FRIDAY, JANUARY  15,  2021 - “What a compliment  to all the teams in the country that went back out there and finished this thing! For us to be even talking about a national championship game is remarkable.” Dave Clawson, Wake Forest coach

*********** BLACK LION AWARD EXTENDED TO TEAMS THAT AREN’T PLAYING IN THE FALL!

A coach, whether or not his team is playing a fall season, may now nominate for the  Black Lion Award  a player who has been a demonstrated leader of his teammates in these tough times. That leadership could show itself in a number of different ways and we’re leaving it up to the coach to describe it.

We think that leadership in the work of preparation - made even tougher by virtual learning and assorted state restrictions - is as worthy of recognition as leadership in the actual game, so therefore,  even if his team doesn’t play football this fall, a player can qualify for the Black Lion Award  by demonstrating that he has been willing to lead from the front - to get his teammates to do the things that he knows need to be done.

We ask that the head coach contact us - blacklionaward@mac.com - to register his team by giving us (1) his name and (2) his team’s name and (3)  the address where the award should be sent.

And then we ask the head coach to write the nomination - to “write him up” as if he were recommending the player for a military medal.  We do insist that the letter (an e-mail is best) and what it says honors the player just as much as the Black Lion Award does.

There is never any cost to you or your school to take part in the Black Lion Award program. The Black Lion Award is privately funded and is not in any way a recruitment tool. (I am a football coach and I administer the award.)

(Your player will receive a certificate and a Black Lions "patch," and his name and his letter will become a part of the Annual Report to the patrons of the Black Lion Award. If you nominate a player for his leadership efforts during the preparation period, you may still present a second award for your spring season.)


*********** If I were asked to describe Alabama in one word, I’d say, “Whew.”

Great performance Monday night.  Great job in the playoffs.  Great season.

Great team.  Maybe the greatest ever. I’ve been following football since the 1940s, and I know it’s foolish to compare teams from different eras.  In my case, although I’ve seen many good teams, in fairness, I’ve looked at them over the years through different lenses. Now, looking at this Alabama team through the lens of a longtime coach, I can’t imagine any of the teams from the past staying on the field with them.

There have been other teams just as dominant - Notre Dame and Army in the late 40s come to mind.  In the span of seven seasons from 1943 through 1949, Notre Dame had three Heisman Trophy winners - Bertelli, Lujack and Hart - and four national titles.  Army, especially when the War years gave it an unquestioned recruiting advantage,  won back-to-back national titles in 1945 and 1946, , and its ’46 team placed three players - Glenn Davis, Doc Blanchard and Arnold Tucker - in the top five of the Heisman balloting. Not until this year’s Alabama team, with Smith, Harris and Jones, had that been matched.

Bama did not grind out its wins.  With great talent and an imaginative offensive scheme, the Tide averaged an astonishing 48.5 points per game against a schedule that consisted entirely of conference foes - no “Compass Colleges” - and two of the other three playoff teams.

And they did it the old-fashioned way, with tough, disciplined  players who played hard and gave no quarter - and kept their mouths shut. 

And they did it with players that they recruited and developed.

And with players that stuck around and waited their turn.

*********** My friend Mike Lude admitted to those of us on my Tuesday night Zoom that he had a rooting interest in Monday night’s national championship game.  Well, I guess he did.

As AD at Kent State, Mike hired Don James to be his head coach, and he was the AD when James brought a former player named Nick Saban on as a graduate assistant. In “Chasing the Bear,” Lars Anderson writes, “Detailed, organized and systematic in how he approached everything, James had as large an influence on Saban as any coach other than his father. Even as a player, Saban was constantly in James’ shadow, absorbing how he watched film, how he talked to players, how he dealt with his assistants, how he interacted with the media, how he handled problems.

When James left to become head coach at Washington, his successor, Denny Fitzgerald, told Mike he wanted to hire young Saban full-time as his linebacker coach, and Mike approved. 

*********** For the third or fourth - or was it fifth? - straight year, I watched the championship game on one TV, but listened (and watched) on another TV turned to ESPN’s “Coaches’ Film Room.”

Who needs the usual BS from Herbie and whoever, and the breathless girls on the sidelines, when you can listen to real, honest-to-God college coaches giving you real, honest-to-God analysis of the game?

Coaches’ Film Room is for the hard core.

This year’s crew was only four - smaller than normal, possibly because of the social distancing crap. In the studio, but socially distancing (but NOT WEARING MASKS!!!) were Gene Chizik, who served as moderator, Hugh Freeze of Liberty, and Dave Clawson of Wake Forest. Tuned in remote was Sam Washington, of North Carolina A & T.  They never told us why Coach Washington wasn’t in the studio, and to a certain extent it did seem to limit his participation.

I enjoyed the coaches perspective on a number of topics, including what you tell your players before a big game like this, and they said things like, “be yourselves,” “we belong here,” and so on, but all of them, to a man, said, “Have fun.” 

I enjoyed their discussion of the coin toss. Bama deferred, and Coach Freeze said he always did, too. Coach Clawson said he did, also, not because he didn’t want the ball, but because he believes more games are won and lost in what he called the "middle eight" - the four minutes before and four minutes after halftime - and how scoring before the half and then coming right back to start the second half with the ball can lead to a "14-point swing."

Being a ball-control coach myself, I want the ball, but it was instructive to hear the thinking, and with the offenses that most college coaches run, it makes sense.

I thought they did an exceptional job of illustrating and explaining how well Bama OC Steve Sarkisian managed to move DeVonta Smith around via formationing and motion making him a moving target and making it impossible for Ohio State to do anything extraordinary to cover him.

Some of the “Return” or “Yoyo” motion that Bama used to flummox the Buckeyes’ defense so impressed the coaches that you could see them say “Wow!” as they watched.

They teased each other about where exactly you start to call a “pick” a “rub,” and they noted the number of times (at least two or three) that Bama linemen were downfield on RPO’s before finally getting called for it. The other coaches accused Coach Washington, a defensive guy, of “calling it in.”  Coach Clawson said that the call probably came from the Ohio State sideline.

As halftime approached and Bama held a 35-17 lead, Coach Chizik brought up the very real possibility that Bama could score again in the minute or so left to play and go in leading 42-17.  He asked what you tell your team in a spot like that.

Coach Freeze told how former Ole Miss coach Billy Brewer addressed this very situation  at halftime of a bowl game,  telling his team, “We can go back out there and play for 60 minutes and be respectable and come back and try to win this thing or we can be on the bus halfway back to home before they know we’re gone!”

They all had a good laugh at that one, but then Coach Clawson observed, “That’s a great metaphor for this season. How many teams probably halfway through the season wanted to get on the bus? What a compliment  to all the teams in the country that went back out there and finished this thing! For us to be even talking about a national championship game is remarkable.”

*********** For many years I’ve wanted to go to the AFCA Convention.  The first one I attended was in 1975, in Washington, DC, and for one reason or another, I haven’t been to one since. Even after I had the money, I never seemed to have the time.

It’s taking place right now.  This year, it’s online, so I ought to be “attending,” right?

Well, guess what?  Crazy as this sounds, I find I still don’t seem to have the time.

*********** Stewart Mandel, in The Athletic wondered,  “What if Rich Rod had taken the Alabama job?”  What if, back in December of 2006, Rich Rodriguez had decided to take the Alabama job? What would have happened at Bama?  What would have happened with Nick Saban?

I’ll answer the first part - the part about Rich Rob.

The Bama job was all his.  The Birmingham paper had already broken the “news” that he’d accepted Bama’s offer.  Instead, though, he crossed ‘em up, and made a last-minute decision to stay at West Virginia.

Hard to say how Rodriguez would have done in Tuscaloosa.  He stayed just one more year at West Virginia, then jumped to Michigan for a ton of money. He left Michigan a failure, both on the field (15-22) and off, accused by the NCAA of numerous violations (the first ever in the long history of Michigan football).

He was hired a few years later by Arizona, where he not only failed to meet on-field expectations (43-35 overall, 24-30 in conference play) but also got hit with a bit of a sex scandal and multimillion-dollar sexual harassment lawsuit by a university employee.

He has since spent a year as OC at Ole Miss, and most recently was hired as OC at Louisiana-Monroe.

Nothing there to indicate that Rich Rod would have coached Alabama to six national titles.

Meanwhile, a month after Rodriguez stiffed him, Bama AD Mal Moore persuaded Nick Saban, who’d already turned him down once, to be the Bama coach. Rumors were that Moore told Saban that if he didn’t come back to Alabama with Saban as his coach, he wasn’t going back - he might as well just go on to Cuba.

Mandel’s part of the answer concerns Saban:  would he have been able to do what he’s done at Bama at some other school?  Mandel says yes:

Saban was light years ahead of the competition in terms of applying an NFL-type personnel operation to college recruiting. We’ve focused a lot lately on his evolution with offenses, but his success starts with the way he’s essentially perfected the art of recruiting. Not so much “selling” recruits — lots of coaches are excellent at that — but identifying and evaluating the right guys and developing them. You would think at some point, one of his annual top-three classes just wouldn’t pan out. It’s yet to happen. And I have no doubt he could have replicated his operation at a school with the resources to let him hire his small army of support staffers.

Carson Wentz will hire the next coach. It makes sense. After all, he fired the last one.

Jeffrey Lurie made this plain Monday, when he ushered Pederson out the door and patted him on the back with a hand wearing the only Super Bowl ring Lurie’s ever owned. Then again, considering Pederson won him that ring and not Wentz, maybe that hand performed more of a stabbing motion.

Wrote Los Angeles Times sportswriter Jerry Crowe, "It's somehow apt that the Trojans were asked to return the Grantland Rice Trophy after being stripped of the 2004 Football Writers Assn. of America national championship... Grantland Rice was the legendary early 20th century sportswriter who wrote, 'When the great scorer comes/to mark against your name/He'll write not 'won' or 'lost'/but how you played the game.'"

Among Carroll's critics in the media was longtime Los Angeles Times sportswriter Bill Plaschke, who said that in one stroke, Carroll went

from a coach who presided over the greatest days in USC football history to one who was in charge of its biggest embarrassment. He goes from saint to scallywag. Carroll says he didn't know about the Bush violations. That now seems impossible... ...he made $33 million from violations that will cost his old school its reputation, and folks here will never look at him the same.

Sporting News writer Mike Florio called for the Seahawks to fire Carroll, saying that "justice won't truly be served until the only coaching Carroll ever does entails holding an Xbox controller."
 
On August 26, 2010, the Football Writers Association of America announced it would take back USC's 2004 Grantland Rice Trophy and leave that year's award vacant, the only vacancy in the over half century of the history of the award. The FWAA also said it would not consider USC as a candidate for the award for the 2010 season. New USC athletic director Pat Haden said USC would return the trophy, stating, "While we know that some fans and former student-athletes may be disappointed, our central priority at this time is our overall commitment to compliance and this action is in line with the standards we have set for our entire athletic program."

TUESDAY, JANUARY  12, 2021 -

As a UI alumnus who has lived more than a half century, I always chuckle when people say “Illinois will be content with 6-7 wins per season in football”. Oh, but if it were true! Whenever Illinois football achieves any modicum of significant success (see Mike White taking UI to a Rose Bowl, Ron Turner taking UI to a BCS Bowl, Ron Zook taking UI to a Rose Bowl), the fan base decides “Why not us?” and the fans’ standards change mightily. Good luck, Brett. Perhaps your role model in this job should be John Mackovic. He coached consistently competitive teams, but never reached the heights that would have turned the fickle UI fanbase against him.

"About that time (following Peyton's junior season in high school) I ran into Bill Walsh, the former 49ers coach, in New York, and Walsh told me I should send Peyton to his camp at Stanford University in Palo Alto. He said, 'I always pull out the top five or six quarterbacks and we work with them individually every day in the stadium. It's a terrific learning experience.'

"The opportunity was too good to pass up. That summer Peyton got a friend, Walker Jones. another prospect whose father had played at Ole Miss, to go with him... all the way to northern California to learn at the feet of an offensive master. They were there for five days. But the master, Coach Walsh, was there for only one. For pictures. And that was it. He never showed for any of the workouts. Peyton was not happy."

FRIDAY, JANUARY  8, 2021 -

*********** How many were the times, just during the bowl season, that we’ve seen coaches have to go onto the field to break up a scuffle?

His name’s Mike Johnson. He’s a senior from Hinsdale, Illinois, and he’s been a regular at left guard all season, so he's familiar with hard-nosed football. 

In the recent Liberty Bowl game against West Virginia, after a seven-minute-long drive to open the second half resulted in an Army touchdown, he was celebrating, along  with the rest of the Army offense, when a West Virginia player (#9 if you must know) ran from the other side of the line, hitting an Army player in the back and knocking him to the ground. (As if he’d had some experience doing such things, or perhaps because he was ashamed of what he’d just done, Mister 9 turned and slunk away undetected.)

A couple of the Army guys, understandably pissed, got in the faces of a couple of Mountaineers (who quite possibly had no idea what had happened to provoke them).

Here’s where Mike Johnson came in.  He’s the guy at the left in the circle. (Did I mention he’s a team captain?)




After “suggesting” that a West Virginian back up, he's seen here applying a double horse collar to the two teammates  and pulling them back from the confrontation.

Then, looking around and seeing other teammates showing signs of wanting to get  in on the action, he physically turned them around, and pointing toward the Army sideline, directed them to leave the scene.

Being a West Point Cadet, he led.  And being West Point Cadets, his teammates respected his authority.

It’s pretty dramatic when you look at it, because few are the occasions in today’s society that a guy will take a strong stand for what’s right, even though it might make him unpopular.

That's tough in today's society, where popularity ranks second only to fame in importance.

But that’s what a leader does.  Right is right, and popularity be damned.


*********** Doc Holliday is out at Marshall.

Two weeks ago, he was named Conference-USA Coach of the Year. He earned the honor - his Thundering Herd went 7-3 this year and won its division.  When he took over the program it had had only two winning seasons in the previous seven, and in his 11 years there, he went 85-54. His teams won three division titles, six bowl games and the 2014 Conference-USA championship. 

That might be enough to help him get another job, but he’s 63, and the chances of that are slim.

“Head coach Doc Holliday will not return,” was all the headlines said. Didn’t sound like a retirement to me, though, and sure enough my suspicion was confirmed when Holliday announced that the president would not extend his contact when it expires this summer.

This past season, his Herd was undefeated after seven games and among the top three Group of 5 teams, but then they lost their last three games, including the C-USA championship game.

He did everything right as an article in West Virginia Metro News attests:

Holliday’s time at Marshall was good. He embraced the community and the culture, telling Marshall’s story to anyone who would listen.

He brought the program out of the doldrums it had slipped into following Bob Pruett’s sudden retirement in the spring of 2005. He help shape the lives of the young men who played for him leaving a last impact that went far beyond the football field.

His players, staff and other coaches around the country respected him.

But in the end, all the achievements, the accolades and the admiration of former players weren’t good enough to keep his job.

Florida A&M this year may be the best small college team in the South, if not the nation. Showing films to a clinic recently, Coach Jake Gaither observed, “this back runs 9.5. This one runs 9.4.” The other coaches drooled.  “And this one runs 9.2.” Besides world record holder Bob Hayes, halfback, this year’s explosive runners are halfback Bob Paremore, triple threat quarterback Jim Tullis and fullback Hewritt Dixon. “If a back can’t get from his spot into the hole in O.8,” says Gaither, “we make him a lineman.”

“In the opening game with Miami you’re going to see an all America quarterback,” Pitt quarterback Jim Traficant immodestly informed the locker room after a spectacular practice last spring. “Yeah,“ a teammate retorted laconically. “His name is George Mira.” The name was indeed George Mira as the facile Key Wester led touchdown marches of 97, 73 and 95 yards for a 23-14  Miami victory.

The “immodest” Jim Traficant would attain a certain amount of fame in politics, first as sheriff of Mahoning County, Ohio, and then as a United States congressman for 17 years.  His time in Congress ended when he was convicted on a number of charges, including racketeering. He was expelled from the House of Representatives, and wound up serving seven years in prison.


Among the ads I mentioned, none was more indicative of the way our culture has changed than one suggesting the perfect Christmas gift for Junior:



Kids nowadays wouldn’t want a gift like this anyhow because the pants cover the knees.

*********** I had an exchange with a coach who told me that in the newsletter he sends out to parents and players he gave it a little thought and decided to edit out a comment that he felt glorified  hitting, out of concern for the way moms might interpret it.

I totally agree.  I think that if I set out to design football in such a way as to persuade mothers not to let their boys play football (and let’s not kid ourselves - in today’s world, moms, single or not, are the ones making that decision) I couldn’t do a better job than a lot of today’s coaches.

The AFCA to its credit has long recognized the danger of this approach, and has been way ahead of its members for years in discouraging the use of terms like “smashmouth.”

Unfortunately not enough coaches belong to the AFCA, and of those who do, not enough pay enough attention to the importance of those things.

A perfect example of this is the fact that despite the emphasis place on targeting by people who write the rules and officiate the games, its incidence has not decreased. That would seem to indicate that there are way too many coaches who don’t care enough about our sport to actively discourage targeting.

Way too many football coaches seem to think that the garden weeds itself - that football will last forever without their having to do a damn thing to take care of it.  You’d think after the upheaval in so many aspects of our culture in the past 10 months or so that they’d begin to realize that in today’s world nothing is guaranteed permanency.

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

Texas A&M eventually pulled away from North Carolina to win the Orange Bowl.  The same North Carolina team that #4 Notre Dame beat.  The debate will continue as to whether ND or A&M should have been in the playoff.  A&M proved itself worthy of consideration, but to no avail.  ANY #4 team would have been beaten by Alabama.

Alabama SHOULD beat Ohio State (won't hurt my feelings), but at times the Tide has proven it can stumble in big games, but so can OSU. Still...ROLL TIDE!

Some of the best football I watched on TV this past weekend was the Texas high school variety.  Yes, they are still playing.  Class 6A and 5A schools started playing in October.  4A, 3A, 2A, and 6 man started on time in September and have concluded their seasons.  The 6A and 5A regional championships were held this past weekend.  The state semi-finals will be held on Saturday.  Three schools from the Austin area made it to the semis.  Westlake 13-0, Buda Hays 10-3, Cedar Park 12-0, and Liberty Hill 12-0.  Buda Hays and Liberty Hill both run the Texas Slot-T (similar to the DW).  The state championship games will be held the following week.

The eyes of Texas have become blind (Sarkisian), while their hindsight is still blurry (Brown).

I've been coaching in a spread offense for the past couple of years and believe me, not only is HOLDING a pox on the game, it has become acceptable.

Have a great week.

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

*********** QUIZ ANSWER: George Ratterman grew up in a wealthy family in suburban Cincinnati, and was an outstanding athlete and student at St. Xavier High School.

He would spend some of his best football years playing second fiddle behind two of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the game.

Although good enough to play at almost any college in the country, he went to Notre Dame, where he played behind the great Johnny Lujack, winner of the Heisman Trophy in 1947.

Later, in the NFL, he would spent four years in Cleveland as backup to the Browns’ legendary Otto Graham.

At Notre Dame he was the fourth and last student in school history to earn letters in four different sports. (Lujack was the third.) Famed Irish coach Frank Leahy called him “The greatest all-around athlete in Notre Dame’s history.” 

He was relatively unknown to the sports public until the summer after his graduation, 1947, when he led the College All-Stars to an upset win over the defending NFL champion Chicago Bears.

With a bidding war going on between the NFL and the AAFC, he signed with the Buffalo Bills of the new league, and as a 20-year-old rookie, he  threw 22 touchdown passes, which stood as a record for a rookie until Peyton Manning broke it in 1998.

He led the Bills to the AAFC championship game in 1948, and in three years in Buffalo,  he threw 52 touchdown passes.  But he also threw 55 interceptions, an AAFC career record that will never be broken.

When the AAFC and NFL merged in 1950, he became the property of the New York Yanks.

He spent a year with the Yanks, leading the NFL in touchdown passes, then jumped to Montreal in the CFL in  1951. In 1952 he returned to the NFL, this time with the Cleveland Browns, intended to be Otto Graham’s successor.

He took over after Graham retired in 1956, but a serious leg injury four games into the season ended his career.  During that time he attained a measure of fame as the first player to wear a radio receiver in his helmet.  At a time when most quarterbacks called their own plays, Browns’ coach Paul Brown would send plays using what he called “messenger guards,” and after four games, NFL Commisioner Bert Bert outlawed the use of radio.

All the time he had been playing, he had also been attending law school at night and in the off-season, and after graduating with his law degree in 1956 he went into the investment business in Cincinnati.

He was a well-known figure in the Cincinnati area, and in 1961 he was persuaded to run for sheriff of Campbell County, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati. Campaigning on a platform aimed at ending the open gambling and prostitution in the city of Newport, he soon ran afoul of the mob.   In an attempt to blackmail him and force him out of the race, he was slipped a drink with knockout drops in it, and put into bed with a local stripper.  But the plot backfired when it when it was discovered that had happened, and the publicity led to his victory in the race.

In the mi-60s, he served as general counsel for the American Football League Players Association, when Jack Kemp was its president.

After a time as sheriff, he ran unsuccessfully for a couple of other offices.  Offered a position with a Denver investment firm, he moved west and spent the rest of his life in Colorado, where he died in 2007.

A many-talented person, he was so accomplished as a pianist that he once played in a concert with the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra.

He had a reputation as a prankster and a fun lover, often to the consternation of the very serious Paul Brown, and he later wrote a book devoted primarily to the humorous aspects of his career.

From 1970 to 1973 he did color analysis on radio and TV broadcasts of NFL games, and he was Jim Simpson’s partner on the radio broadcast of the very first Super Bowl.

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING GEORGE RATTERMAN

JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
GREG KOENIG - COLORADO SPRINGS
BILL NELSON - THORNTON, COLORADO
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
DAVE KEMMICK - MT. JOY, PENNSYLVANIA
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
JOHN ROTHWELL - CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS
TOM WALLS - WINNIPEG, MANITOBA
DAVID CRUMP - OWENSBORO, KENTUCKY

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

George Ratterman isn't a name that I was familiar with, but again I have enjoyed learning about him because of your quiz.

Greg Koenig
Colorado Springs

https://www.nkytribune.com/2020/12/our-rich-history-george-ratterman-1926-2007-football-star-and-reform-sheriff-tackled-newports-cleanup/


*********** As much of an ND fan as I am I had to do some digging on this one!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

*********** After my initial investigation I settled on Frank Tripucka.  The more I read about him the more things didn't line up with your description, though there were similarities.

I am now changing my answer to George Ratterman.  Hard to believe he played for that long and was never the starter in college. I think that is what threw me off for a little.

Dave Kemmick
Mt. Joy, Pennsylvania

*********** I remember reading his book in High School..

Coach Kaz
Mark Kaczmarek
Davenport, Iowa

(The Book, for anyone who is interested, and I confess: I am,  is “Confessions of a Gypsy Quarterback.”)

***********  …and the stripper they threw in bed with George Ratterman? That would be...wait for it..."April Flowers"! (Juanita Jean Hodges).

J. Rothwell, DC
Corpus Christi, Texas


*********** Coach,  Last weekend Shandy and I watched the original Walking Tall. I am not sure if you remember this movie from 1973, but the description of Ratterman cleaning up Newport reminded me of Sheriff Buford Pusser.

Tom Walls
Winnipeg, Manitoba

*********** Hugh

I saw this man play quarterback for the Browns. I  can say from watching him play in Cleveland that he was no Otto Graham. It's nothing against George Ratterman, but Paul Brown missed the boat on him. He could not shine Otto Graham's shoes as a quarterback.

Keep those Browns players coming for quizzes.

David Crump
Owensboro, Kentucky

*********** QUIZ: He was one of the greatest receivers in the history of pro football. He was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, the son of a Mexican mother and an American father who worked as an engineer in Mexico.  He grew up speaking both English and Spanish, and all his life he remained proud of his Mexican heritage.

He played high school football at Los Angeles’ Manual Arts High, then played one season at Santa Clara before being drafted into the Army in World War II.  At that time, his father, who had been working in the Philippines, was being held in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Hoping to become a fighter pilot, he instead wound up serving stateside as a flight instructor while playing service football.

After his discharge, although he had been drafted by the Rams (who had just moved to Los Angeles from Cleveland), he enrolled at UCLA, where he was an All-American in 1946 and 1947. While at UCLA, boosters had managed to get him and some teammates well-paying roles in movies, and when he signed with the Rams in 1948, he joked that to play pro football he had to take a cut in pay.  (For the record, he was the first Mexican-American drafted by an NFL team.)

Although drafted as a defensive back,  he soon was moved to offense, where he was perfect for the Rams’ then-wide open attack.  At 6-2, 215 he had good size, and he had decent speed, but his strength was in running precise routes and, years before there was any thought given to a “five-yard check” rule,  doing so fearlessly.  In his first year, 1948, he led the NFL in receiving and was named Rookie of the Year.

In 1949, he broke the legendary Don Hutson’s single-season record of 73 receptions, when he caught 77 passes.  In his third season, 1950, he caught 84 passes in 12 games, a record that would last for 50 years, until it was broken by Terrell Owens (in 14 games). In one game against the Packers, he caught a then-record 18 passes.

The very next week, against the Bears, he helped the Rams win a spot in the NFL championship game with touchdown receptions of 86, 43 and 27 yards. For his great season, he was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player.

His overall performance began to taper off, and he retired after the 1956 season.

He then spent eight years as an assistant in the NFL, including four years at Green Bay from 1962-1965 under Vince Lombardi, before being hired in1967 to coach the expansion New Orleans Saints.  As might have been expected, he won just 13 games in his three seasons there, and found himself out of work.

The most significant thing he accomplished during his time in New Orleans may have been identifying and grooming the receiving talent of Dan Abramowicz, a 17th round draft pick from Xavier who would go on to play 111 games in the NFL, and at the time he retired held the NFL record for most consecutive games catching at least one pass (105).

After leaving the Saints, he took a year off,  spent spent two more years as offensive coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles, then returned to Southern California as head coach of the World Football League Southern California Sun, a position he held for two years until the WFL folded (for the second time).

After that, he held a number of positions in a variety of football operations and leagues, but he never worked in the NFL again.  He claimed that he was blacklisted, after having served as technical advisor in the making of the movie “North Dallas Forty,” whose portrayal of the league and its players the League found objectionable.

His overall career stats of 400 receptions for 5,397 yards and 38 touchdowns, especially coming as they did as the NFL was just beginning to emphasize the pass, were more than enough to earn him a spot in the NFL Hall of Fame.

TUESDAY, JANUARY  5, 2021 -

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2020 --

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2020  

********** MERRY CHRISTMAS - (THE WORDS  "HAPPY HOLIDAYS" WILL NEVER CROSS MY LIPS)

MY ANNUAL CHRISTMAS WISH FOR FOOTBALL COACHES EVERYWHERE (First printed in 2000, and  every Christmas since, with annual revisions as needed):

May you have.... Players' Parents who recognize that you are the football expert; who stand back and let you coach their kids; who know their kids' limitations and don't expect them to start unless in your opinion they're better than the other kids; who don't sit in the stands and openly criticize their kids' teammates; who don't think it's your job to get their kid an athletic scholarship; who schedule their vacations so their kids won't miss any practices; who know that your rules apply to everybody, and are not designed just to pick on their kid...

... A community that can recognize a year when even Vince Lombardi himself would have trouble getting those kids to line up straight... Opponents who are fun to play against; who love and respect the game and its rules as much as you do, and refuse to let their kids act like jerks... Students who want to be in your class and want to learn; who laugh at your jokes and turn their work in on time... who listen carefully, hear everything you say and understand all instructions the first time...Officials who will address you and your kids respectfully; who know and respect the rulebook; who will have as little effect on the game as possible; who will let you step a yard onto the playing field without snarling at you... Newspaper reporters who understand the game, always quote you accurately, and know when not to quote you at all...

A school district that provides you with a budget sufficient to run a competitive program... A superintendent (or principal)  who schedules teachers' workdays so that coaches don't have to miss any practices... An athletic director who has been a coach himself (or herself!) and knows what you need to be successful and knows that one of those things is not another head coach in the AD's office; who can say "No" to the bigger schools that want you on their schedules; who understands deep down that despite Title IX, all sports are not equal... Assistants who love the game as much as you do, buy completely into your philosophy, put in the time in the off-season, and are eager to learn everything they can about what you're doing. And why! And if they disagree with you, will tell you - and nobody else...  A booster club that puts its money back into the sports that earn it, and doesn't demand a voice in your team's operation... A principal who believes that when there's a teachers' position open, the applicant who is qualified to be an assistant coach deserves extra consideration; who doesn't come in to evaluate you on game day; who gives you weight training classes, and makes those  weight-training classes available to football players first, before opening them up to the general student body; who knows that during the season you are very busy, and heads off parent complaints so that you don't have to waste your time dealing with them; who can tell you in the morning in five minutes what took place in yesterday afternoon's two-hour-long faculty meeting that you missed because you had practice... A faculty that will notify you as soon as a player starts screwing off or causing problems in class, and will trust you to handle it without having to notify the administration... A baseball coach who encourages kids to play football and doesn't have them involved in tournaments that are still going on into late August...  A basketball coach who encourages kids to play football and doesn't discourage them from lifting, and doesn't hold "open gym" every night after late-season football practices ... A wrestling coach who encourages kids to play football and doesn't ask your promising 215-pound sophomore guard to wrestle at 178...

A class schedule that gives you and at least your top assistant the same prep period... Doctors that don't automatically tell kids with little aches and pains to stay out of football for two weeks, even when there's nothing seriously wrong with them... Cheerleaders who occasionally turn their backs to the crowd and actually watch the game; who understand the game - and like it... A couple of transfers - move-ins to your district - who play just the positions where you need help... A country that appreciates football and football coaches - and realizes what good it can do for its young men... A chance, like the one I've had, to get to know coaches and friends of football all over the country and find out what great people they are... The wisdom to "Make the Big Time Where You Are" - to stop worrying about the next job and appreciate the one you have ... Children of your own who love, respect and try to bring honor to their family in everything they do... A wife (like mine), who understands how much football means to you... Motivated, disciplined, coachable players who love the game of football and love being around other guys who do, too - players like the ones I've been blessed with....  A nation at peace - a peace that exists thanks to a strong and dedicated military that defends us while we sleep.

For all assistants - A head coach whose values and philosophy you can support

They're the things I've been blessed with  - may you be blessed with them, too.

And one special wish for those coaching brothers who find themselves "between positions" at this time of year - May your Christmas joy not be dimmed by the fact that you're temporarily without a team, and instead be brightened by faith that your next job is just around the corner. (If my experience is any indicator, it will be a far better one than the last one, anyhow!)

FINALLY, FOR THOSE WHO DIDN'T EVEN GET TO PLAY A FALL SEASON  - A governor who won't welsh (my apologies to any Welshmen I might have offended) on the deal he/she made back in August that if you would just be patient you'd be able to play football in "the spring."

MAYBE I'LL SEE YOU HERE NEXT TUESDAY, AND MAYBE I WON'T. (MAYBE TIME FOR A SHORT BREAK)

MAYBE I'LL HAVE A ZOOM NEXT TUESDAY NIGHT AND MAYBE I WONT - BUT EITHER WAY, I'LL EMAIL YOU!


                         MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE WYATT HOUSE


*********** Only a year ago, during bowl season,  Pizza Hut was running a commercial, saying, "You can't have a game without the fans..."

Oh, no?

Next they'll tell us you can't broadcast a game from a studio in Bristol, Connecticut.*

*If you didn't know, that's the home of ESPN.

*********** With Army set to play West Virginia in the Liberty Bowl, you'll get no corny, trite hillbilly jokes from me.  First of all, I like West Virginia, the state. Second of all, I appreciate the fact that I haven't heard any bitching from the Mountaineers about having to face that boring Army offense.

Then there's this, from a friend of my son's who went to graduate school at WVU:

One side represents the world’s largest stockpile of firearms. The other is Army.

*********** So far, the bowl games have been a series of duds.  But a bad college game is still better than a good NFL game.

*********** An interesting story about the Kentucky football job, from the article that Greg Koenig sent me a link to:

Curci was head coach at Miami (Fla.), where he'd played quarterback, before he came to Kentucky.

"The Miami board of trustees voted twice to drop football," Curci said. "The Dolphins were 17-0, and we couldn't draw flies. I had Chuck Foreman. I had a bunch of players. It didn't make any difference. I'm saying, 'I'm going to get the hell out of here.' And that's my school. I went to school there.

"So I called up Frank Broyles, Charlie McClendon, Darrell Royal, Ara Parseghian and coach Bryant - five coaches. Every one of them said, 'You go to Kentucky. It's a better deal. It's the SEC.' Except Ara Parseghian. He said, 'It's the northernmost school in the South and southernmost school in the North, and it's just a really difficult place to recruit.'

"And it was. It was hard. But we did OK for a while."

***********  Auburn hired Bryan Harsin away from Boise State.  It shocked most people in the West because he’s a Boise guy - went to high school there, played college ball there, assisted there, and then, after a year as head coach at Arkansas State, took the head coaching job there when Chris Petersen moved on to Washington.

I like the guy and I like the job he’s done at Boise.

But I have my reservations.

He’s never coached - or recruited - in the South, and he’s going to find himself in a completely different world in that regard.

But actually, he’s going to experience major culture shock on any number of levels.

The main thing, I think, is going from being the Alabama of the Mountain West to being a guy whose career now depends on beating the Alabama of the SEC.

Personally, I think what drove him out of Boise was the realization  that after the mess left by the Pac-12 and its leadership there just isn't much opportunity west of the Rockies.

*********** With the hiring by Auburn of Boise State coach Bryan Harsin, Boise remains the last unfilled job.  At the moment.

But there’s still Tennessee. Jeremy Pruitt  just finished a 3-7 season there, and he’s now 16-19 after three seasons. Tennessee fans shouldn’t get that uptight about the record, because the late Johnny Majors was just 16-17-1 after three years in Knoxville.  But he got more time, because he was, after all, one of the great players in Tennessee history, and he finally had a winning record in year five, and he went on to win three SEC championships.  But Jeremy Pruitt is not a Tennessee legend, and on top of all his problems, now comes word that there’s an internal investigation going on into possible recruiting violations and impermissible benefits to athletes.

If the Vols do cut Coach Pruitt loose - and if there are irregularities they could fire him for cause and have to pay him nothing - I don’t think I have to point out to them that there is a guy to the south of them who’s done better against Alabama than any man alive.  That would be Gus Malzahn, fired by Auburn simply because they felt they could do better.  Yet Coach Malzahn was 3-5 against Alabama in his eight years at Auburn.  In that time, the rest of the SEC combined could only beat Bama three times.

Now, here’s the best part: with all the money Auburn has to pay Malzahn - $21.5 million over the next four or five years - he could afford to pay Tennessee to hire him!

*********** This transfer portal sh— may be great for the individual, the kid who doesn’t think he’s getting enough playing time, but in the overall picture  I think it’s going to harm college football.  Big time, in fact.

Watch schools start to load up with talented freshmen who play a season and then move on, like Kentucky basketball players.

I have to laugh at the guy who transferred from Clemson after backing up Trevor Lawrence, then spent this past season year as Duke’s starting QB (not a very good one as a matter of fact) and now he’s off to Appalachian State.

Student-athletes, my ass.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2020  

He named USC and Boise State as teams who had expressed a desire to play in New Year's Six bowl games but decided to end their seasons following losses.

"The bottom line is there were enough people who kept saying, 'No, we don't want to play Army, we don't want to play Army,'" Monken told ESPN. "And I'm sure they don't want to have one week to get ready for the option or whatever, but our players, we've got guys on our team that wouldn't be invited as walk-ons to the teams we're getting ready to play.

"It just doesn't make any sense to me that you can go from wanting to play to not wanting to play in a matter of 12 hours."


The Independence Bowl was supposed to feature a Pac-12 team. Problem was, just two Pac-12 teams elected to participate in bowls this year, leaving the Independence Bowl empty-handed. The bowl was canceled. Monken said the bowl worked to find a number of replacement teams, only to be rebuffed each time.

“It’s either, they don’t want to get ready for the option, or maybe they didn’t think we were a good enough opponent. I don’t know,” Monken said. “But there’s teams that they have discussed with us, ‘Hey, we think it’s going to be so and so,’ then all of a sudden they’re in a different bowl game against somebody else. The whole day went like that.”

Army players won’t pack their bags for the holidays just yet, though. The seniors had a closed-door meeting and elected to try to play on, so the Black Knights will have a 1 p.m. practice Monday and continue to prep for a game this week in case their name gets called. The way that Army sees it, more than 100 games have been postponed or canceled this season, which means multiple bowls will inevitably need a replacement team.

And the Black Knights will be ready to go — and follow whatever COVID-19 testing is asked of them — if and when their name is called.

“They’ll say, ‘OK, here’s Army, they’re ready to play,’ and we’ll fly there to play,” Monken said. “And so we’re going to practice and prepare, and like I told these guys from the beginning (of the year): Prepare, don’t plan. Just be a prepared team. And as you’ll do when you’re in the Army, you need to be a prepared Army. You can’t plan for when the battles are going to happen. You can’t plan for when you’re going to go to war. But when it happens, you better be prepared. And so we’ve just taken that attitude, our guys have really embraced it and we’re going to continue to do that this week.”

If nothing surfaces before Thursday, Army will send its players home for Christmas break. Any option that comes open after that self-imposed deadline will create logistical challenges for a roster spread across the country, though Monken says they will do everything they can to make it work if a later bowl game needs a replacement team, too. He welcomed back his roster on May 31, and the West Point, N.Y., campus has been as close to an actual bubble as there is outside of the professional sports ranks.

No one has been allowed to leave campus. No fans or family members are allowed at home games. Some players were able to see their families during Army’s trips to Tulane, UTSA and Cincinnati, but that was it.

The Military Bowl is played in Annapolis, which raises the question: If it were at all possible, would Army be open to playing Navy again?

“We’ll play anybody. We’ll play anybody. Anybody,” Monken said. “Them, it doesn’t matter. We want to go to a bowl game.”

Monken applauded the SEC for continuing to play on, as 12 of that conference’s 14 teams are participating in bowls. (LSU, which has a self-imposed bowl ban, and winless Vanderbilt, which just replaced its head coach, are the only SEC teams staying at home.)

The frustration from Monken’s end stems from those who aren’t playing, causing several bowl games to cancel. The idea of the Black Knights’ seniors playing in their final game Saturday without even knowing it at the time is tough to swallow.

“It was so important that they had these meetings of the minds to get the Big Ten and the Pac-12 to play this fall — ‘We gotta play, gotta play, be relevant’ — and now it doesn’t matter anymore?” Monken said. “That’s what bothers me. When you’ve got kids here that, nobody sacrifices like our kids have. Nobody. The teams, the coaches, the players at civilian schools have no idea, no idea what these guys go through on a daily basis — no idea — and what this bubble really means. Eating in the mess hall every night and every day, and having formations in the morning at 5:30 a.m. They go through all that, and I hear, ‘After all we’ve been through, we’re going to opt out,’ thinking, You’ve got no idea. And that’s what bothers me, and our kids get punished for it.” ****

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2020  

*********** “It looks like my time as a football player has come to an end.”  Just like that.  It’s over.

Thus spake Sarah Fuller, and with today’s announcement that the Georgia-Vanderbilt game will not take place this weekend (I’m sure there’s never been any truth to rumors that so many Vanderbilt guys were disgusted by the whole freak show that they’d had enough of football for this year), and her plan to transfer to North Texas next year and play soccer as a graduate, the Sarah Fuller era at Vanderbilt has come to an end.

So, too, has the first winless season in the school’s long history, which is purely coincidental.

I must admit that I was surprised by today’s announcement.  I thought she’d wait until after the Heisman ceremony.

Anyhow, it’s obvious now why the whole freak show started.  It’s all about NIL (Name-Image-Likeness).  As soon as it’s all worked out, that “history-making” female is going to be raking in the money.

Eat your hearts out, all you suckers who worked your asses off.

*********** This whole Covid business of cancelling games willy-nilly because schools “don’t have enough scholarship players” to play (the limit varies by conference, but in the SEC apparently it’s 50) illustrates how bloated we’ve allowed our game to become. 

Below is the roster of the visiting Miami team when it played at Florida State in 1959. It was the Miami traveling squad.  There were 48 players listed.



Today’s FBS schools have 85 players on scholarship, plus God knows how many walk-ons, “preferred” and otherwise.  And you mean to tell me they can’t play a game with 49 players? Well, of course not. Not now, when you have offensive players who have never played a down of defense - or defensive players who have never played a down of offense -  from the time they started playing in high school.

It started with the return of one-way football in 1964 - when the NCAA football rules committee began to remove restrictions on substitution.

That permitted a return to “platoon” football. (The concept was invented, it appears, by Fritz Crisler at Michigan, and so impressed by it was Army Coach Earl Blaik that he applied the military term to it.)

Platoon football meant specialization: offense-only and defense-only players.

And that led to further specialization: run-stopping linebackers for early downs, pass-rushing linemen for later downs.

We now have punters and players who do nothing but snap the ball on punts;  schools will often have a place kicker for extra points and field goals and another for kickoffs.

It goes on and on.

But sooner or later, our game is going to have to face the fact that things can’t go on like this. With schools facing budget deficits in the tens of millions of dollars, this can’t continue. You can only lay off so many people in the athletic department.  You can only eliminate so many “minor” sports.

I'm not going to debate whether the quality of play is better with spoecialization.  Of course it is. Or whether unlimited substitution provides more scholarship  opporunities or more jobs for coaches.  Of course it does.

But except at the very highest level of college football, the sport is headed for financial trouble, and something has to be done to save it.

It's inevitable that at some point, college football has to take a hit, and the first place to start is with a return to two-way play, and the reduction of scholarships (and coaching staffs, and recruiting expenses) that would follow.

*********** THE SPARKY AND SPARTY SHOW.









SOMETHING OLD:  Can’t say it’s the only reason why Arizona State scored 70 points against archival Arizona - the Wildcats’ near-total ineptness had something to do with it - but the return of Sparky the Sun Devil to the ASU helmets had to have something to do with it.





















SOMETHING NEW: A version of the traditional Michigan State Spartan, called “Gruff Sparty”, appeared on MSU helmets for the first time Saturday against Penn State.  Supposedly Gruff Sparty was very popular with Michigan State fans, so they got what they wanted.  They also got something they didn’t want - a 39-24 loss to Penn State.











*********** As I await Saturday's Army-Air Force game - perhaps the last one ever to be played at West Point...

With  the nation in the clutches of the Deadly Global Worldwide Killer Virus Pandemic - and Democratic governors -  and colleges cancelling their football seasons , it looked as if Army, as an independent, might be left high and dry. Somehow, though,  the West point athletic department came through and did a masterful job of piecing together a schedule.  It wasn’t great, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to allow the Army team to have a season.

Even if there had been no plague, though, the original Army 2020 football schedule was not the stuff of dreams - not exactly a schedule designed to attract potential season ticket purchasers:

Bucknell (FCS)
Oklahoma
Miami (O)
Princeton (FCS)
Buffalo
Air Force

Sure, it would be great to see Oklahoma, making a rare eastern visit.  And you’d want to see Air Force, too.    But otherwise,  considering the effort involved in attending a game at West Point, you might not consider the other games worth the expense.  Or the effort - you’d better get there plenty early, because West Point being an actual military installation, and Michie Stadium being “on post,”  security is tight enough just getting on post.  And then there’s the parking -  if you’re lucky you’re less than a mile from the stadium - did I say that West Point is hilly?

This year,  Oklahoma was a guaranteed sellout, if only because Sooner fans travel well, and many of them had a game at West Point on their bucket list anyhow.   And Air Force, as a service rival, always comes close to a full house.  But as far as demand, that’s it.  The rest of the games would have been attended mostly by parents and friends of players, hardcore alums, a handful of visiting fans, and the Corps of Cadets.

Next year’s home schedule is what I’d call thin gruel - insubstantial and unsatisfying.

2021 ARMY HOME SCHEDULE

Western Kentucky
UConn
Miami (O)
Wake Forest
Bucknell (FCS)
UMass

There’s one Power Five team on there - Wake Forest. And no Air Force - next year, it’s Air Force’s home game. (More about that in a moment.)

If 2021’s home schedule was  thin gruel,  2022’s is tap water.

2022 ARMY HOME SCHEDULE

UTSA
Louisiana Monroe
Georgia State
Colgate (FCS)
UConn

You’re kidding, right? Well, at least there’s Air Force.  Hey, wait - I don’t see Air Force on the schedule!  What the hell happened to the Air Force game? That’s the only reason why I’d buy those g-d season tickets!  Must be a misprint.

Well, no, it’s not a misprint.  There’s only five home games, not a one of which makes your heart skip a beat in anticipation.  Air Force?  They just went and sold that game out from under you.

Today,  Army (and, presumably Air Force) supporters received the ”exciting” news that the next two Army-Air Force games will be played in Arlington, Texas.  In  a f—king baseball park yet.

While we are approaching Saturday's CIC (Commander-In-Chief Trophy) matchup vs. Air Force, mark your calendar for 2021 and 2022!

Army West Point Football will compete in the first college football game at Globe Life Field in Arlington, TX against Air Force in the Lockheed Martin Commanders’ Classic in 2021.

The two-year agreement begins on November 6, 2021 with Air Force as the home team. Army will be the home squad for the return meeting on November 5, 2022. Game times and broadcast information will be announced at a later date.

In order to be seated in the Army sections of the stadium, tickets must be purchased through the Army West Point ticket office. The presale through Army will begin on Tuesday, January 5.

Next year’s game will be the 55th between the two academies. Only three have been played at neutral sites: the first  ever, in 1959 in Yankee Stadium, and the 1963 and 1965 games in Chicago’s Soldier Field. The rest have been played on campus.

Next year’s game will be the first FBS game ever played at Globe Life Field - history on the order of Sarah Fuller’s first kickoff - and officials anticipate a capacity crowd of more than 37,000, including an as-yet undetermined number of cadets.

It’s only a two-year agreement, but I predict that the Army-Air Force game will never return to the respective campuses. Now that the precedent has been set, I fully expect this game to be peddled and sold to the highest bidder - city/stadium/sponsor.

If you like irony, there’s this: not so long ago, the West Point Athletic Department announced the launching of a drive to raise funds to enlarge Michie Stadium.

In view of the news of the move off-campus of the Air Force game, and in view of the unattractive home games that they’ve lined up, the obvious response is - WHY BOTHER?

*********** If you’re satisfied with the way our recent presidential “election” was conducted, you probably didn’t see anything wrong with Florida, which lost to 23-point underdog LSU on Saturday, dropping just one place - to seventh -  in this week’s CFP poll.

If, on the other hand, you’re like me, which means you no longer have faith in anything at all being on the up-and-up, you smell a rat.

Consider: Had Florida been dropped to a more realistic spot - the AP had them in 11th place, which seems about right  - how much interest was there going to be in Saturday’s SEC championship? In an obvious mismatch between unbeaten Alabama and  the 11th-ranked 8-2 Gators, coming off a loss to 4-5 LSU?

But with the Gators in an absurdly unrealistic seventh place, that means that  in the unlikely event they should beat Alabama in this Saturday’s SEC Championship game, they might actually have an outside shot at a spot in The Playoff.  Yes, it would require a few other Saturday games to break in their favor, but it still gives the game a little ”meaning.”

See where this is going?  Instead of another Alabama ass-kicking of another SEC rival, why, folks, we’ve got us a ballgame!  Something we just GOT to watch!

You see, now those Gator players and coaches, who otherwise would have been wondering what bowl game (Cheez-It Bowl, Cure Bowl, Duke’s Mayo Bowl) they’d be playing in after they lose to Alabama, realize that they actually have a chance to go further.  All they have to do is beat the Crimson Tide.

So that means that this week they won’t give star tight end Kyle Pitts the game off, and this week their defensive backs will take a pledge not to act like jackasses. (So, too, with so much on the line, will their head coach.)

Quite possibly, with Florida fired up and on good behavior, Alabama won’t pull away to a 30-point lead by halftime as usual, and that means that viewers will keep on watching a bit longer, which is sure to please  CBS, which has the rights to broadcast the SEC championship game this Saturday, and its advertisers.

Hmmm. You don’t suppose CBS could have tried to influence the CFP rankings?

(NETWORK EXECUTIVE TO MEMBER OF PLAYOFF SELECTION COMMITTEE): Sure, you have to drop Florida after that loss to LSU. Everybody knows that. So how about you make it… say, one spot?

Could a powerful TV network, with millions at stake,  actually have laid its hands on a couple members of the selection committee?

No, you say. This is America, where we believe in fair play.

I say yes.  Compared  to rigging a presidential election, a simple fix like this would be, in the words of our 45th President, “small potatoes.”

*********** You see the damnedest things in obituaries these days, and this  week I came across this one in our local paper (I have changed names):

“Billy Joe is survived by his brothers, Bob and Jim; daughter, Wendy; son, Tim; and possibly several more spread across this great world of ours.”

Hmmm.

*********** KC Smith, of Walpole, Massachusetts, gave me and my wife our best laugh of the week with this one:

Coach, Merry Christmas....just received this text message from a buddy. Yes, 2020 cannot end soon enough.

"You haven't really enjoyed all surround sound has to offer until you hear Beth Mowins calling a girls basketball game WHILE WEARING A MASK!"


*********** I was very sad to hear of the death of Country Charley Pride - a great singer and a great guy.   Also, I once read, a pretty good baseball player.

You have to admire any person who takes the Road Less Travelled, as Charley Pride did, a black man in the otherwise very white world of Country and Western Music.

I especially admired him because he never made race an issue. With him it was all about his music and as a result, so far as I was ever able to tell, he was loved and accepted by C & W fans as one of them.

In 1992 he told the Dallas Morning News, “They used to ask me how it feels to be the ‘first colored country singer.’ Then it was ‘first Negro country singer.’ Then ‘first black country singer,’ Now I’m the ‘first African American country singer.’ That’s about the only thing that’s changed. This country is so race-conscious, so ate-up with colors and pigments. I call it ‘skin hang-ups.’ It’s a disease.”

*********** Andy Gustafson deserves most of the credit for establishing Miami football, but if he were alive today he would certainly have wanted to share the credit with Walt Kichefski.

For 30 years “Coach Ski” was Miami’s indispensible Man - the glue - the unsung guy at the heart of the program. The Gator Hater.

A native of Rhinelander, in far northern Wisconsin, he played football at Miami, where he played offensive and defensive end and was captain his senior year. After playing pro football during the war years with the Steelers and then the Card-Pitt combine of the Chicago and Pittsburgh teams, he became an assistant coach at his alma mater.

He would stay there for 30 years, as an assistant under five different coaches.

When Gustafson retired, Kichefski thought he might have a shot at the head job himself, but when Charlie Tate got the job instead, he stayed on as an assistant to Tate.

A Miami guy to the core, he took over as interim head coach when Tate was let go early in the 1970 season, and although the best he could do the rest of the way was finish 2-7, he is revered among Miami people for the way his team came off a 56-16 thumping by Syracuse to beat Florida (whom he always referred to  in the singular as “The Gator”), 14-13, in The Swamp.

In the days when he coached there, Miami was not yet recruiting black athletes, and as a result, the Hurricanes had to go far and wide for players.

I was looking recently at a Miami roster from their 1959 game at Florida State. Of the 45 players listed, only 17 were from Florida.  There were 11 other states represented, only two of them southern states.  That Florida sunshine sure was attractive to northern kids.

His Wisconsin background came in handy. He recruited extensively in the Midwest, and there was always a Wisconsin player or two - or three - on the Hurricanes’ roster, the most famous of whom by far was a kid from Wausau named Jim Otto.

















*********** An upscale  Baton Rouge men’s store is offering a “Dan Mullen discount” this week: 20 per cent off on all shoes.


















*********** COLLEGE FOOTBALL THIS WEEKEND

SO MANY OF THSE GAMES ARE AT NEUTRAL SITES - DISREGARDS THE "ATS"

FRIDAY NIGHT

UAB AT MARSHALL
BALL STATE AT BUFFALO
NEBRASKA  AT RUTGERS
OREGON AT USC - USC'S WR DRAKE LONDON IS ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING ATHLETES I'VE EVER SEEN

SATURDAY

NORTHWESTERN AT OHIO STATE
TEXAS A & M AT TENNESSEE
OKLAHOMA  AT IOWA STATE
FLORIDA STATE AT WAKE FOREST
WASHINGTON  STATE AT UTAH
AIR FORCE AT ARMY
LOUISIANA AT COASTAL CAROLINA
OLE MISS AT LSU
MISSOURI AT MISS STATE
CLEMSON AT NOTRE DAME
MINNESOTA AT WISCONSIN
BOISE STATE AT SAN JOSE STATE
ILLINOIS AT PENN STATE
STANFORD  AT UCLA
MICHIGAN STATE AT MARYLAND
ALABAMA AT FLORIDA
TULSA AT CINCINNATI
ARIZONA STATE AT OREGON STATE


*********** Hi Coach - hope all is well with you and yours through these crazy times!

It was @ 20 years ago that I saw the Cadets march into Amon Carter Stadium to play TCU. It's impressive at ground-level too!

I definitely got chill bumps. It was awesome. Powerful.

For a few years, I went to a semi-military academy in Harriman, less than 20 miles from West Point.

Our uniforms were based on West Point’s.

I agree on the thuggish, really CLOWNISH behavior during LSU/Florida.

...and I think I heard that Dan Gable's digs were liberally landscaped with hawthorne - really, quite pretty!

J. Rothwell, DC
Corpus Christi, Texas

***********  Hugh,

College Game Day was at West Point last Saturday.  They spent a lot of time talking about the traditions of both academies, BUT, they spent a lot more time on West Point and the Army cadets which apparently didn't sit well with Navy coach Ken Niumatololo.  During a Face Time interview Niumatololo (half joking, half not) let the boys on set know he was "pissed" at how they were glorifying the Army, and not the Navy.  Not the first time the Navy coach has grumbled about the way his team has been treated.  

For the first time I can remember BOTH teams, Army and Navy, appeared to be a bit testy and chippy with one another after the game.

Still on the topic of Army-Navy.  Head coach Jeff Monken's name was floated around for the Vandy job, and possibly one or two other recent Power 5 coaching jobs.  I'm afraid the offensive state of the game around the country will keep Monken at Army.  That's fine with me.  

Breaking:  Clark Lea, ND DC was named the new head coach at Vanderbilt.  He has a Vandy pedigree, with coaching experience at ND and Wake Forest, so recruiting outstanding student-athletes shouldn't be foreign to him.  He may be the right fit for the Commodores.  He has told the team at ND he will be coaching them through the ACC championship game and playoffs.

Used to be when we watched a college football game we would at least get to see one of the team's bands (usually the home team) perform a little at halftime, and with a press box view!  Now, it's all about the talking heads.  After all they have to have the air time in order to justify being paid what they get paid.

Don't get me started on the prima donnas.  We only have ourselves to blame for their rise.  They are selfish and only think of themselves because we allowed them to grow up with the "everyone gets a trophy" mindset, and molly-coddling them during their growth years.  Being part of the TEAM, and playing for the TEAM, and standing by the TEAM has vanished with Bo Schembechler.  

Although he wasn't a football coach John Wooden was one of the greatest basketball coaches to ever coach the game.  If he had been a football coach he would've still been a great coach.  He identified his prima donnas early, and made no bones about where they stood with him.  Just ask Bill Walton.  Unfortunately, I don't see many, if any, John Woodens out there anymore.

Gus Malzahn is a solid football coach.  Someone will be lucky to have him.

Another name being "floated" around...Art Briles.  He just resigned as HC at Mount Vernon HS in Texas.

Frankly, if the PAC 12 doesn't play another game it's likely no one west of Boulder will give a s**t.

Steve Sarkisian is a west coast guy.  Expect Arizona to go all out for him.

I have a coaching friend in Chicago who tells me Lovie Smith's departure at Illinois is a step in the right direction.

The "shoe" incident in the LSU-Florida game has already been cause for a name change...L S Shoe.

Have a great week!  See you tonight!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

The more I see and hear of Coach Ken these days, the less I care for him.  I think he’s lost his mojo and his act is wearing thin.

*********** QUIZ ANSWER: A native of Aurora, Illinois,  Andy Gustafson played at Pitt from 1923 through 1925, under two coaching legends - first, Pop Warner, and then Jock Sutherland.

Straight out of college, Gustafson took the head coaching job at VPI (now Virginia Tech) where in four years he was 22-13-1.

In 1930 he was hired back at Pitt by Sutherland, and in 1933, after Earl Blaik was hired at Dartmouth, he was hired away to be Blaik’s backfield coach.

He would stay with Blaik as his backfield coach, following him to West Point in 1941, first running the Sutherland single wing, then making the changeover to the T-formation.

He would stay with Blaik through the 1947 season, the longest any assistant was to serve under Blaik, before accepting the head coaching job at Miami. At that time, before jet travel, Miami was considered remote. The “U” itself (as it would come to be known) was just 23 years old.

He remains the longest-serving coach in Miami football history, and he’s really the person who put Miami football on the map.  Coaching there for 16 years from 1948 through 1963, he posted a record of 93-65-3.

He was an early proponent of what he called the Drive Series but which came to be called the Belly Series, and during a nine-year stretch from 1954 through 1962, playing anybody willing to come to Miami, he ran it well, going  55-36-3 with just one losing season.

He earned a certain amount of immortality when Blaik gave him credit for deciding not to have his now-famous Lonesome End, Bill Carpenter, go into the huddle with the rest of the team.  As Blaik later told it in his memoirs, “You Have to Pay the Price,” he met with Gustafson at the 1958 College All-Star game in Chicago, and after he explained  his plan to split Carpenter out (as what he originally called a“far flanker”),  Gustafson cautioned him against running Carpenter in and out of the huddle: “Earl,” he said, “You’ll run him into the ground.”

And so was born the mystery of the far flanker - soon to be given its famous nickname by a New York sportswriter - and how he got his signals from the quarterback. (At that time, quarterbacks had to call their own plays.)

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING ANDY GUSTAFSON

JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
GREG KOENIG - COLORADO SPRINGS
BILL NELSON - THORNTON, COLORADO
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
DAVID CRUMP - OWENSBORO, KENTUCKY


*********** QUIZ: He was an All-American quarterback at Miami, under head coach Andy Gustafson.

After graduation he spent seven years at Miami as an assistant, first under Gustafson and then under Charlie Tate.

As head coach of the University of Tampa - a tiny, private school playing a big-time schedule - he coached three seasons - all of them winning seasons - and left with a record of 25-6 (.806).  In his first year there, his 7-3 record earned him Florida Sports Writers Coach of the Year honors, and in his last season, his 1970 team went 10-1 and was ranked Number One in the small college poll.

He could recruit. Six of his players were named All-American and sixteen of them went on to play professional football. Tampa's best-known players were Freddie Solomon and John Matuszak, who was the first pick overall in the 1973 draft.

His 1970 team beat Ole Miss and Miami, and the latter feat was enough to convince Miami to hire him in place of Tate, who had been fired earlier in the season.

Miami was not yet the power that it would become, as “The U,” and he spent just two seasons there, going 9-13 overall, before being hired at Kentucky to replace John Ray, who in four years had won just four SEC games.

At Kentucky, in nine seasons (1973-1981) he won two SEC titles.  His 1976 team finished 8-4, and ranked 18th in country.  To this day it remains Kentucky’s last SEC championship football team. His 1977 team was even better, going 10-1 and ranked Number 6 nationally, but because of sanctions it wasn’t invited to a bowl game and despite going undefeated in SEC play it wasn’t eligible to win the  conference championship.

His overall record at Kentucky was 47-51-2, but in SEC play, his teams were - for Kentucky - a very respectable  25-20. In fact, of all the coaches who have coached at Kentucky in the last 100 years, only the legendary Bear Bryant’s .563 (from 1946-1953) in conference play is better than his .455.

His overall college record is 81-71-2.

In 1991, he came out of retirement to coach the Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena Football League. In his first year, the Storm went 10-2 and won the AFL championship, and he was named AFL Coach of the Year.

He also did some broadcasting of Tampa Bay Buccaneers as well as college games, and  retired as a parks commissioner for the State of Kentucky.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2020 

*** Remember those long-gone days when players decided to pass on their teams’ bowl games?  Now they’re bailing on the last game or two of their junior season.

Chuba Hubbard of Oklahoma State is latest to bail, and I can’t say I was unhappy to hear the news.

It’s been about six months since Hubbard played his BLM card and got his 15 minutes of fame by announcing how offended he was when his coach, while on a fishing trip, was photographed wearing an OAN tee shirt. OMG.  Might as well have been a Klan sheet.  Hubbard said he was as good as outta there.

But after a lot of ass-kissing and humble “I am so sorry, I am not worthy” apologizing by the coach, the diva decided to stay and play.

Karma?  After a great 2019 season, the diva didn’t exactly set the Big-12 on fire this season. He’d been slowed by injuries, and with his production less than 1/3 that of last year, he finally decided he’d had enough - said he was packing it in on this season to get ready for the NFL draft.

I wonder, after all that the one time superstar Chuba Hubbard put coach Mike Gundy through, if Gundy doesn’t wish, in retrospect, that he’d told the prima donna to shove off.

But it’s not too late.

My advice: get him out of Stillwater on the next bus to Tulsa.  (All in the interest of disease prevention, you understand.  Can’t be too careful.)

*** Kevin Sumlin was fired, and Arizona fans have Khalil Tate to thank.

Back in early 2017, when word slipped out that Arizona might be considering Navy coach Ken Niumatololo to replace fired Rich Rodriguez, Tate, coming off a decent sophomore season as the Wildcat’s QB, announced to the world, via Twitter, “I didn’t come to Arizona to play the Triple Option.”

Well.  If there was any chance that Arizona might have actually considered Coach Ken (sources tell me they never did), that was the end of that.

So ‘Zona hired Kevin Sumlin.  Seemed a good enough hire - he’d done a good job at Houston, and a decent job at Texas A & M.

But for what its worth, in Tate’s two years as QB, Arizona went 8-14.  With a triple option coach - Tate having moved on, as quarterback’s now do - would the Wildcats have done any worse?

As it was, all Tate really did was put Sumlin on the hot seat for this season, which proved to be his last in Tucson.

*** Marco Wilson, a Florida senior described by some as a “team leader,” helped make a third-down stop that almost surely meant LSU would have to punt the ball and give Florida an opportunity - and time - to break a 34-34 tie. He celebrated his accomplishment by yanking off the shoe of the LSU man he’d helped tackle and sailing it downfield (at least 20 yards, they tell me).

He was penalized, and LSU, given a first down, drove far enough that their kicker had a chance to kick a 57-yard field goal.  He made it, and Florida lost the game, 37-34, and with it any chance to make it into the Playoff should they beat Alabama in the SEC title game.

Listen to his coach explain the talk he had with his player, and listen to the excuse-making:

“Obviously, I know he’s disappointed but, you know, I mean it’s a shame. I went back to watch the play and he made the tackle and, I mean, part of the football move the kid’s shoe was in his hand and he kind of threw it and jumped and celebrated with his teammates. So it’s pretty unfortunate.

“In that situation, you know, I don’t think there was any intent to taunt and there wasn’t he didn’t throw you know it was like it was thrown at their sideline or doing any of that. It was a huge play, he thought possibly a game-winning play and kind of threw a shoe and went to celebrate with his teammates. I think that stuff, really, an unfortunate situation more than, you know, a mistake instead of somebody really trying to disrespect the game or talking to the opponent or anything of that nature.”

See, he just kind of threw it… I don’t think there was any intent to taunt… he kind of threw a shoe and went to celebrate with his teammates… it was a mistake, instead of somebody really trying to disrespect the game.”

Now tell me those aren’t the words of a man who tolerates this kind of stuff… as long as the player’s good enough.

No one on the field had ever been arrested
Every player on the field had a real major
Every player attended class every day
More than 90 per cent of the players will graduate
Few of them will play a professional sport
Most of them, on graduation, will serve their country
They will know how to lead
They will know how to take orders
They can be counted on to carry out an assignment
They can accomplish difficult assignments  under difficult conditions
They will not let fatigue or lack of sleep prevent them from doing so
They will know how to work with others
They will be gentlemen first
They will know how to treat everyone they meet with respect

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2020  

Once the final decision had been made, Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley let redshirt senior linebacker Max Richardson deliver the news.

Richardson stood up and told his teammates that they would not be playing in a bowl game this year, meaning the most challenging season of their football-playing careers was over.

“When Max told the team that they were going to go home and see their families, there was an uproar of excitement,” Hafley said. “It was emotional for me because, at that moment, I knew 100 percent that this was the right decision.”

To Richardson, it was, too. He and his teammates could go home for the holidays after six months spent under arguably the strictest protocols of any college football program. They could finally hug their dads, kiss their moms and play with their nieces and nephews. Richardson felt that the Eagles had done a good job appreciating the journey and everything they endured in a season they weren’t sure they’d get to play. Because they had approached each day and week that way, “everybody was content with how they’d handled themselves in this difficult year,” he said. “As a team, we came to our senses.” He was part of the team’s leadership group that helped Hafley make the call.

Boston College’s choice to call it a season and forgo postseason opportunities was not easy, but it was absolutely understandable. The Eagles may be the first team to make this call — LSU’s self-imposed bowl ban this week amid an NCAA investigation has different factors at play — but they probably won’t be the last. As one Power 5 athletic director put it in a text message to The Athletic on Thursday, “If everyone was being honest with themselves, they would move on.”

Athletes, coaches and support staff have been under a tremendous amount of stress since they returned to campus in June. They have sacrificed so much in order to play this football season. Some coaches, including Penn State’s James Franklin, lived apart from their families to mitigate risk. These 18- to 22-year-olds have been asked to avoid just about every aspect of the traditional college experience, taking classes virtually and spending time alone in their dorm rooms or apartments when they’re not at the football facilities. Going out to dinner or bars with friends or hugging their parents after home games are now decisions that, if the school permits them at all, come with some anxious uncertainty.

***********  Where else but America can you test positive for the flu and come out ahead?

Washington had to cancel this weekend’s game against Oregon.

The game is considered “no contest” by the Pac-12.

So Washington, at 3-1, will go to the Pac-12 conference championship game next week, without having to beat Oregon (2-2). No muss, no fuss.

Is this a great country, or what?

Actually, the Huskies aren’t in just yet: King County, in which the University of Washington is located,  is still using the 14-day quarantine period for contact tracing rather than  the CDC’s revised 10-day period or seven days with a negative test.

*********** Freddy Akers died Monday.

He was a good coach, but he had to try to step into the shoes of a giant.

He followed a Legend, Darrell Royal, at Texas.  He’d been an assistant under Coach Royal for nine years, then went off to be head coach at Wyoming for two years before taking over at UT after Royal stepped down.

He got off to a great start - 11-1 and a conference championship - but when he lost in the Cotton Bowl at the end of the season, that started it with the Longhorn fans. Freddy just ain’t no Darrell Royal.

He won - his overall record in ten years at Texas was 86-31-2, enough to get a guy a statue outside the stadium at most places - but, see,  he never won no national titles.

And then he went and lost four straight bowl  games… and he lost to them damn Aggies three straight times…

And then, in his tenth year at UT, the Horns went 5-6, their first losing season in 30 years. That just don’t happen in Austin.

And he was gone.  And there followed a succession of coaches, some good, some not so good, but all of them with one thing in common - they wasn’t Darrell Royal - and sooner or latter, they had to go.

Freddy Akers jumped at the Purdue job on the rebound,  but Purdue’s traditionally been a tough place to win, and after four losing seasons there, he was done as a head coach.  For his career, he was 108-75-3.  Not bad at all by most standards.

There’s a moral there and we all know what it is, yet in spite of what we know about the danger of following legends, who among us, if offered the bait, is wise enough to refuse?

Rest in peace, Coach Akers.

*********** I am looking for a book suggestion. I want to get my son a book about leadership/football (preferable quarterbacking) for Christmas. I will have all of the people who have coached him sign it and leave a message. I am going to be under a time crunch, but I think it is a neat idea.

Can you suggest a book that would have these qualities, but would still be engaging enough of a read that a teenager would read it for pleasure?

It’s dated, but the first thing that came to mind is “Manning.”  It’s about dad, Archie, and his boys.  Archie was a great quarterback - and (still is) a very good man - and he and his wife raised three outstanding sons, two of whom became NFL quarterbacks. There’s a lot in the book about football and football history, quarterbacking, and life. It’s well told and well written.  I think it would be readable and inspirational.  Hope you can find a copy.

Archie’s grandson, Arch, is a soph in HS in New Orleans and is already  considered one of the best QB prospects in the country.

I started reading the book myself  - for the second time - and it seems to me that it would be a great book for you both to read and discuss as you go along.  There are just so many things in there that enable a dad to have some real meaningful talks with his son.



*********** There may not be enough great QBs to go around, but there’s certainly no shortage of good ones, and believe it or not, despite the fact that they can be an arrogant, narcissistic lot, I feel sorry for today’s QBs. They are being treated like disposable razors.

Personal coaches and 7 on 7 competition creates a ton of pretty good passers and puts them on display, and colleges stock up on them. Then, once the colleges decide on their one starter,  the rest of them are as useful as yesterday’s paper.

Not that the starters are that secure.  The head coaches might not come and go so frequently, but at the level where offenses - and the starters - are decided on, there’s quite bit of turnover,  and as soon as there’s a change in QB coaches or OCs the starter might as well start looking around, too, because the new coaches have their own ideas, and last year’s starter might not fit into next year’s plan.  What these kids really need is agents.

I recently read a great article in The Athletic - it’s subscription only - about Nick Starkel, the current QB at San Jose State. He started out at Texas A & M, started five games last year at Arkansas, and didn’t see any future in having to sell himself to the new coaching staff. With him as their QB, SJSU is now 5-0 for the first time since 1939.

https://theathletic.com/1594645/2020/02/10/talking-to-nick-starkel-arkansas-san-jose-state/

*********** I find that one of the biggest failings of broadcasters who call games from locations other than the game site, besides a tendency to chat like two guys watching a game on TV (which they are), is their having a tough time calling the spot of the ball - and whether a guy has made a first down - accurately.


*********** Big Ten Athletic Directors: Well, Buckeyes, you’ll be pleased to know it’s unanimous.  We’ve just voted to eliminate that stupid rule we made back at the start of the season that said you had to play six games in order to qualify for the Conference Championship Game. How were we to know that it might keep Ohio State out?  How were we to know you’d only get to play five games?

So good Luck against Northwestern in the championship game, and just to make sure that you beat the Wildcats and get us that spot in the College Football Playoff - which means a ton of money for all the rest of us conference members - we’ve decided  (just for this one game) to let you have five downs to make ten yards. You might not need that fifth down, but you never know when you might, so just in case…

Oh - and for this game only - in view of our commitment to fighting the pandemic and preventing unnecessary exposure of our players to the Deadly Corona Virus,  and because everyone knows that the only reason we’re even playing this game is so that you can get that spot in The Playoff, our officials will be instructed to automatically end the game (“out of an abundance of caution”) at any point that you lead by 14 points or more. (Obviously, this provision will not apply to Northwestern.)

Ohio State: Thanks a lot. We expected it. One question: after our win over Northwestern, can we get a bye straight to the National Championship game or are we going to have to  play in some stupid Semi-Final?


*********** Coach of the Year Awards
Coach of the Year

Tom Allen, Indiana - Hands down.

First-Year Category

Three-way Tie

Eliah Drinkwitz - Missouri
Karl Dorrell - Colorado
Sam Pittman - Arkansas

*********** At the start of the season, there were 43 FBS bowl games scheduled. As of this past Monday, there are now 33. 

Gone is the distinction between the “regular season” and the “bowl season”:

First one up is the  Frisco Bowl,  on December 19, which also happens to be the last Saturday of the “regular season” for some teams, and conference championship Saturday for others.

To show how screwed up this bowl season is, the New Mexico Bowl will be played - it just won’t be played in New Mexico.  Instead - in case you were planning on going - it’s going to be played in Frisco, Texas.

The two College Football Playoff semifinal games are still scheduled for New Year’s Day, 2021, in the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl. The  National Championship game is scheduled for January 11 at Hard Rock Stadium in suburban Miami. 

2020-21 bowl games that have been canceled (so far):

Bahamas Bowl (C-USA vs. MAC)

Celebration Bowl (MEAC vs. SWAC)

Fenway Bowl (AAC vs. ACC)

Hawaii Bowl (AAC vs. Mountain West)

Holiday Bowl (ACC vs. Pac-12)

Las Vegas Bowl (Pac-12 vs. SEC)

Los Angeles Bowl (Pac-12 vs. Mountain West)

Pinstripe Bowl (ACC vs. Big Ten)

Quick Lane Bowl (ACC, Big Ten, MAC)

Redbox Bowl (Big Ten vs. Pac-12)

Sun Bowl (ACC vs. Pac-12)

*********** The NCAA may have waived bowl-eligibility requirements for college programs because of the pandemic, but that didn’t mean that the Pac-12 had to go along. For some reason, its athletic directors decided that their conference’s teams still must be .500 or better to be eligible.

It probably doesn’t matter anyhow, because with the cancellation of five of their bowl games,  they’re running out of games to play in.

The Red Bowl bowl (WTF?) is no more. Neither are the Holiday, Sun and Las Vegas Bowls, with the Los Angeles Bowl the latest to join them.

But the conference did manage to add a spot in the Armed Forces Bowl (against an SEC opponent).

*********** God rest Chuck Yeager, a man’s man and then some.  I’d think about him whenever  I flew and  the captain would come on and say, “Folks…” in a casual, calming drawl imitative of Chuck Yeager, “I’m gonna have to turn the seat belt light on…”

He was the real deal.  The first man to break the sound barrier.  I’d love to have heard his opinion on safe spaces.

*********** “Madden” (the video game) may have done “some”  good in helping to teach “some” inside football to millions of people.  But in terms of the coaching profession, it has been a disaster.

Simply as it pertains to coaching, Madden has deluded its players into thinking  that coaching football is just a matter of designing plays - plays ready to be run to near-perfection,  by players already proficient at playing the game.

Madden skips right over the harsh reality behind making those plays work. Madden players design a play and - whaddaya know? - somebody has already taught the blockers how to block, the passers how to throw, and the receivers how to run routes and catch passes!

To people in need of instant gratification, that’s the beauty of Madden - it enables the “coach” to bypass the tedious process of conditioning players, teaching them techniques and skills, and painstakingly choreographing the efforts of eleven of them to accomplish their mission despite the efforts of opponents - who are doing their damnedest to stop them.

It’s very difficult convincing a young coach brought up on Madden that he doesn’t have all the answers, and that before anybody - let alone him - can start thinking  about running all those plays that worked so well on Madden, there’s a whole lot of work to be done.

And a lot of it is drudgery. Not at all like a video game.

*********** Happy birthday to Mike Eliasof.

It was 11 years ago, in Green Bay, that I last saw Mike, but we manage to talk once a month or so. 

Mike, is a World War II Black Lion,   veteran of the battle of the Huertgen Forest, one of the bloodiest of the war. In 2003 Mike was featured in the documentary “On Common Ground,” the story of the battlefield reunion, 55 years later, of soldiers from both sides of the fighting.

Mike’s is a great American story. Born in New York, the son of Greek immigrant parents, he served his country in wartime, and then became a success as a businessman and as a husband and family man. For a time, he served as Mayor of Closter, New Jersey, consistently voted one of the top places to live in New Jersey.

On Wednesday, Mike celebrated his 100th birthday.

 

2009 - Black Lions and guests on the floor of Lambeau Field: Front row (L to R): Guest Joel Stephens, Little Rock, Arkansas; Guest Don Kovach, Franklin, New Jersey; Black Lion Jim Shelton, Englewood, Florida; WW II Black Lion Mike Eliasof, Singer Island, Florida; Back row (L to R) Honorary Black Lion David Maraniss, Madison, Wisconsin and Washington, DC; Honorary Black Lion George Crume, Houston, Texas; Black Lion Joe Costello, Utica, New York; Black Lion Dave Berry, Sacramento, California; Black Lion Steve Goodman, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Black Lion Woody Woodward, Huntsville, Alabama; Black Lion Tom Grady, Bluffton, South Carolina; Honorary Black Lion Hugh Wyatt, Camas, Washington; Black Lion Tom Hinger, Winter Haven, Florida

*********** Speaking of Pearl Harbor Day…

Can’t use the gym as a PE teacher , so I do supervising. Half of the kids are with classroom teacher other half switch in afternoon. I made sure they understood what Dec 7th meant and what exactly happened. I know they are only 4th graders but they need to know. Found a good kid friendly video on it.

Can't learn any of our history if they are too busy with social media

Pete  Porcelli
Watervliet, New York

***********  I just read a great article that appeared in our local paper today by Cal Thomas about Dr. Walter Williams.  It is rare for a conservative writer to get published on our editorial page in Owensboro.  There was no mention in the paper about his passing last week.  The only reason that I knew of it was reading about it in your news. It is a wonderful tribute to professor Williams from a fellow conservative. I hope that you can find it on line somewhere. I am very sad that we have lost him.

Tuesday night  was great.  Hearing coach Royal teaching the wishbone offense brought back fond memories of trying to defend that great offense. When you and I spoke after the clinic, I forgot to mention that several prominent state football powers in Kentucky ran it for well over thirty years. One notable school in western Kentucky won 15 or 16 state championships running the wishbone. They only went to a spread offense in the last 10 to 12 years. They have not been as successful since they changed to the spread offense.

See you Tuesday.

David Crump
Owensboro, Kentucky

*********** My option friends are jealous of me seeing the Royal video.

John Bothe
Oregon, Illinois

At Tuesday’s Zoom I showed Darrell Royal’s explanation of the Wishbone T.  The film is 50 years old, but it’s still one of the best “how-to” football films I’ve ever seen.

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

Only one news network made mention of the "date that will live in infamy."  Not surprising.  Many youngsters today don't know much about 9/11 either and that was less than 20 years ago.

Just about every college football team today has its hooligans, and I certainly don't condone what the Coastal players did to the BYU QB just before the half.  However, despite the foolishness, IMHO Coastal is still the feel good story of this zany college football season.  They were predicted to finish last in the Sun Belt.  Oops!

The CFP committee only cares about the top 6 teams that have a chance at the playoff.  Everyone else is an after-thought.  Evidenced by how they rank the also-rans.

Apparently it wasn't the first time that Texas high school football player was in trouble.  He must have some "issues", but since he's a player maybe we can help him work through those issues.  Yeah, right.

The rules people changed the rule of covering the snapper.  Well...instead of rushing through the snapper let's rush through the guard or tackle!  It won't surprise me that they eventually DO allow the O Line to fire out and cut block!

It's weird watching any college football game being played in an empty stadium without any fans.  But, at least "some" schools don't! When Notre Dame beat Clemson and the students rushed the field for a moment we caught a glimpse of "the good old days.”

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas


*********** QUIZ ANSWER:  Although he was born in Oakland, John Ralston went to high school in Norway, Michigan, which makes him a Yooper.

At 17, he joined the Marines, and served three years,  much of it in the South Pacific during World War II.  After his discharge he entered the University of California, where he played linebacker under the legendary Pappy Waldorf, and played in two Rose Bowls.

After graduation he coached high school ball in the Bay Area for two years, then assisted Waldorf and his successor, Pete Elliott, at Cal for three seasons. He was on the Cal staff when the Bears last played in the Rose Bowl, in 1959.

Following the Rose Bowl, he was hired, at the age of 31, as head coach at Utah State.

In four years at Logan, he went 31-11-1, good enough to get him the head job at Stanford. In nine years on The Farm, his record was 55-36-3, and following back-to-back Rose Bowl wins over undefeated Big Ten teams (first Ohio State and then Michigan), he was hired as head coach by the Denver Broncos.

In his second season in Denver he led the Broncos to their first ever winning season - for which he was named AFC Coach of the Year - and in five years there he compiled an overall record of 34-33-2.  But he could never beat the Raiders in the AFC West - he finished second in the AFC West four straight years - and despite a 9-5 record in 1976, he was fired.

After that, he assisted in the NFL in Philadelphia and San Francisco, and in Toronto of the CFL.  He was head coach of the Oakland Invaders of the USFL,  and coached the Dutch national team to third place in the European championships.

In 1993, at the age of 66, he signed on as head coach at San Jose State, and in four years posted a record of 11-34 before retiring for good.

His honors were many.

In 1991 he was named Stanford’s “Coach of the Century” for having taken  the Cardinal (then the Indians) to two straight Rose Bowl appearances - and two wins.

He coached Heisman Trophy winner and future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Plunkett at Stanford, and he coached future Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive lineman Merlin Olsen at Utah State.

HIs coaching tree includes Bill Walsh, Dick Vermeil,  Jim Mora, Sr., Mike White, Rod Rust,  Jack Christiansen, Roger Theder and Tony Knap.

He is in the College Football Hall of Fame, the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame, the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame, the San Jose State Sports Hall of Fame, the Stanford Hall of Fame and the Utah State Hall of Fame.

At the time of his death in September, 2019 at the age of 92, John Ralston was the oldest living coach in the College Football Hall of Fame.



CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING JOHN  RALSTON

JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
GREG KOENIG - COLORADO SPRINGS
BILL NELSON - THORNTON, COLORADO
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
JOHN IRION - GRANVILLE, NEW YORK
JOHN BOTHE - OREGON, ILLINOIS
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
TOM WALLS - WINNIPEG, MANITOBA
DAVID CRUMP - OWENSBORO, KENTUCKY


*********** Ears perked up when I saw Yooper – John Ralston.

Norway is just outside of Iron Mountain, the home of Tom Izzo and Steve Mariucci.

Adam Wesoloski
Pulaski, WI

He and Mooch knew each other!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2020  

FROM THE NCAA RULE BOOK
Defenseless Player

ARTICLE 14. A defenseless player is one who because of his physical position
and focus of concentration is especially vulnerable to injury. When in question,
a player is defenseless. Examples of defenseless players include but are not limited
to:
a. A player in the act of or just after throwing a pass.
b. A receiver attempting to catch a forward pass or in position to receive a
backward pass, or one who has completed a catch and has not had time to
protect himself or has not clearly become a ball carrier.
c. A kicker in the act of or just after kicking a ball, or during the kick or the
return.
d. A kick returner attempting to catch or recover a kick, or one who has
completed a catch or recovery and has not had time to protect himself or
has not clearly become a ball carrier..
e. A player on the ground.
f. A player obviously out of the play.
g. A player who receives a blind-side block.
h. A ball carrier already in the grasp of an opponent and whose forward
progress has been stopped.
i. A quarterback any time after a change of possession.
j. A ball carrier who has obviously given himself up and is sliding feet-first.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2020  

*********** Americans who appreciate learned men and realize how scarce such people are will realize how much we've lost with the death of Dr. Walter Williams. No man is indispensable, but Dr. Williams is irreplaceable.

A living refutation of the now-common belief that a black person can’t rise from poverty, he became a respected economist with a wealth of wisdom hich he was more than willing to share with his fellow Americans.

His greatest worry was that Americans were ignorant of economics - and of our history.  During this past election, every time I heard some “expert” expound on “democracy this” or “democracy that,” in reference to America, I thought of Dr. Williams, who said, “America isn’t a democracy.  In fact, the founders feared democracy.”

He had a great sense of humor, and the frequent target of his wit was the race hustlers and the virtue-signaling whites who were their prey.  I loved the way he dealt with the subject of white guilt by issuing a “Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon” to “All Persons of European Descent.”


God bless you and keep you, Dr. Williams.  Your life and your teachings have been a great inspiration to so many of us.

Learn more about this amazing American (a fellow Philadelphian, if I may say so).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams


*********** Dr. Walter E. Williams and Dr. Thomas Sowell are two of the men I most respect and admire.  They are brilliant men.  They are educated men.  They are eloquent men.  They  came from humble backgrounds to achieve success in their fields - and to become  no-BS conservatives.

I don’t refer to them as “black economists,” as if they belong in a special category. They are economists. Period.

They were longtime friends, and I can’t think of a better person to eulogize Dr. Williams than his friend, Dr. Thomas Sowell

https://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2020/12/02/walter-e-williams-19362020-n2580965

HEAR THESE TWO REMARKABLE MEN,  DR. WILLIAMS AND DR. SOWELL…

DR. WILLIAMS:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZGvQcxoAPg

DR. SOWELL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS5WYp5xmvI


*********** Congratulations to Lou Holtz on receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Increasingly detached from reality
unspooling one misstatement after another
his baseless claim that he really won
litany of misinformation
unsubstantiated allegations
futile pushback against the election
his baseless claims
undermining public faith in the integrity of U.S. elections
a random baseless attack on the entire election

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020  

SARAH FULLER - WHAT ELSE? - TOOK UP MOST OF MY TIME AND MY PAGE TODAY


Shouldn't someone have told Sarah that the ball is  centered from the three-yard-line, not kicked from there?

*********** To me, the Sarah Fuller farce was a combination of Geraldo Rivera and Eddie Gaedel.

Many years ago, Geraldo drew a huge television audience with his promise to open Al Capone’s never-before-opened vault and show us what was inside.  Would it be machine guns?  Bootleg whiskey? Decomposed bodies of enemies?

After an enormous  buildup,  the big moment came. We all looked inside, along with Geraldo, and saw -  nothing. 

Like the Geraldo stunt, after all the panting and oohing and aahing, all the public got from Sarah Fuller was a pathetic low, 30-yard (including the bounce) kick that allowed Ms. Fuller to slip off the field unscathed, without in any way engaging in the actual game of football.

Eddie Gaedel was 3 feet, seven inches tall.  A little person.  They were once called midgets or dwarfs.  As a promotion, Bill Veeck, owner of the St. Louis Browns, one of the most forlorn teams in baseball history, signed him to a contract to pinch-hit in a major league game and - under strict orders not to take the bat off his shoulder - draw a walk.  That he did, and he was promptly pulled for a pinch runner.  The very next day, claiming that Veeck had “made a mockery of the game,” Will Harridge, the Commissioner of the American League, voided Gaedel’s contract.

As with Sarah Fuller, Eddie Gaedel’s appearance in an actual game made a mockery of the sport. But unlike Ms. Fuller, Eddie Gaedel’s appearance was never passed off as anything other than a stunt. Further, unlike the breathless promotion of Sarah Fuller’s appearance as “history about to be made” Gaedel’s was unannounced - typical of Veeck’s “what will that guy think up next?” approach to promotion.

And finally, unlike Ms. Fuller, Eddie Gaedel delivered.

*********** Full disclosure: there are those who might call me a male chauvinist pig.  So call me that.  I sleep well.

I’ve been married to the same woman for 61 years.  I’m the proud father of three daughters (a son, too, but that’s not important right now in establishing my credentials) and the proud grandfather of four granddaughters. All but one are college graduates (the one who’s not is a freshman). They are teachers, business people, and engineers. 

I couldn’t be prouder.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not a chauvinist, by today’s ever-changing definitions.

And if any one of them were to ask me what I think about a woman playing football (they wouldn’t ask - they already know) I’d tell them that unless they’re playing on a women’s team that plays against other women’s teams, I’m against it.

I’m against it because just as I feel that there are aspects of our society that should be female-only, so should there be places reserved for men only. Football is one of them, an almost uniquely American institution that provides  a rare opportunity to mold boys into young men and young men into grown men, capable of holding jobs, loving their country and respecting its laws, respecting and marrying women, and raising good kids.

*********** Full disclosure: Four of my grandkids graduated from Vanderbilt. They love the school and their parents love it, and that’s good enough for me.  I support Vanderbilt and Vanderbilt football, something which isn’t always easy to do.  Especially now.

Not after Vanderbilt, whose football ineptitude is at least understandable if not desirable, chose to push its program across the line into Laughingstock City by concocting some story about needing a placekicker - really, really needing a placekicker - and solving the problem by asking the soccer team’s goalie to give football a shot.  That would be the women’s soccer team goalie.

Since then, it has been a carnival of excitement with the “historic” move being greeted, as expected in these days of political correctness,  by unanimous media approval.

Reading from the media list of talking points, one heard them say such things as: Everybody is pulling for Sarah Fuller… Women belong in the game… I get chills… History is about to be made… What a day in college football… Congratulations to Derek Mason for making that happen… She absolutely did it… And on and on.

And true to our new Cancel Culture tradition, there was absolutely zero dissent.  Say it’s wonderful or you die.

*********** I appreciate the problems that Derek Mason faces as Vanderbilt’s coach.  Vandy is an expensive private school, which means that it’s hard to attract walk-ons, and it’s a selective school with high admissions standards, which prevents him from recruiting athletes who could get into any other SEC school.

I understand that, and as a result I cut him a lot of slack. But there is one hard and fast rule I have always taken with me to any job. (They’re always “bad” jobs - they wouldn’t have been in the market for a new coach if things were hunky-dory.) That hard and fast rule is: when your team sucks (and Vanderbilt’s surely does) your first order of business, your sole mission, has to be to STOP SUCKING.

That’s Job One. And Job Two. And Job Three.  It has to take all of your attention.

So what would possess a coach who’s getting his brains beaten in to get the bright idea that bringing in a female placekicker is going to do a damn thing to stop the sucking?  Even if she could kick a little, finding a better kicker when you’re 0-7 is like sticking a finger in the side of the Titanic. You’ve got far bigger problems that need your attention.

*********** True to America’s youth soccer-inspired Trophies for Everybody tradition, The honors start to pour in… For her “effort” in Vanderbilt’s 41-0 loss to Missouri Saturday, Sarah Fuller was named SEC co-player of the week, sharing the honor with a Florida player who returned a punt 50 yards for a score against Kentucky.

Is it too late for me to change my Heisman vote to Sarah Fuller?

*********** There have been a few occasions in the course of my coaching career - mostly when it was too windy to keep the ball upright on the tee - that we've had to have a holder on kickoffs. But what was Vanderbilt's reason for doing it Saturday?  Was it for emotional support?  Did you see how fast the kicker got off the field once she'd kicked the ball? 

*********** Sarah Fuller “made history,” they tried to tell us.  Right.

First of all, this is coming from members of a generation that can’t tell you what happened last year, and can’t tell you whether World War I or World War II came first. A generation that has shown almost universal scorn for and ignorance of real history - except when it serves their purposes (oh look - it says here that when he was eight he once got in a fight with a kid of color).

Second of all,  I have - literally - hundreds of books dealing with one aspect or another of football history. Real football history. Ms. Fullers’ “accomplishment,” meagre and unexceptional as it was, would scarcely rate a sentence in any of them.

Real football history was made by the scores of black players who blazed trails at colleges throughout America - men who certainly weren’t invited and weren’t welcomed, who definitely weren’t treated right from the start like Lady Astor’s pet horse, men who often endured slights and hardships, asking only for the chance to prove themselves. Men whose real on-the-field accomplishments made it possible for others to follow in their footsteps.

*********** A kid from Buffalo named Jaret Patterson - a Maryland kid, I should add, as a one-time Marylander myself - rushed 36 times for 409 yards and EIGHT TDs against Kent State Saturday, and I haven’t read a thing about that in any newspaper. Maybe it’ll rate a line in some record book. But let a female kick a ball 30 yards, and - that’s HISTORY.

*********** One of my grandsons said he was going after the rights to The Sarah Fuller Story.

I hated to disappoint him, but I said, guess what?

The story has already been written. It’s in a binder on a shelf at Disney.

Against all odds, despite enormous obstacles and people saying it couldn’t be done a (handicapped/female/person of color/LGBTQ person) tries, succeeds, and serves as an example to others just like (him/her/them) that you can do anything you want if you just put your mind to it.

They’ve just been waiting for the right incident that gets enough attention and then off they go, “inspired by a true story.”

All they need to do is change a few dates, places and people.  And facts.

In the movie, Sarah will make a field goal - her fourth of the game - as time expires to defeat Alabama and put undefeated Vanderbilt in the national championship game against Clemson. There, when Vandy loses all three of its quarterbacks to injury, Sarah sidles up to Coach Mason and tells him that she once played quarterback when she was in seventh grade… but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

I tell you this from experience, as the person who signed Vince Papale to a professional contract in the World Football League in 1974.  That was two years before the Eagles signed him, after having seen him play two seasons in the WFL. In other words, he was talented, they knew talent,  and they believed that he could help them. They weren’t stupid. But in the movie “Invincible,” it made a better story to ignore his two years in the WFL and portray him instead as a down-on-his-luck bartender  who’d never played any football other than street ball with his buddies.

*********** My wife’s take: I am so mad. As a coach’s wife, I can’t believe there weren’t 40 Vanderbilt players who couldn’t have kicked off better than that - and not needed the ball held. As a woman, I’m upset that she embarrassed us by not being even competent. Does the coach really think this stunt would save his job?

*********** I have often referred to things like women playing football as a freak show, and it just occurred to me that I might be using a reference that people younger than I wouldn’t understand. Freak shows are gone from the scene but until the second half of the last century, when television began to provide in-home entertainment, freak shows were considered a legitimate form of entertainment.

The public paid money to go to traveling shows to see people who for one reason or another - maybe it was a physical deformity or mental retardation, or unusually great or small size, maybe it was a “tattooed lady”  - were unlike anything they would see in their everyday lives.

Sometimes the freak show was part of the sideshow at circuses, and sometimes it was a show unto itself, but it was a form of show business.

We like to pride ourselves on the way we’ve improved in our attitudes toward people different from ourselves - hell, now we even get served in restaurants by tattooed ladies - but the way people jumped on the Sarah Fuller story shows that in addition to the great number of people who really did see her as advancing the cause of women, there were a great many others who just wanted to see something they’d never seen before.

*********** I have no reason to believe that Sarah Fuller is not a nice young woman but I do have to say that in interviews she sounded a bit full of herself and of the supposed importance of her “history-making” performance.

With other players putting various messages on the backs of their helmets, she had to go and  wear one that said, “PLAY LIKE A GIRL.” I could go for the cheap laugh and say, “Well, can't say she didn’t do  just that.” But I won’t.

She talked about the influence she would have on little girls - “I can represent the little girls out there” - like wow, we sure do want them banging on our doors, asking for a chance to kick.

She preached the Great Untruth that I suspect has ruined the lives of more than a few young people: “You can do anything you want to do.” (You realize how many people live empty lives because they really thought they could play in the NBA?)

*********** Biff Jones was the football coach at LSU from 1932 through 1934, and he was a damn good one - his record was 20-5-6.  In the final game of the 1934 season, upset with the Tigers trailing at halftime, Senator Huey P. Long, the most powerful and influential man in Louisiana politics, insisted on talking to the team.

Jones, a West Pointer, refused him admission.  An argument took place with the Senator saying “You’d better win this game,” and  Jones finally telling Long, “Win, lose or draw, I’m through!”

LSU won the game, 14-13. And Jones resigned.

I use that to illustrate that fact that to a football coach, the locker room, especially on game day, is sacred.  Nobody comes in without the coach’s approval.  Most coaches I know are very, very careful about who they let in, and even more so about who talks to their players.

So I have to say that for me the most alarming thing about this whole Sarah Fuller fiasco was hearing her say - not sure when it was, but it had to be after halftime - that she had spoken with the team. I heard her say “I wanted more energy on the sidelines.”

Asked if she had been asked to talk or if she had asked to do so, she said “I asked to talk.” And she said that whoever she approached had said, “Oh, yeah - go ahead.”

Are you shi—ing me? For the last few days, the media has been obsessed with the idea of this person who’s never played a down of football, never been in a football locker room - and she’s going to tell players who have paid with their sweat and blood to be in that locker room how they should act?

Seems to me that this is a serious problem, in a culture of child worship in which the right to speak doesn’t have to be earned by merit or seniority - that everyone has some God-given right to be heard, regardless of where they are who they are, or who(m) they’re talking to.

Derek Mason, obviously, is no Biff Jones.

For what it’s worth, Ms. Jones’ talk must have helped. Some. The halftime score was 21-0.  The final score was 41-0.  The talk might have been worth the one-point difference.

*********** The talking heads have positively salivated over this whole Sarah Fuller farce. I d hoped that there might  be just one of them with the cojones to say what he really thought. But no, their paychecks are coming from the same people who told them to push the BLM story - which as we know  they obediently did.

Talk about cancel culture. Not one of them had the courage to say that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes.

Desmond Howard did express a bit of skepticism - well-deserved, I’d say, in view of how things would turn out - and he got ripped for it.  Bad, Desmond, bad.  Go to your room.

Just as it was with those shy Trump voters, real dissent, in this case,  has had to go underground.  To find out what real people are thinking - no, not the pussies who call the games - get on some site that still allows comments on its stories.

Until, like all the big guys, it has to shut down its comments.  Or shut down its site.

*********** The Sarah Fuller incident brings to the forefront another factor that’s come into play in our society in the last generation or two, and that’s our transformation into a matriarchal society.  For good or bad (I happen to think its bad, but that doesn’t make me right), it does appear that it’s becoming more and more a society of “female good, male bad.”  If it advances the cause of females, it’s automatically good, regardless of the effect it might have on men.  I refer to Title IX, and its having to balance male-female sports participation through a vile combination of contrived female sports and eliminated male sports.

The idea that it’s so wonderful that a woman is making the world better merely by kicking a damn ball - and not well at that - almost makes me want to support transgenders playing female sports. Almost.
 
*********** For seven seasons, I coached football in Finland.  American football.  Tackle football. On the order of semi-pro football in the US - big guys playing for the hell of it - except that many of those big guys had never played football before.

Many were the guys, big and strong and tough, who thought that all they had to do was show up in a uniform and - voila! - they could “play football.”

Few were the guys who stuck around long enough to actually play in a game.

Why?

Because it’s a hard game to learn to play.  Damn hard.

Players need a grounding in the fundamentals,  of course.  And it takes time to learn them well enough to put them to use. The key word there is “time.” In wrestling, they say there’s no substitute for “mat time.” In football, I don’t know what it’s called, but most coaches know that it’s a rare kid who comes to him without any experience who in his first season can do the team much good at any position other than, if he’s really athletic, receiver. There’s simply too much to learn, which is a shame in today’s instant-gratification society, where kids frequently give up when they don’t have quick success.

I don’t include a kicker as playing a position, and I’ve made it a point, because of my respect for the game of football, never to have a guy on my team who did nothing other than kick. In my thinking, kicker or not, if you’re on the football team. you play football!

Did you hear that, Sarah?

*********** You want a good laugh? Derek Mason said Sarah Fuller kicked the ball exactly where he wanted it to go.

(1)  He’s lying. He's  covering for the people who put him up to the stunt.

(2) He’s telling the truth, but expecting us to ignore the fact that he undoubtedly had at least a dozen or so players on his team - and probably more than that in the Vanderbilt student body - who could have kicked it 30 yards (including the bounce).

(3) He’s telling the truth because he knew that if she kicked it so that Mizzou could return it, she might find out that she got more than she bargained for, and he’d have to answer for putting her in harm’s way.

*********** If I were the Missouri defensive coordinator, I would have challenged my defense not to let Vanderbilt into a position where we could “go down in history” as the team that Sarah Fuller kicked the field goal (or extra point) against.  Maybe that’s why Vandy never got closer than the  Mizzou 32 yard line.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2020  

During last Sat's Army game,  neither announcer said anything about what I thought was a spiking rule, to wit, the practice is disallowed with three seconds or fewer remaining in a CFB game. Moreover, the refs didn't cite the rule either.  As you were showing the video last night, I asked the question on my phone. I wasn't at all sure I was correct. What came back was that the rule changed in 2013 to prohibit spiking with under three seconds left in the game. If this is true, wouldn't the game have ended whether there was a tenth of second remaining?

Late in a quarter Team A, out of timeouts, makes a first down, stopping
the clock which reads 0:03. Team A intends to spike the ball and run an
additional play. The referee appropriately blows his whistle and signals, which
starts the game clock. The quarterback takes the snap and raises the ball high
over his head before throwing it directly to the ground. The game clock
shows 0:00. RULING: Time in the quarter has expired. Although there
were 3 seconds on the game clock when the referee signaled it to start, there
is no guarantee of enough time to run an additional play other than spiking
the ball. The offense must execute the spike in a timely manner.

"Every day we practiced handoffs," said Kapp. "I got real good at it, but then I kept saying, 'When can we practice passing?' When I got to pro football, I saw quarterbacks who didn't know how to hand off. I sure did."

The coaches knew Kapp was their asset, and they wanted to get the ball in his hands and keep it there as often as they could. "Joe Kapp could have started at all 22 positions for any Division I team in the country," said John Ralston, an assistant to Elliott who would, of course, coach Stanford to consecutive Rose Bowls in 1970-71.

Kapp finished the season with 616 rushing yards, which not only led the team, it led the Pacific Coast Conference.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2020  

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2020  

           
Charlotte at #15 Marshall
           
#22 Texas at Kansas
           
Central Arkansas at #24 Louisiana
               
Wake Forest  at Duke
           
Houston at SMU
           
UL Monroe at Louisiana Tech
               
UNLV at Colorado State
               
Navy at South Florida
               
Arizona State at Colorado
               


GAMES THAT I’M SURE TO TAKE AN EARLY LOOK AT


#9 Indiana at #3 Ohio State - Just to see how long the Hoosiers can hang with them

Appalachian State at #15 Coastal Carolina - Coastal’s biggest test so far

Georgia Southern at Army - Will Army get back to running its offense?

LSU at Arkansas - Bad sh— going on at LSU -  and I’m not talking about Covid19

#7 Cincinnati at UCF - Cincinnati still has an outside shot at a playoff spot
       
#10 Wisconsin at #19 Northwestern - How good is Northwestern, anyhow?
       
UCLA      at #11 Oregon - I just like watching Oregon’s new offense

Iowa at Penn State - Why do I find myself not liking Penn State?
   
California at Oregon State - Cal didn’t impress me against UCLA. Beavs could have beaten Washington.
   
Kansas State  at #17 Iowa State - EMAW (Every man a Wildcat). But I'm afraid the Cyclones are just better
   
Virginia Tech     at Pitt - I like I lot of stuff VT does.  Why can’t they win?

Tennessee at #23 Auburn - I like Gus Malzahn’s offense
     
San José State at Fresno State - Two of the best Mountain West teams
     
#14 Oklahoma State at #18 Oklahoma - Cowboys are the Big 12’s best shot at a playoff spot. But they have to win - in Norman.

#21 Liberty at NC State - State is favored but I like Liberty.
   
Missouri at South Carolina - Gamecocks’ interim head coach Mike Bobo gets his  first shot
       
Michigan at Rutgers - Has Michigan dropped this far? Michgian will win because Michigan has better athletes.
       
Arizona at Washington - Zona could have beaten USC; Huskies could have lost to Oregon State.
       
#20 USC at Utah - Utah’s opener - Utes are the last FBS team to play.  USC has won a couple that could easily have been losses.

Washington State at Stanford - Cougs' freshman QB Jayden DeLaura is GOOD.

  
*********** Rick Barry is the only person who led the NCAA, the ABA and the NBA in scoring. He’s been named one of the 50 greatest all-time NBA players. And among NBA players he remains fourth-best all time in free throw shooting percentage (89.98).

With the NBA’s overall percentage considerably lower than that - around 75 per cent - and numerous big-name stars shooting below 70 per cent, you’d think that they would be interested in some help from Rick Barry.

But you’d be wrong.  Despite offers to help, he’s never had any takers.

Why?

Simple: the major reason for Barry’s success - besides his all-around basketball skills - was his underhanded free throw shooting technique.  When I was a kid, we were taught it as the only way to shoot free throws. But the “one-hand push” method took hold, and by the time Rick Barry was playing in the NBA - 1979-1985 - he was the only living tie to an earlier day. He was the best in the business at shooting free throws, because he dared to defy convention.

And he was ridiculed.

Not a single one of the NBA’s style-over-substance stars would be seen dead shooting a free throw underhanded.  Not even if they could be convinced that it would improve their performance - and their team’s. Nope.  Form over function.

Said Barry.

“The bottom line is, they have an aversion to wanting to try the underhanded free throw. I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t try anything to try to get better and I don’t think your personal pride should come into play.”

Where I’m headed with this is football coaches, who for the same reason wouldn’t be caught dead running an old-fashioned offense - or teaching an old-fashioned method of blocking.

Success, I've discovered over the years, is secondary in importance to many coaches to membership in the In Crowd, which in today’s football means spreading it out and throwing the ball.

It’s been my experience that for every football coach who would dare adopt an old-fashioned but proven way of playing football that might give his kids the best chance for success, there are 100 others who choose the conventional way of doing things, seeking the safety and security of membership in the pack, even if it means a greater risk of losing.

*********** Charlie Wilson, of Crystal River, Florida recently put me onto “Do Your Job,” NFL Films’ treatment of the Patriots’ 2014 season.

It’s a great look, I think, at all that went into that Super-Bowl-winning season, and a good look at Belichick the coach.  I know, I know - “Belicheat,” blah, blah, blah.  But I admire the guy as a coach and as a historian of the game, and I have no reason to dislike him as a person.

Charlie  asked me about the big play of the Super Bowl - maybe of the entire season - in which the Patriots’ Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson’s pass  (from the ONE YARD LINE) to seal the Pats’ 28-24 win.

The film went into some detail as to how the Patriots anticipated such a play and how they would defend it - exactly, it turns out, as they did.   But, since this was about the Patriots, the film didn’t deal with the sheer idiocy of the Seahawks’ call, which is where I come in.

It was second down and the Seahawks, trailing by four points, were on the Patriots’ one.  There were 27 seconds left. They had one timeout remaining.

And, most significant of all, they had Marshawn Lynch, at that time probably the toughest runner in all of football, in the backfield.

So,  it being the NFL, they chose to throw.  From the one.

Yes, from the standpoint of the Patriots and of anybody else in the  world who thought that doing anything other than giving the ball to  Lynch was smart football, I guess it was a great defensive play. That’s how the film told it,

But I saw it - still do - as a bonehead call of historic proportions.

I think of Wrong Way Riegels and Bill Buckner and Merkel’s Boner and all the guys through the years the rest of whose lives were defined by one egregious mistake, and I marvel at the fact that Smilin’ Pete, whose ”mistake” was carefully thought out and easily avoided, and took place on a far larger stage than that of any of those other guys, is such a media darling that he’s never really had to answer for it.  It’s as if his first name was Hunter.

*********** If, like me,  you haven’t been watching the NFL, this us what you’ve been missing:

Field goals.  Long ones. Lots of them.  In other words, if you’ve been watching golf, or bowling - curling, even - you’ve been watching something more exciting.

Amazingly,   so far this season there have been 102 field goal attempts of at least 50 yards.  Even more amazingly, 71 per cent of them have been successful. That’s a 69.6 per cent success rate.

You talk about suspense:  “will he make it or will he miss?”

No suspense at all, really: 69.6 per cent success is almost exactly the same as the rate at which college basketball players make free throws, which has never exceeded 70 per cent.

*********** Akron’s mascot, I read, is Zippy, a kangaroo. A female kangaroo.

I read that she is one of only eight female college mascots. Evidently one is the Delaware Blue Hen. I don’t know whether Shasta, the Houston Cougar is still alive, and if so whether PETA still allows her to work. But beyond that, you got me.


*********** Is there anyone old enough to remember when Joe Namath was the Playboy of the Western World who doesn’t marvel at the absurd irony of his shilling for Medicare benefits on TV commercials?

*********** Top pathologist Dr. Roger Hodkinson told government officials in Alberta (Canada) during a zoom conference call that the current coronavirus crisis is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”

Dispute this as you wish.  Please bring facts.

And while you’re at it,  tell me again, would you please, what the vast majority of the American people have to fear from the Wuhan Virus that has justified depriving Americans of their God-given (not man-given) liberties?

https://summit.news/2020/11/18/top-pathologist-claims-coronavirus-is-the-greatest-hoax-ever-perpetrated-on-an-unsuspecting-public/

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

I appreciated your quote from John Adams about physical education. I've worked hard during our two quarantines this fall to motivate my students to continue working out. Several have let me know that the workouts that I am sharing with them are helping them to feel better, getting them moving and away from the computer screens, and helping with their general well-being. I've said for years that every high school student should be in a Strength and Conditioning class. I believe that we would see improved self-esteem, academic performance, self-discipline, and well-being.

Greg Koenig
Colorado Springs, Colorado

*********** Coach,

Our season ended with a 34-14 loss to Summerfield which was a team we beat three weeks ago.   In the end we started 7 Freshman and 5 Sophomores with 2 Healthy Seniors we have lots to look forward too in future years.   Our Seniors did a great job leading and embracing the younger kids in our program.   Overall I was really proud of this. 

Quiz answer Don Nehlen....   Michigan ties always help me!

God Bless,
Jason  Mensing 
Head Football Coach
Whiteford High School
Whiteford, Michigan

*********** Coach Wyatt,

It’s been a while since I read your news. Reading a bit today made me realize how much I missed all the info you share.

Hope all is well with you. Stay safe and healthy.

Russ Meyers
Southern High School
Harwood, Maryland

*********** Coach,

I really enjoyed last night’s zoom on the kicking game. Looking at the college recaps is fun, but the actual clinic like description of things you have found successful is particularly useful.

Special teams does seem to be something that coaches overcomplicate and spend too much time on scheme and not enough on fundamentals. This may be because it is commonly given to an inexperienced staff member. My first varsity job was as a special teams coach. I was more concerned with setting up a punt return wall than teaching kids not to leave their feet when attempting to block a kick. A VHS by Frank Beamer (1980s shorts and all) solved that.

I also wanted to comment on the conversations that go on when you finish. I am not a big fan of making statements in the form of a question (pet peeve during faculty meetings) so do not take my silence for passivity. It was good to hear that other coaches were fearful of not having a spring season. I am apprehensive for my 14 seniors and with our program having just finished its inaugural year, I am fearful of losing momentum and not being able to field a team in 2022. Hence, why I stuck around so late yesterday. Hearing other coaches say similar things was helpful. Doesn’t solve the problem, but it was good to know I wasn’t alone.

Tom Walls
Winnipeg, Manitoba

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

We put together our most complete game of the season last night winning 35-12.  First district win in two years, and believe it or not put us into the playoffs.  Our kids have improved a bunch since game 1, and are playing with a lot of confidence right now.  Just in time, and at the right time.  Our state association had to rearrange the Division II playoff bracket when six schools opted out from Covid.  Since our district has the most schools (8) they put 7 of us in the playoffs.  

For our first-round playoff we will travel to Forth Worth on Friday to play Fort Worth Christian.  They have also won only 2 games this year, but their 2 wins came in district play.  Last Friday they beat the number 2 team in their district (7-2 overall). That team elected to play most of their backups and JV kids against FWC.  Apparently that opponent has a first round bye, and will play the winner of a first-round game in their bracket that will likely have a .500 record.  In this Covid year it is very apparent that team's coach is playing the odds.

Anyway, FWC is almost a virtual mirror image of us.  Should be a great game!  Good news is we have a legitimate shot.  Bad news is win or lose we'll get back to school around 3 am, and after getting things put away, I'll likely get home and in bed near 4 am.  Of course winning the doggone game will make it all better!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas



*********** QUIZ ANSWER:   Don Nehlen is without a doubt the greatest coach in the history of the University of West Virginia.  He set the standard by which anyone who coaches there will be measured.

Overall, at Bowling Green and West Virginia, his record was 202-128-8.  He was just the 17th coach in major college history to win 200 games.

A native of Mansfield, Ohio, he played quarterback at Bowling Green.

He began as a high school coach, at Mansfield and at perennial Ohio power Canton McKinley, then assisted at Cincinnati and Bowling Green.

He became head coach at Bowling Green, and in nine seasons there had just one losing season. His overall record was 53-35-4.

In 1977, Bo Schembechler hired him to coach the Michigan quarterbacks.

At WVU, in 1980 he took over a program that hadn’t had a winning season in four years, and when he retired after 21 seasons in Morgantown, he’d had 17 winning seasons and taken the Montaineers to 13 bowl games.  His overall record  there was 149-93-8.

He had two teams that went unbeaten in the regular season, and one of them, his 1993 team, was ranked number one before losing to Notre Dame in what was then considered the national title game.

In 1988 he was named the Walter Camp, Bobby Dodd and AFCA coach of the year in and in 1993 he was named the Kodak coach of the year.

Arriving at West Virginia after three years on Schembechler’s staff, the Michigan influence on his approach was evident from the start in the offense, in defense, and in the  uniforms (a new, Michigan shade of blue and a more yellow gold than the drab old-gold that they had been wearing).  One of his motivators, he said,  was the fact that when he first began to look at film, he could never tell which team was West Virginia.

Along with the brighter colors came the new logo for the helmets.  Now known as the “Flying W,” it combined the two letters, W and V, in a way suggestive of the mountains for which the state is known, and it has become known far and wide as a symbol of the university and, for that matter, the entire state.

Not only did he introduce West Virginia fans to a whole new uniform look, but his first game as their coach was also their first game in their new stadium. They won it.

In his first year,  the Mountaineers went 6-6.

In his second season, they were 8-3 and played in the Peach Bowl, where they whipped heavily-favored Florida.

In his third season, West Virginia beat ninth-ranked Oklahoma.  In Norman.

By his fifth year, they had beaten Penn State - something they hadn’t done since 1955 - and ended a seven-year losing streak to Pitt.

In his final game, his Mountaineers defeated Ole Miss in the Music City Bowl.

80 of his players went on to play in the NFL. One of them, Jeff Hostetler, a quarterback who went on to a solid pro career, married his daughter.

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

Bobby Bowden, who left West Virginia partly because he felt that the fans weren’t sufficiently appreciative of what he’d done, knew better than anybody how much this coach had accomplished.

“Don did an amazing job,” Bowden said. “Number  1, he had that Michigan background.  He used to coach at Michigan when he was an assistant coach and he was used to being big-time all the way,  so when he comes to West Virginia he just assumes he’s going to do the same thing here. He changed the uniforms to even look like Michigan. Don Nehlen is one of the best coaches ever, in my opinion.”

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING DON NEHLEN

JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
GREG KOENIG - COLORADO SPRINGS
RUSS MEYERS - HARWOOD, MARYLAND
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
JASON MENSING - WHITEFORD, MICHIGAN
JOHN NOTHE - OREGON, ILLINOIS
DAVID CRUMP - OWENSBORO, KENTUCKY
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
BILL NELSON - THORNTON, COLORADO
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
TOM DAVIS - SAN CARLOS, CALIFORNIA
TOM WALLS - WINNIPEG, MANITOBA
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON



*********** Don Nehlen is one of my favorite college football coaches. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak over the years and I liked his philosophy of coaching and teaching football.

David Crump
Owensboro, Kentucky

*********** We were just talking about Don Nehlen  in the coach's office the other day...How he's overlooked when talking about great coaches...What a great motivator!

Coach Kaz
Mark Kaczmarek
Davenport, Iowa


*********** It is interesting to note how a change in uniform can lead to a winning culture. I have also seen the opposite. It would be interesting to read a history of uniforms in football. Maybe I can propose it as a post grad thesis.

Tom Walls
Winnipeg, Manitoba


*********** THE LEGEND OF WEST VIRGINIA’S “FLYING W” LOGO

https://magazine.wvu.edu/stories/2015/05/18/the-legend-of-the-flying-wv


*********** QUIZ:  He is often credited with bringing about the greatest turnaround of a program in the history of college football.

BEFORE:

In 1989, he took over as head coach at a school that in its 93 years of football had a record of 299 wins and 509 losses, dead last - by a large margin -  in both wins and losses among America’s major football colleges.

In its 93 years, it had had 32 coaches - an average stay of less than three years per coach.

It had won only one conference championship in its history.

Since World War II (1945) it had had only four winning seasons.

It had been to only one bowl game (and lost it).

He took over a team that had gone 27 games without a win. In the previous two seasons, it had gone  0-10-1 in 1987 and 0-11 in 1988.   His predecessor had gone 2-30-1.

When he was hired, he was 50 years old, fresh off Hayden Fry’s Iowa staff where he had been  offensive coordinator.  This was his first head coaching job.

The AD told him, “You may have heard it's one of the toughest jobs in the country. It's not. It's the toughest.”

A Sports Illustrated article at the time referred to the school as “Futility U.”

AFTER:

He would coach at the school for a total of 27 years in two terms - from 1989 through 2005, when he first retired, and then, after being brought back again, from 2009 through 2018, when he retired a second time, this time for good.

In his first year, he broke the long losing streak. But that was the only game then won.

His second year saw five wins.

His third year - a 7-4 record, including four conference wins.

In his fifth year - 1993 - the team won nine games for the first time since 1910, and earned a bowl bid, the first of what would be eleven straight bowl game appearances.  (1993 would also start an eight year run in which they would win at least nine games a season.)

In his sixth year, they again won nine, and they did the once-unthinkable, beating Oklahoma in Norman.

In his seventh year, 1995, they would win 10 games, including a win in the Holiday Bowl, and earn a #7 ranking nationally.

In 1997, his ninth year, they won 11 games, and would do so for four straight years.

In 1998,  they would finish the regular season unbeaten, with their  first win over Nebraska in 30 years. Only a loss in the Big 12 Championship Game kept them from going to the first-ever BCS national championship game.

In his first term - the 17 years from 1989 through 2005 -  they went to 11 bowl games.
 
In his second - the  10 years from 2009 through  2018 -  they went to eight straight bowl games.

Not bad for a team that had only been to one bowl game in its entire 93-year history prior to his hiring.

His overall record was 215-117-1.  The 215 wins were just 84 short of the total number of wins the school had accumulated in the 93 years prior to his arrival.

He was three times named Big Eight Coach of the Year, and four times Big 12 Coach of the Year.

In 1998, he was AP, Walter Camp and Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year.

In 2011 he was Sporting News and Woody Hayes Coach of the Year.

Seven of his former assistants became FBS head coaches .

No less a coach than Barry Switzer, with three National Championships and a Super Bowl to his credit, said “(He) isn’t the Coach of the Year, and he isn’t the Coach of the Decade.  He’s the Coach of the Century.”

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2020  

***********
FRIDAY'S GAMES (THE WINNERS - OF THE ONES THAT I CHOSE TO CALL - ARE IN BOLD)

W- Iowa at Minnesota
Florida Atlantic at FIU
East Carolina at No. 7 Cincinnati

SATURDAY'S GAMES

W -No. 9 Miami (FL) at Virginia Tech
W - No. 10 Indiana at Michigan State
L- Illinois at Rutgers
No. 15 Coastal Carolina at Troy
Western Carolina at No. 22 Liberty
W - Penn State at Nebraska
L - Wake Forest at North Carolina - UPSET PICK
Vanderbilt at Kentucky
W - TCU at West Virginia
L - Army at Tulane
Gardner-Webb at Charlotte
Middle Tennessee at No. 16 Marshall
W - South Alabama at No. 25 Louisiana
W - Georgia State at Appalachian State
W - Fresno State at Utah State
UTEP at UTSA
W - South Florida at Houston
North Texas at UAB
W - No. 2 Notre Dame at Boston College
W - No. 20 USC at Arizona
Rice at Louisiana Tech
W - Texas State at Georgia Southern
W - Colorado at Stanford
W - Louisville at Virginia
Southern Miss at Western Kentucky
L - Baylor at Texas Tech
W - Hawai'i at San Diego State
W - Nevada at New Mexico
W - Arkansas at No. 6 Florida
W - No. 19 SMU at Tulsa - ANOTHER UPSET
Pitt at Georgia Tech
W - No. 11 Oregon at Washington State
W - No. 13 Wisconsin at Michigan
W - Florida State at NC State
W - South Carolina at Ole Miss
L - No. 23 Northwestern at Purdue
W -Temple at UCF
Cal at Arizona State
UNLV at San Jose State
Utah at UCLA
L - Oregon State at Washington - AND YET ANOTHER UPSET


23 W'S - 6 L'S  - I really like not having to pick against the spread. Maybe I'm becoming a money line guy.

*********** And they tell us to trust the science…

I read this on Friday:

Stanford quarterback Davis Mills, defensive lineman Trey LaBounty and receiver Connor Wedington will be available Saturday, a week after the Pac-12 admitted a third-party coronavirus testing protocol error sidelined them for the 35-14 loss at Oregon. In a statement Friday morning, the conference said: “We apologize to the Stanford football team and its supporters, and especially to the student-athletes who were held out of the game as a result of the testing protocol errors. We are working with our game day testing partner to ensure this type of error does not occur in the future.”

Can you believe that sh—?

Sorry about that, coach.

And you players, who’d been working out for months in the hope that you might at least get to play the half-dozen games your betters finally said you can play, and then got cheated out of one of them because of a “testing protocol error?”  Our bad.

And for crap like this, we’re supposed to let Thanksgiving and Christmas go the way of Easter?


*********** If ever there was a chance for ESPN to do something good it was holding last Saturday’s College Game Day in Huntington, West Virginia, on the 50th anniversary of the horrible plane crash that wiped out the Marshall football program. 75 people - players, coaches, boosters and crew - were killed as they returned from a game at East Carolina. (It was 1970, my first year coaching, and I vividly remember coming home after a game and learning the terrible news. One of my player-coaches, Ron Hawkins, had played at Virginia Tech with Marshall head coach Ricky Tolley, who died in the crash.)

What a nice gesture  it would have been for the small city of Huntington, West Virginia, the people of Marshall, those of us who were alive at the time and suffered with them, and the millions who know the story - sort of - from the movie, “We Are Marshall.”

But no. This was ESPN’s chance to maybe someday wrest the broadcast rights to the Masters away from CBS, which has had them since 1956. This was their chance to get an in, hosting College Game Day - make that College Golf Day - from Augusta National Golf Club, in Augusta, Georgia.

Screw Huntington. Screw Marshall. Screw College Football. ESPN passed on this marvelous opportunity in order to suck up to the big money people behind the Masters.  They tried their damnedest to rationalize what they did, but the explanation was simple: they’re whores.


*********** Steve Beuerlein… Todd Blackledge… Gary Danielson… Tim Hasselbeck… Kirk Herbstreit… Joel Klatt… Greg McElroy… Dan Orlovsky… Brady Quinn… Andre Ware…

They’re all former quarterbacks and they’re now working as college game analysts.  There are more of them than representatives of all other positions combined.
 
Most of them are good, but it’s clear that they  weren’t all chosen for their knowledge of the game and their ability to use it to add to our enjoyment of a broadcast.

Maybe it’s because of name recognition, or because they do tend to be self-confident guys with a lot to say, but some of them are rather full of sh— as well as full of themselves. Yes, they can tell you what a pass play is supposed to do, but they’re not necessarily any better qualified than lots of other players and, for that matter, plenty of laymen, to comment on the numerous other aspects of the game. 

I thought of this while watching the Iowa-Minnesota game Friday night, and listening to former Notre Dame QB Brady Quinn blather on about how - after we’d just seen an offensive lineman grab hold of an edge defender, allowing a runner to get outside him - there was “not enough” there to justify a holding call.  His broadcast partner  (or perhaps it was the network’s rules guy) could have been speaking for me when he said  “Brady’s played too much quarterback.”

At another point Quinn shared his great store of knowledge with us by noting that you don’t see many three-point set-ups by quarterbacks these days, saying that it was because of all the RPO’s that people were throwing now.

He failed to explain the real reason: the three-step drop is used only by a quarterback who’s under center, a breed that’s rapidly becoming as dead as the dodo. But thanks all the same for the expertise, Brady.


*********** Heard an announcer this weekend say of an Australian punter that the first football game he ever saw was the first one he played in.

Well, duh.  In Australia,  “gridiron” (what we call football) is just not that big a deal. Its population is just a bit more than that of Florida,  yet its people play at least four different types (“codes,” they say) of football - Australian Rules, Rugby Union, Rugby League and soccer.  There simply aren’t many athletes left over to play gridiron.

Yes, there are a few teams that “give it a go” on  a club scale, somewhat akin to that of our semi-pro ball, but that’s it.

But as fans, Aussies love their sports, and they like them rough, and there is quite a bit of interest Down Under in American football - especially the college game, which because of the International Date Line, is played on their Sunday.

Since many Australian kids grow up playing Aussie Rules, which places great emphasis on the ability to catch and punt a ball, that combination  - and the fact that those kids are used to rough play -  hasn’t gone unnoticed by American coaches looking for punters, or by Australian entrepreneurs willing and able to help Australian kids develop into American punters.

One such entrepreneur is a former Aussie Rules Footballer named Nathan Chapman, whose organization,  ProKick Australia (PKA), has produced punters for every major conference, and 17 All-American punters. PKA’s punters have already won five Ray Guy Awards.

Check out its site - and scroll down and check out the videos - especially “WATCH PKA ESPN STORY.”

https://www.prokickaustralia.com/#nathan-chapman


*********** I’m already tired of this Number Zero “Look at Me” crap. I  assume that this was allowed as just another  way for coach/panderers to try satisfy the vanity of their star players, and I sure wish when the idea was proposed that  there were more coaches with the stones to say “enough.”


*********** Watching Iowa pound Minnesota was like watching a team that had prepared by playing Madden and found itself up against an opponent that played Big Boy Football.


*********** I played on a college team whose coach was hesitant to substitute even when we were way in front late in the game.  I was a sub and I know how it feels to stand and watch after you’ve busted your ass all week, just like the starters.


So I’m beginning to wonder about this P.J. Fleck character.  You know, Mister Row the Boat.  Well, there sure were an awful lot of spare oarsmen standing on the Minnesota sideline as Fleck, with the Gophers down 35-0 in the fourth, still had his starters in there, determined to get just one little score.  Because… why?

Well, whoopee-doo. He finally got it.  With :14 left to play.  The touchdown was scored by Number Zero.  I’ll bet that symbolizes about where team morale is right now.

Funny thing was, he seemed pissed during that last drive when Iowa (who didn’t have their starters in) called for a review on a questionable catch.  What the hell - didn’t they have just as much right to a shutout as he had to a score?


*********** Kentucky paid an emotional tribute to John Schlarman, their offensive line coach and a  former Wildcat All-SEC lineman who died Tuesday at 45 after a two-year fight with cancer.

On their first offensive play, the Wildcats lined up without a player at left guard, the position Coach Schlarman played.  They didn’t run a play, and in accordance with the rules, they were charged with a delay of game penalty - which opponent Vanderbilt graciously declined.

Then regular left guard Landon Young entered the game - wearing 65, which had been Schlarman’s number - instead of his usual 67.

https://www.kentucky.com/sports/college/kentucky-sports/uk-football/article247188526.html

https://www.kentucky.com/sports/college/kentucky-sports/uk-football/article246807462.html


*********** Just as it became impossible to watch the NFL and  distinguish between sport and entertainment, so is it becoming difficult, with endless reviews, to distinguish between college football and the American legal system.


*********** I like Virginia’s Bronco Mendenhall, an Oregon State guy originally, but I thought he blew a huge chance to teach a kid something about life.  One of his freshman receivers caught a pass then stood, posturing, over a fallen defender until he drew an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty - and damned if he wasn’t still in the game on the next play.  I’ve got news - little sideline chats about how we don’t do things that way aren’t going to teach a kid lesson the way a little bench time will.


*********** Worst measurement ever: Oregon State, down just a touchdown,  had driven inside the Washington 10, and with a fourth-and-a-foot, went for it. The runner appeared to have made the necessary yardage with plenty to spare, we all agreed - me, my wife, and the announcers. But they measured - ever notice how seldom they measure nowadays? - and the Beavers were still a foot short.  Impossible. 


*********** Saw a couple of fumbles caused by bad QB rides in both the Notre Dame and Oregon games. 


*********** Oregon’s new OC Joe Moorhead showed in the Ducks' win over Washington State that he’s everything the Ducks’ fans hoped he’d be. He’s fresh off the job as head coach at Mississippi State (ask Mike Leach what it’s like coaching there), and before that he was OC at Penn State. He’s got some very clever ideas and some talent to work with, and this Oregon team’s going to be fun to watch.  Damn shame the Pac-12 started so late.


*********** In my bitching about teams needing to be able to get under center,  I guess I should have made myself clearer. I meant so that when they needed a yard they could run a quarterback sneak, not give it to a running back lined up seven yards deep.


*********** This week’s name that could make you wonder why you decided to become a broadcaster: Ramaud Chiaokhiao-Bowman, Northwestern.


*********** Not since Michigan Stadium opened  - in 1927 - had a Michigan team been behind at halftime by a score as big as the 28-0 by which it trailed Wisconsin Saturday.


*********** Wisconsin TE Jake Ferguson - kid’s good - is the grandson of Barry Alvarez, former Badgers’ head coach and currently their AD.


*********** This Year’s Heisman presentation is going to be virtual.  (There’s no truth to the rumor that it’s because they polled all the likely candidates and couldn’t find three willing to come to New York.)


*********** The Ivy League has just announced it was cancelling its winter sports season. I swear I read where one of the league executives said they didn’t know whether this meant that the league wouldn’t be receiving its cut of the NCAA basketball tournament money.


In the meantime, is there someone reading this who can tell me what this means for the Ivy League football season that its players and coaches were told would take place in the spring?


*********** The NCAA announced this morning that the entire men’s NCAA Tournament will be played in one geographic region — with Indianapolis being the preferred and most likely spot — as a way to limit exposure to the coronavirus. You can find out all the reasons why in the video below.

The plan remains to have the tournament be comprised of 68 teams.

The tournament plan will not be an isolated single bubble at one location, an NCAA official said, but rather it would be close to that type of scenario spread out in one region to help keep everyone safe.

“We have had initial discussions with the state of Indiana, with the city of Indianapolis to see if it’s feasible to run the entirety of the championship in the metropolitan area,” said Dan Gavitt, NCAA senior vice president of basketball.

https://pittsburghsportsnow.com/2020/11/16/breaking-entire-ncaa-tournament-will-be-played-in-one-region-most-likely-indianapolis/


FOR TWO REASONS, I’M CARRYING THE QUIZ OVER:

(1)    It takes me a little time to do the research, and I blew the better part of a day Friday trying to deal with my server problems (believe it or not, the latent paranoia in my was leading me to think that the higher powers in left-wing tech were out to silence me and my highly-influential Web site).

(2) My site wasn’t up on time, which meant that some readers didn’t see it at their usual time, and didn’t get to see the question

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020

Camas, Washington.


*********** At least a right-footed punter can scramble to his left and maybe get off a left-footed punt, as Oregon State’s Caleb Lightbourn was able to do Saturday night against Washington State.

But right handed passers?  Not too many of them can throw left-handed. (Oregon State’s Terry Baker, who won the Heisman in 1962, was the rare one who could).  So maybe somebody can tell me why right-handed passers seem so often to scramble to the left when they get in trouble…

*********** After months of Americans being treated like inmates in many states, of families being warned not to get together for Thanksgiving, of religious groups being warned not to hold services, of people not even being able to honor the dead at funerals,  I have to admit that it pissed me off no end to see the thousands of precious young Notre Dame students storm the field Saturday night.  But, because they were really conscious of not spreading the Deadly Virus That Will Kill Us ALL, most of them were wearing masks.

*********** I can definitely see the day coming when revenue-hungry states will require a license in order to hold any gathering of any size, the fee to be based on the attendance.

Who would argue?  After all, it’s in the interest of public safety. Naturally, there’ll be inspections and all the usual stuff.

But who’s kidding who? It’s going to be a major source of revenue. I’m sure they’ve dreamed of a scheme like this for a long time but never had the nerve to propose it because the people weren’t submissive enough.  But now, all they’ll have to do is say that it’s to fight the Deadly Killer Virus, and Americans will roll right over.  Well, about half of them.

The other half?

Sounds suspiciously like the Stamp Act, the Brits’ clever way of getting revenue from the American colonies by taxing damn near every legal transaction.

We all know how that turned out.

*********** Founding Father John Adams’ pitch for physical education…

“Human nature with all its infirmities and depravation is still capable of great things. It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. . . . But their bodies must be hardened, as well as their souls exalted. Without strength and activity and vigor of body, the brightest mental excellencies will be eclipsed and obscured.”

*********** The death of former Celtics player, coach and broadcaster Tom Heinsohn marks the passing of one of the great legends of one of the great legendary teams in pro sports.  He had a green light to shoot, and I loved what former teammate - and fellow Holy Cross alum - Bob Cousy had to say about him: “In his behalf, he never took a shot unless he had the ball.”

*********** Miami has its Turnover Chain - a gaudy piece of bling that’s awarded to a player who causes a turnover. Oregon State, deep in timber country, has a Turnover Chain Saw.

*********** It’s one of those “Not from around here, are ya, fella?" town names, and CBSSN’s Ben Holden bit on it when he said that Eastern Michigan’s place kicker was “The pride of LEB-uh-nonn, (Lebanon) Pennsylvania.”  I guess it’s an attempt to sound sophisticated, like OR-uh-gonn, but it ain’t right.  Fortunately, Holden’s broadcast partner, Ross Tucker, bailed him out very diplomatically, saying, “He’s a LEBB-a-nin guy.  That’s about 25 miles from where I grew up (Wyomissing, Pennsylvania - just outside Reading - pronounced REDD-ing).”

I’m getting to like Tucker.  He and Holden do most of the Army games on CBSSN, and he knows his football.  And unlike most former retired pro linemen, he’s not a John Madden WHAM! BAM! type.  I especially like the way he got excited when he saw Eastern Michigan pull a couple of linemen on a running play, saying that he played on a wing-T team in high school, and when he pulled out that was the only time his mom ever saw him do anything.

***********


The Army Goes Rolling Along…

I first got to know Pat Frank in 2008, when he was Lieutenant Colonel Frank, stationed in Fort Riley, Kansas, where he was Battalion Commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 28th Infantry Brigade - the Black Lions.

His idea was to work together with the football program at nearby Kansas State in such things as having his soldiers  - Black Lions - and K-State football players take part in joint physical training exercises.

Thanks in large part to his efforts, the Fort Riley-KSU bond has remained strong in the years since.

As I got to know Pat better, it became apparent to me that this was the sort of guy you’d like to think our entire officer corps is made up of.

When he and the Black Lions were deployed to fight in the Middle East, he asked me if we could round up  DVDs to send to his wife, Jennifer, who would then see that they got to his troops.

(I would find, over the years, what a great team he and Mrs. Frank make.)

As the years went on, as he advanced in rank and moved from post to post, including The Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Fort Drum, New York, with the 10th Mountain Division, we remained in touch.

(New York State is home to him.  He’s a native of the small western New York town of Cuba, and an ROTC graduate of St. Bonaventure University.  He has a graduate degree from Syracuse. And he’s a long-time fan of the Buffalo Bills.)

Three years ago,  then Colonel Pat Frank was promoted to Brigadier General, and assigned to Fort Polk Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in Louisiana as Commanding General.

Fort Polk JRTC is the next step before the Real Thing.  It’s as “boots on the ground” as you can get without being in actual combat - where units about to be deployed  (including troops from friendly allied countries) are prepared for conflict.

Back in April of this year, the Army assigned him as Chief of Staff at CENTCOM, the United States Central Command, with responsibility for all US military operations in the Middle East, at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.

That meant leaving Fort Polk, and recently, my wife and I were fortunate to be able to attend (virtually) the Change of Command ceremony at Fort Polk, in which General Frank turned over command of the post to his successor.

And it was quite a thrill to me when it was announced that Pat Frank had been promoted to Major General, and to see Mrs. Frank present him with his second star.

In his brief speech, he acknowledged her as “my best friend.”

I wrote him to tell him how, as a “coaching couple,” we appreciated the shout-out he gave to his "best friend,” and how impressed we were by the Army’s obvious respect for and recognition of the role wives play in enabling their husbands to best serve their troops.

So many of our institutions were established at a time when wives would automatically be expected to support their husbands’ careers but in these times that often requires a woman with a career of her own to conduct quite a balancing act.  In the case of Jennifer Frank, she has managed to balance a career as a lawyer with the many relocations and responsibilities required of an officer’s wife.

Pat wrote me, “you know the tough times we have experienced in combat with the Black Lions and the Spartans - tough, tough fighting. Back in the States, it was Jennifer attending the Memorial Services with the Families - more difficult than what we do in theater, as we are immediately back in the fight, and we are surrounded by Soldiers.  And the Family is in the States.  She has been committed to the Army.”

Pat and Jennifer Frank are the best. God bless America.

https://www.msjdn.org/our-staff/jennifer-frank/

*********** If only…

What if the NCAA rules makers had listened to Frank Broyles.

Check out what the longtime Arkansas coach and AD had to say in a 1986 interview in Scholastic Coach Magazine…

Since I retired in 1976, the trend has moved more toward the passing game and more and more sophisticated styles of defense. Much of this was brought about by the change in blocking rules that allowed the offensive linemen to use their hands. This has tipped the scales toward the offense.

Up until then the rules-makers had kept a balance between offense and defense on the premise that since the defense did not know the snap count or whether the play would be a run or a pass, they should be allowed to use their hands – thus maintaining the desired balance.

But the new rule has shifted the balance toward offense and I do not approve of it.

Q. Is there any real change you’d like the NCAA to adopt?

The only real change I would recommend would be a penalty of 10 yards and a loss of down for offensive holding.  If a rule cannot be administered, as the officials claim, then the penalty should be made greater.