BACK ISSUES - MAY & JUNE 1999
June 30- In the marshy woodlands of eastern North Carolina, 3-1/2 hours' drive east of the Raleigh-Durham area and an hour away from the nearest fast-food restaurant, is the little town of Swan Quarter, home of Mattamuskeet High School. Mattamuskeet, with just 85 boys, is the only high school in a county of just 5400 people. Many of the local people are fishermen and crabbers, and outsiders visit to shoot ducks and geese and hunt bear. Mattamuskeet is also the home of Coach Eddie Cahoon, whom I've mentioned before. Survivor of a move by his former principal a few years ago to disband the football program, Coach Eddie got things turned around this past year and won four games - most since the 1970's - finishing with three straight wins. He single-handedly (no assistants) coaches the high school team and, for the good of his kids and his program, decided to add a middle school team last season, despite not having the money to add another coach. No problem - he coaches both teams. That's not all, though - he gave up his prep period in order to be able to offer a BFS (Bigger-Faster-Stronger) program at his school, and during the summer, he drives a school bus around the district four evenings a week, picking up kids who couldn't otherwise get to weight training. The bus run takes about 45 minutes, and after weights are over, he drives the kids home before calling it a day himself. He's used to bus driving, though - he drives the team bus to away games, rehashing the game on the way home with his wife, Patricia, who videotapes the games. The Cahoons' son, Jodie, was an All-Conference selection at linebacker last year, and this fall he is enrolling at North Carolina State (Dad's old school) where he intends to walk on. I was hosted by the Cahoons in the great tradition of southern hospitality, and at Tuesday lunch the boys and coaches were treated to great North Carolina (pork) barbecue, courtesy of Pascal Ballance, a team dad. The part that the double wing has played in Coach Cahoon's program is a great source of pride to me.
From Clay Haberman, New York Times columnist: "It's hard to shake the feeling that what really counts for sports-minded New Yorkers is winning. All the psychobabble about a team's inner self comes later. If the Knicks had missed the playoffs - and they came close - you would have had some fans at the Garden screaming that Sprewell belonged in Attica. And a small wager here says that if Slobodan Milosevic could only score from three-point range, his critics would be told to pipe down and give him a second chance."
June 29-In the latest Sports Illustrated is an article about Bubby Brister, heir to John Elway and one of the few reserves ever to step in and take over at QB for a defending Super Bowl champ. I must confess to having had a false impression of the guy as something of an airhead, but the article goes a long way to change that impression. Bubby, who comes from Monroe (pronounced MON'-roe), Louisiana, is one of a line of excellent quarterbacks to come out of North Louisiana. I may have missed one or two, but offhand I can name Terry Bradshaw, Joe Ferguson, Bert Jones and Doug Williams. Please help me if I missed any.
The same SI also contains the story of Brandon Burlsworth. A small-town boy from Harrison, Arkansas, Burlsworth defied the odds by walking on at the University of Arkansas and becoming a starter, developing himself in the process into a 6-4, 308-pound offensive lineman capable of running a 4.88 40. He wound up being drafted third by the Indianapolis Colts in this past spring's NFL draft, and on the basis of a four-day mini-camp, Indianapolis offensive line coach Howard Mudd projected him as a starter in his rookie year. He carried a 3.4 GPA, and had a bachelor's degree in marketing and an MBA (Master's in Business Administration). A devoted son, he drove home every chance he got, even after getting off the plane late at night after distant road games, in order to attend Sunday church with his mother. Everyone who ever came in contact with him talks of him in awe. And on April 28, 11 days after the draft, passing up a ceremony at which his teammates were given their rings for winning this past year's SEC West championship, he instead drove home to see his mother and take her to Wednesday night church services. Fifteen miles from home, he inexplicably veered across the center line and was killed in a head-on collision with a semi.
If North Carolina's most famous sports figure isn't Michael Jordan, it's probably legendary stock-car driver Richard Petty. Son of famous racer Lee Petty and father of another famous racer, Kyle Petty, "King Richard", from Randleman, NC, was hospitalized in Greensboro, NC this past weekend after an attack of bleeding ulcers that caused him to lose 40 per cent of his blood. (If I had been raised in the South, I don't know whether I'd rather be a football coach, a country singer, or a stock-car driver.)
June 28- This from Coach John Torres, a youth coach in Southern California: "Coach - Get this. I was running today at the local park, doing my regular 3 miles. I happened to go by the baseball diamond where the local little league team is practicing for all-stars. As I was running by I overheard the coach say to one of the "all-stars", 'if you dont feel like running, you don't have to...' The kid went to sit down while the others did their laps. When the other kids were finished, the "non-runner" CAME BACK TO PRACTICE AND THE COACH LET HIM! He was obviously one of the better players and the coach acted like nothing had happened. I will bet you a dime to a donut that that "team" does not get past the first round with that kind of poop. Definitely not an ALPHA male. He needs to grow some *&%$## (stones)! " (Just a note back to Coach Torres - plenty of us have seen high school football coaches treat their "all stars" that way. And people wonder why a lot of pro's are the jerks that they are.)
I've been to fish fries and clam bakes, crawfish boils and crab feasts, not to mention oyster roasts and bull roasts, but on Saturday I was treated to one of the most regional of all regional "cookouts" - a real, authentic North Carolina pig-pickin'. It ain' nothin' fancy, from the time you pick up the pig and they throw it in the back of the pickup (after first asking you if you want the feet and head left on) until, some six hours later, you start literally pickin' the pork off the cooked pig as it lies spread-eagled on the cooker, but the taste is beyond description. Family friend Johnny Ratcliffe, a native Tarheel, handled most of the dirty work while I looked on admiringly, but I was enlisted to do some of the cutting and chopping of the meat. Lemme tell you - it does get hot standing around that cooker, cutting up that pig (especially when it's 90 degrees out, and humid as downtown Bangkok). The cooking's all done by gas now, and as hot as it is, I can only imagine what it was like cooking a pig in the days when the cookers were fired by charcoal and you had to keep the fire tended. Makes a guy appreciate liquid refreshment.
While giving my son and his girlfriend a tour of the Duke campus Saturday, we walked into Cameron Indoor Stadium (home of the "Cameron Crazies") and found it jam-packed with kids and their parents, registering for Coach Mike Krzyzweski's Summer Camp. And there at a desk off to the side sat Coach K himself, in an un-air conditioned gym on a bot, muggy summer day, patiently signing autographs and standing up to pose with beaming kids, as a huge line of parents and kids stretching out of the gym waited just as patiently for their turn. And he had time for everyone. I can't begin to describe the looks of joy on the faces of those kids as they had their pictures taken with Coach K. What a contrast to the spoiled young punks in professional sports who can't seem to make the connection between worshipful fans and the enormous salaries they make possible.
A crowd of nearly 21,000 fans in Hamburg, Germany watched the Braunschweig Lions come back from a 14-6 halftime deficit, scoring in the last 25 seconds to defeat the Hamburg Blue Devils, 27-23 and win the Eurobowl championship. This was an exceptionally good crowd for a sport that gets - at best - uneven treatment by the European sports media; many observers, accustomed to the often-brutal fan violence made famous by England's soccer hooligans, marvelled at the sight of fans of both teams sitting side-by-side, peacefully enjoying the action on the field.
June 26- The Chicago Sun-Times carried an interesting article about Elton Brand, Duke's national Player of the Year who has declared himself eligible for the NBA draft and will be leaving school after two basketball seasons. In the article, Duke's Coach Mike Krzyzewski mentions Brand's mental toughness, which he demonstrated last December when he was benched. Instead of sulking and pouting, Brand responded by working harder than ever to regain his place in the lineup. Compare that response with all the spoiled babies who, the instant they learn they're not going to be the starting QB - or point guard - begin talking transfer.
Detroit city schools are looking for 1,000 certified teachers. They are offering $1,000 signing bonuses and a starting salary of over $38,000. It may be a tough city to teach in, but contrast that with the state of Washington, which just got around to raising the statewide starting teacher's salary to somewhere close to - but less than - $30,000.
Great article about Tim Duncan by Mike Wise in last Sunday's New York Times. Wise writes, "the single largest problem in the NBA today is that young kids enter the league with a sense of entitlement, the idea that they are owed something..." Tim Duncan, on the other hand, "did not attend an Adidas or Nike camp for gifted basketball players when he was 15 years old. He did not participate in the cattle-call that most American kids are in each summer for the college and pro scouts that are salivating over their talent, " writes Wise. "He was not treated better than most kids his age. He swam in high school, took up basketball late and decided to enjoy the fruits of college rather than go to work right away. And when he did finally join the NBA, he worked harder on his game than on his image." Wise could just as easily have been writing the same thing about Duncan's fellow star and San Antonio teammate, David Robinson. Hey, fellas - the win by the Spurs does not represent the ultimate triumph of good over evil, of the old values over the new absence of values, of solid no-frills play over scowls, "death stares" and raise-the-roof gestures - but just to win even one round ain't all bad.
Dale Hoffmann writes in the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal: "No question there are enough soccer fans in any large city to fill a stadium, but that doesn't translate into a nation that has gone crazy for corner kicks. A more reliable gauge is television ratings, and those have showed year after year that the average consumer doesn't get excited about this sport, whether it's being played by men, women or trained kangaroos."
Gary Hocking, an Australian Rules football player, changed his name - for one week - to "Whiskas." Paid a reported $200,000 to do so by the cat food product by the same name, the athlete formerly known as Gary Hocking has run into problems with the Australian Football League, which understandably foresees marketing anarchy should players be able to market themselves during games. What's next? "Preparation H?" "Charmin?""Trojans?" "Marlboro?"
June 25- If choking the coach is not your idea of "self-expression", you can't be entirely unhappy about seeing Latrell Sprewell's moment on the national stage nearing an end. I remember Red Hipp, a somewhat notorious night club owner in Hagerstown, Maryland and owner also of a minor league team I once coached, telling me that in some businesses, notoriety is just as good as fame, and a whole lot quicker and easier to get. And as the Knicks made their improbable way to the NBA finals, "Spree's" past, including his attempted choking of coach P. J. Carlesimo, has seemed almost to add to his appeal - to New York fans, at least. (Notice Spike Lee's "SPREWELL" jersey?) Should New York somehow manage to win this thing, expect to be deluged with some of the more obnoxious TV commercials ever made - for a new sneaker company named "And 1." After the choking incident, Sprewell was cut loose as an endorser by Converse, and banished from the league for a year. But on his return, And 1, taking a page from Red Hipp's book, snapped him up. In one commercial spot which has just begun running, Sprewell stands in front of an American flag, and while an electric guitar plays the national anthem in the background, says, "People say I'm America's worst nightmare. I say I'm the American dream." Check out And 1's web site (www.and1.com) - its visitors seem to be just the sort of people who need lessons in getting ahead in life from a guy whose basketball skills seem to have given him a pass on life's rules.
And just in case you needed another reason to root for the Spurs - David Robinson, Avery Johnson, Tim Duncan, etc. - the Knicks' Larry Johnson was first fined $10,000 for refusing to speak to the news media, then fined another $25,000 for speaking to them - loudly and obscenely. Predictably, Billy Hunter, who in his position as head of the NBA Players' Association (how'd you like to have that job?) seems to have all the attributes of a good defense attorney, was quick to ask for compassion and understanding for Johnson. Shoot, he said with a straight face, "L.J. should be commended for his willingness to play hurt." Besides, Hunter added as part of his Purple Heart commendation, "the League should recognize the pressure on an injured player whose team is down one or two games." Commissioner David Stern, defending the fines, said, "This is a very good business. It treats a lot of people very well. There are certain obligations that go with the rewards." Amen.
Nothing against the US Women's National (Soccer) Team, because they really are excellent athletes, they do seem to be good people, and they really do give a lot more back to their sport than the men in the higher-profile sports do, but it's important that we not get carried away with this soccermania stuff. Yes, they are drawing large crowds. But the World Cup is an every-four-years event. The girls have been fawned on by the sports media in this country, and given coverage totally out of proportion to the actual interest in them. Many newspapers have actually given more prominence to the qualifying-round women's soccer matches than to the Stanley Cup finals or NBA finals. They were on the front page of today's Chicago papers. What it all amounts to, though, is that there are a lot of people on the inside who are not exactly impartial - they want women's soccer to be successful. Thanks to the more "enlightened" hiring practices of the 90's, a lot of those people are young women in the sports departments - and at the moment, they're in position to give women's soccer a goose. (If I sound a little bitter, it's because I remember what a hard time we had trying to establish pro football in Portland back in the 1970's, while the Portland Timbers of the North American Soccer League were packing 'em in at $1.50 a ticket. And wouldn't you know that the photo in the Portland Oregonian on the morning after our first game showed our QB, Don Horn, calling signals, while in the background the telephoto lens of the photographer picked up a huge "Welcome to Soccer City" sign on the wall behind him. It wasn't hard to tell where one newspaper's sentiments lay.)Yep, the crowds are good. But I know, from experience in the World Football League, that houses can be "papered" - stadiums can be filled. But check out the TV ratings, fellows. You can't fake them. And at the moment, they ain't there. And that's what ultimately drives sports in America.
This from Coach Bruce Eien regarding school uniforms: Down here in so cal the Long beach Unified school district has had uniforms (blue pants white shirt) for 3 threes in its elementary and Middle schools. Last year they even made 2 of the HS wear uniforms (Wilson and Millikan) So the nationally ranked Wilson baseball team with 3 draft picks all wore uniforms to school everyday.
June 24- The little town of Gervais, Oregon, less than an hour from Portland, decided to establish a dress code in its elementary school. Townspeople and parents strongly endorsed the school board's plan, which calls for dark blue slacks and either red, white or blue shirts. Great idea, right? Wrong. They forgot about the American Civil Liberties Union, that great defender of hitherto unknown rights, including some sort of "right" of grade school kids to "free speech" through the clothing they wear. The ACLU is suing the Gervais school board for a supposed violation of the "freedom of speech" guaranteed by Oregon's constitution to all its citizens. Apart from the fact that schools have a well-established right to control other forms of "speech" by students, this is another in a dreary ACLU list of forms of "self-expression" such as table-dancing in strip clubs, and panhandling in New York subways. Of course, if you've heard the way a lot of kids converse, and read the stuff they write, you'd understand why so many of them have to depend on the clothes they wear to "express" themselves.
My two new videos are at the duplicator in Portland, which promises me it will ship them both early next week. We will save a few days by having them ship directly to the persons ordering them. My thanks to those of you who have waited so patiently for them. Incidentally, I am told that at several clinics this past winter, clinicians made presentations about chest-to-chest tackling similar to what my videotape explains. It may go against the grain if you've been teaching wrapping up the ball carrier's legs, but it merits your consideration.
I'm headed to North Carolina and a double-wing camp next week. Sounds like a lot of fun. It also means- BARBECUE.
Motivational ideas from a Wall Street Journal interview with Jack Welch, who has been chairman and CEO of General Electric for nearly 20 years: (1) Tell people never to allow themselves to become victims...they should go somewhere else if that's how they feel; (2) Constantly refine your gene pool, by promoting your best performers and weeding out your worst; (3) Grade on a curve- if I get 10 people, one is a star and one won't cut it; (4) Instead of giving people specific goals, challenge them to give you every growth idea they've got; (5) You can't just reward people with trophies. Reward them in the wallet, too. Some of Mr. Welch's ideas are going to come as quite a shock to today's youngsters, who are used to getting trophies for - doing nothing. He demands every group grade its performers on a curve, and scores them from 1 (best) to 5. "We demand it of every group, " he told the Journal, "because every group will fight like hell to say, I have all 1's." By his reasoning, 10 per cent should be 1's, and 10 per cent should be 5's. In any group of 10 people, one of them is a 1 and one of them s a 5. "5's are the least effective 10 per cent. We've got to get rid of them. We don't want to see those people again." How does he know when to let somebody go? "With the 5's, it's clear as a bell. I think they know it." Here's something football coaches might consider when evaluating personnel - it's called brutal frankness, as opposed to esteem-building. Whenever GE employees are evaluated, they are told specifically where they rank, "so no one will ever come in with any chance to say, 'I was always told I was great. And now you are telling me I'm not great." (In most of the school systems I've worked in, the opposite was the case - every teacher was consistently rated "excellent." And then principals would complain about not being able to get rid of the dead wood. Schools would certainly benefit from some of Mr. Welch's ideas (including rewarding top performers with money, instead of simpy cards in the teachers' mail boxes). It would take a set of stones.)
June 23- My apologies for the missing day- I am getting things under control. Taking a page from a certain Chief Executive of the United States, the International Olympic Committee, caught red-handed, has gone on the attack. An article appeared in the paper reporting that the IOC is really angry at Salt Lake City officials. It seems that none of the bribes - free surgery for IOC members, free college for relatives of IOC members, gifts galore for IOC members and their spouses - that resulted in Salt Lake City's being awarded the Winter Olympics would have occured had it not been for - get ready for this - corrupt Salt Lake City officials. In fact, "His Excellency" (honest, that's how he prefers to be addressed) Juan Antonio Samaranch, head of the IOC, has even suggested he might never again grace the United States with his presence. Only one problem. The IOC definitely reveals a lack of awareness of the United States in trying to pin the label of corruption on Salt Lake City, and I can't let this one go past. We are not talking Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Providence (where city employees were recently caught driving around in cars confiscated from drug dealers). We are talking about a near-theocracy, where a majority of the people are active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We are talking about Utah, the state with the lowest crime rate, lowest drug usage, lowest rate of illegitimacy, and highest per capita consumption of ice cream. We are talking about a place where caffeine is shunned, and where, even for wealthy foreign visitors to the Olympics, places selling alcohol will be hard to find. As one Utahn told me recently, "they wouldn't know how to be corrupt if they wanted to be."
June 22- Taking a page from a certain Chief Executive of the United States, the International Olympic Committee, caught red-handed, has gone on the attack. An article appeared in the paper reporting that the IOC is really angry at Salt Lake City officials. It seems that none of the bribes - free surgery for IOC members, free college for relatives of IOC members, gifts galore for IOC members and their spouses - that resulted in Salt Lake City's being awarded the Winter Olympics would have occured had it not been for - get ready for this - corrupt Salt Lake City officials. In fact, "His Excellency" (honest, that's how he prefers to be addressed) Juan Antonio Samaranch, head of the IOC, has even suggested he might never again grace the United States with his presence. Only one problem. The IOC definitely reveals a lack of awareness of the United States in trying to pin the label of corruption on Salt Lake City, and I can't let this one go past. We are not talking Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Providence (where city employees were recently caught driving around in cars confiscated from drug dealers). We are talking about a near-theocracy, where a majority of the people are active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We are talking about Utah, the state with the lowest crime rate, lowest drug usage, lowest rate of illegitimacy, and highest per capita comsumption of ice cream. We are talking about a place where caffeine is shunned, and where, even for wealthy foreign visitors to the Olympics, places selling alcohol will be hard to find. As one Utahn told me recently, "they wouldn't know how to be corrupt if they wanted to be."
Jack Reed, realtor and author of football books, is just finishing up his latest - a book on coaching flag football - and he asked me what I know about the 9-man flag game. I told him of living in Maryland in the 60's and 70's, and how big flag ball was then. Tavern-sponsored teams competed in organized leagues all over the Baltimore area, and games were, to understate things, rather competitive. I was at first astonished at the amount of organization they applied to what I always had thought of as a let's-get-some-guys-together-and-play-a-little-touch sort of affair. It was almost as big when I lived in Hagerstown, in Western Maryland, and when we moved to the Northwest in 1975, it seemed to be pretty strong in the Portland area. I don't know what has happened, but I'd like to see it revived. Meantime, I have had a lot of experience with 9-man football. Coaching at a small school, that's how we've had to play our intra-squad games in order to be competitive. The double-wing converts very easily into a 9-man offense. - we just line up in "spread" formation - minus the wide-outs - and run a run-and-shoot running game, which doesn't rely on the wide-outs, anyhow. I got the idea after talking with a coach in South Dakota, where smaller schools are forced to play the 9-man game. The NFL is dumping some money into a flag program for youth, but as usual, they are not concerned with the future of the game of football - their concern is making sure those youngsters grow up to be NFL fans. And as usual, my guess is that most of the money will go to pay curent and former NFL players to make brief personal appearances, which will be videotaped and edited into slick TV spots as evidence of "the NFL's involvement in the future of America's young people."
There are already rumblings in Europe that the NFLE (NFL Europe) has done nothing to enhance the overall growth of American football in Europe. I could have told them that. The NFL is no friend of football. The NFL is a friend only of the NFL, and sometimes, judging by some of the things it does, it doesn't even seem to like itself very much. The wise people in Europe know that they will have to succeed in spite of, not because of the NFL. In Germany, where American football seems to have the strongest hold, two teams in the German top-division Bundesliga, Hamburg and Braunschweig, outdraw the NFLE's Berlin entry. And to show the fierceness of the competition in the Bundesliga, Hamburg and Braunschweig, the two teams in the upcoming Eurobowl tournament finals, were both upset this past weekend.
June 21- It's the longest day of the year. In Scandinavian countries, it's pretty big - dates back to pagan times. In Finland, it's huge. It's called Juhannus, or just "Midsummer," and for Finns, it 's as big as our Fourth of July, with Thankgiving and New Year's Day thrown in for good measure. It's a time for getting together with family and friends at someone's "summer cottage" (every Finn either owns one or aspires to own one) on the sea or on one of Finland's thousands of lakes. It is not a good time to be caught in a city, as I once was, because the streets are deserted and the stores are closed. It is like walking around after missing out on the Rapture. In the countryside, meanwhile, there is considerable celebration - you'd have to know the Finns to understand what I mean - and it goes on all night (depending on how far north you are, it won't ever get very dark, anyhow). As you might expect, when you take all that revelry and hold it close to water, there are drownings. The standard Finnish joke is that most Midsummer drowning victims are men who fell off docks. They are found with their flies open.
No doubt aware of the irony, they chose Father's Day to hold the annual Gay, Lesbian, Bi- and Trans- Pride Parade in Portland, Oregon yesterday. And what a gala event it was! (So I'm told.) A reported 30,000 spectators and marchers (sometimes hard to tell them apart) gathered to "celebrate diversity." And just to show how "inclusive" and "diverse" the gathering has become, several gays and lesbians with disabilities paraded in their motorized wheelchairs! Anyhow, from one "breeder" to another, Happy Father's Day.
I wouldn't normally have missed the Gay Pride parade but I was glued to my TV set, yelling myself hoarse at the excitement of women's World Cup soccer. Are you kidding me? How am I supposed to get anything else done when Nigeria's playing North Korea, and Norway's playing Russia? Depend on me to keep you posted.
The NHL has disgraced itself by attempting to cover up the fact that Dallas' Stanley Cup-winning suddent-death goal, in third overtime, was clearly illegal and should not have been allowed. It's not as if the error weren't correctable: during the regular season, whenever questionable goals occured, play was routinely stopped for a review by instant replay, and numerous goals were disallowed as a result. Tapes show that this one should have been disallowed, too, but there was pandemonium on the ice as people celebrated or protested, the refs were tired, and the Stanley Cup was sitting there just waiting to be awarded to the first team from the South (think: new TV markets for the NHL) ever to win it. So now the NHL bobs and weaves, ducks and dodges, as it tries to cover up perhaps the biggest blunder in the history of major sports championships. I say, bring 'em back and make 'em play.
Frank Simonsen, youth coach in Cape May, New Jersey, informs me that soccer hasn't hurt his program any. In fact, he had 47 kids sign up recently, the largest number ever.
June 18 - Thought for the day: "What this country needs more of is dirty fingernails and clean minds." Will Rogers
As I celebrate one more birthday than I really need, I give thanks for my many blessings, including my wife, our four kids, our three sons-in-law and one near-daughter-in-law, our nine grand-kids, and a mother and mother-in-law both in their nineties and in full possession of their marbles. Also for having had the good sense to be born in America. And for the good fortune and wifely encouragement that enabled me to become a football coach after years in business, all the while regretting that I hadn't gone into coaching. And I try never to think about how old I am, but to reflect, instead, on the wisdom of Leroy "Satchel" Paige, who reportedly said, "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was?" I also heard someone once say, "The secret to eternal youth is arrested development."
Perhaps this belongs more on the "TIPS" page, but I've had a few coaches inquire about pulling the backside guard and TIGHT END on the power and super-power, rather than the guard and tackle. This, of course, is how the pure Delaware Wing-T people block their 137/933 Counter Criss-cross. I have looked at it, and there doesn't seem to be any really obvious reason why it couldn't be done. At least one coach has told me that he did it this way in his spring drills. Any ideas?
Not to get overly political (although I'd like to), but columnist Maureen Dowd, who can be pretty witty, describes one of the recently-announced candidates for President as "so feminized and divers-ified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating."
Coach Jason Schondelmyer, who had been an offensive assistant on Coach Mark Gibson's staff at Brookville, Ohio, has been named head coach at Arcanum, Ohio. I well remember Coach Schondelmyer, because he was at my Louisville clinic two years ago, and he was waiting at the door when I opened up shop at this past year's Cleveland clinic. Coach Gibson wrote to inform me that there is a very strong possibility that he may be able to replace Coach Schondelmyer with a double-wing coach from elsewhere in Ohio.
I find that the Wheaties story yesterday isn't entirely accurate. Tiger Woods signed, but only after General Mills, maker of Wheaties, agreed to pay him more money than it paid Michael Jordan (around $400,000) and use pictures of him wearing his Nike clothing and a Rolex watch. He also refused to sign Wheaties boxes at personal appearances. Ken Griffey, Jr. accepted $1 million for an eight-year deal which, according to the Wall Street Journal, "was so low compared with his other endorsements that the company agreed to limit his personal appearances on behalf of General Mills to about four hours a year." Brett Favre, on the other hand, accepted the Wheaties deal without even negotiating. "Brett didn't care about the money," his agent told the Journal.
June 17- Many thanks to all of you who have kept me updated on the various ways in which my web site has sucked over the past week. Thanks also for your understanding. I can only imagine the anguish at E-bay last week when their site went down - and their stock plummeted as a result. Several of my pages are as yet incomplete, and I have yet to get any of the geeks at Verio to answer the phone. But if you want to sign up for their "service,", call 1-888-GET-VERIO and since you represent new money and they don't yet have to provide you with technical support, someone will cheerily answer the phone.
It used to be a big deal for an athlete to be on a box of Wheaties. In fact, the prestige of being on breakfast tables all over America was more than enough to offset the relatively small fee Wheaties paid. Not any more. The prestige just doesn't cut it with today's athlete, who would much rather see the green. More and more big-name athletes, the gods of our tin-plated culture, are turning up their noses at the mere thousands Wheaties offers an endorser.
George W. Bush may have surprised a few people with his recent announcement that he plans to run for the presidency, but believe me, he has been preparing. So intensely has he been preparing that his underlings have acquired Internet domain names - lots of them - such as "www.georgebushsucks" and "www.georgebushsux" (for the spelling-impaired). If you go to those sites, you will immediately be re-routed to Governor Bush's main campaign site. Evidently his staff got wise to the need to cut off the enemy at the pass when some joker put up "www.gwbush.com," a clever parody of a real Bush site, which very subtly pokes fun at Mr. Bush. It is also said - I can't confirm - that New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's staff has already acquired several domain names that sound decidedly pro-Hillary Clinton, such as "HillaryYes.com" and "YesHillary.net."
Coach Bob Hepp writes me from Wisconsin to tell me of a major move he has made, from small-town Viroqua, in the southwestern part of the state, to small-city Manitowoc, on the shore of Lake Michigan in northeastern Wisconsin. As Bob describes it, "Manitowoc is a hard-working, blue-collar town of 32,500." There are over 1,850 kids in the high school, which has a long and proud football tradition: in the 1980's, Manitowoc won three consecutive state titles and five straight conference championships. The head coach for the last 31 years, Ron Rubick, retired this past spring because of illness, leaving Coach Hepp with a great opportunity, but at the same time with enormous shoes to fill. He inherits a solid staff, two of whom served with Coach Rubick for over 25 years. This will be Coach Hepp's fourth start at a new program, and the challenge is certainly there.
June 16 - Another unanswered call to the helpful folks at Verio. This time I waited 5 minutes. Funny thing- this morning, on the radio, I heard a Verio commercial, and they gave out a phone number to call if you wanted to sign up - 888-GET-VERIO (I could suggest another word to follow "GET"; either that or another word to precede "VERIO"). What do you know? Someone picked up the "sales" phone on the second ring!
Another try at publishing: American kids have apparently traded in their bikes for Nintendos. The American bicycle industry is being kept alive by yuppie mountain bikers. According to the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, fewer than 1 per cent of kids aged 7 to 15 ride their bikes to school. In the 1970s, it was between 60 and 70 per cent. There are lots of reasons given: parents' safety concerns (often well-founded), kids' tight schedules (school-to-soccer-practice-to-whatever), kids being driven to school by parents, kids spending the day at day care, video games, and TV. "Bicycles just don't seem popular," says one elementary school principal, adding, "Maybe they need too much effort."
June 14- I think I'm back in business with my web site!!! Then again, maybe I'm not. I've been told that it's now taking people forever to refresh my pages. I would ask the Verio people about this, but they don't answer their phones. You might bear that in mind if you are considering doing business with Verio.
My Washougal Panthers did the nearly unthinkable Saturday, playing in a 7-on-7 passing tournament! Actually, for the first time in quite a while, it looks as if I've been blessed with a lot of kids who can throw and catch. The guys looked good in their first time out, going 4-2, and only narrowly losing a pair of contests to eventual champion Camas (that's right - the town I live in, and Washougal's biggest rival). I can't say this without making it sound like an excuse, but Camas is a spread-'em-out passing team, whose in-season offense is well suited for a passing tournament. I must confess that I did make one small concession to the nature of the competition itself, and usually split out one end, while running a lot of "bunch" patterns to the TE/A-back/C-back on the other side. (Occasionally, we even went "spread" and split two ends!) My dream is that one day somebody will stage a "running tournament" - no passing allowed - just to let us Stone Age guys show the children of the new millennium our side of the game.
Finland update, from Steve Fickert, double-wing coach of the Seinäjoki Crocodiles: "We just beat the Porvoo Butchers yesterday 46-13. The Double Wing was working great. We had 350 yards rushing and were 3-8 (2 TDs) passing for 50 yards for a Total Offense of 400 yards. Not bad in 48 minutes (they play 12 minutes quarters- HW) and considering we had 100 yards in penalties (WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?!!!!). I think the officials just started making things up so we wouldn't beat the Butchers too bad! I cannot believe we have done this well. WE HAVE ONLY HAD 2 TOTAL TEAM PRACTICES (with all 11 Offensive Players at practice at the same time) SO FAR THIS YEAR: and that was at our first 2 games. (this is all part of coaching in Finland - HW) Tell me any other Offensive System that would allow you to do that and roll up 784 yards and 81 points in the first 2 games!
"We are now preparing to play the ROOSTERS! We play in Helsinki next Sunday. We have some kind of Rock Festival Wed.-Sun. and I am afraid our players will not be quite ready for this game. We may have lost our best DT (with a hyperextended elbow) for the game. However, we may pick up a couple a other Defensive Players that could really help us. The ROOSTERS run a 4-3 Cover 2 look. Any suggestions? We were really basic last week against the Butchers. We ran Spread, Tight and Slot only. We ran 88-99 Super Power to death, 6-7 G, 3 Trap at 4 (they were a Double Eagle look), 47C, XX47C, 29-38 Reach and 88 Red-Red. We really got better! AND WE DID NOT HAVE OUR RT AND 1 TE/SE AT PRACTICE THE ENTIRE WEEK! Plus we had to make the adjustment to the Double Eagle look. I have to go. Films (videos) are waiting. Thank you for all your help. I am a believer in the Double Wing!!!"
(Note: The Porvoo Butchers were originally selected to represent Finland in this summer's World Cup tournament. The Helsinki Roosters, Coach Fickert's next opponent, are currently ranked #2 in Europe, although they may drop a few places after last weekend's 21-14 loss to #1 ranked Braunschweig (Germany) Lions in the Champions League Tournament. (Just as in European soccer, it is not uncommon for European Football teams to have two or three different competitions going on at the same time.)
June 13 - I am having a miserable time with Verio, my new web site provider, which recently acquired Primehost, my former provider. Primehost was dependable and easy to use, and in the rare event of a problem, Primehost provided technical support people who actually answered the phone! An ideal candidate, in other words, for acquisition by a bigger, larger, far less efficient competitor. Verio very kindly "migrated" my site to a new spot under its wing, where I discovered that it has been displaying "golden oldies" - encore performances of great pages from the past - but not, unfortunately, my current updates. Calls to their tech support line have resulted on two different occasions in ten-minute waits. Now, I don't know how long you can stand to listen to elevator music while some cheery voices dripping with phony sincerity tell you, "we value your business...we appreciate your business...we value your call, etc., etc ...(but) all of our technical support people are currently helping other customers (Come on - all of them? I'm sure at least one of them is on break)," without hanging up, but 10 minutes is well beyond my limits. So, just as a test of my ability to update my page with my new server - if you can read this, please let me know.
June 11 - Help! Quickly! Somebody hand me a real sports page before I go nuts! A full 80 per cent of the front sports page of today's Portland Oregonian is devoted to Chamique Holtzclaw, Mia Hamm and Picabo Street. A fourth of the page (saves money on reporters) is a full-color picture of Mia Hamm. Anybody see a pattern here? Anybody care how the Buffalo-Dallas Stanley Cup Final game turned out?
Coach Jason Doorn, offensive cordinator at Kalamazoo Christian High, while doing research for a class, came across a 1983 New York Times article on Coach Gordon Wood. Coach Wood, who spent most of his illustrious career at Brownwood, Texas, retired a few years ago as the winningest high school football coach in the history of the game. (His record has since been surpassed by Coach John McKissick, of Summerville, South Carolina.) Coach Wood is a Texas legend, and he is still revered in Brownwood, and it would seem safe to say that he didn't achieve what he did without being hard-nosed about certain things when he had to be. "There are ways," the author wrote, "in which he might be considered old-fashioned. He still, for instance, uses the Wing-T offensive alignment." (underline mine) It is hard to tell whether the writer of the piece approved or disapproved of Texas football or Coach Wood's operation; the article seems to be rather dispassionate even when it deals with such controversial matters as "initiation" and corporal punishment (you heard right). Warning - Please don't let any soccer moms or liberal "educators" read beyond this point - In the case of the "initiation," the article goes on to say, "the newcomers are stripped and forced to run about the field until they are chased down by six or seven senior players. A cream that produces a burning sensation, generally used to soothe sore muscles, is applied to the genitals of the new players." (What an ad: "Cramergesic- the same great stuff that they initiated Dad with, and still around for your initiation!") In the case of the corporal punishment, it was sometimes laid on by the assistants, sometimes by Coach Wood himself, but always, the author wrote, seemingly in disbelief, "accepted in a fraternal spirit." The writer apparently was never an eyewitness to an incident of corporal punishment, but he had it on the good word of several players that the punishment for the two most serious rules violations - beer drinking and poor grades - was "six hard whacks on the buttocks with a flat wooden board and 40 laps around the quarter-mile track for 40 days." Sometimes the punishment was administered in private, sometimes in front of the whole team. "We really don't like to publicize it," Coach Wood told the writer, "but when a kid drinks and gets bad grades, it bother me. Especially drinking. I don't know what else to do. It's very frustrating." Even in these supposedly more enlightened times, it would be difficult finding someone in Brownwood, Texas to say something bad about Gordon Wood. Coach Wood reflected the values, the standards and the expectations of the community and his kids' parents, and I don't recall reading about any of his former players shooting up a post office. The article undoubtedly shocked many of the Times' readers, but it was nothing like "Friday Night Lights," the chop job that one H. G. Bissinger would do on Odessa, Texas and Permian High School as his way of repaying those folks for the hospitality they extended to him.
June 10- Because our school has "split-sessions," we have had to have two practice sessions daily - one for the upcoming 11th and 12th-graders, the other for the 9th and 10th-graders. We played "Touch Footy" (Australian Rules Football), modified for American fields (the Australian Rules field is much larger, American goal posts (Australia has four uprights), and player safety (not tackling and no "soccering" - kicking the ball off the ground - in both sessions and the kids loved the game. It is a really good workout, it gets everyone involved, it's a lot of fun, and it does bring football skills into play. We are still refining the rules, but we are close.
An English teacher in New Jersey stopped by his school's senior prom, just to wish the graduates well, the Wall Street Journal reports. The kids were by all accounts delighted to see him there. His union, though, was not. Seems his visit was in violation of some rule barring teachers from attending extracurricular events while contract negotiations are taking place. So he received a reprimand from his union (which no doubt calls itself an "Education Association"), saying, in part, "You must not realize that by your own action you betrayed 649 colleagues. So do not be surprised, John, that your colleagues have lost respect for you." Imagine putting kids first! What was that guy thinking, anyway?
Another rather interesting article in the Wall Street Journal deals with bad kids, and our President's misguided effort to stop school murders by keeping kids out of movies (can't they still rent the videos?). Jonathan Kellerman, a child clinical psychologist, scoffs at the notion that watching movies causes violent behavior. Why doesn't everyone who attends those movies act out violently? Or even a sizeable minority? As author Kellerman explains, there may be a correlation between violent behavior and watching violent movies, but no causal relationship has ever been shown. Blue-eyed people tend to have blonde hair - hat is a correlation. But one does not cause the other. He says what most of us in education could have told people long ago- and saved the taxpayers millions in studies, blue-ribbon commissions, etc.in the process - and that is that there are some kids who are just plain evil. Violent movies didn't cause it. Neither did teasing by those big, bad football players. These are evil kids, and they've been that way since very early childhood. Mr. Kellerman discounts any "bad seed" theory, but blames instead factors such as "highly disordered families, lack of maternal love, drug and alcohol use and birth defects due to poor prenatal care," for the fact that symptoms of a potentially criminal adolescence begin to be displayed as early as three years of age. Kids who are likely to develop into violent criminals in their adolescent years "consistently display unusually higher levels of two personality factors: impulsivity and callousness. You don't want to turn your back on a boy who thrill-seeks excessively, appears immune to anxiety and fear, fails to develop he outward signs of a conscience, and exhibits a cold, cruel attitude that denies and degrades the feelings of others." Psychologists at the University of Southern California have discovered that by age three, boys who later as adolescents acted out criminally, had lower heart rates and sweat rates, and abnormal brain-wave activity. These kids, in other words, were cool - to the point of being cold. They needed stimulation. And the understimulation in the brain led to their seeking thrills, while their lack of fear eliminated the likelihood of the social learning that teaches most kids where to stop, and "turns most of us into relatively solid citizens." Solutions? Mr. Kellerman suggests, as a last resort - gasp - taking the kids fom their parents, and putting them in protective custody. Harsh? Not, says Mr. Kellerman, when you think of "body bags in schoolyards." He didn't go so far as to advocate sterilization of the parents, but I'm sure that has occured to some of us.
Keep an eye on the NCAA, which seems to be drawing closer to ending the sham of semi-pro basketball as it is now being played by the colleges. A commission may very possibly recommend ending freshman eligibility in men's basketball. The good reason is the 41 per cent graduation rate of male basketball "scholar-athletes" entering in 1991. 41 per cent! And these are guys who didn't have to hold a stinking job or take out student loans! That's the good reason. The real reason, I submit, is to cut these sleazeball agents and free-lance recruiters and shoe camps out of the loop. Evidently, a college coach has a big job these days just deprogramming incoming freshmen who've spent the summer in the hands of some of the aforementioned people, being told how great they are and discussing whether they should "come out" after one year or stay for the extra seasoning of a full second year of college. Hey -if your guys are only going to be around for two years, what makes you any different from a Juco? Here's one person who would like to return to the days when college basketball teams actually had talented seniors on the floor.
Might want to take a look at women's basketball, too. With only a 66 per cent graduation rate, and the WNBA heating up, look for some of those ladies to start coming out early. One newcomer to the WNBA, who will remain nameless, was quoted in a paper today as getting by on her "$55 per diem a day." Somebody please teach that young woman what college didn't, and tell her that "per diem" is Latin for "per day."
June 9- Coach Scott Barnes, in Denver, has put me onto a great columnist named Kathleen Parker, who writes for the Orlando Sentinel, but whose column is syndicated nationally - appearing in papers that dare to allow on their pages a woman with socially conservative views. Check Kathleen Parker out for yourself.
Cheese-rolling has returned to England. Recently, 2,000 people turned out to watch fellow Englishmen - in various stages of intelligence and inebriation - chase 12-inch wheels of cheddar cheese down a steep hill. In flights of 10 to 15 at a time, the contestants line up along the hilltop, and, after the cheeses are given a head start, take off after them. The first person to touch one of the wheels, which can attain speeds of up to 40 miles an hour, wins all the cheeses. In recent years, serious injuries had begun piling up to the point that public outcries prompted the English government to outlaw the event last year. But the several-hundred-year-old tradition was permitted to resume this year, with the "safety" provision that it begin at noon rather than 6 in the evening, to cut down on pre-race "preparation" in local pubs.
A happy anniversary to Don Capaldo, of Keokuk, Iowa, who writes, "The biggest news is that my lovely wife, Cindy, of twenty-five (can you believe it) years and I will celebrate that milestone this Saturday here in Keokuk with a few family members from both sides of the family and our friends from both Keokuk and Mt. Pleasant, Iowa where we lived for 16 years." I told Don that if it would make him and Cindy feel any younger - my wife, Connie, and I have number 40 coming up this summer.
John Lambert played for me and coached with me and succeeded me at La Center, Washington. He is an excellent choice, and if he were to ask me for advice, I would tell him I would appreciate it if he would not run the double wing and force me to defend it when we play each other this year! John wrote me asking if I had noticed the all-NBA teams. The amazing thing, he noted, is that of the 15 players selected, only one (Tim Duncan) made it to the conference finals. The disgusting thing about the state of "team play" in the NBA is that the other 14 probably didn't care, as long as they got their props.
June 8- This just in, from Coach Jack Tourtillotte, offensive coordinator at state finalist Boothbay Regional High in Maine. Oh, yes- also the school principal. "We must be one of the last formal graduations in the country. We make our kids march in and they must be in suits and dresses under the caps and gowns. Graduation lasts 45 minutes and we have grand march at night. Kids come in white tuxes and white gowns and parade before the community for 30 minutes and then there is a ball afterwards. They are expected to act appropriately and not be foolish - We never have any problems. We had 2000 people in our gym and not one problem. I mention it because of all the stuff going on around the country. We don't worry about hurting their individual rights to free expression at graduation. This year our scholarship fund met everyone's un-met need and in return we demand a high standard. The coast of Maine still is a place of conservative values and I will do my damnedest to make sure our school remains that way. I made a couple of boys take their ear rings off for graduation and made it stick. Try that in California. Sorry for the editorial but it is a direct result of the stuff you put on your web page and I wanted you to know at BRHS there are still a number of Alpha Males. Even the boys basketball coach has a strict dress and grooming code for his team both during the school year and in the summer. Just thought some of this might help make your day." (It did, Jack. It did.)
Cal State Fullerton's baseball team, its two starting pitchers suspended and sent home by the coach, shocked Ohio State, 13-2, Sunday to win the best-of-three super-regional series and advance to the college world series in Omaha. The Titans, 49-12 and seeded No. 3 nationally, will be making their 10th trip to Omaha. Fullerton will open play against Stanford, winner of its super-regional with two consecutive victories over USC. Titans' Coach George Horton placed four players on indefinite suspension - and sent them home - after their arrest last week in South Bend, Indiana for taking part in a "rock-throwing incident." The NCAA may also administer a punishment of its own, since the "incident" occured during playoffs. Despite the loss of the four, the rest of the Fullerton team stepped up. Sophomore left-hander George Carralejo, who had not pitched more than three innings in any game all season, held Ohio State to two hits and one run through five innings in the final game. It was his first start since February 10, and his first victory of the season. "Winning this playoff without them shows how much heart this team has," said shortstop Ryan Owens, who drove in 13 runs in the three-game series, including two more on Sunday. "I think we played two of the best games we've played this season here."
On the subject of baseball, I mourn the death of Eddie Stanky, whom, many of you will remember from my clinics, I often cited as an example of the days when baseball players were really tough. Stanky, who died Sunday at the age of 83, was a good-field, no-hit second baseman who was leadoff man for Leo Durocher. It would be fair to say that Durocher was a competitive person. Stanky was a ferocious competitor himself, a native of the tough and inappropriately-named Nicetown section of Philadelphia, and he endeared himself to Durocher by consistently leading the majors in being hit by pitches. ("Taking one for the team.") In the old films of Bobby Thomson's miracle home run ("The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!") Stanky and Durocher can be seen doing a dance along the third base line. Following a long career as a player and manager in the majors, Stanky stayed in baseball, coaching the University of South Alabama. He returned to the majors in 1977, but resigned after an opening day win, sying he was homesick for his family and South Alabama.
June 7- Eat your heart out NBA, NFL, NHL and Major League baseball. Big-city kids, black and Hispanic, are expected to go big for racing attire. That means NASCAR gear - if you can picture rappers advertising Skoal and Mr. Goodwrench - and $600 form-fitting leather motorcycle racing jackets. At least that's what the big fashion guys - Donna Karan (DKNY), Tommy Hilfiger and others are betting on. The stakes are high. Because what's hot in the inner city will soon be very hot in suburbia. I doubt that there's much chance of the NASCAR guys returning the favor - somehow I can't see any of the Pettys with baggy pants and sleeves down over their fingertips, saying, "Yo! Gimme a Goody's!"
In Finnish football, the Seinäjoki (SANE-a-yoke-ee) Crocodiles unveiled their double wing and beat the Oulu (OH-loo) Northern Lights, 35-6. Coach Steve Fickert, who last coached in Maryville, Tennessee, wrote, "It was a good start considering we were up 28-0 by the middle of the second quarter. Because of a mental let down and a few "Minor" injuries, the final score indicates it was closer than the game really was. We had 380+ yds. of Total Offense, but we really clamped down our offense at about the middle of the third quarter until the end because we wanted to just get home with a good victory on the road. How about those bus rides home with all the beer? Things are really different here! It was quite an experience!" I guess I should have told Coach Fickert about those bus rides. Also about the fact that they have to pull over every hour and have a smoke!
Is Avery Johnson classy, or what? Last year, when Damon Stoudamire was shopping himself around, he publicly declared that San Antonio would never win anything with Avery Johnson at point guard. So last week, Johnson comes into Portland, Stoudamire's home town, and, resisting every opportunity given him by sports reporters to slam Stoudamire, leads the Spurs to a 4-game sweep of the Trail Blazers. And after the final game, he still refuses to gloat, professing to understand why Stoudamire might have said the things he did. And in a nationally-televised interview, he deflects attention from himself, saying, "I don't want to win it for myself. I want to win it for other people. I want to win it for David Robinson."
Go get the copy of the latest Sports Illustrated, the one with the coach-choker-who's-now-the-hero-of-New-York-Knicks'-fans-because-the-team's-winning-and-all's-forgiven on the cover, and read the article entitled "You've Got to be Nutts," about the Nutt family of Arkansas, about a mom and dad and the four boys they raised, all of whom are now college coaches in their home state.
June 6- "Didn't Rasheed Wallace do something similar Friday night?" asked Australian Michelle Howden sarcastically. Michelle, a dear family friend, couldn't resist the needle, as she sent along the following dispatch: Tony "Plugger" Lockett of the Sydney Swans broke the all-time Australian Rules Football goal-scoring record on Saturday against Collingwood. After the game, played in front of a packed house at Sydney Cricket Ground, Lockett was driven around the ground in a car with his wife and kids. His teammates then carried him around the field on their shoulders, before taking him back into the locker room TO SING THE TRADITIONAL CLUB SONG! (Americans unfamiliar with the concept of team spirit may consider it corny, but every Australian footall club has its song, and generations of its fans - "barrackers" - and players know the words - and sing it!) NOTE: We have had some success testing "Touch Footy" (Australian Rules, touch version) in our spring camp, and at the moment Michelle Howden, US marketing representative for the AFL (Australian Football League) is doing a final check of the rules - adapted for American footballers - before allowing me to publish them.
I received a call Friday from Mike Snowden, a former student home on leave after recently completing his plebe year at West Point. I told him I assumed he'd heard of the Holleder Center, and he said, "Yes, sir." (The training already shows.) When I asked him if he knew the story of Major Holleder, he also answered in the affirmative. I told him that after publishing a story about Don Holleder on my web site, I'd heard from the corpsman in whose arms Don Holleder died, and a general who'd played football against him and had to identify his lifeless body. Mike told me that, as a matter of fact, he'd actually met the very corpsman and the very general to whom I referred- they'd spoken to his class last October and told the heroic story of Don Holleder, the returning All-America end who gave up a sure shot at being a two-time All-America in order to move to quarterback, where his team desperately needed help. I knew that the two gentlemen in question, Tom Hinger and Jim Shelton, return to West Point every October to observe the anniversary of the 1967 battle in Viet Nam in which Don Holleder and several other of their comrades lost their lives, and I had to let them know that at least one cadet remembered their visit. I heard from General Shelton (a former All-America guard from Delaware), who confirmed that Mike Snowden had, indeed, heard from him and Tom Hinger, and told me it was exciting to know that the story could touch the lives of our future leaders. What ought to be of interest to us as coaches and leaders of young men is that the military recognizes the importance of heroes and heroic tales - of providing its young men with examples of people worth emulating. Every Marine, for example, can tell you about "Chesty" Puller. Or about Smedley Butler (winner of two Comgressional Medals of Honor). (Meanwhile, future history teachers in the so-called "schools of education" are being taught what evil, rapacious people Americans are, by professors - children of the '60s - who dodged the war that killed Don Holleder and others like him.) You simply have to read about Don Holleder. What a stud.
June 5- I had an interesting talk with John Allen Dees, whose company, Athletic Publishing Company in Montgomery, Alabama puts out the National Directory of High School Coaches (it's where I get my mailing lists), as well as the Blue Book of College Athletics. A useful tip for coaches: John Allen points out how useful the Blue Book can be to a high school coach when parents ask about finding or contacting a college (or junior college) for a son or daughter.
It may rain a bit in the Pacific Northwest, and a lot of high school baseball games may get rained out, but there's always American Legion and Senior Babe Ruth ball in the hot, dry summer, and so four high school kids from Washington - a state of only 5 million people - were among the 30 players selected in the first round of last week's major league baseball draft.
Steve Duin, a former sports columnist for the Portland Oregonian, is now a general columnist, but he made a brief return to the world of sports last week to write a scathing column about the Portland Trail Blazers, calling them, among other things, "churlish." (Love that word: "rude...boorish...surly...difficult to work with." He'll get no argument from me.) As you might expect, a few people wrote to the paper, defending their "heroes." One idiot stated that basketball players are the way they are because basketball is "a microcosm of society." Right. The rest of us consistently show up late for work, leave early (see Rasheed Wallace head for the locker room instead of the bench when he fouled out against San Antonio?), get our bosses in strangle holds when we disagree with their decisions, and thump ourselves in the chest to show everybody how much heart we have whenever we do what we're paid - millions - to do. Right. And they got the idea for covering their bodies with grotesque tatoos from "society." I'd like that fool to see what we coaches see - the way kids are picking up on the antics and trash talk of the NBA - and then tell me whether these guys reflect society, or whether society, increasingly, is reflecting them. (By the way, in case anybody wanted to see what happens when a talented team with heart and character plays a talented team with no heart and a lot of characters, it was all there to see in San Antonio's Friday night trouncing of Portland.)
Division III Augustana College, from Rock Island, Illinois, defeated the Helsinki Roosters, 36-10 in Helsinki, Finland Friday night. It was the first time since 1989 that an American college team had played in Finland, and the Roosters, although considered one of Europe's top teams, were unable to stop the visiting Vikings' running game. I think it is useful for the Europeans to see that the NFL, despite the impression that it tries to give, is not the only place in the US that plays good football. (For the most part, Europeans have no awareness of the quality of football played in the US at the high school or college level.) Until they get over their obsession with the pro game and begin concentrating on developing the fundamentals at an early age, their game is not likely to improve significantly. (Incidentally, it was in 1988, coaching against the Roosters and their offensive coordinator, Don Markham, that I first saw the tight-split double wing.)
June 4- Marianne Stanley wasn't entitled to receive the same pay as George Raveling, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in a 2-1 vote. Stanley, women's basketball coach at USC, in 1993 rejected a $26,000 raise in pay because it would bring her total salary to $96,000 while Raveling, head of USC's men's program, was paid more than $130,000. Naturally, Stanley claimed discrimination, and sued. It couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the fact that the men's program generated for more revenue and publicity for the University and the men's job had a lot more pressure attached to it. The court didn't even get to those issues, saying that USC could justify the pay difference solely on the basis of Raveling's far greater experience. At the time Raveling had over 30 years' coaching experience, including previous stops at Washington State and Iowa, he had coached the US Olympic team, conducted numerous camps and written several books on basketball. And he had twice named Coach of the Year. At the same time Stanley, now coach at California, had 14 years' experience, most recently at Old Dominion. Stanley has been ordered to pay USC's $46,000 in legal fees. Here's the humor, if you're looking for some: The dissenting judge said, "The university's halfhearted promotion of the women's basketball program, its intensive marketing of the men's basketball program, and the formidable obstacles Stanley faced as a woman athlete in a male-dominated profession contributed to this disparate treatment." If you know anything about USC men's basketball and its meager crowds, you will find it highly amusing that someone thinks it has been the beneficiary of "intensive marketing."
Does this sound like your school- kids with real football potential being held hostage by another coach - or, worse still, by one of those AAU types - and required to attend "optional" practices thinly disguised as "open gym," playing in spring leagues, summer leagues and fall leagues, travelling to tournaments every summer weekend, all with the understanding that if they don't participate they won't play? You might casually mention the name "David Robinson" to them. You see, David Robinson, star center of the San Antonio Spurs, didn't even play high school basketball until his senior year. And it's not as if he was hoop dreamin' instead, shooting baskets until someone turned the lights out, or hanging around the gym until he was thrown out. He had a life. He was - grab hold of your chair - reading and studying. And learning how to play musical instruments. And using a computer. And instead of watching a television set, he built one. Maybe that's why we got into the Naval Academy. And somehow, he managed to develop the skills needed by a basketball player without having to sell his soul to the year-round basketball coach. True, it didn't hurt any that along the way he grew to be seven feet tall. But he didn't stunt his growth as a human being by becoming one-dimensional in his high school years. Or his college years - he took the same academic classes as the rest of his classmates, and he would up with a real college education, with a real diploma from a prestigious institution. (Maybe that's why he now stands out among NBA players - among pro athletes, for that matter - as an example of the kind of player - and man - that we'd like all of our kids grow up to be. He is a very good player who doesn't draw attention to himself. He is a good family man. He is a gentleman. And because he's not a thug, he's called "soft." But as David Dupree asks in a recent column in USA Today, "Are you soft if you don't have tattoos up and down both arms and don't talk about how tough you are and how you back down from no one? Are you soft if you don't chest bump, fist wave, and commit flagrant fouls to send a message? It doesn't matter how many guys you knock down. It's how often you get up after getting knocked down that determines if you're soft or not. David Robinson always gets up.")
Coach Ron Timson, in Bennington, Nebraska had been planning a trip to visit his in-laws in Florida when he read on this web site about Tim Smith's being named head coach at Umatilla, Florida, not far from where he's going. So he contacted Coach Smith, and as a result, he writes, "we will share some film and some chalk time. I told him I thought I would go crazy in 10 days in Florida with no one to talk football with. You can only talk to relatives about so many things, and then you have to find a football coach somewhere." If you're a double-wing coach and you're faced with football-deprivation the way Coach Timson was, contact me - there may be a double-wing guy near where you're going!
June 3 - In one of those crazy coincidences of life, I picked up the paper yesterday to learn that a gentleman whom I wrote about on Sunday, May 31, had died on that very day. His name was Colonel William Lawley, Jr., and he was a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, a bomber pilot from Montgomery, Alabama, who was gracious enough to visit my classes several years ago and let a group of high school freshmen raised on rock stars and professional athletes see what a real hero looked like. Colonel Lawley died Sunday in Montgomery at the age of 78. All he did as a 23-year-old Army lieutenant in February, 1944 was fly a B-17 Flying Fortress from England to Leipzig, Germany and back to England again. But he did hit a few snags along the way. Before he could release his payload of bombs, German fighters attacked, killing his co-pilot and wounding him and the other eight members of the crew, knocking out one of his four engines, and damaging a wing. Bleeding severely, and with his plane in a near-vertical dive, he managed to push the dead co-pilot off the controls, fight to gain control of the plane, and level off after a fall of 16,000 feet. Afraid that the plane might explode, he signalled to his crew to bail out, but , informed that two of them were too seriously wounded to do so, he decided to try to save them by flying his plane and its load of bombs back to England - on three engines. This meant at least five hours of flying over enemy territory. Over France, he passed out from loss of blood, but was revived in time to jettison the bombs over the English Channel. Now, with one engine already gone, another caught fire and a third ran out of gasoline. On one engine, he managed a crash landing south of London. All of the wounded crewmen survived.
What they did was wrong, but it didn't rise to the level of an impeachable offense: a student in a Washington high school, obviously an accomplished computer hacker, broke into his school district's computer system and, for a fee, changed the grades of 23 fellow students. In several cases, he even went so far as to change course descriptions to indicate they had taken more advanced classes. Now that the scheme has been unearthed, the school district has handed down its punishment, and it's enough to give pause to anyone considering a repeat offense: expulsion for the hacker, and 10 days' suspension for his 23 clients. Period. That's it. The 22 accompices who are seniors will graduate on schedule. "When you deny that," said the superintendent, a model of courage, "you punish parents, grandparents, people who already have airline tickets and hotel reservations." (I suppose he'd tell you that you had to start the kid who missed practice yesterday, because no to do so would be to punish parents, grandparents, etc.) At least one of the seniors is known to have received scholarship aid from a college. Perhaps it was on the basis of the fraudulent grades. But who will ever know - in perhaps the best example yet of the trickle-down effect of the impeachment fiasco, colleges have not been advised of the students' involvement in the scheme. Said the superintendent, in the "haven't-they-suffered-enough?" administrative mode that so many coaches are familiar with, "Our intent was not to ruin their college careers." Am I missing something? Isn't the school district's withholding of this rather significant information also a form of fraud? I'm sure that this Superintendent would be overjoyed to learn that he had just hired a teacher whose misconduct on a previous job had been omitted in a reference from the previous employer. And since when is it the school district that's "ruining their college careers" by reporting what is fact? Aren't the kids themselves the ones who did this? and to their parents? and to their grandparents? Oh, well - just to show that you can find humor in even the grimmest story - this hacker ain't no future Bill Gates: he charged his customers just $5 each.
June 2- Ed Racely, who is the single-wing historian as well as the Free World's only known source of Dr. Ken Keuffel's book on the single wing, is going to be spending the summer at his place on Cape Cod. Unfortunately for football coaches, that means that Ed won't be able to mail books out until some time in August. Ed also asked that I pass along the news of a price increase: because his copying costs have increased, Ed must now charge $21 for Dr. Keuffel's book. It would be a bargain at twice that.
Coach Homer Smith by now is back home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama after a reunion last week at his alma mater, Princeton. He wrote to say that he was looking forward to seeing highights of Princeton's great teams from the '50s, running their famous single wing. Coach Smith himself was a single wing fullback at Princeton, and he told that guys at my Birmingham clinic that he guessed he'd run the wedge "several hundred times."
Jealousy rears its ugly head: A student at a Vancouver, Washington high school turned her senior project into one more "gender equity" crusade designed to show how unfairly girls in sports are treated relative to boys. She is a softball player, her problem is with the school's softball field, and she's asking the school board for $42,000 to make improvements in the facility. The school board does have the money, but it's been earmarked for restoring boys' wrestling to middle schools, where its absence for over 10 years has had a disastrous effect on the competitiveness of the district's four high school wrestling programs. Now, the softball field is definitely not a good facility, but you can't discount the jealousy factor, because it especially suffers in comparison with the school's 1,000-seat baseball stadium, possibly the best high school baseball field in the state, and site of last week's state 4A final four. The problem is, the school district didn't create the disparity: the baseball stadium wouldn't exist without the generosity of a gentleman named George Propstra, whose local hamburger chain made him a fortune, and who now seems determined to give most of it back to the community. Mr. Propstra donated over $1 million of his own money to create a baseball centerpiece in this baseball-crazy community (major-leaguers Randy Myers, Brian Hunter and Richie Sexson are products of local high schools), and I'm sure he had no Propstra's gift to a not-altogether-grateful community.
May 31- Time to take a moment and thank a vet - the older the better. Memorial Day in Camas, Washington is always a stirring thing for me as the vets from the local American Legion post visit the flag-bedecked cemetery on the hilltop across the road from us and walk from one veteran's grave to another, planting miniature American flags as the veteran's name is read aloud. It reminds me of Finland, where at the center of every town is the Church (Lutheran), always surrounded by row upon row of lovingly-tended graves of young Finnish men who died fighting a civil war against a Communist takeover in 1917, and twice defending their country against the invading Russians in World War II. Finland is now such a peaceful country that it is difficult to imagine the ferocity of the fighting that took place on its soil in this century, and it is an awesome sight to walk among the graves in the churchyards and notice how young these men were when they fell. Maybe it's because Finns have actually had to fight to defend their native land and we have not, and perhaps it's because the long border they share with Russia never allows the Finns to drop their guard completely, but they show a reverence and respect for their fallen soldiers that American liberals would scoff at. It certainly has not made me any more tolerant of American kids screwing around during the playing of our National Anthem, or teachers who can't be bothered with having their kids say the Pledge of Allegiance (even though, in Washington the law requires it). In Finland, high school graduation is followed by a parade to the town churchyard, where the graduates lay flowers on the graves of the young men who will never grow old. If you haven't yet read the story of Don Holleder - a neat football story, by the way - Memorial Day weekend would be a great time to do so.
Taking back our country, one classroom at a time- Recollection of the patriotic Finns was what drew me to an article by Nick Bunkley in the Kalamazoo Gazette about a U.S. History class project at Kalamazoo's Loy Norrix High School. Two teachers, Sveri Stromsta May and Dob Drake, assigned each of their 30 students to interview one veteran at the Fort Custer Medical Center, keeping a notebook of the veteran's recollections and recording their own impressions. On Friday, the project culminated in a class visit to Fort Custer National Cemetery, where the students decorated the graves of veterans. "I'm here to honor the veterans and to honor the debt of what the cost was to out country," sophomore Crystal Washington told reporter Bunkley. It's only one class and it's only one town, but cheers to two teachers with "Stones."
40 million Americans have served in our armed forces in this century. Of that number, just 931 have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, half of them posthumously. General George Patton supposedly said he would give his immortal soul for one. Marine Smedley Butler won two of them. There are 157 Medal award winners still living, and 96 of them attended a ceremony in Indianapolis Friday to dedicate a monument honoring the Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Several years ago, the Medal of Honor winners held their annual reunion in Vancouver, Washington, and one of the great thrills of my life was to have two winners - a bomber pilot from Montgomery, Alabama and an infantryman from Pittston, Pennsylvania - visit our school and address my five classes of freshmen.
May 30- Just spent a very enjoyable two days in Kalamazoo, Michigan at Kalamazoo Christian High School. Flying there is an interesting experience, because Kalamazoo is only about a 3-hour drive from Chicago, and by the time a jet reached crusing altitude, it would be time to land, so from O'Hare, it's a prop job. It was the first time I'd flown in a prop airliner in a long time, but other than hunting for the departure gate in the far reaches of O'Hare, no problem. It was kind of interesting on the flight back when, in order to balance out the load on the plane, the flight attendant asked for three volunteers from the first three rows to move to the rear of the plane. She asked three times without success and finally, she just pointed at three people and said "You, you and you," and dispatched them to the rear. She'd have made a great coach.
Kalamazoo Chrsitian coach Mike Hause is sold on the double wing. He went to college with Jerry Vallotton, author of "The Toss," and after going 1-8 in 1997, his first season at KC, he bought my basic package, took his staff to the 1998 Chicago clinic, and decided to go to the double wing whole-hog. The 1998 KC Comets tripled their win output, doubled their point output, and increased their rushing yardage from 900 yards to over 2000. In one game, against their arch-rival (which KC won) they put on a 90-yard drive that took 22 plays and covered 10 minutes, eating up what was left of the third period and lapping over into the fourth. And in that drive, 21 of the 22 plays were either 88 Super Power or 2-wedge. Offensive coordinator Roger Doorn, who obviously understands the importance of not stopping your own offense, at one point ran five straight 88 Super Powers!
Kalamazoo is a nice city, home of Western Michigan University, and the weather was glorious. After a Friday staff clinic, we ran two Saturday sessions, with the high school squad in the morning and the younger kids in the afternoon. The high school kids looked very sharp, but it was the afternoon session that demonstrated how far the roots of Coach Hause's rebuilding efforts are extending into the program. The "middle school" team, for 6th-7th-8th graders, actually brings together kids from 3 Christian elementary schools around Kalamazoo. Last year, under the co-directorship of John Braganini and Herb Persons, both of them volunteers and benefactors of the program, the young Comets went undefeated, which may have had something to do with the fact that some 20+ prospects for next year's middle school team showed up on a sunny, 85-degree afternoon. And along with the middle school team came more than 20 "Rockets," a 3rd-4th-5th grade youth team that KC is fielding for the first time. Think they won't be well coached? High school JV coach Bob Mulder offered to step down from his high school post to coach the Rockets, and he'll be assisted by Coach Roger Dorn's brother, Doug Doorn. It's a beautiful thing to see dedicated men - not a one of whom, Coach Hause included, is a member of the KC faculty - spending their time helping young boys to become the right kind of men.
Especially in the afternoon, we spent a lot of time on the sort of basic skills - line stances, ball-handling and blocking techniques - we are so crucial to the success of the double wing. The kids really seemed to get excited when we got out the hand shields and started with the basics of the drive block. They would have gone full-contact if we'd let them.
Interesting stat culled from the Michigan papers: Deer hunting is popular and productive in Michigan. Nevertheless, there were more than 65,000 car-deer collisions in Michigan in 1998. One of the problems seems to be that the hunters are where the deer aren't, and vice-versa, as Bambi moves into the animal-friendly suburbs and deer herds multiply to many times their sustainable number.
May 28- I once worked for a principal named Chris Thompson, a former football coach and a Marine, who used to say, "We spend too much time preparing the path for the kids, when we should be preparing the kids for the path." With that in mind, I bring up the just-passed Washington state law providing two years' free tuition to any in-state junior college to any student in the top 10 per cent of his or her graduating class. It was greeted with enthusiasm by one counselor in Vancouver, Washington, who seemed especially pleased that it would help those students who missed out on customary financial aid because - "they didn't get their applications in on time."
Hey! Isn't failing to pass a class a disability? Arlington, Texas students who failed classes during the school year will now get paid to make up the work in summer school. The program, which pays students $5.25 per hour, will be funded through the federal Job Training Program Act. The classes will meet from 8 a.m. to noon for 22 weekdays beginning June 1. Students who attend all the classes can earn $462, school officials said. Critics of the program said that students should not be rewarded for failing classes during the regular school term and that simply paying them for attendance does not encourage academic achievement. Critics say that learning the course material in order to pass to the next grade should be incentive enough for the students.
I had just come across a fantastic column about how we were turning our kids into pussies, when this came in from a coach in Indiana - "Thought you would want to see this reply to a former roommate of mine from college who is a Major in the Air Force stationed in Ramstein Germany. 'It really bothers me where this country is headed--thank God for football coaches. I am beginning to think that we are the last holdouts against this tidal wave of liberalism. (Our coach is writing about an on-campus incident - not school-related - that resulted in cancellation of the last day of school). It is sad that in today's environment we let one nut case dictate to the entire school system what we do. We have cancelled the rest of the school year and all functions except graduation. That is crazy! People have to realize that bad things are going to happen all the time and you have to deal with them. We are making PUSSIES out of our youth in our educational systems. I sure hope that we never have to fight another world war where the draft is reinstated--we have so many pussies out there that we would get our butts kicked. We were talking about the draft in class the other day when I had an ex-student come to visit. He has a year to go in school, but joined the Marine Corps reserve and went through boot camp--it changed his life. He is a fine upstanding young man now, where before he was a punk. He was telling one of my classes about the Marines and one fat crybaby of a so-called young man said "I will never have to do that--I am an only child. They wouldn't do that to my mother." I was PISSED and asked him just who did he think he was. I accused him of being a free-loader on the great society that has been built by the blood and sweat of his grandparents. He almost cried--but I told him if he cried he was kicked out of class! I am sure that I will get a phone call on that one. I am sure you see more of that than I do, but it worries me that we let the nuts run society. Where is our country going?'" Dear Coach: give them my number- and I'll give my nut cases your number!
Perhaps the worm really has begun to turn. Although It shouldn't have been necessary, the Oklahoma state legislature just passed into law a bill "reminding" parents that they have the right to use corporal punishment - including "spanking, paddling or whipping with a switch" - to control their children. Imagine! You can punish your own kid! What will they think of next? Apparently, this silliness was deemed necessary because of reports of defiant children who know their "rights," and avoid punishment by threatening to accuse their parents of child abuse.
Maybe you ought to hear about some good kids- three Gig Harbor, Washington brothers - 18-year-old Tanner Brown, 16-year-old Nate Johnson, and 15-year-old Drew Johnson - received their Eagle Scout awards at the same time last weekend, at the Gig Harbor Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nate has been receiving chemotherapy for bone cancer; Drew has been dealing with a brain tumor.
May 27-Stupid interview questions from Coach Glade Hall in Seattle: " Coach , Twenty years ago I interviewed for a job with our local phone company , Pacific NorthWest Bell . After going through a battery of manual dexterity tests where I had to stand on a 2x4 , squeeze a grip meter and put round and square blocks in a board, she asked, 'What would you like to be trained in?' Thinking for a moment ( keep in mind I was applying for a phone installer job ) I asked to be trained as a Jet Pilot . She looked it up in her book and didn't find that job code. No joke , she didn't bat an eye . I next asked for heart surgeon. 'Not on the list,'' she replied . Then I said , 'How about something in PHONE INSTALLING?'After a minute of searching through her files she offered me Directory Assistance Training . Gees , I left in a hurry ! That's not all - two weeks later they offered me a management position . I turned it down, so they hired me as a phone installer . Go figure"
On the subject of that one particular stupid interview question, from Coach Scott Barnes, in Denver: "When I was a Freshman, I was enrolled in the band and at the same time played on the football team. I played the trumpet and linebacker at the same time. Well, sure enough, the band was scheduled to play at a football game that I was also scheduled to play in - my totally understanding band instructor was clear - don't show up with the band and you get a failing grade. I didn't even TELL my coach my dilemma - well, after much discussion with my dad, he told me that it was basically my choice. Great. (wanna guess MY choice?) So I'm in my bed sleeping a couple of nights before the game - all of a sudden my dad wakes me up - must have been about midnight - Dad asked me "Scott..could you play your trumpet with a busted lip?" I was a little groggy, asked him to repeat the question and when he did, I answered "no sir"(I always said sir and ma'am, even when groggy..dad wouldn't have it any other way!) - about a nano second after answering the question, my dad proceeded to hit me with a hard right jab in the chops...resulting in one of the worse "fat lips" I've every received!to say the least, my mom doesn't much approve of me telling this story, but it's a no-BS true tale - and guess what? He solved the problem - I "couldn't" play in the band..my only choice was to play football..Mom decided it was time for a trip to the school where we had my schedule adjusted, and I havn't played the trumpet since...Does this qualify my dad as an Alpha dad?? Mom thinks it qualifies him as a physco! So the answer to the interviewers stupid ass question should have been 'gee, I don't know...can I meet his dad?'"
Coach Jim Pickett is heading into his second year as offensive coordinator at Camden, Arkansas High. He told me of the time in December, when he was coaching the basketball team and they were eating at a restaurant in Fayetteville. Someone brought out a birthday cake and put it in front of one of the players, a sophomore who had been Coach Pickett's varsity quarterback. He asked how old the boy was, and when he was told it was his 16th birthday, Coach Pickett looked at the other basketball coaches in shocked disbelief and said, "you mean we played ten games with a 15-year-old at quarterback?"
Just got a copy of Keokuk, Iowa's highlights tape, and I'm only one game in, but I can already see that in his second year of running the double wing, Coach Don Capaldo really had his kids executing.
Chalk up another win for football! The Edmonds, Washington School District approved a plan to reinstate football in its middle schools after a 17-year absence. The three-high-school district north of Seattle expects to reinstate football for the 2001 season. The district discontinued its middle-school football program in the early 1980s when ninth-graders were shifted out of the middle schools, making the high schools four-year schools. "We are going to have to find funding," said Doris Walker, Edmonds assistant superintendent. "The board is very supportive. The more opportunities we extend in organized activities, the better our students will be." The move was made to try to bring the Edmonds schools in line with other schools in its conference. "We want to keep up with what our neighbors are doing," Terri McMahan, district director of athletics told the Seattle Times. "The other WesCo 3A schools have always offered middle school football and we didn't. That helped draw a lot of support for the plan."
May 26- (Why do I think I wouldn't want to work for this guy?) A coach of my acquaintance tells me of a recent job interview in which the main interviewer, his prospective boss, asked him, "What would you do if one of your football players was in the drama class, and he had to be in a play on the same night as a football game?" He said he was so stunned by the stupidity of the question that he kind of stammered through some sort of an answer. Later, after talking it over, he and I decided we'd say "I'd ask you what you were thinking when you let them schedule the play for a Friday night in the fall, and then I'd ask the drama teacher just how many people he (or she) thought would show up at a school play on the same night as a football game." Next thing you know, they'll ask "If you could be any kind of tree you wanted, what kind of a tree would you be, and why?" Submit your "dumbest job interview question"
This just in from my secret source at Fox Sports World - not saying that the NFL is dropping the ball in its handling of the awarding of the LA franchise, but it's dropping something. An NFL executive dropped a model of the LA Memorial Coliseum on his foot, requiring 30 stitches.
Cecil Brinkley is an alpha male. He is the assistant principal at Heritage High, outside Atlanta, who walked up to the 15-year-old gunman who had just shot six students, and said, "Give me the gun." He is a real adult in a world of teenagers. So was coach Dave Saunders, the fallen hero of the Columbine High tragedy. If you're an adult surrounded by teenagers, you're more important than you think. David Sarasohn, in today's Portland Oregonian, describes today's teen-obsessed society in which most teenagers spend their lives in isolation from the world of adults - they have their own TV sets (and telephones) in their own rooms, where they watch shows geared entirely to teenagers on networks (ever seen WB?) devoted entirely to such shows, sponsored by companies who could care less whether you and I buy their products, so long as teenagers do; they spend a major portion of their lives in enormous megahigh schools, with only slight interaction with adults, and after school they socialize or work - usually, in the latter case, at malls or fast-food restaurants, surrounded by other teenagers. Sarasohn wryly observes that the worlds of kids and adults are so different that "we should consider exchanging ambassadors." In fact, Sarasohn goes on, "In a way, adults who work in high schools and middle schools are ambassadors, reaching across a widening gap into a different universe." Why didn't one of us think about that? Ambassadors! Instead of being poor, humble teachers and coaches, begging for crumbs from educational higher-ups preoccupied with test scores and school reform, from budget-cutters seeing how many PE and athletic programs they can cut back on, we should be receiving ambassadors' pay! Only one catch. We've got to be adults ourselves. No more of these faculty feel-gooders, whose idea of "relating" to teenagers is trying to act like them. They'll be the first to go. We'll be left with the alpha adults. Don't be surprised if most of them are coaches.
Coach Jim Ferdon, in Georgetown, South Carolina called me the other day, to tell me how spring practice had gone. He was pleased with the way the D-W is looking, but he's a bit disappointed because this will be the last year for his high school, which in 2000 will consolidate with another local school. He's a good man, and I sure hope he gets a good shot at the job at the consolidated school. It's interesting to note the different state regulations regarding spring practice: this year, for the first time, South Carolina allowed pad-to-pad contact. But it's limited to linemen, and they can't start out more than 3 feet apart!
May 25- It's only fair to let you know about my biases, so I must tell you that Coach Mark Kaczmarek and I are members of a very special group - the World Football League Alumni Society - celebrating the WFL's 25th anniversary this summer and fall. So whenever "Coach K" writes me, I pay attention. And he wants everybody to know that it is true, just as this week's Sports Illustrated article says, that in his first varsity carry, as a freshman, Tim Dwight scored on a long TD run in a playoff game against Coach K's team, Assumption High of Davenport, Iowa. But Coach K also thought it might be informative (I agree) to point out that Assumption won the game.
Now that the "rage" of the school outcasts against those nasty ole athletes has been put forth as a plausible reason for the murders at Columbine High School (wouldn't want to blame the guys who did it), it is rather instructive to have a teenager point out that this theme is not new to moviemakers. "Look at the movies for my age group," said Chikwere "Obi" Amachi, and football and track athlete and student body president at suburban Philadelphia's LaSalle High School, to Philadelphia Inquirer writer Scott Flander. "The hero's always the kid who's not that popular, and gets together with the girl who's the girlfriend of the varsity quarterback. It ends up being the good guy against the bad guy, and the bad guy's the athlete. The jock is the meathead. That's what the 'Revenge of the Nerds' series was all about."
Coach John Naylor, a longtime Texas coach, tells me that some Texas high school staffs tend to be rather large. So much so that not so long ago John asked an old coaching associate, now a head coach at a large high school, how a certain young man on his staff was doing. Coach Naylor said the coach at first looked at him blankly; clearly the name was unknown to him. Then, realizing that John must be asking about one of his assistants, stammered, "Oh... right...uh...Oh, yeah - he coaches my wide receivers. He's...uh..doing a great job."
May 24- In an e-mail from Coach Paul Maier, in Mt. Vernon, Indiana: "Noticed the paragraph about GPA's on your site this morning. Here is a little tidbit for you. My wife did a research paper on that subject and used her cross country team as the example. Over the last 8 years, the GPA of her team was an AVERAGE of 3.94. The top 25% of the high school was 3.86. She jokes with one of her runners--an extremely talented young girl who is a junior this year (3 time sectional champion, 3 time conference champion in cross country; and mile and 2 mile champion in the conference and sectional the last 3 years too) that she is her "problem child" grade wise with a sorry 3.4! The other kids on her team tease her about being a "dumb" athlete! Personally I think it has more to do with being a distance runner than being smart kids--anyone disciplined enough to run the workouts they do will surely be disciplined in the classroom." (You are so right, coach - and a whole lot to do with whether a kid's parents buy him his own phone, and let him play Nintendo up in his room after school, or hang around the convenience store with his friends.)
Looking for a change of scene? A chance to get in on the start of a brand-new program? Coach Greg Hansen has just taken over at Sioux Central High in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, and he's got three assistant positions to fill - (1) JV Head Coach; (2) JV O or D Coordinator; (3) Junior High Assistant. There are teaching positions, too, and other coaching is available. Coach Hansen and assistant coach Steve Jarvis were at my Twin Cities clinic, and they impressed me with their enthusiasm and positive attitude. If you're interested, E-mail Coach Hansen at greghansen44@yahoo.com
Speaking of Iowa- check out the article in this week's Sports Illustrated on former Hawkeye Tim Dwight, now a reckless kick- and punt-return man for the Atlanta Falcons. The guy loves track so much that he jumped through all sorts of hoops in order to become NCAA-eligible to compete for Iowa in this spring's track meets. THIS JUST IN, THANKS TO PAUL HERZOG IN NORTH ST PAUL: Tim Dwight won the 100 in this past weekend's Big Ten Championships in 10.51!!! (And he didn't have his hand out. He did it for fun.)
Sammy Baugh won't be in Dallas tomorrow for his induction into the Cotton Bowl Hall of Fame. He's 85, and he's seen enough of big cities. Instead, "Slingin' Sammy" will be back home on his ranch in West Texas. Sammy Baugh, for those who think that there was no football before Super Bowl I, was perhaps the NFL's first "modern quarterback" (if it wasn't Sammy Baugh, it was almost certainly the Chicago Bears' Sid Luckman), coming out of the pass-happy Southwest Conference and helping transform the pro game, for better or worse, into the passing show that it is today. Playing from 1937 through 1952, Baugh spent his entire career with the Washington R------s (who says I'm not Politically Correct?), and in the process made the transition from single-wing tailback to "T" formation quarterback. And this was one QB who wouldn't have been caught dead hook-sliding - he went both ways, and was considered one of the toughest safeties in the game.
May 23- Ed Racely, single-wing historian, was at the San Jose clinic. He's back from a long vacation on Cape Cod and has resumed filling orders for Dr. Ken Keuffel's Single Wing Book (see my "Coaching Resources" page). Ed said he attended his 50th high school reunion back in Nebraska not so long ago, and when the subject got around to football, one of the attendees bet that everybody there could name their football coach for all four of their high school years - turned out they could - but no one could name their sophomore English teacher - turned out they couldn't. A special hard-core award to Coach Tony Macon, from Pittsburg, California, who attended the LA clinic two weeks ago, and also showed up in San Jose this weekend, wearing his "Set of Stones" tee shirt.
Anybody see the bit on page 10 of the May 24 Newsweek in which one David Updike, a "modern dad", describes his frustrations in dealing with his son's tastes in clothing? According to Dad, the lad lately "has taken up a style of dressing that, for reasons not entirely clear to me, I do not like." Clearly not an alpha male who would consider exerting leadership in his own family, Dad wrings his hands and describes the "style, which includes "forgetting" a belt, so that his son's ample pants "sag" down around his buttocks. Gracious! What's a father to do? Mom, as you might expect, doesn't see a problem, and seems to be the one buying the clothing. And Junior's response, when Dad dares to offend him by bringing up the subject, is a petulant "Dad! What's your problem?" And this little tyrant is 9 years old! How much you wanna bet the kid talks the same way to teachers, to coaches (that is, if ever takes time away from his Nintendo to play anything other than soccer), and authority in general. And how much you wanna bet "Modern Dad," having already lost the domestic power struggle to a 9-year-old twerp, is at school in a heartbeat any time one of those authoritarian schoolteachers tries to discipline the little darling?
I came across a new coaching web site yesterday and was aghast to learn that for the past several years I have been in violation of the "offensive commandments" of one "Coach Hutchison," the resident expert on the site. Here is the first and great commandment (I'm not kidding): "Force the defense to defend the entire field. NEVER (capitalization mine) allow a defense to crowd the line of scrimmage, stacking 8 or 10 men in the box." Excuse me, "Coach Hutchison," but if I want to be a good football coach and do exactly as you advise - would somebody please show me how to run this doggone double-tight, double wing without packing everybody in so tight? He also commanded that we script our plays. Sure, "Coach Hutchison." We'll start out with play number one and work our way down the list. And if play number one - let's say it's 88 Super Power - gains 15 yards, we won't come right back and run it again until they stop it . Not unless it's play number two. Because we're going to go by the script. My guess is that this "Coach Hutchison" is not a real person, but a fictional character, spreading misinformation by passing on the cliches of the Sunday TV guys. Either that or, worse yet, he's an actual coach who's doing the same thing. In either case, I leave you to discover on your own this genius and the web site on which he resides. One final bit of advice from "Coach Hutchison" which leads me to suspect that if he is an actual person, he has never been gainfully employed as a football coach (or at least not for very long): "Take chances - No guts, no glory." Right, coach. Also no job
Paul Mannen, athletic director at Dallas, Oregon High School, has been mentioned in here before for the records he's been keeping regarding athletic participation and academic performance. Here are his most up-to-date figures, which he cited in a recent column in the Portland Oregonian: In this year's first semester at Dallas, 275 athletes had an average GPA of 3.056, 17 per cent higher than the 2.601 average GPA of 600 non-athletes. Of the athletes, the 74 who participated in both a fall and winter sport had an average GPA of 3.241, while the 201 who paricipated in one sport had an average GPA of 2.988. Mannen wrote that over the eight years in which he has done this grade check, the results have remained consistent.
May 22 - We all know by now that for quite some time, Barbie, the doll with the prodigious bod, has been the target of feminists. Their claim has been that envy of Barbie's incredible bodily proportions is a major cause of feelings of indequacy in little girls, feelings that lead ultimately to eating disorders such as bulemia and anorexia. (Right. Little girls all have this compulsive desire to look just like Barbie - they all want to be 14 inches tall.) Now, the honeymoon is over for little boys. They've got problems of their own, we're told. So, for that matter, do us older guys. It's GI Joe envy - he's so buff , with his 20+ inch biceps, that he's supposedly causing us all a lot of insecurity and "body image problems." ( The unattainable proportions of Barbie are probably a major reason why, in California, well-to-do parents are said to be giving their teenage daughters a unique high school graduation present: breast-enhancement surgery. Wouldn't want our little girls to go out into the world feeling inadequate about themselves now, would we?)
Jose Rodriguez, a former Brownsville, Texas high school football player whose lawyer claimed he suffered a head injury in a 1995 scrimmage that left him with permanent brain damage, was awarded $14,260,000 in his suit against Riddell, the second-largest ever against the helmet manufacturer. Rodriguez was wearing a Riddell helmet, one that had been reconditioned by All-American, a subsidiary of Riddell, which his lawyers argued was "substandard."
Riddell presented an impressive defense. Its attorney, Robert Guerra, of McAllen, Texas, argued that the youngster was wearing the same helmet, the Riddell VSR-4, that is worn by 90 per cent of all NFL players. According to Guerra the NFL, which since 1976 has been keeping track of head injuries, has not had a single injury of the sort experienced by young Rodriguez and blamed on the Riddell helmet. Guerra noted that players in the NFL hit significantly harder than high school players.
A San Antonio physician, Dr. A. Garza-Vale, testifying in Riddell's defense, said that it was possible the player had experienced bleeding before the game, the result of a condition called familial angiomatosis - weak blood vessels - which evidently affects Hispanics in disproportionate numbers. A close friend said that Rodriguez had been complaining of headaches for at least a week, but refused to tell his coach, knowing that to do so would mean he couldn't play.
Another expert, a biomechanical engineer, analyzed the tape of the scrimmage, and looking at the play on which the youngsters' lawyers said he was injured ("an arm tackle" in attorney Guerra's words), estimated that the player's head was travelling 11 feet per second when it contacted the ground - a speed, according to the expert, insufficient to injure a healthy person who wasn't even wearing a helmet.
In the end, all the testimony and evidence made no difference: the American jury system once again defied reason. "Their arguments were a whole lot of crap," Guerra said. "What won their case for them was when they wheeled the boy down the aisle in a wheelchair, and he really did look horrible. It was very emotional, and the jury felt sympathy, but that had nothing to do with the merits of the case."
Now one of only two helmet manufacturers left in the business of making helmets, Riddell carries a $750,000 deductible insurance policy, but is uncertain of being able to obtain insurance beyond the year 2005. And with three other potentially huge suits now pending against it, Riddell - and American football as a sport - is more and more at the mercy of tort law, trial lawyers and the always unpredictable jury system.
Attorneys' fees in such cases are not normally revealed, but most such suits are taken on a "contingent fee" basis, meaning that the attorney's fee is contingent on winning the suit. It is safe to say, based on customary practice, that in a case such as this, going all the way to a jury trial, the fee would be at least 30% - or in excess of $4,000,000! Wonder why helmets are so expensive, and why there are only two helmet manufacturers left?
Riddell said it would appeal the verdict.
May 21 - The USA having already withdrawn from the upcoming World Cup of American Football, Japan has followed suit, and the national federations of Sweden and Italy, two European countries playing the game respectably, have defaulted on their financial obligations. Now, with what's left of the tournament hanging by a thread, a higher-up in European marketing has proposed that, in order to keep the tournament from collapsing, a "USA" team be cobbled together from American players scattered around Europe, playing for various local clubs. It doesn't take a genius to see that they are going to run into certain problems in trying to put such a team together , if I tell you a little something about how it works over there- the Americans playing in Europe tend to be mostly skill-position guys. The Europeans already have plenty of beef of their own, but an American at wide receiver, defensive back, running back, or - especially - quarterback, can make a huge difference. And even if they can come up with enough linemen, the clubs that have invested money in those players - air fare, lodging, meals, walking-around money - may be reluctant to let them risk injury playing on some sort of "Team USA."
But there are bigger issues here for us Americans- the way our sport is going to be represented internationally, and who is going to be responsible. The right to select the team to represent the "USA" was originally given to the American Football Coaches Association, which selected a team and hired a coach (Gene Stallings), and then, after the outbreak of nastiness in Kosovo, chose not to send the team to the tournament. Who, then, now has the right to select a "Team USA," and make sure that our game is properly presented? I presume that the International Federation of American Football can admit to its tournament any team it chooses to represent the "USA", but to imply in any way that such a team is sanctioned by anyone official to represent us, in our native game, in the manner in which we expect to be represented, is not in American football's best interests.
I think the right to represent the "United States" in any international competition must be earned - either by demonstrated excellence as a team, or by competitive tryout. The team originally selected to represent us evidently met the latter qualification. A hastily-assembled pick-up team of guys who just happen to be in the neighborhood will meet neither. They are good football players, and their team would undoubtedly be competitive, but it will not be a representative national team, and it shouldn't be advertised as such. No more so than the teams of little soccer and hockey players, heading off all over the world on their packaged tours that include gym bags and sweats with "USA" all over them, as if they are junior Olympians. (Wonder if Pat Riley, back when he copyrighted the word "Three-peat", ever thought about grabbing the rights to the name "USA?")
DOG PROPERTY LAWS: (1) If I like it, IT'S MINE; (2) If it's in my mouth, IT'S MINE; (3) If I can take it from you, IT'S MINE; (4) If I had it a little while ago, IT'S MINE; (5) If I'm chewing something up, all the pieces are MINE; (6) If it looks just like mine, IT'S MINE; (7) If I saw it first, IT'S MINE; (8) If you are playing with something and you put it down, it automatically becomes MINE; (9) If it's MINE, it must never appear to be yours in any way; (10) If it's broken, IT'S YOURS
Jack Reed, author of several football books, e-mailed me to tell me he'd be at tomorrow's San Jose clinic. But he also gave me the address of a page on his site on which he chronicles the adventures of his son, Dan, as he made his college decision. Dan Reed, now a 6-2, 175-pound senior at Miramonte High in Orinda, California, had an excellent season as Miramonte's starting tailback, and that, combined with his excellent grades and GPA scores, made him the target of the elite schools of the Ivy League. Jack provides a lot of recruiting details that would be useful as a resource for any coach or dad with an interest in finding the school that's the best fit for a player.http://www.johntreed.com/matsdad.html
May 20- Bob Tucker, of Huntingdon Beach, California, is treasurer of the Southern California chapter of Pride at Work, a so-called "gay and lesbian labor group," working to eliminate discrimination against gays and lesbians in the work force. But not even Mr. Tucker himself is immune to the evils of "homophobia": in his job as an elementary school custodian, he told the Orange County Register, he has actually witnessed grade school kids playing a game called "smear the queer."
Rich McCleskey, a Voluntown, Connecticut youth coach, has launched a web site dedicated to the single wing. It has a lot of promise - I wouldn't recommend it if I didn't think so - http://members.xoom.com/singlewing/
Here in the Pacific Northwest, the big story is the killing of a whale by the Makah Indians. They live in one of the rainiest places in the continental United States, at the very northwesternmost tip of Washington state ("It's not the end of the earth, but you can see it from there," as Lou Holtz once said about Fayetteville, Arkansas) and evidently killing whales was once a major part of their culture. Not lately, though. They hadn't killed one since 1920. What incredible contradictions this bizarre episode has produced: the Indians, claiming that the whale hunt represents a return to their cultural roots, hunted from a hand-carved cedar sea-going canoe- towed out to sea by a power boat; they harpooned the whale - then dispatched it with a rifle shot; they butchered it with a chain saw; and they shared the good news of the kill with those who couldn't be on hand - using cell phones. Meanwhile, on the other side of the issue, the gentle, peace-loving animal rights activists, who wouldn't harm a flea, are grief-stricken. But not so grief-stricken - or peace-loving - as to prevent them from phoning and e-mailing death threats to the Makahs.
Got a call today from Coach Tim Smith, who recently moved from Warner Christian Academy in Daytona Beach, Florida, to Umatilla, Florida, High. Coach Smith just finished his first spring at Umatilla, and he reported, with some frustration, that their spring jamboree had ended in a 14-14 tie. I hope I was able to settle him down a little, because Umatilla, which was 1-9 last year and going against a playoff team, twice lost the ball on fumbles inside the opponents' five. Coach Smith, incidentally, changed to my terminology from what he had been using, and said that it was a great aid in installing the system in a new program. The best thing, he felt, was "all the resources it made available" - if you're using our terminology, you can use my videos to teach your kids!
May 19- I keep hearing about all the workers who are calling in sick today so they can worship the false god of Star Wars. Why don't I think that very many of them are football coaches, who have slightly better things to do?
I spoke yesterday with the National Youth Chairman for USA Rugby, and he has promised to send me a set of the rules for two-hand tag rugby, which does sound like a great activity for off-season conditioning, for PE classes, or just for a little variety in your practices.
I'm also waiting on a somewhat tamed-down version of Australian Rules, which, with 18 players to a side, would really help out in those PE classes that the counselors insist on shoving more kids into. (Actually, for those larger classes, maybe the full-contact version of "footy" would be better - it'd either scare the slackers off, or send a few to the emergency room.)
Last Saturday morning, instead of eating breakfast by myself in my Bloomington, Minnesota hotel, I asked an older gentleman sitting by himself if I could join him, and he invited me to sit down. And I got to meet Mr. Vernon Shumate, of Kansas City, Missouri. Mr. Shumate was in the Twin Cities to attend a reunion of sailors from the USS Hornet, the aircraft carrier from which Colonel Jimmy Doolitlle launched his air raid on Tokyo. Mr. Shumate, who grew up on a Missouri farm, told me how, just out of high school, he and a friend had travelled some 50 miles to Kansas City to check into the possibility of enlisting on the Navy. And that was the last his family heard from him for weeks. He enlisted was immediately shipped out, and since his family had no phone, it was only when he was finally able to write to his mother weeks later that she learned what had happened to him. After surviving several Kamikaze attacks, having two of his ships sunk (the Hornet went down in 1942 in the Battle of the Coral Sea, with the loss of over 600 shipmates), and witnessing first-hand the deaths of numerous buddies, he said he is convinced he had a guardian angel looking out for him. He also told me that he didn't sleep well for over 40 years, until finally his memory began to fail him, and he was able to forget the things he'd experienced. (Nowadays, if school kids so much as see a cat kill a mouse, we have to bring in the counselors by the busload - for their teachers.) Mr. Shumate said that after the way he'd seen the military experience toughen young guys mentally, he'd recommend two years of compulsory military training for every young American male . What a guy. God Bless Mr. Shumate and the people of his generation. What a bunch of studs.
May 18- Paul Herzog, of North St. Paul High, is one of the charter members of the Double Wing Club. When Paul took over at North, there were 19 kids in a football program that hadn't won a game in two years. He brought in the run-and-shoot that he had run at a St. Paul city high school, but quickly came to the realization that (1) his quarterback was getting beaten up; (2) his offensive linemen weren't having any fun; and (3) his defense was spending too much time on the field. So he did a survey of the teams playing "in the Dome" (the Hubert H. Humphrey MetroDome) for the state championship, and found that only one of them was a passing team. And that's when he decided to look for a running offense. His first year, he ran the double wing on the basis of an article in Scholastic Coach. He only won one game - the last game of the season - but as Coach Herzog puts it, "we were getting closer." Best of all, he said, "our kids were having more fun. They were getting excited about a game, because they got to get after somebody." He adopted my terminology before the next season, and "it simplified the system for us. Our kids understood it." North won 6 games in 1997, and in 1998, again won 6 regular season games, then went on to win its sectional championship. Having just completed his fourth year of running the double wing, Coach Herzog is more convinced than ever that it is no fluke. He mentioned finally beating a local power that had seen his offense at least six times before. "We got better at it," he said. "We have started to beat teams that have seen it before." He also told the coaches, "You've got to run the wedge," later proving his point by showing me tape of the sectional final win over Spring Lake Park, in which North scored from the 12 on two straight wedges. On the scoring play, from the five, North's entire offensive unit made it into the end zone! Coach Herzog, who runs the weight room at North - and what a setup it is - was understandably a bit tired, having just finished a week of May Madness, a boot camp sort of activity that had run every morning the previous week, starting at 6:20. Coach Herzog got the idea, which originated at Converse (Texas) Judson High, from state champ Woodbury, Minnesota, and is sold on the team building, conditioning and motivational aspects of the program. He even had three girls, members of the school's hockey team, take part and they stood up to the test. A couple of them, in fact, even confronted one football player who for one reason or another hadn't been attending the workouts - and called him a "pussy."
Heard at the Salt Lake City airport: a 90's mother, trying to "threaten" her out-of-control brat with a "count-down": "One...Two...Two and a half...Two and three-quarters..." At least he's learning fractions.
May 17 - In MInnesota, where I spent the past weekend, Governor Jesse (The Whatever) Ventura is big. Very big. Recent publication of his somewhat premature autobiography, dredging up a distant and not-so-distant past that includes vandalizing schools, losing his virginity (on a bet) at 16, frequenting houses of ill repute while serving in the Navy, and using steroids to enhance "The Body," has the state buzzing. But in Minnesota, fishing is bigger still. So, put Jesse Ventura on a Minnesota lake on the opening day of fishing season, and you have something akin to a papal visit to Boston. Or, at the very least, the Queen visiting Toronto. And that's how the media covered it. Few reporters I know like to be on a cold, drizzly lake at 4:45 AM, but if they wanted a story Saturday, that's where they had to be, so a host of them in a fleet of small boats shoved off along with the Governor onto the waters of Lake Pokegama. And what stories they reported! On the front page of the Sunday Minneapolis Star-Tribune, we learned that this was the first time the Governor had gone fishing in 15 years! ("It looks like he's fished before," said one guide, looking on from a boat nearby.) And he caught fish! Five, to be exact - a perch, a lake trout, and three northern pike! His predecessor caught only one fish in eight years of opening days! The Governor hooked the first one at 6:30, and the next one at 6:40! But one got away! And it was a big one, too! A walleye, probably! The guide took the Governor to 14 spots in all! Mrs. Ventura, fishing at another spot on the lake, caught a 35-inch, 10-pound lake trout, and at 8:30 she radioed her husband with the good news! "It was really cool," she said! Later, she caught another lake trout! And so it goes, in a state which takes its fishing a lot more seriously than its governor.
"At some point," Coach Flip Saunders of the Minnesota Timberwolves said this past weekend, "the people on our facilities commission and the mayor of Minneapolis have to update our facility." If there is a Heisman Trophy for whining, this guy is a lock, because he's talking about the lights in the Target Center. Oh, they're bright enough. They work fine. They just take a while to come back on after you turn them out. Which means that whenever the Timberwolves are on national television, they can't turn off the lights for the player introductions. You know - the usual laser-light show, the music, the fireworks, the spotlights, without which no NBA game should ever be allowed to take place. This means, of course, that the sensation-seeking crowd doesn't get sufficiently pumped. Worse still, it means that the Timberwolves, who certainly can't be expected to go out and play hard without such artificial stimulation, go out and play flat. Which is why, Coach Saunders would have you believe, they lost game number 3 to the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday. Seriously. "In two years, we have not been beaten when we've been able to turn the lights out," he told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Steve Aschburner. And now he expects the city of Minneapolis to take responsibility for getting his players ready to play. A new lighting system for the Target Center would cost $250,000. And the Timberwolves, already paying Kevin Garnett a king's ransom to occasionally have to put up with the indignity of being introduced without a spotlight, can scarcely be expected to pick up the tab themselves.
While changing planes in Salt Lake City, I read a nice article by Joe Baird in the Salt Lake Tribune about Chuck Stiggins, BYU's strength and conditioning coach. Now in his 22nd year in his position, Stiggins has grown with the job: when he first came on the scene, strength training was mostly Universal machines and a few barbells; now, he has a full-time staff working for him, his strength and conditioning computer program is the number one national best-seller; he produces workout videos; and he puts on clinics all over the country. But he does not let those activites take him too far from his main job of overseeing the conditioning of all BYU athletes. And despite having a large staff under him, he is very much hands-on, a vital quality in the person overseeing the conditioning in a sport such as football, where the strength coach is the only coach allowed by NCAA regulations to have year-round contact with the players. "What I like the most about Chuck," said BYU football coach LaVell Edwards, "is that he really follows through and bird-dogs the guys. He doesn't let them slide. He stays on top of them all the time." And he is very intense, Edwards told the Tribune. "He's so intense that he can rub some people the wrong way. But he knows what he's doing." Stiggins, described by Baird as "a walking, talking PowerBar," puts in the time. "It's year-round for me," he told the Tribune. "There's no more in-season or out-of-season. It's everybody, all the time, from 6:30 in the morning until 7:30 at night."
May 15- The proponents of "Gender Equity" will go to any lengths to correct the discrimination that exists in sports opportunities for American women - even if it means dredging a canal in the desert, and even when the "American" women aren't American at all, but come from such well-known American places as Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Yes, fellows, teach your daughters to row, because there are athletic scholarships for young women going begging right now, and they don't even have to be experienced rowers. That's because football, with its 85 scholarhips at Division 1-A schools, has created such a supposed gender "inequity" that major colleges are scrambling to make the percentage of scholarships awarded to the sexes roughly the same as the percentage of each sex in the sudent body. Scrambling for men's sports to eliminate (a typical feminist approach to fairness - wrestling seems to be a favorite target), as well as for ways to lavish scholarships on women, talented or not. In the latter case, the convenient answer often seems to be rowing, since colleges are allowed by the NCAA to provide 20 rowing scholarships. And what a scramble it is - an article in Friday's Wall Street Journal tells of Arizona State's plans to flood a dry gulch near campus, thereby answering the naysayers who might otherwise point out that there is no place to row in Tempe, Arizona. The Journal also tells of the University of Louisville, new to the sport, laying a recruiting trip worthy of a Marcus Dupree on a San Diego high school girl who happened to have a little rowing experience - a tour of the campus, a visit to Churchill Downs, dinner at a local Japanese restaurant followed by dessert - a cake in the shape of an oar. Her hotel room was decorated with rowing pictures and a (Louisville) Cardinal doll. The University of Southern California has done its share to rectify discrimination against our little girls by awarding two $28,000 scholarships to rowers from Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Athletic-looking girls are literally being recruited as they walk their campuses. "There just aren't enough good athletes for all the money that is out there," Joe "Oakie" O'Connor, rowing coach at the University of Miami told the Journal. Friends of the cause of gender equity will be especially pleased to learn of the situation at the University of Iowa, where, according to the Journal, "49 women have a $440,000 university budget, including 12 scholarships, travel expenses, new boats, three paid coaches, a paid rigger to maintain equipment, and a television in the weight room." Meantime, things aren't quite so good for the Iowa men, who somehow get by on a university stipend of $1,500; secondhand boats (which they owe money on); and a volunteer coach (who has applied for a paid job with the women's program). They had to cancel plans to attend a big regatta in Philadelphia last weekend because they just couldn't afford it. (Ever wonder where these schools get the money for a sport that wouldn't even pay for itself if the participants were to row naked? How much you wanna bet it's spelled F-O-O-T-B-A-L-L? Frank Howard, legendary football coach at Clemson, would roll over in his grave if someone could read him the Journal article. Coach Howard is said to have fought the introduction of crew at Clemson on the grounds that he couldn't see taking money from his football program to support "any sport where a guy sits on his ass and goes backward.")
May 14- It's a pity, but the US has, as previously rumored, decided to pull out of this summer's World Cup of American Football competition, citing security concerns arising from the Kosovo situation. The tournament was to have been held in Palermo, Sicily (Italy). To give the obviously disappointed US players some recognition, the US World Cup roster is printed here. Congratulations and condolences to the coaches and players - many from small colleges - who missed out on the chance of a lifetime:
Wide Receivers: Matt Buddenhagen, Ithaca; Ty Goode, Notre Dame; Scott Hvistendahl, Augsburg; Chris Johnson, Central (Iowa); Mark Warder, St. Thomas (Minn.).
Tight Ends: Jamie Bowers, Wabash; Zach Burns, Brown; Matt Hitchcock, Southern Connecticut State.
Offensive Linemen: Mike Blackburn, Baldwin-Wallace; Jason Carriveau, Albion; Clint Head, Simpson; John Hesse, Emporia State; Zach Kessler, Allegheny; Blaine Kindler, Navy; Dan Lauta, Buffalo State; Neil Ravitz, Army; Spencer Stevens, Truman State; P.J. Zariczny, Louisville.
Quarterbacks: Derek Jensen, Southwest Missouri State; Chris Stormer, Hanover; Willie Taggert, Western Kentucky.
Running Backs: Dustin Donley, Southwestern (Kan.); John Duginski, Wisconsin-Oshkosh; Rahsaan Harrison, Temple; Jamie Lee, MacMurray; Phillip Moore, North Dakota; David Ruter, Sioux Falls.
Defensive Ends: Dustin Kiser, Hardin-Simmons; Kevin Saxton, Bowdoin; Dan Swingos, Princeton; Eric Williams, Eastern New Mexico. Defensive Tackles: A.J. Blum, Ashland; Chris Heilman, Shippensburg; Billy Rhodes, Florida State; Brent Staples, Gustavus Adolphus.
Linebackers: Joe Bob Clements, Kansas State; Jason Hall, Mount Union; Kyle Kirk, Angelo State; Steve Kives, Northeastern; Clint Kriewaldt, Wisconsin-Stevens Point; Keith Vanden Bosch, Northwestern (Iowa).
Defensive Backs: Quincy Baker, New Jersey City; Alex Doran, Trinity (Texas); Warren Foust, Alabama; Brian Lee, North Central; Sedrick Medlock, Howard Payne; Jason Sanderson, Air Force; Barry Threats, Indiana (Pa.).
Punter/Placekicker: Will Schale, Texas A&M-Commerce.
Coaches: Gene Stallings, Mal Moore, Gerald Jack, Ron Schipper, Jim Fuller.
May 13- I am not a Marine. I'd like to think that I could have measured up, but I'll never know. Nevertheless, I have a great deal of respect for the USMC, and I believe that a great deal of its no-compromise approach to leadership, to training and to promotion of the manly virtues is applicable to football. It is highly significant that for nearly 4 years now, the USMC has met its recruiting quotas; even more significant is the fact that it is the only one of our services to have done so. And the Marines have done it by not selling today's young people short, as so many others nowadays seem inclined to do. In the words of the Commandant of the Corps, General Charles C. Krulak, "This is not a generation of self-interest and greed. So, we determined it was time to stop talking to them about the 'benefits,' and start challenging them. We raised the bar and made it harder to get in...we deleted from our advertisements anything that says we will give money for college, or training for a specific skill, and instead came up with one advertisement. It says, if you want to be challenged physically, mentally and morally - become a Marine...you will be changed...and the change will be forever." (A football coach might want to stop and consider the success the Marines have had with their approach, the next time he feels tempted - or is pressured - to compromise his standards in order to make his program more "welcoming.")
Knoxville's new area code is 865 (V-O-L).
The May 10 Sports Illustrated has Bill Russell on its cover. And Frank DeFord's cover story on the Boston Celtics' great is a gem. DeFord argues convincingly that Russell, a man of great pride and dignity, was a true sports revolutionary in any number of ways - the prototype of the agile big man; the true trailbreaker for blacks' present-day dominance of the game; the first black man to be a head coach in any major professional sport. And so on. Russell's life as a player and a man is truly a tribute to the people who raised him, including his mother, who died unexpectedly when he was only 12. He still remembers some of the wisdom she imparted: "William," she told him, "you are going to meet people who just don't like you. On sight. And there's nothing you can do about it, so don't worry. Just be yourself. You're no better than anyone else, but no one's better than you." Russell remembers once, when he was 9, coming home after being slapped by a member of a gang. His mother took him out and found the gang, then made him fight every one of its members, one right after the other. "The fact is, I had to fight back," Russell recalled. "It wasn't important whether I won or lost." One of the things that author DeFord illustrates so beautifully is the real love and respect that bound the great Celtics teams together. - they were way out in front of the pack in modelling the sort of race relations that, 30 years later, Americans everywhere should still envy and aspire to. They were Celtics first, and theirs was a meritocracy, in which a man's worth was determined by his ability to contribute to the team. DeFord writes of the time in 1969 when Russell's grandfather, who had lived his entire life in West Monroe, Louisiana, travelled to Shreveport to watch the Celtics play an exhibition game. Watching his grandson - by now the Celtics' coach - during a timeout, he turned to his son, Bill's dad, and asked, "He's the boss?" And when his son nodded, he asked, "Of the white men, too?" He shook his head in amazement to learn that he was. The old gentleman was in for just as big a surprise after the game, when he visited the Celtics' locker room. There, with only one shower for the entire team, players were showering in pairs. He stared as Sam Jones, a naked black man, and John Havlicek, a naked white man, passed a bar of soap back and forth, each taking his turn under the shower. He marvelled at the sight, remarking, "I never thought I'd see anything like that."
Which reminded me of my wife's conversation Saturday with Coach Pete Smolin, at Glendale High. To say Glendale's school is "diverse" is to grossly understate it. I can only imagine all the ethnic groups represented. And the football team itself reflects that diversity: all sorts of races, nationalities and ethnic groups are represented. But there is a big difference, Coach Smolin told my wife. The football players hang out together, while the rest of the kids in school tend to hang out with their "own kind." Now, I ask you, which is best for our society - the togetherness of the football team, or the racial/ethnic fragmentation of the student body.?
May 12- I was recently offered an attractive coaching position. It is at Washougal High School, a class 2-A Washington school with about 750 kids in 4 years. Washougal is a town of about 5,000 just east of Camas, the town where I live, and to say that Camas and Washougal have a rivalry is to say that the Crips and Bloods have a few issues they need to work out. Washougal has a long, rich tradition of hard-nosed football, but the Panthers have gone 5-4, 4-5, 3-6 and 1-8 since 1994, when I assisted Coach Gary Garland and we went 9-0 in regular season play. Coach Garland is now the AD at Washougal and a personal friend, and the chance to work with him was a major inducement. But I still wouldn't have accepted the job unless I was convinced that next year's seniors were committed to winning, and willing to accept me as their coach. I met with them last night, and they are an impressive group of young men. We made a commitment to each other, and I am looking forward to being their coach. (Now, my first question is, do I call the "Wildcat" the "Panther?")
Directions to Twin-Cities clinic - I-494 (from south and east) or I-94 (from west) or I-35 (from the north) to I- 694. I-694 to Exit 52- Highway 36. East on Highway 36, right on Margaret Street, the first left on 12th Avenue, and you will see the school in about 2 blocks. The address is 2416 11th Avenue East. It's best to enter through the back, on the South side of the building.
Finally, after all the garbage we've been hearing from the feminists, and accepted and passed along by most educators as faith - about how we've been discouraging girls from pursuing careers in math and science, and on top of that not letting them play sports (if you believe that one Nike tear-jerker of a commercial) - after all the so-called remedies we've had shoved down our throats - providing athletic scholarships for women who've never even played a sport before while cutting sports for men, all in the interest of something called "gender equity ", single-sex schools (but only for girls), "Take-your-daughter-to-work-day," blah, blah, blah - comes a blast of intelligent observation entitled, "When Did We Lose Sight of Boys?" which appeared in last Sunday's Washington Post. It was written by Patricia Dalton, a clinical psychologist who practices in the District of Columbia, and here are some excerpts:
"For all the unfathomable horror of the shootings last month at Columbine High School, there was one thing that came as no surprise to me. It was boys who fired the guns in Littleton, Colo. Just as it was boys who fired the guns in the school shootings in Pearl, Miss., in West Paducah, Ky., in Jonesboro, Ark., and in Springfield, Ore. It seems clear to me, both as a psychologist and as the mother of two daughters and a son, that we should be concerned about how we are failing our boys.
Because of legitimate concerns about gender discrimination, for years we tended to play down differences between boys and girls, even though research and common sense tell us they exist. Ask any parent who has raised children of both sexes. The differences show up at a young age, they persist, and they are probably there for good evolutionary reasons: They bring the sexes together and promote procreation. More recently, as we've begun to acknowledge gender differences, we've focused our attention on girls.
Where does all this leave boys? The statistics that cross my desk are not encouraging. They suggest that boys may be the more fragile sex. Approximately three out of every four children identified as learning disabled are boys. Boys are much more likely than girls to have drug and alcohol problems. Four of every five juvenile court cases involve crimes committed by boys. Ninety-five percent of juvenile homicides are committed by boys. And while girls attempt suicide four times more often, boys are seven times as likely to succeed as girls--usually because they choose more lethal methods, such as guns.
While girls tend to internalize problems, taking their unhappiness out on themselves, boys externalize them, taking their unhappiness out on others. Boys have more problems than girls in virtually every category you can think of with the exception of eating disorders. The signs of depression my colleagues and I are likely to see in girls are typically straightforward--sadness, tearfulness and self-doubt. In boys, depression is generally hidden behind symptoms such as irritability, agitation and explosiveness.
Since our kids spend the majority of their day in the structured setting of school, that's where problems are most likely to come to light. Many boys think that their grade schools are boy-unfriendly. I well remember my son bursting into the kitchen one day after school, yelling "They want us to be girls, Mom, they want us to be girls!" A seventh-grader once told me he was planning that night to write a book report that was due the next day--"not like the perfect girls who did theirs three weeks ago."
We all know that boys mature more slowly than girls, and that they reach the cognitive milestones essential for doing well at school later than girls do. Take reading, for example. Girls are usually ready to read earlier than boys. This means that average boys wind up feeling less successful, and learning-disabled boys can feel easily defeated.
But what have schools done to accommodate these well-documented differences in rates of maturity? Very little. Schools, like researchers, have been concentrating on girls.
Besides their different maturity rates, boys are more active than girls and slower to develop control of their impulses. I'm not the first one to suggest this; even Plato observed that of all the animal young, the hardest to tame is the boy. A young boy put the matter to me succinctly: "I figured it out. I'm bad before recess." But many schools have not accommodated boys' need to work off excess energy. Instead, many have shortened lunch and recess periods in order to cram more class time into the day, as the pressure to become more competitive and test-oriented has increased.
A fifth-grade boy once told me, "School just sucks the fun out of everything." And my high-school-age son, who enjoyed preschool and kindergarten so much that he left for first grade one day saying, "Ready to rock and roll," had changed his tune by middle school. "Mom," he said, "It's like going to prison."
While parents and schools have often failed to respond to these signals, popular culture has picked up on them. Matt Groening once said that he created "The Simpsons" because of all the teachers who, when he was enjoying himself, would shoot him a look that said, "Take that stupid grin off your face right now." Groening has it right. I hear a lot about "The Simpsons" from the kids I see in therapy. Girls like "The Simpsons"; boys love the show.
One of the ways boys can blow off steam is sports. Yet even this outlet is tainted by the student and adult adulation of athletes that pervades many of the big high schools. That's a problem for several reasons: It gives athletes an inflated idea of themselves and non-athletes feelings of inferiority and resentment. The boys I see in my office often tell me how sports provide an arena in which they can test themselves, and many feel like failures when they get cut from a team--something that is increasingly likely to happen in our highly competitive megaschools. All kids need to exercise and play sports, and not just for the short time they have P.E. It would be good to see all schools offering intramural after-school sports to all students.
There's no question in my mind that, in our haste to make up for the disadvantages that girls have historically suffered, we've tended to overlook the needs of ordinary boys. Like everyone else, boys of all ages need adults to love them, appreciate them and enjoy them, so that they can come to value and have faith in themselves. We need to help them find outlets for their natural exuberance, vitality and even devilishness. One of my favorite sights is the look on boys' faces on the baseball field as they steal bases--when it's good to be bad."
May 11- Many thanks to George Contreras, of Rio Mesa High in Oxnard, California for very delicately pointing out to me that for the last week, I had been going back in time, dating each day's entry as "April" and not "May."
Perhaps you've heard of Massillon, Ohio. Still a big football town, at one time it was synonymous with "football-crazy," in a football-crazy state. The great Paul Brown once coached at Massillon, and the football tradition is so strong that it is said that at one time every baby boy born in Massillon was given a miniature football, courtesy of the booster club. Paul Brown went on from Massillon to win a national title at Ohio State and numerous AAFC and NFL titles with the Cleveland Browns and later went on to start up - and coach - the Cincinnati Bengals, but his heart was in Massillon, his home town, where he is now buried. He wrote in his autobiography that one of the proudest moments of his life was when they named the high school stadium Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.(Shown here). I have a copy of a book written in 1955 by Chuck Mather, who coached at Massillon from 1948 through 1953, winning 57 games and losing only 3 in that time. It is amusing to quote from his "Player's Notebook." "Here are the rules which all Tiger players have had to follow: 1. No smoking... 2. No drinking.....3. Dates on a night before a school day strictly forbidden....4. Hours- home by 9:30, in bed by 10:00 PM any night before a school day....5. No automobiles. You, as a football player, cannot do some of the things that other students do. If you think more of smoking, drinking, dating, staying out late at night, or riding around in automobiles, then you are not willing to 'pay the price,' and it is best for you not to take out a uniform, or to turn it in, in case you already have one. To be on a championship team, you have to be a champion yourself." Wanna see a neat web site? see MASSILLON PROUD
Here's an interesting e-mail I received - "Hugh, I know you are not going to believe this, but I couldn't help noticing your article on General Puller's daughter. My Dad was in the 1st Marine Division during WWII and served in the Pacific with General Puller. We used to go to the annual 1st Marine Division Convention each year and make it part of our family vacation. In 1962 or 1963 it was in Chicago and we all went. They always had great activities for the families and we had tickets on Friday night to the College All-Star football game vs the Packers. Then on Saturday we had tickets to Wrigley field where we saw the San Francisco Giants and the Cubs play (Mays, McCovey and Marichal). Then on Saturday night the Marines always had their big ball. Kids never went to that but I remember my Dad taking me down to the ballroom just so I could be introduced to General Chesty Puller. It was a huge deal for all the Marines at the Convention to have him as the keynote speaker, but I guess I didn't appreciate it so much until after I was in the military and learned about General Puller. My dad said that he was the soldiers' General, and it was nothing for him to come up beside you on a hike and offer to carry some of the equipment you were carrying for a while and talk to you. They would have done anything for him. I also remember when his son stepped on the landmine in Vietnam and blew off his legs. There was no doubt that this very diminutive man, with a pipe almost as large as him, was the hero of every Marine in Chicago that night. It is a small world." Ron Timson, Bennington, Nebraska
Hey, coaches - this country wasn't built, and this world wasn't saved from the Hitlers, by entertainers and rock stars. Let's tell our kids about some real heroes. We've still got them, but our kids don't know about them, because we've stood idly by while the dippy PC police - the same types who spat on our guys when they returned from Vietnam - influenced our schools to stop teaching about them. Let's get back on the job!
We coaches could all learn a few things about leadership and courage from General Chesty Puller. Take a look at the job one Marine has done to keep his memory alive, at "Chesty's Home on the Net".
May 10- "Assemblies often degenerated into catcalls and semiobscene behavior while teachers watched silently...Trash littered the hallway outside the cafeteria, but it was a rare teacher who suggested a student pick up a milk carton he or she had thrown on the floor." (From "The World We Created at Hamilton High," by Gerald Grant.)
Teachers who accuse kids of cheating are required to produce witnesses to counter "the other side of the story." (Likewise)
Sound like the school where you work? If it doesn't, go thank your administrators for having the "stones" to provide adult leadership - for being Alpha Adults.
But if it does, you've got the Supreme Court to thank, according to an article in the May 4 Wall Street Journal by Kay Hymowitz, entitled "How the Courts Undermined School Discipline."
Two key Supreme Court rulings have caused fear by school officials of lawsuits by "aggrieved" parents, the kind who will challenge any attempt to deal with their children's misbehavior, and Hymowitz cites several examples of the resultant climate of school spinelessness in which "adults stand by and condone the worst forms of adolescent acting-out."
Not so very long ago, a Colorado high school principal did nothing when one of his students appeared in school wearing Ku Klux Klan insignia. Only when a black student clocked the wannabe Klansman did the principal forbid the Klan attire, on the grounds that such dress constituted a form of "speech" that incited violence.
Last year, a Half Moon Bay, California 14-year-old wrote a couple of compositions, one about setting fire to the school library and beating up the principal and the other, entitled "Goin' Postal," about shooting the principal. The boy was suspended for five days, but after his parents sued the school district, a settlement was reached in which the suspension was reduced to two days and on the student's official record, the reason given for the suspension was changed from "terroristic threats" to "habitual use of profanity in school assignments."
Looking the other way, dismissing outrageous conduct as "kids being kids," can sometimes prove deadly. Yet even after Kip KInkel, a 15-year-old Springfield, Oregon student, had gone haywire and "allegedly" (got to protect myself) shot and killed his parents and two schoolmates, and injured another 20 or so, the Springfield Superintendent of Schools said, "He was a typical 15-year-old." Right. A typical 15-year-old who had earlier done a science report on how to build a bomb, and had read journal entries to his literature class about his dreams of murder.
The current climtae dates back to two Supreme Court decisions. In one, Tinker vs. Des Moines, the Court ruled in 1969 in favor of students who were sent home because they had worn armbands to school protesting the Vietnam War. In the other, Goss vs. Lopez, in 1975, the Court ruled that a student faced with a suspension of 10 days or more was entitled to due process.
The decisions were intended to "free" students from "oppressive" adult control. But, because now "the mere threat of a lawsuit is often enough to have a chilling effect on teachers and administrators," they have had some unintended results: gun-shy administrators, out-of-control students and demoralized teachers.
Where, when we need them, are the Alpha Adults? (Besides the football field.)
How about playing in a league in which your closest game is two hours away? How about a 500-mile road trip? That's what Coach Dan Cahill of Boulder City, Nevada deals with. Although Boulder City is just outside Las Vegas, its no-growth policy keeps the town - and the high school - small, and in Nevada where towns are tremendous distances apart, being a small school means having to travel great distances to find other schools of similar size. Now, if Boulder City High were the size of the Las Vegas schools, there'd be a lot of short trips: Coach Cahill said that in their county alone - Clark County, where Las Vegas is located - there were 10 high schools just 10 years ago. Now, there are 24, with three more due to open next fall!
May 9 - The LA clinic, featuring "live performers" like the ones in Chicago and Philadelphia, was a lively clinic, with lots of good questions and comments indicating that the coaches knew a lot about the double wing. The clinic was held at Glendale High School, thanks to the efforts of head Coach Pete Smolin and his staff. Glendale, with 3,600 students, is the largest high school I have ever been in. There was some sort of "Peace" conference (peace on the streets, not peace in Kosovo) going on at the same time as the clinic, and hundreds of kids were milling around the campus, but the first one I walked up to, although his English was somethat limited, knew Coach Smolin, obviously respected him and directed me to him.
Coach Smolin is a graduate of Cheltenham High, outside Philadelphia, and I enjoyed introducing him to my wife, a graduate of Abington, Pennsylvania High. Abington and Cheltenham are, to say the least, old and fierce rivals. I believe I have mentioned this before, but Cheltenham High is the only one I know of to have produced a baseball Hall-of-Famer and a living president. The baseball player? Reggie Jackson. The president? President Benjamin Netanyahu, of Israel. Reggie Jackson, incidentally, was also a great football player at Cheltenham.
In the afternoon session Coach Smolin's kids, newcomers to the system, demonstrated plays for the coaches, and gave me a chance to show how easy it is to install. The kids have obviously been well coached. They were respectful and attentive, they hustled on every play, they picked things up quickly, and they helped each other out. After 2-1/2 hours on the field without a break and without a complaint, we finally had to chase them off. They couldn't get enough.
At the request of some of the coaches there, we installed the "Wildcat" series, which we naturally renamed "Nitro" (Glendale is the "Nitros," and some sort of huge explosion is depicted on the outside of their gym, overlooking the stadium; I'm sure that the PC police haven't seen it yet.). It took the kids maybe a minute and a half to have it explained to them and then run the first play successfully, and from there they were off and running. A couple of the coaches who are very interested in the Wildcat (in the interest of keeping their intentions from their opponents I won't name them) stood right where an inside linebacker would stand, and, even without defensive linemen in front of them to further block their view, still lost the ball on every play. One of them went up to the center after several plays and asked him how tough he was finding the snap. The center replied that it was really easy, "all I have to do is remember to keep my tail down." (They never had a mishandled snap.)
One reason (among many) why California has become the prime recruiting area for colleges has got be the tremendous enthusiasm of its youth coaches. I hear from them all the time, and there was a large group of them at the clinic, including my old friend John Torres from Castaic, John Andrade from South El Monte, Jim Chambers from Nipomo, Mel Washington from San Diego, Howard Johnson from Cerritos, Sal Flores from Covina, Anthony Garcia from Valinda, Jay Short and Kevin Connally from Laguna Niguel, Tony Macon from Pittsburg, and Russell Ponce and Tony Borden from Santa Rosa. The last three made the 6+ hour trek all the way from the Bay Area and also have plans to attend the San Jose clinic in two weeks.
May 8 - In Los Angeles for the clinic, I have come across two great possibilities for off-season conditioning - or, for that matter, in-season conditioning. At Fox Sports World in LA, I met with Pat Guthrie, producer of Fox's "Championhip Rugby" show. Pat , a former rugby player himself, also doubles as a sort of promoter of the sport here in America. (Rugby people are pretty passionate about their sport.) I played a little rugby once, and I am familiar with such great international teams as South Africa's Springboks and New Zealand's All Blacks, and I asked him what it would take for the US ever to be a rugby power. He said, in all candor, "a generation." The problem, as he sees it, is that Americans don't even begin to play the sport until they are college age, and since certain of the positions on a rugby team (does the term "fly half" mean anything to you) take so long to learn, by the time an American really knows the position, he is in his 30's, and his legs are gone! The goal, he says, is to expose American kids to the sport early, and he has put me onto the National Youth Director of USA Rugby, the organization responsible for development of the sport, who, I am told, has a videotape and description of a non-contact rugby that would be suitable for a school PE program. I spent much of the afternoon playing cricket (no kidding) and kicking an Australian football around with Paul Roos, a real, honest-to-God Australian Rules football player. Paul, who retired after last season as captain of the Sydney Swans, is now in the U.S. under the auspices of the AFL (Australian Football League) trying to interest young Americans in "footy." as the Australians call their native game. He said that he will try to get to my San Jose clinic in two weeks and perhaps explain to coaches how Australian Rules could be used as an activity for football teams. I'm also trying to persuade him to consider teaching Americans how to punt. If you have never seen Australian Rules football, those guys can really boot the ball - the Chargers' Darren Bennett, a former footy player, is a good example of the kind of athlete who plays that game. Paul is the author of "Beyond 300," a book on his career of over 300 games as an Aussie Rules professional, and he has a few stories to tell. On several occasions, he represented his native state, Victoria, in all-star games (known there as state-of-origin games), and sure enough, he took part in a 1989 match famous in Australia for its coach's post-game interview, which I have had the pleasure of seeing. The coach, Teddy Whitten, a legend as a player and a coach, was a very intense person, and so excited was he at winning the game that when a reporter shoved a microphone in front of him for his comments, he gloated, "We stuck it right up 'em! That's what we did! Stuck it right up 'em." Informed that he was on national television, he immediately became contrite, and said, "Oh. We're on television? Sorry."
May 7- If you haven't heard of Ken Hamblin, you have yet to discover one of America's best newspaper columnists. Hamblin, who calls himself the "Black Avenger," writes a twice-weekly column for the Denver Post, hosts a syndicated radio talk show, and maintains a web site < www.hamblin.com > devoted, I should warn the faint of heart, to the conservative point of view. Like nearly every newspaper columnist in America, and certainly every one in Denver, he recently addressed the subject of the Columbine High tragedy. And hit on a point especially relevant to those of us who coach American kids. "So far as I am concerned," he writes, "if the needless deaths at Columbine High School in Littleton, and those in Notus, Idaho, Springfield, Ore., Fayettevile, Tenn., Edinboro, Pa., Jonesboro, Ark., West Paducah, Ky., and Pearl, Miss. prove anything, it's a need for the emergence of alpha adults. These would be men and women with the courage to wrest the authority from the liberal socialists responsible for diminishing parental authority and keeping our children from vesting themselves in the values of patriotism, the values that respect the rights of others, and the values that stand for obeying the law." Guys, he's talking about people - men and women - with stones. "These would be men and women," he goes on, "who would always smell a rat and confront it if trench coats and mascara on boys become school attire." While others are trying to blame "the jocks" for the "alienation" and "rage" of the murderers, Hamblin looks around and sees a general lack of guts contributing to the creation of the kinds of kids who are committing such gruesome crimes . I really like his call for alpha adults - males and females. I can tell him where to look for the alpha males in most American high schools. Anybody else interested in "ALPHA MALE" tee shirts?
May 6- A 9-year-old kid in Anne Arundel County, Maryland (suburban Baltimore) was suspended from school for drawing a picture of a gun, then cutting it out and waving it in class. Okay with me, you politically correct educators, if you want to decide what's art and what isn't. Just remember - you can't have it both ways. You can't stand by while a Lake Oswego, Oregon high school puts on a school play in which two males kiss and "simulate a sex act," and then defend it as "art." And you liberal "art" fanciers - you can't ask for any more taxpayers' money to support a National Endowment for the Arts which claims that homosexual "artist" Robert Mapplethorpe's photos of a bullwhip inserted in an inappropriate place (no lie!), or Andres Serrano's depiction of a crucifix dipped in urine (true fact!) are "art."
You ex-Marines out there (Sorry - I nearly forgot that you're never an ex-Marine) will appreciate this: I had the pleasure of talking last night with an old (at our age, maybe I'd better watch that word) college classmate of my wife. Her name is Virginia Puller, and her dad was a general in the Marine Corps. Little did I know at the time I first met her years ago that her dad, whom she always referred to as "Father", was the famous General Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, a Marine Corps icon and considered by many Marines to be the very embodiment of the spirit of the Corps. (Ask any Marine you know if he's ever heard of Chesty Puller. You might also ask a fellow football coach if he's ever heard of Vince Lombardi.) We chatted a little about the "Biography" special of him that aired a few years ago on what would have been his 100th birthday. Virginia (I knew her back in college days as "Ginger") said that one of the difficulties that would-be biographers of her father run into is that there is so little film footage of him in action, because his warrior nature meant he was always up front - ahead of the cameras! Herself married to Col. Bill Dabney, USMC (Ret) and the sister of a highly decorated Marine, Virginia Dabney now lives in Lexington, Virginia, site of her father's alma mater, VMI. She says that from time to time researchers will show up in Lexington hoping to search through her father's papers. Much to their disappointment, they go away empty-handed - Chesty Puller, being a man of action, figured keeping his "papers" was somebody else's problem. In fact, Virginia told me, her father loved the scene in the movie "War and Peace", where on the eve of battle a general says his prayers and reminds God, "I'm going to be busy tomorrow, and I won't have time to pray."
This is why Miss Simpson, your 8th grade English teacher, told you to pay attention: The Washington Post writes of the latest computer virus, and it sounds like The Revenge of the Underemployed, Too-Much-Free-Time-Time-on-his-Hands English Ph.D. It's called the "Strunkenwhite" Virus, in recognition, no doubt, of Strunk & White, whose "Elements of Style" has served for years as a guide to good writing. Apparently, when the virus detects an e-mail message lacking in grammar, it returns it - undelivered, -with appropriate comments ("you must use a pronoun's possessive case before a gerund"). Only when the solecism (look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls) is corrected will the e-mail be delivered.
May 5- On the day of John Elway's official retirement news conference, the Denver Post's Jim Armstrong printed his rankings of the 10 greatest QB's in pro football history. It differs considerably from the rankings produced by a recent ESPN poll, in that it seems to acknowledge that they were actually playing the game with real live people back before 1980. Armstrong has Joe Montana at Number One, followed by John (nobody in Baltimore ever called him "Johnny") Unitas, John Elway, Bart Starr, Otto Graham, Terry Bradshaw, Dan Marino, Roger Staubach, Bobby Layne and Fran Tarkenton. I am objective enough to admit that some of my support for Unitas may be powered by nostalgia, and by my memories of living in Baltimore in the '60s, but he was one cool, tough son of a gun with a cannon for an arm, and he really is the father of the fourth-quarter comeback. Montana is the only guy I could imagine ever being placed ahead of John. Don't forget, Armstrong notes, Unitas put up his stats - 40,239 yards passing, 47 consecutive games throwing a touchdown pass - back "when defensive backs could breathe on receivers without being penalized." As for Starr, Unitas' contemporary, I always thought of him as the perfect man to lead the great Green Bay teams of Vince Lombardi. (In fact, now that I think of it, he would have been great in the double wing, because he was smart, tough, responsible and cool, he was fairly mobile, and he threw well enough.) I just didn't think he was good enough to take a mediocre team and make it better, which you could definitely say about the others on Armstrong's list. I consider Graham, the QB of the powerful Cleveland Browns' teams of the '50s, as richly deserving, although during most of his career, despite his great passing, ball-handling and leadership, he was often derided as being less than a "complete" quarterback. That's because, playing under Paul Brown's "messenger guard" system, he didn't call his own plays. (Every other NFL QB at the time did.) Bradshaw's inclusion is a surprise, and I believe Armstrong is to be credited for placing him on his list. As he points out, "Elway gets bonus points for carrying the Broncos of the '80s to the Super Bowl with inferior talent. Bradshaw, on the other hand, seems to get penalized because he was surrounded by Hall of Famers. Don't kid yourself. He was a big reason the Steelers were the Steelers." Marino, even though he is on the list, still gets shafted. "Name a really big game," Armstrong asks, "that he ever won with a late comeback." Okay. Does college count? Seems to me I remember a last-second bowl win over, maybe, Georgia. Staubach, who was out of football for five seasons while honoring his commitment to serve in the Navy, had it all - arm, mobility, leadership, toughness, charisma, great personal qualities - and lots of championships. Bobby Layne is a classic, perhaps the last of the old-time quarterbacks. (He was undoubtedly the last one to play without a face mask! True story.) A high school teammate of the late Doak Walker at Dallas' Highland Park High, Layne and Walker hooked up again with the Detroit Lions in the mid-'50s, the last time Lions' fans really had something to brag about. Those were the days of real team unity - on and off the field - and Layne's off-the-field "leadership" was legendary, too. Unlike some of today's NBA stars, though, Layne managed to party and still make it to practices and games on time. I am surprised at Tarkenton's selection, especially considering the absence of Joe Namath. There does seem to be a sort of backlash against Namath now, and a tendency to dismiss his career as having been built on that one big Super Bowl win over the Colts. Perhaps it is because he was so over-hyped during so much of his career. Perhaps it's because his NFL record is unspectacular, but by the time the Jets joined the NFL, he'd already played a lot of football, and taken an awful lot of hits. People need to remember that before the AFL and NFL officially merged, Namath had already thrown for over 15,000 yards in five AFL seasons, without ever missing a game. After the merger, his knees already shot, he never played a full season. His impact on the game, as the player who gave the AFL credibility in New York, and exposure nationwide, must never be forgotten. Without him, the AFL might have folded, and we might never have had a Super Bowl (a fate worse than death for all you Michael Jackson-at-halftime fans).
May 4- I am still at work on two videos - "Troubleshooting" and "Safe and Sure Tackling" - I seriously miscalculated my ability to combine their production with the demands of travel every week, and to everyone ordering those tapes, I apologize for the delay.
Former Vancouver, Washington neighbor and family friend Brian Hunter is back in the Northwest. Traded by the Tigers to the Mariners, he was on the winning side in all four of last weekend's games, winning the first two as a Tiger, then swapping dugouts in mid-series and winning the last two as a Mariner. Brian, consistently among the major leagues' leading base-stealers, may not even be the best athlete in the family: older sister Stefanie was an outstanding basketball player, and a standout sprinter on the University of Oregon's track team.
No announcement yet on the US decision whether or not to take part as scheduled in this summer's World Cup for American Football, in Palermo, Sicily, although AFCA spokesman Todd Bell tells me there will be some sort of an announcement later this week. (The AFCA - American Football Coaches Association - is the organization sponsoring the US team.) US withdrawal will almost certainly cause the entire promotion to collapse. Europeans are realistic about their slim chances against an American team made up of good American college players and coached by the likes of Gene Stallings, but they have been looking on the World Cup as a chance to measure themselves against good competition, not to mention a chance to get good exposure for grass-roots American football in Europe.
The Sunday Denver Post ran an article on Tae-Bo and the Billy Blanks videos, with a warning by Mark Rabinoff, a fitness expert and professor of human performance at Metro State. Professor Rabinoff, once a champion gymnast himself, claims that it is dangerous stuff. He and 10 of his students, all, according to the article, "in exceptional shape," recently tried the Tae-Bo video program, and concluded that the Tae-Bo infomercials are misleading. "'Consistent, amazing results?' Most people who buy it won't be able to stay with it," Professor Rabinoff says. "Even if you did, you couldn't move the next day. The very least that will happen is aches and pains; the worst is that you'll end up in the hospital." Although this might be worth noting if you are a coach, I think Professor Rabinoff is referring to the sort of person who expects Tae-Bo to be just another "Buns of Steel" workout when he says, "If you've taken aerobic kickboxing from a good instructor, then this is probably a good, high-intensity workout. But if you don't know what you're doing, this is one of the most dangerous videos that's been put out in the last 25 years."
May 3 - Saturday's opening-week results from Germany's Bundesliga: Stuttgart Scorpions 33, Munich Cowboys 31. This despite the fact that Munich had an American QB and two American wide receivers, while Scorpions, running the double-wing, are doing it with an all-German lineup. Scorpions, whose former coach left them to coach the Stockholm "Mean Machine," decided on their own to continue with the double wing - which took them to last year's Bundesliga semi-finals - while they negotiate a deal with a new coach. Now, I wouldn't want to interfere with the new coach, but he might have a hard time convincing the offensive players to run something else. The Bundesliga, Germany's "major league," is the highest of four classes (or levels) of play in Germany, and it's one of Europe's toughest. In most European sports, the level a team plays at is determined by employing a "relegation" system - at the end of every season, the bottom one or two teams in every class drop down to the next level, replaced by the top one or two teams moving up from the lower level. Sometimes, just to make the lower-level team prove itself - to make sure that it won't be overwhelmed by the move up, there is a "relegation game" between it and the team being sent down, winner playing in the upper level, losing playing in the lower level. Such a system assures that even for last-place teams, there is no such thing as a "meaningless" game. Economically, with teams depending heavily on recruiting sponsors to pay their bills, it can make a world of difference to have the prestige of playing in, say, Germany's Bundesliga, or Finland's Vaahteraliiga, rather than at a lower level.
Still on the Denver clinic: Coach Ron Timson, of Bennington, Nebraska, showed some video of his team this past season. Between an opening-game loss and a final defeat in the playoffs, his Badgers ran off a school-record seven straight wins last year. One bit of advice that Coach Timson passed along to other coaches at the clinic - you're not running the offense if you don't run the wedge, and you're not getting the most out of it if you don't run 6-G and 7-G. Amen to that, Coach Timson. (Talk about a supportive school district - for the second year in a row, Ron's superintendent of schools has approved the time and money for him to fly from Omaha to Denver.)
Coach Rhett Jackson, from Gunnison, Utah, added a whole new slant to my section on the wedge. He said that he was talking with an acquaintance who is on the SWAT team at the Utah State Penitentiary, and his acquaintance told him that when they have to go in to break up a difficult situation, their SWAT team goes in with one man on the point pushing a full-length armor shield, while the rest of the members of the team, each holding his own shield, push on him. The inspiration for this tactic, the SWAT team member told him, was the Princeton wedge play!
May 2 - In Denver, where the morning Denver Post is delivered in Bronco-orange plastic bags, there is no shortage of big local stories - the Columbine High tragedy, followed by this weekend's NRA convention, followed by John Elway's press conference to announce his retirement. But you'd scarcely have known, judging by Friday night's TV news. The really big story, crawling across the bottom of the screen in much the same way as other TV stations inform their viewers of tornado warnings or school snow cancellations, was Saturday's youth soccer rain-outs. (Wussies. Evidently rain, uncommon in these parts, paralyzes Denver the way a few snowflakes paralyze the Pacific Northwest.)
The Denver clinic was a success for the second year in a row, with coaches there from Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming and, of course, Colorado. The high school coaches coming the shortest distance - but possibly overcoming the greatest hardship - were Keith Mead and Bill Coffey, of Chatfield High, in Littleton, Colorado. They have been working extra hard lately, putting in long hours as Chatfield prepares to take in 1,800 boarders - the student body of Columbine High, evicted from their own building while police continue the search for bombs. Normally the fiercest of rivals, the two student bodies will share the Chatfield building for the rest of the school year, Chatfield students attending from 7 AM to noon, followed by Columbine students from 1 PM to 6 PM. But before the Columbine students can enter, security requires that all Chatfield personnel - students and staff - be off the property. And they can't return. Under the circumstances, it's certainly an understandable requirement, but it does play havoc with after-school sports. Although they said it was nice to be able to take time off to talk football at the clinic, Keith and Bill had to leave early because their school had a track meet - their kids hadn't practiced in two weeks.
Coach Mead is upbeat about the Chatfield Chargers' football program, which managed to take the double wing and turn a 1-9 1997 record into 4-6 in 1998. The Chatfield JV's, depleted because so many underclassmen were playing on the varsity, lost their first three, but recovered to finish 5-5, while the freshmen finished 10-0.
Coach Steve Pazzie, from Augusta, Kansas, just east of Wichita, attended with six members of his staff. Augusta has been running the double wing for several years now, and after struggling a bit at first, has become a district power, despite being one of the smaller schools in the district. Coach Pete Overman, Augusta's offensive coordinator, said, "It (the double wing) saved our program." Not an easy admission for an Emporia State guy, who was brought up in a passing atmosphere. Now, though, he's sold on the running game. Coach J.D. Hand, the defensive coordinator, described his first look at the double wing that Augusta was running when he arrived: "it looked like a covey of quail running around." But don't say I didn't warn you - even with the success the double wing has helped Augusta enjoy, it still has its detractors. When Coach Terry Alley, the frosh coach, told a local fan that he was going to Denver to attend a double wing clinic, the fan asked, "You guys still gonna run that offense?"
Coach Darel Hatch, from Arapahoe, Nebraska, had a track meet Friday night that lasted until 9 PM. Leaving immediately afterward, he drove the 5-1/2 hours to Denver, arriving at 1:30 AM (picking up an extra hour in the change of time zones).
Coach Bob Drysdale, from Wellington Junior High in Wellington, Colorado, has seen his kids get pummeled over the years by the Fort Collins schools, most of them twice Wellington's size. Not this past year. The same kids who had scored only 42 points in the entire 1997 season, scored that many in one game in 1998.
May 1- Just a reminder that this year's Northern California clinic will be held in San Jose on Saturday, May 22, at the Airport Inn International - same as last year - 1355 North Fourth, San Diego CA 95112 - 800-453-5340
At dinner Friday night, Coach Scott Moshier of Hoxie, Kansas, in town early for the Denver clinic, told how close his kids had come to a winning season - at a school that hasn't had one in 17 years. Hoxie is a small high school in western Kansas, and with the kind of distances they have to deal with, schools Hoxie's size often find themselves playing bigger schools, just to save on travel. Class 2A Hoxie found itself in a strange position last year, building a 22-8 halftime lead over top-ten 4A Goodland, and when they came out of the locker room to start the second half, there were a lot more people in the Hoxie stands - not accustomed to their team winning, many fans had stayed home, until they were roused from their homes by fans who had left the stands at halftime to go get them!
Ron Timson, of Bennington, Nebraska, said his kids surprised him at the school's awards banquet with a school helmet autographed by 11 Heisman Trophy winners. The winners were in Council Bluffs, Iowa for a Super Bowl promotion at one of the casinos there, and his kids stood in line for three hours to get the helmet signed.