BACK ISSUES - MARCH & APRIL 1999
April 30 - The "TBA" clinic on May 22 has just been "A'd" : It will be held in San Jose, California (same as last year) on Saturday, May 22, at the Airport Inn International - same as last year - 1355 North Fourth, San Diego CA 95112 - 800-453-5340
If you stick to the things you believe in, you're inflexible. If you change to keep up with our changing times, you're wishy-washy. You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. That seems to be the lesson learned from watching what's been happening lately to Indiana's Bob Knight and Duke's Coach K.
Knight, famously hard-nosed and inflexible, has really been taking his lumps of late. It's been five years since the Hoosiers advanced past the second round of the NCAA tournament, and now, with the announcement that Luke Recker, a former Indiana Mr. Basketball, has decided to transfer from IU, Coach Knight is being derided as a dinosaur, a tyrant, a coach with outdated coaching methods, one who's just not in touch with today's kids. Not able to relate to them.
Nobody has ever said that about Coach K, a former captain of one of Bob Knight's West Point basketball teams, but vastly different from his former mentor in being right on top of the times. In fact, Coach K related so well with so many extravagantly talented kids that he convinced a large number of them to attend Duke, and then, continuing to relate to them, coached them to within a hair of the NCAA championship. And in the aftermath of that final-game loss, when other coaches might have ranted and raved and dwelt on negatives, he talked instead about- relationships! Are you kiddin' me? Can you imagine Bobby Knight, losing in the NCAA final game, talking about relationships? So how into those same relationships were Coach K's players? Not very, judging from the news that two - maybe even three - of them will bail prematurely for the NBA. Who used whom?
Meantime, people conveniently overlook Bob Knight's 87% graduation rate, best in the Big Ten.
April 29- If you haven't already noticed - the very first entry by Coach Homer Smith appears today on this site - the man has a lot to teach us, and I'm very proud to be able to help.
There hasn't been a whole lot of publicity in the U.S. about the so-called World Cup for American Football, scheduled to be held this summer in Palermo, Italy. Maybe that's just as well, because it now appears as if it won't take place anyhow. Few people here in the US seem to know that Gene Stallings was selected to put together a team made up of a specified number of D-I, D-II and D-III players, to compete against teams from Japan, Mexico, Finland, Australia and Italy. Sweden, whose national federation has had financial problems so severe that it was forced to back out of hosting this year's European championships, was originally among the six nations scheduled to compete. Now there are rumblings, as yet unconfirmed, that the US team, concerned about security issues arising from our involvement in Kosovo, will not compete. If that is true, there is considerably less enthusiasm for going forward as planned. I have contacted the American Football Coaches' Association, the sponsoring organization for the US team, but the secretary was very closed-mouth about it, and I am awaiting confirmation - or denial - from the information guy, Todd Bell. I mean, it's not as if I was asking for nuclear secrets. (I've already got them - came in a fortune cookie.)
April 28- If you like conspiracies (Lincoln was shot in a theater by a guy who hid in a warehouse, Kennedy was shot from a warehouse by a guy who hid in a theatre, etc.) , you'll like this one, which came off a web site devoted to conspiracies:
On January 25, 1998, the Denver Broncos won Super Bowl XXXII (which precedes number XXXIII or 33, the highest degree of Freemasonry). 32 itself is the freezing point on the Fahrenheit scale. The Broncos' victory over the 3-time winning Green Bay Packers ended a streak of 13 consecutive years where the AFC representative had lost. The Broncos won by 7 points, scoring 31 (13 backwards.) Their quarterback, John Elway (wearing the lucky number 7), had previously endured 3 humiliating defeats in the Super Bowl during his first 7 seasons, then managed to be kept out of the big game for 7 straight seasons. In his 15th season (or the 3rd set of 7's) he hit paydirt. The game's Most Valuable Player, Terrell Davis, scored 3 touchdowns to pave the way to victory.
Anybody notice that 44,600 people attended a track meet last Saturday? Well, not exactly a track meet - this was the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, an annual festival of of relays and running events that, despite a claimed lack of interest in track, never seems to lose its appeal. Very few sporting events can compare with the excitement of seeing a crowd that size jump to its feet, screaming, as the anchors in a tight relay round the final turn and head down the stretch.
This sent to me by a reader whom I'm unable to identify: Don't let the orange coneheads intimidate you. Soccer, with 309,484 participants in 8,859 schools, is no better than the fifth most popular boys' high school sport, according to the National Federation's 1997-1998 Athletics Participation Survey. High school football? Despite Sports Illustrated's best journalistic efforts to bury it, it's a solid Number One, with almost a million boys playing. Nearly 970,000 participants (up about 65,000 from the last survey five years earlier) play the 11-man game in 13,243 high schools, with another 25,000 boys playing 6-, 8- or 9-man football. HEY! I RAN HIM DOWN! His name is Larry Warner, and he wrote, "Yes, Coach, I found the article in Coaches Quarterly/Spring 1999 issue. I try to keep up with any article that is a plus to the great game of football. It helps me kids away from mommies' apron strings. There are so many myths flying around about football "dangers" as if it were Russian roulette. True, our great game has its risk of injury,but in 1997 the year of participant study unfortunately 6 High School Players died from on-the-field injuries out of 996,000 High School Players NATIONWIDE.Five of the 6 deaths resulted from damage to the brain. The tape that you are producing on tackling is a timely one More H.S. kid die in CAR,BICYCLE,AND SKATEBOARD ACCIDENTS."
Huh? Former Secretary of Education William Bennett, no great fan of the phony self-esteem movement, told Rush Limbaugh that the daughter of a friend of his had recently received an award at school for "Future Achievement."
April 27- Coach Mike Emery, Of Fitch High in Groton, Connecticut, may be the only Double-Wing coach in America who didn't have a 1,000-yard rusher, yet had a quarterback who threw for 1,100 yards! Not that Coach Emery, who spoke at the Providence clinic, is a mad bomber type - he threw the ball an average of only 9 times a game last year. The 1,100 yards passing is just an example of how effectively he used the Double-Wing passing game. And as to the lack of a big-stats rusher, going undefeated in the regular season undefeated and finishing 10-1 - losing only in the state final - Coach Emery alternated so many quality backs that no one back had enough carries to gain 1,000 yards.
Coach Emery, who brought most of his staff to the clinic, said that when he came across the Double-Wing, he'd been searching for five years for something other than the Delaware Wing-T which he'd been running. The problem he was running into was the difficulty his wingbacks were having blocking defensive ends on the buck sweep, and people blitzing the A-gaps. He purchased my first tape, and said, "within five minutes of watching the film, I knew."
Now, "game planning has become easier." For Coach Emery, as with most of us, it starts with one play. "You've got to have something to hang your hat on," he says. "For us, it's the Super Power. We ask them to get us four yards."
Coach Emery was good enough to show us some of his favorite plays, including "Tight Rip 58 Black All-Deep," great against the 2-deep coverage that so many of us see so much of the time. He also throws a nice screen right to the "A" back off of that same action.
Coach Emery, who is not afraid to innovate, has found that for his purposes, it helps him to have his wingbacks face straight ahead, rather than angled in, a move that he made midway through this past season. He believes that it has helped them to join hips better when double-teaming with their TE, and that it has improved their reach blocking. The Double-Wing remains a work in progress, and when someone can tweak it and improve his performance, it helps us all.
Groton, where our nuclear submarines are built, is a Navy town, and its people expect to win. With just four starters graduating from 1998's state finalist, and his entire backfield returning, Coach Emery appears poised to provide the people of Groton with another winner in 1999.
April 26- THE TWIN CITIES CLINIC WILL BE HELD MAY 15 AT NORTH ST. PAUL HIGH (IN NORTH ST. PAUL) AT 2416 E 11TH AVE
Coach John Irion was a guest speaker at the Providence clinic. Coach Irion has been at Queensbury, New York just two years, and in both of those years, he's taken his team to the New York state Class A finals! He has the rare good fortune of coaching in the town where he grew up, but it took him a long time to get back home. His dad was the superintendent of schools in Queensbury, and so long as Dad ran the schools, there was no way that John was going to be hired as coach there. So John spent 15 years at Class AA Central Square, near Syracuse, while keeping an eye on his hometown, which from 1976 throuogh 1996 experienced only three winning seasons. When the coaching position at Queensbury - a school of 1100 kids - came open two years ago, John's dad had by then retired, and John was hired. One problem - it was already July.
John, a nationally certified strength coach, was frustrated by his inability to do much to get his kids stronger in that short a time - "they didn't think lifting weights was important; they just thought the bench press was important." He had to change some attitudes about more than weight lifting, though. The first thing he had to change, he said, was the mind-set: "It was almost understood that we wouldn't win." Secondly, he had to change the offensive mentality. In his first year at Queensbury, he wound up passing 42 times in the entire season. The year previous to his coming, Queensbury once threw 42 times in one game.
He had looked at the double wing in his last year at Central Square, and now he felt that this was the right time to put it in. "The thing that sold me on it," he said, "was the terminology. It was easy to teach. I had to teach kids who had never run before how to run a running offense."
At first, he said, the players and coaches laughed and said, "what is this?" and he admitted that he had to fib a bit and tell them that he'd run it at Central Square! Fortunately, he did inherit a good staff which was willing to work with him.
He knew he had something when he went into the first scrimmage with just two plays! But running only trap and super power, Queensbury went up against a defending playoff team, and in the first 10 plays scored four times and ran for 10 yards or more on the other six plays!
By the first game, consistent with his "500 play" philosophy ("I told the kids I wasn't going to run a play in a game until we had run in 500 times in practice") he had four plays - trap, super power, criss-cross and wedge.
Things just snowballed from there, as his kids became believers in themselves, and Queensbury made it all the way to the 1997 state finals before losing to a much stronger Vestal team. Coach Irion had known that strength would be a problem that first year, and he set out to do something about it. That he has done. In 1998, Queensbury made it to the state finals again, and after a beautiful opening drive against Rochester Aquinas (Don Holleder's alma mater), appeared ready to capture the title. But three costly fumbles deprived Queensbury for the second year in a row.
In the meantime, there is no doubt that Coach Irion has made Queensbury into a state power. In all 26 games he has coached except the 1997 finals against Vestal, Queensbury has rushed for over 300 yards. He never uses fewer than seven backs in a game, and on one occasion, used 16 different ball carriers ("the stats people weren't very happy with that," he said. "Neither were the newspapers").
His 1998 team set state playoff single-game records with 9 touchdowns in a game, 4 touchdowns by one player, 510 yards rushing, and 29 first downs.
Best of all, he says, "we mobilized the community. People come to me and say, 'We never thought Queensbury would be a football school.'" His total program - 7th grade, 8th grade, JV and varsity - has gone 56-8 in his two years there. "Even without great athletes," he says, "we're going to be successful."
Two-for-two in his two years at Queensbury - where does he go from here? According to Coach Irion, who knows what it takes to get to the top, this year's team could be every bit as good as the previous two, and with the right kind of breaks, his kids could once again be down on the floor of Syracuse University's Carrier Dome, playing for a state title.
Providence - wow! I had a little time Sunday, and used it to drive into Providence and walk around. What a great city! It reminds me somewhat of Boston, but smaller and with nowhere near the congestion. Unlike most western cities, laid out on a grid, Providence has streets winding in all directions, and unlike a lot of our "boomtown" cities, you don't get the feeling of being closed in by sterile, empty glass towers. Many of the buildings are old and beautifully maintained, and there is a lot of open space. The state capitol sits on a grassy hill overlooking downtown, and the narrow little Providence River snakes through downtown, the riverwalk along its banks a neat place for people to stroll. It is a relatively recent addition, and already restaurants are going up along it. Restaurants? Did I say restaurants? A short distance from downtown is Federal Hill, along whose main street I know I saw enough Italian restaurants - these ain't your one-in-every-mall Olive Gardens - to keep me fed for a month without eating in the same one twice. A new downtown shopping mall, spanning the Providence River, will contain a Nordstrom store. Believe me, Nordstrom, based in Seattle, doesn't build just anywhere. If they're coming to town, it says a lot about their confidence in Providence. From what I've seen, their confidence is well-placed. Providence is clean and attractive, with a lot to see and do.
Tomorrow- Coach Mike Emery, of Fitch High in Groton, Connecticut.
April 25 - How many of us have taken a team to our state's final game? At yesterday's Providence clinic we heard from three Double-Wing coaches - Jack Tourtillotte of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, John Irion of Queensbury, New York, and Mike Emery of Groton, Connecticut - who have been there. They were good enough to share their experiences and their approaches to the offense with the 30+ coaches in attendance.
Jack Tourtillotte, offensive coordinator at Boothbay Regional High, has helped head coach Tim Rice take the Seahawks to the state Class C finals. Boothbay Regional - smallest school in the state playing football, with 285 students - won only 30 games in the 30 years between 1965 and 1995, but finished 1998 with a 10-0 regular season record, the Western Maine class C title, and a berth in the state final. For his effort in the enormous turnaround, Coach Rice was honored as Maine Coach of the Year for all classes. Coach Tourtillotte told of being 0-7 in 1996, and deciding, with two games to go and nothing to lose, to try the double wing, based on my article in Scholastic Coach. Already a wing-T team, the Seahawks fit the Double Wing seamlessly into their current system, and broke into the win column on the very first try. The next week, they upset a playoff team, to finish 2-7. What impressed Jack most about the potential of the offense was Boothbay's opening drive in that game: deep in the hole after fumbling the opening kickoff, they proceeded to drive 96 yards in 26 plays, consuming 18 minutes! In this past year's state final game, against traditional power Stearns High of Millinocket, with the score tied 6-6 and three minutes to play, Boothbay was at the Stearns 38 and driving. A criss-cross picked up 25 yards, but the Seahawks were called for holding on the play. Set back to midfield, they stalled and had to punt- and Stearns returned the punt for the winning touchdown!
tomorrow: Coach John Irion, of Queensbury, NY.
April 24- Coach Bruce Eien, of Brethren Christian High School in LA, referring to tip #49, was good enough to remind me to point out that, with a backside Tight End who is in the free blocking zone and therefore can legally block low - even clip - we must make sure to instruct him not to block low on someone already being blocked by the center. This makes it an illegal "chop block," which in the days when it was legal blew out the knee of many a nose guard.
Two new and very significant "success stories" checked in this past week:
Coach Bob Shaffer, of Truckee High, in Truckee, California, wrote to order some materials, and said, "We incorporated the double wing with our Wing-T package and went 13-0 this year. In the state championship game, we used it exclusively the second half, and won, 28-14. (Truckee, at the crest of the Sierra Nevada, is in one of the most spectacular locations in the U.S.)
Coach Marshall Burdette, of Parkersburg, West Virginia High, wrote, "we put in the wing-T in 1994 and have been in 5 straight playoffs. We put the Double Wing in in 1997 and in 1997 we were in the state finals and this past season, 1998, we were in the semi-finals. We broke our old scoring record of 417 points (set in 1917) by scoring 531 points this past season (1998). Coach Burdette also passed along his program's web site address: www.PHSFootball.com. (I checked it out - the 1999 web site is under construction, but the 1998 version is good. So was Parkersburg. The "Big Reds" weren't too bad on defense, either, shutting out nine of ten regular season opponents. Their only loss, 24-15 in the state semi-finals, came at the hands of Nitro, and their nationally rated QB, J. R. House.)
April 23- While passing through Detroit... the idiotic idea of the week - maybe of this tired, old millennium - comes from Fox Sports Net. According to "Preps Insider" columnists Mick McCabe and Bill L. Roose, in the Detroit Free Press, Fox is hard at work planning to produce - and televise - a high school national championship football game. According to the plan, the top two teams in Fox Sports Net's final "Fab 50" weekly ranking would meet somewhere for this self-proclaimed national championship. The coach of Hampton, Virginia High, unquestionably one of the nation's better programs, evidently is quoted in Fox's press release as saying, "This is exactly the shot in the arm that high school football needs." Aside from the use of a metaphor that now has certain unfortunate drug undertones, writers McCabe and Doose were all over that one. "Who said," they ask, "that high school football needs a shot in the arm?" They go on to point out other problems, such as teams that make it into the various national rankings and aren't even the best teams in their states - or cities - or leagues (this has happened in Washington); the need to impress pollsters by running up the score; a high school game sometime in December, when winter sports are under way (we can't compalin about other sports if we're going to encroach on them); and a too-powerful-for-some-guys-to-resist temptation to recruit ("come to our school and you could be playing for a national championship!"). But gosh, what a chance for people to sell products! What a moneymaker! Uh-oh. Where's that money going to go? To the individual schools? Great - that'll buy them a weight room like Nebraska's. To the state associations? Terrific! They can build even more luxurious offices. To the "non-revenue" sports? Hey, why not? We're already, in the interests of "fairness," sharing facilities, attention, and, increasingly, sports pages with them. Two more Michigan arguments against the grand scheme: last year, Michigan had two great teams - Class AA Redford Catholic Central and Class A Farmington Hills Harrison, and they're stil arguing over which one was better. How could pollsters tell? And, finally, the clincher: In what the writers call "a world record for response time," Michigan's governing body put out a statement saying that no Michigan team would be participating. Ever. I fully expect other key states to follow Michigan's lead, but regardless, I agree with McCabe and Roose when they say, "if Michigan schools aren't in the mix, it cannot be a true national championship game."
Much has been made of the weird attire of the so-called "Trench Coat Mafia," but as the Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial Thursday, "there are many strange rooms" in the "great mansion" that American culture has become, "and behind each door you will usually find a group of teenagers huddled together with their "friends" and trying hard to conform themselves to the strict rules that define whichever fashion has blown through their lives this year. You get a sense of just how strict the new rules are when you see these surviving Columbine students willing to go on national TV to talk about the massacre of 15 among them, but by golly they're not going to take off those backward baseball caps to do it. Small stuff, but it says loads."
The editorial went on, "Ours is a culture of chaos now, and without guidelines to socially or morally predictable behavior, it's no big surprise that the most vulnerable among us, especially adolescents, are prone to snap. The ones who make the news open fire or throw babies in dumpsters. Most of the rest are just family friends with by-now familiar problems - eating disorders, sexual promiscuity, sexual confusion, drug and alcohol abuse."
"This country has spent about 30 years trying very hard to prove that no one, not even children, should be fettered by anyone else's idea of proper behavior. Now we have no norms. Or at least none that we hold in common. Are we happy yet?"
Peggy Noonan, author of "Simply Speaking," writing on the same page, related something she heard a caller say on a Christian radio station. "Those kids (in Colorado) were sick and sad," the caller said, "but if a teacher had talked to one of them and said, 'Listen, there's a way out, there really is love out there that will never stop loving you, there's a real God and I want to be able to talk to you about Him' - if that teacher had intervened that way, he would have been hauled into court."
I mentioned hearing Rick Neuheisel speak on Wednesday night, but I didn't mention his biggest move so far: out are the nondescript all-purple helmets brought in by former Coach Jim Lambright when he succeeded Don James, and back are the gold helmets with purple-and-white striping of the James-era Huskies, which Neuheisel recalled from his days at UCLA as "intimidating." People on hand when Coach Neuheisel broke the news to the players said it was greeted by a resounding cheer and a standing "O". (Think about it for a minute: other than Jim Lambright, can you name another coach who took over an already-strong program and dared to put his personal stamp on it by changing the design of the helmets? )
April 22 - Happy Earth Day and Happy Take Your Daughter to Work Day. (Anybody able to tell me why that ain't in the summer?)
Apologists at work- anybody else hear the female member of that Colorado cult of losers (whoops- there I go imposing my values again) say of the killers, "They were good people who just made a bad choice." That's the kind of crap that the people who "work with" these kids fill their heads with.
Last night was the annual National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame Dinner to honor the outstanding football player/students in our section of the state. Coach Rick Neuheisel of the Washington Huskies was the guest speaker and although I was not predisposed to like him, I must admit that he did an outstanding job.
At the dinner I spoke with Steve Miletich, a long-time referee and one of the most respected officials in our state. I mentioned Tip #49, and told him of a coach who e-mailed me. I know him and like him, but somehow or other he thinks that his defenders ought not to be "fair game," so his interpretation (of a rather straightforward rule) is that they can take on a blocker by taking him on at the legs. My response was - and is - "the rule is clear." Steve even offered to help "protect" any kids whose coaches "protect" them by teaching illegal tactics: "they'll have soft landings on my flag."
April 21 - While waiting for the sociobabble apologists to blame the Littleton murders on the fact that if we didn't overemphasize athletics and glorify athletes, those poor misunderstood youngsters wouldn't have felt so alienated...
Playbooks started shipping yesterday, and the balance will go out today. My thanks to all of you for your patience, especially you guys in the South who have spring ball coming up!
The Twin Cities clinic will be held at North High School in North St. Paul, thanks to the efforts of North head coach Paul Herrzog.
Most of you know that I am a Ricky Williams fan, and I thought choosing him Number One was an easy call. Even Tim Couch is a project, because he is coming out of a system that bloated his stats, while in my estimation at least, Ricky Williams will play - and excel - right away. But an article in The Wall Street Journal by Allen Barra has caused me to a take a different look at the situation. Barra writes that 10 years ago, while working with NFL films, he polled writers, players and former coaches to come up with a list of the 10 top running backs of the last 40 years. He has since updated his poll a couple of times, to make sure no recent stars would be excluded, and here's what he came up with: (1) Jim Brown; (2) O.J. Simpson; (3) Gale Sayers; (4) Walter Payton; (5) Eric Dickerson; (6) Barry Sanders; (7) Earl Campbell; (8) Thurman Thomas. Before I get to numbers 9 and 10, does anybody see a pattern here? I didn't, but here it is, and it is shocking - the top eight running backs of the "modern" NFL have won only two championship rings (Brown and Payton one each), in a combined 80 years of football! The problem in most cases was that their individual brilliance was seldom complemented by outstanding players at quarterback, and their teams often came up short defensively. Only when we get to running backs 9 and 10 - Emmett Smith and Terrell Davis - with five titles between them - do we find gifted runners who were fortunate enough to have had both the quarterback and the defense. Mr. Barra's conclusion - if Ricky Williams' experience is like that of most of the great runners who have preceded him, he will have a great rookie season. So, perhaps because of the improved morale his presence creates, will his team, maybe even making the playoffs. But after that, if precedence means anything, his team's performance will level off, no matter how many yards he gains. "He'll likely spend the rest of his career," Mr. Barra predicts, "wondering why football was never so good again."
April 20 - The "We Can Do Anything Men Can Do" Award goes to: The Portland Oregonian, so politically correct that it insists on referring to the Indians as "the Cleveland Team," the Braves as "the Atlanta Team," and the Redskins as "the Washington team." Evidently its sports editor thought it would be striking a blow for gender equity to send sports reporter Abby Haight to Cincinnati to cover the story of Oregon QB Akili Smith's arrival in Cincinnati, whose Bengals had just made him their first draft choice. "Coming into the city," Ms. Haight wrote on Monday's sports page, "Smith could look to the right and see Cynergy Field and the skeletal framework of the new John Brown (sic) Stadium, which will open next year." Now, hot on the heels of Reggie White's daring to voice his objections to a woman reporter's entering a pro locker room, Ms. Haight gives us reason to wonder what she is doing covering football. Her display of either carelessness or ignorance - of disrespect for our game and for Paul Brown, one of its giants - would certainly seem to bring her credentials into question, and prompted me to e-mail her: "It is possible that you just slipped up in naming Cincinnati's new stadium 'John' Brown Stadium; otherwise, your ignorance of the importance of Paul Brown to the city of Cincinnati, to the National Football League, and to the game of football is an affront to those of us who believe that a knowledge of - and respect for - the history of our sport and the men who made it are essential qualifications for anyone who represents himself/herself as a legitimate sports reporter. I am well aware of the contributions to American history of a certain John Brown. If you like, I would be happy to tell you more about "P.B.", the legendary Paul Brown. There is a big difference." (I have yet to receive a reply from Ms. Haight, who is no doubt at the library reading up on Paul Brown.)
Coaches of any sport should be saddened to see Wayne Gretzky hang it up. Here was a guy who acted as well as he played - who never did things to draw attention to himself, never trash talked, never showed up late to practice, never showed up a teammate, never needed a bodyguard or an entourage, never complained about the way he made his living, always recognized his responsibility to be an example for young people, and always made the people around him better. Shoot, he made an entire league better: when he arrived in Los Angeles after a fabulous run at Edmonton, the Kings, hockey's lone outpost in Southern California, were practically dead on their duffs. By the time he left Los Angeles for New York, the NHL had not one, but two solid franchises in Southern California. Wayne Gretzky was called the Great One for good reason. But he wasn't just great - he was good, too.
Mike Nobile, youth coach in Glastonbury, Connecticut, called to register his staff for the Providence clinic. Since putting in the double wing in the final week of the season a few years ago, Mike's 13-14 year-old team has gone 20-3, and last year scored 258 points in 9 games. He told how he was able recently to get his kids together in a high school gym for a workout, their first since the season ended at the end of October. He ran the kids though 10 plays, and in his words, "they didn't miss a beat." Coach Nobile said that the amount of the offense that they had retained, despite not having run it for over five months was "unbelievable."
April 19-In the lobby of the Cleveland airport is a scale model of the beautiful new stadium used to lure the Browns - under new ownership - back to Cleveland (which lost the original Browns to Baltimore and its new stadium, which had lost the Colts to Indianapolis and its new stadium, etc., etc.). Cleveland's looks nice and all that, but it really is symbolic of the shafting that the masses - the hard-core football fans - are getting at the hands of "their" teams. I searched th model high and low, but for the life of me, I couldn't find any tiny waiters serving catered meals to the corporate suits in their luxury boxes, nor did I see any of the suits and their glamorous ladies exchanging power talk in the boxes' glassed-in, air conditioned/heated comfort, every now and then sneaking a peek at the game on one of the box's monitors. And no tiny figures in orange hard hats had been placed in the new version of Cleveland's famous "Dawg Pound. " But it didn't take much figuring to come to the conclusion that, seated in end zone sections that have been pushed way back to make room for the luxury boxes down below, those Dawgs in the upper reaches will have to have strong arms indeed to hit any referees this time around - they're more than 100 yards from mid-field! That makes them fifty yards from the goal posts "below" them! Baltimore has done an equally good a job of moving its lunchpail fans as far back from the actual site of the game itself as is architecturally feasible. I recall seeing a sales pitch for Baltimore's PSL's that extolled the "views of the Chesapeake Bay" awaiting those lucky enough to be seated high in the upper deck. "Chesapeake Bay," did you say? How about the Rockies? (PSL, by the way, is short for "Personal Seat License," a nasty little instrument of greed that enables an NFL club to separate you from more of your money, by charging you thousands of dollars merely for a supposed right - non-refundable, by the way - to buy an exorbitantly-priced season ticket to watch their games, in a stadium which your tax dollars helped to build, so that a business which pays its employees millions of dollars a year can sell the right to name your stadium to some software company, and pocket all the money.)
Does your boss/principal think you're really working at the computer while you're actually reading this? Tell them to relax - they should be glad it isn't Penthouse. An analysis of computer logs at IBM, Apple and AT&T showed that in one 30-day period, employees of those companies visited one web site - Penthouse Magazine's - 12,823 times. Using an average "visit" of 13 minutes, that worked out, according to Nielsen Media Research, which did the study, to 347 lost 8-hour workdays in a single month! (And if they were actually reading any articles, the figure could be even higher!)
You may not realize how hard it is to get an honest evaluation from a previous employer of a guy you're considering hiring. They'll always say he's a great guy - even if he's not - because he's no longer their problem, and it's often in their best interest to see that he gets another job. And they certainly don't want him bringing any action against them for something they might say that could cost him another job. So one human resources professional suggests this approach: ask the former employer where they'd rate him on a scale of 0-to-10. Here's the trick: for whatever reason, most honest employers tend to score artificially high, giving even medium performers scores of eight or nine. But not 10. That's your opening. Now you should ask, "what would he have needed to do for you to give him a 10?" I am told that this approach can get even reluctant references to open up and provide you with some useful information.
What's wrong with this picture? There are estimated to be 147 million Web users worldwide, according to the Wall Street Journal; on the other hand, the index of search engine Alta Vista, which is owned by Compaq Computer, contains 150 million Web sites!
April 17- Coaches from Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania made the second annual Cleveland double wing clinic a great one. Especially exciting to me was the arrival of my first international attendees, Coach Chris Marcus and his staff - Joe Robinson and Bill Pollard - from South Secondary School (High School) in London, Ontario. In its first year of running the double wing, South won the city championship. But Chris, Joe and Bill all confess that they're still trying to out what to do with the twelfth man!
Ray Pohlman of Perrysburg, Ohio, was there with assistant Todd Sims. Ray is looking forward to his second season of the double wing, after an encouraging introduction of the offense in his program from 7th grade on up to the varsity. He returns practically everone from last year's club, which finished its season with a huge defeat of archrival Maumee. The introduction was not without its snags, though. After playing his first game, Ray's own son, a freshman, told him, "Dad, this new offense isn't going to work." Ray told him to be patient - that things would get better. Sure enough, they did. The freshmen started winning big, and soon, whenever they would get down close to the goal line, the parents would begin to chant, "WEDGE! WEDGE! WEDGE! WEDGE!"
Larry Decker, offensive coordinator at Medina, New York, and Nick Benedetti, head coach, were among the earliest converts to my system, and it was nice to finally meet them. Larry is a Bills' fan. His e-mail address (Decker @billsfan.net) even advertises the fact, and he brought me a truly unique gift - a box of Flutie Flakes! Nick and Larry both say they're still having fun with it the offense, and best of all, they say, their kids love it.
Jim Deuble, of Chicago's North Shore Country Day School is also his school's head baseball coach, which prevented him from attending the Chicago clinic two weeks ago, but a Saturday rain-out cleared the way for him to get to this one, and he was able to catch a last-minute flight to Cleveland. Jim said that North Shore Country Day's winning season in 1998 was its first in ten years.
Jason Schondelmyer is really into the double wing. Coach Schondelmyer was at my Louisville clinic last year, and after a year of running it on Coach Mark Gibson's staff at Brookville, Ohio, he is more sold than ever, and now he is a leading candidate for a job nearby. So when he heard Friday about the Cleveland clinic, he immediately called my home for more information. Except by then, I was in Cleveland. When I called home on Friday night, my wife told me about Coach Schondelmyer's call, and at 9:30 Friday night, I managed to get in touch with him and give him directions. I have no idea what time he had to get up, but Brookville is near Dayton, some 5 hours away, and Coach Schondelmyer was the first guy at the clinic, at 8:10!
There was some talk at the clinic about the recent resignation of the head coach at Fremont Ross High, one of Ohio's premier programs. In one stretch of several games last year he didn't call a pass play (wing-t guy) and perhaps as a result, despite a two-year record of 18-3, the community was split on supporting him. In the land of Woody Hayes! Evidently at one game, when people in the stands started hollering at him to "go home," his wife, like him a transplanted Pennsylvanian, stood up and hollered back, "we're trying to!"
Cleveland is plenty excited about the Browns' return, but it doesn't take long to see that it's a baseball town, too. You're no sooner in the airport than you begin to see people wearing Indians' jackets, and Saturday night, a huge crowd sat in 40-degree weather to watch the Tribe play the Twins. And while I sat in a local joint grabbing a bite to eat, people all around me sat transfixed in front of the big-screen TV's, wildly cheering every base hit.
This from Ron Timson, in Bennington, Nebraska, commenting on Don Capaldo's note about the selection process for Iowa's All-Star game: "What a great way to select the All-Star team. Too many times I see it selected solely on stats and big school publicity here. The first selections here are always the Division I recruits. I think it is mighty refreshing to see someone have the guts to select it on character and what it may mean in the future lives of these young men."
Commenting on former Cornhusker Lawrence Phillips, Ron wrote, "We get a few players here with some previous problems and we always give them an opportunity and let them start out with a clean slate with us. We work around counseling and diversion program appointments as long as the young man is committed to turning his life around and being a solid citizen. We are always happy when we see some of them make such great strides and we know that our program and the rules we make them adhere to have brought some discipline to their lives. The one thing we must always remember though is we will not turn every one of these young men around. When they consciously make choices that cause us to dismiss them, we have to realize we did not fail, but they did not succeed when given the opportunity. It is very hard when this happens, and we certainly would like to (and we try) to help them all, but we won't always be successful. We can look in the mirror and know that we gave them the best opportunity they had to turn their lives around, and we just have to live with that. The best thing about this profession is that we have something to offer them sometimes when no one else does. Well, I was just in here doing some work and pulled you up on the internet to read the coaching news. Had to get my two cents in. I always tell my guys that football is the closest thing you can get to war, we just play it without guns. I know that the people I stay in touch with the most are the ones I was in the service with and the ones I share football with. That has to say something."
Ron closed by adding, "we are also putting the Tae-Bo program in here. I have watched all of Billy Blanks' tapes and I don't think that I have seen anything that looks like it combines conditioning, balance, and athleticism like this program does. It also helps that they have some young ladies demonstrating this, because my guys would never let the girls think they can do something they can't do."
April 16 - Scott Barnes, in Denver, e-mailed me an article from one of the local papers (Denver is one of the few cities in the country to have two competing newspapers, which means sports gets a lot of coverage there) about Terrell Davis going to Washington to lobby on behalf of Pop Warner football. Terrell spoke highly and kindly about his Pop Warner coach in the days when he was a kid growing up in San Diego, and he gives him a lot of the credit for the success he has had since then. What does it say about a man's persistence and belief in himself when his efforts take him from number two running back at the University of Georgia to number one running back on the number one team in professional football?
On the subject of running backs, but down at the other end of the character scale, I can't imagine what is going to happen to Lawrence Phillips in Europe. A guy who drags a girl by her hair down a couple of flights of stairs (the news media now euphemistically say he "assaulted a former girl friend") and follows it up with numerous incidents indicating he isn't always concentrating on turning his life around is not find the same kind of tolerance for his antics in Barcelona, Spain that he found among some - but certainly not all - of the folks in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'm not sure that those people have yet discovered that unique form of "punishment" we call probation. I wish Barcelona Dragons' coach Jack Bicknell all the happiness in the world in dealing with his new running back. (Or at least, the same kind of happiness Lakers' coach Kurt Rambis must be experiencing, now that he no longer has to wet-nurse Dennis Rodman.)
And, with draft day coming up, who will step up and take a chance on Cecil "The Diesel" Collins, whose brief stays at LSU (thrown off the team) and McNeese State (thrown off the team) have to remind one a little bit of Lawrence Phillips? Not the Eagles. Their owner has already said so. Of course, they've got problems of their own if they go ahead and draft a quarterback, as they seem hell-bent on doing, in the face of an enormous groundswell of support for Ricky Williams. These guys are influenced more by some stupid workout than by what a guy accomplished in four years of college.
April 15 - Don Capaldo, whose 1998 Keokuk, Iowa Chiefs posted the first undefeated regular season in school history, wrote to tell me he attended the kickoff luncheon leading up to this summer's annual Iowa Shrine All-Star game, and that fellow DW coach Mark Kaczmarek, a perennial playoff contender from Davenport Assumption High, will be the Offensive Coordinator for the South squad. (Don't show those other coaches too much, Coach Kaz). But what Don was really excited about was what he heard North Head Coach, Dave Arns from Waverly-Shell Rock High, tell the audience. "What hit me the most ," Don wrote, "was the comment he made about having his staff get together to choose 44 players for the squad from a list of 160 nominees. He said he could have chosen all of them for their talent and stats. What he and the staff did instead was make calls to all their coaches and then they selected the 44 that they felt, from their interviews with the coaches, were the 44 with the most character and thus the capacity to gain a meaningful experience from the game. 'Hopefully', he said, 'the experience they have will inspire them to a life of service to their future communities and the children in them.' Great Stuff, don't you agree? What a great line of work, this passion of ours!" Amen, Coach Capaldo.
Down in Kentucky, with spring practice over, Coach Ron Hennig has just finished installing the double wing at Western Hills High, in Frankfort. Coach Hennig was 19-4 in his last two seasons at Louisville's Holy Cross High, and with a big-time turnaround project ahead of him at Western Hills, he said he has already found one believer in his system. After a few days of drills, he put his best athletes on defense, then huddled up his offensive unit and told them to run 88-Super Power. One yard gain. Back in the huddle, he told them, "Okay, guys, let's run it again. 88 Super Power." No Gain. Now, facing third and nine, Coach Hennig leaned in on the huddle and said, very matter of factly, "Run it again." As the team left the huddle, somebody must have muttered something, because Coach Hennig heard his quarterback say, "Hey! I watched the tape of this stuff! We got to be able to run this play against anybody!" Bingo - 20-yard gain. Now that he had the offense's attention, Coach Hennig told them to run it again - and told the defense, too. And play after play, even with the defense knowing it was coming, they still couldn't stop it. And I want that quarterback on my team.
In Birmingham, Coach Jerry Stearns is gearing up for the May 3 start of spring practice at Kingwood Christian School in nearby Alabaster, Alabama, after spending 28 years as head man at Birmingham's Woodlawn High. He says it's going to be quite an emotional jolt when he walks out the doors of Woodlawn and says good-bye to the people he loves, but he is fired up about reviving the program at Kingwood. One of the things he got me excited about was his use of Tae-bo to condition his players and help develop athleticism. Not only do his players like the Tae-bo workout, but he said that when he tried it in his PE classes, he found that even the kids who wouldn't normally dress for PE (we all have them) were enthusiastic about it. He says he arranges his kids in the gym in a semi-circle facing a TV monitor, and plays the workout tape, by a guy named Billy Blanks. Now, I'm not that a big martial arts guy, but I'm not too proud to admit that I don't know much about this, and because there's always a chance that finding out about it can help me, I checked it out on the Internet, and I'm going to invest $59.95 in a set of Billy Blanks' tapes. If you're interested, the guy's got a web site : http://www.taebo.com/offer.html
April 14 - Happy Birthday to my wife. I couldn't have been a coach without her. (Or a father, for that matter.).
Hot on the heels of Bill Lyon's comments yesterday about the civility of Jose Maria Olazabal comes today's news that the Ohio Valley Conference has suspended five college athletes for fighting - at a tennis match!
Dwight Jaynes, writing in the Portland Oregonian, described the fix that rookie coach Kurt Rambis of the Lakers finds himself in: "The toughest part of coaching at the highest level ," Jaynes writes, "is getting players to do things they don't want to do. It's imposing your will, as a coach, on your players and getting them to carry out your philosophy and game plan - even if it doesn't always run along the same line as their best interests." Jaynes, one of my favorite columnists, is right on the money as he so often is - but he is talking only about "the highest level", and he may not realize how far down the coaching food chain this truism now applies.
Steve Duin, also in the Oregonian, wrote about going with his Little League team to their practice field, and having to wait until the "orange coneheads" - the soccer teams - were finished.
Coach Bob Harris, of McCorristin Catholic High, in Trenton, New Jersey, was back at the Philadelphia clinic for the second year in a row, enthusiastic about the strides his "Iron Mikes" are making in a major turnaround effort - including a season-ending, Thanksgiving Day win over their arch-rivals. (For those unfamiliar with the Thanksgiving Day game tradition, still huge in the East and Northeast, winning the Turkey Day game is like winning a bowl game.) Coach Harris endorsed the Wildcat (renamed the "Mike") package, telling the other coaches at the clinic that he sprang it on one opponent and his kids ran for 399 yards. Most people nowadays know Temple for John Chaney's great basketball program and futility in football, but Coach Harris and I remember better days for Owls' football. I was working in Philadelphia in 1974, when Temple and Coach Wayne Hardin were the talk of the city. Bob Harris was a two-year starter at running back in Hardin's wide-open attack - a devastating combination of the veer running game and a drop-back passing game. Hardin put together a nine-year string of non-losing seasons (they were 5-5-1 one year) in the '70s at Temple, including 9-1 in 1973, and a bowl game win over California in 1979.
Coach Dale Spitzer, of Fort Defiance, Virginia, writes to say that his players have even taken to running double-wing plays on their video games.
A California youth coach said he used this site to help recruit a kid whose dad wanted to know more about the offense he was going to run. The coach referred the dad to this site, where he said he'd find out all he needed to know about it. Now the dad wants to help coach. (Which I assume means that his son will be playing.)
No promises, but there could be a teaching-assistant coaching position at a Double Wing school in the Pacific Northwest. If you're interested, sight unseen, in a ground-floor job, e-mail me (coachwyatt@aol.com) with some resume details - including coaching references - and if the job opens up, I'll see that it gets into the right hands.
April 13- Back in the sunny (!) Pacific Northwest, my wife finds that teaching colleagues who spent their spring breaks in places like California and Arizona are grousing about the nasty weather they encountered (snow in Phoenix!), while we, who spent the last week in Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had some unbelievably beautiful days.
Whether or not you're a golf fan, if you're a coach and a sportsman, you had to appreciate the class shown by Jose-Maria Olazabal in Sunday's final round of the Masters. Safely in the lead, and having made an approach shot on the 18th that assured him of the victory, Olazabal refused to go the "look at me!" route, and stroll up the 18th fairway alone, basking in the applause of the tens of thousands of fans gathered there. Instead, he waited for runner-up Greg Norman to join him and walk with him and share in the crowd's tribute. "In a time when sports is awash in surliness and mean-spiritedness, " wrote Bill Lyon in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "when we abuse each other with cruelty and simple bad manners, this was a redemptive and reassuring moment. Civility on the field of competition- what a quaint notion."
From the same geniuses who want a worry-free world, and won't let their kids play football because they might get hurt: A recent Washington Post-NBC poll showed that 57 per cent of the people it surveyed back the use of ground troops in Kosovo. But get this: the poll also found that among these same people, support for ground troops dropped off dramatically when they were asked whether they would continue to support the military action if it resulted in US soldiers being killed! (The Game-boy warriors. They'd probably try to sue Milosevic.)
A recent article by Greg Gittrich in the Los Angeles Daily News tells of the work being done by double wing coach John Torres, who doubles as an assistant special agent with the ATF in Los Angeles, and the men he works with - < "When deputies stopped a Ford Bronco outside a crowded West Hollywood nightclub, they found TV actor Omar Gooding behind the wheel and three handguns missing serial numbers on the seat. Using new, sophisticated technology, ATF agents painstakingly identified the guns and traced them back to a cache of more than 1,200 weapons an illegal immigrant bought with a forged gun dealer's license. In turn, that led them to a 365-pound Northridge man and two other illegal dealers who had sold the weapons to San Fernando Valley gangs, the Mexican Mafia, drive-by shooters, a bank robber -- and Gooding, younger brother of Oscar-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr. Since then, authorities have recovered 59 of the 1,200 guns in what they say is a shocking story of black market gunrunning in Los Angeles -- a trail of crime facilitated by the ease with which criminals can get weapons.
"This is very typical of the type of gun trafficking that's going on right now in Los Angeles," said John Torres, assistant special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' Los Angeles Field Division.
"These guns were being used in crimes in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles and near San Diego literally within a week after they were purchased illegally. They hit the street extremely quickly. They were brand new and most of them were not small-caliber handguns."
The massive gunrunning ring began unraveling Nov. 25, 1995, at 2 a.m. when sheriff's deputies in the West Hollywood station got an anonymous telephone call. "We got a report that these guys in a car on Sunset Boulevard had at least one gun," recalled Deputy Mark Gayman. Gayman and his partner stopped the Ford Bronco parked outside a nightclub on the crowded boulevard. The deputy had no idea the driver was Gooding, a 22-year-old Sherman Oaks actor from TV's "The Smart Guy."
"When the crowd outside the nightclub saw who we were arresting, we nearly had a riot on our hands," Gayman said. "They were throwing bottles and rocks, and yelling the normal stuff at us. We had to call for backup from LAPD and Beverly Hills. It wasn't a good situation."
Inside the Bronco were three handguns, all with obliterated serial numbers.
Gooding refused to tell deputies where he got the guns, two Sundance .25-caliber handguns and a late-model Sterling pistol. Without his help, the chances of tracing the guns taken from Gooding's car looked bleak because the serial numbers appeared to be chiseled off, deputies said. Nevertheless, Detective Lawrence Hastings forwarded the firearms to the ATF National Tracing Center in West Virginia.
In the following months, federal agents raised the serial numbers on one of the Sundance models, tracing the gun to J&J Loan, a pawn shop on Florence Avenue in Los Angeles.
After reviewing records from the federal firearm license assigned to the shop, Torres said, investigators discovered the handgun was one of 1,200 firearms purchased between May 1995 and March 1996 by the retailer - except the shop had been closed during that entire period.
"A former employee, Manuel Sycip, stole the license and doctored it," Torres said. "The shop's owners had no idea what he was doing."
ATF Special Agent Thomas Makar led a search of Sycip's Temple City apartment June 4, 1996. The task force seized 30 firearms, as well as electric grinding tools found "on a vise in a bedroom that had been converted into a firearms and ammunition workshop." Investigators believe Sycip clamped each gun into the vice and ground off the weapons' serial numbers before peddling them to three main distributors. The handiwork makes the weapons nearly untraceable and allowed Sycip to sell the guns for as much as seven times the wholesale value, federal agents said.
Despite a new Los Angeles law that limits buyers to one gun purchase a month as part of a nationwide push for stronger gun laws, thousands of these weapons continue to reach criminals and children, Torres said. Contrary to a long-held presumption, criminals don't need to steal their guns or buy them across state lines, according to a new analysis by the ATF, the most comprehensive study of its kind. Rather, a growing portion of the guns used in crimes taken from juveniles and felons in Los Angeles are less than three years old and bought from gun shops but then resold to people who otherwise couldn't buy them legally.
"Firearms trafficking is an evil crime," Torres said. "Being the father of two boys, I take it seriously when a firearms trafficker illegally dumps these things on the street for the simple motive of greed.">
April 12- I am writing this from Aberdeen, Maryland - home of baseball's famous Ripken family. (Anybody out there ever seen the famous Billy Ripken baseball card?)
The Philadelphia clinic treated coaches to the sight of a group of kids who had never run the offense before (a few - but not all - of them had seen my first tape), absorbing things up at such an astonishing rate that by the end of a two-hour session, they had run 88 and 99 powers and super powers, 6-G, 3 Trap 2 and 2 Trap 3, 2 Wedge (to the extent that you can run a wedge on a hotel parking lot), 47-C and Criss-Cross 47-C, 7-C, 38 and 29 G-O Reach, Rocket 38 and Lazer 29 Reach, Thunder and Lightning. They were the Wildcats from Maple Shade, NJ, they were brought to the clinic by new head coach Tony Nicolino and his staff, and the speed with which they picked up the system made quite an impression on the coaches in attendance. (How would it make your kids feel to do something well enough to earn the applause of the 40-some Double Wing experts looking on?) I can't think of any greater compliment than having another coach entrust me with the coaching of his kids, and for that privilege I certainly want to thank Coach Nicolino and his staff.
Coach Doug Williams, of Catoctin High in Thurmont, Maryland talked about the way he was able to continue running the waggle, a carryover from his days as a wing-T coach, and merge it smoothly into the double wing. He knows the play inside and out, and uses it as a complement to the power off-tackle. Coach Williams also had some very kind things to say about the double wing and what it has meant to him personally, saying it has "rejuvenated" him as a coach. Coach Doug Baker, one of Coach Williams' former assistants, is now a head coach himself, at Snow Hill, Maryland. He was there with his staff, and praised Coach Williams for his special way with kids.
I had the honor of introducing Coach Doug Moister to the coaches. Doug is an old friend, who just hung it up after 26 years as head coach at Abington High, outside Philadelphia. Going purely on my say-so, Doug was the first coach with the "Stones" to run my double wing, and he told the coaches that he is more a believer in it now than he ever was. He told of the time his undermanned "Galloping Ghosts" ran up close to 400 yards rushing in nearly upsetting eventual state 4-A champion Central Bucks West. Doug in turn introduced Terrill Johnson to the group. Terrill, it can now be told, was the B-Back whom I featured in "Dynamics III" as the player whose spectacular success at running 6-G taught me a better way to teach it. He put up some big numbers at Abington, and is now in the process of transferring from Bloomsburg (D-II) to Florida A & M. (Coach Moister, by the way, still teaches at Abington High, and said he'd be happy to speak to any coach who still has doubts about switching over to the double wing.)
Seven states - Maine, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia - were represented at the clinic. Coming the greatest distance were head coach Tim Rice and offensive coordinator Jack Tourtillotte, from Boothbay Harbor, Maine, with head coach Brian Twitchell and assistant Karl Seemann, from Moravia, NY (near Syracuse) a close second. I was remiss in not recognizing Coach Rice, who coached his Seahawks to the state finals, and was named 1998 Maine Coach of the Year for all divisions.
Coach Jeff Matthews, whom I first met at last year's Philadelphia clinic, was there, and brought the good news that in their first year of running the double wing, his Sidney (NY) High Warriors finished 1998 with a 5-4 record, giving the school its first winning season in 10 years.
Following the Philadelphia clinic, I found myself in suburban Washington D.C., in the football hotbed of Northern Virginia, putting on a clinic for a youth football association there. I am constantly amazed at the scope of some of these youth football organizations - this one organization alone has 20 teams with over 400 kids.
I think most people by now know of the high regard I have for youth coaches - the people who get our kids started. Maybe it's because, in having to teach the game from the ground up to adult foreigners, I have some understanding of what youth coaches go through all the time. Yes, I have heard of a few knuckleheads who get their jollies by putting kids through hamburger drills, but I don't know any personally, and I have met hundreds of awfully good men who coach little kids. It's interesting how, without government subsidy or NFL assistance, these guys raise money and donate their time and energy to keep our sport growing at its grass roots. That's why I was so pleased to receive an e-mail from a respected youth coach who was at Philadelphia: "I think it was the best clinic I've ever been to," he wrote. "My coaches were very impressed and feel it was a great learning experience for teaching football.. They were treated like real coaches. I think the main reason more youth coaches do not come to clinics is fear of being embarrassed because they don't understand some of the terms coaches use."
Just in case anyone might doubt the importance of youth football to our game, I was reminded of it once again by coaches Rice and Tourtillotte, from Maine, who said that in the next two seasons, no fewer than seven Maine high schools which had never played football before will be starting football programs. That's starting - not dropping. In Maine, fewer than half of all the high schools play football, and the seven who are starting up have been soccer-only schools. Some of them, in fact, have been among the state's best soccer schools. Why are they seemingly going against the tide, starting up a sport that Sports Illustrated almost seemed to delight in telling us was dying? Very simply, it's upward pressure: the youth coaches in those areas, despite having no help from their local high schools, have done such a great job of generating interest in the sport at their level, that now their communities are willing to bear the cost of offering high school kids the chance they never had before - that chance to play the All-Amercan game.
A sad good-bye to Mr. Jerry Hoffberger, my former boss (actually, several levels above me) at Baltimore's National Brewing Company, who died Friday at the age of 80. Mr. Hoffberger, a man of incredible brilliance, vision, power, grace, compassion and class, was the owner and president of National during its heyday (it once claimed a 56% share of the Baltimore market), and through it, of the Baltimore Orioles in theirs (what Baltimorean can forget the O's 4-game sweep of the Dodgers in '66?). Talk about a great time to live in Baltimore and work for the National Brewing Company - besides owning the Orioles of Powell, Robinson (Brooks and Frank), Belanger, McNally, Palmer and more, we also were the major sponsors of the Colts, the team of Unitas, Moore, Berry, Parker, Donovan, Marchetti, Billy Ray Smith and so many others, a franchise so closely wedded to its community that I have yet to lift the hex I placed on the Indianapolis Irsays when they stole Baltimore's birthright. (Give back the name and the horseshoes, Irsay - As long as those Dolts wear those stolen horseshoes on their helmets, they ain't going to win.) Mr. Hoffberger was a true civic leader who supported numerous charitable causes, and, at a time when it was risky for a business leader in Baltimore to do so, identified himself with the Civil Rights movement, and led the way in hiring minorities to executive positions. He was a giant. God bless you, Mr. Hoffberger.
April 10- Charles Barkley has said he's not a role model. Every day, Dennis Rodman proves he's not. So what happens when a guy knows he's a role model, and acts the part? Well, if his name's Reggie White, he's considered a far greater misfit than the grotesque Mr. Rodman. You know Dennis - he's just different. ("We mustn't sit in judgment of him.") But let Mr. White, a Christian and a preacher at that, use his renown to speak out on topics that evidently are not open to civil discussion, and he is called, at the very least, a homophobe. In most cases, he has become a pariah to the everyday sports media, and his name seldom appears in print except to denounce his "far-right Christian" views. That's why Mr. White's book, "Fighting the Good Fight," is a must-read for me. He is bright, he is opinionated, and he is courageous. He will take a stand on moral concerns. Thursday's Wall Street Journal contained an excerpt from the book, in which he takes off on the now-acccepted policy of allowing female reporters into professional locker rooms, the better to ogle the naked athletes. Of course, no one ever seemed to consider the privacy of the athletes, or the dignity of them and their spouses - the most important thing, when all this started back in 1977 with a lawsuit against the Yankess and Major League baseball, was eliminating discrimination on the basis of sex. The result? White tells of the time two teenage girls involved in a journalism program accompanied reporters into the Denver Nuggets' locker room: one player complained that the two students and a female photographer hovered a few feet away from him the entire time he dressed. And many of us remember the 1990 incident in which three members of the New England Patriots exposed themselves to a female reporter whom they considered a "looker" - a "reporter" who liked to stare at naked men. The NFL fined the players, and settled out of court with the reporter. Mr. White tells also of the time Sam Wyche, then coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, kept a female USA Today reporter out of the team's locker room. "Men and women don't conduct business in the nude in the real world," he said. "Why should the locker room be any different?" For that, Wyche was fined nearly $28,000, but the upshot, according to White, is that within a matter of months, Wyche had received over $30,000 in donations, from people in 37 states and 12 foreign countries, eager to help him deal with the NFL's idiocy. White would like to fight this policy, all the way to the Supreme Court, if need be. ("I just hope," he writes, "that if that happens, one of the exhibits before the court isn't a film of Reggie White singing in the shower.")
Rob Vail, of Boothbay Regional High, has just been selected State of Maine Lineman of the Year for all classes. Rob, a 6-4, 275 offensive and defensive tackle, has signed a grant-in-aid to play next year for the University of Maine Black Bears.
April 9- Last night - April 8, 1999- the Phillies were playing at Atlanta, 25 years to the day since Hank Aaron hit home run number 715, breaking Babe Ruth's career record. I can remember working late in the Philadelphia Bell office and watching the event. Not many people now remember the trickery Braves' management engaged in to try to assure that the record would be broken in Atlanta, and not on the road. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn even went so far as to order the Braves not to hold Aaron oout of early-season road games. People have also forgotten that Aaron, from Mobile, was but one of a quartet of outstanding National Leaguers from Alabama - Billy Williams, Willie McCovey, and the Pride of Birmingham, Willie Mays, were the others.
Philadelphia Weekly, a newsmagazine, came out with its list of "100 Philadelphians who Rocked the World" in this century. It is not a competition - the list is alphabetical. Overlooking Chuck Bednarik, Steve Van Buren, Lefty Grove, Pete Rose, Robin Roberts (how many of you think immediately of a certain female sports reporter?) and Connie Mack is unforgiveable, but then, they also left out Bobby Darin, Fabian, Chubby Checker , Dick Clark and Ed McMahon. And John Facenda, long a Philly TV news anchor, but best known as The Voice of NFL highlights. They also left out tennis great BIll Tilden - hey, just because he liked young boys, who are we to judge him? The athletes they did include: Dick Allen, Richie Ashburn, Charles Barkley, Manute Bol (Huh?), Steve Carlton, Wilt Chamberlain, John Chaney, Julius Erving, Jimmy Foxx, Joe Frazier, John Kruk (Huh?), Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, Willie Mosconi (the best ever at what he did - how many of you guys have ever heard of him?), Rocky (he was from South Philly, after all, and he ran up the steps of the Art Museum), Tim Rossovich (get serious), Dave Schultz (but not Bobby Clarke or Bernie Parent?), and Leonard Tose (who lost the Philadelphia Eagles at the gaming tables of Atlantic City). My favorite on the list: Manny, Moe and Jack - the Pep Boys - even though in 1990 Manny (the guy with the glasses) went PC and gave up his cigar.
April 8- I had dinner last night in Cape May, at the southernmost tip of New Jersey, with youth coach Frank Simonsen. Before dinner, Frank gave my wife and me a quick tour of the oil-spill response vessel on which he is skipper, and then took us through the town of Cape May, a lovely little town that makes you feel as if you've been taken back in time to the turn of the century. Frank couldn't resist showing me the site of his old ocean-front high school football field, no longer there, where extra-point kicks, behind a strong tail wind, routinely sailed into the ocean.
It's always sad leaving the Jersey Shore - and the subs. Forget New England Grinders, New York Heroes, New Orleans Po' Boys and - especially - forget Subway and Blimpies. The absolute best submarine sandwiches in the world come from the White House, at Arctic and Mississippi Avenues in Atlantic City, and Sacco's (Sack o' Subs) on Ventnor Avenue, in Ventnor. Days later, you will still taste the onions. When I taught world geography in the Northwest, I used to order them and have them air-freighted in for my classes to try - a little introduction to the difference between the upfront, in-your-face East Coast and the laid-back, "whatever" West Coast - and my room would smell for days afterward.
Looking through last weekend's Chicago Sun-Times, I found the latest returns in the Sun-Times' "Greatest Chicagoans of the 20th Century." Michael Jordan is at Number One, followed by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and the late Mayor Richard J. Daley. Walter Payton is the next sports guy, at 15, followed by Ernie Banks (19), Harry Caray (26), Bill Veeck (30), Dick Butkus (45), Jack Brickhouse (50), Mike Ditka (52), and Bobby Hull (80). Now, I don't mean to cast aspersions on the masculinity of the Sun-Times readers, but holding down 10th Place - ahead of anyone on Da Bears, ahead of Ernie Banks - even ahead of Mike Royko, for gosh sakes - is a certain Hillary Rodham Clinton!
April 7- An outstanding coach of my acquaintance, who must remain nameless, won't be coaching next year - at least at the same school. He has done an incredible job of turning a perennial doormat into a powerhouse, but he found himself in one of those "I don't need this ---- anymore" situations. Seems that his administration initially supported his decision to let a couple of assistants go, but then, when the assistants created a public and rather nasty stir, the administration left him hanging out to dry, making it seem as if it was all his doing. Now, this is a man who put as much into his program as anyone I know, and it had to hurt him deeply to do so, but unwilling to submit himself to further indignities at the hands of such cowardly and treacherous administrators, he handed in his resignation. (Maybe what we ought to be doing is compiling a rogue's gallery of such administrators, warning one and all that anyone who coaches for them does so at their own risk.)
April 6- Ed Racely, who has been making Dr. Ken Keuffel's single-wing book available, asks me to pass on to you his request that you hold off on your orders until mid-May. He's going on vacation, and he's been deluged with orders. Either the single wing is coming back, or some of you are afraid it is and gearing up to stop it!
The talk in Philadelphia - I'm at the Jersey shore right now - is about Allen Iverson and Larry Brown of the 76ers. The story may not have received the play nationally that it does here, but it seems that Mr. Iverson, perhaps the most exciting player in the NBA, was having a bad first quarter - 0-for-7 or something like that - and Coach Brown sat him down at the start of the second period. Evidently, Iverson sulked, and when he was reinserted into the game after a few minutes, muttered loudly enough for all to hear, "It's about f----ing time!" Clearly, Allen Iverson was not happy. Neither, after being so crudely and publically dissed, was Coach Brown. . YOU BE THE COACH: WHAT WOULD YOU DO? (Iverson is leading the NBA in scoring, and, although the 76ers are barely ontending for the playoffs, their play is improved and their attendance is way up.)
Back in Chicago, the Schaumburg, Illinois Flyers, playing minor league baseball in the independent Northern League, have signed former Negro League star Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe to a one-game contract, for $1000. Mr Radcliffe, who once threw out Ty Cobb three times in an exhibition game, and hit 400 home runs in a 36-year career, will pitch briefly against the Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks. He is 96 years old.
A story in the Chicago Sun-Times Sunday dealt with the impact Pro Wrestling is having on youngsters. As one of my Finnish friends once said, "I cannot believe people watch dot sheet," but "dot sheet" is pulling incredible TV ratings, especially among males aged 12 to 34. If you haven't watched it lately, the competition between the two big promoters has led to some incredible displays, but not much of them are actual wrestling. A recent "Inside Edition" show cited an Indiana University study of 50 WWF shows, that found that on average, only about 36 minutes out of a two-hour show is spent wrestling. The rest of the time, the study observed, is devoted to "story lines filled with profanity, simulated sexual activity, drug use and miscellaneous sordidness." Like most of you, I'm concerned about the effect of "dot sheet" on our kids. But I think we'd better also be concerned about its effect on other pro sports (the NBA and the NFL come immediately to mind), which sooner or later will trickle down to our game.
April 5- Less than a day after posting the plea for help in locating a copy of Ara Parseghian's book, there came two responses, one from Coach Bruce Eien (friendly enemy) who has on his site a search engine http://members.xoom.com/bcwarrior/OLDBOOKS.HTM for locating old and out-of-print books, and one from Russell Farley, a football enthusiast and football book collector, who located and passed on the name of three places where our coach's friend can find the book! Many thanks for the help. (I don't want to name the coach for fear of spoiling someone's surprise, but he's a great guy and he'll appreciate it.)
On the front page of the Sunday Chicago Tribune sports section was a story about sickos who have been sneaking video cameras hidden in gym bags into athletic locker rooms, then advertising the resulting tapes over the Internet to God-only-knows what sort of customer, under titles such as "Naked Wrestlers." Such taping incidents have been traced to wrestling tournaments at Northwestern University and at the University of Pennsylvania, with special emphasis on weigh-ins. (Wow! Videotape of naked guys!) Amazingly, there seems to be no violation of any law here, although Illinois does have a law making it illegal to tape anyone in health clubs and tanning salons. There is a slight chance of nailing these perverts if they recorded any audio, but school officials are concerned that pushing the issue of punishment would unwittingly provide wider advertising of the videos, even further invading the privacy of the athletes involved, many of whom are identifiable in the tapes.
Coach Mike Spears, of Lincoln, Illinois, who is also a baseball coach, came up to me at the Chicago clinic and suggested the use of a baseball analogy when explaining to people why you're not spreading it out and chucking the ball all over the field. As he put it, when you don't have long-ball hitters, you shouldn't be spending your time swinging for the fences. That's when you turn your coaching skills to beating people with "little ball," emphasizing bunting, hitting behind the runner, and running the bases.
April 4- Despite its being held on the day before Easter, the Chicago clinic was our biggest ever, with coaches from six states, representing 17 different high schools, two middle schools, and one very interested youth program - with seven coaches in attendance - taking time away from their families. The Rich Central facilities were top-notch, and they are a credit to Jon's principal, Von Mansfield, a former NFL player. A graduate of University School of Milwaukee, Mr. Mansfield stopped by to say hello to current University School coach Coach Don Forti, who happened to be in attendance at the clinic. Coach McLaughlin addressed the assembled coaches and told how the double wing is helping him build a solid top-to-bottom program: His frosh were 8-1, his sophs were 7-2, and his varsity, in a dramatic turnaround this past season, was 4-5. He showed the coaches a list of the plays and sets run at each level, showing how they expand the arsenal- partly by adding new plays, but mostly by running from multiple sets - as the kids move up to the next step. Coach Don Capaldo, of Keokuk, Iowa, devoted most of his talk to discussing the Keokuk passing game, then followed up with a nicely-done tape which he edited himself. The Keokuk Chiefs, in two years of running the double wing, have been 6-3 and 9-1. Coach Capaldo says the double wing has helped bring his staff closer together, because they all understand it so well. That's important to Don, who runs four levels of programs with a large staff, very few of whom teach in the high school. Coach Capaldo, especially, stressed the importance of not being seduced by all the goodies our system offers, and trying to do too much. In the afternoon, twenty of coach Jon McLaughlin's Rich Central Olympians were on hand to demonstrate double wing basics for the coaches, as well as the latest in double wing innovations. 1999 looks promising for Central , which returns eight offensive starters from last year, including three members of the backfield. His major loss was 6-5, 270 pound guard Aaron Hodges, rated one of the top 20 players in the Big Ten region, who signed with Illinois. I hadn't seen those kids since last June when I helped Coach McLaughlin install the offense, and it was great to see them again, but I was shocked - shocked at how much knowledge they had retained since the end of the football season and how well they were able to run the offense with no prior preparation. All I had to do was tell them which direction to run a play, and they were off and running.We actually could have used them to demonstrate our "no-huddle". I was also shocked at the kids' physical development since last June. They all looked bigger and - maybe because of how well they were executing - quicker, too.
While I was dealing the way we break down film (tapes), Coach Kerry Johnson, of Waukesha (Wisconsin) South High mentioned how useful it was to them to keep a "first hit" chart during the game - something they can refer when they want to get an idea if any particular defender is causing them problems overall, or whether the same defender's number keeps popping up every time South runs a particular play. (You can't begin to solve a problem until you can identify it.) He also has a large enough staff that he is able to assign a different coach to observe each backside defender, and he trains them for this in the pre-season by showing an actual game tape, then hitting the "STOP" button on the VCR, and recording their answers. At that point, Coach Johnson reminded everyone, "No Answer" is acceptable, but not "constructive memory." (No information at all is far preferable to misinformation.)
I have a coach - actually a friend of a coach - who is desperately searching for a copy of Parseghian and Notre Dame Football. If anybody has a copy they're willing to part with, please let me know, and I'll forward your name and address to the other party, and they can take it from there.
News that the NFL is moving the Monday night kickoff back to 9 PM Eastern is going to be well-received by coaches in the Pacific Time Zone. Last year's 5 PM Pacific start meant that most high school coaches, if they were lucky, managed to get home in time to catch maybe the last quarter.
I have to find out more about this, but I spoke with Gord Carey, a youth coach in Toronto, and I swear he told me that they play "midget" football (that's what they call 17-19 year-olds ) in the summer up there; I didn't get enough details, but it sounded like he said that in the province of Ontario there were 600 boys on 12 teams, each playing an 8-game schedule between late April and the start of school in August. This is totally outside the high schools, and teams typically include players from several different schools.Sounds interesting. I haven't found out where they get the money to fund such an operation, but I do know that the coaches are all volunteers. As usual, of course, the referees are not.
April 3 - I'm in the southwest suburbs of Chicago - Olympia Fields, to be exact - for what promises to be the biggest double-wing clinic in two years. Dinner Friday night was enjoyable, listening to the tales of clinic host Jon McLaughlin of Rich Township High, and Don Capaldo, from Keokuk, Iowa, and five members of his staff. Killer steaks at Bogart's, in Tinley Park, Illinois.
Ever noticed how much the term "student-athlete" is used on college sports telecasts? Ever laughed when it appeared to be a hilarious contradiction of terms? (Did you say you needed someone to write your term paper for you? No problem.) Ever use the term "student-athlete" yourself? If so, the NCAA has laid its hands on you.. "Student-athlete" is pure spin, a term actually invented by Walter Byers, former executive director of the NCAA (he admits it in his book, "Unsportsmanlike Conduct"), as a way of fighting a lawsuit. No kidding. When an injured football player sued his college for workmen's compensation, Mr. Byers, knowing full well how much NCAA members stood to lose if the player could convince a jury that he was an "employee" of the college, ordered college sports information directors to stop using the term "players," and begin referring to them as "student athletes," the better to convince the public of their "amateur" status.
In an article in last Friday's Wall Street Journal, Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health, Eduation and Welfare from 1977 to 1979, and now president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, had a lot to say in clarifying the headlined report of a few weeks ago to the effect that there is no evidence that use of marijuana leads to use of harder drugs. He is upset at what he calls the news media's "sloppy summaries" of the report - many of them breezily declaring that pot smoking is no big deal - and points out that the report itself admits "people who enjoy the effects of marijuana are, logically, more likely to be willing to try other mood-altering drugs than are people who are not willing to try marijuana or dislike its effects." The report also admits that "intensity" of marijuana use increases the risk of progressing to other drugs. Mr. Califano concedes that most people who smoke pot do not go on to use other drugs - "but then," he says, "only 5% to 7% of cigarette smokers get lung cancer. The point for parents and teens is that those youngsters who smoke pot are at vastly greater risk of moving to harder drugs." He calls for a renewed effort to keep kids away from pot: "We know that someone who gets to age 21 without smoking, using drugs or abusing alcohol (notice he didn't say using alcohol) is virtually certain never to do so. We have known for some time that marijuana harms short-term memory, motor skills, and the ability to concentrate, attributes teenagers need when they are learning in school."
April 2 - April Fool! You can still call it "football." The President has more important things on his mind these days.
Interesting e-mail from Scott Barnes, a Colorado (by way of Texas) businessman and youth coach. He says, "I was watching GMA one morning this week - the "big story" - People aren't getting enough sleep nowadays, so they are taking "power naps" at work - Huge govt funded studies have shown that these poor folks just need a "little nap" in order to be expected fo fufill their obligations at work..I mean gee..how can we really expect folks to work a whole 8 hours without a nap?..bunch of ruthless bosses...So now, large corporations are providing access to "napping rooms" for people so they can get a little nap in during the day..there are other companies now marketing "Executive Power Napping Kits" that include a roll out mat, alarm clock, feather pillow and a "power nap in progress" door sign..I just about fell on the freakin' floor..I'm sorry - I'm not working for some freakin' wimp that has to take a nap during the afternoon!!! You know, there is a country just south of ours where all the work stops for an hour or so during the afternoon so everyone can get their "power nap"..have you looked at their economy lately??? but I'll tell ya coach, that's where we're headin' and it scares the crap out of me! " Coach Barnes has already begun tapping into the wisdom of Homer Smith, and he passes along his "Coach Homer Smith Quote for the day" - "It is not enough just to work hard; he must work hard enough to win"... "AWESOME quote," says Coach Barnes, "but obviously ,Coach Smith doesn't understand that it isn't hard work that creates winners, it's a well timed power nap!"
Doug Baker will be at the Philadelphia clinic after all. Doug, the coach at Snow Hill, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, wasn't able to attend originally because his wife was due to give birth to their first child about the date of the clinic. Nature intervened, though, and Mrs. Baker went into labor a month prematurely, and Dad rushed her 2-1/2 hours across the Chesapeake to Baltimore's John Hopkins Hospital (my eldest daughter was born there!), where, at 3:45 AM on March 8th, Connor William Baker was born, weighing in at 5 pounds, 4 ounces. Mom and Dad stayed with him for a week until he was strong enough to go home, and Mom has given Coach Baker his release to attend the clinic. "I thought defeating our arch-rival in my first season was exciting," Coach Baker wrote. "Nothing I have ever experienced compares with participating in the birth of our child. It was awesome!"
April 1 - The President of the United States signed into law today a bill officially declaring soccer to be America's National Sport, and promising to put "100,000 more soccer coaches on the playing fields of America by the year 2000." In signing the bill, which passed unanimously through both houses of Congress despite strong lobbying efforts by representatives of the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball and the American Football Coaches Association, the President acknowledged that he had been under mounting grassroots pressure from representatives of junior soccer organizations, and said the White House had received "tens of thousands" of e-mail messages and countless calls from young mothers evidently speaking on car phones on their way to their children's practices. In order to bring the United States in line with the rest of the world, where soccer is known as "football" and is by far the most popular sport, the President urged American news media to begin referring to soccer as "football," and suggested that American football be hereafter referred to as "Gridiron," as it already is in Australia and New Zealand.
Today's Wall Street Journal has a feature story on Kathy Morgan, a high school counselor at All Hallows Catholic High School, in New York's South Bronx (remember Fort Apache?). Working with kids - entirely poor minorities - whose average combined SAT score was 870 (out of 1600), two thirds of them from single-parent homes and on public assistance, Ms. Morgan managed last year to get all 88 graduating seniors into college. It was not easy. Ms. Morgan, described by the Journal as "Rosie O'Donnell with an edge," is as aggressive with the diversity-seeking colleges she contacts on behalf of her kids as she is with the kids herself, where her approach could mildly be described as "in your face." She won't even let them consider not going to college. She claims that of the kids she has placed since beginning her program in 1996, three-fourths are still in college. And we're talking good colleges, too - Holy Cross, Middlebury, Notre Dame, Skidmore, Trinity. She says, "What I've learned is that our kids are incredibly adaptable, ingenious at survival, and they can't afford to fail. Once they get away from the madness of their lives in the South Bronx - once they can clear their damn heads - they eventually figure things out." That woman could coach football.
Nice article in yesterday's USA Today about Mike Holovak, former General Manager of the Houston Oilers and now director of regional scouting for the Tennessee Titans (the recycled Oilers). He's 80 years old and still going strong - runs for an hour every day. He's seen it all in 60 years as a player, coach (Boston College, Boston Patriots), player personnel director, general manager, and scout. Still going at 80? Hey, he's a part of that generation of studs ("The Greatest Generation," Tom Brokaw calls them in his book) that fought two wars (WW II and Korea) within five years of each other, then came back and built our country - while rebuilding Europe and Japan, too. Don't get me going on those people. We could use a few of them in certain places right now.
March 31 - My mention of Commander Nick Mygas in Virginia Beach, and his intention to teach and coach after his upcoming retirement brought me some e-mail. Ron Timson, successful double-wing coach in Bennington, Nebraska who was in the same position a few years ago after retiring from the Air Force, says it's a logical move.
And Jack Tourtillotte, principal and offensive coordinator at Boothbay Regional High in Maine (state finalist last year) said he recently hired the commander of the nearby Coast Guard station to be his baseball coach. Jack says, "Although I paid for one coach, I got plenty of assistant coaches as he used some of his sailors as assistants. They have been great, great great!! He has a baseball background playing in the Baltimore system and twenty years in the Coast Guard. He has been so good we have talked him into helping with football next season."
Jack also adds, "I ordered the complete set of Homer Smith manuals and gave them to our head coach, Tim Rice, as a gift. He and I will share but they are best materials I have seen on the game of football. So much practical information and somewhere in there, Coach Smith says you don't learn the game of football -you absorb it."
Say this aloud in the faculty lounge or at your place of business: "State police nationwide say a significant cause of accidents is women farding in cars." Then sit back and watch the reaction. (Make sure they look up the word "fard," because it's only fair to warn you that a guy in Washington, D.C. nearly lost his job for saying "niggardly" around people who didn't know the word.)
March 30 - Coach Daryl Allen, of Hertford County High, Ahoskie, North Carolina, chuckled at the Durham clinic when I mentioned putting players who didn't know their plays next to players who did. He recalled, "I played center in college for three years before I played next to a guard who knew the plays."
Commander Nick Mygas came down from Virginia Beach. He's also Coach Nick Mygas, an assistant at Kempsville High, ready to retire from the Navy after 20 years and begin a second career as a teacher and coach. What an idea to turn this country around - instead of hiring dewy-eyed graduates of the brainwashing pits we call "schools of education" (talk about an oxymoron), we could solve a lot of our projected teacher shortages - and add some sorely lacking testosterone to our faculties at the same time - by encouraging military retirees to get into teaching. We might also pick up a few more football coaches in the process. Nick Mygas, incidentally, played linebacker at Navy under George Welsh, and remembers looking across the field at Homer Smith, then the coach at Army.
Coach Richard Lee, of Fairview (Tennessee) High, near Nashville, is what yoou might call hard-core double wing. Two weeks ago, he sent two assistants, Chad Gates and Jon HIll, to Birmingham, but he couldn't make that one himself, so he came to Durham a week later. Trying to turn things around in a school with little football tradition, he had his ups and downs this past season, but opened with five playoff teams and played them all tough. Most of his kids are back, and he's inheriting a group of underclassmen who have won big playing the double wing.
Coach Lee's kids must have done a pretty good job of executing the offense in their first year because during one game, he heard a lot of laughter in his head set. When his spotters stopped laughing, they told him that they had overheard the visiting team's radio guy, in the booth right next to them, say, "...and there's the snap, and the ball goes to Anderson - no, make that Watson - wait a minute! Oh, hail - Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know where the ball is!"
Coach Lee, who once coached at North Carolina State, was out of football for a spell back in the '70s, when he sang in a group that backed up The King, travelling the country with Elvis. Think he doesn't have a story or two to tell?
Incidentally, Coach Lee is looking for a head freshman coach. Tell you the truth, it sounds pretty good to me. It's a chance to work under a great guy, with a great staff (I've met two of its members) and be a part of a major turnaround. There's a teaching position, too. This wouldn't be the first time Coach Lee hired a coach off the Internet: he hired one last year - a coach from Arizona - who has worked out so well that Coach Lee is eager to try again. If working in the South, in beautiful Middle Tennessee, just minutes from the very cosmopolitan city of Nashville appeals to you, call Coach Richard Lee at school (Central Time - 615-799-2614) and tell him I told you to call him.
Finally, my pre-season favorite for Coach of the Year: Coach Eddie Cahoon, of Mattamuskeet, North Carolina, brought his whole staff to the clinic. It cost him only $60. As Coach Cahoon puts it, "I am Mattamuskeet football."
Mattamuskeet, in Eastern Carolina, hasn't had a winning team since the 1970's, but that hasn't daunted Coach Cahoon. He's an ex-Marine (although I'm told there's no such thing as an ex-Marine - you're one till you die) who decided he'd do whatever it takes to make Mattamuskeet a winner. Already a varsity coach with a staff of none, he talked his principal into funding a JV team. Fine - except there wasn't any money for a JV coach. So Coach Cahoon (who must catch up on sleep during class) said he'd coach the JV's, too. Here's how he did it: JV's practiced from 3:15 to 5; varsity practiced from 5:15 to 7. On JV game days - Wednesdays - he took his varsity players to the JV games and had them work as equipment managers and trainers; when they returned home from the JV game, the varsity would practice. Coach Cahoon flattered me by saying he was inspired by hearing me tell in the "Installing the System" video of having to coach a team in Finland all by myself, with no assistants. That's not all, though. After he had the BFS people come in and put on a clinic, he persuaded the principal to let him teach the BFS system to his kids every day - during his prep period! If there are coaches elsewhere in the country who are doing things like this to keep this great game alive in their town, I'd sure like to hear about them and recognize them. Not to take anything away from the great coaches who win titles year in and year out, but Coach Eddie Cahoon, of Mattamuskeet, North Carolina, is my idea of a true Coach of the Year.
Early reviews are coming in: "Coach Wyatt; Just finished the first of 5 books that I ordered from Coach Smith. They are fantastic--so many simple, practical steps and ideas! I wish I could just plug all the information into my brain and go! Oh well, guess that is a human fraility--I will have to read and re-read them to get all the good information. Thanks for putting info about them on your web site. I find it hard to find good information on the fundamentals of football and always appreciate your opinion. If in the future you find additional information, please let me know." Paul Maier, Mt. Vernon, Indiana (Read about Homer Smith in the March 22 and March 23 entries. For more information about Coach Smith's manuals: www.galaxymall.com/sports/homersmith or e-mail kimhall@mindspring.com
March 29- I thought I'd been travelling a fair amount lately, but then I read about Dr. Nan Keohane, President of Duke University. She was in San Jose for the Duke women's game Friday night, flew to Tampa-St. Pete for Saturday's Duke men's game, flew back to San Jose for Sunday's women's final, and will fly back to Florida for Monday night's men's final. If you've got the kind of principal that doesn't go to games, you might want to ask him/her why Dr. Keohane thinks it's important for her to go to such lengths to be there, but he/she doesn't.
I like the South! First of all, there's barbecue. Northerners think barbecue is a verb, not a noun. But Southerners know that barbecue is not something you do- it's something you eat. After years of careful research, I think that Bullock's in Durham may be about as good as it gets. Then there's the football. Just like the Birmingham clinic the week before (when Coach Homer Smith told me he was amazed at the enthusiasm he saw for the double wing among the coaches there), Durham's group was lively and enthusiastic.
One thing I am noticing in this second year of clinics is the amount of help I am able to get from coaches who already have a year or two under their belts. For instance, two coaches, Eddie Cahoon of Mattamuskeet High in North Carolina, and Richard Lee, of Fair View High in Brentwood, Tennessee, both mentioned that after a couple of premature whistles on wedge plays (the runner was still up and running) they now routinely show the officials the wedge play, and caution them not to blow the whistle until they can find the ball and the runner is down.
Coach Roger Brookes, from King William (Virginia) High, east of Richmond, was good enough to make the trip south to tell us a little about the unique double-wing offense that has played such a part in the success he's enjoyed.
Coach Brookes has been head coach at King William for 26 years. Taking over a program that had had three straight 1-9 seasons, it took Coach Brookes a few years to get his program established, but once he did, he has had only one losing season in the last 23 years, with 15 playoff appearances in the last 20 years.
Coach Brookes' double-wing resembles our "Wildcat" somewhat, although his is not in the experimental stage. And unlike our Wildcat, with two men of theoretically equal strength back of center, Coach Brookes declares a strong side: his quarterback is about 3 yards deep, directly behind the center, and his blocking back is about a yard deep, offset slightly to one side or the other of center. His attack is based on - but is by no means limited to - the direct snap to the center, handing to a motioning wingback for a sweep or off-tackle play.
Coach Brookes also runs from a balanced-line single wing and, since we hooked up with each other, our "T" double wing. Just as our "Wildcat" gave us another dimension with very little extra work, Coach Brookes said that fitting our "T" double-wing into his direct-snap double-wing was "a seamless mesh."
He provided some wise insights into his personnel selection, especially this one: at running back, "always take the good blocker ahead of the talented runner - every time. He's not going to be there at crunch time if he won't do it from the git-go. I'm going to work a guy real hard to make him a good blocker, but if he still won't do it, I'm not going to play him." (It takes a set, guys, but that's why Coach Brookes has been The Man for 20+ years.)
He sometimes finds his running backs among his guards. One year, he convinced a youngster to play on the line, in return for a promise to move to blocking back in the future. "You play guard for me this year," Coach Brookes told him, "and I'll let you run the ball next year."
As you might have guessed, Coach Brookes hasn't lasted as long as he has by compromising on the things he believes in. A few years back, with a potential state champion on his hands, he watched everything go up in smoke when he had to dismiss eight players from the team - because they wouldn't come to practice on time.
Young coaches should heed his advice on that score:"If you don't deal with it this year, you'll have to deal with it all over again next year."
Here's another interesting point to consider: on those unpleasant occasions when we're forced to suspend a starter, how many of us give much thought to what's going on in the mind of the kid who replaces him? Coach Brookes told of taking extra care in that situation to call the boy's dad and ask him to go easy on his son, because he was being put in a tough spot.
His offensive philosophy definitely makes Coach Brookes a member of the double-wing brotherhood. He is a take-it-to-you, pound-it-at-you kind of guy, basing his attack on a power off-tackle. "If you can stop that," he says, "you've got to give us something else."
Coach Brookes and I also share a belief in staying with something that's working. "I like playing against guy who runs three plays in a row and then throws the ball, " he says. "I guess he'd rather not run the ball eight times in a row and score."
Like many of you, I'm always interested in hearing the thoughts of guys who've been in the business a while, and I found myself at least as interested in Coach Brookes' general observations on coaching as I was in his offense, and that's saying something.
(Coach Brookes said how nice it was to find himself in Durham surrounded by other double-wing coaches. He sounded lonely. If you really want to make him feel like he belongs, send him an e-mail at RGB134@aol.com)
Tomorrow- the Coach Who Sang with Elvis; and my pre-season nominee for National High School Coach of the Year honors.
March 27- Got some guys coming to the Durham clinic who are Tar Heel fans and would prefer not even having to enter the city of Durham (home of the Duke Blue Devils), so I will be very careful not to go overboard on Duke this weekend. But this town in pumped. The rivalry is so intense in these parts that my daughter used to leave one of her kids in day care and when he came home every day, she'd find that the day care workers had pinned North Carolina diapers on him. And in my other grandson's first-grade class, I was visiting one day when the teacher found it necessary to give the kids - half-black and half-white - a little lecture on tolerance. They were going to have to show each other more respect, she said.The Duke kids were just going to have to respect the North Carolina kids, and the North Carolina kids were just going to have to respect the Duke kids!
I've had calls for tee-shirts, and I owe a few to people, and to them, I apologize for the delay. My supplier let me down, and I've had to order from an alternate supplier.
March 26- No! Say it isn't so! You're breaking my heart! Those of you who absolutely adore the baggy-pants-down-around-the-buttocks look of today's youngsters are going to be devastated to hear that, according to Tuesday's USA Today, fashion buyers are predicting it's on the way out!
A big win for youth football: according to Margaret Guerrero, treasurer and co-founder of the Imley City, Michigan Junior Spartans, they actually finished their first year of operations in the black, with three teams, ages 8 to 13, of 30 players each. Now heading into their second season, they are being forced by equipment availability to put a 35-player limit on each team. Margaret's fiancee, Joe DeLuca, a local police officer, coaches the "varsity" (oldest team), but it was the JV coach, Ted Reintjes, who discovered the Double Wing on this site. (Ever notice how many law enforcement guys are involved in kids' sports? Maybe after a day of dealing with society's scum, it's therapeutic to work with kids. Whatever, it's great for kids to be exposed to men - and sometimes women - of their caliber. I'm pleased to announce that one of my former captains, Tim McNall, is the newest member of the Camas, Washington pollce force.)
The incomparable John Wooden was interviewed in Wednesday's USA Today, and as usual, he had several things interesting to say. He said that he doesn't watch pro basketball, because they're so into "showmanship," and "look at me" antics. Same for the NFL. (Right on, Coach Wooden.) When asked to name his all-time team, he declined to name any of his former players. He has such high regard for the men who played for him that he refuses, even at this point (he's 88 years old), to show any favoritism. (Other than his own players, he chose Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson, Michael Jordan and Elgin Baylor. He did wonder, though, if Michael Jordan had ever been called for travelling.) Coach Wooden's recipe for making basketball better: (1) Enforce the rules in the rule book ; (2) Make the game more of a finesse game and less of a physical game; (3) End freshman eligibillty; (4) Make the NCAA tournament a "champions-only" tournament once again - either that, or end the season a week early and open the tournament to every team, awarding every team one share of the total revenue for each game it plays, instead of the "winner-take-all" system that heaps millions on the Final Four. Oh, yes- and he'd end the dunk.
March 25 - I recently received from Wayne Wright, director of Gridiron New Zealand (GNZ) a set of the rules for an 8-man variation of football which they have designed specifically for play inside their country. (They will still field an 11-man national team for international competitions.)
In many respects it is radically different from our football - even our 8-man football - but Wayne told me that it was designed to ty to answer the three objections New Zealand sports fans have to "our" game: (1) the number of stops in the action; (2) the length of time it takes to play a game; and (3) what they perceive as excessive substitutions.
Here goes:
The field is 74 metres (about 80 yards) long by 30 metres (about 33 yards) wide. (That's about 2/3 the width of the American gridiron.) Hash lines will be placed directly in the centre of the field at every metre. The ball will be spotted on the central hash lines.
Four 15 minute running clock quarters. Clock will only stop on change of possession, incomplete passess, out of bounds and to enforce penalties, in the final one minute of each half. The clock will then restart on the ready for play signal. Each team will be allowed 2 timeouts per half.
Each team will be entitled to 6 huddles per quarter, which will be of 20 second duration. Officials must be informed of the intention to call a huddle.
All kickoffs will be drop kicks from the goal line.
A kickoff must remain within the field of play. Any kickoff which travels untouched outside the field of play will be placed on the 20 metre line, or where it went out of bounds, whichever is more advantageous to the receiving team.
The kicking team must remain at least 5 metres away from the receiver fielding a kickoff until he touches the ball.
4 downs are allowed to advance the ball 10 yards, to secure a 1st down, or to score (they don't say how they are going to deal with the "yards vs meters" conflict, which would come up occasionally when I was coaching in Finland).
Punting is illegal. On fourth down, a team must go for a 1st down or touchdown, or attempt a field goal.
Touchdowns will be worth 7 points, with no points after touchdowns. Field goals will be awarded 3 points by drop kick or by placement. A Safety will not result in any points being awarded. Instead Team A, which caused the Safety will be awarded the ball, 10 metres out from Team B' s goaline.
3 offensive players must be on the line of scrimmage; these players must be a centre and two guards, in the traditional formation. Apart from the Centre and two Guards, all other players, on the Offense are deemed eligible receivers.
Any eligible receiver is allowed to be in motion, parallel to, away from, or towards the line of scrimmage, prior to the snap. Only one player is allowed in motion on each play.
Pass Rushing is only permitted on the interior line of scrimmage, either between the outermost linemen or up to one-yardbeyond the outside shoulders of those players.
(A player is part of the "interior line" if he is lined up on the line of scrimmage and within 2 yards of an offensive guard.)
15 yard penalties become 10 metre penalties. 10 yard penalties become 5 metre penalties. 5 yard penalties become 2 metre penalties.
It will be interesting to see how this game is received. (There certainly has to be some football talent in New Zealand, where the big sport is rugby, and the All Blacks - the national team - are consistently among the world's best.)
March 24- It's official! The L.A. clinic, scheduled for May 8, (9 to 4), will be held at Glendale High School. Head Coach Pete Smolin has arranged for us to use their facilities, and several of his players will be on hand in the PM to demonstrate. I'll pass along further details as I get them, but anyone wishing to contact Coach Smolin directly may do so at nitrofb@aol.com or by phone (football office) at 818-242-3161 x1143. Glendale High is located at 1440 E. Broadway (in Glendale). Coach Smolin does an especially good job in the area of player and community relations. You might want to check out his excellent web site - GLENDALE HIGH SCHOOL NITRO FOOTBALL
In an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Dr. Matt Bloom, a professor of management at Notre Dame, announced his finding that the greater the difference in pay between stars and bench-warmers on a baseball team, the worse the team's performance tended to be. Dr. Bloom studied 1,644 players on 29 major league teams over nine seasons, and found that top teams such as the Yankees, Indians and Padres had some of the narrowest pay spreads in baseball, while such bottom-feeders as the Florida Marlins and Arizona Diamondbacks had some of the widest spreads between top and bottom. (One team, the Montreal Expos, seems to break the rule: their is little spread, because their players are all paid a relatively low wage - at least, by baseball's standards.) Dr. Bloom says that "if what owners want is better team performance, then they have to pay differently." He points out that big differences in income promote discord, instill feelings of inequality and dissatisfaction, and disrupt cooperation and teamwork. This obviously is of interest to the business people who read the Wall Street Journal, but it should also be of interest to high school and youth coaches. Yes, Dr. Bloom's point may seem obvious, and besides, we don't pay our players, anyhow. But we do have "benefits,"and we might want to take a look at the way we distribute them. I've always felt that when a coach demands strict adherence to his rules from the players on his team, but gives a free pass on the rules to the star, he is creating a form of "pay" disparity not unlike the kind that Dr. Bloom describes. I know, I know - in this current atmosphere of "tolerance," the other players are trained by our education system not to say anything. Being human, though, they are sure to resent the inequality. Just the same as if he had created a wide discrepancy in pay, a coach, in cutting the star extra slack may "promote discord, instill feelings of inequality and dissatisfaction, and disrupt cooperation and teamwork." (The Lakers might keep this in mind when they insist that the rest of the team show up at games and practices, while Dennis Rodman gambles in Las Vegas).
Coach - You mentioned Homer Smith's manuals on your web site. I have these, and they are without a doubt the most academic approach to football that I have read in my 25 years of coaching. These are a real treasure. No coaching library would be complete without them. Coach Tim Jobst --- Ottawa Township HS - Ottawa, Illinois (Coaches are invited to send me their comments)
March 23-I had a chance to talk briefly with Homer Smith following the recent clinic in Birmingham, and asked what it was that influenced his decision to become a coach. He said it was his respect for his coach at Princeton, Charlie Caldwell, and the fact that "I always loved football." But "Charlie said I should go to business school first," so after a tour in the Army, Coach Smith did as his coach suggested, and enrolled at Stanford Business School. While at Stanford, he served as a volunteer on Chuck Taylor's staff, getting an early exposure to the passing game in a Stanford program that had quarterbacks the likes of Gary Kerkorian and John Brodie. Besides Caldwell, the men who had the biggest influences on his career were "people you've never heard of" - Joe (Jumbo Joe) Stydahar, and Ernie Jorge. (In fact, I had heard of them.) Ernie Jorge, who coached for years at Navy, helped Coach Smith get his first job, at the Air Force Academy. Frequently thought of as a pass-oriented coach, perhaps because of several books he published on the subject of passing, Coach Smith resists being pigeon-holed. "I never thought more of the passing game than the running game," he told me. "If you can do both, that's the best offense." Absorbed by the idea of football as an "11 against 11 confrontation," he has become a student of the history of the game, particularly of offensive systems. "I've worked hard," he said, "to understand why they worked, and what stopped them." An interesting observation that he passed on to the coaches at the Birmingham clinic was that of all the offenses that he has seen come and go, only one has remained - the wing-T. He attributes that to the fact that it has such a strong counter game. Known for working hard to keep abreast of changes in the game, Coach Smith has usually been out in front of the pack. Yet for all his knowledge of the game and its theory, he is even more highly thought of as a teacher. The essence of good teaching, as he sees it, is that no matter how much you know as a coach, "you have to get the athlete ready to do it on his own." To get him to that point, Coach Smith believes that you have to make the practices tougher than the game. In recent months, Coach Smith has been devoting his time to what he calls "my life's work" - writings on the game of football divided into a series of 17 manuals, aimed at coaches of all levels who want to learn the game from someone who has been there and seen it all. "Young coaches," he points out with the wisdom of just such a person, "must accept that football rests on its past." At a time when Americans are all too willing to trash history in other phases of our lives, thinking that everything began with us, we coaches ignore the lessons of football history at our own peril.
In typically gutty fashion, Coach Smith has published these manuals on his own, and is marketing them through the efforts of his daughter, Kim Smith Hall (who is married to a former Smith-coached quarterback, West Pointer Leamon Hall).
Homer Smith not only knows what he is talking about, but he knows how to put words on a page. His stuff is good. I wouldn't recommend junk. For more information about Coach Smith's manuals: www.galaxymall.com/sports/homersmith or e-mail kimhall@mindspring.com
Clinic Update: I just received confirmation from a Philadelphia-area coach that we're going to be able to try something new and different at the Philadelphia clinic (actually, in Fort Washington, PA). He's new on the job as a head man, but he's been planning for a couple of years for the day when he could run the Double-Wing, and he will be bringing some of his kids to the clinic. Using his players as our guinea pigs, we'll install and go over the basics of the offense in the PM session, and demo some of our "advanced" stuff, too. Naturally, we are banking on good weather, and we may have to do things in the parking lot, but it wouldn't be the first time I've had to practice in a parking lot. This is highly experimental, but if it works as I expect it will, it opens the way to a whole new, hands-on approach to our double wing clinics.
(Incidentally, there will NOT be violations of any rules, because I, not their own coach, will be doing the coaching - aided, I hope, by the expert kibitzing of the other double-wing coaches in attendance.)
March 22- On hand at the Birmingham clinic was coaching great Homer Smith, now "retired" and living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Although Coach Smith is no longer actively coaching, it is not completely accurate to describe him as retired, because since he left the University of Arizona following the 1997 season, he has been devoted to putting down on paper the accumulated wisdom of his years of coaching. Not such an easy job when you've been to the places he's been, seen the things he's seen, done the things he's done, worked with the people he's worked with. Coach Smith is a native of Omaha (Benson High) who played his college ball at Princeton as a linebacker and single-wing fullback, back in the days of two-way football. Following graduation and service as an Army officer, he attended Stanford Business School, where he got his first taste of coaching, as an volunteer JV coach (somewhat on the order of today's graduate assistants) and as freshman coach. Rather than pursue a more conventional career in business, though, as might normally be expected of an Ivy Leaguer in those days, Coach Smith had caught the coaching bug, and he embarked on what might be called, for lack of a better word, an unconventional coaching career. He has been head coach at Davidson College, University of the Pacific and Army, but paradoxically, it has been his work as an assistant coach - normally a position that guarantees that the best of men will labor in obscurity - that has brought him national renown, not to mention the widespread respect of his coaching peers. Coach Smith has been offensive coordinator at Air Force, UCLA (three different times), Alabama (twice), and Arizona, as well as with the Kansas City Chiefs. In 1990, he was named Offensive Coach of the Year by The Sporting News, and in 1997, he was a finalist for the Broyles award, given annually to the nation's top assistant coach. He has written a number of books, including one, Handbook for Coaching the Football Passing Attack, which I reviewed several months ago on my COACHING RESOURCES page. His current work, "Homer Smith on Football," is a series of 17 pamphlets, each dealing with a different matter of interest and use to coaches, and I'll tell you more about them and how to get them. In the meantime, Coach Smith will be giving us his unique perspective on football, including excerpts from those pamphlets, on this web site. (More tomorrow.)
Coach Todd Mahaffey, of Jonesville, LA, e-mailed me to tell me a sad tale of leaving his clinic notes in his clipboard, and leaving his clipboard on the roof of his Jimmy - and driving all the way home from Houston before noticing something was missing. I told him I'd be happy to reconstruct the lost material as best I could, in return for being able to rag his tail a little bit by "sharing" his story.
March 21- Coaches from five different states - Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee - turned out for one of the best clinics we've had yet. Staffs were there representing small town, inner city and suburban high schools, public and private. It was a good mix of coaches who are already running the double wing and coaches who are fixin' to (as they say in these parts). There was a lot of back-and-forth, and lost of good questions. Coaches were interested in our version of a No Huddle, which was inspired by the work of Coach Bob Hepp, in Viroqua, Wisconsin. Ours, while nowhere near as sophisticated as Coach Hepp's, has been a subject of considerable interest at the clinics so far. There also was some interest in our way of using an ordinary spread sheet program in our film (video) analysis. Coach Steve Jones, of Florence, Mississippi, has to be unique- he just finished coaching his school's soccer team - that's right, soccer team - to the state finals! (In Mississippi, Soccer season starts after football ends.) Here's the best part, though - He said he doesn't know a whole lot about soccer, but just made sure most of his team was made up of football players! (Now, I wonder what would happen if they'd just try picking up the ball and running with it... ) Also in attendance was the "Mystery Guest" whom I referred to several weeks ago when I announced he had consented to write material for this site as a guest columnist. Several of you guessed who he was right away, despite my scanty clues, and those guys will be happy to know my tee-shirts are finally being shipped to me. Our guest now lives in nearby Tuscaloosa (he coached at the University of Alabama, among other places), and was well known to the coaches in attendance. I'll tell you more about him tomorrow!
March 20- I had the chance to visit Friday with a couple of Alabama double-wing coaches. At Birmingham's Woodlawn High, Coach Jerry Stearns is retiring after 28 years as the head man there. Woodlawn has a distinguished athletic tradition, dating back to Alabama All-American Harry Gilmer and college coaches Vince Gibson (ex-Kansas State) and Bobby Bowden, to more recent notables such as Greg Carr (Steelers), Tim Harris (Packers) and Tony Nathan (Dolphins), who played under Coach Stearns. Coach Stearns has had the privilege of coaching 10 players who have gone on to the NFL, including Howard Ross, who played with the Raiders and now serves on the Woodlawn staff. Coach Stearns and his offensive coordinator, Coach Wendell Jones, showed me the tape of their 28-14 win last season over Parker High, a playoff team. Parker's kids were huge - big enough to make Woodlawn's 250-pound offensive linemen look small. Yet Woodlawn, with some fantastic running by speedy (4.5) A-Back Remus Blair, moved the ball up and down the field against them. It is hard to describe the speed of these kids other than to say it's like looking at my kids' tapes on fast forward-search. Junior Carlos Danby, a 6-4, 210 TE-LB, is definitely a blue-chipper. Although retiring from Woodlawn, Coach Stearns isn't ready for the rocking chair just yet: he's agreed to take over the struggling program at Kingwood Christian School, in Alabaster, Alabama. He's looking to hire a staff, but he's too late to grab his own son, Shane, who played center on three national championships at North Alabama, and is now coaching at Thompson Middle School, also in Alabaster. Coach Stearns' spot at Woodlawn hasn't been filled yet. One of the applicants is Coach Jones, the offensive coordinator, who would like to continue running the double wing, saying, "This is the best thing that ever happened to us." (Guess who I'm pulling for to get the job?)
Friday afternoon I drove two hours south to Montgomery to visit Coach Robert Johnson and his staff at St. James School. I mistakenly said that St. James was holding spring practice, but I was wrong - not until May, when baseball and track are done. What I saw was "athletic period," a daily period not unlike PE, in which coaches are able to work with their athletes on strength, agility, techniques, or, in the case of Coach Johnson and his staff, a new offense. (Overemphasis, did I hear some educators say? Last I heard, most schools were offering classes for credit in band and choir and, in some schools I know of, cheerleading.) The St. James kids seem to be catching on quickly, perhaps because Coach Johnson had already been running a successful wing-T offense. St. James has excellent facilities, including a nice field house with a large coaches' office and a spacious team room. Adjacent to the team room is the weight room - when I peeked in after school, there were 22 seventh-graders hard at work on their twice-weekly routine, under the supervision of three members of Coach Johnson's staff!
March 19- I'm in Birmingham for Saturday's clinic, but I'll spend Friday afternoon watching a recent convert to the double wing (I'm sworn to secrecy) introduce the offense during its spring practice. (The South is football country. For those who aren't aware of it, schools in the South, from South Carolina to Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana on around to Texas, and taking in Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, have spring football. (I can't speak for Oklahoma, but it wouldn't surprise me.) Think how much three weeks of spring football every year can add to an individual player's development - by the time he graduates, he will have picked up what amounts to an additional football season's worth of practices! How good would your kids be with an extra year's work? I guarantee you, the prospect