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He played in all 37 games in his four years, including his school's first-ever appearance in the Rose Bowl. He led the Big Ten in rushing all four years, and when he graduated (on time), he was the NCAA all-time leading rusher. His last two years, when the rules changed to require two-way play, he played linebacker on defense and made All-America both his junior and senior years. In additon to winning the Heisman, he also won the Walter Camp Trophy, and was named MVP of the Big Ten. In 1975 was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.
*********** Jim Jeffords liked the I-formation. Trouble was, for 26 years, he'd coached at the same place, and they ran the Double-Wing. He didn't like the Double-Wing. But he liked the job. He had numerous opportunities to quit and go someplace else, but he enjoyed being recognized as a member of the staff. He liked the prestige and he liked the perks. He liked the free coaches' hats, the shirts, the jackets that all identified him as a staff member. And he liked to run out on the field with the team before games, and stand on the sidelines, and he enjoyed the applause and the congratulations when they won. But he wasn't what you'd call a team player. From time to time, when he could find anyone who'd listen, he'd criticize the head coach's strategy. He was invited to all the team social functions, but he rarely went. Instead, he seemed to prefer hanging out with rival staffs Often at practice, when he'd been instructed to take a group of players with him down to the other end of the field and run the Double-Wing, the other coaches would look down there and see him running the I-formation. When confronted with this, he would basically say, "Fire me," because he knew they couldn't. One of the problems with being the head coach there was that somebody else hired and fired the assistants. All the head coach could ever do was have a talk with Jim, or ask some of the other staff members to talk with him. But it never seemed to do any good. Jim was going to do things his way. This year, though, a new head coach came on board, a guy from Texas, and he announced that he not only intended to stay with the Double-Wing, but that he'd be placing added emphasis on the basics - on running the basic Double-Wing offense without any frills. And so, the first time he found Jim Jeffords trying to teach kids the I-formation, he called him into his office and said some things that must have shocked Jim. Up until then, everybody'd just pretty much resigned themselves to just going along with Jim, putting up with what the newspaper reporters liked to call his "independence." This time, though, Jim was offended. Who did this guy think he was? At practices, Jim began to mutter to the few members of the staff who seemed willing to listen to him, telling them that he was upset and thinking of quitting. He also made sure to leak word of this to a few of his friends at the newspapers. And then, two games into the season, he quit. He called a news conference to announce it, saying that after 26 years of loyal, dedicated service, he felt that the team had deserted him. He said he'd been made to feel "like an outsider" on the staff, that there was no longer room on it for a coach with different ideas. Despite his deeply-held belief in the I-formation, he said, he found himself increasingly under pressured to run the Double-Wing. Reporters wrote down his every word; spectators, especially those who didn't like the Double-Wing cheered loudly. It was all very exciting. Few people had ever heard of him before, and now suddenly, here was his picture in all the papers, He was even on the TV news every night. They talked about him on weekend TV talk shows. Within days, he joined the staff of the arch-rivals, an I-formation team. They gave him a new hat, a new shirt, a new jacket, and a shiny new whistle. And named him offensive coordinator. He tells everyone who asks that it was a matter of principle. *********** RATED R FOR POTENTIAL VIOLENCE- I was brought up, like most kids in my generation and those before us, to show proper respect for our flag- the flag never touches the ground, the flag is not to be used as part of a costume or athletic uniform except as a patch on a military, fire, police or veterans' organization uniform, etc. The flag covers a veteran's casket, and following burial, it is folded, "neatly and ceremoniously", and presented to his or her next of kin. My brother's is in front of me as I type. But something happened over the years - I think it was called the 60's - to bring about a nearly total ignorance, if not scorning, of our rituals and symbols of respect. On occason, I have been willing to make myself unpopular among some kids - and some younger faculty members as well - because I am willing to tell them to take their hats off and shut up and stand respectfully for the national anthem. "When the national anthem is played or sung," says a pamphlet entitled"Our Flag," published by the National Flag Foundation, of Pittsburgh, "citizens should stand at attention and salute at first note and hold the salute through the last note." My question, after watching the start of Sunday's Indianapolis 500, is, "what if there is no 'last note?'" I am referring to the disgustingly disrespectful "performance" of our national anthem prior to the race - ironically scheduled as part of the Memorial Day weekend observances - by some pencil-neck creep named Steven Tyler who we were told (I confess to no knowledge whatsover of those things) was lead singer of the group Aerosmith, but looked to to me more like a professional blood donor. He shrieked... he gesticulated... he paused - took a break, would be more accurate - in order to work the crowd... the camera cut away to tough ole A.J. Foyt, standing there listening to that crap... and then the "singer" shrieked some more, as if someone had him firmly by the short hairs... But he never finished. Not our national anthem, anyhow. Catering to the beer-sotted portion of his audience, he chose to end with, "And the home... of the... Indianapolis 500." He was so-o-o-o cute and innovative. Okay. What the #$%@& is going on in this country, anyhow, when people who stage events like this somehow think it's appropriate to hire "simgers" to $#@%$ around with our national treasure? Do they really think there is a large segment of their audience that expects it? (Do you suppose there really could be?) Ever had a song that you and your girl, or you and your wife, considered to be your song, only to have to listen to some clown butcher it? Ever wanted to say, hey, fella - that's our song? Well, there this puke was, $#@%$ing with our song. Yours, and mine, and those guys lying in the national cemeteries. You mean to tell me that guys died landing in Normandy or planting the flag on Mt. Suribachi so that scum like that could one day dishonor their symbols? After the "singer" had finished his act, ABC went to commercial, and when they came back, there was the Commandant of the Marine Corps, saying a few words to the crowd to remind everyone that we were, after all, observing Memorial Day. What a vivid contrast between two people and what they stand for. While we still have the Greatest Generation with us, I have a job for them. I'll bet we could get a few of them to volunteer to sit up in the stands at events like Sunday's 500, and take potshots at anyone who desecrates our national anthem. Time's a-wastin', men. Got to get you some target practice. Super Bowl'll be here before you know it. *********** Don't know how them Ivy guys do it, without athletic scholarships, but Princeton won the NCAA lacrosse title Monday, defeating Syracuse 10-9, with 41 seconds left in the first overtime period. *********** It's official. Roger Penske's place in motor sports is secure. After five years away from Indianapolis, he returned Sunday, and his team finished one-two. It is the sort of thing that we have seen certain football coaches do, time after time, in place after place. They are successful in so many different places and under so many different conditions that it is obviously more than luck or coincidence. Lou Holtz comes to mind. *********** I watched Britni Saturday night. Not Speers, Sneed. For no particular reason, I found myself watching the LSU-Oklahoma women's softball world series game. Now, I probably would not be considered the most enthusiastic or knowledgeable softball fan in the world. I think it is a joke, for example, that Oklahoma's pitcher pitched every game the Sooners (Lady Sooners? Soonerettes?) played this past season. But I got hooked watching this kid pitching for LSU, Britni Sneed. Going against the defending champions, she gave up a home run to the first hitter she faced, then shut down Oklahoma the rest of the way, until she found herself in trouble in the top of the 11th. With one out and the bases loaded, following a walk, an error and another walk, she faced the top two hitters in the OU lineup. And struck them both out. Talk about tough. She has the heart of a Tiger. And LSU finally won in the bottom of the 13th. *********** In Tennessee, it's okay for high school tennis players to yell "Jesus!" or "Christ!" when they're angry or upset. Just so they don't put the words together and scream "Jesus Christ!" That was the ruling of Jan Genosi, a Tennessee Secondary Schools Athletic Assn. official Thursday, who disqualified a player and his partner after the player lost his serve and uttered the blasphemy. The incident occured in the third set of the Class AAA state championship match, and the victory was awarded to the opponents. "I don't have any leeway," Genosi said. "I'm going by the rule." The Tennessee state association says it adheres to U.S. Tennis Association rules, which apparently permit players to yell "Jesus," or "Christ" - but not together. Tennessee state rules further call for an automatic default on a first offense for visible or audible profanity or obscenity or physical abuse of a player or official. The disqualified players' coach said she had not heard that phrase included in warnings about forbidden profanity. Isn't that insane? It's okay to say, "Jesus!" and it's okay to say "Christ!" Just so long as you don't say "Jesus Christ!" I'm sure that the ACLU will be in on this one in a hurry. I can just hear them now - why is Jesus Christ given extra consideration? What if the kid had said, "Buddha?" What's so special about Jesus Christ? What about Satan? See? There go those wacky, right-wing Christians again! Personal confession: I have been known to use colorful language on occcasion. I may get pissed off, and tell a kid to get up off his ass. There are times when "Bovine Excrement" has its uses. But I don't say the F-word around kids, and I do NOT take the Lord's name in vain. Not first name or last name. (You know, I have a suspicion that that was NOT the first time the kid's coach ever heard him say that, which means that he had been allowed to get away with it in the past, without correction. Nice job of teaching.) *********** Hmm. Once again, I marvel at the many uses of Title IX, an American law, passed by American legislators, on the grounds that it would benefit American women. Of the nine members of the University of Washington's women's crew - all on scholarship because, as everyone knows, in order to have true gender equity in a college's athletic program, it is expected to offer as many scholarships for women as for men - two hail from Washington, two from California, and five from Canada. *********** I suggest that Yale and USC swap names, so that Yale can officially be known as University of Spoiled Children. Several of the little boys and girls at the Yale Day Care Center defiled their own graduation by booing the President of the United States, a Yale graduate himself, who was there to accept an honorary degree. Many of them got up and walked out, turning their backs on our President. In my lifetime, I have seen exactly one President. It was Lyndon Johnson. I was not a great Lyndon Johnson fan, but nevertheless he was the President, and Mr. Johnson, for all his behind-the-scenes personal coarseness, had an abiding respect for the dignity of the office. It was a great thrill for me to see a President - a moment I'll never forget. (Actually, I saw Harry Truman, out for his morning stroll, when he visited Yale, but that was years after he'd left office, and I saw John F. Kennedy when he was campaigning in New Haven, but he wasn't President yet.) When The Man From Hope came along and debased the office with his loathesome conduct, my belief in respecting the office, if not the man, was strained. So now after eight years of that, we have a President who for many youngsters is the first one they've ever seen who actually reflects the dignity of the Presidency - and they boo him. They didn't all arrive in New Haven as louts. They have been well taught, by a faculty every bit as churlish as they are. 200 members of Yale's finest chose to protest the university's decision to honor the President of the United States. Among the libs that dominate college faculties, there is a great deal of animosity toward people who have been successful in more worldly pursuits than standing up and lecturing to fawning underclassmen. And I'm sure that among Yale's flaming libs, there is hatred of the rich (you know, the ones who endow their professorships). George Bush's accomplishments didn't justify the honorary degree, they said. Easy to say, I suppose, when you're a haughty Yale Professor, sitting there in your ivory tower high above the hoi polloi and secure in your lifetime tenure. But while we're on the subject of accomplishments, where were they when Yale was giving honorary degrees to over-the-hill actors and aging rock stars? Did they think that those accomplishments made them more worthy than the President of the United States? Is it possible that they think that acting and singing is more significant than leading our county or governing our second most populous state? *********** A high school girl in Florida is going to miss her graduation because she's on suspension. Someone found a kitchen knife in her car, and she has the misfortune of going to a school with a zero-tolerance policy for weapons. Zero tolerance. What a crock! Just one more way in which the law-abiding citizens get shafted by the scum. Sounds like gun control- can't distinguish between crooks and law-abiding citizens? Simple. Disarm everybody. All because the weenies who run the schools won't make the kind of calls that any football coach could make in a heartbeat. You say you found a weapon? Tell me what it was, and tell me who you found it on, and I'll tell you how to handle it. A bayonet? On Jason White? That punk. Guaranteed, he's up to no good. Suspend his ass. A bread knife? In Melissa Jones' car? You mean the kid who led the canned food drive? She says she was taking the knife to her grandma and forgot it was in there? I believe her. Personally, I thought that was what character was supposed to be all about. You prove yourself to people, and when you really need them to, they believe you. On the other hand, you screw people over, and then when you need a break, it's their turn. *********** "My father had his beginnings as a MIGRANT farm worker, but he also served his country during the Korean WAR as a member of the elite 82nd AIRBORNE Division. He had over 50 airborne jumps during his career, 4 were during combat missions. It was he who was responsible for instilling in me a sense of duty and civic responsibility..." John Torres, Manteca, California John's father's story is a great one. It is people like him who make America the incredible country it is. America may have difficulty at times assimilating newcomers, but by God, we're the only nation in the history of the world that's ever made it work to everyone's advantage. *********** It's called integrity... In the second round of the 1965 U.S. Amateur golf tournament, on the third hole, a guy named Bob Dickson discovered that he had been unknowingly carrying one more club in his bag than the rules of golf allow. Had he been a baseball player, he might have put spit on the ball or cork in the bat; if he'd been a basketball player, he might have faked taking a charge; if he'd been a football player, he might have pretended that he'd caught a ball that he knew full well he'd trapped. But he was a golfer, and he respected the game of golf. He gave himself the four-stroke penalty that the rules prescribe, and wound up finishing second in the tournament - one stroke behind the winner. *********** Ever have a hard time understanding why most airlines continue to lose money, when it seems as if you never get on an airplane these days that isn't filled to the gills? The problem is, the plane is filled with the wrong kind of people. All those other people on the plane are just like you - they bought the lowest-priced ticket they could find. The guys who pay full fare - the fare you have to pay when you walk up to the ticket counter on the day of the flight, rather than the one you pay when you can buy your ticket two weeks in advance - are disappearing. The airlines need them. The rest of us help buy the gas, but it's the heavy-hitters that the airlines really need. They're the people the airlines have traditionally depended on to put them in the black. But those people have, in some cases, begun to cut back on flying; in other cases, they've downgraded themselves, buying coach class tickets instead of business class or first class; sometimes, they've scheduled their travel so they can buy tickets well in advance, even staying over a Saturday night. Some of them have switched over to low-fare airlines, such as Southwest. And some have gone to the other extreme, buying shares in corporate jets, and avoiding the riff-raff entirely.
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A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: He was a native of Kenosha,
Wisconsin. Nicknamed "The Horse," he was a big, hard
runner who became his college's first Heisman Trophy
winner. It would be 45 years before it would have
another.
*********** Memorial Day, originally known as Decoration Day, was set aside to honor the men who died in the Civil War. (There was a time when certain southern states did not observe it, preferring instead to observe their own days to honor Confederate war dead.) The Civil War soldiers called it "seeing the elephant." It meant experiencing combat. They started out cocky, but soon learned how suddenly horrible - how unforgiving and inescapable - combat could be. By trhe end of the Civil War 620,000 of them on both sides lay dead. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were left dead or homeless. "I have never realized the 'pomp and circumstance' of glorious war before this," a Confederate soldier bitterly wrote, "Men...lying in every conceivable position; the dead...with eyes open, the wounded begging piteously for help." "All around, strange mingled roar - shouts of defiance, rally, and desperation; and underneath, murmured entreaty and stifled moans; gasping prayers, snatches of Sabbath song, whispers of loved names; everywhere men torn and broken, staggering, creeping, quivering on the earth, and dead faces with strangely fixed eyes staring stark into the sky. Things which cannot be told - nor dreamed. How men held on, each one knows, - not I." Each battle was a story of great courage and audacity, sometimes of miscommunication and foolishness. But it's the casualty numbers that catch our eyes. The numbers roll by and they are hard for us to believe even in these days of modern warfare. Shiloh: 23,741, Seven Days': 36,463, Antietam: 26,134, Fredericksburg: 17,962, Gettysburg: 51,112, and on and on (in most cases, the South named battles after the town that served as their headquarters in that conflict, the North named them after rivers or creeks nearby. So Manassas for the South was Bull Run for the North; Antietam for the Union was Sharpsburg for the Confederacy). General William T. Sherman looked at the aftermath of Shiloh and wrote, "The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war."
The death of a close friend and former student especially affected Major McCrae. Following the burial, which, in the absence of a chaplain, Major McCrae himself had had to perform, he sat in the back of an ambulance and, gazing out at the wild poppies growing in profusion in a nearby cemetery, began to compose a poem, scribbling the words in a notebook as he went. But when he was done, he discarded it. Only through the efforts of a fellow officer, who rescued it and sent it to newspapers in England, was it published. The poem, "In Flanders Fields", is considered perhaps the greatest of all wartime poems. The significance of the poppies is that poppy seeds can lie dormant on the ground for years, until someone digs up the ground. Only when the soil has been uprooted do they flower. Needless to say, much of the soil of northern Belgium had been uprooted by war, so that by the time Major McCrae wrote his poem; it is said that the poppies were in bloom as no one could remember ever having seen them before. In Flanders Fields... *********** "WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE AND YOUNG" - "If you have not read this book then you should! Hal Moore did a great job of depicting the true horror of combat, and what combat is really like. A movie is in production, and I shudder to think what Hollywood will do to this great book. The prologue of this book should be required reading for all politicians-before they commit our young people into harm's way." Tom Hinger, Auburndale, Florida (I have read it, and I agree with Tom, a Vietnam vet who went into the jungle with Don Holleder, and came out with his lifeless body. The prologue is a thing of beauty. I print it here because I think it should be required reading in every U.S. history class in every high school.) PROLOGUE OF "WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE AND YOUNG", by Hal Moore: *********** In 1954-55 I lived at West Point N.Y. where my father was stationed as a member of the staff at the United States Military Academy. Don Holleder was an All American end on the Red Blaik coached Army football team which was a perennial eastern gridiron power in 40s and 50s. On Fall days I would run home from the post school, drop off my books, and head directly to the Army varsity practice field which overlooked the Hudson River and was only a short sprint from my house. Army had a number of outstanding players on the roster back then, but my focus was on Don Holleder, our All-America end turned quarterback in a controversial position change that had sportswriters and Army fans buzzing throughout the college football community that year. Don looked like a hero, tall, square jawed, almost stately in his appearance. He practiced like he played, full out all the time. He was the obvious leader of the team in addition to being its best athlete and player. In 1955 it was common for star players to play both sides of the ball and Don was no exception delivering the most punishing tackles in practice as well as game situations. At the end of practice the Army players would walk past the parade ground (The Plain), then past my house and into the Arvin Gymnasium where the team's locker room was located. Very often I would take that walk stride for stride with Don and the team and best of all, Don would sometimes let me carry his helmet. It was gold with a black stripe down the middle and had the most wonderfull smell of sweat and leather. Inside the helmet suspension was taped a sweaty number 16, Don's jersey number.
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*********** Coach, After reading your news about Friday night football I decided to check out the Esks (Edmonton Eskimos) schedule for the upcoming season. Check this out: Esks will play the following Friday nights during high school football season. Friday September 21 vs. Toronto 7:00 PM TSN Friday October 5 vs. Winnipeg 7:00 PM TSN Friday October 12 vs. BC 7:00 PM TSN Friday October 19 @ Toronto 7:30 PM TSN Way to go Esks :( Kyle Wagner, Edmonton, Alberta (P.S. Our jerseys are black.) *********** Parsippany, New Jersey High is down to Titans or Red Hawks. Having ditched "Redskins," the nickname that had served generations of Parsippanians (can't call them Redskins any more), and reluctant to adopt "Tomahawks" as also potentially offensive, they scratched off such other suggestions as Scarlet Raiders, Red Storm and War Hawks (goodness! "War?"), to settle on what their assistant principal called "two pretty unique names." Yeah, unique. Any of you guys heard of Denzell Washington? Red Hawks is really inspired, too. That's what Miami of Ohio went to when they had to flush their old "Redskins" nickname. Scott Russell, of Sterling, Virginia, is a Parsippany grad. He says he submitted "Red Scare." *********** Where Darrell Royal really got it right in answering one particular critic of his football program was in pointing out that football isn't for everybody, and if you don't want to be there, you sure as the devil shouldn't be there. Administrators don't like to hear coaches say that, because they figure that if we can just get every kid off the streets and out on that football field, we can turn convicts into Eagle Scouts. Too often, they wind up wanting us to accomodate all those kids and parents nowadays who don't particularly like all the demands that football makes on a kid - who want football to change for them. Something like the *'s (if you know Kurt Vonnegut, you know that that's how he drew a particular part of the human body, down where the sun don't shine) who build a home in the country and then complain about the neighbor's rooster. *********** A substantial number of parents get swept along with that garbage about allowing kids to "express themselves" by the clothes they wear, and in their grooming and piercing. (They are, for the most part, public school parents - private schools aren't quite so tolerant of dressing for diversity - and they are, for the most part, under the spell of their kids.) Maybe it's because their kids write and speak so atrociously that they have to resort to other methods of self expression, but the fact is that the way kids choose to look could be leading them into trouble. A police officer was talking about the issue at a nearby neighborhood meeting. He was careful to say that what kids wore or how they groomed did not mean that they were automatically good or bad. He had to say that, of course, because if there's one thing that unites American parents nowadays, it's a sense of denial ("not my kid!"), BUT - he did point out that appearance was a major factor in determining the type of kids that they associated with. And haven't we all seen what can happen to even a good kid, when he starts "hanging with the wrong crowd?" As we all know, "peers" are a major influence on most teenagers, and maybe a kid isn't at all bad, but what about the people he's hanging with? Think about it for a minute. Nowadays, the "costume" or "uniform" a kid wears is a sure sign that he identifies with a certain group. I mean, there's nothing inherently wrong with skateboarding, but if your kid carries a skateboard and dresses like a skateboarder, he has taken the first step in gaining access to that subculture. Once he's done that, can you be sure he isn't also mimicking the antisocial behavior of so many members of the group? Not only does a certain style of dress gain a kid access to a particular group, but it can also get him (or her) excuded from others. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but what are the chances that that kid who wears a black trench coat to school is going to hang out with athletes? Where is the dude with the spiked hair going to sit at lunch? Sagging? I would be willing to bet that there is an inverse relationship between a kid's GPA and the amount of boxer shorts showing above his drawers. My kids, thank the Lord, are grown. *********** As the state championship track meet approaches, Nick Daschel, a spoprts columnist for our local paper, wrote an article in which he argued that specialization in other sports is really hurting high school track. Not in numbers - they're higher than ever - but in the quality of performances. In Washington, for example, with the exception of girls' pole vault, which has only been a state-sanctioned event for three years now, 14 of the state's 34 track and field records are at least 20 years old. Only eight of them were set during the 90s. Why is this? Simple. Track is turning into the sport you do for fun. While other sports demand more and more of their athletes' time and effort, track increasingly is a welcome break. The year-round dedication required to break records is rarely there in track. Says one area high school coach, "For 99 per cent of our kids, except the distance runners, it's over until next season." One local high school male athlete, who had qualified for this weekend's state track meet in four events, told Daschel, "I believe (track) is a type of social event, because there's guys and girls, it's coed." "Social event," huh? Anyone for irony? The next day, the day after Daschel's article appeared, that same newspaper reported that that same male athlete had been suspended from the team for what his coach called "a violation of team training rules." That means no appearance in the state meet. One of his four events was the 1600 meter relay, which also means that the other three guys on the relay team are SOL. Some social event. *********** Coach, Here's another installment of "I wish they had some 'stones'". The state of Georgia has put some "value" in creating equlity among all Georgia high school students by requiring them to pass a state senior exit exam which tests them in several areas. If you don't pass all parts of the test, NO DIPLOMA! It seems in the Columbia County school district some students can't pass the test even though they have taken it five times. Our board has decided to let these children walk across the stage with the other graduates. Of course all these kids get is a certificate of attendance. Doesn't this devalue the ceremony for the kids that met all the requirements for graduation? Won't anyone take a stand about an issue? Sometimes I admire people who will fight for their ideas regardless of how the majority may feel. I may not agree with them either but at least they will keep to their guns. There is a growing trend to find a loophole in everything and somehow make excuses about why the rules shouldn't apply to them or their kids. Dan King Evans Ga. Standing in the way of any attempt to put teeth in reforms, is our soccer-mom concern for how it will make people feel. Above all, we don't want to hurt peoples feelings. It is just more of that self-esteem crap. More of that "trophies for everybody crap." More of that black-berets-for-everybody-in-the-army crap. *********** (Regarding my suggestion that the producers of Pearl Harbor might have played fast and loose with historical truth, when they decided to rescheduled the invasion to some time a little later in the day.) "Come to think of it, are you sure it was the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor? It would make for a better story line if it were the Chinese, don't you think? Maybe it was the Iraqis, or the Libyans. No, I know, it was the Republicans! Damn those sneaky Republicans..." Alan Goodwin, Warwick, Rhode Island *********** "We had our football signups this weekend and wow, am I excited. We signed up 161 kids so far and if the usual stragglers show up, we should have roughly 185 kids in our program this year. (By comparison, last year we had 130 kids and in 1995 we had 55 kids.) This means we'll field 6 teams at all levels compared to 4 last year. Other programs in our league are showing similar increases. In an area where soccer, lacrosse, hockey, and affluence compete for kids attention, I think the numbers prove that football is alive and thriving on the north shore of Chicagoland. "You'll be glad to learn that the Black Lion Award received overwhelming good reviews from parents and kids. Having a lot of them striving for this award can only help us when practice begins. Some anecdotes: 1) Matt Suhey signed up his son Joey who is reputed to be a real speed merchant. Mr. Suhey and I discussed how we teach tackling and how it's changed since he was playing youth football. Although he was skeptical of the effectiveness of our techniques, he agreed the safety issue was critical at this age. 2) I had several mothers tell me that their doctors told them that at this age, soccer had more injuries than football so they felt more comfortable with their kids playing football. 3) We've received excellent word-of-mouth advertising as first time program participants tell us that the reason they signed up is because one of their friends had a good experience last year." Keith Babb, Northbrook, Illinois *********** From a youth coach in the South: "Register me for the Black Lion Award.The kids in this town need something like that. .Everybody around here is me, me, me, and that is how they raise their kids." *********** A coach wrote me recently asking me to recommend some books on coaching. There are lots of older books that I would recommend, including "Football Principles and Play," by Dave Nelson and "Football Coaching" by John McKay. Unfortunately, there haven't been too many published in the last 20 years by successful college coaches that are much help to other coaches. Mostly they're a compilation of stories, and more often than not the coach himself has had little to do with the actual writing. I would, however, put Coach Bob Reade's book, published in 1994, right up there with the best I've read. Coach Reade won three state titles at Geneseo, Illinois High, and four consecutive NCAA Division III national titles at Augustana College. How's that for credentials? His book is entitled "Coaching Football Successfully," by Bob Reade, 1994, published by Human Kinetics - www.humankinetics.com *********** "Point of interest, or maybe not, the existing group hug record is safe after Green Bay came up about 28 short, with 150 no-shows. (It was supposed to be a part of the festivities at the groundbreaking ceremonies of the rebuilding of Lambeau Field. HW) The good news is lots of money for Special Olymics was generated." Adam Wesoloski, DePere, Wisconsin. Whew! My faith in the good citizens of Packerland is intact. I would hate to see Green Bay go into the Guiness Book of World Records in that category. I still say a beer-and-brats tailgater outside the stadium would have drawn more people and made more money. And probably, at some point, inspired a real group hug. *********** "What happens when this 'Army of One' says, 'F--k it. I'm not going over the top?'" Tony Soprano, noted TV mobster.
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"In the book "Vain Glory" the author, Jan Reid, asked Royal about Shaw's book: "'I read that book," Royal told me. 'And I'd have to say that Gary mostly told the truth -- as he experienced it ... he didn't want to play football. He wanted to quit in junior high, he said in the book, but his dad kept pressuring him, which I think is terrible. Why isn't he mad at his daddy? 'I don't like to swim. I just hate going under water. Now if some guy's up there with a whistle telling me to dive in -- get up, get out, dive in again -- I can understand how I'd grow up to dislike that guy in a hurry. Only thing is, I wouldn't go out for the swim team. 'I don't deny we ran a tough program, especially back then. I don't think we ran it without feelings. But for Gary it was a powerful experience, and I think he was entirely truthful in 90, maybe 95 percent of that book. I still object to the five to ten percent lies. I don't even recognize some of those drills he described. We never had them -- ever at any time. But there wasn't much in that book that wasn't true. 'Gary said I ran into him on campus and didn't even know him. Well, the guy grew a beard and long hair and lost down to 170 pounds, quite possibly I'm guilty of that. But I'd have recognized him if he still had a crewcut and weighed 200 pounds. I still remember the way his legs were built and the way he moved.'" *********** All over the United States last year, there were 11 kids killed in school bus accidents. Obviously, one is too many. It would be best if no kid had died, but when you consider the number of kids involved and the number of trips they made (the airlines use a standard of measurement called "passenger miles"), school buses have to be just about the safest form of mass transportation known, right up there with escalators and elevators. I would be willing to bet that more kids die every year driving their cars to or from school, or walking to and from school and trying to cross busy streets and highways. Nevertheless, there are politicians among us who can't pass up a chance to show us how much they care for "the children," no matter how much it's going to cost you. Their solution here is to pass another one of those things called "unfunded mandates" - laws that require someone else to come up with the money. It is a cheap way for the big mouths to show us they care. Their latest? A proposal to require all new school buses to have seat belts. Supposedly, surveys show that the public is in favor. Of course, a lot of surveying is in the way the question is asked ("in view of the number of innocent children killed every year in gruesome accidents in which kids are tossed around inside school buses like little rag dolls, would you be in favor of requiring that seat belts be installed in all new school buses?"). Also when and where it is asked - like right after a school bus accident, in a town where one has occured. Once buses were so equipped, of course, the next step would be requiring all kids to buckle up. Apart from the added cost to taxpayers... do you have any idea how much longer the average school bus trip is going to take? *********** "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." Smeared across much of the front page of Monday morning's Portland Oregonian was an article on the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA), the new pro league, now in its sixth week of trying somehow to relive the once-in-a-lifetime excitement of the 1999 Women's World Cup. Based on the kid-glove treatment WUSA is receiving from the sports media, perhaps the XFL's biggest mistake was not putting women in pads. Monday we read about how wonderful it is to be "paid to play a sport they love", as if many of them hadn't been paid, and paid rather well at that, to play on the USA women's soccer team. We also read about how the sport is "making it." I would say to the reporters, "you wish." Because they made the mistake of showing us the numbers: Washington's average attendance of 21,682 is by far the highest. New York, a town that knows a minor league sport when it sees one, has the lowest. Its fans have been turning out in droves of 4,281 a game to watch its team, the "Power." Of the league's eight teams, only four of them are averaging over 10,000 fans at home games, and two of those four - Boston and Philadelphia - have played only one game. It is safe to assume, based on how things have been going in the WUSA, that those "crowds" (11,714 in Boston and 11,092 in Philadelphia) were pumped up by the excitement of the home opener, and are almost certain to taper off along with the euphoria. Put it this way: if every team in the WUSA were to play a home game at the same time, and bring along all the fans that attend an average game, and put them all in the University of Michigan's stadium, there would still be 26,780 empty seats. So tell your local sports editor to give this minor sport the coverage it merits - that is to say, base it on its fans' willingness to support it with their dollars, the way he says he does when you call him to complain about coverage of high school football. It's all well and good for the sports media to want something to succeed, but if that were what drove them, they'd have stopped covering the NBA a long time ago. *********** Shawn Kemp, are you reading this?... Jane Eisner, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, wonders why it's bad-bad-bad for this guy Tom Green in Utah to have five wives and 25 children, but it's okay for pro athletes "to pepper the globe with love children." *********** So this is what it has come to. In an America in which beer-guzzling football fans sit in the end zone with bare chests and painted faces and mug for the TV cameras while passing judgment on coaches, it was just a matter of time before AOL asked its members to give Colin Powell a grade (from A to F) - a job rating - as Secretary of State. Are you kidding me? Idiot web surfers, most of whom couldn't find Canada on a map of North America, grading the Secretary of State? They were asked to respond to a question, too: What role will Powell play in getting things done? Their choices were: Uniter... Divider... Not Sure. Sounds awfully touchy-feely to me. I mean, who gives a rip whether he tries to make everybody feel good by being a uniter? That kind of garbage is for those overpaid phonies at the United Nations. If it takes a threat or two to get North Korea to feed its people before it spends any more on weapons, to get China to turn over our plane, I hope the last thing the General will worry about is whether that makes him a "uniter" or a "divider." *********** "The 2000 season was our first with the D-W. We finished 5-5 again, however we had more yards, rushing yards, points, first downs and fewer turnovers than our opponents for the first time in my seven year tenure here. We had the AA state champs down at half. (stack 99 S.P. for 88yds on the first play) Our A-back led the league in rushing, scoring, yards per carry and yards per catch!" Will Fields, Alleghany High School, Covington, Virginia *********** I have had various offers to go with some big "portal" site, and I've had no interest. I value my independence. All I can think of is living in a rental house and having the landlord tell you he's sold the place and the new owners want to move in tomorrow. Rivals.com, the biggest collection of sports sites in the business, is out of business, its sites all acquired by a firm called AllianceSports. In the meantime, those of us who had favorite sites that were part of the Rivals network appear to be SOL. Please let me know if you get Homer Smith's new address before I do. *********** The movie Pearl Harbor opens this weekend, in case you have been unconscious and hadn't noticed the hype. We didn't make this big a fuss ten years ago, on the 50th anniversary of the attack. I always enjoyed telling my history classes how clever the Japanese were, how well they knew Americans, attacking Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning when so many Americans were sleeping off the night before. But in the movie, as I understand it, the attack somes at another time of day. Typical Hollywood "historical" film - C'mon, man, I've got a story to tell. Can't let facts interfere! What's next? Paul Revere, galloping through the streets of Mexico City in late afternoon, waking everyone from siesta? Napoleon's parched troops, dying of thirst as they beat their summertime retreat from Moscow across the hot Russian plains? Franklin Roosevelt, crippled for life by a Bronko Nagurski tackle? Lincoln, trampled to death by concert-goers? In one way, this will help you if you're a history teacher, because when you assign reading on Pearl Harbor and some kid comes in the next day telling you that the attack took place later in the day, you'll know immediately that he rented the movie instead of reading the assignment. *********** I know that we are sometimes disliked, but... John Torres, in Manteca, California, said a friend heard this exchange on the Double-Wing at a recent defensive football clinic: Defensive Coach 1 - "Why do Double-Wing teams always wear dark-colored jerseys?" Defensive Coach 2 - " To hide the ball for deception?" Defensive Coach 1 - " No. Because they are the reincarnates of the DEVIL!". Ouch |
*********** So you want to be a sports executive... ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT TO THE FOOTBALL COACH 101. Today's Topic: Team Travel When I worked in the World Football League, among my assorted duties was handling team travel. It was stressful enough when times were flush, and we flew charter. I still had to arrange for ground transportation at both ends, to assign rooms and arrange to have everyone checked in and room keys ready when the players arrived at the hotel, to disburse per diem money, to arrange for team meals and meeting rooms at precise times, to arrange for buses to and from the game (including a police escort, where possible) and hand out appropriate passes - sideline, locker room and press box - to coaches and support personnel. Oh, and make sure the owners were taken care of. And listen to complaints. Did I forget anything? I can't be sure, because I don't have my check list handy, but let this be Lesson Number One: Don't take anything for granted. Don't misplace your check list, and double-check everything! When times got tough and we started to count pennies and fly commercial, it got to be a real hassle. We tried to pair off the big guys, and give each pair a row of three seats, with an empty seat between them. Flying out of Portland, it almost invariably meant a change of planes somewhere, which meant that our equipment man had to go down on the tarmac and make sure everything got on the next plane, and it meant shepherding a large group of grown men to our connecting flight. Once, as we were about to take off after a change someplace, Jim Martin, our offensive line coach, noticed that J.J. Hartstein wasn't in his seat. J.J., a running back out of Arizona State (or so he said), was something of a flake. Once, after I'd told a Birmingham reporter named John Cargile that I'd seen J.J. eat a light bulb, Cargile met our plane at the gate - light bulb in his pocket, photographer at his side - and held up everyone on the plane until he could get a photo of the act. (He did.) Jim Martin was a big, tough man. He'd fought in the South Pacific as a Marine in World War II, then started on Frank Leahy's great Notre Dame teams from 1946 through 1949. In his four years there, the Irish never lost a game. He played alongside no fewer than eight All-Americans and two Heisman Trophy winners, and was named All-America end himself in 1949. In his 12 years in the NFL - one with Cleveland, 11 with Detroit - he played on four NFL champions. During his pro career, he played six different positions - seven, if you count place-kicker. Even then, years after he'd played his last game, he looked to be in fighting shape. So J.J. wasn't in his seat, and we were getting ready to leave, and Jim began to get upset. He was a team man. He cared about the players! "Where's J.J.?" he began asking everybody, panic in his voice. And as they began to close the doors of the plane, Jim bolted up from his seat and told the flight attendant, who had begun to show us all how to fasten our seat belts, "we're not going anywhere without J.J!" She evidently took him at his word, because she hastily turned and departed for the front of the plane and returned shortly with a very official-looking guy, who informed Jim that we were going to leave, J.J. or no J.J. Jim strode forward and stood four inches from the guy, his face red, his jaws and fists clenched, as ready to mix it up as any guy I've ever seen. Oh, my, I thought. We're going to have the air marshals in here, and Jim's going to get hauled off - not without a fight, certainly - and our players are going to clear the bench, figuratively, in support of him, and we'll be a week getting back to Portland. Suddenly, from up toward the front of the plane, someone called out, "Hey! Here's J.J.! Here he is, up here!" Up ahead in the aisle, walking back toward us, was J.J. When he got close enough to see the standoff beteen Jim and the airline official, he asked, "What's all the fuss about?" It seems that after boarding the plane, he'd found an empty seat up front next to a couple of girls, and had flopped down there. Lesson Number Two: No changing seats on the plane. I was talking the other day with Joe Gardi, an old friend from WFL days, who's now the head coach at Hofstra University. Joe told me a story that you might want to remember the next time you find yourself planning team travel. Last fall, when Hofstra, located in New York, flew to Portland to play Portland State, they flew commercial. It was a full flight. Joe is a big guy. He was assigned a middle seat. Big mistake, Mr. Travel Planner. Lesson Number Three: First take care of the head coach. *********** From General Jim Shelton, on a non-football topic: "Re Bob Kerry. I think you are right on the money. He needs a good press secretary. He's his own worst enemy when he gets up to speak because I don't think he knows how to lie and never believed it was part of the job to kill women and children. All Vietnam combat vets share the shame of My Lai. Those who know what really happened there are appalled and shamed by those brutal atrocities and the men that did it should still be in prison--and the officers that tried to cover it up should live in infamy. "I do not believe that Bob Kerry is one of those guys. We should be proud of Bob Kerry as a man of courage and conscience. For my money Senator Bob Kerry is an American that we can and should be proud of. However, I have heard enough about it. Dan Rather is also a self promoter who operates like a vulture or a hyena. "In the book STOLEN VALOR by B.G. Burkett, Rather is panned as an unreliable journalist who weaseled out of military service.That book, though not widely known, set many records straight on fakes and phony heroes." *********** Chris Thompson, my old principal at Ridgefield High, said he went back to Philadelphia last fall to help celebrate the Marine Corps' 225th birthday (the Corps was officially founded in the Tun Tavern, in Philadelphia). Chris said he wound up in some tavern run by a guy named "Sergeant Wags," a former Marine whose custom apparently is to celebrate the Marine Corps' birthday every year by performing the Ultimate Trust Fall. The guy stands on a second-story balcony and falls into the throng of Marines standing below. He has yet to hit the ground. *********** In an ironic use of the term "gentleman," it was once common practice to keep black athletes out of athletic contests by "gentleman's agreements". On those occasions when northern teams were scheduled to play southern teams, if the southern team were to object to the northern team's use of black players, the northern team would agree to bench them for that game. (Recall Paul Robeson's being held out of Rutgers' game against Washington and Lee.) Not until well after World War II was the practice was generally discontinued; even as late as 1956 the governor of Georgia created a stir over Georgia Tech's agreeing to play in the Sugar Bowl against Pitt and its lone black starter, fullback Bobby Grier. In 1941, a group of New York University students caused a stir when they got word in advance that their star player, an African-American named Leonard Bates, was going to be held out of NYU's game at Missouri by gentleman's agreement between the two schools. They organized a protest, circulating petitions and picketing administration buildings, insisting that Bates be allowed to play. Their protests were to no avail: Bates was kept home and missed the game, and seven of the protestors were suspended from school for three months. Now, 60 years later, NYU has decided to recognize the courageous stand of the "Bates Seven," and will honor them at a dinner on campus. Leonard Bates will not be there. Mr. Bates, who had a long career as a guidance counselor in New York schools, is now listed in NYU's records as deceased. Several years ago, though, a historian had contacted him, hoping that he could help locate the "Bates Seven." He wasn't able to help, but he said, "Whenever you do find them, tell them, 'Thank you.' " *********** They say that whenever you read about someone being bilked out of money, you will usually discover it's because that person had hoped to make a little easy money himself, which made him an easy prey for the sharpies. So the rubes out in Oregon, with larceny in their hearts, are scheming to catch a major league baseball team. They want the state to put up the money to bait the trap, by building a stadium. Now here's the best part. Once they landed their team, they would repay the state - by taxing the millionaire baseball players. I am not kidding. That's how naive these people are. *********** I know I am doomed to failure on this point, but I hear more and more sports announcers and NFL personnel types referring to a player's "aggression." They actually mean "aggressiveness," and they should say be saying so, but being the fashionable types that they are, they can't pass up a chance to use what sounds like the latest trendy word. In many trades, including pro football, speaking the jargon shows that you belong. Not that it will make a whole lot of difference, but "aggressiveness" is a characteristic of a person (or, for that matter, a business or a country) which may or may not result in the act of "aggression" - an unprovoked attack. The joint German-Russian invasion of Poland in 1939 is a classic act of aggression, and it precipitated World War II. (Which, it might surprise American moviegoers to learn, had already been going on for more than two years before Pearl Harbor.) *********** While watching Bill O'Reilly Saturday night, I heard a 20-year-old woman say that since being taken from her druggie mother when she was a 11, she'd been in and out of at least 20 different foster homes. In some of them, she'd been abused, dragged to her bedroom by the hair, for example, and in none of them had she been treated with any kind of warmth. (I suspect that at some point, she developed a hard, protective shell as a means of dealing with matters.) Most people would agree that foster care has serious problems. On the other hand, leaving kids with some of the screwed-up people who breed them can be a death sentence. Where I went to elementary school, in Philadelphia, many of my schoolmates were kids who came from the Lutheran Home - an orphanage. Those kids were not ostracized. In fact, the impression I always had was that they came from a large family. What would be so bad, I often ask, about a return to orphanages? How could well-run, faith-based orphanages not be better for kids than the gruesome upbringings so many of them face? How could that not be better for society than turning kids loose on the streets, or leaving them defenseless against Mom's latest boyfriend? The young woman on the show was followed by one Father Joe Carroll, a Catholic priest in San Diego who is hard at work on a project to be called Father Joe's Village. It will be based on the model of Father Flanagan's Boys Town, Nebraska, and will house up to 250 kids, aged four to 18, who for various reasons could not - or should not - live with the people who begat them. Kids will live eight to a cottage, with live-in couples hired to serve as house parents and mentors. It will be open to kids of any religion, and will not be used to proselyte them - to recruit them into the Roman Catholic Church. Somehow, though, I suspect the Church's influence will come into the picture in seeing to it that "couples" selected to be house parents will consist of one male and one female. *********** Coach- What a bummer. I was really looking forward to that (LA) clinic. I hope you will try and reschedule sometime in the future. Thank you for sending me the other two videos so promptly. I am really excited about this upcoming season. Last year we scored the most points in our division, averaging 29 points per game. All that with 8+9 year old players. That counter play was there all year long. Thank you for all your support. Rick Regalado- Santa Monica Pop Warner
In 1994, more than 100 of his former players gathered in New York to honor him at a 90th birthday dinner.
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"While the wingbacks would be in the "free blocking zone", they are not usually on the line of scrimmage, thus making them ineligible to "clip" someone. "Here is an excerpt from the press release. 'In an effort to reduce the opportunities in a contest for possible player injuries, Rule 2-17-2a has been changed to restrict blocking below the waist to only the players who are on the line of scrimmage and in the free-blocking zone at the snap.' Later, David Cottrill, West Milford, West Virginia" Coach Cottrill is 100 per cent correct, and as a matter of practice we never have our wingbacks do this, but when they line up on the line, as they sometimes do, they are still legal and they could legally block low or clip. Thanks to Coach Cottrill for pointing this out. The check list has been reworded so that there is no confusion on this point. If you've already downloaded or printed the checklist, make note of that change, or better yet, download or print the changed version. (A DOUBLE-WINGER'S CHECKLIST: What to go over with officials before every game!) *********** Jackie Stiles is playing pro basketball for the Portland whatchamacallits. That's pretty exciting, because she seems like a good kid and she really is fun to watch. In her very first exhibition game, she sank a jumper with five second left to give her team a 53-51 win. She is a refreshing change from the churlish, selfish, pouting louts who wear the uniforms of the Trail Blazers, an organization rapidly becoming as popular in Portland as the Republican Party. The Blazers, with the highest payroll in the history of the NBA, were assembled without regard for team chemistry by GM Bob Whitsitt, who showed what a set of rabbit ears - or eagle eyes - he had when his goons ejected a woman from a playoff game for holding up a sign that said "TRADE WHITSITT." He later apologized. Well, technically he apologized - actually, he had a "spokesperson" call and do it for him. That's the kind of PR savvy this guy has. See, Portland is basically small-town, and its fans want to love their team. They don't really care how many games the Trail Blazers win, so long as they play hard and they're lovable. The current bunch doesn't and isn't. Steve Duin, a columnist for the Portland Oregonian suggested that one PR fix for the Trail Blazers would be to play some double-headers with the women's team (called the Fire - see, I knew). That way, fans could see some good basketball, and probably some of them would stick around to watch the Trail Blazers' game afterward.
In 38 years as a major college coach - 13 at Wichita State, six at Iowa, 19 at Oregon State, Coach Miller's teams won 674 games. He won two Big Ten titles at Iowa, and, during a time when UCLA ruled the basketball roost, two Pac-10 titles at Oregon State. At the time of his retirement, he was the sixth-winningest coach in Division I history, and in all that time, he had only three losing seasons. He built the Oregon State basketball program at the same time its football team was beginning a long decline that it has only now snapped out of. Five of his OSU teams were ranked in the top ten, and his 1981 team was ranked number one for nine weeks, before losing its final regular-season game and dropping its opening-round NCAA tournament game to Kansas State in a huge upset. A native of Chanute, Kansas, Ralph Miller was one of the greatest schoolboy athletes in Kansas history. He earned four letters each in football and track, three in basketball, and one each in golf and tennis. He was named all-state three times in basketball. At the University of Kansas, he lettered for three years in basketball under the legendary Dr. Phog Allen, but also won three letters as a quarterback on the football team. After graduation from Kansas, he served three years in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He was a stickler on fundamental basketball - tough defense, team play, and passing the ball. He would pull anybody who took a shot too quickly. He hated to see the ball hit the floor, whether as a dribble or a bounce pass. He was a crusty sort, who drove his players hard, with a coaching style heavy on sarcasm that would shock most of today's feel-good educators. His preferred practice modus operandi was to turn the hands-on work over to his assistants, then go up in the stands and, leaning back in his seat , smoke cigarette after cigarette while snarling an occasional instruction in his unmistakeable, gravelly voice. He was not easy to please. He would unhesitatingly correct any player, any time, anywhere. He didn't mince words, and he didn't care who heard him. I am somewhat old school, but I sat at the scorer's table one night as Oregon State played North Carolina State, and I couldn't believe how caustic he was. At one point, one of his players - as I recall, his name was Rocky Smith - took an ill-advised shot. "Rocky!" Coach Miller shouted. "Who the hell told you you were a shooter?" Nevertheless, as hard as he was on his players, they all professed a great loyalty to him, and all speak highly of him now.
*********** Jim Shelton recalls his days as a guard at Delaware: "The man who recruited me to go to the Univ of Delaware was Mike Lude. In fact he recruited 90% of the guys that went to Delaware in the early 50s. Mike was the line coach and like all Delaware coaches at the time was a Michigan guy, Mike a Hillsdale graduate and Capt of their football team. Mike Lude made me whatever success I was at Delaware. Dave Nelson was the "systems" guy, and Mike Lude was the "people" guy.In the early 60's Mike went to be the head coach at Colorado State. He then went to Kent State as the athletic director. Several years later Mike was hired as AD by the University of Washington along with Don James who was the football coach at Kent State. The rest is history as the Lude/James tandem at UW made Washington a national power. Mike then went to head up the Blockbuster Bowl and then to Auburn to pick up the Pat Dye pieces. He now lives in Tucson and Bellevue, WA." *********** I was reading in the local paper about a kid at one of my old schools - Hudson's Bay High, in Vancouver - who refused to take the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL- pronounced "Wozzle") test, the state-mandatred test to be given to all of Washington's fourth-, seventh- and 10th-graders. I happen to think that the test, conceived with the best of intentions, is not in synch with what is neing - or should be - taught, and will be used against schools and teachers in prejudicial ways, so I tended to sympathize with the youngster to a degree. In order to refuse to take the test, students must have parental permission. They then must "work independently" while others take the test. "But mostly we just sat there and talked," the kid told the Vancouver Columbian. "Some kid brought in cards." I was still somewhat on the kid's side, until I came to the end of the story. I read it, then sat up straight and said, "Uh-oh. We got problems here." What if you had been forced to take the test, the kid was asked? "I would have gone to court," he said. No one forces me to do anything." *********** A coach whose opinions I respect wrote me, "I love your news portion of your web site, but I have some problems with the comments concerning the Dalai Lama. First off, give the kids a break when they are getting interviewed. I remember my first interview and I sounded like an absolute idiot, even though I already had a Masters degree in college. Kids get nervous when that microphone or camera is shoved in their face and they are asked to comment. "As for the fact that the kids came out of his presentation and many of them were wowed by his message, don't be surprised. Sure, non-violence and peace have been preached to kids any time they went to church (God I hope!) or when the schools covered school violence. To hear it from a Nobel Peace Prize winner in person made a strong impression on many who attended. Many kids had the impression that this would be an extremely old person who would lecture them and put them to sleep. The fact that he spoke English (with little difficulty) and was not condescending to them really caught a few kids off guard. I was particularly impressed with his humor, and that quote you have concerning running in the line-of-fire was one of several exapmles of his humor. The kids loved it and it helped ease the tension and get his message across. Also, he did NOT preach Buddhism, nor any other religion. His message was simply non-violence. "I attended the presentation and I was delighted with it. As a student of history, to be in the presence of one of the most revered spiritual figures of this or any century was a real treat. Also, his mere presence is just a reaffirmation that the U. S. and the free world should continue to oppose oppression like in his homeland of Tibet and support the liberation of these persecuted people and others throughout the world." With all due respect... I certainly don't expect everyone to agree with me, but given that "the only person who has freedom of the press is the person who owns the press," I am in the fortunate position of owning a press. Apart from the fact that I do not think it is healthy or wise for our young people to approach this guy - holy or not - as a semi-sacred figure, I am in agreement with you that we should oppose the oppression of people such as the Dalai Lama and his followers. (You have no doubt noticed that I am not a great fan of the government of China.) But the irony is that for all the Dalai Lama's talk about peace and non-violence, he is an exile from his own land. Doesn't that make the argument for the need to meet force with force? The noble (no pun intended) ideas that win Nobel Peace Prizes do not, unfortunately, safeguard a nation's security or combat tyranny and oppression. That's because the bad guys don't play fair. "Peace for our time," was what Neville Chamberlain told the world he'd achieved, after giving Hitler carte blanche to invade the Sudetenland, when in reality, by giving in to a tyrant, he practically guaranteed us a world war. Most everyone, I think, wants peace. No one wants our young people to go to war. But my concern is that, as our young people are bombarded - some would say brainwashed - with messages of this sort, we mislead them into thinking that somehow, of all the people who have ever walked the planet, they are uniquely anointed, and so can disregard the old truism that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. I am afraid that we are failing to teach them what history demonstrates- that all too often the price is a steep one, and the more one ignores this basic lesson of history, the steeper that price becomes. Isn't it interesting that kids rarely get to hear a comparable counter-message? Evidence of this is that the Portland Public Schools won't even permit military recruiters into their schools, because of the military's policy regarding gays? As for the youngsters' manner of speaking, I will cut them no slack whatsover. I hear them speak that way all the time, including when they are not nervous. If there is any good excuse for a lack of simple, basic eloquence, I have yet to hear it. It is at the very least a condemnation of our schools, because not enough teachers that I've seen have the guts to correct kids' speech, even in their own classrooms. We do them no favors by failing to do so. *********** Oregon, like California a state of good people and incredible beauty, also, like its neighbor to the South, harbors some real fruitcakes. The latest is an elementary school teacher upset with the Oregon's state song. Too violent (you know, Pioneers and stuff.) Who knows? Maybe it made some of his children cry after they sang it. So Portland DJ Bob Miller has proposed a new state song, which he was good enough to sing for his listeners. It began, "Land of Tonya Harding... Land of the Spotted Owl...") *********** There seems to be a lot of uproar these days about police and other security personnel, while attempting to apprehend assorted miscreants, using what some people - frequently those on the receiving end - deem to be excessive force. And the complaints are automatically given great credence in the news media (two sides to every issue, and all that). Barrett Kalellis, who writes for publications such as the National Review, thinks that in trying to balance the scales between the good guys and the bad guys, we risk losing sight of one of basics of living in a civilized society. Writing in the Detroit News, he says: "The hard reality is this: there is the law, and there is criminality. Criminals know that they live outside the law, and have chosen to pursue this path. It is the mark of a civilized people to defend themselves from lawlessness. Our sympathies should lie with the good guys." |
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LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: In this photo, taken in 1949, Darrell
Royal is Number 11, a young kid from a little town named
Hollis, Oklahoma, one of the first in a long line of
quarterbacks that would make his coach's split-T offense
famous. Oklahoma didn't win the national championship
this year but it did the next. He was a pretty good
quarterback, but he became a much better coach. He and
three of his teammates (Dee Andros, Jim Owens and Wade
Walker) would go on to coach major college teams, and he
himself would coach three national championship teams.
THE
SACRAMENTO CLINIC last Saturday at Highlands High School was
set up by new offensive coordinator Joe Daniels, a
Double-Winger himself, who persuaded new head coach David
Sachs to take the great leap forward. Pictured at left is
the core of the new Highlands staff (from left to right):
Rod Thaler, offensive line; Joe Daniels, offensive
coordinator; David Sachs, head coach; David D'Ambrosio,
defensive coordinator. The staff may be new to the varsity
program, but they have been working together at the JV
level; in California, where JV games are customarily played
on Friday nights, before the varsity game, JV staffs have
quite a bit of autonomy, which means that these guys are not
exactly inexperienced at running a program. Besides that,
they have had some success with the underclassmen, in a
school whose varsity has won only five games in the last
five years. Based on the turnout Saturday afternoon of more
than 60 kids, it seems to me that the new coaches have
generated a new enthusiasm in the Highlands program.
Especially with the introduction of 58 Black Throwback C Post. I saw you run this play late in your Washougal Highlights video. Wow! Vs.a 2 deep coverage, that's difficult to stop. If the two banana routes are executed properly, the C-Back could dive a Mack truck down the alley that's created down the center of the field. I know there are lots of plays in the play book, but that just might be one of the most effective. If anything, just run it to keep the secondary honest! If they fly up to stop the run and you spring this on them it's lights out time! I really like this play. Sincerely, Mike Lane, Avon Grove, Pennsylvania
With the Dalai Lama visiting Portland, and local high school kids by the thousands excused from school and bused to hear him speak, I thought a radio station could have picked a more eloquent kid to interview than the one I heard saying, "It made a lot of sense and stuff." Then again, after the one I heard interviewed on TV, maybe the pickings were pretty slim. That one said, "It was kinda neat, because he's like a world leader and stuff." *********** Boy, that there Dalai Lama guy sure is one smart fella! On Monday, he addressed a throng of Portland-area high school students, urging them to pursue peace, non-violence, harmony, etc. To hear some of the dimwits who attended, you'd think these were all bright, new ideas that no one had ever mentioned before, and they spoke of him in reverent tones, as if they had had an audience with the Lord Jesus Christ. One young student, groping for answers to some of the eternal riddles, asked the Great One what could be done about school shootings. Bear in mind now, the Dalai Lama is from Tibet, where school shootings are, uh, somewhat uncommon, but there he was, with words of wisdom for the lad and the rest of the multitude: something on the order of, "if you're in the line of fire - run." Sheer genius. And to think that most people would have to go all the way to Tibet to hear him. *********** Wondering what's holding up school reform? Why don't we go right to the people calling for it the loudest? "A kid either knows how to read accurately and fluently or they don't," said a Washington state legislator named GiGi Talcott, co-chairwoman of the House Education Committee. Evidently, with the school reform Rep. Talcott and others are calling for, a pronoun either agrees in number with its noun antecedent or they don't. *********** For nearly four years, while he was Governor of Texas, President Bush's personal trainer was Jeff "Mad Dog" Madden, whose day job was- still is - strength and conditioning coach for the University of Texas Longhorns. Given the nickname "Mad Dog" because of the intensity with which he applied his trade at places such as Rice, Cincinnati, Colorado and North Carolina, Coach Madden came to Texas when Mack Brown took the Longhorns' head job. (You might want to take a virtual tour of the 'Horns' weight facilities at http://www.virtually-anywhere.com/utfootball/index.html ) Without violating the President's confidence, he confirmed that Mr. Bush's workout regime is about as follows: (1) Three to five miles on a treadmill, at a rate of about 7-1/2 to 8 minutes a mile, four days a week. (2) Three sets of curls, 10 reps each, at 50, 60 and 70 pounds. (3) One to three sets of incline presses, 10 reps each, at 100-120 pounds. (4) One to three sets of flys, 10 reps each , at 20-25 pounds. (5) One to three sets of bench presses, 10 reps each, at 155 pounds. (6) One set of lat pulls, 30 reps, at 135-155 pounds. *********** Surprise! Beijing made the cut down to the Final Three, along with Toronto and Paris, to host the 2008 Olympics. Is there any doubt in anybody's mind which city will get the nod? China is reported to be taking all sorts of measures to overcome one of the major objections to Beijing's bid - its world-class air and water pollution. Steps being taken include planting millions of fast-growing trees all over Beijing, relocating smog-producing factories away from Beijing, doubling the city's sewage treatment capacity, "urging" people (yeah, like they "urge" families to have no more than two kids) to recycle garbage, and converting the majority of Beijing's buses and taxicabs to natural gas. No one has contacted me yet, but when they do, I will suggest the Chinese immediately place an order with the folks in Kohler, Wisconsin for several million porcelain toilet bowls. Otherwise, visitors to the Beijing Olympics, having just spent thousands on the trip of a lifetime, are going to have the shock of their lives when they see those holes in the floor. Come to think of it, maybe I should keep quiet, before some free-trader figures out that they can make potties cheaper in China than in Wisconsin, and we'll lose a couple thousand more good-paying jobs to our "strategic trading partners." *********** The latest school to take a long hard look at sensitive nicknames and logos is Parsippany, New Jersey High, whose superintendent had the stones to make a decision single-handedly to drop the name "Redskins." I personally have no problem with Braves, Chiefs, Warriors, Indians and various tribal names such as Seminoles, Cherokees, Sioux or, yes, Fighting Illini, provided they are portrayed as proud symbols worthy of emulation by young people, but I do have a hard time trying to understand how "Redskins" could not be offensive to large numbers of American Indians. As a kid in elementary school, like many American kids of that time, I sang the old standards of Steven Foster. Great songs. Great snapshots of another time in our history. But have you ever read the lyrics? Ever read the words to "My Old Kentucky Home?" Schools long ago either cleaned up the words or tossed out the song completely, but here's how it originally started out: "The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home, 'tis summer, the darkies are gay..." As little kids in school, we sang it and never gave it a thought. And unconsciously, a little bit of racism was ingrained in us. It was perfectly okay, obviously, to refer to some people as darkies. "Darkies?" Are you kidding me? It's a word that no one in his right mind would consider using today, yet it was once thought perfectly all right, back when no consideration was given to the people it was applied to. If, that is, they were even considered people. Once, when I was 11 or 12, I remember hearing a bus driver order a black guy off the bus, saying, "Next time, Darky, you pay." "Darky" is a perfect example of a term once considered appropriate by society at large that, upon serious consideration, was being used to describe people - without their consent - as different, and in a condescending way at that. Maybe it was not intended to be derogatory, but it was conferred on people by someone else - the ruling class - and used in such a way as to imply that they were of a lower order. I love Steven Foster music. I don't condemn his using the language of his time. It was quite acceptable then. But it's not now. It's just this one person's opinion that "Redskins" falls into the same category as "Darkies." I do not think it is an ennobling representation of a people, and I can't imagine, if an election were to be held, that the continued use of "Redskins" would win the approval of a substantial majority of American Indians. (Of course, based on the widely varying definitions these days of what constitutes an American Indian - thanks to the spread of tribal gambling casinos - there is little likelihood of that vote ever being held.)
************ Humorist Dave Barry predicts that those of us who plan on flying this summer ("73 million passengers, no two of whom will pay the same fare") are in for some tough times. First of all, there are going to be delays, some weather-related, some mechanical. The latter occur, Barry says, "when any single one of the 43,000 little warning lights on the cockpit instrument panel lights up." When that happens, the pilot is required to bring in "one of the nationwide total of six airline maintenance personnel, who, after repeated efforts to repair the problem while the passenger cabin reaches the temperature of a pazza oven, will declare that the airplace needs a new part." That new part, unfortunately, "must be brought in from the Airline Parts Storage facility, located in Kurdistand and accessible only by goat." Part of the problem, as you may have read, is our antiquated Air Traffic Control System: "Air-traffic controllers are relaying on outdated maps that show giant serpents in the oceans and refer to North America as "New Spain"; "The FAA's so-called 'nationwide radar system' is in fact a man named Murray standing on the roof of a Wal-Mart in Central Kansas with a walkie-talkie and a pair of binoculars."; "The FAA's Emergency Backup Aviation Communications System has become increasingle unreliable because, in the words of the audit report, 'most of the pigeons are dead.'"
Just joking, of course, because no Scot anywhere is embarrassed to wear a kilt. Check out "Rob Roy" or "Braveheart," and you'll understand. In World War I, the Germans called the infantrymen of the Scottish highlands "The Ladies From Hell." They were the Black Watch, fighting Scotsmen who marched into battle to the skirl of bagpipes and the beat of drums - all of them wearing kilts. The story is told of an Allied force in World War I trying without success to take a hill. The commander had a bright idea: he ordered a bagpiper to begin playing his pipes, and not to stop until ordered to do so. He played throughout the night without stopping. The next day, the Germans gave up the hill. Some say that it was because of the fierce fighting of the Scottish Highlanders. Others say that the Germans fled to escape the sound of the bagpipe.
*********** Chris Thompson is still writing notes to kids. For seven years, Chris was my principal at Ridgefield, Washington High School. I chose to go to Ridgefield in the first place for one main reason - Chris Thompson was the principal. I first met him when he was Ridgefield's football coach (see, I knew you'd like him), and I just thought it would be enjoyable working in a smaller school for a principal I knew I could work with. I was right. He was the best principal I ever worked for. Chris came out of high school in the mid-60's, not sure what he wanted to do, so he joined the Marines and was shipped off to Vietnam. When he came back, a combat veteran, he was a man, with a much better idea of what he wanted to do, and he enrolled at the University of Washington and became a teacher and a football coach. He was not a sit-on-your-ass-in-the-office-with-the-door-closed kind of principal. He got out among 'em. He knew every kid in school, and tried to see them in a variety of settings. Granted, it was easier to do because it was a small school - 400 kids in four grades - but he did everything possible to make sure that no kid fell through the cracks. At the end of every report period, after the teachers had all handed in our grades and the reports were all printed out - everything computerized, to save us time - he would take the reports home with him over the weekend and laboriously write a personal note on every kid's report: "Nice job of getting that English grade up!", "Let's see if we can't do better in Algebra next time!", "It's obvious you like art!", etc., etc. Chris said his inspiration for the hands-on, get-to-know-the-kid, "lead from the front, not the rear" approach was Marine Corps General Lewis Walt, who Chris said was beloved by him and his fellow grunts. General Walt, he said, had a reputation as the kind of guy who'd show up unannounced, and, dispensing with formality, would sit down next to some Pfc and talk with him, man-to-man. By contrast, he told of the time when they were informed that General Westmoreland was coming. Chris told of everyone picking up all the cigarette butts, cleaning up, trying to look as neat as it was possible to look. He remembers at that point being run down by the heat, the stress and the diet to where he was about 125 pounds, and resenting having to put on a show. And then one day a helicopter hovered overhead and a white face poked out over the side and looked down briefly, before the chopper moved away. Maybe it was Westmoreland and maybe it wasn't, but they never saw him on the ground. When Chris left Ridgefield for a better opportunity, I was happy for him, but personally very sad. I knew I wasn't long for that place. I stuck around for one more year. The next principal was a good guy, but it just wasn't the same, and that's when I began to think seriously about getting out of teaching and going on the road pushing the Double-Wing. Now, Chris is principal at Bremerton, Washington, home of a big Navy base. As has always been his custom, he answers the phone, "Hi, this is Chris Thompson, principal of the best high school in the State of Washington." If it isn't, it's not for lack of effort on Chris's part. Bremerton is not a small school. It has 1,100 kids. Jokingly, I asked Chris if he still writes a note on every kid's report. Yep, he said. Last report period, it took him 18 hours.
|
***********This
is special...Jane Scott Lambert was born on Mother's Day to
Kerry and John Lambert, of Vancouver, Washington. John has
always been a favorite of mine. He was an excelent student
and football player for me at Hudson's Bay High in
Vancouver, then went off to play ball at Western Washington
University. After he'd been out a few years, I was fortunate
enough to land him as an assistant at La Center, Washington,
where he soon became my right hand. When I left there, they
listened to me and hired John, and LaCenter has now had
three straight winning seasons - the last two under John.
Little Jane is John and Kerry's first, and she is a lucky
little girl to have parents like that. (My wife says it
looks like John's the one who had the baby!)
***********
There will be hell to pay if a Scotsman ever takes a look at
the wall of the cafeteria of Highlands High School, in North
Highlands, California. Highlands' teams are called the
Scots, and their mascot, up on the wall for all to see, is a
guy wearing - I hesitate to say this, even in this oh, so
tolerant day and age - a skirt!
Chris Davidson was going to school at Temple and coaching Abington's tight ends. (One of them, Marcus Hoover, is now at Stanford, playing defensive end.) In 1997, Chris got his first head coaching job, at Phillipsburg-Osceola High in Central Pennsylvania, near his hometown of Curwensville, and I was able to spend a couple of days with him helping him install the Double-Wing. He did not have a teaching position, which from the start put him at something of a disadvantage politically with the other members of his staff, if you get my drift. And it became apparent to him quite early that his AD didn't like what he saw of the offense when he asked Chris if he'd consider changing to the I formation if he didn't have 300 yards rushing after three games. (P-O had 300 yards rushing after its first game.) Chris had three good years at P-O, but he still didn't have a teaching job, and in the meantime he'd gotten married, and when his wife got a job opportunity in North Carolina, he headed south with her, looking for a coaching job. Last season, he found one, as an assistant at Columbia. And now, with the resignation of the head coach, Chris has been offered the top job. Hard to believe it could happen in this little corner of East Carolina, but Chris' toughest job may not be putting in the Double-Wing. he knows what he's doing. It could be trying to stop it. One of his opponents is Mattamuskeet High, coached by another old friend, Eddie Cahoon, who knows a thing or two about the Double-Wing himself.
"I put together a Spring Football Warm-up on Thursday May 10th to roll out the new offense with the Mitey-Mites and Jr. PeeWees.We also rolled out our new defense which we feel will give us an advantage over other teams.We had 40 players turn out and it was very exciting to be able to teach them the 88 power in under 15 minutes.We showed them enough of the play for them to get a basic understanding of how it works. "The clincher for us was at the end of the night the kids were asking when we will get together again.This is something that has never been done before and we will meet with our teams every month from now until the season startsin August.Interest in your offense is very high. Thank You for all your help." Frank Hackney, Waterbury, Connecticut *********** I think that someone needs a lesson in American history... Back in the 1800's, when America's big cities were becoming "overrun" (in the words of the "native Americans") with Irish immigrants, the poor newcomers faced discrimination that would make our present-day treatment of immigrants seem as if we're meeting them with the Welcome Wagon. As one example, Irish looking for work frequently encountered the initials "N.I.N.A." on help-wanted ads - employers' shorthand for "No Irish Need Apply." So I found it rather interesting to note the wording of a coaching job description currently posted on the Web by a Michigan high school: "NO OUT OF STATE COACHES NEED APPLY." ("Your record at St. Cecilia's is very impressive... but you're from New Jersey and we're not interested in anybody from out of state, Coach Lombardi.") *********** "Coach, Just thought you'd get a laugh out of this. I was at a social gathering (okay, drinking with some friends at a party with other teachers) and a guy (spouse of a fellow teacher) told me next year I was going to have to "open up the offense". Go figure- a 7-3 season, district title and playoff qualifier in a year that was SUPPOSED to be a down year, and the offense "still" doesn't work. I just laughed and told the guy I wasn't changing a damn thing." Brad Knight- Holstein, Iowa *********** The Portland Public Schools project a budget shortfall of $20 million next year, so they have begun to chop. Whack! School police. Whack! Talented and Gifted Program. Whack! Custodial and maintenance services. Whack! Recently-hired teachers. Who knows what's next? Even in a district that likes to pay its administrators well in excess of $100,000 a year, it's hard to find enough things to eliminate when you've got to cut out $20 million. That's a lot of money. It's how much a guy named Tito paid for a ride in a Russian space ship. Not that it isn't Mr. Tito's money, and not that he isn't free to light cigars with it if he chooses, but... whatever happened to guys like Andrew Carnegie? *********** I couldn't have said it better, so I'll just pass along the highlights from an editorial in the Portland Oregonian on the recent firing of Mike Dunleavy, a sports injustice if ever there was one: "Here's the good news: The job pays $2 million a year. "Here's the bad news: Your keeping it depends on Rasheed Wallace. "Here's the good news: You're getting an All-Star forward (Shawn Kemp) making $11.7 million a year. "Here's the bad news: Lots of it goes for cocaine. "Here's the good news: Nobody thinks it's your fault. "Here's the bad news: Good-bye." *********** CITIZENS' INVESTIGATIVE COMMISSION (CIC) http://www.ConservativeAction.org has announced plans for a series of July 4th "Made in China Barbecues" to be held in the Washington, DC area, starting at dusk, with hopes that the idea will spread around the country. The CIC asks that you start your July 4th barbecue with a Communist Chinese Flag or a picture of a Chinese Official, then add cheap clothing, pirated cds and other products exclusively "Made in China." If you contact the CIC, it will post the location and time of your "Made in China Barbecue", along with any photographs you furnish afterwards. CIC reminds Made in China Barbecuers to be environmentally responsible and obtain any necessary permits. Of course, merely throwing a few "combustible items" onto your usual 4th of July barbecue fire should not , in most cases, require a permit. *********** A coach wrote, "Last year I purchased your Safer Surer Tackling video and began using it with our team. Old habits and die hard (not only with kids but coaches.) "While we are converting our kids to this technique, other teams teach the runners to lower their head when making contact with the tackler. Since the officials will not call spearing on the offense, how do we protect our tacklers from the shots to the chest by a back using his head as a battering ram? "I am not giving up trying to get this technique adopted by the league, and having the officials strictly enforce the rules will help. Unfortunately it will take someone getting seriously hurt before league-wide changes will be made." Even if the officials won't enforce the rules, we are not excused from our responsibility to put the players' safety first. Dropping the tackler's head just because the runner has dropped his is not an option. The tackler has to get low. That means bending the knees. The best stance is a low stance. The tackler also must learn to be the aggressor and not invite the runner to lay the wood to him. The best drill to teach this is the goal-line tackling drill on the tape. Keep getting your men lower and lower. The next best drill is the one with the runner and tackler lying on the ground on their bellies with the bag in between them. In reality, a runner and a tackler rarely meet head-on in a situation in which the tackler is standing still and the runner drills him. Far more than 90 per cent of tackles entail a collision at at least a slight angle; furthermore, in most head-on hits, the tackler is the more aggressive party. A runner who is running that low, with his head down, can easily be taken to the ground by the man approaching from an angle. *********** In my discussions with Jim Shelton, I happened to mention a certain parallel between the demands on a coach's wife and the demands on a soldier's wife. Jim responded, "When I tried to convince my wife that I should return to the Bell Telephone Co of Pa in Philadelphia, where I had been employed as a Management Trainee, after two mandatory years in the Army, she said,: "you'd go crazy there. You love the Army--stay in". I told her the Army life was too tough on a wife. She said, " where you're happy, I'm happy". "The next day I put in my papers to stay in the Army and never regretted it. My dear wife, Joan, from Wilmington, who raised our eight kids while I ran round the world, never regretted it either. What a lucky guy I am. Do you believe in all those years, 44 years, Joan has never said to me, "Where have you been?" When I arrived home, sometimes hours late--sometimes days late--she never asked me where I was, or what I was doing." *********** "Coach Wyatt, Just a quick note to let you know that we've started spring ball down here in Georgia. We just finished our second day of practice. We have been extremely productive. In a little over four hours of practice the kids understand the numbering system, are lining up pretty well, and are running the powers and superpowers right and left. I've got some great kids and we're gonna steamroll some people with this offense. Thanks for everything. By the way Coach, the t-shirts you had made up for this year's clinics gave me a great idea for our team t-shirts. On the front will be our menacing Freedom Middle School Ram, of course, but on the back it will read "The Smash Mouth Tour 2001", and will have our team schedule on it. Thanks for the idea, I hope you don't mind me borrowing it. Have a good season in Chicago?, Finland?, Portland? I have to know how long of a road trip I'm looking at in the fall Coach : )" Wedge or Die, Kevin Latham, Freedom Middle School, Stone Mountain Ga. *********** "Dear Coach Wyatt; I just wanted to drop you a line and tell you how much I appreciate your clinic. Being able to meet you in person and hear your most recent thoughts on football was worth any price at all. I can't tell you how enjoyable it was, or how glad I am to have had the chance to be there. "Working with the kids was a blast, and seeing first hand the implementation of the offense really made the ease of this system come alive. "Great knowledge and wisdom from all the coaches at every level, youth through high school. In the Coast Guard we have a log entry for morale events that I think would be very appropriate: "A good time was had by all." Thanks again. Very Respectfully; Derek Wade, Tomales High" (I believe that God, in His way, watches out for all of us, and if you believe that with all He has to do He occasionally finds the time to do a little something extra for someone who deserves it, Derek Wade proves your point. Coach Wade, a Double-Wing afficianado, is a Coast Guardsman, and has spent the past football season or so in football exile. He was in the United States, but just barely, stationed in St. Paul's Island, Alaska, in the middle of the Bering Sea. So his payback for that forced withdrawal was a transfer to Petaluma, California, where he discovered that he was just 5 minutes away from Tomales High, where coach Leon Feliciano has been running the Double-Wing for several seasons. He introduced himself to Coach Feliciano, who snapped him up as an assistant, and brought him along to my Sacramento clinic Saturday, where after years of corresponding, I finally got to meet Coach Wade.) |
In his first year at Yale, Hickman was surprised - but shouldn't have been - to find that his linemen were not exactly of the same caliber as he'd been used to working with at West Point. They weren't that bad, but they were small, and he jokingly referred to them after one practice as "The Seven Dwarfs."
*********** One of my daughters overheard an acquaintance being asked if she'd like to bring her daughter to a "play group," which I guess is a bunch of moms who get together so their kids can play. Just play. You know, like kids will do? She swears she heard her acquaintance decline the offer because her daughter was so tightly scheduled - we are talking four-year-olds - that she didn't have time. To play! *********** Are you like me? Do you drive by a bunch of protestors and instinctively feel like hollering, "Get a job?" Hey, it turns out protesting is a lot harder than you neanderthal football coaches think! Why, just last week, Robert Kennedy, Jr., nephew of the late President Kennedy and now an "environmental attorney," checked into a Seattle hospital. He'd spent the weekend in Puerto Rico, protesting U.S. Navy bombing on the island of Vieques. He'd been "detained" along with other protestors, and had hardly had any sleep over the weekend and - he was exhausted! Try to remember that, the next time you roll down your car window. *********** Our local schools claim to be chronically short of money. Our schools also claim that they must refer to the time off in mid-winter as "Winter Holiday," because calling it "Christmas" is intimidating to non-Christians. So next Monday, our near-broke, keep-Christianity-out local schools will be excusing hundreds students from school and busing them - at school expense - to Portland to see and hear the Dalai Lama, who, last I heard, was a Buddhist leader. *********** Darian Hagan, who in 1990 quarterbacked Bill McCartney's Colorado Buffaloes to a share of the national title with Georgia Tech, is now employed in marketing in sales, but this fall he will find time to work with the quarterbacks at Fairview High in Boulder, Colorado. Fairview's head coach is Tom McCartney, Bill's son.
This is from a 1934 book by a couple of highly-respected coaches, entitled "Practical Football." But other than the old-time equipment, it might just as well have been taken this past season, based on some of the things I've seen taught and some of the things people are still advocating. It does appear as though the tackler could be trying to keep his head up, but because he has aimed his shoulders low, because they are as low as his hips, simple body mechanics make it nearly impossible for him to do so. You tell me if this guy is vulnerable to injury - at the least, a hard knee to the head could knock him cold. But what if, try as he might, he should drop his head, and catch a blow, full-force, on the top of the helmet? Do you think a jury, looking at a kid in a wheelchair, will excuse you when you testify that you told him to keep his head up? Telling him is not enough. You must do everything you can - you must teach a style of tackling that makes it practically impossible physically to duck the head. I'm not trying to scare anyone into buying my tackling tape. But I am urging you to stop teaching kids to drop their shoulders in attempting to grab the runner's legs. Go to the survey of injuries of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research. Read it carefully. *********** Johnny Lee died last Saturday. He was a great man. He was probably the best basketball player in Yale's history. He was two years ahead of me and lived in the same college (house), and I remember thinking how cool it was to be rubbing elbows with a guy who'd been on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He was a Brooklyn guy, a high school basketball star at storied Erasmus Hall High who chose Yale because, in his words, "I didn't want to be just another college athlete with nowhere to go after graduation. If I'd gone to some of those other schools, I'd have ended up with nothing to show for it but four years of basketball and a four-year-old convertible." He scored 1493 points over his three varsity seasons at Yale, averaging out to 20.5 points per game. His 40 points against Harvard his senior year is still a school record. He graduated in 1958 with a degree in chemical engineering, and although drafted by the Knicks, passed up the NBA (salaries were a lot smaller then) to remain at Yale and earn his master's degree in chemical engineering. He used his education to launch a long and prosperous career in the business world, and until his resignation just a week before his death, was chief executive officer of Hexcel Corporation. Somewhere along the way, he became "John" Lee, but I'll always remember him as Johnny. John Lee left his wife of 40 years, four children and five grandchildren. And a grateful university: in the 1990's he led an alumni-giving campaign that raised $1.75 billion for Yale. When I learned of Johnny Lee's death, I immediately e-mailed Bruce Weber. Through a mutual friend, I've come to know Bruce, publisher of Scholastic Coach (and Athletic Director) Magazine. Bruce, like Johnny Lee, is an Erasmus Hall grad. Basketball great Billy Cunningham was another, a classmate of Bruce's, and Bruce said he likes to tease Billy, who probably would have been the most illustrious alumnus of almost any other high school he could have gone to, by telling him that at Erasmus Hall he barely makes the the top five - not in the school, but in his own graduating class! That's because he graduated with Neil Diamond... Barbra Streisand... (chess champ) Bobby Fisher... Lainie Kazan. Opera star Beverly Sills, actor Jeff Chandler and author Mickey Spillane also graduated from Erasmus Hall. Sports? How's this, football fans: Erasmus' football field is named for Hall of Fame quarterback Sid Luckman, its gym for Oakland Raiders' owner Al Davis. Former NFL and Liberty University coach Sam Rutigliano is also an Erasmus Hall grad. In fact, when Sports Illustrated did its "Top 50" athletes of the twentieth century from each of the 50 states, four of New York's 50 - Cunningham, Luckman, Davis, and Gertrude Ederle (first woman to swim the English Channel) - were Erasmus Hall grads! Bruce, who also played basketball at Erasmus Hall and then went on to play at Maryland, remembered Johnny, who graduated a few years ahead of him, fondly. "John, who had an amazingly successful post-Yale career, was the second choice of the Knicks in the 1958 draft and opted to go to graduate school instead. The rest is history. Can you imagine that happening today? Can you imagine a Yalie as one of the top 20 or so players in the country? (Ouch, HW) "Al Badain, our legendary coach (at Erasmus Hall), 'rescued' him from Midwood, one of our archrivals, by telling him to sign up for German (not offered by Midwood) when he was finishing eighth grade. To provide him with this 'vital' (especially for an Irishman) education, he had to come to Erasmus. And that, among other reasons, is why Al Badain was called The Fox. " My favorite personal John Lee memory: We were assigned to each other in the annual Alumni-Varsity basketball game which ended the season (it was a fundraiser for minor sports and very profitable because the alumni included so many great and notable players). I go baseline on Lee and as I move to the basket, he waves at the ball with one hand and with the other smashes me into the wall which was about five feet behind the baseline. The referee was Norm Drucker, already an NBA official (and an Erasmus alum) and future NBA Supervisor of Officials. As I careen off the wall, I look at him and scream, 'Hey, Normie!' He looks back, puts his palms up, and shrugs his shoulders. Lee is laughing heartily as he races downcourt. Ten years later, I remind Drucker of this malfeasance after an NBA game. He looks at me, puts his palms up, and shrugs his shoulders. Some things never change." *********** Neil Devlin, high school sports editor for the Denver Post, will have a son playing high school sports next year. In a column last Sunday, he wondered how he tough it's going to be for him, in his official position, to be a "regular dad." What happens, he wondered, when the other parents find out what he does for a living? "Will they hassle me about getting something about the team in the paper (this actually happened to me in a baseball league for 9-year-olds)? What if - gasp - my staff or I misspell one of the kids' names, or get the school name or score wrong?" What happens, he wondered, if his son isn't very good? "Do I blame the school? His coach? His teammates?" What if things don't work out? "Do I move from my house in Aurora to an apartment elsewhere in the middle of the school year to retain eligibility?" "What if the announcer at one of his games misprounces my son's name?" "If he doesn't get a scholarship, do I call his school's athletic director a moron, or his principal a dope?" "If my son is a senior and he gets beaten out by a freshman or a sophomore, to whom do I whine?" "Will I send fliers, including color photos, hawking his accomplishments to The Post?" "When I pay the participation fee, do I think that ensures him playing time?" "When he tears it up at the freshman and junor varsity levels, then is run-of-the-mill on varsity, should I think it's bad coaching?" ""Do I turn in a coach or AD who is recruiting my kid?" "If the coach yells at my kid, do I demand a meeting with the coach, AD, principal and superintendent?" *********** Jim Shelton, a former guard at Delaware under Dave Nelson, now a retired US Army General, has been sharing some of his memories and observations with me, and on the theory that there's a lot we coaches can all learn from great coaches - as well as leaders in other fields - I've been passing them along to you as I get them. "Another Dave Nelson practice, each year at the first practice, he would give basically the same speech the first day. He would say, " You people as a team are unique. You are not the same group that you were last year, and you won't be the same next year. Each year older people move on, and new people come in. Each team is unique--just like a human being. There will never be another 2001 team. You are it. It is what you do together that counts. You must improve each week. There can be no 'ups and downs'. Each week is a new challenge and you must improve each week. You either get better or you get worse. The good teams get better each week - even though you may lose you've got to keep striving to get better as a team every week. There is no looking back to last year, or forward to next year. This year is your campaign. Make the most of it as a team together so you have no regrets". Coach Nelson gave this speech to each team, every year. It made sense to me."
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THIS HOW YOU'RE TEACHING KIDS TO TACKLE?
*********** Jim Shelton, who played guard for Delaware's great Dave Nelson, inventor of the Delaware Wing-T, recalled for me what it was like: "One Dave Nelson rule was that NO ONE would talk to the other team. If you did he would pull you, and if Dave Nelson pulled you you might never play again.I vividly remember a real good college football team we played. They tried to get us to say something. One guy finally said, 'You guys aren't football players, you're machines.' That was exactly what Coach Nelson was trying to get across. The opposing players were to be treated just like those hated blocking dummies that we tried to kill in practice. The opposing player was a cylinder that you had to move out of the way by technique and explosive , under control, poise and concentration. Great coaching! Where the hell did trash talking come from anyway?
*********** Jim went on to tell me that David Maraniss is at work on a book which contrasts the simulaneous efforts of the Black Lions, preparing to do battle in the jungles of Vietnam, with those of a group of anti-war protestors at the University of Wisconsin. You football guys will know - or should know - David Maraniss for his excellent biography of Vince Lombardi, "When Pride Still Mattered." As you may know, even if you haven't read author Maraniss' book, one of the major influences on Coach Lombardi was Colonel Earl "Red" Blaik, legendary Army coach, under whom Lombardi served as what we would now call an offensive coordinator. Maraniss used a humorous incident that occured while Lombardi was a Blaik assistant to illustrate just one way in which the Colonel shaped Lombardi as a coach: "Watching film was his idea of fun- WORK and PLAY. Once, after he and his staff had studied Michigan game footage for several hours in the projection room near his office, Blaik turned to Warmath (Murray Warmath, his defensive coordinator, who would later take Minnesota to its only Rose Bowl appearances in the last 40 years - 1961 and 1962) and Lombardi and said, 'You guys wanna have some fun?' It was a hot afternoon, and the assistants were restless. Warmath dreamed of a round of golf. 'Heck,' said the Colonel to his projectionist, 'open up the locker and get those Navy films out. Let's look at those for a while!'"
*********** "We finished our spring camp last Saturday. I put together a team of 11-12 year olds and scrimmaged a 13-14 year old middle school team. I had 4 kids from my team last year and the rest had never seen the DW. I had a grand total of 2 hours spread over 4 days to put in an offense. (3 kids had only 10 minutes of DW practice). As you can imagine, plays were limited. Wedge, 5x and 4x from tight and stack I. The team we played was overall bigger but we were able to run the wedge successfully and they knew we were going to run it. We wedged on his 6-2 250 lb. NG. It was funny to watch the wedge move the kid off the LOS repeatedly. Since I didn't have time to put in any off tackle plays we ran 4x and 5x out of stack leading the 2 upbacks through. We moved the ball pretty well even though I didn't have an experienced running back. Used 2 big quick guards to lead in the stack. The other team's coach came up to me and said he was confident he could stop the wedge and was suprised it worked. I told him that it works a lot better when the rest of the offense is installed and repped. He also asked me if I would help him run the wedge. I might if he wants the rest of the offense. We will be practicing against this team a lot this fall. Maybe after they see the DW run against them another will be converted." Greg Stout, Thompson's Station, TN.
*********** I am told that a retiring NEA-affiliate executive in a state other than Washington asked an interesting question in his retirement speech: "What would we really do differently if we really did listen to our members?"
*********** "In response to your tip #127, we use the buck look with 3T2/2T3 and Super Power with 2T5/3T4. The Super Power look by the QB really widens the intended victim." Mark Kaczmarek, Assumption High School, Davenpoprt, Iowa ************ I read in the Wall Street Journal a little while back that one of the European car companies - I think it was BMW but I'm not sure - was experimenting with doing away with the steering wheel and going to a joystick. This, of course, would make it a lot easier for people to drive their cars and talk on the phone, eat, put on makeup, read newspapers, etc. But not so fast - first, I want to draw on the memories of all you old fogies out there. Do you remember "necker's knobs?" Do you remember when they were outlawed as unsafe, because they made one-handed driving possible? For those of you who never heard of the device, a necker's knob was a great convenience for guys - mainly teenagers - who wanted to drive one-handed, with their left hand on the wheel and their right hand around the shoulders of a young lady. What's so tough about that, you young guys ask? Hey, those were the days before power steering, when it took a lot of serious cranking, hand-over-hand, to turn a corner. But with a necker's knob, a device shaped approximately like a doorknob, fastened securely to the steering wheel, you got enough leverage on the wheel with just your left hand that it left your right hand free for other activities. (And talking on the phone wasn't one of them.) Now here's what I want to know- if they could outlaw necker's knobs, supposedly because they were a potential hazard, then what's taking them so long to outlaw talking on cell phones? I'm guessing that the necker's knob industry, which once provided jobs for working Americans producing a product that retailed for a couple of bucks, didn't have the lobbying might that the cell phone guys do. I'm also betting that if teenage boys were the only ones who used cell phones in cars, they'd have been outlawed long ago. *********** Anybody remember that nut in Norway or Sweden who seriously proposed nominating the sport of soccer ("futbol") for the Nobel Peace Prize? For those of you who agree with him that soccer does such a great job of promoting the cause of world peace and understanding, it is my hope that after you read this story from my crack Australian correspondent, you might consider changing your vote. "The big story I've been working on concerns last Sunday's soccer playoff between the Melbourne Knights and the Perth Glory. After the game, a group of Knights fans attacked the Perth coach and players, inflicting a few injuries. It came out yesterday that a Perth player Bobby Despetovski (a Serb) made a "Serbian war signal" at Knights fans, who are mainly of Croatian background. The symbol is a "three finger" gesture, which Serbian soldiers use to show that they've cut two fingers off of their Croatian prisoners." *********** "I just got back from a meeting with our AD and he informed me that we will now be required to film the way we teach tackling in practice. He will then put the tape on file for protection against lawsuits. I really have no thoughts one way or another and will have no trouble doing this. Your thoughts? (This might be the time to hit him up for the cash for your tackling video!!)" Jason Sopko, Forest City, Iowa Coach- I think your AD has probably been to a seminar on sports injuries and protecting yourself from litigation, and I think it is a wise thing for him to do. A coach should be ready and willing to show anyone, any time, exactly how tackling is taught - by every coach on his staff. *********** TROPHIES FOR EVERYBODY!!! In the glory days of Ohio State football, Coach Woody Hayes believed in handing out "buckeye" helmet stickers for outstanding plays.By the end of a season, you could scarcely see the silver on some guys' helmets, for all the buckeyes they'd won and stuck on them. Somehow, knowing how much stock Coach Hayes put in those buckeyes as motivational tools, and what it took to win one, I doubt that it ever occured to Coach Hayes to try to make all his players feel good by saying, "Aw hell - give everybody a buckeye!" But that's exactly what the Secretary of the Army, a guy who needs replacing if ever a guy did, set out to do. His resume includes the fabulous "Army of One" advertising campaign, but his crowning achievement, sure to be talked about for years wherever military people gather, is a "Trophy for Everybody" scheme known as the Black Beret fiasco. With the idea of giving everybody in the Army a buckeye, the Secretary ordered that by this summer, every person in the Army would wear a black beret. You would think that an idea like that would have been carefully thought out, but I tend to doubt it, because the black beret was already taken. By the Rangers, an elite group of soldiers with a proud tradition that goes back to the Revolutionary War, and includes being the first men to scale the cliffs of Normandy on D-Day. To say the least, the Rangers were pissed to think that the Secretary's order meant that now any member of the Army could wear their symbol, something as important to them as the green beret is to Special Forces and the maroon beret to the airborne. So much of a squawk did the Rangers alumni put up that it was decided that while the entire Army would wear black berets, they could still have a distinctive beret all their own. The color decided on was a tan, called butternut or buckskin, that itself has some important historical roots, going back, I'm told, to the original Rogers' Rangers of the Revolution. But, with the Rangers somewhat appeased, at least according to their official spokesmen, who it should be pointed out still come under the command of the Secretary of the Army, other problems arose. It seems that, try as you might, you just can't find a good American-made beret any more. Or at least enough of them to put on every head in the United States Army. They needed some 4,000,000 of them, and evidently the American beret industry has gone all to hell like so many other American industries, and so our Army - the United States Army, mind you - did what more and more Americans in need of cheap products do: it decided to buy 600,000 berets from China, at a cost of $4,000,000. (China, in case you were off the planet over the last couple of months and hadn't heard, has not been acting lately like the sort of "strategic trading partner" we had been led to believe it was. In fact, after we were nice enough to lend them a surveillance plane - even delivering it for them - now they won't return it. ) Last I heard, the Army decided that it would be smart to get the berets someplace other than China. Memo to the Secretary: Why stop at berets? Why not Congressional Medals of Honor for everyone? *********** Jim Kuhn, of Greeley, Colorado, commenting on the tendency of American corporations to export manufacturing jobs, wonders why, if the workers take the big hits so the corporations can increase profits, CEO's (and CFO's) get large bonuses even when companies lose money. Good question. How many football coaches go 4-7 and earn bowl bonuses? "Today (May 7th), " Jim writes, "Lucent Technologies fired their chief financial officer Deborah Hopkins after just a year on the job and she goes home with 4 million dollars bonus - despite 10,000 jobs were cut last January, Lucent's stock recently tumbled to an all-time low of $5.50, bad loans for Winstar Communications Inc., and believe it or not, Lucent lost $3.69 BILLION dollars for the first three months of 2001. Not bad for someone who only has a BA degree. Lucent Technologies may declare Chapter 11 soon... "Hopkins spent 16 months at The Boeing Co. before she accepted the job with Lucent Technologies. "My sources at Lucent Technologies told me that they came up with an idea for a major motion picture based on Debbie's financial experiences - DEBBIE DOES DOLLARS." |
*********** You have possibly heard me refer from time to time to Jim Shelton, a retired US Army General who received All-America mention as a guard at Delaware under the great Dave Nelson - inventor of the Delaware Wing-T. Jim recalled scrimmaging against Army with Don Holleder quarterbacking the Cadets, then later served with Don Holleder in Viet Nam, and was one of those who identified Major Holleder's body. Jim now lives in Florida. We correspond frequently, and I appreciate his advice in a number of areas. When you read some of his recent observations, bearing in mind that they were written from the point of view of someone who knows a little about football and a little about training a fighting force, you will realize that there is a lot of good being accomplished on a football field, and that as a football coach you are appreciated by some people whose opinion matters: "Hugh: I went to the local high school football practice yesterday at Lemon Bay High School (yes, high school spring practice). It is a coincidence that they use the Delaware Wing T. I haven't seen a high school football game in 10 years(at least). I was really impressed by the state of organization out on that field, and the spirit and discipline of the kids. The line coach really knew what he was doing. When those kids went into their offensive line stances I knew that coach knew what he was doing.And using those cylindrical , moveable blocking dummies. Teaching footwork at getting to the dummies. I forgot how tough it was to be a line coach, correcting those kids by showing. I 'm glad it wasn't me though I envied that line coach because he was building a unit that would look like one machine this fall. "Anyway, the highly regarded Lemon Bay High School football coach Mike Messina said he requested the Black Lion Award which was a thrill. You have gotten me started on this football kick." (Wednesday - Jim Shelton recalls Dave Nelson's approach to trash-talking.)
This is from a 1934 book by a couple of highly-respected coaches, entitled "Practical Football." But other than the old-time equipment, it might just as well have been taken this past season, based on some of the things I've seen taught and some of the things people are still advocating. It does appear as though the tackler could be trying to keep his head up, but because he has aimed his shoulders low, because they are as low as his hips, simple body mechanics make it nearly impossible for him to do so. You tell me if this guy is vulnerable to injury - at the least, a hard knee to the head could knock him cold. But what if, try as he might, he should drop his head, and catch a blow, full-force, on the top of the helmet? Do you think a jury, looking at a kid in a wheelchair, will excuse you when you testify that you told him to keep his head up? Telling him is not enough. You must do everything you can - you must teach a style of tackling that makes it practically impossible physically to duck the head. I'm not trying to scare anyone into buying my tackling tape. But I am urging you to stop teaching kids to drop their shoulders in attempting to grab the runner's legs. Go to the survey of injuries of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research. Read it carefully. ***********" Wow, looking at that picture of tackling in your news looks just like what alot of coaches are still teaching. I bought your tackling film last year Coach and taught the techniques that you use and saw a tremendous difference it made on the field, and not to mention the most important part that it was MUCH SAFER! I just popped in our highlight video and watched the section on defense and watched our kids tackling and saw it again on film. Thanks again for all the info. I think for Pop Warner and Youth football that tackling video should be issued to every team. For the most part most youth league coaches are volunteers who played when they were kids along time ago and are teaching the methods that they used way back then. They are just obsolete and dangerous." Ken Brierly, Chariho Cowboys, Carolina, Rhode Island (Coach Brierly's Cowboys, running the Double-Wing, won past season's New England Pop Warner championship, and made it to the National Pop Warner finals in Orlando.) *********** "I was at a BBQ (beef, brother - the real deal) Sunday evening at one of my neighbors' houses. There were about 50 folks enjoying a nice Spring evening (better take advantage of them when you get 'em around here!). I was having a nice talk with the Defensive coordinator from my old High School (Mesquite Skeeters!), when as you would imagine, the conversation turned towards the Great Game. We ended up drawing a big crowd, as folks started oooing and ahhing 'bout the upcoming season, and how the mighty YellowJackets of Rockwall were going "all the way" this year - Coach's second season will be the one..wish he wouldn't run that funky offense (Wing-T - run VERY well)..blah..blah..! So I start to hear folks talking about their season tickets -- where they are located and "did you hear that so and so is moving?" " do ya think they'd sell their season tickets?" I find out that season tickets for the Jackets are harder to get then for Cowboy games!! and once you "own" them, they're yours! you can sell the rights etc...so there is this big "underground" of ticket holders that broker these things, and man...let me tell ya....they Ain't Cheap!!!! It's the craziest thing I've ever seen..most of these folks don't even have kids playing at the high school! I wish you could come to town for a Friday night this season! We'd have a blast!" Scott Barnes, Rockwall, Texas *********** Don't wanna say I influenced anybody's thinking, but...This from family friend Mike "Gasman" Gastineau, popular Seattle talk-show host: What's the best name for Seattle's new bowl game (Being moved from Hawaii, to be played in Seattle - outdoors - on January 2)? The Why Are We Sitting Outside in January in Seattle Freezing Our Asses Off Bowl. 19.2% The Tell Me Again Why Going to Hawaii Was Such a Bad Idea Bowl. 35.8% The Well, At Least We Aren't In El Paso Bowl. 8.6% The Pass Me The Bottle of Wild Turkey Again, Will Ya Slim Bowl. 15.9% The Boy This Will Motivate Us To Never Finish 4th in the Pac 10 Again Bowl. 20.5% *********** The wife cheats and sues for divorce and wins custody of the kids, and Dad has to pay child support until the kids are 18. Not in Oregon, though, where a court has just ruled that even after the kids have turned 18, Dad is still responsible for paying for their college education. Talk about coercion! Married men - at least until Oregon courts can get around to them - still have the right to decide whether they want to spend $30,000 a year to send Junior someplace to party. *********** Epson has laid off several hundred workers at its ink-jet printer plant in Oregon; it's going to make the printers "offshore" (overseas), and so, as the English say, its American workers are "redundant." The city of Portland is all excited about its new downtown trolley cars, made by Skoda, a company in Czechoslovakia or the Czech Republic or whatever it is now. (All I know is that long, long ago, Skoda made a lot of stuff for Hitler.) In both cases, manaufacturing will be done overseas, so that we can buy the goods cheaper. Where once we were a nation of producers, we are rapidly becoming a nation of consumers. Do we really need cheap printers that bad? More than those laid-off Americans needed their jobs? Is it all that important that Portland buy the cheapest trolley cars it can buy? Isn't there some place in America where someone still remembers how to make a trolley car? Do Americans still matter to our leaders, or are they now just co-equal with everyone else in the world, the way some the people at PETA see humans as no better than snails and insects? Meanwhile, back in Oregon, the highways go nearly unpatrolled, as the Oregon State Police, in the face of budget reductions, try to make do with a smaller force. And our armed forces, caught between tightening budgets and a strong economy, are understaffed. Even after watering down their requirements, our services, with the exception of the Marines, are having trouble meeting their recruiting quotas. Hey - as long as we're letting our manufacturing jobs go to foreign firms, why not go all the way, and fill those state police jobs with people who'll work for lower wages? Why not send our military recruiters "offshore?" Got to be able to speak English, you say? No problem. There are nearly a billion people in India, most of them underemployed by our standards, and millions of them able to speak English. This is the global economy, right? Let's bring 'em over here and put 'em to work patrolling our highways and maintaining our bombers. Makes almost as much sense as sending our good-paying industrial jobs offshore.
*********** This week's Most Courageous Correspondent Award goes to Jeff Huseth, my fearless Twin Cities correspondent, who stays relentlessly on the tail of Governor Jesse Ventura, a man who by his own admission is a man killer. Jeff sent me this reprint from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune of a letter the Gopher Governor sent to the Yankees' George Steinbrenner, apparently apologizing for something the Twin Cities' fans must have done to bruise the feelings of Chuck Knoblauch, one of Mr. Steinbrenner's spoiled, millionaire employees: Friday, May 4, 2001 Mr. Steinbrenner: On behalf of the people of Minnesota and all Twins fans in the Upper Midwest, I want to apologize for the treatment of Chuck Knoblauch and the Yankees during the recent series at the Metrodome. I'm all for letting off steam at sporting events, but in this case a few fans went too far. We have a reputation in Minnesota for having knowledgeable (Coach, we don't know that!) sports fans, and when they go to games, they should know where to draw the line. I want Chuck Knoblauch, or any player for that matter, to feel welcome at the Metrodome. I am told that the Twins are taking steps to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. With that in mind, I would like to officially invite you and the team back for another series. How does October work for you? Sincerely, Jesse Ventura Governor Adds Jeff Huseth: P.S. George, do you still watch wrestling? (Frankly, I think Jesse is sucking up to The Boss in hopes of landing a broadcasting job with the Yanks.) *********** I didn't write it at the time of Jack Elway's death, but he is almost certainly the major reason why his son John wound up with the Broncos, despite the fact that he was originally drafted by the Baltimore Colts. Not everybody remembers that, but the Colts were then coached by Frank Kush, who had established a reputation at Arizona State as a guy who could make Bobby Knight seem like your favorite uncle. The story aroound football circles is that Jack advised his son, who was also being courted by the Yankees as a baseball player, to sign with them and use baseball as his leverage to force a trade. I know the Baltimore people never forgave John for that, but seeing what he accomplished in Denver, and what the Irsays allowed to happen to the Baltimore Colts, can you argue with dad Jack's advice? *********** I got an e-mail some time back from a youth coach in Mission Viejo, California named John Wirth, and just taking a shot in the dark, I asked him if he knew Vince McCullough. Vince coached at Saddleback College, a JC in Mission Viejo, and I got to know him when we were both coaching over in Finland. Vince McCullough is without question one of the greatest guys I've ever met in football. Turns out John Wirth not only knows Vince McCullough - Vince's daughter, Kellie Mascari is his defensive coordinator! You know how I feel about women's' sports leeching off of men's sports, and how I feel about girls playing football, but I have gone on record as being in favor of women coaching football if they are the best peoople for the job. From the way John Wirth talks - and knowing Coach Mascari's pedigree, I have no doubt that she is good. Here's what I heard from Coach Wirth: "Nice to hear from you again. Vince is still in town. I got to see him at all the El Toro Charger football games as his grandson and Kellie's son was on the Varsity with my son. He is no longer coaching but does a Karate type show on a local cable channel. He looks great. "I asked Kellie to come aboard again this year after suffering through some short comings on the defensive side of the ball last year. I liked the idea of having a coach on the team with no child. The politics of Pop Warner Football is very interesting with Coaches and their kids. She is a real 'cut to the chase' coach. She knows defense instinctively. After a tough loss in week 2 we won all the rest of our games and finished 9-1. "That included 3-4 shut outs. I thoroughly enjoyed learning your offense as did our boys.(aged 9-11) We were successful with it after a slow start. We averaged about 250 yards offense and about 20+ points per game. We are taking this team to the next level (Pee Wee) next season. With this core group of players over the past 3 years we are 25-5-1. The pressure is on me to keep this ball rolling. Kellie is trying to see if she can fairly balance the demands of having a girl in High School and coach a football team. "Her son will be going to Columbia University next fall. We were both on the football booster board for the past 3 years and are relieved to see that duty pass. During this Little League season I will be managing and also studying the offense more to begin implementation of 2-3 additional formations. Thanks for your interest and I will keep you posted. "I will pass along your hello to Vince."
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Despite the passage of all the years, Nevers may still be the most illustrious figure in Stanford's long and glorious sports history. His number - number 1, what else? - is the only Stanford number ever to be retired. He played football against Red Grange and pitched against Babe Ruth. For months, he was listed as Missing in Action in World War II. And yet, possibly because he was a private man, reserved and self-effacing, he is not as well-known as he ought to be. Ernie Nevers was born in Willow River, Minnesota, on June 11, 1903. After his family moved to Wisconsin and then to Santa Rosa, California, Nevers played as a senior on his high school's very first football team. When it turned out that he knew more football than the coach, he designed the offense, putting himself at fullback. "You see, I wanted every chance to carry the ball and kick," Nevers explained later. Although Ernie Nevers is still regarded as perhaps the greatest athlete ever to attend Stanford, Stanford landed him only after an epic recruiting struggle with its archrival, the University of California. The story that has since become legend was that while he was visiting the Cal campus, Nevers was "kidnaped" by Stanford zealots, spirited away to a secluded spot somewhere on the coast and - in the pleasant company of a good-looking young female - kept hidden from Cal people until he finally decided to attend Stanford. The young lady must have been very persuasive. Years later, Nevers admitted that Cal had been his first choice. "Brick Muller (a Cal All-American from the early 1920s) had been an idol of mine, and I got to know him," he said. "So I was all set to go to Cal, but at the last minute I picked Stanford. But if I had gone to Cal I probably would have stayed a lineman and nobody would have given me much of a chance. I was a terrible tackle. I did much better as a fullback." Indeed he did. At 6-1, 205, he was a big man by the standards of his day; as a fullback, he was gigantic. Called "Swede" and "Big Dog" by his teammates, he truly did everything - he ran, passed, punted and tackled. He was noted for his fearless, reckless style of play, and on occasion, when the action got especially ferocious, he would toss his helmet aside and fling himself into the action bareheaded. Asked to compare him to the legendary Jim Thorpe, whom he had also coached, Pop Warner, Nevers' coach, said, `"I consider Nevers the better player because he gave everything he had in every game." Warner wrote, in his autobiography, "In an era of great ones - Red Grange of Illinois, George Gipp and the Four Horsemen from Notre Dame, Elmer Oliphant and Chris Cagle of Army, or even Jim Thorpe of Carlisle - Nevers always stood a bit taller when trying to compare others to him." Nevers' most legendary performance was in the 1925 Rose Bowl against Knute Rockne and Notre Dame and the legendary Four Horsemen. He almost didn't play at all. He'd broken his left ankle before the opening game of the season, and his right ankle in the next-to-last game. He was on crutches until two days before the Rose Bowl. And then, ankles supported by braces fashioned from inner tubes by coach Warner and wrapped so tightly that he had little feeling in his legs, he headed out to battle. "You'll probably last ten minutes," Warner predicted pessimistically. But Nevers played all 60 minutes, and outgained all four of Horsemen all by himself. Nevers carried the ball 34 times for 117 yards, handling the ball on every offensive play. On defense, he intercepted a pass and was in on 80 percent of Stanford's tackles. So amazing was his performance that the two interceptions he threw - returned by Elmer Layden for touchdowns of 78 and 70 yards - were forgiven. Although Stanford lost, 27-10, Irish coach Knute Rockne was in awe of Nevers' performance. "Nevers could do everything," Rockne recalled later. "He tore our line to shreds, ran the ends, forward-passed and kicked. True, we held him on the 1-yard line for four downs, but by that time he was exhausted." So impressed was Rockne that day that later, when Nevers was playing as a pro with the Chicago Cardinals, Rockne would often take his players to Chicago just to watch Nevers play. At Stanford, he earned 11 letters - in football, baseball, basketball and track - in three years. On at least one occasion, he competed in a track meet in his baseball uniform, then hurried over to the diamond to play a game. In baseball, he once pitched 37 consecutive scoreless innings - a school record that still stands. In the 1925 three-game series with Cal, he pitched the full nine innings in two of the games, and in the final game, with the count three-and-two, hit a grand slam home run to win the series for Stanford. While in college, he also had some bit parts in Hollywood productions during the offseasons, working with a couple of USC football players named Ward Bond and Marion "Duke" Morrison. Bond would become a well-known actor, and Morrison would become fairly well-known himself as a guy named John Wayne. In his first year as a pro football player, 1926, Nevers played for a travelling team called the Duluth Eskimos (later to become the Detroit Lions), playing 29 games in 117 days - including one stretch of five games in eight days. 27 of the 29 games on the road. There were 16 men on the Eskimos roster. "Sometimes we used take two showers after games," Nevers recalled once. `"The first one would be with our uniforms on. Then we'd beat them like rugs to get some of the water out, throw them into our bags, get dressed and catch a train." Nevers missed just 27 minutes of action in the entire 29-game schedule - when doctors ordered him to sit out a game after he was diagnosed with appendicitis. But with Duluth trailing 6-0, Nevers couldn't stand to watch. Disregarding doctor's orders, he inserted himself into the game, and threw a 62-yard TD pass and kicked the extra point to give the Eskimos a 7-6 win. His major-league baseball career was a short one. Playing for the woeful St. Louis Browns, he did gain a measure of fame as a result of Babe Ruth's hitting two of his record-setting 60 home runs off him in 1927. The Babe, not one to flatter anyone unnecessarily, said to him, "You've got good speed, kid. For my sake, I hope you stick to football." He once hit a double off the great Walter Johnson, but Nevers modestly said, "I think he grooved it for me." After his football playing career ended in 1932, Nevers began a coaching career, but at the outbreak of World War II, although too old to be drafted, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. While serving in the Pacific, he and his battalion were reported missing for several months. When they were finally found on a deserted island, several had died, and Nevers, who suffered from beri-beri, weighed only 110 pounds. While he was away in the service, his wife died of pnuemonia. Following the war, Nevers was involved in starting Chicago's franchise in the All-American Football League, and spent most of the rest of his life working in a variety of positions for Bay Area beer, wine and liquor distributors. Nevers was modest and private, and declined most requests for interviews. He kept few football mementos in his home, and reportedly never talked about sports with his family. Around the news media, he seemed embarrassed to talk about himself, and when he did, it was often in a humorous, self-deprecating way. Asked to recall his Rose Bowl performance, Nevers chose to dwell on the interceptions he threw. "A total of 150 yards and two touchdowns in two tries," he once said, "makes the passing combination of Layden of Notre Dame and Nevers of Stanford the best in Rose Bowl history." Nevers lived in Tiburon, north of San Francisco, for much of his life and once invited Bob Murphy, then the sports information director at Stanford, to bring a tape recorder over his house to discuss his athletic career in detail for a possible book. "We rambled on for a few hours," Murphy recalled. "He talked about everything - the Four Horsemen, Pop Warner taping up his ankles with inner tubes, the home runs he served up to Babe Ruth. But here's the sad part of the story. I transcribed the tape, but to this day, I don't know what I did with it. I may have it buried somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it." In 1951 he was inducted into the College Hall of Fame, and in 1963 and he was a charter inductee in the Pro Football of Fame. He died on May 3, 1976, 25 years ago yesterday.
"Is this b-s or a new rule? "The reason this came up (and why I try and not talk DW with non-DW'ers) is because once they found out the O I run they began to tell me all the ways to stop it. One being tackling the WB's when they moved to run a pass route(how they would know it's a pass route I have no idea). Second that if you have a good push from the defensive front line you could "blow up" the offense. I explained my comment re: being as far back off the LOS to remedy that tactic............then there we went. The suspicion that one is being b-s'ed is the first stage of wisdom. Go to the site of the National Federation of State High School Associations. They are the high schools equivalent of the NCAA, because they pass the rules that all states except but Texas and Massachusetts (which use NCAA rules) go by. There is no such "new rule" as they describe. Here is where you can find a summary of new rules passed this January: http://www.nfhs.org/sports/football_rules_change.htm
This is from a 1934 book by a couple of highly-respected coaches, entitled "Practical Football." But other than the old-time equipment, it might just as well have been taken this past season, based on some of the things I've seen taught and some of the things people are still advocating. It does appear as though the tackler could be trying to keep his head up, but because he has aimed his shoulders low, because they are as low as his hips, simple body mechanics make it nearly impossible for him to do so. You tell me if this guy is vulnerable to injury - at the least, a hard knee to the head could knock him cold. But what if, try as he might, he should drop his head, and catch a blow, full-force, on the top of the helmet? Do you think a jury, looking at a kid in a wheelchair, will excuse you when you testify that you told him to keep his head up? Telling him is not enough. You must do everything you can - you must teach a style of tackling that makes it practically impossible physically to duck the head. I'm not trying to scare anyone into buying my tackling tape. But I am urging you to stop teaching kids to drop their shoulders in attempting to grab the runner's legs. Go to the survey of injuries of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research. Read it carefully. *********** "I want to register all four of the Deerfield Young Warriors youth football teams for the Black Lions Award. I will be the contact person. I'll give you the other coaches' names after we have sign-ups. With your permission, I would like to put together a packet explaining the award and telling the Don Holleder story using your web site's information. I want to hand this packet to every player who signs up. Our registration will be held on May 20th and 21st." Keith Babb- Northbrook, Illinois (Permission granted!) *********** People looking for a major problem in American public education, for a major reason why increasing numbers of parents send their kids to private schools or home-school them, for a major reason why teachers in general lack respect, need to take a look at Hockinson, Washington, a conservative little community in the foothills of the Cascades. Hockinson's school district is trying to do the near-impossible - fire a teacher. Here's why: in 1995-96, the teacher was warned not to show his middle-school classes videos that he'd obtained from video stores or taped from TV. In March, 1997, parents complained that the teacher had once again done just that, and he was given a reprimand and directed not to show any videos not approved by the school district or by the local Educational Service District, a sort of branch of the state Department of Education. In February, 1999 he was discovered to have been viewing sexually explicit Web sites. On his classroom computer. For this, he received a one-day suspension without pay, along with a reprimand from the Office of the Superindent of Public Instruction. At that time, he was given a warning stating, "any further substantiated conduct of this nature, or other substantiated conduct indicating a lack of maturity and judgment in use of technology or educational resources shall be considered grounds for your termination." This past Hallowe'en, at a "Hallowe'en Party" in his room (leaving aside the debate on the appropriateness of a Hallowe'en Party during school time), he showed excerpts from "The Exorcist," an R-rated movie. (R-rated movies are taboo in practically any classroom in the state of Washington and, I suspect, in many other states as well.) Like most of us, the school district evidently considered this to be an indication of "a lack of maturity and judgment in use of technology or educational resources," and decided to pull the pin. Apart from the fact that the teacher's action was in direct violation of an earlier warning and reprimand, "Parents can reasonably expect that teachers will not show their children films during the school day that require parent permission for the child to see in a theater," wrote the school superintendent. End of story, right? Not a chance. The teacher has filed a grievance against the district, and now a hearings officer will be selected to determine whether he should be reinstated. Should the firing be upheld, the teacher can still appeal to an arbitrator, whose decision would be binding. I suspect that the union dues paid by countless of his fellow teachers - hard-working, rules-abiding - will go toward paying the costs of trying to save his job. So what do you suppose the chances would be of getting rid of a teacher simply because he/she is incompetent? *********** "If you had a hard time finding sneakers that weren't made in China try finding some shoulder pads that aren't made there. American Companies but made in China -- guess it is cheaper to ship goods halfway around the world than it is to pay Western wages for the American Companies." Doug Gibson, Naperville, Illinois *********** Not sure where he got it, but this was sent me by my son, Ed. From November 5, 1971 to January 9, 1972 - more than two months - the Los Angeles Lakers didn't lose a game, and most of the victories were by comfortable margins. On Dec. 22, they won their 27th straight, giving them the longest winning streak in major pro sports history, passing the 26 in a row by baseball's New York Giants in 1916. Only Wilt Chamberlain was unimpressed. "I played with the Harlem Globetrotters and we won 445 in a row," he said. "And they were all on the road." *********** "Hi Coach- Just dropping you a line to let you know we won our first two league games (yesterday and last Sunday) using the Double Wing. The scores were 12-0 and 33-0, so we are now 2-0 for the season which is an improvement on last season already. Check out our website < www.plymouthadmirals.co.uk > for match reports and pictures of fat sweaty English blokes. I'm number 78 in the front row All the best - Mike Kent - Cornwall, England *********** "Coach, I should have written earlier but I wanted to thank you for a GREAT clinic!! Even though I have been running the DW for 4 years, I still came away with valuable information. I am excited to implement some of the new play designs though I'm very strict when it comes to "new" things when the "old" work so well. Some of the new variations will definitely complement the system especially with some much welcomed strengths in personnel I hope to enjoy this coming season. I especially am excited about the Stack I. Thanks again coach for another great clinic." John Irion, Queensbury, New York (Coach Irion is an excellent example of what happens when you combine the Double-Wing with great coaching. He has been to the state finals twice in the four years he's been at Queensbury.) *********** I have read the New York Times' story about former Senator Robert Kerrey, and I've read numerous editorials on the subject. And Tuesday night I watched "60 Minutes 2". I have heard all I care to hear on the subject, and I have come to one inescapable conclusion: I despise Dan Rather. As a politician, former Senator Robert Kerrey from Nebraska was not a particular favorite of mine. He knew Bill Clinton was a liar. Said he was a particularly good one. Said so publicly. Then let him skate. But Mr. Kerrey went to Viet Nam and served his country and came back without his right leg. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Bronze Star. Now, it seems, he may not have fought the war the way those of us sitting in the comfort of our homes would prefer our wars be fought: nice and clean and neat, with no casualties on either side. Or, reminiscent of cartoonist Al Capp's "Schmoos," our enemies should just fall over dead with smiles on their faces, because it's the least they can do for us and it pleases them to do so. Years later, we learn that Mr. Kerrey may have taken part in the killing of some Vietnamese civilians. Women and children. He says that he didn't know until afterwards that he had done so. A fellow Navy SEAL now claims otherwise, saying Mr. Kerrey knew what he was doing. His story was in the New York Times last week, and he went on TV to tell us more (for a price, I would imagine). A Vietnamese "eyewitness" was found, a former Viet Cong who claims to have been on the scene the night the incident occured. Five former mates support Mr. Kerrey's version, although Dan Rather seemed to imply, in his sneaky, underhanded way, that their getting together recently - for the first time in years - might just have had something to do with getting their stories straight. Now, obviously, no one can condone another incident such as My Lai, in which Americans took part in the killing of innocent women and children. But I have never been in combat. I have absolutely no way of knowing what it is like to be faced with an instant, life-or-death, kill-or-be-killed decision. Hollywood with all its special effects can't make it real for me. You have either seen combat or you have not. And in a war in which it was often difficult to know who was the enemy - who was a civilian and who was a combatant - I would think that our servicemen were often presented with some very tough, life-or-death, kill-or-be-killed decisions. What if Mr. Kerrey - then Lieutenant Kerrey - had ordered his men to hold their fire - and they'd all been killed? Nevertheless, I am afraid that in our current climate, one in which the public expects a police officer in a dark alley to know in an instant whether that thing in that person's hand is a real gun or just a toy, Senator Kerrey faces some tough times ahead. He can always pull a Hillary, of course, and say, "I don't remember." But I fully expect that he will be a man and deal with the matter forthrightly. I think he already has. Dan Rather put him in the delicate position of asking him if he was calling a former mate a liar, and he did not rise to the bait. Maybe, just maybe, while we provide air time to the Dan Rathers and some who might even venture so far as to brand Senator Kerrey a war criminal, we will give at least equal time to some of those who were actually there, so that they might have a chance once again to refresh our memory of what they went through on our behalf. Because 25 years after the fall of Saigon, after the flight of the "Boat People" and the ensuing massacres in Viet Nam pretty much justified our being there, if not the strategy we pursued, Dan Rather, that pompous puke with the new pompadour, showed that there is still life to the movement to discredit the people who served. Seeming to fancy himself as the conscience of America, Rather took great delight at grilling Mr. Kerrey, looked so clever with his subtle little facial expressions, gave great credence to the "memory" of the supposed eyewitness, and seemed shocked - shocked! - to think that Mr. Kerrey had kept the story of the incident a "secret" all these years. A "secret?" Like he should have been bringing it up at cocktail parties? How many combat vets do you know who tell war stories? ************ The all-new Detroit Fury of the Arena Football League has already sold 11,000 season tickets. In case you weren't aware, there are now 18 teams in the AFL. Not only that, but there are 28 teams in AFL2, its minor-league little brother. It's no wonder the NFL has an option to purchase 49.9 per cent of the AFL. *********** It isn't enough that the Boy Scouts are getting hammered by gays because of that line in their pledge ("to keep myself morally straight"), now they've got PETA on their case. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) wants the Boy Scouts to discontinue awarding a merit badge for fishing - because fish have feelings. (To quote Dave Barry, "I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.") And fishing, why, PETA says, it encourages children "to put hooks in live frogs so as to trick other animals into impaling themselves, then to rip them from the water into an environment where they cannot breathe..." *********** At least now I know what some of those XFL "cheerleaders" do in the off-season. In the annual report of WWF it says that one of CEO Vince ("Welcome to Our Game") McMahon is eligible to receive up to $50,000 a year in "cleaning expenses." I think some of those young ladies would look darling running around the McMahon mansion dressed in skimpy little maid's costumes, reaching up to dust the chandeliers and bending over to vacuum the rug. *********** The city of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 to begin paying the costs of its employees' sex changes, leading Rush Limbaugh to play the old Tony Bennett hit with one word bleeped out: "I left My ------- in San Francisco." *********** Is ESPN nuts? Does UNLV need the money that bad? Is the Mountain West Conference that desperate? Is Conference USA really serious? Let's wait until we see how this plays out, but thanks to a recent NCAA ruling removing its ban on Friday night college games, the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA have already jumped at the chance to take ESPN's money to play games on Friday nights, going up against high schools all over the US. Since I presume the games will come on at 5 PM Pacific, same as the Thursday night games, I don't seem them having a major impact on West Coast games. The biggest impact would seem to come in the Eastern Time Zone, with an 8 PM kickoff, or in the Central, with a 7 PM kickoff. Actually, considering the marginal national attractiveness of the two conferences involved, the move could backfire on them. I mean, Personally, I think it's a matter of two pretty good football conferences with practically no marketing profile - conferences that have been doing a lot of whining about a lack of respect - going out and doing something that's likely to brand them as outlaws, and cost them what little respect they may have had. I mean, does Michigan have to play on Friday night? Or Tennessee? Or Nebraska? I urge anyone who lives within a phone call of a Mountain West or Conference USA school to give the football office a call and tell them what a sleazy move this is. UNLV, Utah, Colorado State, Wyoming, New Mexico, Fresno State, BYU, San Diego State, San Jose State Army, Louisville, East Carolina, Southern Mississippi, Houston, Memphis, Tulane, Cincinnati As for ESPN, try to remember that it is owned by Walt Disney, a company that makes billions disguising sleaze as family entertainment - a company that wants everybody to feel so warm and fuzzy about playing national championships in Orlando. |
Ernie
Nevers may be the only man in sports history to play pro
football, pro baseball and pro basketball - and all in
the same year (1927) at that.
"A Tucson, Arizona, statute reads: 'It shall be unlawful for any visiting football team or player to carry, convey, tote, kick, throw, pass, or otherwise transport or propel any inflated pigskin across the University of Arizona goal line or score a safety within the confines of the city of Tucson, County of Pina, State of Arizona." Violators can be fined $300 and sentenced to not less than three months in the city jail.'" Derek Wade, Tomales, California *********** "I remember great features in SI and the BFS Journal about Gordie Lockbaum. What an athlete and person." Mark Kaczmarek, Assumption High, Davenport, Iowa (I mentioned meeting Gordie Lockbaum at a clinic I gave recently and not being able to place his name - and my later embarrassment at realizing that I knew his name because he played at Holy Cross and was pretty good - he placed fifth in the Heisman Trophy balloting in 1986. He was just named to the College Football Hall of Fame.) ***********Thinking about running the single wing? Read carefully... Rummaging through my old Sports Illustrateds in search of something, I came upon something even better (that's called "serendipity" - discovery by accident). It's the September 24, 1962 issue - the College Football Special Issue. (Notice how late the date was, compared with today, when colleges start playing benefit games on Labor Day weekend?) UCLA coach Bill Barnes was featured in the section on the West. The Bruins, one of the last holdouts of the single wing, were headed into their first season running the T formation. Why, he was asked, are you changing over from the single wing, after all the success it's enjoyed at UCLA? There were a number of reasons, he replied. "First," he said, joking, "the alumni demand it..." There was probably some truth to that, but there were some very important additional reasons besides, mainly having to do with recruiting. It seems that the schools in the Big Six, that year's version of what we now call the Pac Ten, had tightened their entrance requirements. In addition, the NCAA had just passed a rule requiring a player enrolling in a JC to stay there for two years before transferring to a four-year school. Coach Barnes' experience had been that while a kid who couldn't qualify academically for UCLA right out of high school might be willing to spend one year at a JC and then transfer over, two years would be another matter: now, he would more than likely go to another four-year college, one with lower requirements, rather than commit to two years at a JC. It was the likely prospect of a shrinking talent pool, he said, that caused him to switch from the single wing to the T formation. "In the single wing," he told SI, "it was all specialists. You had to have a center who could snap the ball unerringly while upside down. You needed a quarterback who was a vicious blocker, yet fast enough to stay ahead of your backs. You needed a fullback who could spin and pivot like a ballet dancer but had power to rip a line apart. Of course, the tailback was the core of the team. He had to run, pass, kick and even block and he had to be durable enough to stand up under game-to-game pounding. But probably the hardest man to come by was the wingback. He needed a sprinter's speed, the niftiness of a scatback and the strength to block an end or halfback who might go 200 or 200. (Nowadays, even more- HW) "We just couldn't come up with all these men year after year." *********** My wife, a third-grade teacher, was recently handed an "Observation Checklist," a guide by which her "superior" will observe and evaluate her - there were 32 different checkpoints on this checklist. And that's just for "Language Arts," one of the six or so different subjects a typical elementary school teacher teaches. ("Language Arts" is what we laypersons used to call "English" until the educator-types typically decided to change it to the more pretentious-sounding name. The school "library", for example, isn't the "library" any more, either. It's now the "resource center.") Anyhow, just to give you an idea of what teachers have to deal with, and at the same time show you how badly the people who will evaluate the teachers of "language arts" need a lesson in "English," one of the checkpoints asks, "Are language arts concepts explored in a problem-solving, real-world context?"
*********** Frank Simonsen of Cape May, New Jersey, responded to my criticism the other day of the coach who was unapologetic about openly teaching holding: "Coach, I agree the coach that is teaching this is a jerk, BUT - where the hell are the officials? Why are they letting him get away with it. We teach our kids to respect the officials, that their word is final, and that I am the only one (including assistant coaches) that may question a call. I don't think holding is any worse or more dangerous than letting the defenses cut our B-Back's or Def. linemen tackling our pulling linemen. "We have a meeting every year (as do the high school coaches and AD's) with the head of the NJ. Chapter of Officials that do our games. This meeting is to go over all the rules and rule changes. This is the time and place to bring this up - make a point of asking why this is being tolerated. "Why are we given rule books and why bother having the meetings if you are not going to enforce the rules? I use these meetings to do my politicking (usually at the bar if possible) to explain our offense and why we run it and how it uses the benefits of the rules." Frank Simonsen, Cape May, New Jersey Coach Simonsen is right to ask, Where the hell are the officials? But the point in football is the same as in society as a whole - it functions best when people can be depended on to obey the law, whether or not the police are watching, BECAUSE IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO. Once everybody decides they'll do whatever they want until they get caught - which seems more and more to be the case in society nowadays - there will never be enough police to keep order. Officials can't possibly stay on top of a coach who is determined to cheat, which is why we have such a thing as a code of ethics. Now, all it needs is some teeth.
*********** Hmmm.... passed along to me by Scott Barnes, USMC, in Rockwall, Texas: "The Air Force Chief of Staff would never allow himself to be referred to as: Airman... The Chief of Navy Operations would never allow himself to be referred to as: Sailor... The Commanding General of the Army would never allow himself to be referred to as: Soldier... BUT!...... The Commandant of the Marine Corps is damned proud to be referred to as: MARINE!" *********** Years ago, one of the astronauts said that the scariest thing about going up in space was the knowledge that every component of his craft had been supplied by the low bidder. Now, you talk about scary - a rich American has bought his way onto a Russian space venture. A Russian space venture? Are you kidding me? That is about the scariest prospect I can imagine! As a Finnish friend of mine once said, in dismissing Russia and Russians, "They don't know paint." I knew what he meant. I have been to Russia - went there on a "Russian cruise ship," which is an oxymoron if there ever was one. It was his way of saying that in Russia, if it isn't made of bare concrete, it is either peeling or rusting.
*********** The taxpayers of Washington County, Oregon, no doubt wanting to feel safe from bad guys, approved a $69.3 million public safety levy back in November. They probably feel a lot safer already, with the announcement that the sheriff has just hired a local female TV reporter for $54,576 a year to be his "public information officer." *********** Perhaps you've heard of Warren Buffet. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska, and he's one of America's wealthiest men. He didn't get that way by being stupid. While other investors made gazillions overnight, and just as fast morphed from Masters of the Universe to "Will Work for Food" when their dot-com stocks crashed, Mr. Buffett has built his fortune the stodgy, old-fashioned "Double-Wing" way - by investing in unglamorous, solid, down-to-earth companies. He even joked about it in his "chairman's letter" to shareholders in his company's annual report. "We have embraced the 21st century," he wrote, "by entering such cutting edge industries as brick, carpet, insulation and paint. Try to control your excitement." In the last 36 years, a share of Mr. Buffett's company, Berkshire-Hathaway, has appreciated in value from $19 to $40,442. (That's the price of one share, guys.) That is growth - 23.6 per cent, compounded annually. Think about that the next time you stop in at the Dairy Queen. Berkshire-Hathaway owns it, too. *********** "I came upon your site while looking for something out of my childhood. The first year I followed football, Columbia beat Stanford in the Rose Bowl, the upset of the century. When I attended Columbia, ten years later, of course I went to every game, and they still talked about Al Barabas and KF79. But I never made it my business to find out what it was - I assumed it was a wingback reverse. I wondered how that play could have worked in the mud. So, thinking I'd better find out while I'm still breathing, I "asked" Copernic2001 about Al Barabas, and your site is one of the references that came up. I must have spent an hour reading the month of June, in which your explanation and diagram from Lou Little's book appeared (I never did find the question). You have a great writing style and thanks very much for good reading. I will check your site regularly for your refreshing opinions. Best wishes, Donald Kahn, UK *********** I spoke too soon. No sooner did I mention how reassuring it was that Rick Neuheisel had returned Washington to the traditional gold helmet of the Don James days, than word broke that the Huskies had agreed to a Nike-managed makeover on the order of what the people behind the Swoosh did for (some would say "did to") Oregon. Having turned the Ducks into creatures from the pages of a Super Heroes comic book, Nike has designed new Huskies' uniforms with a little less "orange" in the gold pants and a little less purple in the purple jerseys. I'm betting that in an attempt to make the uniforms more "ballsy," (not to mention stimulating sales of jerseys to fans) we will be looking at a hideous "old gold" about the color of Gulden's mustard. I stopped in to a local sporting goods store and saw the purple home jersey (oh, yes - they're on sale already. Why do you think Washington went along with the makeover?), and I must say that for a Nike design it's pretty tame. They somehow resisted the urge to make it mostly black with purple trimming. The striping looks sort of lame, and the numbers really suck - they are an ultra-modern type font, about the sort of thing you would expect on some Umbro soccer jersey. Not exactly ballsy. The worst part of the whole deal, if you are a traditionalist, is the redesign of the good old husky logo. Nike has produced a slick, contemporary line drawing that looks to me like a weasel. *********** Here's a great one from the pages of Sports Illustrated, 1962. Prior to the season, Pitt's quarterback was said to have boasted, "in the opening game with Miami, you're gonna see an All-America quarterback." He was right. But it was George Mira, Miami's quarterback, who led the Hurricanes on drives of 97, 95 and 73 yards as Miami won, 23-14. The Pitt quarterback? A guy named Jim Traficant, who as a US Congressman from Ohio is as brash and outspoken today as he was nearly 40 years ago. *********** From Scott Russell, Sterling, Virginia: "Q: At the gym, a guy asked me to "spot" for him while he did the bench press. What did he mean? A: "Spotting" for someone means you stand over him while he blows air up your shorts. It's an accepted practice at health clubs, though if you find that it becomes the ONLY reason why you're going in, you probably ought to reevaluate your exercise program." *********** "When my son Zack was a little tyke playing flag football we won tickets to see a Junior College game from the sidelines. The team we went to watch was Scottsdale JC and they played Snow College from Utah. SJC had a tailback that Zack still talks about. He was a little guy about 5' 7" and faster than a jackrabbit in heat. Yes it was Garner before he went to Tennessee. Apparently Tennessee had found SJC as a good place to 'hide' players until they could become eligible to play, or so I was told by someone on the sidelines. Garner talked to Zack briefly after the game and asked him if he played. Zack said yes and Garner said 'I started when I was about your size.' Zack has never forgotten the conversation and inspiration he got that day from Charlie Garner." John Torres, Manteca, California
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