*********** "Coach, Thanks for the explanation of the Belly series. This has been a staple of the Wishbone offense that I have been asssociated with for the past 15 + years. The major difference is that we read the Belly. We will run it as either an Inside Veer Belly or as a Midline Belly. It is a great way to read an unblocked defender and have a Fb/Hb play that hits straight ahead. It is great to use when you don't have enough speed to live by the Triple Option." Dennis Metzger - Connersville, Indiana *********** Coach, One other I was surprised to see you elide over, in terms of belly success stories, was the domination of Div III football by Augustana of Rock Island, Illinois. During the 1980's, no other team dominated college football like Augie. The primary attack was, of course the inside belly series. Richmond Flowers I was liberal indeed. So liberal that during the 50's and 60's as Alabama AG he started to attack the existing Jim Crow laws of Alabama. In the efforts to thwart him, elements of the controlling political machine had him convicted, on trumped up charges, of election and campaign law violations. This had much to do with his son going to Tenn. He later received a Presidential pardon. One of the lost heroes of the 60's. Mark Kaczmarek, Davenport, Iowa Coach- You're right about the belly as a part of Augustana's attack, but it was as a component of Bob Reade's version of the Wing-T, and so I wouldn't call his a "Belly" offense per se. In fact, it was as a wing-T coach that we had him out to do a clinic in the Northwest several years ago, and I still have the notes. (I remember some of the guys being disappointed - not me - because we were Delaware adherents and his offense was not the pure thing!) Sports Illustrated ran a nice article about the Flowers family not too long ago. What the elder Flowers did was in its way as courageous as the work of the SLCC. *********** Coach Wyatt, I just went out and purchased a new iMac DV SE in hopes of being able to do digital editing on my football game tapes. After loading the game footage into the iMac, I found that after I had exported the edited footage into my new Sony GV-D200 digital vcr that there was noise and visual glitches in the dubbed footage that does not exist on the original tape and also doesn't exist in the footage I viewed in the iMac before exporting. I found an iMovie message board that reports this as a common occurance. A phone call to Apple revealed that my digital vcr (which is so new that it's not yet listed on Sony's website) is not a "compatible" vcr, despite the fact that it has a Firewire port. So now I'll either have to add a new "compatible" camcorder to the mix, despite having bought this $600 vcr a month ago to exclusively perform this job or return the iMac and go with a Sony Vaio PC. I thought you might want to make a mention in your article on your website about digital video editing to make sure that the camcorder or vcr you purchase to do your recording is actually listed on Apple's website as being compatible to their iMacs. It could save somebody some aggravation. Sincerely, Dave Potter, Durham, North Carolina - Coach - As with all such applications, there is always the chance that the equipment will not be compatible. I have never encountered the sort of problem you describe. I suspect that Apple, in its iMac advertising, may have oversold the idea of "open the box and start making movies", without pointing out that there are always going to be some compatibility issues. It is nearly as simple as they advertise it, but with computers, nothing is foolproof, especially when you get involved with peripheral hardware - scanners, camers, printers. I came onto the computerized editing scene with considerable experience in analog editing, and so I am prepared for the worst, aware that not everything works together smoothly the first time - if ever. I am not aware of the VCR unit you describe, and I am surprised to hear that SONY makes one for as little as $600. I have one which I use to edit and it cost me close to $3000, and, probably because it is not a consumer-level item and not commonly found in homes, it was not recognized by my first version of iMovie. So I just managed to work back and forth between my camera and my computer. Now, with iMovie 2, that little problem is resolved. My question for you would be this: what are you doing your shooting with? I am surprised that returning the $600 tape deck wasn't one of the options you described, because I really don't see the absolute need for one. Assuming that you are shooting with a digital camera, why you don't just go back and forth between your camera and your computer, using the same FireWire connection? I couldn't tell you a thing about the SONY Vaio system, other than the fact that for a computer system with video editing capability it seems reasonably priced, and reviews of the editing software it uses have not been very complimentary. I have not seen it, much less used it, so I can't say that it wouldn't work fine for your purposes. I do not own Apple stock and none of my relatives or close friends works for Apple, but I have been reasonably happy with its products, and while I stop short of pushing them, I must come to Apple's defense in this case. It seems to me that it is not the fault of Apple if its programmers failed to anticipate every subsequent product that would down the pike, particularly a product so obscure that SONY hasn't even publicly announced it yet. The fault, I suspect, lies with SONY. Surely its engineers/marketers were aware that iMac/iMovie users would make up a significant portion of the market for this product, and they had ample opportunity to test for the problems you describe. So I think that if they are not aware of the problem, they are incredibly ignorant; and if they are aware of the problem and have not clearly informed consumers of it, they are incredibly negligent. To say the least.
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*********** Bob Miller, popular DJ of Portland station KEX, noting that "steak and upside-down-tart" were on the menu when President Clinton and President-elect Bush dined at the White House recently, said "In the Clinton White House you shouldn't be surprised to find an upside-down tart somewhere."
*********** Speaking of Whit Snyder down there in Baytown, he and his Texas Longhorn buddies will like this one: http://www.virtually-anywhere.com/utfootball/index.html - It is one of the coolest football sites I have ever seen, a virtual look at Texas football and the Longhorns' program, including panoramic views (move your cursor and get a 360-degree look) at such things as the Stadium, Bevo the Longhorn Steer, the lockerroom, the weight room, the training room, the players' lounge. Zoom in for a closer look if you'd like. Listen to the band play "The Eyes of Texas" after a game. Ah'm tellin' ya- it's one heck of a recruiting tool. According to the description of the players' lounge, the room is equipped with a kitchenette, a large screen television, a billiards table, comfortable furniture, a stereo system and a video games system, and - are you paying attention, Minnesota? - phones. Pay phones. |
*********** In college football, it is fairly common for a small school to visit a big school and absorb a beating in order to take home a big check; in basketball roughly the same thing happens, except that the beating doesn't leave as many bruises. So it was a bit of a twist Tuesday night when big-time Duke visited Portland to play the University of Portland Pilots. The U of P is a small Catholic school which turns out an NBA player once every generation or so, and other than the odd Oregon or Oregon State home game brought up the road to the big city, the locals don't get many opportunities to see big-time basketball (unless you count the NBA). As a result, a chance to see the nation's top-ranked team drew more than 15,000 people to the Rose Garden and earned a pile for the Pilots. It was the largest crowd in the history of Oregon to watch a college basketball game, and at least five times the size of a good crowd for Portland, which drew 833 to watch it play Sacramento State only three nights before. The game was arranged because of a promise Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski made to Mike Dunleavy, Jr. (whose dad coaches the Trail Blazers, and hosted the Duke team for dinner Monday night) when he recruited him out of Beaverton, Oregon's Jesuit High two years ago. He promised, as he does all his recruits, that Duke would play a game in Dunleavy's home town. It is not a hard promise for Coach K to keep. There isn't a school in the country that wouldn't like to have a home game against the Blue Devils. *********** Jack Reed, author of numerous books on youth sports, is a West Pointer. Jack also is his own man, and speaks his mind, and doesn't have a lot of use for a lot of the people in the Pentagon, most of who have worked their way to the top by playing politics - sucking up, and avoiding making any career mistakes by avoiding having to make tough decisions. As a result, the higher-ups often tend not to be warrior types - those guys are out in the field carrying out their orders. Of course, it bothers Jack as it does most military people, but it doesn't worry him. He figures that anybody we'd have to fight has the same bureaucracy at the top as we do. As a result, he says, "it's our bureaucrats against their bureaucrats." *********** Coach, Just thought I would drop you a note to let you know how the Huskies fared this year running the double wing. Sorry I didn't update you during the season but I tend to have that "deer in the headlights" look throughout the season. Although our record was not as I had hoped (5-5), the team really enjoyed the offense. I was amazed at its adaptability. We basically ran from tight all year and were quite successful in the running game in all but one game. Our best and most physical lineman was about 178 pounds and we consistently faced opposition of 230 lbs per man across the front. That said, for the most part we were able to play ball control and limit other teams opportunities. I really enjoyed the trap and 6-G. It seemed that whenever we pulled one of those out that it was a huge gain. I did get frustrated with the offense on occassion but that was more a product of my inability to recognize and exploit my opponents weaknesses as opposed to the sets limitations. I am a definite convert and can't wait to learn more. Usually by now I would be getting pumped up for next year but I am not sure when I will get the opportunity to coach again. I am leaving on January 3 to attend Army Officer Candidate School - seems I'm going to be an Armor Officer. I have always wanted to serve my country as an officer (already experienced the enlisted route). More so though, I really want some experiences to share with the young men that I hope to coach some day. Talking with veteran coaches such as yourself has made me realize that coaching is a lot more than the x's and o's. I need to be able to bring more to the table than my knowledge of football. The best coaches seem to be the ones that can impart wisdom that they have attained throughout the years in several arenas. Additionally, I'm hoping to use the time to get certified. I've got the bachelors but not the pesky certification.
*********** "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercize thereof." Thanks to the badgering tactics of so-called "civil liberties" organizations, that simple statement, the first clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, has been twisted to mean that our schools now shut down for "Winter Holiday" instead of "Christmas vacation"; that there can be no manger scenes or even Christmas trees in public squares; that city bus drivers can't wear any sort of decorations on their clothing that might be connected with Christmas; that schools are more likely to deck the halls with drawings of Rudolph and Frosty, and "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree" is about as close as the "Winter Concert" gets to a Christmas carol - er, wintertime faith-based song. Things have passed well beyond the point of nonsensical nuisance and far into the realm of harassment of Christianity. Come on - Congress has never come close to anything resembling an "establishment of religion" - requiring membership in a specific, state-approved religion in order to receive the full benefits of citizenship. No one is legally kept from voting or driving because of their religion; similarly, no one is deprived of a job and no one's kids are refused admission to public schools for religious reasons. No matter. The "civil liberties" activists and anti-Christians press on, attacking centuries-old American Christian-based traditions on the grounds that they make some people "feel uncomfortable."
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***********
Just so you know I try what I write about... What you see
on the left is a fresh-outta-da-oven (outta our
oven!) turducken, sliced clean through. We had one sent
to us by our son-in-law, Rob Love, who couldn't make it
to our recent family wedding, preferring instead to
remain in Durham, North Carolina and deal with power
outages. He sent along the turducken in his place, and
given oour choice between having the turducken and having
Rob there, Rob would win out. Narrowly. The cross-section
here reveals delicious white-meat turkey, cajun stuffing,
chicken, duck and sausage, and an outer coating of cajun
spices. To use the title of a cook book from down there
in Cajun country - "Talk About Good!" Ah done tol'
you 'bout a mont' ago where you kin git sum o' dat
turducken fo' yo'self, but ah guess ahma have to tol' you
some mo':
*********** .*********** In more and more American colleges, it's called the "Hour of Power." It's the time interval between midnight on the day a college student turns 21, and the time the bars close. Actually, it may be more than an hour, but even so, for the birthday boy (or girl) participating in the increasingly-common ritual of consuming 21 drinks before closing time, it's not nearly enough time. "There's no way that amount of consumption of alcohol could be done responsibly," Fulton Crews, director of Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina, told the Durham Herald-Sun. "I would say that any person who drinks 21 drinks in a day is certainly at risk for causing brain damage and perhaps killing themselves." The effects of the alcohol depend on the period of time over which which the person consumes the alcohol, the person's size and weight and the amount of food also consumed, Crews said. But a person generally metabolizes only three-quarters of a drink to one drink per hour, so "Even over a six-hour period, you're still only talking about metabolizing five drinks," he said. Which means that, although people commonly think that once the drinking is finished, that's as drunk as the person is going to get, there's still alcohol in the person's stomach, and it will continue to be absorbed into the blood stream. Which is usually what happens when well-meaning friends take a drunken companion home and put him (or her) to bed. And while he's sleeping or passed out, his blood alcohol could rise to lethal levels. "It's a progressive thing, from a stupor to a coma to death," said Crews, explaining what has happened in cases where students have been put to bed drunk, then discovered dead the next day. Vomiting may save lives, Crews said, because in doing so, the drinker is purging the stomach of alcohol that would otherwise have been absorbed into the bloodstream. "If they vomit, that might level it off, but if they don't they might die," he said. "It's just lucky a lot of people vomit." *********** A coaching friend wrote to tell me about a slight problem he had with his AD. Seems he'd told his kids earlier in the season that if they made the playoffs, he'd letter everyone on the team - starters and scout team players alike. His AD knew of his promise, but didn't give it any further thought, since the school has never made the playoffs. But guess what? This year it did, and when he reminded the AD about his promise to his kids, the AD said, "Nothing doing." He said that the main problem was the extra cost of the additional awards. So our coach then proposed having the Booster Club pay for the extra letters, and the AD consented. A big objective in salesmanship (I was a salesman in an earlier career) is to "find the hidden objection" - to find out if the objection you are being given is the real objection. The trick to finding this out is to say, in this case, "in other words, then... if I can solve that objection - if I can find a way to pay for the extra awards, you don't have any problem with lettering everybody?" And at that point, he either says, "If you can do that, go right ahead," or else he winds up letting you know immediately that there is another objection - a "hidden objection" - that he wasn't telling you about. Something else besides the "extra cost" is really standing in the way. The cost objection was just a smoke screen! *********** Coach Wyatt, How nice to read about my alma mater (Oklahoma State) in your news. Seeing those 43 national championship banners hanging from the rafters of Gallagher Iba Arena is an impressive sight. Actually it's just 42 right now. The 43rd will probably be hung sometime this basketball season when last years championship golf team will be honored. Those banners will be doubly impressive in the newly remodeled arena. Us Cowboys like to rub all those titles in the faces of our brethren to the South in Norman. We normally call them squatters (why would they name themselves after cheaters????). They have a couple of sweet 16 banners hanging in their arena. Naturally all they want to talk about is football. "Did the article you read mention how the new arena was built around and over the old one and the two connected after the roof and walls of the old arena were demolished? University representatives were once told that would be impossible to do. Leaving the old structure in place allowed the architect to "grandfather" in the steep pitch of the seats and close proximity of the floor seating making it "one of the most intimidating venues in the country". Dick Vitale's words not mine. The architect and project manager (both OSU graduates) said two of their primary goals were to retain the high decibel potential (once, light bulbs in the ceiling started bursting and popping it got so loud) and to save the thick maple floor Mr. Iba installed when he had the building built. Great pain and expense was taken to leave the floor intact. "Most O-State fans would say Terry Don Phillips is the best thing to happen to OSU athletics since Mr. Iba. He is a lawyer (very appropriate in these times) but he was also a very good lineman for Frank Broyles at Arkansas and coached for a number of years before becoming associate athletic director and protégé under Mr Broyles. When he first proposed the stadium improvements he spoke of the time he was an assistant coach at Virginia Tech. They were expanding the stadium and upgrading facilities even though they could barely half fill the existing stadium. Although he thought they were crazy it has proven to be the best thing they could have ever done. I would say hiring Frank |
I
have had several people who saw Saturday's Division I-AA
championship game comment on the way Georgia Southern ran
the "Double-Wing," and what a great job they did running the
option out of it. No argument from me about how well they
run their offense. It is great to see a college program
proving that the running game is not dead. But actually,
although Georgia Southern's base formation does look like
our "spread" formation, they are not running what most of us
think of as our "Double-Wing." First of all, the name as
applied to the formation shown on the left is not
technically accurate: a wing, by definition, consists of a
tight end and a back just to his outside. What you are
looking at on the left is not a double wing. It is a
double slot. Secondly, unlike us, they do employ
splits. Splits are essential to running their offense as
effectively as possible. Third, their fullback is
considerably deeper than ours. In fact, although the
formation does look like something we do, our offenses have
different family trees. Our offense's grandpa is the Wing-T.
Georgia Southern is running what you might now call the
"flexbone," the modern generation of the wishbone. The
wishbone, as once run very successfully by Texas, Oklahoma
and Alabama, among others, is based on the triple option,
which starts out by walling off defenders to the inside and
establishing a fullback dive. If the defense doesn't make a
move to stop the fullback, the game is over. At some point,
though, they will get tired of getting their butts run over
by that fullback, and they will do something to stop him.
And that's where Georgia Southern's quarterback takes over
and runs the next two phases of the triple: the option keep
or pitch. By its very nature, any option offense - unlike
ours - has to be very quarterback-intensive. And any option
offense requires a lot of work on the mechanics of the
option itself. This is not to say that you can't run a
triple-option package within our Double-Wing system, but one
of the beauties of our offensive system is that it frees you
from having to rely on a gifted quarterback, and having to
spend the time and effort involved in making an option
offense work.