FRID

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SIGN UP TO PRESENT THE BLACK LION AWARD TO A PLAYER ON YOUR TEAM -  COACH GREG KOENIG (ON THE RIGHT IN THE PHOTO) HAS PRESENTED IT TO PLAYERS AT THREE DIFFERENT SCHOOLS IN COLORADO AND KANSAS SINCE 2001 - AND NOW HE'S AT HIS FOURTH SCHOOL - WHERE HE STILL PRESENTS IT!  IT'S THE ONLY AWARD HE GIVES!  IT'S ABSOLUTELY FREE - YOUR PLAYER RECEIVES A CERTIFICATE AND AN OFFICIAL BLACK LION PATCH.    NOW'S THE TIME TO SIGN YOUR TEAM UP AND  - EMAIL ME THE NAME OF THE TEAM AND THE HEAD COACH'S CONTACT INFO:

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*********** I mourn the death of President Bush.  He was the embodiment of the “Yale Man,” an archaic term that once meant something to those who attended a school whose byword was “For God, For Country and For Yale.”  He was an athlete, he was a warrior, he was a wonderful family man, he was a man who served others, with never the hint of a scandal.  He didn’t take himself too seriously, and he came from a time that fewer and fewer of us are alive to remember: a time when a man didn’t brag - when manliness was still a supreme virtue, and it was universally agreed that it was unmanly to boast or bring attention to yourself.

*********** One of the things about the Army-Navy game that the public doesn’t always get to see is the good-natured ribbing that takes place between the two opposing sides in the days leading up to the contest.  Some of the videos and memes are pretty well done.  One little sampling…



*********** The Top 25 Power Rankings show what most of us suspect - the SEC is pretty good. Of the teams on the list:
SEC: 8
ACC: 3
BIG 10: 3
BIG 12: 3
PAC-12: 3
Mountain West: 2
AAC: 1
INDEPENDENTS (Notre Dame, Army): 2

*********** Mark Kaczmarek, of Davenport Iowa, writes…

Your talking about NAIA recruiting reminded me of my college O line coach Brodie Westen talking about us...remember that chart called the evolution of man, well Coach Westen talked about the "De-evolution" of Linemen....Edge rushers...if they can't do it, move them to a 3 tech...3 tech doesn't work out make them a 1...after that it goes to offense, 1st to C/G & if it doesn't work that last stop is T...In his words, "If offensive T doesn't work out, then it's the Glue Factory!"

*********** Hugh,

Go Army!  Beat Navy!

My Bulldogs did it!  I stayed up and watched every agonizing minute.  Arizona State and Fresno State will be a good matchup in the Las Vegas Bowl.  Will be watching that one as well.

Minnesota will have its hands full with Georgia Tech.  Tech will be doing everything it can to send Coach Johnson out a winner.

Notre Dame.  If they can play with any consistency they will give Clemson a battle.  Especially if Clemson plays the way they did against Pitt.  Otherwise...it was a great season for ND.  If the ND Club of Austin comes up with a reasonably priced package to attend the game we will be going.  Dallas is only 3 hours away.  Otherwise...pub time!

My brother's buddy was at the PAC-12 championship game.  My brother told me his buddy said they were lucky to have 30,000 there.  PAC-12 needs to do a Mike McCarthy with Larry Scott.

At one time the story was Jalen Hurts and his dad weren't happy with Nick Saban, and that the dad was threatening to pull his son out of the school.  Not sure how it was settled but the Tide football team is happy with the result!

If I was in charge at Kansas State I would have offered Jim Leavitt the job yesterday.  Leavitt is a damn good coach.

If I became a head coach again (not that I have any intention to) one of my first hires would be a locker room assistant whose main job would be to police the locker room from the time the players get in, to the time the last player leaves.  I would have to in order to keep my job.

P.S.  Just heard the news about Urban Meyer.  Not surprised.  This time around his health is TRULY the issue he's calling it quits.

Have a great week!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas


***********  A great suggestion written in to the Wall Street Journal by one Joseph Henderson, of  The Woodlands, Texas.

I will not believe that the NCAA and the NFL have a brain between them until they send the head coach to the locker room with the player who commits any dirty hit this is the only way to get coaches to become teachers of the rules and to address head injuries with each successive penalty of this nature assistant coaches should join them in the locker room until the equipment manager and the team doctor are calling the plays.

Friction between Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and ousted head coach Mike McCarthy escalated throughout the 2018 season in part due to Rodgers's tendency to regularly change McCarthy's playcalls at the line of scrimmage, according to reports from Sports Illustrated's Kalyn Kahler and Albert Breer.

From the fan reaction I’ve read, Mr. Rodgers is not going to come out on the good end of this.  I’ve even read conspiracy theorists’ suggestions that Rodgers’ poor performance against Arizona - resulting in the loss that proved to be the tipping point against McCarthy - smelled of taking a dive.

At the very least, it sounds as if the next Packer head coach will have to meet the approval of a certain diva quarterback.  And then share the play-calling with him.

https://sports.yahoo.com/aaron-rodgers-regularly-changed-mike-195505172.html

Colin Cowherd has an interesting take on the reason for the unusual power and influence Rodgers wields…  the Packers don’t have an owner!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSqCXqU6OgY

*********** Writes Mike Bianchi, in the Orlando Sentinel…

How sad is it that there is no sadness?

When Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer announced he was retiring Tuesday, the college football world reacted not with warm goodbyes and glowing tributes but with cynical comments and skeptical columns.

There were no heavy hearts; only cocked eyebrows.

Usually, when one of the greatest coaches of all time announces his retirement ostensibly for health reasons, there are cheers and tears and crying-in-our-beers. But on the day Urban Meyer supposedly retired, the first thought that crossed everybody’s mind was, “Yeah, right.”

*********** George Bush’s Baseball Legacy

by John Henry - PressboxDFW

George Bush’s most excellent excursion into history began in 1948 with a trip in a Studebaker to Texas, though, he wasn’t making it to chase his true dreams, which he left behind in Connecticut.
“The truth?” he wrote in his autobiography, Looking Forward, answering a hypothetical question of why he moved his young family to Texas. “I wish I could have answered, ‘A fat contract to play professional baseball.’”

Bush, being honored on Wednesday with a state funeral in Washington, D.C., became a man of consequence as the 41st president, but as a collegian he was better known as “Poppy” Bush, a student of the “dismal science” – economics – and baseball and soccer player.

On the diamond he was adorned in a uniform with the No. 2, a first baseman for Yale from 1946-48.

He bat left and threw right.

As a senior and team captain, he famously met Babe Ruth at home plate before a game in New Haven. The encounter was captured for posterity through a still photo published in the Yale Banner yearbook.

According to the researchers at the Society for American Baseball Research, Bush hit .224 with a home run in 76 games for the Elis, the only Yalie to start every game. He had a fielding percentage of .983.

He was, his coach Ethan Allen dubbed him, “good field-no hit,” something the president liked to repeat over the course of the years.

A 1947 game pit Yale with Bush and Fordham with Vin Scully, another good field-no hit. Both went 0 for 3 that day.

He also played in two College World Series.

The Yale years are only part of the story of one man’s romance with the American pastime.

Baseball molded him. And he cherished it as an institution with as much the same reverence as the sacred bond he shared with his wife.

“You never forget your first love,” he wrote in the 1990 World Series program. “For me, that was and is Barbara, but a close second is baseball.”

He came of age with Ruth, Foxx and was a teen when Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial broke in.

The picture of a dying Ruth handing Bush the final manuscript of his autobiography The Babe Ruth Story as a donation to the Yale library was impactful.

Bush called it a “thrill.” The Bambino “radiated greatness,” Bush recalled, despite speaking in a voice that was more of a “croak” than normal.

It was Lou Gehrig, however, who was his childhood hero. Of his baseball idol, Bush later wrote, recalled in Curt Smith’s The Presidents and the Pastime, Gehrig was “steadier, less flamboyant and more dependable than the Babe, steadily achieving excellence.”

That could have been a description of himself, Smith, a Bush speechwriter, noted.

As president, Bush would often summon baseball reporters, a dozen or so at a time, to catch up on what was going on across the league.

For half-an-hour or more, the president would just talk baseball, Smith wrote.

“I’d rather watch baseball than anything else,” Smith recalled Bush saying. “There are some things I’m sure I’m behind on, but I love sitting there, thinking what would I do next – would I walk this guy or tell a fellow to steal?”

A highlight of his presidency was unquestionably hosting 5,000 Little Leaguers to mark the 50th anniversary of the organization.

A week later, he was in Poland, newly freed from the bondage of a Soviet satellite, christening Little League Baseball in the Land of Walesa.

There, he gushed about Carl Yastrzemski and Stan Musial, both the off-spring of Polish immigrants.

Bush also was a presidential baseball pioneer.

William Howard Taft was the first sitting president to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, but it was 41 who took the custom to the pitcher’s mound. With his Yale first baseman’s glove affixed to his right hand, the president fired a ball to Orioles catcher Mickey Tettleton on Opening Day 1989.

YouTube has a clip. Bush appeared overjoyed, bounding off the mound to shake Tettleton’s hand and then that of Orioles manager Frank Robinson before hurrying off – in Bush fashion – and probably on Secret Service script.

Bush performed the same duty for the Texas Rangers on Opening Day 1991, the president hosted by his son George W. Bush, then the managing general partner of the Rangers and himself with baseball DNA. Our link to Bush family baseball concerns, of course, is significant. The ownership group under George W. literally saved baseball in Arlington.

Gerald Ford was the first president to toss an Opening Day pitch in Arlington in 1976, a political decision considering Texas was very much in play in 1976. Bush 41 and 43 returned in 2010 to throw out the first pitch before Game 4 of the 2010 World Series.

Bush’s throw on Opening Day 1991 bounced to recipient Geno Petralli. The president was mortified, an inexcusable transgression for a baseball player.
And a “player” he still was to some degree.

In his first term as Ronald Reagan’s vice president in 1984, Bush, then 60, played one inning at first base in an old-timer’s game in Denver.

Bush popped out facing Warren Spahn, but was given a “mulligan,” facing Milt Pappas next. The first pitch was a swinging strike, the second a ball. On the third pitch, Bush stroked a grounder up the middle for a base hit.

He recorded a putout of Brooks Robinson on a grounder to third baseman Ron Santo. The next hitter, Tony Oliva, drove a hard grounder down the first-base line, which the vice president stabbed and tossed to the pitcher for the out.

Said Pappas at the time: “He made a terrific play.”

The chance to play with the former big-leaguers was his Walter Mitty moment, he said later.

The GM of the then minor-league Denver Bears watched in amazement, telling reporters afterward that he “couldn’t believe that any politician could look that comfortable out there and have that kind of athletic ability. It was obvious that he had played before.”

Another chance to do something like was out of the question during his presidential term.

Ted Williams was also on Bush’s agenda as president.

Williams initially declined an offer to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He didn’t want to wear a tuxedo. Officials told him a tie would work. So, to Washington he went in 1991.

Williams’ contributions to American culture and freedom were irreproachable, but Bush no doubt likely also wanted to do something nice for him.

Without the Splendid Splinter there might not have been a Bush presidency.

During the primary season in 1988, Bush had lost to Bob Dole in Iowa and was trailing at the next stop, New Hampshire. A loss would have in all probability necessitated his withdrawal.

Bush and Williams had first met in WWII flight training at Horace Williams Airport in North Carolina. They remained steadfast friends.

Unannounced and unexpected, and sensing the urgency, Williams flew himself from Florida to help campaign, knowing his standing as Teddy Ballgame would be an asset in the northeast.

“Everything’s going to be fine now,” Williams assured Bush, according to Smith.

Bush won easily on his way to the nomination.

The Kid was the difference.

Bush also wanted to commemorate Williams’ and Joe DiMaggio’s 1941 seasons by presenting each a “President’s Award.” That was the year Williams hit .406 and DiMaggio hit in 56 straight games.

Smith was directed to write the speeches.

His first question: “When was the last time this so-called President’s Award had been handed out?” The answer was never. There was no such thing. (It has since never been presented again.)

But never before to that point had America had such a baseball fan as president.

https://www.pressboxdfw.com/the-bush-legacy-includes-baseball-romance/

*********** QUIZ ANSWER - John Dottley got the nickname “Kayo” from his father, who trained fighters.

This is from a Web site…

Dottley ran a 9.7 second 100-yard dash in 1946. Two college coaches attended his high school graduation — Bear Bryant and Johnny Vaught. Both were desperate to sign Dottley. His father wanted him to sign with Bryant; his mother, Vaught. Kayo did what his mother said.

In 1948 at Ole Miss, Dottley rushed for 1000 yards. But he and Vaught had a scare the following summer. Dottley's name came up for the draft. Vaught wasn’t going to hear of his top running back going off to Korea. So the legendary coach let Dottley borrow his car so he could go sign up for the National Guard in his hometown — and stay in the U.S. for the following season. Once at the National Guard recruiting center, the officer in charge of physical fitness tests asked Dottley to do a deep knee bend. He bent down, winced with pain and let out a yelp (he’d injured his knee in practice).

When Dottley returned to Oxford, Vaught asked, “Did you get signed up?”

“No,” Dottley told him, “they said I was unfit for service.”

The following fall, Dottley rushed for 1,312 yards — still a single-season Ole Miss record.

As a rookie running back in the NFL, Kayo led the Chicago Bears in rushing. It’s a little-known fact that he was the first rookie ever asked to play in the Pro Bowl.

Dottley  might very well be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame but for a freak accident on a windy Chicago night. As Dottley was waiting for his car outside a Chicago hotel, a drunken valet ran a car up on the curb and pinned Kayo’s legs between two cars.

George Halas, certain Dottley’s career was over, wrote that he was the finest running back he had ever coached.

Credit: http://lemuriablog.com/kayo-dottley-the-greatest-player-youve-probably-forgotten/

(My addition:  John “Kayo” Dottley died this past November 17, at the age of 90.

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING JOHN “KAYO” DOTTLEY

JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
GREG KOENIG - CIMARRON, KANSAS
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
JOE GUTILLA, AUSTIN, TEXAS
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
TOM WALLS - WINNIPEG, MANITOBA

*********** Thanks to Greg Koenig…

https://olemisssports.com/news/2018/11/18/ole-miss-football-legend-kayo-dottley-90-passes-away.aspx


*********** QUIZ:  He came out of tiny (population 1,000) Keewatin, in northern Minnesota.

As a single wing tailback at the University of Minnesota, he backed up All-American Paul Giel until his senior year.  As a starter his senior year, the Gophers went 7-2, but despite the fact that he was also an excellent placekicker, he went undrafted by the NFL.

After graduation, he played three years in Canada, with one year off for service in the US Army.

After being cut up North, he spent the 1959 season out of football, but on hearing of the start of the American Football League, he contacted Lou Saban, newly-named coach of the Boston Patriots, and landed a tryout.

He made the team, to say the least.  Ten years later, when the AFL merged with the NFL, he was one of only 20 players to have played in every year of the AFL’s existence;  and he was one of only three players to have played in every single one of his team’s games.

He was extremely versatile.

A good receiver, with his and QB Babe Parilli’s Italian last names, their frequent connections on passes led sportswriters to refer to them as the “Grand Opera Twins.”

He also ran back punts and kickoffs, and put in time as a defensive back. (In one game he intercepted three of Oakland QB Tom Flores’ passes.)

But it was as a placekicker than he really stood out. Between the touchdowns he scored as a receiver and the points he scored as a kicker, he led the league in scoring five times, and he will remain forever in the record books as the AFL’s all-time leading scorer (1130 points on 42 TDs, 176 Field Goals and 342 PATs).

He was a 5-time AFL All-Star and in 1964 he was named the league’s MVP.

He is a member of the Patriots’ Hall of Fame.

An ardent golfer, he once credited the great Arnold Palmer with a tip that made him one of the game’s great kickers:

“I read an article in which Palmer discussed his concentration - head down, eyes on the ball and follow-through.  That seemed to apply to my business as well as his,” he said.

“I had been kicking within 1.3 seconds after the ball was snapped but a stopwatch proved I could kick safely in 1.4 if I wanted to concentrate longer.   So now I black out everything.  When Babe Parilli is holding the ball, I look at it so hard I could count the stitches in the seams.  I don’t even hear the thud of my foot on the leather, but the ball really flies.”

(He is no relation to the Heisman Trophy winner from Penn State by the same name.)

TUESD

*********** Nike revealed the Army uniform for this Saturday’s Army-Navy game, and I have to say that for a company that has Colin Kaepernick on its payroll, it’s done a great job.



Army’s colors are black, gold and gray, but the Army uniform for this year’s Army-Navy game will contain some red - the red of the Big Red One.



On the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, it honors the First Infantry Division - aka “The Big Red One” - the first US Army Division sent “Over There.” 

It also recognizes a part of the Big Red One, the 28th Infantry Regiment, and its role in demonstrating to the Allies that American soldiers, under the command of American officers, were combat ready.  It was in the town of Cantigny, in France, where American forces first fought, and where the fierce fighting of the 28th earned it the famed nickname, the Black Lions of Cantigny.

The Big Red One is headquartered at Fort Riley, Kansas. In 2008, Lieutenant Colonel Pat Frank, then Battalion Commander  of the Black Lions, forged a relationship with the Kansas State program that continues today.

I asked a NAIA head coach about recruiting.

He said first he looks for defensive linemen because if they didn't work out there they could be moved to the offense.
If the player he recruited as an offensive lineman didn't work out all he had left was a fat videographer.  

*********** Hi Hugh,
I have been watching the division 6 Mass. Super Bowl between Stoneham and Old Rochester, Rochester was undefeated and Stoneham had lost one game. Stoneham ran a classic DW,  the old fashion kind, with Qb leading on SP and only  one  formation. They won the game, 26-20, on a 66 SP that went for 46 yards. One thing they did do different was a QB wedge with the B Back pushing the QB. It was very good and they picked some nice yards on it. Their coach Bob Almada (sp) has coached their 25 years and won his first Super Bowl.

Fun game to watch and Stoneham ran a very nice 88/99 Reach Sweep. They also had some success running our old Red-Red completing it for a couple of big plays.

It sure brought back memories it was classic and with four minutes to go Stoneham recovered a fumble and ran out the clock (66-77 Sp). It was almost enough to push me back into coaching LOL 😂

Anyway thought you would be interested.

Hope you folks are having a great holiday season and our love to you and Connie.

Jack Tourtillotte
Rangely, Maine

Hi Jack-

Thanks for the note!

Glad you got to watch that.  My congratulations to Coach Almada and Stoneham.

Funny you mentioned the QB Wedge with the B-Back pushing - I’ve been hammering away at this for weeks now, now that the rules allow assisting the runner!

Watching that kind of stuff gets the blood going again, doesn’t it?

*********** Not saying that Pitt ever had a chance against Clemson, but why help an opponent that doesn’t need help?

Down 21-10, they held Clemson and took over on their own 20, with 1:03 left in the half.

Time to get the hell out of there, right

Wrong.  They threw.  Threw an interception that Clemson returned to the Pitt 10.

Clemson scored on the next play.

28-10 sounds a whole lot worse to me than 21-10.

*********** Fresno State finally found out the formula for beating Boise on the blue turf: make it snow.

Sick of losing to a team with blue uniforms playing on a blue field, Fresno State brought snow, and with their white uniforms on a white field, they turned the tables on the Broncos, winning in OT

*********** Some people insist on calling it “hazing”  but it’s really sodomy -  the sort of thing one associates with prisons, not with high school sports.

Nevertheless, it happens far too often in our schools, and now four “teens” in Damascus, Maryland face trial for their rape of a teammate.  With a broomstick.

(Sorry for the failure to give a trigger alert.)

About 45 minutes northwest of Washington, DC, Damascus was a rural area when I lived near there, some 50 years ago, but as the city and its suburbs have sprawled, it’s transitioned to an affluent Washington suburb, with a median home price of $380,000.

It has, by all accounts, a very good football program.

Since the current coach took over in 2010, Damascus has gone 107-9.  His “worst” season was in 2011, when he went 9-3.  The Damascus Hornets were undefeated state champions in 2015-16-17. They also had undefeated regular seasons in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2018.

Evidently the players involved were on the JV team, and according to the Washington Post, suspects and victims both have told authorities that this was part of a “known hazing practice.”  According to a police report, when one victim asked attackers to stop, he was told it was a “tradition.”  When one victim asked three attackers to stop, police said in the charging papers, the assailants replied that it was a “tradition.”

“Hazing?”  “Tradition?”

 “Hazing?”  That’s way too mild a term to describe sexual assault.  “Tradition?”  that implies that it’s been going on for some time.

Get ready, school board.  You’re going to have to explain how  this could have happened to kids, entrusted to your care, if they were properly supervised.

(Which is why, I might add, I would never take a team, even kids a knew and trusted, to an overnight team camp.)


https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/indictments-handed-up-in-high-school-locker-room-rape-case-in-damascus-md/2018/11/30/703f3fda-f498-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html?utm_term=.a1c3a665df6a

*********** I’m a big fan of Tom T. Hall ("A Week in a County Jail") , and it irks me no end to hear his “I Like Beer” serving as the background music while beautiful people sip their post-workout Michelob Ultras.

*********** Don’t know much about geography…

Back in June, a guy named Gavin Clarkson lost a primary election to become a congrressman in New Mexico.  A few weeks ago, he lost out on a chance to become New Mexico’s Secretary of State.

And on November 20, while in Washington, DC to marry his fiancee, who lives in the District, he was refused a marriage license by a court clerk who insisted on seeing his “New Mexico passport.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2018/11/30/couple-was-refused-dc-marriage-license-when-clerk-asked-new-mexico-passport/?utm_term=.0b84d709ca88

*********** A local high school girls’ basketball score from this past weekend: 68-8.  They’re both decent-sized schools, Washington Class 4A.  The losing school has at least 1500 kids in the top three grades.

With Title IX and all that, the girls’ basketball coach is paid exactly the same as the boys’ coach.  For what?


*********** Saturday my wife and I took in some of the Washington state championships - held one right after the other in the comfort of the Tacoma Dome.

It meant getting up early. We left our place in Ocean Shores at 6:45 so we could get to Tacoma in plenty of time to catch the first game, which started at 10 AM.

It was the Class 1A championship game, between Colville and Newport, and it was a major reason why we came.

I wanted to meet Bill Carpenter and see him win a state title.  Bill, the son of a friend, is the DC at Colville, and we’d never met.

(Colville, in the Northeast corner of the state, is about as far from our home in Camas, in the southwest corner, as you can get, so it’s not every day I get the chance.)

Colville is always pretty good, but over on the eastern side of the mountains, there’s one roadblock that stands in the way of anybody who has hopes of winning a state title.  It’s Royal High, in Royal City, in the central part of the state. Royal came into this year’s playofs as three-time defending 1A champion.

Last week, in the state semi-finals, Colville had to slay the dragon. But they were up to it, winning  31-28 and ending Royal’s 53-game win streak.

Saturday, they faced Newport, a team from their own league, and to this observer there was no doubt which was the beter team.

Colville’s kids looked stronger physically, and they probably were - they lift every morning at 5:30, before school starts.

They had a nice looking quarterback, a 6-2, 195 senior named John Knight whom Montana has expressed interest in.  He was also the free safety in Colville’s 4-2-5, but as QB he really shone: he completed seven of 12 passes for 226 yards and two TDs, and he carried six times for 26 yards and two TDs.  Colville,  running a bit of Double-Wing - mostly Super Power - from two or three formations, ran 32 times for 206 yards.

Newport was kept almost totally under control by Bill Carpenter’s defense. They passed for only 94 yards and ran for only 82. But then, they had so few first downs that they ran only 43 plays from scrimmage.

They did manage to score once, after Colville had opened up a 20-0 lead and they ran back the kickoff deep into Colville territory and then quickly scored.  But Colville, thanks to a beautiful 29-yard touchdown pass just before halftime, led 27-7 at the half.

Final score: Colville 48, Newport 7.

Colville shut out Newport in the second half, and scored three more times to invoke a running clock - how many times do you see that in a state championship game?

(After all the hubbub of the trophy presentation and the team photo - below -  the Colville team formed a circle and - omigod - seemed to be praying!  Shhhhh.)



***********  Rick Steele, who many years ago played for me and then assisted me, won his second consecutive Washington Class 2A state title Saturday when his Hockinson Hawks (regional accent: in most of the West, “Hawk” sounds like “Hock”) beat the Lynden Lions, 42-37.

For the most part, Hockinson has been a passing team - a very good passing team - the past two years, but on Saturday they were down, 17-7 at the half, and when Lynden scored first in the second half to take a 24-7 lead, Rick took extreme action.  He moved Sawyer Racanelli, one of the state’s top receivers, into the backfield and presto - just like that - Hockinson became a running team.  And a damned good running team at that.

Racanelli had accounted for Hockinson’s only first-half touchdown by throwing  (back to the quarterback,) and he wound up with five receptions for 55 yards.  But in the second half, taking a direct snap and running - mostly off-tackle - he mostly ran.  And he ran for six touchdowns, a new state playoff record.

Afterward, Rick said that the run package wasn’t designed for this particular purpose.  Instead, two weeks earlier, he realized after Hockinson almost blew a 35-7 lead in the quarterfinal game that they had to be better at  using the clock.  And that meant running the ball.

“So we really worked on that heavy formation," he said, " and told the kids, ‘hey, we’ve got to gain three yards a pop. And if we do that, get first downs, we’ll never give that ball up.’ Tonight it came in real handy.  They just couldn’t stop us.”

Sounds like a running coach to me.

A guy after my own heart.

*********** It wasn’t until 1995 that a team from our part of the state - Southwest Washington - won a state title.  The next one didn’t come until 2004.  We were an athletic backwater.

But things have swung.  There’s scarcely a year that we don’t have one state champion, and this year we had two - Hockinson and Union - with another team making it to the semifinals.

This year, the best team in the state - all classes - was probably Union High, from Vancouver.  (It’s on the Vancouver-Camas line, and the Camas kids deride it as “West Camas,” but it’s been a power since it opened.)

Leading Lake Stevens 24-20 at the half, the Union Titans, behind a native Hawaiian QB named Lincoln Victor and a native Samoan named Jojo Siofele, scored 38 straight second half points to win the Class 4A title, 62-20.  Victor was 19 of 24 for 327 yards and five touchdowns; Siofele caught 10 passes for 179 yards and rushed for 113 yards, most of it coming on an 80-yard sprint from scrimmage.


*********** QUIZ ANSWER - A native of Canton, Ohio, Dan Dierdorff played his college ball at Michigan.  His junior season was Bo Schembechler’s first as the Wolverines’ head coach, and as an offensive lineman, he was named to several All-American teams.

In his senior year, Michigan went 9-1, and he was a consensus All-American.  Depending on the formation, he played “strong tackle,” and Schembechler said he was “as good as any tackle in the country.”

He was drafted in the second round - number 43 overall - by the St. Louis Cardinals, and he spent his entire 13 year career with the club.

During much of that time, he was considered the best offensive lineman in the NFL. He was a 6-time Pro Bowl selection. He was named first team All-Pro five times . In 1975 won the Forest Gregg Award, given to the NFL’s Offensive Lineman of the Year. For three straight years - 1976-77-78 - he was named NFC Offensive Lineman of the Year.  For two entire seasons - 1976 and 1977 - he did not allow a single sack.

He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.

After retirement as a player, he embarked on another career as a broadcaster.  For 12 seasons he was on the broadcast team on Monday Night Football (back when it was a very big deal), and then spent 15 years as a game and studio analyst on NFL games.

Dan Dierdorff currently works as a color analyst on radio broadcasts of Michigan  games.

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING DAN DIERDORFF

JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
TOM DAVIS - SAN CARLOS, CALIFORNIA
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
GREG KOENIG - CIMARRON, KANSAS
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
JOE GUTILLA, AUSTIN, TEXAS
PETE PORCELLI - WATERVLIET, NEW YORK
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
DAVE POTTER - CARY, NORTH CAROLINA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
TOM WALLS - WINNIPEG, MANITOBA

*********** QUIZ - He got the nickname “Kayo” from his father, who trained fighters.

This is from a Web site  Kayo's last name has been deleted…

Kayo ran a 9.7 second 100-yard dash in 1946. Two college coaches attended his high school graduation — Bear Bryant and Johnny Vaught. Both were desperate to sign Kayo. His father wanted him to sign with Bryant; his mother, Vaught. Kayo did what his mother said.

In 1948 at Ole Miss, Kayo rushed for 1000 yards. But he and Vaught had a scare the following summer. Kayo’s name came up for the draft. Vaught wasn’t going to hear of his top running back going off to Korea. So the legendary coach let Kayo borrow his car so he could go sign up for the National Guard in his hometown — and stay in the U.S. for the following season. Once at the National Guard recruiting center, the officer in charge of physical fitness tests asked  to do a deep knee bend. He bent down, winced with pain and let out a yelp (he’d injured his knee in practice).

When Kayo returned to Oxford, Vaught asked, “Did you get signed up?”

“No,” Kayo told him, “they said I was unfit for service.”

The following fall, Kayo rushed for 1,312 yards — still a single-season Ole Miss record.

As a rookie running back in the NFL, Kayo led the Chicago Bears in rushing. It’s a little-known fact that he was the first rookie ever asked to play in the Pro Bowl.

Kayo  might very well be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame but for a freak accident on a windy Chicago night. As Kayo was waiting for his car outside a Chicago hotel, a drunken valet ran a car up on the curb and pinned Kayo’s legs between two cars.

George Halas, certain Kayo’s career was over, wrote that he was the finest running back he had ever coached.

(My addition:  Kayo died this past November 17, at the age of 90.)

FRID

here’s no answer to that.

It can’t be about Tech “wanting to do better.”

The Tech people can talk all they like about that, but the reality is that Johnson did as well as anyone could have been expected to do. Since the glory days of Bobby Dodd’s teams in the 1950s, Tech has played just a bit over .500 football.

Paul Johnson leaves as the fourth winningest coach in GT history, behind three legends of the past - Dodd, Bill Alexander, and John Heisman.  Of all the coaches that Tech has had since Coach Dodd retired in 1966 (with a .713 win-loss percentage), PJ's percentage of  .585 is second only to that of George O’Leary, who leveraged his success into the Notre Dame job.  (That’s another story.)

Even Bobby Ross, who won a national championship there, posted an overall win-loss percentage of only .543. Bill Curry, a GT legend as a player, could finish no better than .423.

Georgia Tech, like a number of other schools (Army, Notre Dame, Minnesota, for example) is living in a glorious past that will never return.  Just as Army will never again be the team that it was in World War II and the years immediately afterward, just as Notre Dame will never again get its pick of the best Catholic kids in America,  Georgia Tech will never again be THE football team in the South’s biggest city, as it was in Coach Dodd’s day.

Georgia Tech people are saying that they want more than just a winning team that goes to a bowl game every year - they want  ACC championships, and an occasional spot in the playoff.  Well, guess what?  So do other people in the ACC: the people at Clemson, Miami, Florida State, Virginia Tech (to note only the ones best positioned to compete for those spots).

The big winners in all this are Army and Navy.  They have coaches they are happy with, and there is next to no chance that those coaches will ever leave for greener pastures, because nobody else wants their offense. (Monken would put a winner on the field at GT, but the fans would really hate watching - he throws even less than Johnson.)

Sorry to sound a trifle down, but I think the grand experiment is over.  Now, I look for the guys on the rules committee to finish the job.  I keep hearing the concussion guys talking about reducing repetitive blows to linemen’s heads by eliminating the three-point stance.  That ought  to about do it.

*********** "I was saddened when Coach Johnson informed me that he was going to step down as our head coach," Georgia Tech athletic director Todd Stansbury said.

Yeah, sad.  But happy as hell to get the deep-pocket alumni off my ass.  Now I can go out and hire a guy who’ll run an exciting, wide-open offense the same as everybody else in the ACC and Big 12.  At least then when we finish a hair over  (or under) .500 they can’t blame it on the offense.

*********** It’s almost two years old, but Jeff Monken’s explanation of his plan for turning Army from a 3-9 team into a (now) 9-2 team is still good reading…

https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/12/13/13924292/army-vs-navy-football-game-2016-streak-jeff-monken


*********** Back in 2001, when my friend Greg Koenig was coaching at Las Animas, Colorado, it was a big deal - a VERY big deal - when his kids upset Limon.  Limon is in eastern Colorado, on the plains about midway between Denver and the Kansas line.  Limon has only 135 kids in its school,  below the 150-student cutoff to play 11-man football, but it has been given special dispensation to play 11-man.  It has 32 kids on the football team - roughly half the boys in the school.  It just won another state title - its 18th.  Limon holds state records with 18  titles, six consecutive titles, 50 consecutive wins and 13 unbeaten seasons.

Greg sent me a great article about this little town and its remarkable football tradition:

http://stoutroadsportspage.com/learning-from-limon/?fbclid=IwAR3F1EOGcrhdRy7ZmsLpldhRIonAjl6uBgImZpQay2CdHlrlnUUcQMGpkuY


************* I was doing a little research and got to reading more about Frank Girardi. For 36 years - from 1972 through 2007 - he was head coach at D-III Lycoming College, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

He retired with a record of 257-97-5.  HIs teams made 11 D-III playoiff appearances, and made it to the final game twice.

Very impressive.  But that’s not why I’m writing.  There’s a great story about him that every football coach will understand and relate to.

On the morning of his first game as head coach at Lycoming, his house caught on fire.

As his wife and kids had to evacuate the house, still in their pajamas, he had to leave.  He had a team waiting for him.  They had a game to play.

He would later recall that Lycoming lost that first game, to Albright, 39-0.  "That was the start of my college coaching career,” he said.  “Our house burned down and we were beaten 39-0. I think the 39-0 hurt me more."


*********** Watching Dan Mullen break up an interview to go  put a stop to the clowns on his team trying to plant a Florida flag in the Florida State logo got me to thinking about the need for us to express ourselves in terms that others could understand.

Maybe, to put our feelings about the national anthem protests in proper perspective, we should have just told the NFL kneelers, “Guys, to you  it may be protesting, but to us it's  like dancing on our logo.”


*********** The Headline: ACC suspends NC State, North Carolina players after huge brawl

The Story:  When NC State scored against North Carolina to win in OT,  a Carolina player started lashing out in apparent frustration. And when an NC State player took offense, it was game on.  But truthfully, with the exception of a handful of players - a couple of UNC hotheads who acted like jackasses, and a couple of NC State guys who didn’t take to their antics - it didn’t look to me at all like a “huge brawl.”  Actually, considering the heat of the moment, what impressed me was the number of guys on both teams who stood around and did NOT join in the “huge brawl.”

Typical media sensationalism. (“Film at eleven.”)

*********** I wrote to a coach I know - a very good coach - who had a rough season, and said I tell guys who've known nothing but success that while I wish them no ill, I do sort of wish they could have one tough season so their education as a coach will be complete!

*********** An Iowa “football mom” whose son had graduated decided she wanted to do more than just sit in the stands as watch - so she offered to keep stats…

Being down on the sidelines, she writes, is “indescribable… I see and hear everything. I see how much the coaches are invested in these boys and in this program. We have an absolute great bunch of coaches who know their football. I hear them strategize. I hear them say “atta boy.” It gives me great pride to be a part of this program.”

http://www.nwestiowa.com/independent/football-mom-on-what-it-means-to-be-a-falcon/article_bb487298-ec51-11e8-8a73-57134f33dec9.html

***********  It’s a source of considerable resentment among Army football people that in the recruiting wars, competing coaches have subtly - and sometimes not so subtly - suggested that if a young high school football player were to choose to go to West Point, it would be just a matter of time before his life was in danger, in some godforsaken place on the other side of the globe.

People may not be aware of how West Point cadets wind up in the branch of the Army that they do, but it’s the result of a competitive process.  Certain branches are more highly prized than others, and acceptance into them is determined by class rank.  You might not think so, but the most desired branches of the service are “combat arms” - infantry, armor and artillery - and the number one branch in terms of desirability is the “Queen of Battle” - the infantry.  The infantry means “boots on the ground,” and no decoration in the Army is more respected that the Combat Infantryman Badge - look for it atop all the other decorations on the left breast of a soldier. It can only be awarded to one serving in infantry, as a Ranger or in Special Forces.


It means that the wearer of the badge has “seen the elephant” - he has been “personally present and under fire” during “active ground combat.”

Navy football recruiters wouldn’t get far with the “we’re safer than the Army” approach because  a number of its players choose infantry duty after graduation, too. Of the 34 seniors on this year’s team, 16 will serve in the Marine Corps.  One of them will train to become a Marine pilot, but the others have selected Marine Corps Ground.

At least four of the future Marines are starters - quarterback Zach Abey, starting fullback Anthony Gargiulo and starting inside linebackers Hudson Sullivan and Taylor Heflin.

How they came to choose the Marines is an interesting story, in the Annapolis Capital Gazette…

the key factor in encouraging Navy football players to pursue a Marine Corps career is exposure. To that end, Green and Walsh have annually taken rising senior football players with an interest to Marine Corps Base Quantico for a week-long training exercise.

Abey said a large contingent of Navy football players were divided into squads and actually played some war games. It was meant to give the prospective Marines an understanding of The Basic School, the six-month training that is conducted at Quantico.

“We spend some time in the field, shoot the rifles and do the whole deal of staying overnight in the woods. We had different squads and game-planned attacks and actually shot blank rounds at each other,” Abey said. “It was really cool, a really fun training. We had all the Marine Corps equipment and got a taste of what will be doing during TBS.”

That introductory training session is known as Camp Leatherneck and is purposefully designed to be difficult. Gargiulo said it rained almost nonstop during the week the football players participated and he joked about cooking food in a bag and eating dried crackers.

“Actually, being out in the woods wasn’t the bad part. It was all the long-distance running and not having a nice Italian meal ready for you after a long day in the field,” Gargiulo said with a chuckle.

Abey had a feeling he wanted to serve in the Marine Corps upon arrival at the Naval Academy and that was only reinforced by talking to numerous former teammates that had already taken that route.

“It’s something I wanted to do coming in here. Just seeing so many members of The Brotherhood choose Marine Corps really influenced me,” Abey said. “Seeing the summer trainings at Quantico, I thought it was really equivalent to Navy football.”

Sullivan initially thought about joining the aviation community, but gradually changed his mind after hearing about the Marine Corps from inside linebacker predecessors such as Cody Petersen and Winn Howard. The northern Virginia native, who did not grow up too far from Quantico, also learned a lot from the summer training session.

“When we were down there they told us about the close resemblance between the Marine Corps and football and it makes a lot of sense,” Sullivan said. “Everything we learned on the football field can be implemented into the Marine Corps.”

https://www.capitalgazette.com/sports/navy_sports/ac-cs-navy-football-marines-20181122-story.html

As the Pac-12 has slipped away from college football’s mainstream, desperately attempting to keep up with the coaching contracts and conference television cash, its flagship school is a mess… The athletic director’s first major decision has backfired spectacularly, as Swann bid against himself this winter to keep Helton and extended him through 2023, showing no feel for the market nor particular care for USC’s budget. Had Swann bothered to do a few simple Google searches, he could have found out that no other Power 5 job was sniffing at Helton.

TUESD

The 49ers, with a 4-4 record, were practicing at Georgetown University for their game against the two-time defending champion Baltimore Colts on Nov. 27, 1960, when Hickey called a meeting.

"I asked my players if any of them thought we could beat Baltimore with our regular offense, and not one hand went up," Hickey told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2001.

Hoping to cope with a Colts rush led by linemen Art Donovan, Gino Marchetti and Big Daddy Lipscomb, Hickey scrapped the T formation. He had his quarterback stand about 5 yards behind the line instead of taking the snap while under center, and he spread his backs to the sides. That alignment, drawing on the double wing and short punt formations previously used in college football, gave the offense an extra second or two to develop a play. The quarterback could run, hand off to a crisscrossing back or throw.

The 49ers upset the Colts, 30-22.

In the locker room, Hickey told reporters that his offense was simply "spread right and spread left."

But moments later, as he related it to The Chronicle in 2001, he came up with something more sprightly. "Well, I'm an old country boy, and I used to go hunting with a shotgun," he said. "How about we call it the shotgun?"

FRID

 Jeff Riley’s thought-provoking new book, Big Time: The People, The Places, & The Game of Oregon 8-Man Football, provides an intimate journey into the culture of a gritty, impassioned brand of high school football that is played in the small towns of Oregon that are painted into the backdrop of some of the most spectacular landscapes in America: snow-tipped peaks, fog-shrouded forests, and rocky canyons so deep, they reach into your very soul.

The high-scoring, wide-open affairs are played by 16-year-old kids who toss hay bales by day and footballs by night. They are coached by former rodeo clowns named Stub, weather-beaten cattle ranchers, and former standouts crippled by logging accidents — men who doff their caps as the autumn sun drops behind 9,000-foot peaks, look down their line of scrappy players with hands on hearts, and have a moment. “The sun sets behind those mountains on game night, and I mean, wow,” says Joseph coach Toby Koehn, whose field is dwarfed by the 9,839-foot majesty of Sacajawea Peak. “I don’t know where else anybody would want to be in the world at that moment.”

Their fans are mostly a smattering of parents, cousins, and girlfriends. They line the fields in 4×4 pickup trucks and swing their feet below lowered tailgates. They are the working class of Oregon and their sons are the working class of Oregon high school football.

Big Time takes you through the 2017 season: the triumphs of the nation’s winningest 8-man football coach, the grit of the running back who rushes for 300 yards in the state championship game with a broken bone in his foot, the redemption of the quarterback returning from a stint in a youth correctional facility, and the soul of a game that connects them all.

“I’ve heard the comments from the 11-man people, things like ‘Oh, do you guys play with a smaller ball?’ As if our game is less than 11-man,” says Jack Henderson, whose teams have won more Oregon 8-man state championships than any school in the sport’s 47-year history. “Eight-man is more of a game, if you ask me. Besides, it’s like what I tell my kids: The big time is wherever you’re at.”

TUESD

Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof:

So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years, but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb. XI, 16), and therein quieted their spirits.

When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love.

The next day they went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the Key as spectators could not refrain from tears. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away, that were thus loath to depart, their Reverend Pastor, falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with the most fervent prayers unto the Lord and His blessing; and then with mutual embraces and many tears they took their leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them.

Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succour; and for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search unknown coasts.

Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew.

If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of the world.

This editorial has appeared annually since 1961.

*********** Good morning Coach -

Hope that you and yours have a great Thanksgiving (one of the things that I am thankful for is your "News")........

All the best!!

Joe Bremer
West Seneca, New York




*********** For several years until his death, I would talk long-distance with my head coach, Ed Lawless who lived outside Philadelphia.

Whenever I could, I would get Ed talking about the post-war years when he played single-wing blocking back at Penn under the great George Munger.  Penn (not to be confused with Penn State) was very, very good back then. In Ed's senior year, 1947, only a 7-7 tie with Army (also very, very good back then) kept the Quakers from going unbeaten and untied.

In one of our conversations, he happened to mention a Penn teammate named Bob Mostertz.  Bob Mostertz, Ed said, was missing all the fingers on his left hand - he’d lost them in some industrial accident when he was a kid. ("Industrial accident?" I thought. ”Wait - when he was a kid?"  Those were, indeed different times.)

When I asked what position he played,  Ed said, "Center."

Right, I thought.  In the single wing.

Single wing centers in George Munger’s system (the same one Ed would later have us run in high school)  had to make four or five different types of snaps, both right formation and left,  depending on whether it was going to the tailback or the fullback,  and what the back’s initial step was going to be. Ed said he never saw Bob Mostertz make a bad snap, including deep snaps on punts.

Rather than make a big story about it, as ESPN would do today, there was very little mention of Bob Mostertz’ “handicap.”

Note the old Penn publicity picture - and where the photo was cropped.



*********** Pretty bad when I have to depend on a guy from Australia to cover the NFL for me, but my son, Ed, writes…

I know you’re not a big NFL guy but here are three quick thoughts:
 
1 Frank Reich is doing a damned good job of coaching in Indianapolis
2 Mark Helfrich has the Bears’ offense doing some good things
3 The NFL continues to show little care for its players. Bears game flexed to Sunday night and then they have to play the early Thanksgiving game on Thursday

My response:
1. I like the guy.
2. I like the guy.
3. "At the NFL, player safety is always uppermost in our thinking."
 

*********** That damned The Ohio State. They barely escape against Maryland, and they fall just ONE PLACE in the rankings.

But let West Virginia get beaten in the final moments by a much better team than Maryland (Oklahoma State) and the Mountaineers drop FOUR PLACES.

*********** Speaking of the Mountaineers, it’s a good thing that our sports are on the up-and-up, just like our elections,  so that, despite all that’s at stake, we can depend on a fair outcome, free of any taint.

Otherwise, when you realize that a West Virginia win over Oklahoma  this Saturday would mean that both the Sooners and the Mountaineers would have two lossses, knocking both of  them - and the Big 12 - out of contention for a playoff spot (and all the money that means) you’d suspect that there might be an awful lot of people with an awful lot at stake who’d um, “prefer” an Oklahoma win.  Just sayin.’

Thank the Lord for honest people.

*********** Two years ago, Mike MacIntyre was Coach of the Year.  His Colorado Buffaloes were 10-4 and ranked 15th in the country after losing to Washington in the Pac-12 title game.

On Sunday, after the Buffs were blown out by Utah, their sixth straight loss, Mike MacIntyre was fired. I feel bad because I like the guy.

Too bad, Les Miles.   I think this would have been a better job for you  than Kansas, but then, Colorado isn’t that great a job either.  In my opinion, I think they’d have been much better off if they’d stayed in the Big 12.  Nebraska, too.  Also Missouri. 

*********** Army’s entire upper deck was empty because they couldn’t get the snow cleared by game time.

*********** Seeing that the score was Maryland 14, Ohio State 3 was enough for me  to move it onto the big screen.  What a great move! Actually, it was worth watching just to witness the  anguish, the suffering, of poor Urban Meyer.  When the Buckeyes  were stuffed on a 4th and one, he threw his head set.  When there was a question about a Maryland touchdown, he was on the field, on the 12 yard line.  You try that and see what happens.  What a schmuck.



*********** Is there no escaping it?  In both the Army-Colgate and the Yale-Harvard games, the bumper music - as they went to commercials - was rap.

*********** I saw a Citadel-Alabama halftime score that I swear read 10-10, but I didn’t bother to check it out. What was the point?

*********** When was the last time you saw a home run in baseball disallowed?  How about a three-point shot in basketball?

Have trouble remembering?

Well, I bet you don’t have to think hard to remember  the last time you saw a touchdown called back because of offensive holding. It might have been five minutes ago.

It’s a plague on our game, and there are two reasons for it: first of all, the rules change several years ago that allowed the use of hands to block,  and the reduction of the penalty for holding from 15 to 10 yards. 

Actually, there’s a third reason: lazy coaching.

Undeterred by a mere 10-yard penalty in exchange for the right to hold, and  the tremendous advantage that goes with it, coaches shamelessly teach their players to hold.  At the very least, they don’t discourage it, much less coach against it.

Bring back the 15-yard holding call.  And enforce it.  Make the coaches earn their millions.

*********** Colgate did a nice job against Army’s offense.  They had a 6-2, 205 pound safety named Alec Wisniewski who is a real hitter, and interestingly enough, he was a teammate, at Maine-Endwell High, in Endwell, New York, of Army’s 5-9, 225 pound fullback, Darnell Woolfolk.    On Saturday, Wisniewski was all over the field making tackles, and Woolfok scored three touchdowns in Army’s 28-14 win.

With two players like those two, it’s no wonder that Maine-Endwell won three state championships while they were there.



*********** Well, duh.  Small print on an ad: “Drinking plenty of fluids may reduce your chance of dehydration.”

*********** Did Notre Dame really have to go along with the clown show and wear those goony-ass pin stripe pants?

*********** It was the 50th anniversary of the famed “Harvard Defeats Yale, 29-29” game, but this time Harvard left no doubt.

In a game played in Fenway Park, Harvard outscored Yale 17-3 in the fourth quarter and won going away, 45-27.

*********** Oh, dear.  A Harvard runner had a touchdown called back because of an “inappropriate hand gesture.”  He couldn’t wait until he scored to seem to give the nearest Yale defender the finger.  Oh, no.  He had to do it before he scored and since the penalty for that  is enforced from the spot of the foul, Einstein lost his touchdown.

*********** Few people know more about the passing game than Duke’s David Cutcliffe, who ever since their days together at Tennessee was Peyton Manning’s personal QB coach, and was Eli’s head coach at Ole Miss.

But sometimes, even a man as learned in the passing game as Coach Cut can find a use  for a double tight, full house formation.

In this case, it was so the backs could give the  QB an extra push on his sneak. (He/they made the yardage.)



*********** I’m glad that Kansas finally decided to hire Les Miles. I was getting a bit weary reading that Kansas, a school that desperately needed a coach, was “moving toward hiring” a guy who’s well qualified and looking for work.

*********** Whoever coaches the Maryland secondary either isn’t a very good coach or  doesn’t have much to work with.  Nothing against Ohio State QB Dwayne Haskins, but it appeared that any time he needed a long completion all he had to do was throw the ball upfield.

*********** There it was again - another insane decision by a coach to go for a two-point conversion, rather than go on in  overtime.  Maryland interim head coach Matt Canada coached his ass off and watched his kids play their asses off, but when it came down to crunch time, he as good as admitted that he didn’t have faith in his players to win in overtime.

“I wasn’t trying to be aggressive,” he said afterwards.  “I was just trying to win.”

Um, coach - how can you preach to your kids about fighting to the end, never giving in, blah, blah, blah -  then pretty much admit that you don't think they have enough fight left in them to win?

Do you suppose there’s a coaches’ union that we don't know about  that’s insisting its members be paid time-and-a-half or they won't work overtime?

No matter.  Stupid decision.  But I do think that Canada has earned the right to coach that team.

*********** Lane Kiffin has shown that he can put a good team on the field.  But he won’t be able to skip out on Florida Atlantic this year, not when they’re not even bowl elgible yet.

He’d be much easier to sell to fans if he were just a little bit humble.  You don’t suppose this year’s record  is teaching him that, do you?  Naaa.

*********** Lee Corso said that Bill Snyder has earned the right to stay at Kansas State as long as he wants to.

Agreed. But the real question all along has been: has he earned the right to designate his successor?

*********** Couldn’t listen to FSU-BC because Beth was doing the play-by-play.

*********** Chip Kelly has shown that he’s not all flash and dash.  He can line up and run at you, too, and that’s what he did as UCLA’s Joshua Kelley (with the extra “e”) gained 289 yards on 40 carries and the Bruins beat USC.   Said Kelly (without the extra “e”) afterwards, “I wish he’d carried it 100 times.”

*********** I still think that on any hook slide they should deduct 5 yards from the starting point of the slide.

*********** Purdue blew one in OT to Wisconsin, making it 13 straight losses to the Badgers.

*********** A Michigan kid got hurt on a kickoff and had to be carted off.  It was a questionable, but not clearly illegal,  hit - the injured player was leading interference and an Indiana defender took him on aggressively.

Well.  Cue the analyst, Joel Klatt, to get up on his soap box and pontificate.  The entire time the medics administered to the injured player.  To save you having to listen to everything he said: “They ought to just outlaw the kickoff.”

*********** I like Vandy and I like Ole Miss, but I have to go with Vandy because of grandkids who went there (and one who's still there). I was happy when Vandy won in OT, but I have to admit I don’t understand at all why an Ole Miss touchdown catch was disallowed.  Vandy and Ole Miss are now both 5-6, with Vandy needing to beat Tennessee next week and Ole Miss needing to beat Mississippi State.The latter seems like a tall order, but it is the Egg Bowl.

*********** UCF belongs in the Top 10.   That’s as far as I’ll go.

*********** After a whole day of waiting, Wazzu came on. 

Poor Arizona.  It was 55-14 at halftime.  WSU had 407 yards of total offense.

What do you say when they interview you at halftime and you’re winning like that?

If you’re Mike Leach?  “So far, so good.”

*********** If you want to recruit receivers… tell them you’ll throw them the ball.  And then do it.  In every game so far, Washington State has had at least nine guys catch at least one pass.

*********** Last week, before the Yale-Princeton game, several hundred former Yale football players and coaches and their families gathered outside the Yale Bowl in a large indoor track facility known as the Coxe Cage to pay tribute to the greatest football coach in Yale history, the late Carmen Cozza, who passed away this past January.

I didn’t have the privilege of playing for Coach Cozza, but my friend Lou Orlando  did.  He played center for Coach Cozza, and I often tell him that if I had played for him, my love for the man would have been more than enough to make me still love Yale, despite the disgust I feel at its left-wing turn.

I met Coach Cozza just twice.  The first time was back in the days when alumni could help recruit, and after working fairly closely with Seb LaSpina, the Yale assistant coach who worked the Maryland area,  I accompanied a recruit and his dad on their official visit to New Haven.  We had lunch with Coach Cozza, and I was very impressed - awed, almost - by his total professionalism.  This, I sensed, was exactly the sort of coach I would have loved to play for.

(The recruit didn’t go to Yale.  He wound up going to Harvard.  Nonetheless, there came the time, a few years later, when I, then coaching a minor league team, applied for a head coaching job at a small college, and I asked Coach Cozza if he could write me a letter of recommendation.  He not only could, he did - and what a letter he wrote.  I still have a copy.  I didn’t get the job, but I got an interview, and only, I’m sure, because of Coach Cozza.)

Lou Orlando was kind enough to send me this link to the video of the tribute to Coach Cozza.

http://www.yalebulldogs.com/sports/m-footbl/2018-19/videos/20181113-b8wgte8g

You may not want to take the time to go through the entire video - it goes on for an hour and a half, with numerous former players coming forward to pay tribute to their coach.

One player’s tribute - the one that had the greatest impact on me - comes at :30 on the video, and it’s worth watching.  It was the one delivered by perhaps the greatest player he coached, Calvin Hill, who went on from Yale to a great NFL career with the Cowboys, and whose son, Grant, went on to even greater fame than his father as a basketball player.  Calvin Hill tells of his first meeting with Coach Cozza.  The coach  handed him a book entitled, “The Yale Football Story,” and inscribed it, saying, “I hope you will come here and help us write a new chapter.”

Calvin Hill  noted that no one on any Ivy team is on an athletic scholarship - that he could have dropped out of football and still received the same amount of financial aid -  which meant that everyone was playing because they loved the game of football.

And he reflected on why, when Yale and the rest of the Ivies opted to move down to Division I-AA (now euphemistically called “FCS”), most of the players felt that Coach Cozza, despite opportunities to go to bigger programs, wouldn’t leave Yale: “He enjoyed coaching a program that operated in a manner that was consistent with the academic purpose of the university.”

He lauded Coach Cozza for his values: integrity, fair play, and respect for teammates, rules and opponents.

Calvin Hill was followed by Jack Ford, well-known TV personality and former Yale monster back, who not surprisingly delivers a very professional tribute to Coach Cozza.  He told of having a knee replacement, at age 60 - and learning from one of his nurses that “someone who says he was your coach at Yale” had called to see how he was doing.

And at 43:14 Jack Ford introduced a photo album spanning Coach Cozza’s years before, during and after Yale.  It ends with the playing of the alma mater, “Bright College Years,” which, I’m not ashamed to admit, always brings tears to my eyes.

At 55:30, Brian Dowling talked about coming to Yale as a highly-recruited kid from Cleveland’s St. Ignatius High.  He mentioned that early in his sophomore season, his dad died.  And who showed up at the funeral, in Cleveland, in the middle of football season, but coach Cozza.  (For what it’s worth, Brian Dowling was the “B.D” who played quarterback in  fellow Yalie Gary Trudeau’s “Doonesbury.”)

Following Dowling at 1:04.40 was Steve Skrovan, who went on to become a standup comedian, then a comedy writer best known as a co-writer for “Everybody Loves Raymond.”  He was just a bit crude, but he was funny nonetheless.  And, he asked, “how lucky are we,” at a time when there are few coaches in any sport who aren’t touched with some kind of scandal, “to have played for a man like Carm Cozza?”

At 1:10.10 Gary Fencik came on.  He was defensive captain of the Chicago Bears’ 1985 Super Bowl team, and he was as hard a hitter as there was on a team notorious for its hard hitting. In contrast to so many of the semi-literate mumblers on today’s NFL rosters,  it made me proud to see how well-spoken he was.

*********** Coach, Needless to say Purdue fans are quite nervous about Jeff Brohm. Here's some food for thought. If my numbers are correct, Lou-a-vul (the proper pronunciation of the largest city in Kentucky) owes Bobby Petrino $14.3M for a buyout. Surely that will be negotiated downwards, but Petrino will be paid a LOT of money to "just go away." Brohm's buyout is currently at $4.4M and will go down to $3.3M after December 5, 2018. Remember also that Louisville told its Number One booster John "Papa John" Schnatter to go away as well. Then UofL has to negotiate a contract with Brohm to coach the team.  They are also dealing with the fallout from Rick Patino.  Louisville was built with tobacco money. Now you can't smoke on campus. I truly wonder where all of this money will come from.  And, by the way, Jeff Brohm likes it here. A lot. Purdue is a perfect fit for him. That all said, he's probably gone, unless he can talk his younger brother Brian to take the team.

I met Bill Bergey at the old Downtown Cincinnati Shillito's Department Store. He was signing books. Bill was very friendly to a skinny high school kid who did not buy a book from him. When Paul Brown traded Bergey to the Iggles and he made All-Pro, my dad said, "Bergey was All -Pro here, but now he plays for an East Coast team." I saw him absolutely destroy the rookie Terry Bradshaw, knocking him out of the game.  Great player, maybe the best linebacker to ever play for the Bengals.

Jim Franklin
Flora, Indiana


*********** QUIZ ANSWER - Bill Bergey grew up in far Western New York,  in the small town of South Dayton (2010 population: 620).  He had to go across the state to persuade a college coach from a school halfway across the country to give him a chance.  By the time he was 33, he was the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL.

A football and basketball star at little Pine Valley Central High School, he seemed to be on his way to earning all-star honors as a fullback and linebacker when he took ill and missed most of his senior season.

Going to New York to a coaches’ convention, he managed to persuade a college coach who’d never seen him play to give him a scholarship.

The coach was Bennie Ellender and the college was Arkansas State.  As a freshman he played fullback and nose guard, but  at the start of his sophomore year he was switched to middle linebacker.  For the next three seasons, he led the team in tackling, and in 1968 he was named first team AP All-American (college division).  And he was named by vote of fans the greatest player in Arkansas State history.

He was drafted in the second round by the Cincinnati Bengals, up to then the highest pick ever to come out of Arkansas State. He quickly earned the starting spot at middle linebacker and wound up being named Sporting News Defensive Rookie of the Year.

He soon became recognized as one of the best middle linebackers in the NFL, and with the announcement of the startup of the World Football League, he was offered money by the Florida Blazers to sign a “future” contract with them,  meaning that he would play for them as soon as he had played out  his contract - plus the so-called “option year” - with the Bengals.

Cincinnati owner-coach Paul Brown,  not one to put up with that sort of business, traded him to the Eagles for two first-round draft choices and a second-round pick.

When the Florida Blazers - and then the WFL itself - folded, he kept their money, and remained with the Eagles for the rest of his career.

In all, he played 12 seasons in the NFL - five with the Bengals and seven with the Eagles.

For five straight seasons in Philadelphia, from 1974 through 1978, he was either first- or second-team All-Pro.

He was named to the Pro Bowl five times and he was three times named the Eagles’ Most Valuable Player by his  teammates. 

When he signed a four-year contract for a (total) of $1 million, he became the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL.

Bill Bergey was a major factor in the Eagles’ making the playoffs in 1978, 1979 and 1980, and he retired following the 1980 season and the Eagles’ Super Bowl loss to the Raiders.  At the time, his 27 career interceptions were the most of any active linebacker. And he held the team single-season team record of 233 tackles.

FRID

New Year’s Six bowls

Dec. 29 | Cotton | Arlington, Texas
Alabama (CFP No. 1) vs. Michigan (CFP No. 4)
Dec. 29 | Orange | Miami
Clemson (CFP No. 2) vs. Notre Dame (CFP No. 3)
Dec. 29 | Peach | Atlanta
West Virginia  (at-large) vs. Penn State (at-large)
Jan. 1 | Fiesta | Glendale, Ariz.
LSU (at-large) vs. UCF (at-large)
Jan. 1 | Rose | Pasadena, Calif.
Ohio State (Big Ten) vs. Washington State (Pac-12)
Jan. 1 | Sugar | New Orleans
Oklahoma (Big 12) vs. Georgia (SEC)

Remaining bowls

Dec. 15 | New Mexico | Albuquerque
Boise State (MWC) vs. North Texas (C-USA)
Dec. 15 | Cure | Orlando
Tulane (American) vs. Arkansas State (Sun Belt)
Dec. 15 | Las Vegas | Las Vegas
Utah State (MWC) vs. Arizona State  (Pac-12 No. 6)
Dec. 15 | Camellia | Montgomery, Ala.
Appalachian State (Sun Belt) vs. Northern Illinois (MAC)
Dec. 15 | New Orleans | New Orleans
Troy (Sun Belt) vs. UAB (C-USA)
Dec. 18 | Boca Raton | Boca Raton
Memphis (American) vs. Florida International (C-USA/MAC)
Dec. 19 | Frisco | Frisco, Texas
SMU (American) vs. Ohio (MAC/at-large)
Dec. 20 | Gasparilla | Tampa
South Florida (American) vs. Florida Atlantic (ACC/C-USA)
Dec. 21 | Bahamas | Nassau
Toledo (MAC) vs. Marshall (C-USA)
Dec. 21 | Idaho Potato | Boise
Fresno State (MWC) vs. Eastern Michigan (MAC)
Dec. 22 | Birmingham | Birmingham, Ala.
Cincinnati (American) vs. Tennessee (SEC No. 9)
Dec. 22 | Armed Forces | Fort Worth, Texas
Cal* (Big 12 No. 7) vs. Houston (American)
Dec. 22 | Dollar General | Mobile, Ala.
Buffalo (MAC) vs. Georgia Southern (Sun Belt)
Dec. 22 | Hawaii | Honolulu
Louisiana Tech (C-USA) vs. Hawaii (MWC)
Dec. 26 | First Responder | Dallas
BYU* (B1G Nos. 8-9) vs. Middle Tennessee (ACC/C-USA)
Dec. 26 | Quick Lane | Detroit
Western Michigan* (B1G Nos. 8-9) vs. Miami (ACC No. 9)
Dec. 26 | Cheez-It | Phoenix
Oklahoma State (Big 12 No. 6) vs. Stanford (Pac-12 No. 7)
Dec. 27 | Independence | Shreveport, La.
Georgia Tech (ACC No. 8) vs. Army* (SEC No. 10)
Dec. 27 | Pinstripe | New York
Virginia (ACC Nos. 4-6) vs. Purdue (B1G Nos. 5-7)
Dec. 27 | Texas | Houston
Texas A&M (SEC Nos. 3-8) vs. Texas Tech (Big 12 No. 4)
Dec. 28 | Music City | Nashville
Mississippi State (SEC Nos. 3-8) vs. Boston College (ACC/B1G Nos. 5-7)
Dec. 28 | Camping World | Orlando
Syracuse (ACC No. 2) vs. Iowa State (Big 12 No. 3)
Dec. 28 | Arizona | Tucson
San Diego State (MWC) vs. Louisiana Monroe (Sun Belt)
Dec. 28 | Alamo | San Antonio
Texas (Big 12 No. 2) vs. Washington (Pac-12 No. 2)
Dec. 29 | Belk | Charlotte
Auburn (SEC Nos. 3-8) vs. N.C. State (ACC Nos. 4-6)
Dec. 31 | Military | Annapolis, Md.
Duke (ACC No. 7) vs. Temple (American)
Dec. 31 | Sun | El Paso, Texas
Pittsburgh (ACC Nos. 4-6) vs. USC (Pac-12 No. 5)
Dec. 31 | Redbox | Santa Clara, Calif.
Oregon (Pac-12 No. 4) vs. Maryland (B1G Nos. 5-7)
Dec. 31 | Liberty | Memphis
Missouri (SEC Nos. 3-8) vs. Baylor (Big 12 No. 5)
Dec. 31 | Holiday | San Diego
Utah (Pac-12 No. 3) vs. Iowa (B1G Nos. 3-4)
Dec. 31 | Gator | Jacksonville
South Carolina (SEC Nos. 3-8) vs. Wisconsin (ACC/B1G Nos. 5-7)
Jan. 1 | Outback | Tampa
Michigan State (B1G Nos. 3-4) vs. Kentucky (SEC Nos. 3-8)
Jan. 1 | Citrus | Orlando
Florida (SEC No. 2) vs. Northwestern (B1G No. 2)

Two quick takeaways…

1. Unlike other years (2015 and 2016) when they needed teams, and they had to resort to comparing graduation rates in order to bestow bowl-eligibility on teams with fewer than the required six wins, this year it appears that there will be more eligible teams than there are bowl slots.

2. If I’m Jeff Monken of Army or Paul Johnson of Georgia Tech, I’ll be damned if I want to have to face my own offense, and I’d make sure my AD knew that.  However, If the Independence Bowl really does go ahead and match Army and Georgia Tech,  two teams that between them might not attempt a dozen passes, that sucker will be over in two-and-a-half hours. You’ll be able to fly in that day, watch the game, and catch the last flight out of Shreveport that night .

*********** Is that MAC unpredictable, or what?  Buffalo brought a 9-1 record into Wednesday night’s game at Ohio (6-4), and was never in the game, going back home on the sore end of a 52-17 ass kicking. 

*********** I’m no Urban Meyer fan, as you may have discerned from reading some of my stuff, but the latest charge of racism against him - actually, against disgraced former Meyer assistant Zack Smith - sure sounds as if it’s baseless, leading to a reasonable suspicion that some of the other stuff written about Smith, Meyer and Ohio State might also be trumped up.  Next:  Julie Swetnick claims she was gang raped in the Ohio State locker room.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2805899-urban-meyer-says-ohio-state-considering-legal-action-over-trevon-grimes-report

*********** Hi Coach - Quick question. High school and/or NCAA rules.  If you slip an extra tackle in at TE (like single wing teams often do) can he remain uncovered as long as he doesn’t go downfield on a pass? Does he have to report eligible?

(Two questions, actually):

Yes to Question Number One. The rules only specify that five players on the line must have ineligible numbers. It doesn’t say where on the line they have to line up. But of the players on the line, only the ones on the two ends are eligible - and then only if they wear eligible numbers.

No to Question Number Two. There is no need for any lineman to “report” as eligible or ineligible because without an eligible number no player can ever be eligible, reporting or not. Similarly a back who wears an ineligible number can play in the backfield - he can fake, block, carry the ball - but he can never be eligible for a forward pass. (I can’t believe that the pros have never junked that stupid, anachronistic tackle-eligible crap that dates back to before 1952 when a quarterback - Otto Graham, specifically - could wear number 60.)

*********** You don’t suppose, do you, that the pros might have suddenly discovered what we practicioners of a “Pop Warner Offense” have long known - that tight splits have their uses?  Oh - and it appears that somebody told them that getting the linemen back off the ball improves their chances of forming a wedge.



Sunday night. Eagles vs. Cowboys. Fourth and short. Yes, they wedged - and got the needed yardage.

Yes, yes, I know - the Eagles’ formation is illegal. They don’t have seven men on the line.    Here, as deep as #61 is (he’s deeper than the QB, which puts him clearly in the backfield),  there’s no way the Eagles can have seven men on the line, as required by the rules.  (There are 10 men on the screen, so even if the split end, who’s out of the picture, is on the line, that still only makes six.)

How's this for  officiating inconsistency: while  the slightest twitch by an offensive lineman is sure to get his team a false start penalty,  the rule stating quite clearly  that the offense must have seven men on the line of scrimmage is routinely ignored. 



Monday night.  49ers vs. Giants.  Fourth and short. Yes, they wedged - and got the needed yardage.

Here’s why the wedge would always work in the NFL:  Yes, you can persuade your youth, or middle school, or high school defensive linemen to take one for the team - try to defeat the wedge by submarining.  But I defy anybody to try to get NFL players to risk their careers by diving into a pile of legs.

*********** I realize that TV is turning college basketball into a pain the ass right now, intruding on what should be the most exciting time of college football with its meaningless scores and meaningless games at the very beginning of a meaningless regular season.

But before it’s all over and the basketball season and the Final Four have come and gone, and this year’s one-and-done phenoms are off to NBA anonymity…

You have got to see this kid Zion Williamson, from Duke.

Actually, he’s not really from Duke.  They’re just borrowing him for the season.

He’s actually from Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he went to a small private high school, and this time next year he’ll be playing for whoever wins the NBA draft lottery - there’s that little doubt about his being the number one draft choice.

He is that good.  And he is a physical freak.

The kid is 6-7 and 285 pounds.  That’s 285.  No, he’s not a football player, although an LSU assistant said he offered the kid a scholarship recalling, "I thought, hell, why not, he's probably the best damn tight end to ever live.”

Even by basketball standards, he is  unusually  big and strong, but somehow, he can jump with the best of them - he has registered a vertical leap of 45 inches. Think about that a minute.

Want more?

Naturally, he can dunk it.  But -  he can take off from the free throw line and dunk it.

*********** After my comments about Bobby Petrino’s getting his comeuppance for running up scores, I came across this, in Paul Dietzel’s memoirs, “Call Me Coach.”

He told how, early in his career at West Point, Army had had three starters injured against Notre Dame, with a powerful Pitt team coming in to West Point.

The next week we played Pittsburgh, which was ranked number three in the nation. The game was played at West Point.  I realized that the Pitt game would be followed by Navy.  There was no way that I was going to let those three players get re-injured and then be unable to play against Navy.  So I held them out and Pitt proceeded as they normally did to steamroll us. Five or six of Pitt’s players including Paul Martha got into the pros the next year.  Their coach was John Michelosen.  They just lined up and ran right over us.  To give you some idea,  at the end of the first quarter they were ahead 28-0. The score was the same when the game ended,  28-0. Pitt could have scored 100 points,  but after the first quarter they backed off.

After the game I walked across the field to Coach Michelosen and said, “Johnny, you know you could've beaten us by a hundred points.  I'll tell you,  I really appreciate your not humiliating us.”

He said,  “Paul, if you coach long enough, sooner or later you're going to be on the other side of the field.  I've been on that side of the field,  too.  It doesn't do you a bit of good to pour it on after you’ve already won the game.”

I said,  “Johnny, I don't know how long I'm going to coach, but I'll tell you one thing: I will never forget this. It was very generous.”

I appreciated it very much.  Johnny Michelisen was a first-class coach, and a very fine guy.

“We used to say KState’s recruiting is in neutral; now it’s in park.”

“The players we talk to are literally not hearing anything back from KSU recruiters. It’s like they’ve gone into bunker mode. Other teams are texting and calling constantly, with 6 weeks to go before signing day.”

Whoever gave the thumbs up to Shakira concerts on back-to-back October dates at Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca and another last week for what sounds like a music festival hosted by Telehit, or some such, obviously didn’t talk to Jerry Jones first.

Jerry could do Paul McCartney on Thursday, George Strait on Friday and reincarnate the Texxas Jam in his own image on Saturday, and the Cowboys would still be ready to kick off at noon on Sunday.

To Jerry, that sounds like a dare.

Instead, the Rams and Chiefs are moving to Los Angeles. Nothing in Mexico has been this messed up since trying to install an Austrian archduke as emperor.

It was quite the dropped pass.

According to the NFL, the game between the Raiders and Texans in Mexico generated $45-million impact on the local economy. In other words, to me, it was money likely stolen by the government and/or cartels.

It’s a good thing that 2026 World Cup bid has come through.

*********** A “WAR STORY” passed along by a West Point classmate of the late Ed Bagdonas, former Army football player who competed as a hammer thrower in the 1960 Olympics…

Long ago when we were learning the trade, war stories – with and without wars – went a long way towards making the intolerable tolerable.
 
One of my favorites took place at the Ranger Training Camp at Fort Benning. Rangers wore fatigues sans insignia of any kind that made equals of all ranks. The Ranger Cadre wore all their badges and stripes with bulging biceps to impress their charges. Deeds alone spoke for the untermenschen, Ranger trainees subjected to endless physical training, harassment and degrading barbs meant to drive out the faint-hearted..
 
One afternoon found us seated in stands before a steep rock face. The subject was Use of the Grappling Hook. The Ranger instructor regaled us on its importance, demonstrating its use slowly swinging the hook in a circular motion about the forearm and  wrist before releasing the hook in a heave that took it well up the rock face. The instructor then seated it with a tug permitting him to climb the rock face.
 
The instructors dared the Ranger trainees to attempt the feat, which was impressive. After no small amount of abuse directed at the miserable state of trainees in general, the instructor bragged that the feat was beyond our strength. He paused for effect and called for a volunteer from the ranks of the trainees. There appeared to be no takers. Why would a sensible trainee volunteer for such a challenge that was sure to prove physically demanding and likely to fail?
 
Following a long pause a Ranger Trainee stood and came down from the bleachers. His name was Ed. In his modest way,  Ed took the grappling hook and the attached rope into his hands and slowly coiled the long rope. Then, ignoring the example of the instructor, Ed grasped the rope near the hook. He spun around and around in the style of an Olympic hammer thrower and launched the hook into low earth orbit at Mach 2. The Hook sailed high above the rock face, disappearing from view and taking the entire rope with it.  It was gone. It was rumored to have landed somewhere in Alabama. We cheered Ed Bagdonas with a loud roar that lifted the spirits of the Ranger Trainees.
 
The instructors were dumbfounded. Their training aid had disappeared. Their class, which was scheduled to last for several hours of trainee humiliation and practice with the grappling hook, was abruptly terminated by Ed’s awesome throw. We were formed up and marched back to the Barracks. Training for the rest of the afternoon was cancelled. It was a proud moment, when a Ranger Trainee stood tall and taught a lesson in humility to our trainers.


*********** It’s always terribly sad, and one more reminder of my own mortality,  to learn that one of my former players has died. I’m no youngster, and a lot of the guys I coached, some of them back in the early 1970s, are now elderly themselves. (Sorry, guys.)   But since I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for more than 40 years,  I haven’t seen most of my “East Coast”  players in all that time, so in my mind’s eye they’ll always be young guys. I’ve never seen them any other way.

The sad news of the passing of one of “my guys” came to me on Wednesday via longtime Double Winger Russ Meyers, from Annapolis, Maryland:

Coach Wyatt,

It's been a while since I have emailed you and I have sad news for you.  Roy Brown recently passed away.  He played for you with the Hagerstown Bears.  Roy was a good friend of mine and he was a great guy.  I have attached the link to a story from our local paper. His memorial service is today.

https://www.capitalgazette.com/sports/ac-cs-roy-brown-dies-20181106-story.html

That was, indeed, sad news.

Roy Brown was a year or two out of college (Western Maryland) when he played tight end for me in Hagerstown, in the early 70s. He made a great contribution to our club, as a player and as a teammate.

He was the sort of player who didn’t need much coaching from me. He was quite intelligent and figured out his assignments very quickly, and was a good enough football player that he’d just go and get the job done. It didn’t hurt that he was 6-4, 230 and a good athlete.  When the Chicago Bears called about him, I had no problems recommending him. 

He was quiet, but he was deep,  always thinking, and when he did have something to say it was astute, and often humorous.

We lost touch, and although I knew he’d become a coach, I had no idea just how good a coach he’d become -  as head coach at Annapolis High from 1989 through 2002, he won 104 games and lost 47.  His 2000 team made it to the state final game.  He went out on top - his 2002 team went 9-2, losing in the state quarterfinals to the eventual state champions. 

I’m very proud to have known Roy, and although our lives were connected for only a short time, he made a great impression on me as a man.

I’m terribly sad not only to hear of Roy’s death, but to learn that those who knew him best saw him suffer from Alzheimers.

May God rest his soul.



***********  The season came to an end. We got to the semi finals, one game from the valley championship.

Down here in youth football that is a big step.

We ended 7 and 2.
Years prior, in order:
2017 - 1-8
2016 - 2-7
2015 - 0-8

We turned it around. We ended up with a scoring average of 31 points per game which was the league’s best.

Next year I am moving up to 12-14 year olds. And we will install the double wing. Down here we do not have middle school fooball. This would be equivalent to 8th grade ball.

Thank you Coach Wyatt for all the help. We were a success story offensively.

As a final note, anyone that says football does not impact a young man’s life needs to look at the pictures. Defeat hurts and it should. It shows a person cares. And here is where we learn how to take defeat and disappointment and rise back up and go get it the next time.

John Coelho
Turlock, California

Congratulations on a great season! The photo of the two kids consoling each other is beautiful. It is America as it ought to be.  If only every person in America - black, white, Hispanic, Asian - could experience what it’s like to play football with each other, to work together as a team toward a common goal, to win together and lose together, we’d be a lot closer to having the kind of nation our founders wanted us to have!


*********** QUIZ ANSWER:   In the long history of the NFL, just one player from an Ivy-League school - Chuck Bednarik of Penn - has been drafted Number One overall.  (In fairness, although they always played Princeton and Cornell, the Penn of Chuck Bednarik’s time was a cut or so above the rest of the Ivies.   Army,  then a real national power, and Navy were regulars on the schedule.  So was Penn State, though not yet the power that it is today.  Notre Dame was often on the schedule.  As a kid, I saw them play Georgia, with a guy named Zeke Bratkowski at QB.)


CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING CHUCK BEDNARIK
JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
MIKE BENTON - COLFAX, ILLINOIS
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
GREG KOENIG - CIMARRON, KANSAS
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
CHARLIE WILSON - CRYSTAL RIVER, FLORIDA

*********** chuck bednarik.....no doubt could still have an impact if he played today.....side bar.....i just finished a two year ordeal getting a finger fixed while from a vicious game of p.e. kickball....going thru several rounds of therapy the conversation turned to worst busted fingers the therapists had seen.....i suggested they google "chuck bednarik's hands"....needless to say that even people who make a living with with injuries were taken aback with the pics of his giant crooked mitts!

Kevin McCullough
Lakeville, Indiana

*********** A COLLECTION OF PHOTOS OF CHUCK BEDNARIK - https://www.si.com/nfl/photo/2015/03/21/classic-photos-chuck-bednarik#20

*********** QUIZ - He grew up in far Western New York,  in the small town of South Dayton (2010 population: 620).  He had to go across the state, to persuade a college coach from a school halfway across the country, to give him a chance.  By the time he was 33, he was the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL.

A football and basketball star at little Pine Valley Central High School, he seemed to be on his way to earning all-star honors as a fullback and linebacker when he took ill and missed most of his senior season.

Going to New York to a coaches’ convention, he managed to persuade a college coach who’d never seen him play to give him a scholarship.

The coach was Bennie Ellender and the college was Arkansas State.  As a freshman he played fullback and nose guard, but  at the start of his sophomore year he was switched to middle linebacker.  For the next three seasons, he led the team in tackling, and in 1968 he was named first team AP All-American (college division).  And he was named by vote of fans the greatest player in Arkansas State history.

He was drafted in the second round by the Cincinnati Bengals, up to then the highest pick ever to come out of Arkansas State. He quickly earned the starting spot at middle linebacker and wound up being named Sporting News Defensive Rookie of the Year.

He soon became recognized as one of the best middle linebackers in the NFL, and with the announcement of the startup of the World Football League, he was offered money by the Florida Blazers to sign a “future” contract with them,  meaning that he would play for them as soon as he had played out  his contract - plus the so-called “option year” - with the Bengals.

Cincinnati owner-coach Paul Brown,  not one to put up with that sort of business, traded him to the Eagles for two first-round draft choices and a second-round pick.

When the Florida Blazers - and then the WFL itself - folded, he kept their money, and remained with the Eagles for the rest of his career.

In all, he played 12 seasons in the NFL - five with the Bengals and seven with the Eagles.

For five straight seasons in Philadelphia, from 1974 through 1978, he was either first- or second-team All-Pro.

He was named to the Pro Bowl five times and he was three times named the Eagles’ Most Valuable Player by his  teammates. 

When he signed a four-year contract for a (total) of $1 million, he became the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL.

He was a major factor in the Eagles’ making the playoffs in 1978, 1979 and 1980, and he retired following the 1980 season and the Eagles’ Super Bowl loss to the Raiders.  At the time, his 27 career interceptions were the most of any active linebacker. And he held the team single-season team record of 233 tackles.

TUESD

*********** WHY WE LIVE IN THE NORTHWEST… It was a beautiful day Sunday, clear and cool, and from our deck we could see Mount Hood - some 40 miles , as the crow flies, to the east - with the season’s first coating of snow. (If you look closely, straight down from Mt. Hood's summit you can see the cross atop  the steeple of the Catholic Church just down the hill from us.)



*********** SO HOW DID THE GENIUS PROGNOSTICATOR DO THIS PAST WEEKEND?

WIN: Boise State by 2-1/2 over

A golden playoff opportunity, as well as a huge payday for the conference, slips through the hands of Big 12 officials during a split of back-to-back games played by the league’s two best teams within eight days to settle the conference championship. West Virginia knocks off Oklahoma, 41-37, on Nov. 23 in Morgantown, W.V. , to cap the regular-season schedule for both schools in what should have been a winner-take-all battle for an undisputed league title. But because Big 12 officials created a conference championship game to boost conference revenues by $3 million per school and provide a nebulous “13th datapoint” for deliberations by members of the CFP selection committee, the teams are forced into a Dec. 1 rematch at the Big 12 championship game in AT&T Stadium. Oklahoma achieves payback, 51-28, in front of a partisan crowd in Arlington and ends the season with an 11-2 record and the official Big 12 title. West Virginia, also a two-loss team, joins Oklahoma the next day in being left out of the CFP’s four-team playoff bracket. CFP officials, who have yet to award a playoff berth to a two-loss team in five seasons of playoff history, acknowledge that a one-loss champ from the Big 12 “clearly would have earned” a spot in the bracket but that team did not emerge because of the forced rematch in the championship game.



*********** Nowadays, when you can’t even wear a sombrero on Hallowe’en without being accused of the newly-invited crime of cultural appropriation, it may be hard for some to believe that there was once a  time when a bunch of college players  could proudly pose as “Chinese Bandits.”

Back when  the colleges’ limited substitution rules did away with platoon football, LSU coach Paul Dietzel, a very inventive sort, came up with three distinct teams, each capable of playing two ways.  Sort of. The first was made up of his 11 best two-way players.  He called it the “White team.” (Uh-oh. That wouldn’t fly today, but it was called that simply because its players always wore white jerseys in practice). The second was a mostly-offensive  unit which he called the “Go Team.” (He originally called it the “Gold” team but as he wrote in his memoir, “The press quickly shortened the name.”)  The third was a mostly-defensive unit, and he conferred on its members a name inspired by a once-popular comic strip named “Terry and the Pirates,” in which Chinese Bandits were described as the “meanest, most vicious people in the world.”  

A couple of big-game goal-line stands - combined with their unique name - got the Chinese Bandits national recognition  that not even Paul Dietzel, promoter that he was, could have foreseen. 

***********   "Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young men and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation," wrote Edmund Burke.

If so, we are sunk.

In the Foreword of "Football Through the Years," (1940) the author, Dean Hill,  writes that one of the things that occupied the minds of our young men then was football. That and the value of hard work, a belief that a man had to prove himself a man, and a love of country. 

"Football, ” Hill wrote,  “symbolizes team play, discipline and self sacrifice. If our country is to continue to be the America we love, I say let every American be a football player at heart, if not on the gridiron."

The year 1940, of course, was just before we  had to fight - and win - a world war.  

What occupies the minds of today’s young men?

Not, in most of them, the value of hard work.  Certainly not having “to prove himself a man,”  and,  considering the emphasis in our schools, not a love of country.

Instead?  Video games,  rap, drugs, porn, brash show-offishness,  disrespect for rules and for authority. And soccer.

*********** If what I read on its Web site is an indication of its attitude toward our game,  it should be no surprise that Natrona County High, in Casper, Wyoming, is a traditional football power. 

Every Day Is A Great Day To Be A Mustang!

From the earliest games in the 1890's with homemade uniforms to today's sophisticated game with nine uniform combinations...one constant has remained. NCHS has special young men who play smart, play hard and love one another like brothers. Our older players have made our Freshmen football program the best in the country by mentoring and spreading greatness. We have two Freshmen squads (black and orange) along with our Sophomore, Junior Varsity and Varsity schedules that provide the most comprehensive 7-12 football program in Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain Region. NCHS has won more football games than any other school in Wyoming but more importantly we have realized the "miracle of team" more than any other school in Wyoming. This "miracle" not only makes for successful teams but more importantly it makes for successful lives, families and communities. Our foundation is love, hardwork, trust, service, academic excellence and character development. We focus on the only two things that any of us can control and that is our Attitude and our Effort. We don't cut players, we simply buy more equipment. If you enjoy working hard and being a part of something bigger than yourself then come play football with the Mustangs. GO MUSTANGS!

This year, the Mustangs went 11-1, and won the state 4A (largest class) championship.  They were also state champions in 2012.  In the last 10 years they’ve had only one losing season, and they’ve had five seasons with 10 or more wins.

*********** What do you suppose happens when two forms of self-expression collide: when one of these guys with a  “JR” or a “III” after the name on the back of his jersey has hair so long it covers the name?

Are the two forms of  exhibitionism self-cancelling?

Is he dishonoring his forebears?

*********** Such is the level of basketball interest and play in the Land Down Under that you can look at almost any college’s roster these days and you’re likely to find an Aussie on it. 

Australia has its own profesional league, the National Basketball League (NBL), and  my son, Ed, has just accepted the position of Marketing, Media & Communications Manager of its newest franchise, its ninth team, in Southeast Melbourne.

The new team, as yet unnamed,  will begin play next season, and gives Melbourne, a city of 4.8 million people,  its second NBL entry.

The other teams in the NBL are Melbourne United, Adelaide 36ers, Brisbane Bullets, Cairns Taipans, Illawarra (Sydney area) Hawks, New Zealand Breakers, Perth Wildcats and Sydney Kings.

*********** After the discourtesy the Philadelphia Eagles showed the President in refusing his invitation to the White House, it didn’t bother me  that much to see them lose to the Cowboys Sunday night.

It definitely pleased me to see Dak Prescott get the fans and the media guys off his back, if only temporarily, with a winning performance.

But it especially pleased me to see the way Cowboys’ rookie Middle Linebacker Leighton Vander Esch played.

The announcers were going nuts over the way he made tackles from sideline to sideline, 13 in all, and the way, near the end of the game, he broke through two lead blockers to make a shoestring tackle on a 3rd down play that saved the Cowboys’ win.

I’ve written about him before.  He played at Boise State, but he’s from tiny Riggins, Idaho (population 410).  At Salmon River High School (“The Savages”), he played 8-man football (his class had only 13 kids in it - 11 boys and 2 girls).

A kid from the Mountain West who makes it as a middle linebacker - are we looking at a reincarnation of Brian Urlacher?

(Just in case you might play 8-man football and somebody might try to suggest that it’s not “real football,” tell them watch #55 of the Cowboys.)

(Nice video here) https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/article221549770.html


*
********* Well, we gave it hell, but we fell just short. We lost 21-12. Boys played their hearts out. We came out and over-coached it a bit. We came out blitzing heavy on defense and gave up an easy TD on an off-tackle run. We realized the error of our ways, settled back into our base defense and played tough defense.  Offensively they were huge up front and we just wore down. We ran 5-X, 4-X regular and lead to some early success. But late into 3rd and 4th quarter we just didn't block well enough to move the ball. We did run polecat on a two point conversion. Boys executed it perfectly. They left 6 guys over the center so we threw it to the guy lined up behind the wall. They tackled us at the goal line. Ref ruled he didn't get in, but on the video he crossed. Oh well, the kids were so stoked to have run the play. Which brings me to the greatest thing about 8 year olds. They came off the field sobbing and heads down. I gave them my coach talk about how proud I was of them and how hard they played and that didn't want to see a head hanging. Then I took them over for the trophy ceremony, they got a big old runner-up trophy and you could not have guessed they just lost the championship. They were on cloud 9 with their huge trophy, which even matched our uniform colors, as one kid so astutely pointed out.

Cole Shaffer
Boulder, Colorado

************ QUIZ: Army has a black place kicker named John Abercrombie, a junior from Phoenix.  He’s pretty good - best they’ve had in quite a while.  Interestingly, he spent his first year at West Point playing on the sprint football team (178-pound max).

For some reason, there haven’t been many black place kickers in the NFL.  Gene Mingo was the first.

(PS: Do not be misled by someone who played in the AFL and NFL  but never kicked in the NFL, or someone who played another position and kicked only occasionally. This guy was an honest-to-God kicker. He was a handy guy who could help out at other positions - at a time of 40-man rosters, there was no such thing as a kicking specialist - but wherever he went  he was on the roster because he was his teams' full-time place kicker.)

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING GENE MINGO
JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA

READ ABOUT GENE MINGO - HIS IS AN AMAZING STORY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Mingo

http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2018/01/19/gene-mingo-football-broncos

*********** QUIZ:   In the long history of the NFL, just one player from an Ivy-League school has been drafted Number One overall. NAME HIM.

FRID

*********** Happy Veterans’ Day.  (Make every day Veterans’ Day.)

At 11 AM on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns were silent.  An armistice - an end to fighting - had been agreed on.  The World War - the War to End All Wars - the bloodiest war mankind had ever known came to an end. 

Well, yes. The shooting was over.

But in many ways, the world has never recovered.

France lost 1.5 million or more of its young men - practically an entire generation wiped out.  How can a nation lose the flower of its young manhood without losing its strength as a nation?

Russia lost more than 3 million men - many in the war, and even more in the bloody revolution that ensued.

The United Kingdom lost a million men.

The United States lost “only” 120,000 men. But then, we were engaged only for the last year and a half or so, after much of the damage had been done to both sides.

Australia, as far from the fighting as a country could be,  lost more than 60,000 men - 1.2 per cent of its population.  Maybe not a lot of people in the global scheme of things, but to the US, that would mean almost 5 million people,  the equivalent of the population of Oklahoma. (For a great movie about Australia’s role in the War, you can’t beat “Gallipoli,” starring a young Mel Gibson.)

And the enemy? The Central Powers - Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (think Turkey) lost anyhere from 7 million to more than 8 million.

Who would not welcome an end to the carnage and suffering and loss?

That’s why nations worldwide celebrate the day.  In the US, it was once Armistice Day, the day on which we celebrated the end of The War.  Unfortunately, it might not have served its intended purpose, because just we Americans have been involved in  another World War and several other bloody conflicts that weren' t called wars but sure looked like them.

In the US, Armistice Day  was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.  Okay. I can’t think of many more important things for Americans to do than to honor men and women who have served us, in time of war or peace.  We also should honor the families who sacrificed so that their children and spouses could serve.

But I can’t help wishing that we had set aside another, separate day to do so - so we could have retained Armistice Day and its original meaning, and used it to impress on the Americans that have never known war just how horrible it can be for everyone  - especially veterans and their families.

*********** Say a prayer if you will for Bob Novogratz, former Army All-American who just a few days after attending the 60th reunion of the 1958 Army team on Saturday, suffered a broken hip in a fall Wednesday and underwent surgery Thursday at NYU Medical Center in New York.  Bob is a great American and his story is a great American story.

*********** And also remember in your prayers General Jim Shelton, who passed away recently.  Jim played football at Delaware under Dave Nelson and Mike Lude, and loved to tell of the time Delaware scrimmaged Army and Don Holleder ran over him.  Jim was quite involved in getting the idea of the Black Lion Award approved by assorted people in the Army, and as honorary colonel* of the 28th Infantry Regiment, the Black Lions, his signature was on hundreds of Black Lion Award certificates.  (*Although he had attained the rank of Brigadier General, in the Army a regiment is commanded by a colonel.)

*********** From John Walters in The Athletic:

The top three schools in the polls before Saturday were located in Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana. The bottom four states in terms of education, according to the U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings, are Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana and New Mexico. The reasonable deduction is that either New Mexico or New Mexico State should be much better in football.


*********** “Hate Messages” Show up on University of Manitoba Campus


The University of Manitoba is in an uproar over  the poster at left and similar  “hate messages” found around campus, which the school’s president says are part of "a co-ordinated international effort by neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.

From students came such reactions as "element of fear”… “it’s sickening” … “racist actions.”

Fools, yes. 

But after all, this is Canada, which has never had such a thing as freedom of speech. (Remember when we did?)

But jeez.

Will they stop me at the border when they find my posters that say  ‘IT’S OKAY TO BE MALE?”  “STRAIGHT?”  “CHRISTIAN?”

In Canada is it okay for Kermit the Frog to be green?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/hate-messages-university-manitoba-campus-1.4889084

*********** Paul Dietzel was quite a coach, a national champion at LSU,  and as a young assistant he worked under the best of them - at Cincinnati under Sid Gillman, at West Point under Earl Blaik, and at Kentucky, under Bear Bryant.

In his book, “Call Me Coach,” he tells a story about the Bear - one that all ambitious young assistant coaches should commit to memory…

“Coach Bryant was a real stickler for loyalty. At a Kentucky statewide coaches’ meeting, he asked a high school assistant coach what offense they were running at his school.  This fellow told him they were still running the ‘same old offense,’ and even though he wanted to modernize the offense, the head coach was old-fashioned and would not change.  Coach Bryant was quite disturbed, to say the least, that an assistant coach would speak this way in public about his head coach.  The Bear told the man that he was going to get him fired, and indeed he did.”

*********** I saw the name “WAGUESPACK” on the back of an Air Force player and it interested me.  I’d never seen the name before.

Turns out that AFA linebacker Kade Waguespack is from Gonzalez, Louisiana - roughly midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge - and evidently the surname is not unknown down there.

I read on…

The only problem in coming to Colorado Springs for Waguespack has been the food. He’s from the “Jambalaya Capital of the World,” and he hasn’t found anything that comes close to meeting his standards here.

He gets by on a recipe that can be made in a slow cooker with smoked sausage from home and white beans. Aside from that, he said his parents generally bring frozen food when they visit, then his mom spends time at his sponsor family’s house cooking Cajun meals that she’ll leave in the freezer.

“That’s kind of how I survive,” he said.

Bigger hands help quarterbacks handle the ball and perhaps also help them throw it. Mr. Bales recorded the hand measurements for every quarterback drafted since 2008 and also found data for some older quarterbacks. The average N.F.L. hand size for a quarterback is now 9.6 inches, he said. “Some of the top ‘short’ quarterbacks (6-2 or shorter) of the past decade have ridiculously large hands — Drew Brees (10.25 inches), Russell Wilson (10.25 inches), Brett Favre (10.38 inches),” he wrote. (The average length of a male hand is 7.44 inches.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/upshot/big-hands-small-colleges-and-the-nfl-draft.html?emc=edit_th_20140509&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=23696377&_r=0&referrer=

*********** Quick Open Wing question……when you use Red and Blue protection I made a note that the RB blocks back-side.  However, its a 6 man half-slide protection so against a 7 man front a LB may be un-accounted for.  I would call the protection opposite to my primary receiver so the QB can see the unblocked defender if they send 7…..does that sound right to you?


Typically, when we are throwing to the open side, we want our playside linemen sliding. We want the Back set to the side of the twins because (1) if we want, we have his run fake to the tight side (2) this puts him in a better position to pick up a blitzing inside LBer (3) it sets up a screen to the side away from where the QB’s looking.

If there is ever any need - this has never come up - for extra blocking on the backside, we call “MAX” (MAXIMUM)  and the TE blocks a man ON or to his OUTSIDE.

Honestly, I have never had an issue with this.  Often any “protection” problem lies somewhere else.  I should stress here that making this protection work is as much a matter of timing between the passer and the receiver as it is blocking upfront.  The QB and the receiver need to be drilled on taking the correct number of steps and the QB needs to be drilled on getting the ball out of there, without wasting a lot of time patting the ball or waiting for a receiver to "come open.”

That waiting, I find, is a major problem with inexperienced quarterbacks.  They have to set up, and they have to know what to look for and where and when to throw the  ball without wasting time.


*********** MY COLLEGE FOOTBALL MUST-TAKE-A-LOOK-ATS

THURSDAY -

WAKE FOREST, 19-POINT UNDERDOGS,  GAVE JAMIE NEWMAN, A 6-4, 230 REDSHIRT FRESHMAN, HIS FIRST START AT QB AND ALL HE DID WAS DRIVE THE DEACONS THE LENGTH OF THE FIELD IN 1:09 TO DEFEAT 14TH-RANKED NORTH CAROLINA STATE - ON STATE’S FIELD. 

FRIDAY -

Fresno State is favored over Boise State by 2-1/2.  It’s on Boise’s field, so I’ll take the Broncos

SATURDAY -

West Virginia will beat TCU plus 11-1/2.  It’s in Morgantown, and TCU has been looking bad ever since they had to kick off the girlfriend-beater

Michigan State plus 3-1/2 over Ohio State.  No real reason other than I like the Spartans and I dislike Ohio State’s coach and that damn “THE Ohio State University” attitude.

Penn State over Wisconsin plus 9 - Badgers are in QB trouble with Hornibrook having concussion issues

Kansas State over Kansas plus 10 - K-State may be having their problems, but they’re still more than 10 points better than the Jayhawks - especially in Manhattan.

Army over Lafayette - this one shouldn’t have been scheduled, and the oddsmakers won’t even touch it.

Indiana by one point over Maryland - It’s at Indiana, and as long as there are guys on the Maryland team who’d still rather D. J. Durkin were their coach, it’s hard to pull for them.

Oklahoma State and 20-1/2 over Oklahoma - only because of my grandson Mike, a Cowboy.

Washington State over Colorado plus 6.  Seen how bad Colorado has looked the last couple of weeks? Besides, the Cougs had their close call last week against Cal.

Baylor and 14-1/2 over Iowa State.  My upset call. Actually, I’m pulling for Matt Rhule.

Pitt over Virginia Tech plus 3-1/2.  Pitt, if you hadn’t looked, is in first place in the ACC Coastal.

Purdue over Minnesota plus 11. Purdue is pretty good.  Minnesota is not.

Oregon plus 3 over Utah. Utah may not have its QB.  Ducks usually play well in SLC.

Georgia over Auburn plus 14.  Dawgs have had one slip-up and aren’t about to have another until they meet Bama in the SEC title game.

Georgia Tech over Miami plus 3.  Even when Miami has been good, Georgia Tech has played them well.  Game is in Atlanta.

Houston over Temple plus 4-1/2.  Forgive me, Owls.  Going with my head and not my heart.

Notre Dame over Florida State plus 16-1/2.  Not many times I find myself rooting for Notre Dame, but this is one of them.

Texas Tech plus 1-1/2 over Texas.  It’s in Lubbock, and I think Tech is good enough to take the Horns.

Boston College plus 20 over Clemson.  I’m figuring it’ll be wet, and a lot colder than some of those southern boys have ever experienced on a football field.  Plus, BC is pretty good.

Stanford over Oregon State plus 14.  That’s my guess at a spread. The oddsmakers haven’t posted anything.

Cal plus 5 over USC.  USC is not USC. Cal has been steadily improving.  Their defense nearly shut out WSU’s Gardner Minshew last week.

I’ll watch UNLV at San Diego State and Colorado State at Nevada because they’re both on late, but I have no particular interest (other than that I hear CSU’s Mike Bobo is a pretty good guy.)


*********** How many times have you read about a coach's wife not knowing whIch team to root for - her husband's team, or the opponents, whom her son plays for?

I knew the feeling last Friday night, when LaCenter and Elma met in a “play-in” game to determine which would be one of the 16 teams to advance to the state playoffs.

Many moons ago, I coached at LaCenter.  Those who got my video “Dynamics II” will understand.  The place had no tradition and it was way short on facilities.  But I had great support from the principal (a former football coach), really good kids, and a really good staff. One of the best members on the staff was a young guy named John Lambert.

John had been a student and a player for me at Hudson’s Bay High - smart, bright-eyed, hard-working and enthusiastic, both in the classroom and on the team - and after a playing career at Western Washington, he became a teacher.  There’s where the principal’s support came in - he hired John, and for two years, John was my right hand man, soaking up everything he could and contributing more and more as he learned.

When I left LaCenter after three seasons, I recommended John, despite his youth and his relative inexperience, because I felt that he had the makings of a great coach.  The principal, to his credit, listened - and hired John.

That was 1999.  And there we were last Friday night , and there was John, finishing up his 20th season as head coach at LaCenter.

He has, to say the least, been successful.   His 20-year record is 143-71.

By his third season, he made the state playoffs, and by his fifth season, his Wildcats (for those who don’t know, LaCenter is the reason why I gave the “Wildcat” formation its name) were in the state semifinals.

In all, his teams have made the playoffs 12 times in his 20 years, and in that time he has had only two losing seasons.

Although he now runs more of a single-wing look than double-wing, he’s still a proponent of physical football. “A lot of teams don’t run what we do,” he told Paul Valencia in Clark County Today.  “That in itself is an advantage. A lot of teams are mimicking what they see in college. Four-wide, empty backfield. We want to establish the line of scrimmage. We teach our linemen to be physical, be aggressive, to stay low, and move people off the ball. Not many teams do that.”

John never kicks off deep (sound familiar?) and he seldom punts.  He’s going to make you play defense against him for four downs.  That was his strategy long before guys started writing about it in coaching magazines.

John has had numerous opportunities to go to bigger schools, but he’s turned them all down.  He’s wise enough to  know that bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better.  At LaCenter, he’s got a solid program with a solid staff of assistants and great community support - much of which is his doing.  And as the LaCenter area continues to grow, he’s got a steady stream of young football players coming up who know the LaCenter system and “want to play for Coach Lambert.”

LaCenter brought a 4-5 record into Friday night’s game.  In fairness, John always arranges to play as tough a non-league schedule as he possibly can: of his four out-of-league opponents, three went on to make the playoffs, one of them in a higher classification.  Their overall record was 25-4.  By the time league play started, the Wildcats were in an unaccustomed 0-4 hole, but the tough pre-season had prepared them well - and they went 4-1 in league play to qualify for the playoffs.

John Lambert and me

With John Lambert coaching one of the teams, why in the world would I be conflicted?

Well, facing LaCenter Friday night was Elma, about 2 hours northwest of La Center.

Until this season, Elma had gone a long time without a lot of success on the field.  The Eagles won a state title in 1998, but they hadn’t won more than 5 games in a season since 2005. 

In 2017, Ron Clark, an Elma native who’d coached for years at nearby Aberdeen, took over as head coach.  In his first year, the Eagles were 3-7, but this year, going into Friday's game,  they were 7-2.  The two losses were by the skinniest of margins: by one-point to unbeaten Hoquiam, after having both an extra point and a field goal blocked in the last two minutes; and to neighbor town Montesano (Elma hasn’t beaten “Monty” in 13 years) by six points on a touchdown with less than a minute to play.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdg3ZhIWH1k

Elma runs a classic wing-T.  Its bread and butter plays are buck sweep, trap, bootleg (waggle) and weakside belly.

Occasionally the Eagles will line up in shotgun (what we would call East or West formation), mostly to throw but with a bit of zone read thrown in.

Everybody who coaches football babbles about how important the offensive line is (the same way they go on and on about how important blocking and tackling is, blah, blah, blah),  but anyone who has coached a wing-T (or Double Wing) knows that in those offenses,   the line really IS important. 

And Elma’s line is coached by Todd Bridge, whom I coached with for six years at North Beach.  He was the head coach and I was his OC, and he coached the line.  Now the AD at Elma, he also signed on as line coach when Ron Clark needed help, and he’s put together a very physical front.  As a testament to the way they’ve run the ball, in 10 games, the Eagles have rushed for 2980 yards and 44 touchdowns.  Obviously, I’m pleased at how well Coach Bridge has done and very happy for him both as coach and AD.

And I’m happy for Ben Bridge, too.  Ben is Todd’s third son.  I’ve been fortunate to coach all the Bridge boys, but I only got to coach Ben for two years.  Ben’s now a senior, and he plays full-time at center and rotates in on the defensive line.  While not as tall as his older brothers, both of whom are over 6-5, at 5-11 and 230 Ben’s every bit as strong, winning the state powerlifting title last spring.  (He won the center competition when he convinced the coach to let him make the one-handed, end-over-end shotgun snap that he learned at North Beach. Ahem.)  I have yet to see him make a bad snap all season, shotgun or T-formation.

Elma’s leading rusher is their fullback, 5-10, 210-pound Taitum Brumfield, who’s carried 205 times for 1289 yards. His 22 touchdowns represent half the team’s total.

COACH BRIDGE, CODY VOLLAN, BEN BRIDGE, ME

But their second leading rusher is their quarterback, 6-2, 190 pound Cody Vollan.  He’s carried 97 times, and even after deducting yards lost on sacks he’s gained 536 yards - and he’s rushed for 10 touchdowns.  He’s a threat to run on designed plays and on pass plays when he decides to take off.

The passing aspect is where I come in, if I may be allowed a bit of bragging.  Every weekend in the winter and spring, Cody and I worked together, and it has been a delight for me to watch him develop.  His passing has been a key to Elma’s success. (I should point out that I have made a special effort not to be like some gurus I’ve heard of who are slyly - sometimes blatantly - critical of their client’s coach.  Not once have we discussed strategy, and even when I might have seen something in his mechanics that could stand adjustment, I’ve held off, believing that trying to do anything at that point might do him more harm than good - like trying to change a tire while the car’s doing 70.

Much of the time, when Cody’s been called on to throw it’s been in “passing” situations - where the Eagles were in a hole and needed a first down.  Even under those conditions, he completed 43 of 87 for 988 yards and 11 TDs.   He has thrown deep successfuly on numerous occasions, as reflected by his 11.4 yards per attempt, and his ability to take the deep shot at any time has kept defenses from overcrowding the line of scrimmage. His 11 touchdowns work out to an extremely productive one in every eight attempts.

Everyone who coaches quarterbacks knows that the quarterback’s number one job is to protect the ball, and Cody has more than done that: he’s thrown only one interception all season. 

Overall, if Cody were a college QB, his high yards-per-pass, his high percentage of TDs, and his low percentage of interceptions, would give him a passer rating of 184.2.  If he were playing in the NFL, his rating would be an extremely impressive 125.4.   (Source: http://www.primecomputing.com/  ) 

Cody is a very good athlete - he's point guard on the basketball team - and he has  very good speed - he runs the 400 in track. He is very coachable, always eager to improve.  He is a great competitor who is just as happy playing corner on defense, where he’s college-prospect good, as he is playing quarterback.

So there I was, caught between two loyalties, letting things work themselves out on the field.

It was a hell of a football game, a test between a bigger, more physical Elma eleven and a young, quick LaCenter team with a bag of tricks ready to go.  Elma jumped out to an 14-0 lead and it appeared that we could be looking at a blowout, when LaCenter took back  the following kickoff 93 yards to make it 14-7 at the end of one.

Cody threw a 10-yard touchdown pass to make it 21-7, but with a minute left in the half LaCenter answered.  Sophomore QB John Lambert, John’s son, ran in from 5 yards out to make the halftime score 21-14.

LaCenter took the second half kickoff and drove right in for a score, with Tom Lambert running in from the 10.  The PAT tied the score with 9:00 remaining.

But with 2 minutes left in the third, Cody ran four yards to the left corner to give Elma the lead it needed, and Taitum Brumfield added a score with 4 minutes to play. The Elma defense, meanwhile, shut down la Center the rest of the way, stopping them on downs, recovering a fumble and intercepting a pass.

The final score was 33-21, and Elma moves on to the state playoffs

The game, I should add, was played in LaCenter’s beautiful new nearly-completed stadium.  I have to admit that I never thought, 20 years ago, that it would ever be possible. Actually, without John Lambert, it wouldn’t have been possible.  I’m not one for naming things after people who are still working, and I hope John coaches many more years.  If it's his wish, I hope it’s at LaCenter.   But when he finally does decide to hang ‘em up, they’ve got to name that stadium after him.


*********** Got this from a long-time friend whom I respect as an excellent coach…

Coach Wyatt,

From time to time, I receive emails from coaches asking for assistance.  I received this one over the weekend.  Here is our exchange (his in bold)


Do you have any pwrpoints,clinics,dvds,manuals, for sale?

--Nothing for sale.  What is it that you're looking for?

Actual footage on all your drills. To see how there supposed to be run. Visual learner.

--What age do you coach?  How long have you been coaching?  Are you in NC?

7 to 8 yr olds. 1st year hc. Just did regular season. Went 0-8. We played 9 on 11 players. Fixing to coach select 8u in a couple of weeks. Installing kb first. Then the O. Aggression and confidence is what I seek.  I'm in Tx. Thanks
I have what it takes to be a Disciple. Just need help getting there. For instance. On my rabbit drills i didn't use the fear of another player tackling them from behind. I used good ole fashioned dog sh-- as the motivator. I put some in a clear baggie and chased them to get them moving. It worked. Im all in. 

--You’re kidding....

I sure did.

--Can you explain your thought process behind it?

Getting tackled from behind sucks. Getting sh-- on your back sucks even more. Have a stubborn player that runs outside on 16 power? Stand there with some poo. He'll go inside.

If that's your approach, it's only because you don't know how to teach.  I feel bad for your players.  If you think that's an appropriate way to teach kids, there's little I can say that will convince you otherwise.  I think your approach is way past wrong.  It's a farce.  It's demeaning.  Regardless, you're no "disciple" of anyone, because I don't know of any self-respecting coach that would use your approach.


Coach Wyatt, he "thanked me for my time" and I sent him one followup saying that I was willing to help because he obviously needed it, but that I was blunt and if I think he's wrong then the best way for me to help him was to tell him what I thought.  Of course I didn't get a reply.  I'm sure he thought I was harsh, but sometimes these guys just need to be grabbed by the collar...And I was willing to help, but as with most coaches, they're willing to let their pride get in the way.

I wrote...

I can’t help thinking that guy was pulling your leg.

Demeaning, for sure.  I would call it borderline abuse.  Some, I’m sure, would say it goes way over the border.

I’m not for government interference in sports, but if the local leagues won’t screen and vet and double-check the guys who coach our kids - and then observe them at practices and games - there’s nothing left but the government to do it.

Funny how he describes that “coaching” and then he says he has what it takes to be a “disciple.”  I think I know you well enough by now to know that that couldn’t possibly be further from your approach to coaching.

Not that it will make any difference, but that guy needed to hear what you said.  He also needed (needs) to be hit with a 2 x 4.  Literally.

***********  Hugh,

A good friend of ours has also finished a disappointing first season, but...the ever positive coach told me it was good to get the season over and get back to the serious work of developing his new program in the off-season where true success is made.

After that first drive of the game I thought Army was going to blow Air Force out of the sky.  But AF hung tough with the Cadets, and it took Coach Monken's "muy bolas grandes" decision on that fourth and one to seal the Army win. 

Speaking of Army a few of the cadets did manage to "ground" the Air Force mascot before the game.  From what I understand the "pranks" the academies pull on one another have been going on for a hundred years.  Yet...by the reactions of "civies" to the prank one would think our service academy folks are a bunch of miscreants.  Aurora, the falcon, did recover
Texas...how in the world do BOTH DIVISION I 4-5 STAR safeties, at that point in a close game, let a receiver get behind them for the would be game winner??  Then...how in the world does the corner allow the receiver to cross his face and complete a slant pass in the end zone??  Then...how does the DC not put a "spy" on the QB for the second two-point try??

The current ND team, with its inconsistent play, at best, is probably the 6th or 7th best team in the country.  Even IF they are fortunate to run the table, and get in the playoffs, and continue to pull wins out their butts the way they have, an appearance is about all you'll see from them.  UNLESS...that offense gets cranked up, and that defense has a sudden change of temperament.

Best game on TV this weekend will be Fresno State at Boise State on Friday night.

Have a great week!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

I’d rather not even talk about the incredible lack of judgment - in future Army officers - that would lead USMA cadets to think kidnapping a bird was a bright idea. I’d also like to know how they managed to get the bird out of the house of an Army Colonel.  Was the Colonel in on the caper?  Uh-oh.  Did they break into his house?  Uh-oh. 

*********** FROM THE COACH WHO SUGGESTED THAT HE TEACH THE NON-PLAYING KIDS ON HIS YOUTH TEAM A FEW DOUBLE-WING PLAYS… (HIS HEAD COACH GAVE HIM THE GO-AHEAD)…

Got a nice win tonight, 18-16. DW accounted for all of our points and we ran it 80% of the time. The other team didn't even realize we were going unbalanced on our base leads. Kids were pumped...our defense struggles at times so we fell behind a couple of times, but fought back each time, which they hadn't been doing. They had been packing it in when we got behind in the score. Coach was excited as well. Lots to correct and work on but good first effort. We played a wing-T team and you know how easy it is to stop those old fashioned offenses! :)

Will keep you posted....two more games, need to put in 6/7 G-O and 3T2 this week.

*********** QUIZ ANSWER - As a high school coach in Middletown, Ohio, Glenn “Tiger” Ellison grew tired of losing games with his running attack, and devised a wide-open passing attack which he called Lonesome Polecat (because, as he wrote, one of his assistants said, “it stinks”).

The Polecat, however, led to his development of a wide-open system heavily oriented to passing which came to be called the Run and Shoot.

He enjoyed great success as a high school coach. He was named Ohio Coach of the Year in 1961 and served as President of the Ohio High School Coaches Association.

Over the years, with certain adaptations to his original system, his offense has met with great success at every level of the game.

He was a graduate of Denison University, where he was an All-Ohio guard, and after retirement as a high school coach, he served for six years on his college teammate, Woody Hayes,’ staff at Ohio State.

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING TIGER ELLISON

JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
GREG KOENIG - CIMARRON, KANSAS
MIKE BENTON - COLFAX, ILLINOIS
JOHN IRION - GRANVILLE, NEW YORK
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
JOHN BOTHE - OREGON, ILLINOIS
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA
RALPH BALDUCCI - PORTLAND, OREGON
TOM DAVIS - SAN CARLOS, CALIFORNIA
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA

*********** Glenn "Tiger" Ellison is my answer!  I just finished the book: Run and shoot football:Offense of the future.  What a great book!   Back in 1991, I worked with a coach who ran the offense.  he called the series, Gangster,  Cowboy, Popcorn, wagon train,  and we even ran some of the lonesome polecat, straight out of the book! 

I always thought he made that stuff up!  I plan to re re-read it a few more times this offseason!

I also loved reading Woody Hayes foreward in the book!  He is one of my all time favorite coaches.

Mike Benton
Colfax, Illinois

*********** I ran Polecat my 2nd year I was a head coach.    Monsoon like weather had me run my "short yardage" offense which morphed into your DW later.      Some of the hits in the polecat would be defenseless targeting now.

John Irion
Granville, New York

*********** Sent me by several coaches -

A nice read about Tiger Ellison’s contribution to today’s football.

http://pistoltripleoptionfootball.com/glenn-tiger-ellison-greatest-innovator-football-history/


*********** The work that best updates Tiger Ellison’s work - bringing all his “Popcorn” and “Gangster” stuff (names I have to admit were way too corny for me) into a form usable in today’s game - is Al Black’s “Coaching Run and Shoot Football.”  Al Black was a very good high school coach in Pennsylvania, winning 149 games against 41 losses. After retirement, he coached some in Europe, and he worked as an OC at some small eastern Pennsylvania colleges. His book, published in 1991, is really good. It’s available, but scarce, so start saving your money.

About Al Black…

In 1970, the Springfield Spartans of Montgomery County fielded an extraordinary gridiron team. The smallish suburban Philadelphia school, with 25 returning lettermen, romped through a ten-game schedule and scored 497 points, an average of nearly 50 per game. The Suburban One League championship race was no contest.

Coach Al Black's masterpiece had experience, speed, intelligence and enthusiasm that translated to a blazing offense and a stifling opportunistic defense. Opponents' mistakes were quickly converted into points. Black summed it all when he said, "Hustle and good execution win games. When you combine them with talent, you can't help but have a great season."

Despite its modest enrollment, Springfield had moved from the less challenging Bux-Mont League, after winning the 1968 crown, into the powerful Suburban One to play many of the biggest schools in the area.

After erasing neighbor Plymouth-Whitemarsh, Black's "Big Blue Brigade" faced Upper Merion in their fourth 1970 game. UM was thought before the season to be Springfield's toughest rival. The Spartans won 58-8. Amazing halfback Paul Melzer shredded the Vikings' defense for 319 yards and four TD's. With guard Bruce Williams leading the way, Melzer was sensational all season and was named to the All-State first unit.

The following week against non-league Lower Moreland, deep Springfield dressed 72 players and Black got all of them into the game, a 48-29 romp. The Spartans led 48-8 at the half. Decisive victories followed over defending champion Abington and hopeful Norristown.

Abington dominated the first quarter, had the Spartans on their heels, and led 3-0. The Spartans quickly got the message and blitzed the Ghosts for 26 points in the second quarter and 21 more in the third. No seniors played in the final period as Springfield won 54-3.

In the finale of this glorious season, long before the playoffs were introduced, Springfield overwhelmed Thanksgiving rival Wissahickon, 55-30. The Spartans scored on dives, sweeps, reverses, and long and short passes. Black also employed "junk" plays, as he called them. A double reverse pass went for 16 yards and a touchdown.

Springfield had gained more than 500 yards in every game. The highest scoring team in the nation, the Spartans were nominated by the Philadelphia Inquirer as the best in the state. A championship game against WPIAL AA champion Mt. Lebanon or New Castle's great team would have been something to behold.

Al Black is a native of Northfield, New Jersey and graduate of Glassboro State, now Rowan. Glassboro had dropped football and Black played in the semi-pro ranks during his college years. He started his career as an assistant at Audubon, NJ. He was head coach at Springfield just five years, moving to Coatesville in 1971. Black coached the Red Raiders for 13 years, winning seven Ches-Mont titles.

An attacking specialist, Black later served as offensive coordinator at Widener, Millersville and Delaware Valley (colleges) . More recently, he has worked in various levels of professional football in Europe, coaching, holding clinics and consulting. In 2003, his London Olympians won the "Brit Bowl".

The Spartans'1970 record:

55 UPPER MORELAND 20
42 UPPER DUBLIN 27
41 PLYMOUTH-WHITEMARSH 12
58 UPPER MERION 8
48 LOWER MORELAND 29
56 CHELTENHAM 0
46 METHACTON 8
54 ABINGTON 3
42 NORRISTOWN 22
55 WISSAHICKON 30

TUESD

FRID

Saturday’s game was a mismatch, a rout that the score did not honestly reflect because OU coach Lincoln Riley called off his potent offense, electing not to pummel the literally defenseless Wildcats into utter humiliation.

K-State looked much closer to the feeble program Snyder took over in 1989 than the one he built into a power that won a pair of Big 12 championships. The last one came in 2012, and six seasons later the slow erosion is obvious. Snyder’s castle is collapsing in decay.

TUESD

COLLEGE FOOTBALL ON THE TUBE LAST SATURDAY

*********** EASTERN MICHIGAN VS ARMY - Eastern Michigan’s field is a slate gray.  It looks like a fuzzy parking lot. Maybe that’s what kept the crowd down to what I expect to see at an 8-man high school game.

Can’t imagine how Eastern beat Purdue earlier in the season.  They are very undisciplined - and that includes the coaches.

They had five personal fouls or unsportmanlike conduct penalties, three of them after the play was over.

Damned if they didn’t pick up two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties on the same play - half the distance followed by half the distance.  One of them was on the “assistant head coach.”  Lemme tell you something, fellas - if you’re an assistant, stay back and stay out of it! It’s bad enough for the head coach to pick up an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, but it’s absolutely unthinkable - an inexcusable intrusion on the head coach’s business - for an assistant coach to get one. 

Eastern didn’t have a first down in the entire first half.

For some reason, otherwise-effective passers seem to lose their accuracy against Army.  Could the Army defensive guys be operating some sort of top-secret, hand-held anti-missile device from up in the press box?

An Eastern Michigan defensive lineman was called for defensive holding, and damned if replay didn’t show him pulling down an Army offensive lineman by his jersey.

Army had a backup crew of announcers. You could tell they were because they didn’t get the official memo from headquarters: not once did they say “Army West Point” or “Hopkins, Junior.”  One of them was a former NFL lineman named Ross Tucker.  For a Princeton guy, he was pretty good.

After the game - a 37-22 Army win - some Eastern guy named “McGILL JR” came over to Army’s QB, Kelvin Hopkins, and got in his face and started jawing at him.  Very classy.

*********** Navy isn’t good enough to beat Notre Dame, but Northwestern definitely is.

*********** A kid named Rocky Lombardi got the start at QB for Michigan State.  Did a nice job.  Purdue was flat, MSU was fired up.

*********** It doesn’t appear that Mississippi State has a QB controversy after all.   Nick Fitzgerald is still the man.

*********** For the first time in a few years, Florida-Georgia was a game.  For a while. But Florida isn’t ready yet.

*********** Is it time to take Kentucky seriously yet?

*********** Houston sure took the wind out of South Florida's sails.

*********** San Diego State has only one loss - to Stanford; Fresno State has lost only to Minnesota; Utah State has lost only to Michigan State; Boise State may be the best of them all - but the Broncos have lost twice - not only to Oklahoma state but also to San Diego State.

*********** I saw three real, honest-to-God quarterback sneaks this weekend  - with the fullback pushing on the QB - and they all worked: for Michigan State, Army, and Oklahoma State.

But wait - there was a fourth, if you believe the ignoramuses at the AP.  That's what they called it in their stories on Sunday. It was the play that Oregon State’s Jack Colletto scored on  to beat Colorado in OT. But he wasn’t under center.  Looked more like an old-fashioned single wing tailback off tackle play to me. Are you telling me that these jackasses who've turned tailbacks into quarterbacks are now going to turn an off-tackle run into a quarterback sneak? (Ahem. Jack Colletto is from Camas, the town I live in; his dad, Bert, played for me in 1980 at Hudson’s Bay High in Vancouver, Washington. He was a really good football player who went on to play at Eastern Washington.)



********** The TV networks need to have a “Mercy Rule” when blowout games go extra long while the game we’ve been waiting to watch has already started. Sheesh. Clemson was winning 59-3 with 6:51 to play - and they were throwing!!!  The only thing that made it bearable was that it was against Florida State and Willie Taggart.

*********** Speaking of Willie Taggart… FSU suffered its worst loss ever, since the days when it first admitted men (it was originally an all-female school) and then took up football.  In the post-game press conference Taggart implied that there were some quitters on his team.  Hmmm. Would a job-hopping coach be a quitter?

*********** Iowa State, leading 33-31, sees nobody in the middle of the field and throws a post, good for a 49-yard touchdown.  Texas Tech drives but with 1:51 throws an interception.  The TT QB stands there with his palms up instead of going after the return man.

*********** Iowa led Penn State early, 5-0.  How often do you see that score?

*********** I tuned in Kansas-TCU to see how the new TCU QB was doing and there it is the second quarter and Kansas is still winning. (7-3)

*********** I think if a QB wants to run he has to be considered a real football player, with none of this sliding sh—, and defenders not sure whether or not to hit him.  If he wants to slide, by all means let him do so - but no more of this getting the first down and then sliding. Instead, once the ball is dead, spot it five yards back from the start of the slide. (I would actually start the negotiating at 10 yards, but I’d settle for five.)

*********** Iowa used a hard count and got Penn State to jump on 4th and one.  Another reason for having a QB under center.

*********** Watching two or more TVs - and only listening to one of them - makes you aware that TV networks could do a much better job on their graphics.  Who was the ball carrier? How much did he gain? 

*********** Holy sh—! Kansas 14, TCU 10 in the third quarter!

*********** Iowa, going for a field goal just before the half, screws around with the signals and the ball is snapped too soon. Penn State recovers and puts on a drive and kicks a field goal of its own. A six-point turnaround.

*********** Kirk Ferentz is now #5 among all Big Ten coaches in conference wins, after Hayes, Stagg, Schembechler and Paterno (assuming the NCAA hasn’t yet erased Joe Paterno’s wins from the Big Ten’s book).

*********** Penn State’s Trace McSorley, taken out of the game earlier with a leg injury, comes back in and runs a 51-yard keeper for a TD. Penn State leads, 24-17.

*********** USC had been leading the whole game, when Arizona State’s N’Keal Harry pulled off an all-time great punt return and the Sun Devils went ahead, 31-28.

*********** Oregon State, after being blown out by Colorado 31-8, scored again to make it 31-28.

*********** TCU, down 27-24, drives to the Kansas 7 yard line with 1:11 left - and fumbles.  Kansas recovers and runs the clock down to 7 seconds, then takes a safety, leaving one second on the clock.  Time runs out on the free kick and Kansas has its first win over TCU since 1997.

*********** Washington takes the field against Cal with fruity-looking purpley helmets, the bright idea, no doubt, of some flit at Nike.

*********** Oregon State scores with :29 left to tie the score at 34-34.  And then THE DAMN KICKER MISSES THE EXTRA POINT!!!  We’re headed for overtime.

*********** Arizona State, up 31-28 on USC, calls a QB keeper on 3rd and 1 and it’s good for  a long TD. Final: ASU, 38-28.  I believe I’ve already said this, but just in case I haven’t - Herm Edwards is putting a well-coached football team on the field.  I still think he’s a blowhard, but I have to give him credit where it’s due.

*********** MIchigan State is definitely good enough to beat Ohio State.

*********** Iowa was driving with 3:15 left when the QB threw an interception.  Actually, it looked like a sure completion but a shallow receiver appeared to let the ball go past him, perhaps thinking it was intended for a deeper receiver. Instead, it landed in the arms of a Penn State defender.  Game over.

*********** Oregon State scores in OT, then stops Colorado, ending the Beavers’ 13-game conference losing streak - and their 22-game road losing streak.

*********** Halftime, Oklahoma State 31, Texas 14. Wow.

*********** Cal scores only one TD, and it’s on an interception return, after Washington mystifyingly replaces its starting QB.  But one’s enough, and Cal wins.  Washington looks flat and uninterested.

Said Huskies’ coach Chris Peterson afterward, “Obviously painful. Painful on offense. Let me start by saying: Pulling Jake (Browning) out, that had more to do with me trying to do something to help this offense way more than it did with Jake. Jake is a competitor. Jake does everything we ask. But, you know, we got to try help this offense out somehow, someway…”

Well, Coach, since you brought it up:  what about a real fullback?  A couple of tight ends?  An off-tackle play?

(I have yet to hear back from them on my suggestion that they stop playing patty-cake on offense and start playing physical football.)

*********** Stanford finally finds an offense and gives Washington State all it wants, but ultimately it’s not enough. Stanford receiver JJ Arcega-Whiteside is as good a receiver as there is anywhere.

*********** Oklahoma State takes a knee but a Texas defensive end with a wildass mane of hair and an attitude decides he’s going to go hard, and it nearly starts a brawl.  For a moment it looks as if the two coaches will get into it, but they kiss and make up at midfield afterwards.

That kid down on the field afterwards? The one in the middle of the crowd? The one in the orange tee-shirt?  That was my grandson, Mike Tiffany. 

*********** Washington State wins and Mike Leach says of his QB, Gardner Minshew, “I think he’s the best quarterback in the country.”

He might be right, now that it’s obviously not Oregon’s Josh Herbert.  Herbert, with no running game to take the heat off him, wasn’t at all sharp, and the Arizona Wildcats hammered the Ducks.

To be frank, the Ducks looked as if their season ended last week in Pullman.  Their old coach, Willie Taggart, was a continent away, calling his players quitters.  If he’d stayed at Oregon, he might have been saying the same thing Saturday night.

*********** You could have made a lot of money betting on the underdogs in the Pac-12 Saturday.  (Utah played UCLA on Friday night.)

All five games were upsets:
Oregon State over Colorado
Cal over Washington
Arizona State over USC
Arizona over Oregon
Washington State over Stanford

*********** It would take quite a bit of digging for find out, but I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest since 1975 and I sure can’t remember a Saturday when Oregon and Washington both lost and Oregon State and Washington State both won.

*********** Syracuse beat NC State in the Dome, and the Orange is bowl eligible for the first time since 2013.  Syracuse QB Eric Dungy is an Oregon kid.

*********** A bank of lights went out in Fresno and they sent the teams inside.  Not sure why.  We could see fine on TV.  Maybe somebody saw the word “lighting” problems and  read “lightning” problems.  No matter.  Fresno beat Hawaii handily.  Get this: Washington State is the only Pac-12 team in the Top 25 this week.  But Fresno State is in there. In other words, the Bulldogs outrank 11 of the 12 Pac-12 schools.

*********** NFL miscellany….

Jameis Winston may be the face of the Bucs’ franchise, but Ryan Fitapatrick is the better QB, and he damn near pulled out a win yesterday. 

I really think that the nightclub “brawl” in London started when the four Jaguars’ players found out they were actually expected to pay their entire $64,000 tab - that they weren’t being comped all those $500 bottles of champagne simply because they were star athletes.

Without all the Packer fans in attendance, the Rams, as good as they are, would have had half the crowd they did.

*********** Hugh,

I also hope Northwestern can pull off a win against Wisconsin for "personal" reasons.  Go Gophers!

Would like to see Minnesota vs. Indiana tonight but I'll be watching a flag football game instead.
Go Gophers!

Hawaii will give Fresno State a battle.  Should be a good one to watch!  Go Bulldogs!

We spent last weekend in Denver.  You could say we smelled a "Rocky Mountain High" all three days we were there.

Pop Warner was way ahead of his time, and why he is still considered one of the great football coaching minds of all time.

I can vouch for that long-time DW coach and what he says.  As the former HC here we ran the DW and won.  Something that had not been done in the previous 5 years of the school's existence.  After I stepped down the new HC abandoned the DW for the "Air Raid" offense.  They went 3-7.  After that coach stepped down the next HC abandoned the Air Raid for the Spread Option.  They went Ofer.  Those last two years may have killed the football program.

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas


*********** The Double Wing rolls…

Pete Porcelli, who for five years had been head coach at Hoosic Valley High in the nearly-unpronounceable town of Schaghticoke, New York -  north of Albany -  hung it up after last season.

He’d had a good run - three straight playoff spots at a school that was seriously considering dropping football before he took over.

And then he wrote me to say that he was back in the saddle.   He’d reconsidered, and he’d rescinded his resignation. 

After the first three games, though, he had to have some second thoughts.  His kids were 0-3.

He didn’t panic - he’d been in the same spot last year.  He stayed the course, and his kids kept getting better.

And they began to win, And win.  Now, they’ve won six straight, defeating Whitehall in the Super Bowl semi-final, 22-7.

In next week’s final, they’ll face Warrensburg (7-1). It ought to be VERY interesting - Warrensburg beat them, 34-14 in week two.

Don’t bet against Hoosic Valley:  Whitehall, the team they just beat 22-7, beat them 40-20 back in week three.

*********** The Double Wing rolls… In his second year at Cimarron, Kansas, Coach Greg Koenig has the program on the move.

His Blue Jays are now 8-1, their only loss coming in the opening game after a lightning-caused cancellation when they trailed, 27-20 early in the fourth quarter.

Since then, though, the Blue Jays have run off eight straight. Seven of them were by large margins, including Friday night’s opening-round 52-14 playoff win over Ellsworth.

It was Cimarron’s first playoff win since 1998, and the first time since 2004 that a Cimarron team has won more than seven games in a season

Cimarron made short work of things, leading Ellsworth 22-0 after one quarter and 30-0 at the half.  Ellsworth’s two scores came in the fourth quarter.

Sophomore A-Back Tate Seabolt carried 36 times for 183 yards and two TDs.

Next up: Hoisington (7-2), a 38-13 first-round winner over Sterling.  Cimarron beat Sterling earlier in the season, 74-19.    Hoisington beat  Ellsworth, Cimarron's first-round victim,  48-14.


*********** The Double Wing rolls…

Coach,

Our regular season is done. We used to be called the Junior pride. Now we are the Hornets. We went from 1-8 last year to 7-1. Complete turn around in 1 year. We went from worst offense to number 2 in one year if installing the DW. We have a Bye in first round of playoffs. Our only loss was to the number 1 team. This was achieved using only the following plays. Super Power, Counter, Wedge, reach (we have a 100 meter dash champion) and Brown/Black pass. We once in a while run Criss Cross Counter.

You can use us as a testimonial. We used your new book to educate coaches and implement.

John Coelho
Turlock, California



Coach,

I appreciate the update and the offer to be a testimonial.

My congratulations to you, your players and your staff.  I’m certainly proud of the job you did and the results that you achieved.  

Best of luck in the playoffs!

*********** The Open Wing rolls…

Cole Shaffer, a former player for me in LaCenter, Washington, and a former assistant of mine at Washougal, Washington, now lives in Northern Colorado, where he owns and runs several NAPA stores. He’s just finishing his first season as a youth coach, running my Open Wing offense, and he sent me this update…

Hi Coach,

Well it was a battle, but we won our semi-final playoff game 13-6. They played us tough and we struggled to move the ball continuously, but we finally broke a 6-G Keep that got us down to the 5. Then I told our kids that we needed the wedge of our lives. You see, the team we were playing has a Nose Tackle that outweighs most everyone on our line by 50 pounds. But as you can see in the photo below, the kids did run the wedge of their lives and we drove the big kid all the way into the end zone for the game winning TD.

It's been a tremendous run, and we have one more game to go. We play the Northern Warriors again, the only team we haven't beat. But our defense is playing the best it has all year, and we have a great game plan on offense. Should be fun. Win or lose, I couldn't be more proud to have the smallest (in numbers and size) team in the league and be headed to the Championship.

So much fun, thanks as always for you help!!

(That’s Coach Shaffer’s team in red. Whether open Wingers or Double Wingers,  readers will recognize the Wedge in the photo below!)



*********** QUIZ  ANSWER:  The son of a Polish-immigrant coal miner, Dick Modzelewski (Mod-jel-EFF-ski) was a native of Natrona Heights, in western Pennsylvania, and a three-sport star at Har-Brack High.

He played with his older brother, Ed, on Jim Tatum’s powerful Maryland teams of the early 1950s.

Although at 6 foot, 215, Ed was the smaller of the two,  Ed had already made a name for himself at Maryland as a powerful runner - that name was “Big Mo,” a takeoff on the nickname of the famed World War II battleship, the USS Missouri.  When Dick arrived, although he outweighed Ed by at least 30 pounds, he was dubbed, half-jokingly, “Little Mo.”

During his three years of eligibility, the Terps went 24-4-1, including a 22-game win streak. In the 1951 Sugar Bowl, the third-ranked Terps defeated previously unbeaten (and already-crowned national Champion) Tennessee, 28-13. (Big Mo gained 153 yards and was named the game’s Most Valuable Player.)

In 1952 he was a consensus All-American, and he won the Outland Trophy as the nation’s best interior lineman.

A second-round draft choice of the Redskins, he played with four teams during his career: Redskins, Steelers, Giants and Browns.  His best years (1956-1963) were spent on the front line - along with Roosevelt Grier, Jim Katkavage and Andy Robustelli - of the great New York Giants’ defenses of Tom Landry.  Although future Hall-of-Famers Grier and Robustelli got more ink, he was a consistent solid performer in Landry’s scheme.

In 1964, he had the good fortune to be traded to Cleveland, and although intended as a backup on the defensive line, he wound up starting - on the last Browns’ team to win an NFL title.

Dick Modzelewski is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and the National Polish American Sports Hall of Fame.

He died last week.  He was 87.


CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING DICK MODZELEWSKI

JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
GREG KOENIG - CIMARRON, KANSAS
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN

BIG MO (LEFT) AND LITTLE MO AT MARYLAND


*********** Ed Modzelewski’s obit - http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/terps/bs-sp-obit-modzelewski-20150301-story.html

*********** QUIZ - He is one of only three men to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a player and also as a coach.

A single wing coach all the way, in the span of just eight years, he won conference championships with three different teams, and he was named Coach of the Year in three different conferences.

A native of Kingston, Tennessee, not far from Knoxville, he played at Tennessee under  General Bob Neyland.  He started every game for three years, during which time the Vols were 23-5-3, and in his senior year, 1938, he was a consensus All-American end and captain of a Tennessee team that went 11-0. The Vols went to the Orange Bowl his senior year - the first bowl game that Tennessee ever played in - and defeated Oklahoma.

After graduating from college, he coached at Mississippi State for three years, then served as an officer in the Navy during World War II. After his discharge, he spent one more season at Mississippi State before landing the head coaching job at Wyoming.

Patterning his game after that of General Neyland, he coached the Cowboys to a  39-17-1 record in six years.  In 1949 the Cowboys went 9-1 and in 1950 they went 10-0, including a Gator Bowl win, and were ranked 12th in the AP poll. He was named Skyline Conference Coach of the Year.

In 1953 he took over a sorry Arkansas program, one that hadn’t had a winning season since 1947, and by October of his second year, 1954, his Hogs were the talk of the country.  The “25 Little Pigs” were unbeaten after knocking off Texas and Ole Miss on consecutive Saturdays.  They did eventually lose three, including a loss to Georgia Tech in the Cotton Bowl, but they won the Southwest Conference championship. Their 8-3 finish earned him Southwest Conference Coach of the Year honors, a new car - courtesy of the boosters - and an offer to be the head coach at his alma mater.

Just as Bear Bryant would leave Texas A & M for Alabama a few years later because “Mama called,”  he couldn’t turn his alma mater down. He took the Tennessee job, and in his second year at Knoxville, the Vols went 10-1, going unbeaten in the SEC and losing only to Baylor in the Cotton Bowl.  He was named SEC and AFCA Coach of the Year.

But in his final five seasons at Tennessee, his teams went 25-22-3 and he was let go, one game short of his 100th career win.

His overall record at Wyoming, Arkansas and Tennessee was 99-56-1.

He died of viral pneumonia in 1969.  He was just 51.

So far as I can determine, we aren't kin.

FRID

The game that looked so made for national TV a week ago is now down to two backups battling each other Friday night when Phoenix Pinnacle plays host to Scottsdale Chaparral.  Pinnacle senior quarterback Spencer Rattler, who is committed to Oklahoma, did not go to practice Thursday morning and won't play in the game.

Coach Dana Zupke confirmed it, but he wouldn't say what happened to Rattler.

Rattler returned a direct message on Twitter, saying, "sprained MCL, out for a while."

Rattler practiced Wednesday evening with the Netflix documentary crew following him for Season 3 of QB1.

Asked Thursday afternoon when the injury happened, Rattler said, "I felt it bugging me Tuesday. Didn’t go to practice this morning.

I do miss running a series-based offense the most...it's kind of in my football DNA if you will at this point...I'm always looking for complimentary plays, etc. Our second group gets zero reps on offense so I'm thinking about asking the coach if I can work with them and install a simple DW series.

It kind of cracks me up....coaches get such crap about running the DW, but we run the I formation as our base formation, and guess what, our 2-foot splits become 6-inch splits when someone lines up in gaps and ruins our plays. We played another team who ran the straight T against us.  They had better athletes, but weren't well coached so we beat them. I knew that they had run the DW in the recent past so mentioned to their coach, a young guy, that we had also prepared for the DW. His response was, "yeah, the HC used to make me run that, but not this season"....I'm thinking, dude, you're dissing the DW, but you ran the straight T against us (and not very well, no dive fakes, very little misdirection, etc.). Crazy.

TUESD