boy out of a game has been found guilty of battery and sentenced to 45 days in jail, three years' probation and six months of anger management counseling and ordered to "avoid arguments at sporting events." According to prosecutors the father, angry because the coach had taken his 11-year-old son out of a game after three innings last spring, threw his son's jersey in the manager's face, then slammed him against a truck, saying "How dare you make my son a three-inning player?" (The nerve of that coach!) The father said he was merely making hollow threats. "I always stuck up for my kids," he said. "I didn't always do it the right way. I'm a loud guy." (Why do I think that bit about "avoiding arguments at sporting events" isn't going to amount to much?) *********** Portland is a very sensitive-to-your-needs city, and so where other, less homeless-friendly cities might have acted months - years - ago, Portland has been having a devil of a time dealing with a large army of "homeless" (can't stand that euphemism). It seems that their tent city, which someone for some dumbass reason decided to call "Camp Dignity" (a name with which the media have obligingly gone along), has been forced to move from place to place as landowner after landowner has asked to have them removed. So time after time they've had to pack their goods into "their" shopping carts (no one seems willing to point out that those shopping carts are the property of some store, somewhere) and move on once again. It hasn't been easy for them, they're all too willing to tell us every night on TV, insisting that the only solution is for the city to give them land. Did you hear that? Give them land. My wife and I watch and want to say, hey, hoboes - we were 50 before we owned our own house, and nobody gave it to us. Try doing it our way. Try working for it. *********** Paul Harvey told about the guy in the Midwest who stood on a corner holding up one of those lame "Will Work for Food" signs. Across the street from the beggar was a restaurant with a sign in its window: "NOW HIRING." *********** I can remember when all it took was Kellogg's AppleJacks ("a bowl a day keeps the bullies away"). Now, it takes an act of the Washington State legislature. Having run out of things to do, the lawmakers of our fair state decided to declare war on - school bullies. It's true. And since they evidently think that teachers and school officials also have nothing better to do to do, all schools in the state will be given an extra assignment - to develop an anti-bullying plan (I am not making this up). So after dozens of stupid meetings, schools will have designed one more thing, which along with all the unsafe playground apparatus that they've removed, and all the laws calling for helmets whenever kids step outside, will ensure that all children in the state will be as near as we can possibly make them to being injury-free. *********** "It is sometimes said that heroes are hard to find. But I never heard that said around the Pentagon. Those who would understand the meaning of duty, honor and country, need look no further than the nearest veteran of America's armed forces." Vice-President Dick Cheney *********** I swear I saw this Saturday on a fence near me. Danger- Archery Area. All Dogs Must Be On a Leash *********** Al McGuire is gone. Fortunately, for those of us who loved him, we had a little time to prepare for his passing, but it's still tough. He was one guy I'd like to have been with for a day, or been for a day. I thought he was so cool. Absolutely no B-S about the man. No posturing. Nothing phony. Imagine a guy with the cojones to turn down an NCAA tournament bid (which he did) because he thought his team got shafted in the seeding (which it did) and instead, playing in the NIT and winning it? Imagine a guy starting his own son at point guard, and when another guy playing the position complained, telling him, unabashedly, "Sorry. We're talkin' flesh and blood here. If you're gonna beat out my own kid, it's gonna have to be a clean knockout." The only thing he ever did wrong in my eyes was to be so good, so clever and entertaining on TV, that he inspired all the cheap imitators we hear today, all the Dennis Millers who sit up nights, thinking up funny lines and writing them down for later so they can sound naturally witty when they go on the air. With Al McGuire, though, it was all unrehearsed and off-the-cuff. He had something that his wannabes couldn't get at broadcasting school - street smarts. He coached in North Carolina and he coached in Wisconsin, but the New York never left him and the Irish never left him. His idea of relaxation was to jump on his Harley (made in Milwaukee, of course) and ride out into the Wisconsin countryside. What a story-teller! What a sense of humor! What wouldn't I have paid to have dinner or a couple of beers with Al McGuire? |
*********** Coach Wyatt, A month or so ago we discussed via email the idea of choosing youth teams by making the talent as even as possible. I believe you mentioned this ideas a week or so on your website. I brought up this subject with a former recreation director in my county. We both agreed that the coaches would never allow the talent to be evenly dispersed. My comment was that would show who were the good coaches and who were the recruiters. I said the games should be decided by which team executes the best and is well coached. Instead, the winning team is always the one with the most kids who just slide in under the weight limit and age cutoff. He replied that the other "coaches" would not like me in their league because I coach for a living and am not a parent who wants to coach his kid for a year or so. Besides he says that I shouldn't get the same level of talent as everyone else because it wouldn't be fair because I have coached a long time. Yeah, right! I suppose my $1500 stipend for coaching makes me a professional. I got an idea. There should be a test for coaches. If you don't know anything and your head is up your butt then you should get your pick of the 11 best players in the league. If you're just an idiot you should only get five or six of the best. The coach who scores the highest on the test gets the rest of the kids who don't like football and would rather play video games. I wonder if Hillary Clinton runs this league. It sounds like some kind of twisted logic that has been spun right out of a politician's mouth. Just kidding! best wishes for the new year, Dan King, Evans Georgia *********** Coach - I just heard parts of the interview with the last 2 Texas convicts captured in Colorado. Geeze..what have we all been thinkin? how could we have expected anything else out of these poor mistreated citizens? I mean, hey...they haven't even been allowed to go to college while being incarcerated! and they are treated like, well...common criminals down in Texas! Obviously the Texas penal system needs an overhaul, according to these fine young men. There are WAY too many people being sentenced to 99 years +...what about THEIR lives? There is no consideration regarding their future! Those are some of the actual quotes from these murdering rapists! They congratulated themselves for how civil and peaceful they have been, when "it could have been a bloodbath". Well, I know one Irving police officer's family who would disagree - let's see - he was shot 6 times, then run over by a car 3 times - yeah..let's overhaul the Texas penal system - make it so we can send these bastards straight to the chair! Scott Barnes - Rockwall, Texas (The other night I heard your delightful former governor, that big-mouthed frump named Ann Richards, wailing about all the money George W. Bush - who kicked her butt - had spent on prisons. She thought the money shoulda been spent the money on treatment, whatever that's supposed to mean. Maybe she meant free college courses. I would say the cat-o-nine-tails would be about right for those guys.) *********** I was reading an article about General Colin Powell, and came across a couple of very interesting bits about his background. His parents were Jamaicans and until he was grown and in college (CCNY) they lived in the South Bronx, a name now scarcely written without being preceded by one or more phrases such as "run-down," "poverty-stricken," "crime-ridden." It wasn't so bad then, though, as one of General Powell's boyhood friends recalled. It was "like the United Nations," he told USA Today. "We had Jews, blacks, Greeks, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Chinese. Now, it's predominantly Hispanic. Then, it wasn't predominantly anything" People got along. General Powell himself recalled that he didn't experience racial bigotry until he left the South Bronx. His parents were able to buy a house of their own in Queens when his dad, uh, hit the number. For $10,000. "The number" was a daily lottery - illegal - run mostly in big cities and popular especially in lower-income neighborhoods. The idea was to guess the three digit number that came up that day - maybe it would be the last three digits of the daily handle at a race track. You could play for as little as a dime. The "better people" always referred to it as a "racket," but for people in the cities, especially for black people, whose paths to the top economically were, to say the least, limited, "playing the number" provided a little bit of hope. Actually, besides hope for the masses, the "numbers racket" or "numbers game," provided either extra income or full-time employment for a large number of people, from the barber who took the bet to the runner who collected the bets all the way up to Mister Big. Mr. Big himself was often well known. He was frequently a community benefactor, and he backed the local politicians of his choice and was reputed to have provided the seed money for minority businessman who wouldn't have been given the time of day at a bank. Mister Big generally was as well-known to the police as he was to the people in the community, yet somehow he rode around the neighborhood in his big Cadillac and he never went to jail. You figure it out. Nowadays, thank goodness, those "crooks" have been driven out of business. They have been driven out of business by bigger crooks in our state governments, who don't have to pay off the police, since they're already on the payroll, and, now that they have a legal monopoly, don't have to give the same odds as the numbers boys either. (Generally the number paid 600 to 1. The actual odds against the player were 999 to 1. Obviously, there was a lot of spread there for the numbers boys, but they had bills, too. They had a large, efficient organization to run. Now that the states run the numbers game - advertise it, even - they don't give you anywhere near the odds that the "crooks" did. Of course, they have even larger organizations to run - and very inefficient ones at that.) *********** I said it before and I'll say it again: Brian Billick has done a great job of coaching this year, but I wish he'd shut up. He has been sounding like the Jane Fonda of professional football, chatting up the cause of the enemy in his phony defense of Ray Lewis. Unless it's movie stars, there are few people in the world who are poorer informed than most professional sports figures - especially pro football coaches, generally one-dimensional types who could give you three dozen ways to attack a zone blitz but couldn't tell you where (or what) Canada was if it didn't have a pro football league. I sympathize with sports reporters who have had to suffer through lectures on morality by Mr. Billick, whose prime motivation is obvious - to suck up to his best player. He sounds like the parent of the misbehaving kid who comes into school and says, "I know that's what the teacher says. But Brandon says he didn't do it. And my son doesn't lie." ***********"Jesus couldn't please everybody. He was slashed at, spit at, but he just carried on. That's what I'm trying to do." Ray Lewis, noted biblical scholar." *********** Somebody has got to tell Vince McMahon about Shannon Sharpe. If I ever have to leave the scene of a double murder in a hurry and then lie to the police about what I know, I want Shannon Sharpe handling my defense. Or at least serving as a character reference. But since I don't plan to be doing anything like that any time soon, I have another thought - anybody watch that loony on TV Wednesday, and think that maybe he was auditioning for a spot in the booth next to Jesse Ventura on the XFL telecasts? ***********"Ray Lewis had a chance to make the rest of his life a lot easier. All he had to do was give the Super Bowl media what they wanted yesterday. A dash of humility. A pinch of remorse. A pang of regret over his role in the unsolved double homicide that occurred after last year's Super Bowl in Atlanta. He wouldn't do it. 'I'm not here to please the country,' Lewis said during an hour-long session with reporters at Raymond James Stadium. "Too bad." John Eisenberg, Baltimore Sun *********** "So here was his chance to be a man, open his heart and say the words that grieving souls and a confused nation need to hear. It should surprise no one that Ray Lewis, with a smile, defiantly refused. Reporters surrounded the podium of Ray Lewis. "Is there anything you might want to say to the families of the victims?" he was asked, surrounded by hundreds of media still unsure why he was involved in a brawl that left two men stabbed to death last January. "Nah," Lewis said. "Football. Football. Football." Cold. Cold. Cold. Like that, the most despicable saga in Super Bowl history grew more sickening and morbid Tuesday, a day when Lewis exhibited no sorrow for the dead and voiced little remorse for the shady friends he kept or the lies he told. He yet may explode into the greatest middle linebacker ever, but on a cool afternoon in his native Florida, Lewis only assured himself a place in eternal shame." Jay Mariotti, Chicago Sun-Times *********** An Olympic Moment, going to waste. Who would ever have thought that the made-for-the-Olympics story of the redemption of an alcoholic and his rise from near-uselessness to stardom as quarterback of a Super Bowl team would be no better than Super Bowl Story number two? *********** I love Baltimore and, even though these are not the Colts, I am happy that the fans of Baltimore are happy. It is nice that they have a team again, even though it is a gaudily-clad imitation of the Colts. But there is no way that this Cleveland team should win a Super Bowl before one that actually plays in Cleveland does. (And from the looks of things, that is going to be a really long time.) *********** Fearless Super Bowl forecast: neither team will score very much, because (1) the Ravens' defense is good; (2) the Ravens' offense is bad; (3) last year's game notwithstanding, Super Bowls usually suck. *********** I have received numerous "explanations" of the origin of various words and phrases, and one of them should serve as warning to anyone who swallows whole anything he reads on the Internet. It gies llike this: "In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's." Cute story, but anyone who knew the old-time printing business knows better. "Minding one's p's and q's " referred to the constant need for care on the part of typesetters who had to look at type in reverse and set page after page in reverse and never found out they's made a mistake in setting type until they'd "pulled a proof" - printed a page. They were especially troubled by the lower case "p's" and "q's" which looked very similar and were stored (in the lower case, of course) in adjacent compartments. There was always the danger that after the last job, someone had replaced the type in the wrong box, and one had to be constantly on guard against setting a "p" where a "q" was called for, and the converse. *********** Six members of the Washington State basketball team were seen out after bedcheck at a Eugene, Oregon joint the night before they were scheduled to played Oregon. One of them was the coach's kid. The coach, informed by an Oregon athletics department official, nailed the offenders, and suspended them all. All but one guy, that is. Eddie Miller, who was his leading scorer, was said to be the one whose idea it was to sneak out, and the only one not showing any remorse, and he was given the boot for what the coach called his "overall attitude." The person who made the call, a former associate of the WSU coach, said that when he called the coach and told him, he heard him sigh, then say, "thanks for telling me." I actually heard a talk-show host say Thursday that instead of calling the coach, the guy should have gone up to the kids in the bar and suggested they go back to their hotel. *********** Kevin Jones, a 6 foot, 200-pound running back from Cardinal O'Hara High in Springfield, Pennsylvania, who rushed for 5740 yards and 84 touchdowns in his career, was considered by many to be the nation's best running back. Wednesday, at a news conference held at the school to announce his choice of college, he came in and picked up a Penn State shirt. He's going to be a Lion! thought the Penn Staters in the crowd. And then, he tossed the Penn State shirt aside and peeled off his sweatshirt to reveal, underneath - a Virginia Tech jersey. *********** More than 100 police officers in our area managed to surround a mile-square area to the north of us and corral an escaped murder suspect Wednesday night. He was finally located by a helicopter's heat-seeking camera, hiding under a log in the middle of a blackberry thatch, and nabbed by a police dog. Really nabbed. He was taken to the hospital for treatment of a dog bite "in a place," as the TV reporter said, "where a man doesn't want to be bitten." |
A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY - Archie
Manning was a raw high school kid, a sophomore
probably, when this picture was taken. He came from a
small town in Mississippi (Drew, population 2,000 or so)
where he had a sensational high school career, then
started at his state's university (Ole Miss) from the
time he was a sophomore (freshmen weren't then eligible).
He was a do-everything guy who became such a legend as a
college player that a country song ("The Ballad of Archie
Who?" - in response to buttons worn by Tennessee fans)
was written about him - although I doubt that it was all
that popular outside the borders of that Mississippi. He
was the second player chosen in the NFL draft, right
behind the Heisman Trophy winner (Jim Plunkett), and a
reporter wrote that he was "going to the cesspool of the
NFL." The reporter was right. (He went to the Saints.)
Our guy played for three different NFL teams (New
Orleans, Houston and Minnesota), enjoying a long career
distinguished less by his outstanding play (he was very
good) than by the fact that he spent most of it with a
team so consistently poor that its fans disowned it by
wearing bags over their heads. (They jokingly called the
team the "Ain'ts") Oh, yes - he and his wife had three
sons, all of them excellent high school football players.
The eldest, Cooper, went to Dad's (and Mom's) college as
a wide receiver, but was discovered to have a medical
condition that ruled out any further football; the middle
son (Peyton) was considered one of the top two or three
high school QB's in the country, and when he decided not
to go to Dad's alma mater (and go instead to Tennessee),
Dad's phone rang off the hook with calls ranging from
disappointed to downright nasty; middle son, despite
lucrative offers to turn pro, stayed in college for the
full four years, at the end of which he was the first
player drafted by the NFL; son number three, Eli, had an
outstanding high school career and is now carrying on the
family tradition as a QB at Ole Miss. (Ironically, Eli's
head coach, David Cutcliffe, was Peyton's QB coach at
Tennessee, and Peyton speaks highly of him.) By now, it's
possible that more poeple know Peyton than know Archie.
But if you'd like to know more about Ole Archie and his
boys... I am not usually fond of books that people don't
write themselves. You know -books supposedly "written" by
the author, but with the subtitle "with" or "as told to"
a professional writer. I mean, who's kidding whom? I'd be
surprised if most of those "authors" knew where to put a
period. But I must confess to a certain amount of bias
where Archie Manning is concerned, and I heartily
recommend the book "Manning," "by" Archie and Peyton,
"with" John Underwood. Archie and Peyton are themselves
intelligent and articulate, and the real writer, John
Underwood, is such a pro that it reads exactly as I
believe Archie or Peyton would tell it. And without
giving anything away - with all the crap we're used to
hearing about how the trials and traumas of a hard
upbringing are supposed to give some jerk of an athlete a
pass for his psychopathic behavior - if ever a guy
experienced trauma in his life, it was Archie Manning.
But he soldiered on, and his reward is the family that he
and his wife, Olivia, built.)
*********** "Coach; Thanks for your denunciation of "Friday Night Lights." You pegged the circumstances behind that book to a T. The sumbitch who penned it came to Odessa telling everyone he was planning to write a "Hoosiers"-style tribute to Texas high school football only to dump on the whole city and all those in it. "I don't know if you saw President Bush's visit to Midland (Odessa's next door neighbor) which was televised last week, but Bush became somewhat emotional when he talked about the place and its people. I understand why. My dad comes from West Texas (as did his dad and his grandfather) and though I wasn't raised there I'm proud to say I was born there as well. As far as I'm concerned, West Texans are the finest people on Earth and reading anything that puts them down is just going to make me mean, therefore I have yet to read "Friday Night Lights." "Now, if you're looking for a good book on high school football and Texas high school ball in particular, Ty Cashion's "Pigskin Pulpit: A Social History of Texas High School Football" (foreword by Bum Phillips) is the one to read. It is an eye-opening and entertaining look at how the game in this state was affected by the varying social conditions which existed from the 1920s through to the current day as seen through the eyes of high school football coaches. The author is the son of an HS grid coach (and related to former NFL ref Red Cashion, too, I believe)."-- Whit Snyder, Baytown, Texas (Doggone- another one of those football books in that big stack next to me that I gotta read!) *********** Scott Barnes, a youth coach who has spent a career in business and has risen to a vice-presidency of Perot Sysyetms in Dallas, has told me for some time that he felt a calling to be a high school coach. Said at first he was put off by the fact that he didn't have a college diploma, but then he realized that it would be important for him to get the degree just to serve as a good example to his own kids. Well, by gosh, he's going to answer the call. "I'm officially "IN" at Dallas Baptist University," he writes. "I'm about 18 months away from the goal. Joan and I have made this decision - again, after much thought/prayer/consideration - I'm "retiring" in 30 months and we're both going to hit the teaching ranks - She'll probably go back to elementary where she spent 11 years, and I'm going for the High School level. That's where I'm supposed to be - it's my call and I can either answer it or live the rest of my life knowing that I'm not living the life I was supposed to live." I applaud Coach Barnes and his wife, Joan, for being willing to face the change in lifestyle this will represent. I understand perfectly. I was once headed up the corporate ladder, too, but I just couldn't shake the football out of my head. I am not going to recommend that others do what I did. It was not easy financially. But I know that there are an awful lot of good teachers and coaches out there disguised as business people, servicemen, lawyers, government workers. Our schools and kids would surely benefit from their diversity of experience and viewpoints. And I do believe that the best people in any occupation - the best teachers and coaches - are the ones who most want to be there, and have made sacrifices to make it possible. Robert Frost, who didn't know squat about football, wrote a poem that applies - The Road Not Taken. *********** George W. Bush will probably never be a football coach, and Jon Eagle will probably never be President of the United States. But I was struck by one very important management trait - call it an organizational skill - they share. Jon, one of the top high school coaches in the Pacific Northwest, has been coach at Evergreen High in Vancouver, Washington since 1987. I was coaching in Finland one summer, with no plans to coach when I returned to the States, when I got a call from Jon. One of his assistants had died, and he wondered if I'd be interested in working on his staff. I knew Jon's dad - also a coach - and I'd coached against Jon and liked what I'd seen, so I thought it over a day or so and then said, "sure." Even with the fact that on my return to the states I landed in Portland at 11:30 on a Sunday night, approximately 24 hours after I'd started, and Jon's first practice started at 12:01 AM Monday (a motivational thing - that's Jon) it was a great experience. I worked on his staff for two years and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, I was 50 at the time, and Jon was just 30. I was one of three former head coaches on his staff, and none of us was what you'd call ready to retire. The obvious warning signs were there, for most young coaches, who might feel, uh, insecure, afraid that the older guys might be second-guessing their every move - to the kids, or the parents, or the guys in the tavern. It does happen, you know. But Jon had so much confidence in himself and his ability to coach that I'm not sure it ever entered his mind that it might be a problem. It wasn't, as far as I could ever tell, and we went 15-3 in the two seasons I coached with him. I am reminded of Jon Eagle whenever I hear people wisecracking about how Dick Cheney is the "real brains" behind the Bush presidency. Yeah, I think. And so what if he is? Wouldn't it be scary if the President of the United States was so insecure - so desirous of getting all the credit - that he would hire a lesser man when a superior one is available? General George C. Marshall managed the entire U.S. military effort during World War II; Eisenhower and MacArthur reported to him. After the war, as Secretary of State, he became a man of peace, author of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. But if President Harry Truman had listened to his advisors, General Marshall would never have been appointed Secretary. He will outshine you, his advisors told the President. Mr. Truman, not one to worry about such things - and not known for his lack of confidence either - is reported to have said, " I'm President. He isn't. I want him." *********** Ken Dryden played goalie for Cornell University when it won the NCAA Ice Hockey Championship back in the 1960's, after which he played in the NHL for eight years. He's now a lawyer, and president of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I believe I quoted him earlier, saying that the greatest lesson of sport is that most things go wrong; in fact, things almost always go wrong. He said he's seen any number of instances in which coacches will diagram plays in the locker room where everything is executed perfectly. But the reality of competition, he went on to say - what it teaches kids - is that the best of plans almost always break down. What kids learn in competition is not get upset, but instead to deal with things like that - to find another way to get the puck in the goal or the ball in the end zone. What's going to happen, he asks, to the high school student who doesn't play sports, the one who consistently gets straight A's, who never has anything go wrong? What's going to happen to that student in college the first time something goes wrong - the first time he or she gets a B instead of an A? What's going to happen to that student when something goes wrong in life? Which leads to this... *********** Twenty years ago I was coaching at a Catholic high school in Portland, and a JC coach from up north who was the friend of our basketball coach was passing through town with his team and asked to use our gym for a practice. It was after school and I decided to watch. They were scrimmaging, and there was some sort of a collision, followed by a reaction by one of the players, when in a flash the coach grabbed the basketball and got in one kid's face. "BIG F--KIN' DEAL!" he shouted. "THERE ARE KIDS STARVIN' IN BANGLADESH, AND YOU GET FOULED! BIG F--KIN' DEAL!" A couple of us who were sitting there looked at each other, not sure whether lightning would come through the roof of that religious institution. But in his own way, which may very well have been the most effective way to reach that particular youngster, he was preparing that kid for success. He was trying to teach him to get over it - to deal with the little things - to move on. I was reminded of this when I read about the basketball player from West Virginia who evidently got so enraged by fouls that had been called against him early in the game ("They can't do that to me! Who do they think they are? Do they know who they're screwing with? I'll teach them to disrespect me!") that - unable to get over it - he continued to pout, and wound up throwing a the mother of all tantrums, the culmination of which was his spitting on a Notre Dame cheerleader as he was being escorted out. WVU coach Gale Catlett said afterward that it was the worst thing he'd seen in 38 years of coaching, and promised to deal with it. But I'm willing to bet someone will step in and persuade Coach Catlett to give the kid a break, and despite the disgrace he has brought on his team and on that university, not to mention the filthy assault on that cheerleader, he will probably receive little more than a slap on the wrist. We have become so hung up on being "fair" to the miscreants that we don't realize that if we were to slap a couple of them - hard - we would get everyone else's attention and things would improve - real fast! It also mightn't have hurt if that kid had had someone earlier in his life to say to him, whenever things went wrong, "BIG F--KIN' DEAL!" and remind him of all those starving kids in Bangladesh. *********** One year as head coach at C. B. West High was all Mike Carey could take. He'd gone 14-1 and taken his team to the Pennsylvania state class AAAA title game, narrowly losing in overtime. But one year was enough. But he told the news media that he knew by the end of the regular season that after 14 years as an assistant, the last nine of them as associate head coach at Central Bucks West High in Doylestown, being the C.B. West head coach was not for him. He said it wasn't the pressure. (He'd inherited the program from Mike Pettine, who retired from West last year after a 33-year tenure in which he became the state's winningest high school coach; he'd inherited a team that had won an unprecedented four straight state titles, and a winning streak of 45 games that he'd extended to 59 - longest in state history - before falling to Erie Cathedral Prep in the state title game) Instead, he mentioned the usual wanting to spend more time with his family. He also mentioned health issues: said he'd lost 24 pounds and his blood pressure had soared. One possible successor is current staff member and C.B. West grad Randy Cuthbert , who starred at fullback for Duke and soent three years with the Steelers. Another? Mike Pettine, Jr., (featured on the recent ESPN special "The Season") who, although he coaches at rival North Penn High, is himself a C.B. West grad and might be tempted. Coach Pettine, Sr. (pronounced PET-in) was at the news conference at which Coach Carey announced his resignation, and he suggested a more plausible explanation, something anyone who's ever been a head coach can understand: Coach Carey didn't have a right-hand man. "The thing that I had was that I had him there," Coach Pettine said. "I always looked at it as a partnership. And then when he took over, he had a good staff. But he didn't have anyone like I had to take away a lot of the work and pressure and burden."
*********** No one dares question the credentials of the Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker to speak on matters of importance to African-Americans. He has been there and paid his dues. Himself a giant of the civil rights movement and a former associate of the Reverends Martin Luther King , Jr., Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth, Reverend Walker spoke not long ago at the Congress of National Black Churches, and said that in his opinion African-Americans as a group are worse off today than they were a generation ago. But he wasn't talking about racism or denial of rights or lack of opportunity or poor schools. He was talking about "negative lifestyles." Not even slavery, said Reverend Walker, broke up the black family the way AIDS and "negative lifestyles" have. Mary Sanchez, writing about the speech in the Kansas City Star, noted that it was too bad more people didn't hear it - too bad it didn't get same attention, from whites and blacks alike, as "MTV booty bumping, gangsta rap hype and sitcoms perpetuating images of the jive-talking buffoon."
*********** It's probably too late for Reebok to rethink that big deal it just offered Venus Williams. Converse has just had to declare bankruptcy. Most guys my age recall fondly the company because that pair of Converse All-Stars we got in high school was the first "serious" pair of sneakers we ever owned. Some people called them "Chuck Taylors" or just plain "Chucks" for the name of the guy whose autograph appeared on the rubber disks which I guess were to keep our ankle-bones from crashing into each other. Nobody knew who Chuck Taylor was. Who cared? Turns out he was one of Converse's top salesmen. A former basketball player who got out and knew everybody in basketball and really sold shoes. One of the reasons Converse wound up so heavily in debt is because it paid lots of money to guys who didn't sell shoes. When you go bankrupt, your creditors get stiffed. One of Converse's creditors, said to be owed $400,000, is a non-salesman named Dennis Rodman.
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*********** Anybody else check out the motorcyle police preceding President Bush's motorcade down Pennsylvania Avenue? There were 25 of them on those big white Harleys, and they formed a perfect wedge. Good luck breaking through that one.
*********** Micah Rice, a young sports writer with the Vancouver (Washington) Columbian, wrote a very timely column last week on the continued denegeration of sportsmanship in our local schools' sports. He told of numerous incidents recently in which kids exhibited rude, crude and/or lewd behavior when things didn't go their way. What he saw, of course, is not confined to one little corner of one of the 50 states. It has become pandemic - prevalent throughout our entire country. We might have seen this coming when feel-good school administrators began driving the old "holler at the kids" coaches from the gyms and the field. But we also might have foreseen it... When we began raising brats - when we swallowed whole the psychobabble of the people who counseled parents that spanking was just another form of child abuse, and no one else had to right to admonish their children... When a high school girl could ask the President of the United States whether he wore "boxers or briefs" and people thought it was cute... When our schools began to spend so much time inflating kids' self-esteem, teaching them that just by being on earth they are "special", that kids really began to believe it, whether or not they had done anything to merit the praise... When, wanting to shelter kids from the trauma of losing, elementary and middle eliminated competition altogether, depriving kids of the experience of learning to live with defeat. Of "dealing with it". Of "getting over it"... When people began slapping "QUESTION AUTHORITY" stickers on their cars, and parents began to go well beyond mere "questioning" of school officials and coaches when their kids were punished for misbehaving in school or breaking team rules... When parents began seeing youth sports and high school sports as their kids' stepping-stones to wealth and fame, and coaches and officials as roadblocks in their way... When professional sports gave up any pretense of sportsmanship, and even incorporated acts of poor sportsmanship into the video games it licenses... When professional wrestling's Monday night TV ratings passed NFL Monday Night Football among teenage boys. Now, just over the next hill, we have the XFL, promising to "put the fun back into football," and the NFL, already anticipating the XFL's challenge, concluding its most demonstrative, "celebration"-filled season ever.
*********** "Tuoppi" was just named Vuoden Valmentaja. Tuomas ("Tuoppi") Heikkinen, a former player and defensive coordinator of the Helsinki Roosters, was just named Finland's Coach of the Year. I first recruited him to play football, right off the stage of a disco in 1987. He was playing in a band in our team's hangout, a place called the Ratikellari in a town in Central Finland called Jyväskylä (don't even try to pronounce it). He was a musician type, long-haired. But he was good size, with big arms. It seemed such a waste for him not to be playing football. He spoke English well and was really into rock and roll and American culture and we got talking and I said, "Hey Beastie Boy - why don't you play football?" He asked me if I really thought he could play. Thinking of how pathetic some of our athletes were at that time, I said, uh, yes. YES. DEFINITELY. That was about all it took. Such was recruiting in Jyväskylä, Finland in 1987. He was a fast learner and a very good athlete - about 6-1, 235 and, as it turned out, the fastest guy on the team. He went on to become a pretty good player, and, in a few years, to star on the national team. We have managed to stay in touch over the years. (His real name - Thomas in Finnish - is Tuomas (pronounced TOO-oh-mahss) but somewhere he had acquired the similar-sounding nickname "Tuoppi" (TOO-oh-pee), which just happens to be what the Finns call a glass of beer.)
*********** It's well-known that the son (or, I suppose, daughter) of a doctor is far more likely than the rest of us to become a doctor, too. It's that way in a lot of professions. Consider coaching. All you have to do is look at four of this past year's top five college teams: Oklahoma's Bob Stoops and his three coaching brothers are the sons of a coach. (They give most of the credit for what they are today to dad Ron Stoops, long-time high school coach in the Youngstown, Ohio area.) Butch Davis of Miami is the son of a high school coach in Arkansas. Dennis Erickson's dad was a high school coach in Washington. Bobby Bowden's two sons are coaches. I bring this up as a way of illustrating the corollary: that a kid who doesn't have a father at all would seem to be at something of a disadvantage in the choice and pursuit of a career. This could be a crucial factor in pointing more young black men at coaching as a career. If there aren't men in their homes, as is all too often the case, then the men who do play major roles in their lives - coaches - need to do everything they can to counsel them to consider careers in coaching, then encouraging them to get the necessary education, skills and experience.
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Correctly identifying the Bills' duo- Glade Hall- Seattle, Washington -(" Coach- The two guys are Cookie Gilchrist and Jack Kent. I can remember them as a kid growing up in Geneva, NY . My uncle was a diehard Browns fan and would never admit he liked those guys from that "hot dog league" as he put it.")... Adam Wesoloski- DePere, Wisconsin... Scott Russell- Sterling, Virginia... Kevin McCullough- Lakeville, Indiana... Bill Nelson- West Burlington, Iowa... Dennis Metzger- Connersville, Indiana... Whit Snyder- Baytown, Texas... Tom Compton- Durant, Iowa... Ken Brierly- Carolina, Rhode Island... David Cramp- Owensboro, Kentucky... Dave Potter- Durham, North Carolina... Mark Kaczmarek- Davenport, Iowa... Mike O'Donnell- Pine City, Minnesota... Ross Woody- Vallejo, California... Alan Goodwin- Warwick, Rhode Island... Joe Bremer- West Seneca, New York (This is a lay-up for us die hard a Bills fans. The guy on the left is none other than the great -- and I mean great (saw him play in his heyday) Cookie Gilchrist. The guy on the left is a fellow who was quarterback on the team and went on to have a pretty fair political career)... John Reardon- Peru, Illinois... *********** Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Ask Washington Huskies' basketball coach Bob Bender about that. The Kentwood, Washington High basketball team was at an out-of-town holiday tournament, when some of its members were caught stealing a couple of cases of beer from a convenience store. Two of them were charged with misdemeanor theft, and they were thrown off the team for the rest of the season, as called for by school district policy. But one of them, 6-8 Mike Jensen, had committed back in October to accept a scholarship to play at the University of Washington. Immediately after the incident made the news, Coach Bender announced that he stood behind young Mr. Jensen, and that his scholarship was safe. Oh, what a firestorm ensued, much of it directed at Coach Bender, who is not on the firmest of footing as it is. "How do we explain to high school athletes that it doesn't matter if you break the law, you'll still get your scholarship?" asked a Seattle radio show host. "There's a feeling out there: all too often, if you're good enough in sports, you can always find a way to beat the system." In poll of the visitor's to the station's Web site, 69.5 per cent of the voters said that a high school player should lose his scholarship if arrested. Hey- not so fast, guys. Yes, it was a dumbs---t thing to do. Regrettably, though, teenage kids will sometimes do things like that. Once. It was wrong and the kid needs to know it, needs to be repentant, and needs to pay a price for what he did. Now, then - was this the first time he'd done something like that, or was it just another in a series of incidents? Is he a normal high school kid who broke the law just once, or is he a chronic outlaw? In the former case - if it was a first offense - I think Coach Bender is correct; in the latter case - if the kid is "troubled," as the do-gooders like to say - Washington had no business signing him in the first place. I suggest that perhaps Coach Bender could have avoided some of the outrage directed at him had he announced that the scholarship would be contingent on the kid's completing the school year without further incident. But "beat the system?" The kid has not, after all, gone unpunished. Suspending him for the majority of his senior year is fairly harsh. Justified, but harsh. And last week, the other shoe fell. Found guilty, he was fined $400 and placed on three months' probation by the court. *********** Coach, In response to your story about the young coach who is receiving excessive criticism from parents, I have a couple of suggestions. These are things that people suggested to me when I have gone through the hard times. 1. Since his AD seems supportive, make all queries about the coach go through the AD, that will keep some people away and the AD can quell some of them before they even get to the coach. 2. A coach can refuse to take these calls at home. During our playoff run this year the media interest increased to the point that I had to direct all media to call my voice mail. I also did this with a parent situation before. That way I could get back to them on my terms. This kept them from interefering from class time, practice time, and at home-time. 3. I feel a coach can state at his pre-season meeting that he will not deal with parent questions about playing time and other related issues. If the player wants to meet with the head coach or position coach on how to improve that is OK, but playing-time meetings are not required. Coach Frank Lenti from Mt. Carmel HS in Chicago, IL has spoken at several clinics and wrote some articles about these topics. He has a very good lecture in the 1999 Nike Coach of the Year manual that has been helpful to me. This would be good material for any young coach. If the coach likes the kids and has administrative support he should stay. If the support is not there, there are other places. I hope this can help. John Bothe, Head Coach- Oregon HS, Oregon, Illinois *********** How'd you like to work for an AD like Peter Dallis? Dallis, the AD at UCLA, called Rick Pitino when he learned that Pitino had stepped down as coach of the Celtics. Called him twice, in fact. They are not known to be old friends, so Dallis' original denials that they were talking about coaching didn't ring true. Trouble is, Dallis already had a coach - Steve Lavin - when he made those calls. And then he lamely said that all he was doing was making a list of potential applicants for the UCLA job, should it ever come open. Coach Lavin, as he should have, lash |
A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY - The two guys shown here are
celebrating a professional championship, the first of two
straight titles that the Buffalo Bills would win.
Unfortunately for the player on the left,
Cookie Gilchrist, the next
one would be without him. He was a 6-3, 250 pound
fullback, and no less a judge of talent than Al Davis
called him at the time "the best all-around back in
football." He led the league in rushing in the regular
season, and he ran for 122 yards in the title game. But
he had his problems with the coach - who had put him on
waivers during the season and only reluctantly recalled
him - and not long after this photo was taken, he was
traded to Denver. He was drafted by the Cleveland Browns
while still in high school and went straight from high
school (Har-Brack High, in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania) to
pro ball, but because of NFL rules at the time, that
meant going to Canada until what would have been his
original college class had graduated. He stayed in Canada
for eight years where he became a legend, and never did
return to the Browns, signing with Buffalo of the AFL in
1962. He twice led the AFL in rushing, and for three
straight years led the league in carries. He was four
times an AFL All-Star selection. At one time he held the
AFL single-game rushing record, with 243 yards (it is
still the seventh-best rushing game in NFL history). In
1962, he scored 128 points for the Bills, including 14
PAT's and eight field goals. "An athlete should be traded
every two or three years," he once said. "It keeps him
from becoming complacent." I hope he really meant it,
because in his 12-year professional career, he played for
six different teams. The player on the right,
Jack Kemp (often known then
as "Jackie"), was a solid, unspectacular quarterback from
Occidental College in California whose brainy leadership
took the Bills to those two straight titles - the last
ones ever won by the franchise. After a failed tryout
with the Steelers, he sat out of football for two years
and probably would never have played again had the AFL
not started up. He played in five AFL championship games
with two different teams (three, technically, since he
quarterbacked the Chargers both in L.A. and San Diego).
Following his pro football career he entered politics,
serving as a Congressman from Western New York and as a
member of the Cabinet. He was a candidate for
Vice-President of the United States. His son also played
quarterback in the NFL.