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BACK ISSUES - MARCH & APRIL 2000

 

April 28 - "Our communities can use the discipline of football - only your teaching will protect the game, its name, and the position it holds in our society." Harold "Tubby" Raymond, University of Delaware

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The May 1 issue of US News and World Report contains an article entitled, "What's Your Favorite Class?" It's about recess. Recess is endangered. In the 1950's it was common for schools to have three recesses a day, but according to the article, 40 per cent of American schools have eliminated recess or are considering doing so, largely because of the perception that statewide testing requires them to spend more time in the classroom. That perception is wrong, say many educational experts, who claim that breaks in the school day actually promote learning. Others point out that recess provides kids with rare chances to work on badly-needed social skills, like working out who plays on whose team, and dealing with a kid whose behavior is out of line. Furthermore, say some educators, many kids' lives are so structured nowadays - school to soccer practice to dance lessons (same difference) etc., etc. - that recess affords them a rare opportunity for them to do something totally on their own. Not to mention blow off steam before heading back to the teacher.

 

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In a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, Wade Evans, from Boone, North Carolina writes, tongue-in-cheek: "According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, in 1997 1.4 million people were arrested in the U.S. for driving under the influence. In 1998, one out of nine intoxicated drivers in fatal crashes had a prior DWO conviction within the past three years. Eight youong people a day die in alcohol-related crashes. Based on these statistics, it would seem that we need to take more drastic action to protect Americans, especially young people, from this terrible fate. In order to do this, I suggest that the following laws be adopted:

1. All auto drivers be required to take safety courses in driving;

2. All drivers should be licensed by a governmental agency;

3. All vehicles should be registered with a governmental agency.

Uh-oh. It appears we already do this. The only action left is to take everyone's car. If there are no cars, there will be no drunk drivers and no one will be killed by drunk drivers."

 

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It has really hit the fan at the University of Oregon, where the administration typically thought it could have things both ways. Recall that in reponse to campus protests by the great unwashed, the University's president caved in and decided to join the Workers Rights Coalition (WRC), which ostensibly is devoted to improving working conditions in third-world factories, including Nike's. His note to the WRC said that the University decided to join "after a great deal of reflection, research and consultation with students, faculty and staff." Perhaps, in retrospect, they might have done a little more consultation - say, with Phil Knight, an Oregon alum and co-founder and president of Nike, Inc., who felt blindsided when he learned of the UO's decision. As a major donor to the University, he felt that the least Oregon's president could have done was to call him and inform him personally of his decision. Oregon's president, lamely forgetting that we now have cell phones, said he was unable to call Mr. Knight because he was out of town. Nike, which manufactures shoes and clothing in several third-world countries, has been trying to clean up its act through membership in a rival organization, the Fair Labor Association, formed by manufacturers and the US Department of Labor; although at first glance it would appear that it and the WRC would seem to be share the same goals, they are in fact bitterly at odds with one another. (Some suspect the motives of the WRC, said to be bankrolled by US unions and perhaps less interested in improving working conditions overseas than in creating jobs - union jobs, naturally - in the US.) So, as rumored earlier, Mr. Knight has publicly declared, "for me personally, there will be no further donations of any kind to the University of Oregon." When Mr. Knight talks "donations," he is in the big leagues. He has already given some $50 million to the UO, and his leadership - and personal contributions - have been considered essential to the planned $80 million enlargement of Oregon's Autzen Stadium from 41,000 to 53,000. Sorry, Ducks. That's the price you pay when you led the rabble run your schools. Actually, I would like to be able to stand firmly behind Nike in this, but as a high school coach, it is difficult. Too bad that instead of building up a reservoir of goodwill among grassroots coaches, Mr. Knight's company has alienated so many of us with its commercialization of our sports without apparent concern for its effect on us: Thanks to Nike's bestowing enormous shoe contracts and consulting fees on college coaches in return for requiring their athletes to wear the Nike logo, it is growing harder to oppose pay for college players... in Nike's summer basketball camps, premier athletes are flown in and "showcased" for onlooking coaches like so many cat-house girls being paraded in front of the customers... Nike's funding of summer leagues and elite teams diminish the importance of their high school teams and coaches, while promoting athletic transfers between schools... Nike's adoption of a few select high school programs provides them with benefits such as slick outfits and funding for trips to exotic places that enhances their ability to "entice" (recruit) athletes from outside their districts... Nike's glorification, for marketing purposes, of notorious athletes has often been at cross-purposes with what we try to teach our kids. As for Nike being body-slammed by activitists, it is only fair that Nike, be tarred with its own brush. Nike has enjoyed playing the role of social activist itself - don't forget the preachy Nike ads in which they implied, years after Title IX, that there was still some vast conspiracy in society to deprive our little girls of chances to play sports ("If You'll Just Let Me Play") and thereby avoid spousal abuse. What a shame that the University of Oregon has lost its largest donor. What a shame that Nike, which in its effort to redefine our culture in its own image ran like a steamroller over so many of our values, finds itself smack up against the student protestors who can never be appeased. What a shame that a company which could have done so much good for our sports is under attack, and yet it's hard for many of us to generate a lot of sympathy for it. Oh, well. There may yet be a bright side to all of this - maybe Nike will pull all those video-game-character uniforms it designed for the Ducks last year, so they can go back to looking like a football team again.

 

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Have we found the ultimate magnet? If Florida Governor Jeb Bush's "One Florida" plan to eliminate affirmative action is successful, it will replace a system of racial "preferences" with one that will guarantee admission to a state university to any student graduating in the top 20 per cent of his or her high school class. It depends for its success on the reality that many Florida high schools are highly segregated, and therefore, the top 20 per cent of a school whose student body is largely minority will likely be largely minority itself. Without getting into arguments about whether academic standards might be lower at so-called "Inner-city" schools, it would seem probable that even after skimming off the top 20 per cent at a high-academics school there would still be a fair number of good students left out in the cold. With college admissions at stake, is it possible that the parents of such kids - ranked in the top third of their class but not in the top 20 per cent - could begin buying ghetto property so their kids can enroll in less academically-competitive inner-city schools?

 

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Tough Question: Practically unnoticed by the media was the death two weeks ago in suburban Chicago of J. Emmett Clair. Mr. Clair was 102. What was his contribution to football?

 

April 27 - "To do nothing is in every man's power." Samuel Johnson, famous 18th-century English writer and wit

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Why football is better for America than baseball: two brand-new ball parks opened this year, in San Francisco and Houston, have foul lines shorter than 325 feet, the minimum specified by the rules of baseball. More home runs, you understand. (Fans like home runs.) Hey, it's only the rules of the game. According to Commissioner Bud Selig, hired to uphold the rules of the game, "There's nothing wrong with pleasing your customers."

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You might just as well call it the "professional athlete defense." Former heavyweight boxer Ike Ibeabuchi is accused of sexual assault by a Las Vegas woman. A doctor who examined him to determine whether he is competent to stand trial testified, "he doesn't share the same sense of reality as the rest of us in this courtroom."

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"Soccer is a gentlemen's game played by hooligans. Rugby Union is a hooligan's game played by gentlemen. Rugby League is a hooligan's game played by hooligans." Australian saying.

 

You probably don't know the difference between Rugby League and Rugby Union. One looks a little like American football and the other is practically impossible to understand. (I played it for two years and still don't completely understand it.) But the Aussies do. And once they do, they support one or the other - there is no room in between.

 

Just to help anyone Down Under who didn't know the difference, one Australian sport reporter, Spiro Zavos, writing in the The Sydney Morning Herald last week, was glad to assist them. It had something to do with the Australian Rugby League's calling a match an "Anzac" match.

 

April 25th was Anzac Day, or Remembrance Day, on which they honor the memories of the brave young Australians who went off to fight in World War I - and never returned. In Australia, they really do use the day to remember. (In America, we take a day off.) Evidently the Rugby League people did something akin to burning the flag (which used to be a Bad Thing in America), which was just too much for reporter Zavos. He chose the occasion not only to remember, but to reveal a major difference between Rugby League and Rugby Union.

 

True, he says, many rugby league players did serve and die heroically in WWI.

 

However, he points out, an essay published in 1979 called Sport, War And Society, by Michael McKernan, a leading authority on World War I, disclosed that rugby league officials, concerned that a rival organization might take over their sport if they were to have to close down because of the war, did little to support the war effort. McKernan noted that three-quarters of the unmarried rugby league players called up in September, 1916, somehow managed to avoid the draft.

 

"The contrast with rugby union," wrote Zavos, "could not be more stark. Ninety per cent of all rugby union grade players enlisted." Competitions were cancelled until the war ended. The New South Wales Rugby Union's 1916 Annual Report listed 115 former players killed in the War. Seven members of one club, the Wallabies, were buried on the Dardanelles Peninsula (Gallipoli).

 

One Wallaby, Clarrie Wallach wrote home: "We arrived at Hellipolis about three weeks ago. We have been in pretty solid work but expect the real stuff next week. All the rugby union men are well here, from the Major down to the privates. 'Twit' Tasker told me how Harold George died a death of deaths, a hero's, never beaten until the final whistle went."

 

(Harold George was an outstanding forward for the Wallabie. "Twit" Tasker, another Wallaby, died of wounds in Europe in 1918. The major refrerred to was Major James McManamey, a leading rugby official. He died on Gallipoli a few weeks after Wallach's letter was written. Clarrie Wallach himself was killed at Gallipoli not long after the letter was written and later awarded the Military Cross for bravery.)

 

"In March, 1998, on Remembrance Day," Zavos wrote, "the Wallabies visited Villiers-Bretonneux (France), the site of a crucial battle on the Western Front. The experience had been profoundly moving for the young Wallabies as they wandered through the memorial cemetery picking out the graves of soldiers whose age most approximated their own.

 

"As the great crowd in the Millennium Stadium a year later waited for the two teams, Rod Macqueen read to the Wallabies an extract from the diary of a young soldier who was in charge of a machine-gun company during the battle of Villiers-Bretonneux. These were the last words the Wallabies heard before they walked out to face their own historic destiny.

 

"The instructions the soldier had been given were to hold the post, at all costs. 'If the section cannot remain here alive, it will remain here dead,' he wrote, 'but in any case it will remain'".  

 

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I think we've found a way to get more kids to shower after PE class. An 18-year-old Powers, Oregon high school girl has been suspended for taking a post-PE-class shower - in the boys' shower - along with five boys. She claimed that she was just doing it to call attention to the lack of security at the school. Right (" I was only throwing up to show what drinking can do to you."). She evidently is not totally stupid, because she was the school valedictorian. Was. Not any more. What I don't understand is why the boys were disciplined, too. For what? Taking a shower? What I do understand is the girl's mother jumping to her defense - the punishment is too severe. (It always is. You know how that goes - the school is always wrong.)

 

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They're called Coach-killers. You know, guys with all sorts of talent who can go out and set things on fire when they're so inclined - then skip practice the next day. And act as if they haven't done anything wrong. If there's a coach-killer for Lenny Wilkens, late of the Atlanta Hawks, then none of us is safe. You would think that when you reached the stature of Coach Wilkens, winningest coach in NBA history, you would be able to side-step having to deal with such jerks, but then, if is the NBA, and thre are such things as general managers. Their job often seems to be to know more about what's good for the team than the coach himself. That was the case with Coach Wilkens, whose GM knew that J. R. Rider would be just the thing to turn the Atlanta Hawks around. Of course, as anyone breathing could have told him, he was wrong. From the Hawks' very first practice - which Rider missed supposedly because he wouldn't take the commuter plane to training camp ("I don't fly in no crop-dusters") - until he was finally released, he was a stone in the coach's shoe. Lenny Wilkens deserved better. I first met him 25 years ago, when he was coaching the Trail Blazers and I was new to town. You had to be impressed by the guy - the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers is easily the biggest man in town, but there were no airs about Lenny Wilkens. He was friendly and humble. And now, Lenny Wilkens has "retired." If he stays "retired", the league will be missing a whole lot of class.

 

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BELOW: Coach Jerome Anthony, of Detroit, was kind enough to send along a great photo he took at the Toledo (Perrysburg) clinic, taken at the precise moment the left guard and left tackle have taken their first steps. It illustrates perfectly the "hand on" technique used to keep them from over-turning their shoulders.

 

April 26 - "Embarrassment is a great motivator." Hayden Fry, long-time Iowa coach (although I shouldn't have to identify him)----------

 

I thought the point was to attract more bright young people to the teaching profession. Alabama's school superintendent proposes raising the salaries of the state's most experienced teachers by 5 per cent. No argument from me there - they need to get caught up. But he's only asking for a niggling 1 per cent raise for beginning teachers! So while experienced teachers making in the $30,000 range would get a well-deserved extra $1500, those just starting out - at $20,000 or so - would get a hefty $200 increase. Spread out over 52 weeks, that's nearly four dollars a week! Put another way, that's an extra two gallons of gas! That will go a long way toward luring those bright, young math and science majors away from lucrative careers in high tech. -------

 Steve Duin of the Portland Oregonian, one of my favorite columnists, was writing recently about a visit to a scrap-metal yard, where the down-and-outers - "the peddlers, the scrappers, the homeless scavengers" - come to sell whatever they've managed to come across on roadsides, in abandoned buildings, in Dumpsters. And, one of these days, your school. "When the markets go way up," the head scrap-metal buyer told Duin, "the bleachers at the high school stadiums start disappearing."

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"Dear Coach Wyatt: I coach in a small single A high school in Virginia. Thanks to your insight into the Double-Wing, you have helped make our football program successful. Two years ago we started running some of the Double-Wing along with our regular wing T offense. The two years before, we ran an I formation - we won three games total, all in the second year. The first year we were 0-10, and scored 82 points the entire year. Last year our football team was 8-3, losing in the first round of the regional playoffs. This was the first time in 13 years our school made it to the playoffs. Our offense scored 314 points. This past year we concentrated on the Double-Wing a lot more, still running our regular WingT offense. However, we ran the superpower and the wedge play a lot especially in the red zone. Our team record was 10-0 and ranked 2nd in the state. Our offense scored 415 points, our three backs combined for 3400 yards rushing and 49 touchdowns. Thanks for the web page and the Double-Wing. I keep telling people how terrible the Double-Wing offense is with hopes of discouraging coaches in my area from running it. I dont want to defend it." Coach Robert Casto, Riverheads High, Staunton, Virginia -------

 

Bob Cook, writing in the Chicago Tribune recently, had another take on the Bob Knight situation. He works in another department at the Trib, but having covered basketball for the IU Daily Student in the 1980's, provided his unique perspective to the sports page. Ever notice, he asks, that Coach Knight never shows up at any of the rallies drummed up whenever he's in a jam and it's necessary for his supporters to show that they're still out there? He never even acknowledges them, says Cook, who likens the relationship between Coach Knight and supporters to what psychologists call co-dependency. It's a sort of abusive relationship. "Perhaps the fact that Knight withholds his love is the key to the relationship," Cook writes. "Fans are constantly seeking his attention and approval, never getting it...it's about a successful guy who holds back the love." Cook speculates that Knight 's keeping his job depends on his maintaining his aloofness. "People talk about losing games being Bob Knight's undoing," he writes. "I say the moment he starts appreciating his followers, he's finished."

 

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First in on the answers to the trivia question was Coach Bruce Eien, from Brethren Christian, in Los Angeles - "all the players hail from the Big Ten." (He's earned a plug - you have probably already visited Coach Eien's BC Warriors Football Coaching Site, but if you haven't, check it out - he does a great job with it); second was Coach Keith Babb, from Northbrook, Illinois. A graduate of the University of Tennessee, he also got a plug in, writing, 'It looks like all of those guys played in the Big 10 - the country's second conference behind the SEC." Third was Coach Bill Lawlor, from Elk Grove Village, Illinois, who wrote, This may be a simplistic guess but I think all of those players played on Big 10 teams and were overall #1 picks in the NFL draft. As an aside, many people think it is stupid that the Big 10 retained that name when Penn State came in but I believe the charter name of that conference is something like the "Western Conference" or "The Great Western Conference." The Big 10 has always been just a slang term I believe, hence there was no real reason to change the name of the conference....I could be wrong....this was a minor fact I learned when pledging the Delta Chi fraternity at U of Illinois, when I wasn't being hazed....just joking."; Fourth was Adam Wesoloski, of dePere, Wisconsin: "They all played in the Big Ten/(Eleven)." When he was selected first overall, Penn State's Courtney Brown became the 10th Big Ten player in the history of the NFL draft to be so selected.

 

April 25 - "Humility is only seven days away" Barry Switzer

 

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It's been a little over two years since Reggie White stood up in front of the Wisconsin state legislature and rejected the comparison of the gay rights movment with the civil rights movement. "Homosexuality is a decision," he told the lawmakers. "It's not a race." Ooh-wee. Did he catch it! The gays jumped all over him. Homophobe. Bigot. Sponsors - including Campbell Soup, a company that spends millions trying to associate itself with wholesomeness - dropped him as a spokesman. Wouldn't want gays and lesbians to boycott our chicken noodle soup, now, would we? CBS Sports pulled out of a plan to hire him as a network commentator. To his credit, despite all the pressure, Reggie White has not backed down, saying, "God owns a whole lot more than CBS could ever give me." And in an article in "Focus on the Family" magazine (www.family.org), he doesn't sound as if he has any plans to back down any time soon. "The greatest lesson I've learned," he says, "is that too many of us don't want to suffer, and we let other people back us down from what we believe in. The Bible says that we should rejoice in suffering that comes against us."

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Pianist/Comedian/Political Satirist Mark Russell says of The Man From Hope: "He places such a value on his integrity that he only uses it on special occasions."

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Great. The Portland Oregonian's new feature sports columnist, Chuck Culpepper, has arrived in town from Lexington, Kentucky, and Friday he wrote his first column, introducing himself to us by telling us about his likes and dislikes. Sounds like a positive guy, who likes a lot of things: "I like basketball. (that's good, Chuck, because outside of the Trail Blazers, it's pretty slim pickings in your new burg.) I like football. (At least you're not a commie.) I like American football." Whoa! What is this? "American football?" Hey, Chuck - I've been to Europe. "American Football" is what they call our sport in places where "real" football ("futbol") is played by guys with no last names (Maradona, Ronaldo)... who react to injury by rolling around on the ground holding their legs and writhing in pain as if mortally wounded, only to return to play minutes later... who are disciplined by being given tiny little yellow cards, the sports equivalent of having their names written on the chalkboard... whose "fans" set fire to grandstands (sometimes each other) and occasionally crush each other against chain-link fences designed to keep them from going onto the field and attacking the players. Hey Chuck - you may not be in red-blooded SEC country, and you may be on the westernmost edge of America, but it's still America. And we ain't giving up the name of our sport without a fight.

 

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"A sound defense is one that has every player on defense carrying out his assignment. Then it is impossible for the offense to score. Note that I said every player, which makes defense a team proposition, and eliminates the individual defensive play. By this we mean that every defense is coordinated and each player is an important part of the overall defensive unit. We try to instill in every boy that he is personally responsible to see that the opposition does not score." Bear Bryant

A recent Zogby Poll reports that while college students overwhelmingly support the concept of diversity on campus, eighty per cent of them oppose the use of racial preferences to achieve that diversity. Fifty per cent of those surveyed declare that political correctness is interfering with what they learn. -------

"In modern times, the census is taken by the Census Bureau every 10 years, as required by the Consitution. (For the other nine years, Census Bureau employees play pinochle while remaining on Red Alert, in case the Consitution suddenly changes." Humorist Dave Barry

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And you thought "jock sniffing" was just a figure of speech. The Dallas Cowboys, through their web site, are selling used socks. For $19.99 a pair. You can also buy an old pair of Troy Aikman's shoes ("Future Hall of Famer Troy Aikman wore these shoes during an NFL game last season. Walk a mile in his shoes! These Adidas size 14's come with a signed certificate of authenticity from the Dallas Cowboys Football Club."). For you - $1,999.99. I am not joking. Emmitt Smith's old practice pants? Just $799.99. How about a pair of Deion Sanders' Prime Time gloves? $299.99. Or Michael Irvin's ... never mind. Think I'm kidding? Check it out.

 

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Question: What do the following #1 NFL draft picks have in common: Tom Harmon, Randy Duncan, Jim Grabowski, Bubba Smith, Tom Cousineau, Jeff George, Dan Wilkinson, Ki-Jana Carter, Orlando Pace and Courtney Brown?

 

 

 April 24 - "Even in a clutch situation, I hear some part of my mind saying, 'Hey, God, let's make this thing work,' but I catch myself. The idea of God taking my side in a football game embarrasses me." Joe Paterno

 

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Bob Verdi, of the Chicago Tribune, may very well be the only sports writer in the world outside the state of Indiana who has come to Bob Knight's defense, writing that the coach is "caught in the middle with his rough edges." Verdi argues that if Coach Knight were a total user of kids but managed to win big every year - "if he declared the library off-limits and worried less about discipline and acountability, but posted a 38-1 record" - everyone would call him a genius. On the other hand, "if he won 10 games a year, while stressing academics and lessons for the future, he'd be a 'teacher.'" Coach Knight's problem, as writer Verdi sees it, is that "he's just himself, capable of occasional tantrums and frequent acts of decency that make lasting impressions."

 

Verdi argues that the "perfect people" who would crucify Coach Knight for venting in locker rooms ("it's where all our children go for lollipops. They are children, aren't they? At least, they are until they leave early for the pros, and that's when all these perfect people wonder why these raw recruits lack not only basketball skills but social skills") conveniently overlook the excesses of today's athletes, many of whom could use a healthy dose of Coach Knight's discipline at some point in their lives: "If only Knight were an indipensible athlete," Verdi writes, "he could choke his coach, drag a girlfriend down a flight of stairs by her hair (uh, if that would be Lawrence Phillips, wasn't it a couple of flights?), accost (rape?) a teenage babysitter, brandish a gun at his wife's head or engage in drug trafficking and then receive absolution from an arbitrator before forcing a trade to another team that will pay a heftier salary.

 

"However, Knight is only a red-sweatered senior citizen who can't shoot a three-pointer, licks nobody's boots and, what's worse, hasn't earned any of those precious championship trophies lately."

 

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Based on the large color photo at left from the sports pages of the Melbourne Age, Political Correctness has yet to make its way to New Zealand. Perhaps our State Department has a few billions in foreign aid lying around to provide diversity training for those "homophobic" cricket fans of New Zealand who greeted the Australian team and their "Vice-Captain" Shane Warne by holding aloft a professionally-done, 15-foot-long self-explanatory banner, (In America, can't you just see the stadium security detail tripping all over themselves to confiscate the sign before a newspaper photographer or TV cameraman can shoot it? Not that any US newspaper would ever print the photo, anyhow.) Come to think of it, maybe instead of foreign aid we could just ship all of our professional diversity trainers to New Zealand. That ought to be far enough away, and from the looks of the work ahead of them, they'll be there a while.

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Noted sports fan Janet Reno used a sports analogy to describe her frustration with negotiations with Elian Gonzalez' Miami relatives, accusing them of "moving the goal posts". She had to be referring to soccer goals. The kind with wheels on them. We don't move our goal posts.  -------

 

I don't know whether any one else has noticed, but entangled in the whole Elian Gonzalez story, has been some pretty ugly stuff. "Send him back," said many Americans - perhaps the vast majority of them. Fair enough. Reasonable people can take sides on the issue. But they didn't stop there. "Send them all back," they went on. Given the political correctness of our times, the way presidential candidates bend over backwards to curry favor with one group or another, I have been amazed at the way the public and the news media have felt free to take shots at Cuban-Americans. Time Magazine has actually referred to Cuban-Americans as a "privileged, imperious elite, who set themselves up as a pueblo sufrido, a suffering people." Can you imagine the uproar if Time had written that about any other group in America? They might have said that same thing about gays. But would they have dared? Time should know better, but other Americans might be surprised to learn that Cuban-Americans - many of whom have been in this country for 40 years, and most of whom are as American as those of us whose ancestors came from Europe - have benefitted America by the values they have brought with them. They are people of faith. They believe in family. They are law-abiding. (Why didn't they burn down Miami this past weekend? We've seen worse riots in America over routine traffic stops.) They are hard-working. (Many of them came here as engineers and lawyers, but the only jobs available to them here were as janitors. No matter - they took those jobs and worked at them and saved their money and educated their kids.) They value their independence, and do not depend on the government for assistance, yet only yesterday I heard some caller on a radio show suggest that they were all on welfare, which was why they had the time to be protesting. (They actually go the other way on welfare and tend to vote Republican, which may be their greatest sin in the eyes of the news media.) They believe that America is far superior to Cuba. (Go back? Those who have visited recently say, "No way." One Cuban-American coaching associate of mine who has gone back in the last year to visit calls it a "hell hole." There was a time, back in the 1960's, when they willingly would have gone back; as a matter of fact, with the approval of President Kennedy, they even planned and conducted an invasion to liberate their homeland, one which turned into a slaughter when the air support promised them by the US government never materialized. Don't believe me? Look up "Bay of Pigs.") Michael Gonzalez, deputy editor of Wall Street Journal Europe's editorial page, writing in last Thursday's Journal and himself a Cuban-American, said that other Americans have been led in the Elian Gonzalez case to pile on Cuban-Americans because they are "The Ethnic Group Liberals Love to Hate." He wrote, "To me, there's never been a bigger sign that Cubans have succeeded in America than the total absence of any political correctness in the whole Elian story. Media commentators feel free to attack Cuban-Americans in a way they never would any other ethnic group... Cubans irk liberals for two reasons. First, liberals harbor a latent sympathy for Fidel Castro and for communism. Second, our very success disproves the claim that 'Hispanics' or other minority groups cannot thrive in America. The latter point really rubs some people the wrong way. I've seen it in the eyes of every liberal who has lectured me about America's unfairness only to be cut off by my saying, 'I'm one of these Hispanics you keep talking about and. really, I've done fine'... We refuse to play the victim. We just get on with it, and in today's culture of victimhood, this is a major infraction."

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Funny how the same fluffy-haired TV news guys who would have had conniptions over the sign in the crowd at the New Zealand cricket match - name-calling is a form of "violence", they're so fond of telling us - informed us Saturday with straight faces that the armed raid to sieze Elian Gonzalez was not violent - because "no one was hurt."

 

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Finally, some honesty. I was talking with Coach Jay Minyard, head man at South Albany, Oregon High, who has two very successful years behind him as a head coach and a Double-Wing coach. He said a former assistant, now a head coach himself, was at a clinic recently, and overheard a highly-respected Oregon coach depart from the usual disparaging description of our offense (Mickey Mouse, Pop Warner, etc.) that has been typical of a lot of otherwise intelligent opponents. Instead, this coach was heard to say, in effect, that "the Double-Wing is going to revolutionize high school offense."

 

 

 April 22 - "From the player's standpoint, the most important characteristic of the game is the personal transition of individual achievement into the context of the team." Woody Hayes

 

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Food for thought... last week, on the first anniversary of Columbine, Patrick Welsh, an English teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, wrote in USA Today that to some black kids (T.C. Williams is 45 per cent black), the refrain common after school shootings - "We believed it couldn't happen here" - is seen as subtly racist, a way of saying, "We didn't think white kids could do a thing like this." He quotes T. C. Williams senior Janelle Loving as saying, "Adults associate school violence with black and Hispanic kids... When white kids commit some horribly violent act, people look for excuses... 'He has psychological issues.' Black guys are simply labelled as thugs." Before dismissing her statement, consider the school where I held last weekend's clinic. Rich Central High in Olympia Fields, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, is more than 80 per cent black, but it resists any attempts at stereotyping it. The words "substandard," or "violent," or "gang-ridden," all too often used in association with "black school," simply do not apply to Rich Central. The school sits in a large, grassy campus, overlooking a small lake, in the middle of a prosperous residential area of large, single homes. Broken windows? Get serious. Metal detectors? Why? There is no graffiti in evidence. Anywhere. Halls are clean and spacious, classrooms are neat and well-equipped, lockers are freshly-painted and unmarked. By any standard - facilities, faculty, athletics, academics, administtration, expectations for student behavior - Rich Central is an exemplary suburban high school. The community it serves is upper-middle-class and upwardly-mobile; it supports its schools and expects a lot of them in return. It is living out another familiar stereotype - the American Dream.

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Former player and former assistant Cole Shaffer is originally from New Mexico - a big fan of the Lobos and Brian Urlacher - and he wrote me to say. "I've been a Bears fan since I was born and the Bears selecting Urlacher was like the all the planets aligning themselves."

 

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Picky, picky... "Hugh,, Just read your web page and Ted Brown is our Ted Brown. Don't know why it came from Wiscasset but Ted lives in Boothbay Harbor and is the new father of a bouncing baby girl. Given the rivary between the two communities I know Ted would want people to know he resides in BOOTHBAY HARBOR." Jack Tourtillotte (Principal and Offensive Coordinator, Boothbay Regional High, Boothbay Harbor Maine)- Hey Jack, Ted's e-mail is HarborRealty@wiscasset.net

 

April 21 - "In my view, achieving an understanding of character without relating it to faith is nearly impossible." Tom Osborne

 

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SORRY... Regretfully, I am forced to re-schedule - possibly even cancel - the LA clinic scheduled originally for May 6. The original location at Glendale High School became unavailable when the host coach ran into unexpected and unavoidable problems, and in searching for a hotel room to hold the clinic, I found myself a victim of my own bad scheduling - good luck finding meeting rooms in the LA area on Cinco de Mayo weekend. Unfortunately, ith my present schedule, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find another date, but it will have to be sometime in June or even July, and those dates are getting booked up.

 

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Did he or didn't he? Every school should have an alumnus like Phil Knight. While Phil Knight was a runner on the track team at the University of Oregon, his coach was the late Bill Bowerman. Together, he and Coach Bowerman founded the company that became NIKE, Inc., and Phil Knight, now the chairman of NIKE, is Oregon's wealthiest man. And he is sports-minded. Is he ever. He recently donated $30 million to the University to help in the explansion of Autzen Stadium. But last week, in a classic case of biting thje hand that feeds you, the university, known in some quarters as the Berkeley (or Boulder) of the Northwest, caved in to demonstrations by students and agreed to join a consortium of colleges fighting "sweatshop conditions" in third-world countries. One of the main targets of the demonstrators - most of them snot-nosed rich kids who've never done an honest day's work in their lives and wouldn't know what "sweat" is, much less a sweatship - was none other than NIKE, Inc., which has been known to make a few pairs of shoes. Reports out of Oregon are that Mr. Knight is so upset at the University's caving in to the demonstrators that he has taken back his donation. The university is denying the reports; Mr. Knight's office won't comment, saying that his donations are confidential.

 

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Frederick Klein, writing in the Wall Street Journal, March 31: "Several years ago the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced it would issue press credentials for the Final Four rounds of the Division I men's basketball tournament only to representatives of newspapers that didn't carry point-spread listings on college games. That pretty much would have limited the press sections to me and the reportrs from the Christian Science Monitor and the Washington Post, and while I admit to having fantasized about the space and access such exclusivity would have provided, I didn't ecpect publishers to change their policies to accomodate the organization. They didn't, the edict was lifted, and the Final Four...proceeds amid the usual news-media squalor."

 

"I don't believe in change just for the sake of changing. However, I've always admired Bear Bryant as he not only changed his offensive and defensive philosphy with the times, but he changed the way he handled players. And over the years he continued to win and win big." Grant Teaff, Executive Director of the AFCA (American Football Coaches Association) in the March/April "Extra Point," the AFCA's member publication

 

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Anybody now doubt that Michael Jordan was worth what they paid him? Maybe it's just a coincidence, but since he retired after the '97 season (can it possibly have been that long?) the NBA's TV ratings have dropped 20 per cent. And whereas in 1995 nearly 12 per cent of all ads had an athletic endorser appearing in them, now, even mega-sponsors Nike and Reebof are bailing out of the endorsement market. "It isn't just the lack of Jordan," writes Collin Level in the Wall Street Journal, "but the lack of Jordan's class." Good point. Can you imagine Michael Jordan handing out Michael Jordan dolls at a game (a la Allen Iverson handing out Allen Iverson dolls), Michael Jordan rapping (Shaquile O'Neill), Michael Jordan demanding more money from a shoe company (Vince Carter and Puma) when his endorsement wasn't selling any shoes? The difference between Jordan and today's pretenders to his throne is that "Jordan lent dignity to the brands and projects he endorsed. With his successors, its the oppoisite...they make the game seem like a sideshow. That's something Jordan never did." The NBA's marketing of the post-Jordan era is a flop, he says, because it isn't fooling the people who are hardest to fool - hard-core fans and little boys. They can see right through it - "it is a transparent attempt to engineer a new superstar."

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First three answers to yesterday's question:

(1) Hi, Hugh - Knowing you are not a soccer fan and that your son is in Australia, you must be talking about Australian Rules Football. Ted Brown, Wiscasset, Maine

 

(2) Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day is a National Day of Remembrance consecrated in Australia and New Zealand in memory of those brave men who lost their lives 25th April 1915 World War I. Collingwood Magpies play the Essendon Bombers in Australian Rules Football (AFL) related link: http://www.afl.com.au/news/story_176707.htm - Adam Wesoloski, De Pere, Wisconsin

(For an insight into the Australian national character and the Anzacs' contributions in World War I, you might want to check out one of my all-time favorite movies, "Gallipoli". It is impossible to characterize it, because you'll laugh a lot, and it is one of Aussie Mel Gibson's first movies, but I guess in the end you would have to call it a rather intense war movie.)

 

(3) I'm probably late again, but that has to be Australian Rules Football, a sport that deserves more coverage in this country. Keith Babb, Northbrook, Illinois

 

April 20 - "You coach for a love and not a living." Frosty Westering, head coach of NCAA Division III Champion Pacific Lutheran 

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Two members of the Portland Trail Blazers, Bonzi Wells and Damon Stoudamire, recently cut a rap single entitled "Can I Get a Headband?" designed to cash in on their latest attention-getting fashion quirk. Not that they asked me, but if they are giving any thought to taking it a step further and making an album, I could suggest a few titles that some teammates might want to join in on: Can I Get a Groupie?... Can I Get a Lawyer?... Can I Get a(nother) Tattoo?... Can I Get My Contract Renegotiated?... Can I Get a Shoe Contract?... Can I Get a Wake-up Call? (single, by former Blazer J.R. Rider)... Can I get a Technical? (single, by Rasheed Wallace)

Among the books I am currently reading is "Faith in the Game," by former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne. It is great. In it Coach Osborne quotes fellow Nebraskan Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (which, for those of you scoring at home, closed Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange at $58,600 a share), and one of America's wealthiest men. Mr. Buffett did not get to where he is by being stupid, and Coach Osborne writes of some remarks Mr. Buffett made at a symposium at the University of Nebraska. "One friend of mine," Mr. Buffett told the gathering, "said that in hiring he looks for three things - intelligence, energy and character. If they don't have the last one, the first two will kill you, because it's true that if you go in to hire somebody that doesn't have character, you better hope they are dumb and lazy because if they are smart and energetic, they will get you in all kinds of trouble."

With all the wailing about the harshness of "zero tolerance" for one thing or another, and of the cruelty of minimum sentences for repeat offenders, I keep reading about crime being down. Does anybody else see a connection here?

"Coach Wyatt, I received the "Safer and Surer Tackling" video yesterday, watched it last night after I came home from Bible Study Fellowship and I am glad that I purchased it. You do an excellent job of breaking the elements of tackling down and demonstrating how to teach it safely. I especially was pleased with your comment about "Bull-in-the-ring". And the quote from Bud Wilkinson was right on! There may only be six "things" that a person must do in order to play football: run, block tackle, show courage, give great effort and execute. Perhaps the most important is to show courage; without courage you can't do the others the way they need to be done. And courage doesn't happen unless there is some degree of confidence. I'm a Wishbone Triple Option coach but there is a lot of your offense that I truly appreciate! Thank you for your efforts in promoting this great sport! God Bless!" Dennis Metzger, Connersville, Indiana -------

I received this from Coach Kyle Wagner, of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, asserting his national pride in pointing out that lacrosse's origins are Canadian, and that despite what most people think, ice hockey has only recently been named Canada's national sport - for most of the nation's history, it was lacrosse! Coach Wagner sent me a clip from Encyclopedia Brittanica: "Several of the sports played in Canada are derived from those of the indigenous peoples or the early settlers. Lacrosse, adopted as Canada's national game at the time of Confederation, was played by Indians in all parts of the country and adopted by later immigrants. By 1867 definite rules had been established, and the game had become organized." (The name itself came from French missionaries, describing the resemblance of the Indians' sticks to the Cross carried in church processions.) Many people are not aware that professional lacrosse - the indoor version - draws extremely well in the East, far outdrawing indoor soccer, perhaps because indoor lacrosse somewhat resembles ice hockey. This condensed version of the sport, sometimes called "box lacrosse," was originally played in Canada in the summertime on iceless hockey rinks, partly as a sport for out-of-season hockey players. Outdoors on a grass field, as a springtime sport in the US, it is a natural for football players, and I remember when I lived in Baltimore how it would gall the lacrosse purists there whenever Navy, its lineup studded with football players, would beat traditional power Johns Hopkins.

Poor Vermont. First it was the cancellation, following revelations of hazing (and lying to cover it up), of the remainder of the schedule of the state's lone sports team of any national consequence, the University of Vermont's hockey team. Then came the state supreme court's ruling, despite the opposition of an estimated 2/3 of the state's residents, that gays in the Green Mountain State have a right to enter into something close to marriage; the state legislature has complied with the court's wishes by coming up with something called "Civil Unions". Finally, in perhaps the cruelest blow of all, came the recent sale of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, the Vermont-headquartered icon of "socially-responsible capitalism", to corporate giant Unilever, not particularly noted for sharing Ben and Jerry's adoration of the earth's rain forests. Now, the best things about Vermont - a state whose proud history includes the deeds of fearless Ethan Allen (the man, not the furniture) and his Green Mountain Boys, and a period as an independent republic - are ski resorts and Bag Balm. Little could Ethan Allen have dreamt that one day, when people talked about the Green Mountain Boys, they'd be referring to a slowpitch softball team sponsored by a gay bar in Burlington. The day may even come when Vermonters think "Ben and Jerry" are two guys applying for a marriage license.

Question: Next Tuesday, Anzac Day, a sellout crowd of more than 90,000 will be at the MCG ("The G") to watch the Collingwood Magpies play the Essendon Bombers. What sport will they be playing?

April 19 - By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard 'round the world.

From "Concord Hymn", by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Carved on the monument at Concord, Massachusetts

memorializing the patriots who started the Revolution,

and first read at its dedication, April 19, 1875

 

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Talk to your players some time about that small band of Massachusetts farmers - the Minutemen - who 225 years ago today took on the British army - and lived to tell about it. In fact, they pulled off one heck of an upset, the first - if not the biggest - in our history. How did they do it? First of all, they were prepared; they had the opponent well scouted; they were highly motivated; finally, they forced the other guys to play their game. (Any lessons there for a football coach?)

 

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First person to guess America's fastest growing sport: Coach Glade Hall, of Seattle, who wrote: "Lacrosse , It's the only other game I can think of which has all those qualities . I played in high school , upstate New York." Coach Bryan Oney, of North Fairfield, Ohio was second by a nose.

 

"Lacrosse still isn't soccer," says Steven Stenerson, executive director of US, the sport's national governing body, "but lacrosse is, we believe, the fastest-growing team sport in the country."

In 1994 there were 4,600 men's programs in the US; in 1998, just four years later, there were 5,600; the number of women's programs increased in that same time from 1,500 to 2,400.

It appears in many cases to be stealing kids fom soccer. As Stenerson says, "people are saying, gee, let's try something different." In the words of one Pennsylvania 9-year-old, "You get to run around a lot. You get to hit people with sticks. You get to score goals, knock people over."

Unlike football or basketball, smaller guys can play the game, and it is a great "carryover" sport with guys well into the thirties playing in recreational leagues. The equipment is expensive: for girls, who play it as a non-contact sport, the only expense is the stick, which can run $40 to $60. But for boys, add another $200 or so for helmet, shoulder pads, elbow pads, and gloves. Because it is expensive to start, lacrosse has often been considered something of a preppy sport, but it is worth noting that many people around Baltimore, where they take their lacrosse very seriously, remember a certain guy from Syracuse named Jim Brown (the same) as the greatest lacrosse player ever. Brown went to high school on Long Island, like Baltimore a hotbed of the sport.

The game has begun to spead to city schools. Northeast Catholic, in Philadelphia, started the sport last year, with 25 kids, most of whom had never played before. "We went 0-19," said Luke Hogan, who started the program. "But we played. The bottom line is that 0 and 19 is better than 0 and 0."

 

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Ouch. Skip Bayless of the Chicago Tribune, calling Michigan State's Plaxico Burress "a 6-foot-5 tease, an occasionally dominant college player, a bully when he has the physical edge, " wrote that he "has Curtis Enis written all over him." Enis has, to say the least, been a disappointment to Bears' fans, but Bayless says Burress would have been worse: "At least Enis can turn on his Eddie Haskell charm when he first meets adults. Burress is straight-up Puff Daddy." Bears' fans needn't worry about getting another Curtis Enis: the Steelers, selecting before the Bears in Saturday's draft, chose Burress. So grateful to the Steelers was Bayless that "Cowher got my vote for coach of the year."

 

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Serve and Protect. The Portland (Oregon) Police Bureau (kinder, gentler Portland no doubt thinks "Bureau" sounds less "confrontational" than "Department.") has been having problems lately getting people to take it seriously, what with bogus overtime claims and a generous buddy-system of awarding retirement for questionable disabilities, The recent "disability" claim of Damon Woodcock is a case in point. In 1991 Deborah Woodcock (more about the name a little later) joined the Portland Police Bureau. Dedicated to "diversity," Portland actively recruits gays for its Fire and Police Departments - oops, Bureaus. In December 1998, Deborah, perhaps hoping to contribute to department diversity, underwent a sex change. I am not making this up. And she/he remained on the force. No doubt in the name of diversity. (Got to make sure that sex-changees are represented.) But "Damon," as Deborah then chose to be called, balked when told last summer to move out of the women's locker room and into the men's locker room. "Damon's" lawyer said that the switch to the male locker room was "uncomfortable for everybody, since everyone had known him as Deborah." But the switch took place as ordered, and shortly after Damon moved into the men's locker room, someone defaced the nameplate on his/her locker - drawing a slash through "part of his last name," as the Portland Oregonian put it. (near as I can figure, the "part" had to be either the "Wood" or the "cock.") This, said Damon's lawyer, who perhaps has never heard of the Holocaust, amounted to a "hate crime," and she filed a disability claim on Damon's behalf, based on the stress that all this has caused the poor thing. Amazingly, Damon's claim couldn't even get past the pushovers at the Disability and Retirement Board. They turned him down. It was close, though - the vote was 5-5. Damon will appeal.

 

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This is worth remembering, just on the chance we may occasionally find ourselves becoming overly dependent on times and measurements for evaluating our personnel. Wall Street Journal sports editor Frederick Klein tells this story about a conversation he had with Jerry Krause, Vice-President of the Chicago Bulls. (Many people may not be aware that Krause spent years as a baseball scout.) "When I was with the Chicago White Sox," he told Mr. Klein, "we had a long, long meeting about a prospect, going over things like his arm strength, bat speed, growth potential and time going from home plate to first base. Freddy Schaefer, an old-time scout, was sitting in a corner, not saying anything. I asked him if he had any observations or questions. 'Yeah, I do,' he said. 'Anybody know if this kid can play baseball?'"

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By now, John Rocker will have spend his first full day of the 2000 season in uniform. A Wall Street Journal article yesterday is worth reading, because it goes a long way toward explaining why John Rocker is still in Atlanta - a majority African-American city - and still playing ball there, after the anger his comments stirred among community leaders. But one very prominent black Georgian, Andrew Young, played a crucial role in Mr. Rocker's rehabilitation. Mr. Young, now practically an American icon, was a co-worker with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the civil rights movement, then mayor of Atlanta, US Congressman, and US Ambassador to the United Nations. Home recovering from prostate surgery, Mr. Young found himself watching a news conference in which leaders took turns denouncing the "hate-filled" Rocker, and finally, grown weary of the "ranting and raving", he called the Atlanta Constitution to ask if it would publish his views on the Rocker situation. Are you kidding? Turn down the city's most distinguished citizen? In his article, Mr. Young explained that everyone is likely to react with fear and insecurity to unfamiliar cultures. "I took sides with him," he told the Journal, "because I thought he was more integrated in his lifestyle than either the press, the league management, or the blacks who were criticizing him." (Mr. Young was referring to an assortment of ethnic-minority minor-leaguers who have lived with the Rocker family.) Mr. Young said Rocker's comments about New York are understandable: "The fans in New York spat on him, poured beer on him, threw batteries on him, and then they asked him what he thought of New York. More baseball fans probably agree with him than disagree about New York." Bottom line? "I resented all these people pushing on this kid who lost his temper." Salvaging Rocker wasn't easy and it wasn't a one man job. The black mayor of Rocker's home town of Macon, Jack Ellis, also worked on behalf of Rocker, receiving advice at one point from Reverend Jesse Jackson to hate the sin but love the sinner. John Rocker's rehabilitation is not yet complete, but the nation does seem to have recovered to the point where most people are prepared to give him another chance. For that, credit Andrew Young, whose job in the civil rights movement was to go into places after there had been some unrest and make peace with the local leaders. "Our success in the South has been in converting racists, not condemning them," he told the Journal, "We always worked to give our opponents a face-saving way out."

April 18 - "The finest series in single wing football, or all football for that matter, is the complete spin with the fullback." Forest Evashevski and Dave Nelson, in "Scoring Power with the Winged T Offense," 1957

The Chicago clinic was held for the second year in a row at Rich Central High School in Olympia Fields, courtesy of head coach Jon McLaughlin, principal Von Mansfield, and AD Jimmy Daniels. (Principal Mansfield played football at the University of Wisconsin and played professionally with Philadelphia and Green Bay.)   Coach McLaughlin told the clinic that the Double-Wing has enabled him to build a solid program at all three levels: in the three years prior to installing the Double-Wing, the entire RC program - varsity, JV and frosh - generated just 29 wins; but in just two years since installing the Double-Wing, the program is a combined 41-15. His frosh and JV's have both been 15-3, and his varsity went from 4-5 in 1998 to this past season's, 7-4 record and a state playoff spot. "The Double-Wing works for us," Coach McLaughlin said, "because we want to run the football; we want to physically punish people who play us." He pointed to the improvement in his defense this year, and attributed it to the fact that not only does the Double-Wing allow him to control the clock and keep his defense off the field, but being a physical running team on offense, "I know our kids play tougher on defense." He also likes the fact that the Double-Wing is easy to teach, pointing out that with kids coming to Rich Central from five different feeder schools, none of them under his direction, the challenge of the freshman coaches is to blend kids together quickly at their new school. (Coach McLaughlin is blessed with unusual coaching talent at the freshman level: one of his frosh coaches - there is no head coach - is Bill Snedden, recently inducted into the Illinois High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame, who was himself head coach at Rich Central for 17 years. Coach McLaughlin says RC's frosh will never be outcoached.) Coach McLaughlin says the Double-Wing gives average, hard-working kids a chance to be successful, with the result that kids, coaches, parents and administration have bought into his approach 100 per cent. (His numbers are way up - football is now the sport to play at RC, and his program's philosophy of having 22 starters each on both the frosh and JV teams hasn't hurt any. ) He showed the coaches a list of the plays and sets run at each level, followed by a video showing a representative sampling of plays. His approach is very basic and very sound, and he sticks totally to our numbering system, beginning with a handful of plays at the freshman level (Frosh coach Snedden won't run a play unless he is confident it has an 80 per cent chance of success) and expanding the arsenal - partly by adding new plays, partly by running it from multiple sets - as the kids move up to the JV level with Coach Ed Schmeski and on to the varsity. Coach McLaughlin is guardedly optimistic about 2000, but if returning B-Back Tyreece Jones plays up to his potential as one of the top runners in Chicagoland, and the Olympians can get through a suicidal first-three games, Rich Central could be very tough.

Coach Theotis Pace, of Kankakee, Illinois has been a youth coach for over 20 years. He is used to success. He told me how this past year, after his second game, Kankakee High coach Dan Wetzel showed him my "Dynamics of the Double Wing" videotape. That was on a Monday. The next day, Coach Pace installed the Double-Wing. His kids practiced it on Thursday and Saturday, and Sunday, he unveiled it - against a team that was "definitely ready for our I-formation." His first offensive play went for 60 yards and a touchdown. The second went for 45 yards and a touchdown. The third went for 50 yards and a toouchdown." To say the least, Coach Pace and his staff at Kankakee East Side are believers.

Yum. My flight to Chicago, originally scheduled to leave Portland Friday at 9:30 AM, finally took off at 1:30 PM - four hours late. About an hour after takeoff, at 2:30 PM Portland Time (4:30 PM Chicago Time), the flight attendants, perhaps operating on Tokyo Time, offered us our choice of corn flakes or an omelette.

Talk about lifelike. So many visitors to a wax museum in Australia kept unzipping Our President's fly that it finally had to be sewn shut.

Keith Babb, one of the coaches who attended the Chicago clinic, wrote me to tell me, "I'm sure glad I attended your clinic this past weekend. I can't wait for preseason practice to start. I'm also glad that all of the other coaches in the room were from areas that I don't have to coach against." He is so right about that. As I travel the clinic circuit this year, it is very impressive to me to see how the increased level of understanding of the system is reflected in the intelligence of the questions that are being asked.

This one was a no-brainer You'd only have to look at the student parking lots at most high schools to figure that out. One suburban Philadelphia school district has finally gotten smart, and is considering eliminating busing for its high school students. Only 81 of Lower Moreland High's 521 students ride the bus on an average morning, which works out, according to the principal, to an average of nine riders per 50-seat bus. The superintendent estimates that cutting the bus service will save the district $350,000 a year. The only opposition seems to be coming from parents who live in the Lower Moreland district but send their kids to private schools; the district is required by law to provide them with transportation.

It's being called "the fastest-growing team sport in the country." No, it's not soccer. It's nowhere near that big, but it's growing at a faster rate - increasing by 15 to 20 per cent per year - and winning more and more converts from the "beautiful game." In the words of one of its strongest advocates, "It has many of the physical aspects of football and hockey; it has the teamwork you have in soccer and basketball, and it's end-to-end like soccer and basketball." What is it?

April 17 - "No offense should be viewed more seriously than disloyalty." Bill Walsh

The Chicago clinic on Saturday drew a record number of Double-Wing coaches, with high school and youth coaches representing a new record ten different states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin - and California. Tomorrow: host coach Jon McLaughlin and the up-and-coming Rich Central program.

The Chicago papers this past weekend, as might be expected of a Big 10 city, were full of stories about Indiana's Bob Knight. Surprisingly, at least one influential columnist was not part of the media mob delighting in piling on the Indiana coach. Coach Knight, accused well after the fact of having choked a former player, is now in something of a jam thanks to a videotape of the incident released by a treacherous weasel of a fired former assistant, who supposedly told an associate AD at IU that he had been holding onto the tape as his "trump card."

"Coach Wyatt, I was in Chapel Hill attending a Leadership Program for Assistant Principals. Participants in the seminar cover a cross-section from our entire state. Of the 31 participants, there were 4 males.

Thursday's session dealt with a comparison and contrast of schooling in America and Asia. We were assembled into five groups and I served as the only male specimen in our group. The particular chapter we were assigned was the heart and soul of the book (The Learning Gap). I "nailed" the thesis of chapter but none of the other group participants did. As I waited patiently for my turn to speak, I scribbled some notes down for the presentation.

Our chapter spoke to the fact that the majority of Americans today believe that their innate or natural ability enables them to succeed in life. In Asia, success is determined by hard work, perseverance, dedication, and preparation. Because of our (not my) belief in natural ability, when we encounter difficulty or failure, we naturally quit. Difficulty and failure, to Asians, are viewed as tools to learn from. It is also perceived that "one did not work hard enough, and that is why they failed." It is not uncommon for students in Asia to spend 15-20 minutes at the board, in front of the class, trying to find out why they got the problem wrong. Can you imagine what would happen to that teacher if it happened here?

I likened education in Asia to coaching football. More often than not, we take the field on friday night with less talent (innate ability) than our opponents. Only through the lessons of hard work, committment, dedication, and perseverance are we able to compete. We stress the values of working harder and working smarter.

My group really didn't embrace my theories. They did allow me to speak, after they had finished with the majority of the presentation. I spoke about the things that I related to you earlier. The facilitator, who was a black lady, gave me a standing ovation. She communicated to the entire group that all classroom teachers could learn valuable lessons from the coaches in their schools. She challenged them to attend a practice next week on their campus. I echoed her beliefs and took them to a higher ground by asking them to attend football practice during August. I grew up in a society whose heroes were men and women who had overcome difficulty and had persevered. How did we wind up where we are today?" Coach Ross Renfrow, Kenly, North Carolina

Sid Hartman, sports columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, is, I gather, highly-respected. But I caught him in one last weekend. He was touting one Tom Jurich, currently the AD at the University of Louisville, as a potential candidate for the vacant athletic directorship at the "troubled" University of Minnesota. "His first job," Hartman wrote in praise of Jurich, "was at Northern Arizona, where he put the athletic department on the map." Huh? Overlooking the dreary cliche, what exactly did he accomplish there to make the world suddenly aware of Northern Arizona? Oh, well. But then, Hartman went on to say something that just isn't so. "He advanced to Colorado State," Hartman went on, "where he was the reason the football program became very successful." Uh, Sid - not to spoil your story - but wouldn't that be Sonny Lubick?

Just in case you think they don't notice the things you do for them... H. F. "Gerry" Lenfest, who made several billion dollars when he sold his suburban Philadelphia cable TV company to giant Comcast last January, has donated $35 million to his prep school, Mercersburg Academy. He said that Mercersburg, located in south-central Pennsylvania, taught him more than he learned in college at Washington and Lee, or law school at Columbia. "The teachers there not only taught education," he said, "they taught what you should be as a person... that if you develop the right qualities and get an education, you could do something of value in your life." The money, donated outright (no strings attached), is expected to be used to increase teachers' pay, add some buildings, and increase diversity. The latter goal is one that eludes most prep schools such as Mercersburg whose annual tuition is $24,000. And even though 40 per cent of Mercersburg's student body receives financial aid, and even with an average aid package of $14,000, the balance still puts a Mercersburg education far out of reach of most Amercian families. Mr. Lenfest, who graduated from Mercersburg in 1949, was sent there by his dad after his mother died. He said he was inspired to go there by another Mercersburg grad who was a distant cousin of his mother - a fellow named Jimmy Stewart who had gone on to Princeton and from there to Hollywood.

Coach Mike Lane, of Avon Grove, Pennsylvania was first to provide the answer to Friday's question, although he did lose style points for disparaging the question by telling me "this is too easy!" Anyhow, this was the answer - Seifert, Switzer and Martz all took over as new head coaches of defending Super Bowl champions. (Second was Don Capaldo, of Keokuk, Iowa.)

April 14 - "I've got a great gimmick - let's tell the truth." William Bernbach, founder and president of New York advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach

Happy birthday to my wife, who has saved me from myself on more than one occasion, and has made it possible for me to be a coach.

There's still a lot of year left, but a southern New Jersey high school has jumped out to a big early lead in the running for this year's Golden Screw Award. In a decision that could only have been made by bureaucratic types who have never strapped one on, tiny Wildwood High has been told by the members of the Cape-Atlantic League, all of whom have enrollments at least three times that of Wildwood, that it must compete against them in football. That's what Wildwood used to have to do, until four years ago, when after a 10-year span in which it was outscored by Cape-Atlantic League rivals 1,008-196, it was allowed to play an independent schedule in football. This past year, in its fourth year as an independent, Wildwood made it to 6-4, its first winning season since 1965. That was all the evidence the other members of the Cape-Atlantic League needed that Wildwood was back. Time to jump back in with the big boys. Wildwood argued that its varsity team last season - it had no junior varsity - consisted of 26 kids, nine of them freshmen. (Of Wildwood's 235 students, 107 are boys.) No matter. "We felt four years was long enough to rebuild their program and come back, " said the (female) AD of one of the conference schools, who presumably doesn't know a whole lot about the dangers of football mismatches, or the frustrations of coaching and playing under those conditions. So Wildwood must play football in the Cape-Atlantic League, says the league, and the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association supports the League. It would have taken a unanimous vote by the league to release Wildwood. Unanimous! Fat chance. The vote of the league's executive committee, made up of principals, AD's and superintendents, went 24-5 against Wildwood,with five abstentions. If I had been a fly on the wall at that meeting, I'm sure I'd have heard the AD's bleating: Hey! If we let Wildwood go play an independent schedule, we'll all have to get on the phone and find a replacement game! And it's already April!

"Art Rooney, the Pittsburgh owner, had taken a fancy to me. But after I got to Pittsburgh he no doubt was a little disappointed in me. He pressed me to go to confession, to make a better Catholic of me. Let's just say I came under the heading, but spell it with an "i", and "n", and an apostrophe. I was a roamin' Catholic." Johnny Blood, NFL Hall of Famer

Dear Coach Wyatt: I am sending a very big thank you along with this email.I want to thank you for making the football materials available and for being accessible to other coaches, who may need some advice. I contacted you last summer in regard to the double wing system, more in desperation than anything else. I have been coaching youth football for 13 years and thankfully, our teams have had a lot of success. This due to a lot of hard work and great kids and coaches, who have been a pleasure to work with.

Last season, though, was the first year, that we knew going into the season, that we would be extremely inexperienced in a very competitive league. To make matters worse, because of our past success our schedule was brutal. We had to play the defending state champs at our weight classification-who retained the core of their talent-in the first game of the season. As a coaching staff, we knew we had no players with any quarterbacking experience at all. We had two returning starters and 15 players on a squad of 27, that had never played a down of organized football.

While other teams were fine tuning plays and working on strategy, we were absolutely starting at square one. We have always run a multiple offense, the veer and veer option package and we also really liked to throw the ball, a lot. This is unusual for our age group, since the ground game is much more prevalent. With next to no line experience, I could not see our team driving opposing teams 5 yards off the ball. I needed a new perspective and that is when I called you. To make a long story, short. We went through our season with a 7 and 4 record and we made the state playoffs again. Our only losses were to high ranked playoff teams, including the defending state champions, twice. They beat us in the playoffs and repeated.

Our teams normally score a lot of points, but realistically I could not imagine that before our season started. I was wrong. Once we started to get enough reps for the guys to get familiar with the rhythm of the offense and the blocking schemes, we started to score with surprising regularity. The amazing thing about the offense is the long range capability, since it is a run oriented offense. We have had teams that scored more points in the past, but they were good, experienced teams that should have been able to do that. This team was very inexperienced and they still executed because the offense allowed them to grow with the reps and the blocking schemes did not demand that they physically outplay a more experienced player. 80% of our touchdowns came from 45 yards or more, with 18 of them from 65 yards or longer. We had the third most passing touchdowns our team has ever recorded, not bad for a running offense. Our passing touchdowns averaged over 60 yards per play.

 I just wanted to say, I do not believe we would have had this same success, if I did not switch to the double wing this past season. I have seen the offense work. Our kids grew in confidence every week and it was great to see a group of inexperienced kids have success, instead of suffering through a losing season. I think the double wing leveled the playing field, so their efforts were rewarded. Thank you, Coach Wyatt - Coach Charlie Swetnam, Jackalopes Football Team, Peoria, Arizona

You could field an NFL All-Star team wearing orange coveralls. Now comes the disgusting case of the Green Bay Packers' Mark Chmura. You almost expect NFL players who come off the streets and out of the projects to be "troubled," that is to say, to be thugs; the wonder is that so many of them are not. But it is mind-boggling when a person of Eugene Robinson's caliber leaves his family to go slumming on Super Bowl's Eve, and when a guy like Chmura, supposedly a pillar of his team, is accused of, uh, "taking liberties" with the family's 17-year-old babysitter. I know, I know. He hasn't been convicted yet. But the description of the behavior fits perfectly the all-too-familiar pattern of pampered children who think they are entitled to anything - or anyone - they want. Admit it - wouldn't it be great if all professional sports were just to shut down for a couple of years, long enough to force those overpaid creeps out of their stretch limos and gated communities, and help them rediscover that their excrement actually does stink?

Washington Post Columnist William Raspberry says that school vouchers solve the problem of poorly-performing public schools in the same sense that gated communities solve the problems of housebreakings, loitering and street crime.

What do the coaching careers of George Seifert, Barry Switzer and Mike Martz have in common?

April 13 - "Kicking, either directly or indirectly, decides the issue in practically every close game." Bobby Dodd

It's too late this year to warn those slacker seniors at your school who've already gone in the tank, but it might be worth telling this year's juniors - more and more colleges are reneging on earlier offers of admission to students whose classroom performance has faltered since being admitted. They've fallen "victim" (there's that word again) to "senioritis" a condition all too familiar to high school teachers. They've "misjudged the finish line," in the words of one college admissions official, and now some of them are being dumped by colleges that had accepted them. "Our research and experience dealing with academic failure indicate that students whose performance falls off markedly during the senior year are not yet ready to undertake the demanding and competitive programs offered here," went the letter sent by the University of Michigan in changing its mind about a senior previously awarded admission. "We are disappointed to learn," Boston University informed another student, "that you received a failing grade during your last semester. Our acceptance of your application was based on our understanding that you would maintain passing grades in all subjects through the end of your senior year." Those poor children! That's not fair! Nobody told them! Senior year is supposed to be for kicking back! No doubt certain parents of this new class of victims are searching right now for the doctor who is willing to sell his integrity and declare senioritis a new disability. (SSD - Senior Slacker Disorder) Meanwhile, I have a question. It has been my experience in Washington, with its incredibly lax graduation requirements, that many students manage to complete all state graduation requirements before senior year - except for one class called CWP (Contemporary World Problems) which is offered only to seniors. As a result, an unmotivated college-bound senior's schedule at a school with a four-period day might look like this: Period One: Teacher's Aide (Roam the halls and occasionally run off a few copies for the teacher); Period Two: Foods of the World (That'll impress the admissions folks at Michigan and Boston U); Period Three: CWP; Period Four: Early Release. (Got to get to the job.) That schedule alone ought to be enough to cause any self-respecting college to rescind admission.

"I was very lucky to have pitched with that team instead of against them. Never has a day passed when I don't think of how fortunate I was to have played there." Carl Erskine, who pitched for the great Brooklyn Dodgers' teams (Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Billy Cox, Don Newcombe, etc., etc.) of the 1950's, and is soon to publish a book about his playing days entitled "Tales From the Dodger Dugout."

Rick Pitino, who coached Florida's Billy Donovan at Providence College, sounded as if he might be ready to return to the college game himself when he talked about Donovan with the Boston Herald's Peter May. "Looking at him out there," Pitino said, "I was amazed at how much polish he had, and how he had gotten his young team to sacrifice. And I realized, although it's very small, I had a small part in his life. I'm going to give some thought process of whether I'm making a difference in the lives of athletes. Because that's where I get my gratification. I've been to four Final Fours, and that's nice. It really is. But I look at what I've accomplished in developing athletes as basketball players and as people, and that's where I get my gratification, as a teacher. What I'm saying is if there comes a day where I don't feel I'm teaching all of those things, then I will look at myself and say, 'maybe it's time for a change in scenery.'" (Poor Coach Pitino. Maybe he really thinks he can continue to coach in the NBA - and make 100 times what a high school coach makes - yet still enjoy the intrinsic rewards that come with high school coaching! Come on - if he really thinks he's having an impact on the lives of today's pro athletes, he's not as sharp as I thought he was.)

Anyone for a little irony? Columnist Maggie Gallagher notes that with polls showing two-thirds of Vermonters opposed to same-sex marriage yet few of them willing to stand up and endure being called bigots by the gays and lesbians, it is now the straight people, the advocates of real marriage, who are being driven into the closet.

"A little while back I offered Allie Sherman, the Giants coach who was my third-strong quarterback in the early forties, the defense I used to stop Graham and the Browns. But he wasn't interested. Too bad. I still think there are a lot of things from what they call the old days that still could help the game today." Greasy Neale, Hall of Fame coach (NFL championships with the Eagles in 1948-49) speaking in 1969.

April 12 - "Don't save your pitcher for tomorrow;  it might rain tomorrow." Leo Durocher, great baseball manager

I asked Coach Frank Simonsen, long-time youth coach from Cape May, New Jersey, if he would talk to coaches at last Saturday's Philadelphia clinic about the importance of good relations between the youth coach and the high school coach. I wasn't disappointed. "Captain Frank" (he's a retired Texaco oil tanker captain), has 30 years of coaching experience, and he had a lot of wisdom to pass along. I have seen his kids, and I can vouch for his ability to coach. He is a great believer in drills. "We spend more time setting them up, teaching them, and then running them than we do scrimmaging," he said. "The Pancake Drill (from the Dynamics of the Double Wing video) is one of the finest drills in football," he said. "We have incorporated it into every phase of football." Coach Simonsen pointed out a number of ways in which coordinating the youth program with the high school program can benefit the high school coach, especially in the area of evaluating and placing kids in the best positions for them before they get to high school. (It really is amazing, especially if the youth team and the high school team are running the same system, how often the youth coach's judgment in this area is correct.) Frank also is a great believer in encouraging kids not to concentrate on one sport; he believes that's an important part of a youth coach's job in counseling kids. He especially likes to steer kids topward wrestling. "I think wrestling is the most comparable sport to football," he said. "I encourage wrestling." He appealled to high school coaches not to look down on youth coaches, but instead to bring them into the overall program. "Treat us like a member of your staff, " he urged them. "Treat us like coaches. Respect our input." Some of the ways he suggested that high school coaches might reach out to youth coaches would be to invite them to high school staff meetings and ask them to attend clinics with them; to issue youth coaches an open invitation to high school practices and let them down on the sidelines at high school games. Coach Simonsen also urged high school coaches to attend youth games, and talk with the players before and after the games. Finally, he said, "Be brave - come to the youth football booster meetings!"

"...there were no breaks, no water buckets, even for games on the hot late-summer afternoons in September, and our players could not sit or kneel during timeouts unless they were injured. If a player was hurt, then he lay down and we took care of him. Everything was built on a spartan, toough, fight-your-way-to-the-death basis, and as the attitude seeped into the players, they began to realize they didn't need any comforts on the field. When they saw other teams hit the water bucket, they said, 'We'll take care of them.'" Paul Brown, on taking over at Ohio State in 1941 (OSU won the National Championship in 1942)

When we get letters like these, they remind us of what a great calling coaching is. This came Monday from Janne Haapanen, a former player - pretty good one, too - on a team I coached in Kotka, Finland. I hadn't heard from him since 1994. "Hi Coach !!! I was really surprise, find to your fine homepage in net. And I was very glad to read some stories in your coaching times in Finland (particularly Kotka). The time which you were our coach in the Kotka was most growing time for me (I don´t only mean football, also "how to be good human" I really learn a lot of that time ) and I´am very grateful . Now a day I´m working in the most biggest dairy co. in Helsinki (responsibility : butter cheese process), and I still play football in team of Varkaus (very young and decent team, last season -99 we were I division play off, without any "real" coach!) Sincerily ! Janne Haapanen (former member of South East Eagles team)"

Just in case you thought you were the only one... "Coach Wyatt I suddenly find myself facing the basketball monster. I would like to take my returning lineman and some younger kids to a 2 day lineman camp. I think it would help our fundamentals and our aggression. Unfortunately a lot of my returning lineman are also basketball players. They are signed up for 6 team camps this summer. So when I ask them to make one more camp the cost of all these camps has become an issue. I can understand that the cost is probably getting outrageous. The camps for the basketball players range from $10 to $55. The basketball coach thinks this is very cheap. I must admit not bad but when you string 6 of those together it will start to add up. I love basketball in fact I'm the assistant coach and we have been very successful over the past few seasons. It is becoming very obvious to me that it will be very difficult to build a good football team unless I can get some of these guys to put some summer priority on football." (The time to get really upset is when the Booster Club makes most of its money at the concession stand at football games, then uses most of it to pay entry fees to summer basketball tournaments and tuition to basketball camps.)

"Two items concerning "out of hand" parents/youth coaches, that tell me the apocalypse is upon us.... 1)At our (Bill George Governing Meeting, concerning rules changes) A group of us tried to eliminate having the Silver Division (B-level/instructional division) from getting to play the "Super Bowl" at Northern Illinois Stadium. The reason - towns that had average talent were putting their teams in the "B" division and going after championships, rather than putting them in the "A" division where they should have been and could compete. So rather than work and push their kids to succeed and compete at a high level, they are teaching their kids to take the easy way out and go for the trophy at the Silver division. It really sickens me, what that is teaching a kid. Of course the towns that do this state it is not about championships, but rather playing time and self esteem. (Funny, if you go to their respective web sites, the first thing you see is pictures of their Silver divisions teams at NIU, holding their trophies.........) Scary

 2) You will like this, one of the towns brought up a rule change asking that the 85 lb. level (5th graders) should switch to a smaller ball (one used by the flag program) Their reasoning for the rule change would be that a smaller ball would be easier to grasp and then they could promote more throwing of the ball!!!!! As one brainiac parent stated...."We gotta start being able to teach our QB's how to open it up" -.....IN FIFTH GRADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The second rule bit the dust, by a vote of 14-6. Thank God. Regards, Bill Lawlor, Chicago"

April 11 - "If you make every game a life-or-death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot."  Dean Smith

Travelling this past March to places such as Toledo, Ohio and Portland, Maine, I'd managed successfully to avoid foul winter weather. In fact, the weather in those places, where winter has been know to last well into spring, was glorious. And Saturday, outside Philadelphia, it was sunny and 72 degrees out, the kind of day when even the most dedicated football coach has to strap it on to sit inside and learn about the Double-Wing. But there they were, some 25 coaches, and when we said our good-byes, we routinely wished each other a safe trip home. Little did we know. Overnight, the weather turned nasty, with temperatures in the low 30's, gusty winds - and snow. Lots of it. The New York Mets' game was snowed out, as was a major CART race scheduled to be run at Nazareth in Northeastern Pennsylvania. It wasn't all that bad for me, driving to Baltimore-Washington International for my flight home, but the roadsides along the way were strewn with cars that weren't quite so lucky. Three of the coaches at the clinic, having travelled quite a distance from upstate New York, decided to spend Saturday night in Fort Washington, PA and drive home Sunday morning. I wonder what their reaction was when they woke up to see snow on the ground.

At my request, Coach Doug Baker spoke with the Philadelphia clinic. Coach Baker is unique in that, despite a suvvessful 1999 season, he likely won't be coaching this year. After two years in which he turned things around at Snow Hill, Maryland, he assessed the level of support for his program and decided to move his wife and son closer to their families back in Western Maryland, 200 miles away. Among Coach Baker's 1999 accomplishments at 1-A Snow Hill, smallest school playing football in the entire state, were taking the eventual state 2-A champs to a narrow Double Overtime loss, and finally defeating much larger Cambridge South Dorchester, after 30 straight unsuccessful tries. In 1998, South Dorchester's kids had ridiculed the Double Wing, chanting "NINTENDO! NINTENDO! NINTENDO!" After Doug explained to his kids what the chant was supposed to mean, they took special pleasure in doing the same chant following their 1999 win. One humorous incident Coach Baker related was the time an official threw a flag on an 88-Super Power and came over to tell him, "In all my years of officiating, I've never called a holding penalty against a quarterback before." He told of the "mud bowl" in which the Wildcat was "a real life-saver." (He called the formation "Q-Squared" because he ran it with two QB's side-by-side.) A great bit of advice he passed along was to sneak a unique formation in against an opponent, then put it in hiding for a couple of weeks before showing it again. Coach Baker showed us his version of the 77-power, with the A-Back faking the criss-cross exchange, and his "trips" formation with the B and A backs lined up just outside the C-Back. Since the topic of cooperation between youth coaches and high school coaches was a point of some discussion at the clinic, Coach baker told of his frustration with his inability to persuade his youth coach to run the Double-Wing, despite the fact that the youth team scored only 7 points, while Snow Hill's varsity was scoring 378 points. Coach Baker encouraged Double-Wing coaches to attend clinics like this one and to stay in touch with each other, saying that with this offense, "You've got to tap into this small group of coaches, because you can't just talk to the guy across the street." A young coach, Doug Baker says he's learned one really important lesson which he passed along to any coach who might feel the need to give his seniors an edge, even when they haven't paid the price in the off-season. "I used to be soft, " he said, but not any more. "Twelfth-graders should know better. You don't owe them anything. They should have been out working. Find your best 11 kids and go with them, no matter what grade they are."

Taxpayers in the Twin Cities are enraged after hearing of accusations in a recently published book by Jay Weiner, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star-Tribine, that their governor - no, not Jesse "The Soul" - may have been part of a fictitious plot cooked up to trick Minnesota legislators into building a taxpayer-funded stadium for the Twins. In his book, "Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big-League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles," Weiner claims that the idea originated with the chief of Staff of Governor Arne Carlson, who back in 1997 supposedly told Twins' officials to crank up the pressure on taxpayers by concocting a deal to "sell" the team and move it elsewhere. The Twins allegedly went along with the plot, supposedly finding a "buyer" in the Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point, North Carolina area. But for all their efforts, the scheme (if, in fact, that's what it was) failed, and now Weiner's tale of the story behind it would seem to complicate further efforts by the Twins to get in on the free stadium giveaway.

Owners of a downstate Illinois nursing home, which was only half full, cooked up a great idea to fill their empty beds and make money. For $75 per person per day, paid by the state, they offered to house 26 young, homeless drug addicts from Chicago among their elderly patients. Bad idea. After reports that the young city lads terrorized staff members and elderly patients, the scheme has been discontinued.

I received this e-mail yesterday: "Greetings Coach Wyatt: I would not have believed it until I saw it in black & white. A well-known YOUTH football league has mandated that all football, cheer and dance squads must have an APPROVED patch on competition uniforms. What is the logic or mystical powers of this mandatory patch? I wonder what will be next?? Of course these NFL style patches are only available from ONE Source. The cost per 1.50 retail, bulk possible 75 cents to one dollar. With this non-profit?? league claiming 300,00 youth participants, an easy $150,000 to $450,000? the location of website is www.dickbutkus.com/dbfn/popwarner/home.html . A sad commentary on where the true interest may be."

Could this really be possible? I asked. Could some national organization really be trying to shake down hard-working volunteers at the local level? This, I had to see for myself. So I looked up the site and sure enough, there it was:

COACHES/ADMINISTRATORS - FYI Don't forget the important rule change taking effect next January. In 1999 ALL Pop Warner football teams, cheer and dance squads must have an approved Pop Warner patch on competition uniforms. Pop Warner's Regional Management, together with the national staff, agreed last Spring that APPROVED PATCHES MAY NOT BE LOCALLY PRODUCED... and are ONLY available from Pop Warner's official merchandise source... The Warner Corner. CLICK HERE to go to THE WARNER CORNER or call 1-800-910-4POP (1-800-910-4767) for pricing and order information.

These "prayers" come from Coach Herb Persons, in Kalamazoo, Michigan:

Lord help me to relax about insignificant details.....beginning tomorrow at 7:41:23 AM PST.

Lord help me to consider people's feelings .....even if they ARE hypersensitive.

Lord help me to take responsibility for my own actions.....even though they're NOT my fault.

Lord, help me to not try to RUN everything...But, if You need some help, please feel free to ASK me!

Lord, help me to be more laid back .....and help me to do it EXACTLY right.

Lord help me to take things more seriously,.....especially laughter, parties, and dancing.

Lord give me patience....RIGHT NOW!

Lord help me not be a perfectionist. .....(Did I spell that correctly?)

Lord, help me to finish everything I sta ..

Lord, help me to keep my mind on one th -- Look, a bird! -- ing at a time.

Lord help me to do only what I can, and trust you for the rest......And would you mind putting that in writing?

Lord keep me open to others' ideas.....WRONG though they may be.

Lord help me be less independent.....but let me do it my way.

Lord, help me slow down .....andnotrushthroughwhatIdo.

April 10 - "You should never let anybody that doesn't like you, doesn't care about you, have the authority to critique your situation." Bill Russell, basketball great

NCAA President Cedric Dempsey has proposed a revision of basketball recruiting rules - to be voted on next January - decreasing coaches' summer "evaluation days" in an effort to reduce the influence of summer camps. Not so fast, you football coaches. Don't start cheering just yet. This may mean less demand on kids' time in the summer (although there'll still be AAU tournaments), but in return for a curtailment of their summer recruiting, college coaches would now be given 70 "evaluation days" - up from 40 - during the "academic year." Has it occured to you that most of the free time these coaches have during the "academic year" comes during football and baseball/track seasons - meaning that the talent pimps and AAU coaches will now be enticing your football players to play in weekend and weeknight tournaments during football season - maybe even giving up football entirely - "because that's when the colleges will be watching?"

I must say that the XFL did bring to my attention something that I really wasn't aware of. The new football league will allow just 35 seconds between plays, rather than the 40 seconds the NFL allows. 40 seconds! I wasn't aware it was that long. No wonder their game sucks! No wonder there is a substitute for every situation. No wonder the blabbering bozos in the booth have become more important than the game itself! If the NFL really wants to improve its game, it'll cut the time between plays down to about 20 or 25 seconds.Maybe it'll mean no more Lovely Leslie Visser sideline interviews, but I'm willing to take that chance. The current 40 seconds still isn't long enough for her to conclude a sideline interview without talking over the game action itself, anyhow.

I do like Minnesota, but remember, that's where they elected Jesse Ventura. Jeff Huseth, a reader in the Twin Cities, passes along the latest from the Land of Cold Weather and Warm Hearts: the adults involved in youth soccer in Blaine, Minnesota, will not longer use such terms as "opponents," or "rivals," and certainly not "the enemy." They will be referring to those guys on the other side of the field as "necessary friends."

Home schooling anyone? As a teacher, I would always marvel at those idiot parents who liked to make big noises about holding teachers and schools "accountable," but would think nothing of taking their kids out of school for a week to go skiing, or to go to Disneyland - or Hawaii - the week before vacation starts ("to beat the crowds"); even worse were those numbskulls who would go away for a few days by themselves and leave teenage kids home alone. The big story in the Philadelphia suburbs right now is the conviction of four male high school students of "sexual assault" at a party thrown by a fellow student last October 1 when his parents were out of town. During the party, at which condoms were handed out at the door, and students "guzzled" vodka and marijuana, a girl claimed to have had too much to drink, and to have fallen asleep in a bedroom. She was awakened, she said, by five boys holding her down while at least three and possibly four of them took turns raping her. Sorry. I should have said, "sexually assaulting" her, even though it sure sounded a lot like rape. The four "children", two of them baseball players and a third one a basketball player, were convicted. And, boy - did they get the book thrown at them. Tried as juveniles, the "children" face a little juvenile detention - or probation. (I'm betting on probation, because "they're basically good kids who made a mistake" - isn't that how it usually goes?) But wait - that's not all. The law's not done with them yet. They also face - counseling! That'll scare them straight. Oh, yes - and the two baseball players have been "temporarily suspended" from the team, because "we are very concerned about having students found guilty of felonies representing our district in extracurricular activities," according to the president of the school board. Yeah, very concerned. Not concerned, though, about returning convicted felons to the classroom, because on Friday, they were all back in school! (Their victim has been home-schooled since the incident). According to a fellow student, the return of the four perps was no big deal. Just another day at school. "Same as normal," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Nothing different. Just a normal day, and nobody talked about the trial today." Actually, I'm willing to bet that among a substantial portion of the student body, those guys are heroes. Like pro wrestlers and NFL gods. I tend to side with the local resident who told the Inquirer, "This just confirms that the students are out of control." He might have included Boomer parents, who can't quite seem to come to grips with the idea that they are supposed to be the adults in all this.

"One of the greatest challenges that faces a football coach is coaching the offensive line. Because linemen seldom get as much public recognition as they deserve, it often takes a real selling job on the part of the coach to convince them of their importance to the team." Jim Owens, University of Washington - coach of two consecutive Rose Bowl champions (1960-1961)

Guess some people are just slow learners: 18 per cent of all new AIDS cases in Maine last year were over the age of 49.

Answer to Friday's Question (Can you name the only five schools in the history of NCAA championships to have won a national championship in football and an NCAA basketball tournament?) - Arkansas, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, UCLA

April 7 - "The best thing you can do with an enemy is make him a friend." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Want to get something started in your house? Take a cue from what WIP Sports Radio in Philadelphia did the morning after UConn's women defeated Tennessee for the NCAA Women's Championship: tell the females in the family that your state's boys' high school champion could beat UConn's women. Then stand back and protect yourself. The guys at WIP used Pennsylvania class AAAA state champ Chester to make their case, but they could just as easily have chosen Philadelphia's Roman Catholic High (Philadelphia's Catholic schools are not eligible to play for the state title) and its 6-9 blue-chipper, Eddie Griffin. Granted, you could have a tougher time arguing if you live in a small state that is less, um, "ethnically diverse," but hold your ground, anyhow. You're still probably right. And as for states such as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York (California doesn't have state champions) - get serious, ladies. UConn's women are good at what they do - women's basketball. But you shouldn't have let yourself get too carried away by those PC ads that NIKE brainwashed you with - you know, the girls on the playground beating the guys... Mia Hamm dusting Michael Jordan in a sports medley. Those ads were meant suck up to female viewers and give them a warm, fuzzy feeling about NIKE. But they weren't reality. The reality is that those high school boys' champions are bigger, faster and stronger than the college women, and the difference in their jumping abilities is laughable. Where is the woman who can handle an Eddie Griffin?

Those who really think that the Chicago Cubs-New York Mets' season-opening series in Japan might lead to some sort of global baseball league any time soon are dreaming. Writes Kevin Baker, in the Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Selig (Bud Selig, Commissioner of Baseball) has spent the last three years unsuccessfully trying to realign the American League's Central and West Divisions. Scheduling in the Hiroshima Carp or the Nippon Ham Fighters is beyond his capability."

Not shilling for anybody, but - you may remember my saying that I had bought an iMac DV Special Edition (DV for Digital Video) a few months ago. This is what Walter S. Mossberg, Personal Technology Editor of the Wall Street Journal, wrote yesterday: "The top model, the iMac DV Special Edition, is the best MacIntosh I've ever used, period, and one of the best PCs ever."

Sleep well, citizens of Boston. Four Boston police officers have asked to be excused from a rule requiring them to establish a residence in the city within a year of being hired, claiming that living in Boston is too dangerous.

See if you can connect the dots: (1) The three top-rated shows on TV last week were different versions of the same show. Three different nights of "Millionaire," with its imbecilic opening-round questions - multiple choice, yet - occupied spots one, two and three. (2) Orkin, the pest control company, reports that the "cockroach" crawling across the screen in its TV commercial is so convincing it has caused some viewers to throw things at their sets.

Here's a great fund-raiser for your school. Not only did Michigan State win the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament on Monday night, but it also earned the right to buy the actual floor - all 7,200 square feet of it - on which the Final Four was played. For $80,000. It probably bought it, just as Kentucky and UConn, the last two NCAA champions, did. Why? You realize how much money they can make selling mementoes featuring 3" x 6" pieces of that hardwood floor? If they cut the hardwood carefully, (and if my math is correct ) that will work out to 57,600 pieces. Mount each piece on a nice plaque with an engraved brass plate on it, sell it for $75 or so to alumni and fans, and, even after purchase of the floor, marketing and manufacturing expenses - and giving away a few to your largest donors - it is still possible to net well over a million dollars. Don't know about football, though - somehow, I just can't see a chunk of sod mounted on a plaque.

Can you name the only five schools in the history of NCAA championships to have won a national championship in football and an NCAA basketball tournament?

April 6 - "Unless you have patience, your players will not improve much."  H.O. "Fritz" Crisler, Coach at Minnesota, Princeton, and Michigan

Soccer may be making inroads in much of our over-feminized United States, but there are places in northern New England where football is coming back. Actually, it's not a comeback, but more of an emergence. Surprisingly, there are still some schools in Maine and New Hampshire - some of them fairly large - that have never had football, but their number is declining as more and more of them have begun to field teams. In fact, two such schools were represented at my clinic held last weekend in Gorham, Maine. One of them, Kearsarge Regional High, in North Sutton, New Hampshire, just completed its second season of football, running the Double-Wing and compiling a 5-4 record. Coach Dennis Hoffman, who has been a coach for over 20 years, was instrumental in getting the program going, starting first with a youth program and patiently grooming the kids until they were old enough for him to convince the school to let him start football as a club sport. Now, with the community donating lights for the field and the school making football a full-fledged sport, he is eagerly looking forward to a great year in 2000. I had a chance to see some of his game tapes, and was very impressed by the job Coach Hoffman and his staff - and kids - have done. At the other school, Gorham High, Coach Dave Kilborn has a somewhat different situation. He is headed into his second year, at a school known mostly for its powerhouse soccer teams. Gorham high has excellent facilities, one of the most obvious being its nice, lighted stadium - for soccer. But Coach Kilborn, with an enthusiastic staff that includes John Beedy, whose dad is a football coach, and his own dad, Art Kilborn, a coaching legend in Maine football before "retiring", is not intimidated, and is making great strides in building football in the community.

"Dante," a caller to Philadelphia's sports radio WIP, noting that the NFL is going to have to do something to keep young males from deserting Monday Night Football for wrestling, suggested weekly human sacrifices at some point in the contests, possibly bringing in some ancent Mayans, who would be able to pull of sacrifices because "it's part of their religion." One of the WIP radio guys observed that ABC had already begun paving the way for such entertainment, with its axing of Dan Dierdorff, Frank Gifford and Boomer Esiason.

The amazing thing I noticed while driving through New Hampshire, in my first time back since 1981 and only my second time since 1955, is its resemblance to Finland - from the narrow roads cutting through thick forests of birch and evergreen trees, to the solid granite through which the roads sometimes have to be cut, to the "Moose Crossing" signs. Hitting a moose is not a pleasant experience, as my Finnish friends pointed out to me - a moose weighs a lot more than a deer, and its body is just about windshield-height.

Road kill seen while driving inside the city limits of Manchester, New Hampshire: a dead beaver.

Hypocrisy Alert. Amid all the furor over the Confederate Battle Flag's flying over the South Carolina state capitol - originally put there, incidentally, by a Democratic governor, one Ernest Hollings - it is amusing to take note of another state, Arkanasas, once governed by The Man From Hope. Arkansas law specifies that the Saturday before Easter Sunday be celebrated as Confederate Flag Day.

Isn't it amazing how the news media allow liberals get away with twisting the First Amendment to serve their purposes? It is just fine, they say, for an artist to disparage your religion by depicting - in a public place, such as a museum - a crucifix dipped in urine or the Virgin Mary covered with dung. But - depending on how the Supreme Court rules in a current case - it is not all right to pray for players' strength and safety prior to a high school football game - because it's in a public place? And isn't it interesting how it is okay to burn the American flag (that's protected speech, you know, and besides, it's just a symbol), but the same people who like to set flags on fire can bar the doors to a public building to keep you from delivering a speech opposing something they hold dear? Wonder why the free-speechies at the ACLU think it's all right for it to cost you your job if you're a police officer and you express your opinion that women are unfit to be police officers? Or if you're a football coach and you state openly that you don't believe girls should be allowed to play football? Or if you're any male, and you tell the wrong female co-worker that she's looking good today? Let Reggie White express his deeply-held religious belief that homosexuality is wrong, and just watch cowardly legislators - once they learn that he has offended gays - rush to be the first to condemn him. (Memo to liberal student groups: don't try standing in the doorway when Mr. White arrives to give a speech at your college.)

Answer to yesterday's question - The pitcher who plunked and injuredYankee first basemen Wally Pipp, opening the door for Lou Gehrig to replace him and of course start the Iron Horse's streak of 2130 consecutive games played, went on to become a college football coaching legend? Charlie Caldwell, of Princeton

April 5 - "Education is experience; the rest is only information." Albert Einstein

Tell the guys in Cooperstown not to start on the Pete Rose plaque just yet. Somehow, I don't think he swung any votes his way with his performance on Wrestlemania Sunday night. Rose, who probably has a better shot at immortality as a guy who will do anything for money than as a member of baseball's Hall of Fame, took his act to a new low. Charlie Hustle's opening act was to threaten some wrestler with a baseball bat. It's important to know that the wrestler in question (I don't know these guys' names and couldn't care less) weighs in the neighborhood of 400 pounds and wears only a thong. That's it. We're talking about a lot of sweaty flesh. It's especially important to know this, if you're the kind of father who for some unknown reason lets his kids watch this dreck (Yiddish for crap). Give yourself 100 parenthood points if you have the stones to tell your kids they can't watch. Deduct 100 points if you don't. Because this 400-pounder's next act was to slam Mr. Wannabe Hall of Famer, and then, as Rose lay (supposedly) dazed in the corner of the ring with his head against the lowest rope, ram his corpulent butt into Rose's face. Wow. What great entertainment. No wonder the kids love it. And ole Rose - what a class act. (Seriously, what kind of man would allow somebody to do something that sordid and degrading to him - for any amount of money?) Setting Mr. Rose aside for the moment, a few other, even bigger questions arise: Is this the "excitement " we can look forward to when the XFL tees it up? Was Dick Ebersol of NBC sports - who only last week said of the WWF "I have not seen anything I would classify as vulgar" - watching Wrestlemania Sunday night?

A lethal combination. Driving through New England Sunday, I heard some NFL guy on a Boston station saying that there are two very important unanswered questions regarding anybody they consider drafting, even a "can't-miss" guy: (1) what's he going to do when he has time? and (2) what's he going to do when he has money? Time and money are two things most college football players don't have a whole lot of, and sometimes when they find themselves with both the results can be ugly.