FRID

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

New Year’s Six bowls

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

Remaining bowls

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

Two quick takeaways…

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Two questions, actually):

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

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

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Want more?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Jerry, that sounds like a dare.

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

It was quite the dropped pass.

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

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

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

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


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

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

Coach Wyatt,

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

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

That was, indeed, sad news.

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

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

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

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

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

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

May God rest his soul.



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

Down here in youth football that is a big step.

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

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

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

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

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

John Coelho
Turlock, California

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


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


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

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

Kevin McCullough
Lakeville, Indiana

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESD

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



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

WIN: Boise State by 2-1/2 over

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



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

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

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

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

If so, we are sunk.

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

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

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

What occupies the minds of today’s young men?

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

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

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

Every Day Is A Great Day To Be A Mustang!

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

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

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

Are the two forms of  exhibitionism self-cancelling?

Is he dishonoring his forebears?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Cole Shaffer
Boulder, Colorado

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

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

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

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

READ ABOUT GENE MINGO - HIS IS AN AMAZING STORY

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

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

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

FRID

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

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

Well, yes. The shooting was over.

But in many ways, the world has never recovered.

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

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

The United Kingdom lost a million men.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

Fools, yes. 

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

But jeez.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I read on…

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

THURSDAY -

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

FRIDAY -

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

SATURDAY -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Lambert and me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COACH BRIDGE, CODY VOLLAN, BEN BRIDGE, ME

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Coach Wyatt,

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


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

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

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

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

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

--You’re kidding....

I sure did.

--Can you explain your thought process behind it?

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

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


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

I wrote...

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

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

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

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

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

***********  Hugh,

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great week!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING TIGER ELLISON

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

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

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

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

Mike Benton
Colfax, Illinois

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

John Irion
Granville, New York

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

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

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


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

About Al Black…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Spartans'1970 record:

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

TUESD

FRID

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

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

TUESD

COLLEGE FOOTBALL ON THE TUBE LAST SATURDAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*********** NFL miscellany….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas


*********** The Double Wing rolls…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


*********** The Double Wing rolls…

Coach,

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

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

John Coelho
Turlock, California



Coach,

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

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

Best of luck in the playoffs!

*********** The Open Wing rolls…

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

Hi Coach,

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He died last week.  He was 87.


CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING DICK MODZELEWSKI

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

BIG MO (LEFT) AND LITTLE MO AT MARYLAND


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRID

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESD

*********** I was watching two Seattle area schools play on TV last Thursday night. I especially wanted to see Kennedy Catholic’s sophomore quarterback, Sam Huard, who threw for 10 TDs in a game earlier this season.  A tall lefthander, Huard is the son of  a former University of Washington and NFL quarterback, Damon Huard, and the nephew of another former Husky and NFL quarterback, TV analyst Brock Huard.

I was certainly impressed with the kid’s ability, but Kennedy (5-2) seemed unable to put Kentwood (2-5) away.

Finally, though, with under two minutes to play, Kennedy took a 36-35 lead.

But Kentwood drove into field goal range, and with seconds left, called time out and lined up for what it hoped would be the winning kick.

Unfortunately for Kentwood, though, the snap was bad, and the holder, unable to scramble out of trouble, threw incomplete.

With that, the Kennedy Catholic bench emptied and Kennedy players raced to the end zone to celebrate the hard-fought win.

Or so they thought.

Unnoticed by anyone but the officials, it had only been third down, and when the Kentwood holder threw incomplete, there was still time remaining - and it was still Kentwood’s ball.

The Kennedy celebration? The act of players leaving the bench area resulted in an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty - and another (and closer) field goal attempt by Kentwood.

This time the snap was good.  And so were the hold and the kick.

Final:  Kentwood 38, Kennedy Catholic 36.

Think about that the next time you wonder about the wisdom of kicking that field goal a down early.

*********** College Football playoff situation - updated

Remember:
1. No team with two losses will make the playoff
2. There are still plenty of teams that will finish with no worse than one loss
3. No team outside the Power 5 conferences has a chance of getting in with one loss.  At present, Central Florida, Cincinnati and South Florida of the American Athletic are still undefeated - but they all have to play each other.
4. Notre Dame, as an independent, has an inside track even with one loss (should it lose to USC) because as an independent it can stay home and watch as other playoff contenders eliminate each other in bogus “conference championship” games.
5. With Notre Dame still unbeaten, the Irish are likely to be one of the four playoff teams, which means only three spots remain for the Power 5 conferences. That also means there is little likelihood of two teams from the same Power 5 conference.  Most importantly, though, it means two conferences - and all their members - will not get a nickel of playoff money, while Notre Dame gets to pocket AN ENTIRE CONFERENCE SHARE. (Who made that deal, anyhow?)

Speaking in terms of Power 5 conferences only…

There are still two unbeaten Power 5 teams:
Alabama and Clemson

My call: “Alabama plays Tennessee in their traditional Third Saturday in October game, but Bama isn’t going to blow this one.” True dat. 

My call: “Clemson and NC State meet Saturday - at Clemson.  The winner has a great shot at taking the Atlantic Division spot in the ACC championship.”  Clemson definitely got the job done.

Last Thursday’s preview: “there are still lots of one-loss teams fighting to stay that way and make it to their conference championships.  Several of them will play in big games Saturday…”

1. Michigan vs Michigan State?  Michigan got the job done

3. Texas vs Oklahoma State? Mea culpa. (Latin for "my bad') Texas played BYE. This week it's OSU.

4. West Virginia vs Baylor?  WVU got the job done.

5. LSU vs Mississippi State? LSU got the job done.

6. Ohio State at Purdue?  “Buckeyes are just too good,” I wrote.  Well.  As I wipe the egg off my face… apologies to the good folks from Purdue whose patience and forebearance was rewarded with one of the most inspired performances you’ve ever seen over an Ohio State team that looked dazed.  This team - the same Ohio State that gave us Archie Griffin and Eddie George and Jim Otis and Bob Ferguson and John Brockington and Ezekiel Elliott and Hopalong Cassidy and Vic Janowicz threw the football 73 times!

7. Vanderbilt at Kentucky?  Kentucky got the job done.

8. Oregon at Washington State? (“So is ESPN Game Day, in recognition of 15 years of the Cougar flag - Ole Crimson - waving at Game Days around the country. The loser will come out of this with two losses and can kiss its playoff chances good-bye.  The Pac-12’s last hope for a playoff spot is for Oregon to win this one and win all the rest. The Ducks’ toughest game the rest of the way is at Utah, and then, of course,  the conference title game.  Washington State? If they beat the Ducks, the Cougars still have to beat Stanford, Colorado and Washington, and - out here it’s called “Cougin’ it” - they can’t possibly win them all.”) The Cougars won, and now - tada - they “control their own destiny.”

9. Duke vs Virginia?  Duke was 5-1 going in, but they’re 5-2 now.

10. Iowa vs Maryland?  Hawkeyes got the job done. They’re now 6-1 - and they’re still ranked below Penn State, who’s 5-2.  They’ll settle that one on Saturday.

*********** My playoff prediction, updated:

1. Alabama.  Best team in the country by far.  Jalen Hurts, their "second starter" at quarterback (he deserves a better title than “backup”) could start for almost any other team in the country.  He appears to have suffered an ankle injury against Tennessee Saturday. The Tide will beat LSU, MIssissippi State and Auburn.  (And The Citadel.)

2. Clemson. The Tigers have had their close call against Syracuse.  They dispatched pretender NC State with such ferocity that it’s obvious they’re in a class by themselves in the ACC.  They will beat Duke and archrival South Carolina.

3. Notre Dame.  Damn, this one pisses me off.  But a deal’s a deal, and evidently the wizards who put together the playoff didn’t have the stones to tell ND to go get in a conference like every other major college team.  Any other year, Northwestern, Florida State, Syracuse or USC would be a significant hurdle - but not this year.  USC’s thumping by Utah Saturday night makes it apparent that USC is still a long way from restoring the glory days.

4. Either Michigan or Ohio State.  This assumes that they will both enter their final-week matchup unbeaten, and that the winner of their game will move on to the Big Ten championship game - and win it.  Even that might not be enough for Ohio State to overcome the embarrassing beat-down that Purdue put on the Buckeyes this past Saturday.

(At the very least, I’d like to see Notre Dame in that #4 spot, so the Irish have to play Alabama in the semi-finals.  But Clemson will beat them just as bad.)

OUTSIDE SHOTS:

Georgia or Florida (or even Kentucky) could slip in with an SEC title-game win over Alabama (or LSU). Despite rankings and all that, I don’t see how Bama could get the nod - this time - over a team good enough to beat it in the conference championship game.

LSU - But they have to beat  Alabama. (The game’s in Baton Rouge.)

Iowa - Only if the Hawkeyes win out. And Wisconsn loses once more. Iowa still has to play Penn State, Purdue and Northwestern.  And even if the Hawkeyes  were to run the table, Wisconsin - the only team to have beaten Iowa - would get the Big Ten West title game spot if the Badgers were to win the rest of their games.

Oklahoma/Texas/West Virginia - It’s quite a job for any of them.  Texas and OU both have to play WVU. And they both have to play Texas Tech.  And when one of them is eliminated,  the two survivors  will have to meet in the conference title game.

Washington State - A Mike Leach team will always put up points. And don’t look now but the Cougs play pretty good defense, too. But they’ve already got one loss and it’s highly unlikely that they’ll win the rest of their games - not with Stanford, Washington and a conference championship game still ahead.

*********** SITUATIONS TO WATCH:

1. PENN STATE.  The Lions are now 5-2 (remember when they were just one bad call away from possibly beating Ohio State?). They play Iowa this week, then they play Michigan at home and then Wisconsin on the road.  That’s three tough games in a row.  Remember a year ago when Georgia State lined up for a field goal with 11 seconds left to play, and Lions’ coach James Franklin called a timeout? Penn State led, 56-0. Franklin at first defended what he did as always keeping his foot on the gas, then after catching heat from some New York sports writers, he denied that he did it to ice the kicker and preserve the precious shutout, and said that he called the timeout to get his second unit in the game.  Right.  That’s why he called it nanoseconds before the kid kicked.  Anyhow, if you believe in karma, three weeks from now Penn State could very well be 5-5 (2-5 in conference play) and playing Maryland - Maryland, for God’s sake! - to stay out of the Big Ten East cellar.

2. OREGON. A week ago the Ducks were riding high. Their convincing win over the Washington Huskies had washed away the pain and stain of their lone loss, a fluky, overtime defeat at the hands of Stanford, and now they had a shot at a possible playoff spot.  All they had to do was beat Washington State. But as one Portland sports writer noted, the game started at 4:00 and the Ducks started at 5:30.  By the time they got serious, the Cougars had put them away.  The Ducks play a suddenly-alive UCLA, then at tough Utah, then Arizona State.  They could lose two more.

3. OHIO STATE. Earlier in the week came the rumors that Urban Meyer might be on the verge of another “health crisis” - you know, like the one that caused him to walk away from the train wreck about to take place in Florida.  And then came the whipping put on the Buckeyes by Purdue. This week, they’re off, and then they’re at Nebraska.  The Cornhuskers have been showing signs of life lately, but the Bucks have too much talent for them.

4. PURDUE. The Boilermakers lost their first three games - including a four-point, opening-game loss against Northwestern - so they’re way out of any playoff conversation. But they’re now 3-1 in Big Ten play, with a decent shot at getting into the title game: they need to win out, and they need someone else to beat Northwestern.

5. NEBRASKA. The Huskers thoroughly beat Minnesota in Lincoln.  And to their fans’ credit, there was no storming the field in celebration.  I mean, this is still Nebraska, right?  With the proud tradition of Nebraska football, ending a losing streak is not celebrated as if it were a national title.  Besides, they have to keep focused on Saturday’s big game against Bethune-Cookman.

6. MINNESOTA. After rowing the boat to wins in their first three games, the Gophers must have let go of the oars, because they’ve lost four in a row.   And they haven’t been close in any of them.  WTF is going on?

7. NAVY. Their offense seems to have lost a step.  Is it me, or  could it be that having to play a full conference schedule - in a very tough conference at that - is beginning to take a physical toll on the Middies?

*********** Harbaugh just can’t seem to resist being an a$$hole,  which explains why he’s got guys on his team like  Devin Bush out there before the game playing the child, scuffing up the Michigan State Spartan logo, and why he defends the guy’s actions afterward.

*********** I sort of wanted to see Cincinnati remain unbeaten, even if it meant beating Temple, but not after I saw the dirty hit that a Cinci player put on a defenseless Temple receiver.  That did it for me.  That was borderline assault and battery.

https://www.12up.com/posts/6201588-video-incredibly-dirty-hit-on-temple-player-results-in-impressive-coach-freakout

*********** The Michigan-Michigan State game was delayed by severe weather for 1-1/2 hours, and once they resumed playing, Fox seemed to think none of us cared to resume watching, shuffling us off to some little-known Fox channel that I have yet to find on either cable or Dish.

*********** You won’t see this happen often, but just before halftime, with one inch to go and one down to score a touchdown, Army - a wishbone team - wasn’t able to punch it in against Miami (OH).

*********** With 17 seconds left to play, Miami scored against Army to pull to within 21-20.  Any chance that the whatever-they-ares-now (used to be Redskins) might have decided to go for the win went out the window, when the receiver who scored the TD just had to spike the damn ball. Just had to do it.  After the penalty they kicked the point and the game went into OT, but Army won. 

*********** Diversity is our strength…  It wasn’t so much that the referee at the Army-Miami game was female.  It was having to listen to that shrill voice. 

*********** Miami (OH) linebacker Brad Koenig (“KAY-nig”) is really good.  Miami had a good scheme against Army, and Koenig was making tackles all over the field.

*********** Maybe these spread teams that don’t even bother to recruit fullbacks any more ought to pay attention:  Michigan ran a fullback, a 6-3, 250 pound horse named Ben Mason, as an I-formation tailback for a score against Michigan State.

*********** Starting to see a lot of flat passes being thrown from shotgun to the running back that was just faked to.

*********** Indiana gave Penn State all they wanted but the Hoosiers just can’t seem to finish the deal.

*********** Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, said Samuel Johnson. 

First Nike aligns itself with Colin Kaepernick, and then it goes and plays patriotic by resurrecting a story of the 1918 LSU team - whose members went off to fight in World War I - as the pretext for putting the Tigers in all-white uniforms with purple helmets.

I’ll bet you could even buy replica jerseys at the LSU book store.

*********** Who else was hoping that Purdue would go for two at the end, just to make it a nice round 50 against THE Ohio State University?

*********** ESPN College Game Day did a very nice feature on Tyler Trent, a young Purdue fan with terminal cancer who basically expressed a dying wish that his beloved Boilermakers could somehow beat Ohio State.  It was quite moving, and if there was any football fan in the United States who had trouble picking sides before watching, the choice was easy afterward.

*********** Purdue was picked to have a good season, but then the Boilermarkers started out 0-3, including a loss to Eastern Michigan. Purdue Coach Jeff Brohm was asked after the Ohio State win what happened to turn things around and he started out, “We were 0-3. We were conservative, and we got our ass - our butts - handed to us…”

*********** Mike Leach has a dry sense of humor, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile. (Remind you of Bobby Knight?)

So when he had finished his deadpan postgame explanation that his Cougs still hadn’t played a compete game, the interviewer said to him, “Try to enjoy this.”

*********** Tua Tagovailoa still hasn’t played in the fourth quarter of a game.  He’s thrown 25 TD passes and ZERO interceptions.

*********** Linfield College, a D-III school in McMinnville, Oregon, is now 4-2.  If they beat Pacific Lutheran next Saturday,  2018 will be their 63rd straight winning season.

*********** A few days ago I happened on a great TV feature on Jim Abbott, whom some of you may remember as an outstanding left-handed pitcher at Michigan, and then for a number of major league teams.

In his major league career, he won 87 games and had 888 strikeouts, and in 1993, while playing for the Yankees, he pitched a no-hitter.

But It’s never possible to write about him without mentioning that he was born without a right hand, and I do so in admiration of how, not unlike a great football coach named Mark Speckman (who was born with no hands), he learned to “deal with it.”

His biggest initial challenge was fielding - throwing with his left hand, then quickly putting on his glove to catch the ball, and then just as quickly shedding the glove and grabbing the ball with his hand so he could throw.  His story of how as a little kid he worked and worked to get good enough at fielding is quite inspirational.

He was an exceptionally talented athlete, driven not just to compete, but to excel. “I was tired of being an inspiration,” he said.  “I didn’t want to win the Courage Award. I wanted to be the MVP.”

What was especially interesting to me was that he also played high school football, and rather well at that.   His high school, Flint (Michigan) Central, turned out many good athletes and good teams.

He was a quarterback, of course, but first the coaches had to figure out how he was going to get the ball from center, and one of them recalled how funny it must have seemed to see three coaches kneeling down, watching him take the snap.

He didn’t start a game until the final game of his senior year, when he was pressed into service - and threw four touchdown passes.

Interviewed on the show, his high school baseball coach said,  “playing football made him the baseball player that he became.’


*********** If you didn’t watch the Washington State-Oregon game, you missed this.  Even if you did watch, you might have missed it.



Washington State, in dark uniforms, is lined up in what would ordinarily be a 3 x 1 spread formation, with trips to the right. (There is also a split end on the left but he’s out of the picture, to the bottom of the screen.)

Just one little matter: that flexed end on the right side (the guy circled) is the “center.”. He’s going to flip the ball to the QB, who’s going to hand off to the running back, who’s going to run a plain old running play to the left.  (But then, he’s going to cut back to the right, break maybe six or seven tackles, and dive in for a Cougar score.)

Nothing at all ingenious about the play itself, but the formation on the right side was an adaptation of the “Lonesome Polecat” as explained by the great Tiger Ellison in his book, ‘Run and Shoot Football” (1965).

Two things to note about the “center”:

1. He doesn’t have to snap the ball between his legs. He can flip it directly back, of course, but he can also throw it, underhanded, to either side.  (In this case, he’s going to throw it to the left, to the QB)

2. Although he may be the “center” in the sense that he’s snapping the ball,  he’s on the end of the line, and he’s wearing an eligible number (17) - which makes him an eligible receiver.

It’s interesting that the Cougars ran what they did, because it was only a couple of weeks ago that I got an email from  Mat Hedger, of  Langdon, North Dakota, who saw Iowa run something similar and asked if I’d ever run from any “special formations” like that.

Why, yes, I told him.  I’ve done stuff like that on occasion - mostly toward the end of a season as a way of having fun and keeping guys interested.

But a few years ago, finding ourselves in a first-vs-fourth first-round playoff game (we were the fourth-place team and we were facing a top-ranked team, one that we knew would blow us out by 50-60 points)  we decided to run some Lonesome Polecat - Credit to Glenn “Tiger” Ellison and his book, ‘Run and Shoot Football” (1965).  It was a very limited package, because the emphasis is on improvisation...



We got blown out, as we knew we would, but we had a lot of fun in practice and we actually ran off a few good plays in the game - more than we would have if we’d stayed in our base offense.  Try taking a very good scrambler and lining him up ten yards deep - and see hard it is for two or three defenders to run him down.  (Any more than that and they’ll have trouble covering all your eligibles and defending against the blocking of your five linemen.)

*********** The Web site is named “isgrudengoneyet.com

And the  answer is an emphatic NO

and running counters show:

* the years/weeks/days/hours/minutes/seconds left in his contract

* The amount of money he’s made so far

* The amount of money he’s made just since you logged in

* The amount of money he’s still due

http://isgrudengoneyet.com/

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

Sorry for the late reply.  

What gives Urban Meyer a headache?  BOILERMAKERS!!  That was a flat-out take 'em out behind the shed and give 'em an old-fashioned a** whoopin'!!

Suddenly...Michigan is looming even larger for the Buckeyes.

Mike Leach has a favorite new hobby...Duck Hunting!

Only thing standing between Notre Dame and the National Championship Playoff is Notre Dame.  Each of their remaining games is a trap game.  Any one of them could knock the Irish off.  Navy has the option.  Florida State is steadily improving.  Northwestern has a history of pulling off big upsets.  Syracuse is a sleeper.  USC is a rival.

Some TV talking heads continue talking about Texas as playoff contender.  NOT.  As much as I would like to see the Horns in it their remaining schedule is daunting, and even if they were lucky enough to keep winning they would have to face Oklahoma again in the Big 12 championship.  Sooners will be fired up for that rematch.

I think it's way too early to start predicting the playoff.  Way too many tough conference games remaining, and conference championships.  People keep saying Alabama is a lock, BUT... they still have to play Ed Oregon's fired-up LSU Tigers IN Baton Rouge next week.  Clemson may have the easiest schedule (and the best team).  See above for Notre Dame.  Ohio State may be fading and thus opening the door for either Michigan or Iowa.  The PAC 12 champ will be playing in the Rose Bowl.  Georgia is still a factor.

My alma mater Fresno State continues to impress at 7-1.  Only San Diego State and Boise State (as tough as it gets) stand in their way of being considered for a January 1 bowl game.

Army managed to escape a huge upset at the hands of Miami OH.  Goes to show that even the most disciplined teams can't afford taking anyone lightly.

I thoroughly enjoy seeing those old play sheets from great coaches of the past. 

Talk soon!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

Joe’s joke is pretty good.  I wonder how many younger guys - or guys who didn’t grow up around working men - even know what a boilermaker (the drink) is! The boilermaker is nothing more than “a shot and a beer.”  The shot - usually blended whiskey (once called “rye” in Pennsylvania) - is tossed down neat in one gulp, followed by the beer - usually a short draft or a small bottle because it’s as much about the whiskey as it is about the beer.  I see on Youtube that there are people trying to call it a “cocktail,” but it’s nothing of the sort. It’s a real man’s drink, a “workingman’s special,” and it’s definitely an acquired taste. The guys I once worked - and drank - with wouldn’t have known what the hell to think if they’d heard some millenial refer to it as a “cocktail.”

*********** QUIZ ANSWER: Doug Atkins came out of Humboldt, Tennessee and went to The University of Tennessee on a basketball scholarship. He was a great high jumper, finishing second in the SEC track championships.  He played football for General Bob Neyland, and  although he played in the 1950s, he’s still considered perhaps the greatest defensive player in the history of SEC football.

He was so good as a defensive end - big and mean and agile - that he would have been as good today as he was when he played.

At 6-8 and 265, he would be big enough to play in today’s NFL, but by the standards of his day he was huge.

In 1953 he was the first-round pick of the Cleveland Browns, but after two years in Cleveland, it was apparent to Paul Brown that he was not Brown’s type of person, and he was traded to the Chicago Bears for a couple of future draft choices.  In his 12 years in Chicago he made eight Pro Bowls.

Said Bears’ owner/coach George Halas years later, “Paul Brown couldn't handle him in Cleveland. I could slough off anything. He didn't give me trouble, except when he'd get stiff and call me up at night."

Because of him, Halas hired a private detective to keep track of players. At training camp, Bears’ coaches refused to check his room at bed-check time because he kept a pit bull named Rebel in his room. Recalled teammate Richie Petitbon, Rebel was “trained to kill.”

He evidently liked a drink. Once, he and fellow defensive lineman Fred Williams had a martini-drinking contest.  They stopped drinking at 21, but Williams conceded that Atkins probably won, since he was able to drive them home.

He didn’t like to practice - he claimed the Bears didn’t pay him enough to play and practice, too.

He loved to try to get under Halas’ skin.  Once, on the first day of training camp, he arrived late to practice, and  proceeded to jog lazily and indifferently around the field. When Halas asked him what he was doing, he said, “Breaking in my helmet.”

For all his distaste for practice, though, he once went 12 straight years without missing a game, and in his 17 years of football he missed only 17 games.

And on the field, he was feared; the word among opposing offensive linemen was, “Don’t make him mad.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, “Fullback Rick Casares once said: ‘We used to hope that somebody would hold him. The next play you would see guys flying around like King Kong had gotten ahold of them. Awesome. I've seen him grab a tackle by the shoulder pads and just flip him over like a doll, then come in on a back that weighed 225 pounds without breaking stride and hit him in the chest, knock him over on his back, reach over, grab the quarterback by the shoulder pads and throw him down with one arm.’”

Despite his great size, he would often hurdle over blocking linemen on his way to the quarterback, and if sacks had been counted when he played, he would almost certainly be in the record books.

Recalled his Tennessee teammate Jack Stroud, who had a long career with the Giants, “The notion that because those guys in the 50s didn’t lift weights and take steroids they weren’t strong is a crock.  A lot of those guys would have whipped the hell out of these guys today.  Take Doug Atkins. He was 6-8 and 265 and was solid muscle and bones. And he he high jumped six feet.  And he never touched a weight in his life.  With the frame he had, he could have weighed 300 pounds no problem. His arms were 18 inches around.  We measured them in Knoxville.  I told him over to the gym to try to get him to work out (Stroud was a serious lifter). He allowed that that was a lot of extra work he didn’t need.”

He was a team leader - of sorts.  “Doug was a nice guy but you were scared of him," said Mike Pyle, who played center for the Bears. "He nominated me for player representative. He said, 'I nominate Mike Pyle 'cause he's from Yale.' The rest of the players were asked, 'Anybody else?' Doug said, 'Yeah, I move the nominations be closed.'"

At 37 he was sent to the Saints in the expansion draft, but he had enough left in the tank that in the three years he played in New Orleans he played well enough to have his number retired.

Despite Halas’ initial misgivings about his practice habits, he is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

His highest salary was $25,000, and at his Hall of Fame induction, he said he once got into a heated argument with Halas over $500.
"Coach Halas said if I give you that money you would only spend it. I said, 'Coach, that's what I want it for'"

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING DOUG ATKINS:

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

*********** Great article on Doug Atkins…

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/football/bears/ct-bears-atkins-appreciation-spt-0103-20160102-story.html

*********** Video of Doug Atkins - thanks to Greg Koenig…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MIh8BPLgwI

*********** QUIZ - He was a native of Lexington, Nebraska who played college ball at Nebraska.  Although he lettered three years, he didn’t start until his senior year, when he was also named a co-captain.

He was undrafted, but after signing as a free agent with the Vikings in 1962, he became their starting center as a rookie. He held that spot until he retired in 1978.

He was generally considered to be the best center of his time, being named first team All-Pro five times and second team twice.  He played in six straight Pro Bowls from 1964-1969.

He is one of just 11 Vikings’ players to have played in all four of their Super Bowl appearances

When he finally did retire, he had started in 240 consecutive games, second only among NFL players to his  former teammate, Jim Marshall.

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

FRID

*********** College Football this weekend…

By  official proclamation of the owner of this site, it’s time to begin assessing playoff possibilities.

Assumptions:
1. No team with two losses will make the playoff
2. There are still plenty of teams that will finish with no worse than one loss
3. No team outside the Power 5 conferences has a chance of getting in with one loss.  At present, Central Florida, Cincinnati and South Florida of the American Athletic are still undefeated - but they all have to play each other.
4. Notre Dame, as an independent, has an inside track even with one loss (should it lose to USC) because as an independent it can stay home and watch as other playoff contenders eliminate each other in bogus “conference championship” games.
5. With Notre Dame still unbeaten, the Irish are likely to be one of the four playoff teams, which means only three spots remain for the Power 5 conferences. That also means there is little likelihood of two teams from the same Power 5 conference.  Most importantly, though, it means two conferences and all their members will not get a nickel of playoff money, while Notre Dame gets to pocket AN ENTIRE CONFERENCE SHARE. (Who made that deal, anyhow?)

Speaking in terms of Power 5 conferences only…

There are still three unbeaten teams:
Alabama
Clemson
NC State

Alabama plays Tennessee in their traditional Third Saturday in October game, but Bama isn’t going to blow this one.  Bama still has to play LSU, MIssissippi State and Auburn.  Also the Washington Generals. Not really - but they always have a softy down near the end of the schedule and this year it’s The Citadel.

Clemson and NC State meet Saturday - at Clemson.  The winner has a great shot at taking the Atlantic Division spot in the ACC championship except… Clemson still has to play Duke and - big intrastate rival - South Carolina.  Should NC State get past Clemson, the Pack has a fairly easy schedule remaining: Syracuse, FSU, Wake, Louisville, ECU

There are still lots of one-loss teams fighting to stay that way and make it to their conference championships.  Several of them will play in big games Saturday…

1. Michigan plays at Michigan State.  Ohio State may be the big game for Michigan, but Michigan is the big game for State.  The Spartans are tough, especially coming off last week’s win at Penn State. A loss would probably keep Michigan out of the Big Ten championship game, since the Wolverines still have to play Penn State and Ohio State.

2. Oklahoma at TCU.  OU has one loss and even after TCU, the Sooners still have to play Texas Tech, Oklahoma State and West Virginia.

3. Texas at Oklahoma State. Texas has beaten Oklahoma, but still has to play Texas Tech and West Virginia.

4. West Virginia plays Baylor.  WVU “controls its destiny” as they like to say.  (Except that if it’s destiny, nobody has any control over it, right?) The Mountaineers still have to play Texas, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma.  The season-ending OU game will be in Morgantown.  And then, theoretically, the two teams could meet a week later in the Big 12 title game.

5. LSU plays Mississippi State in Baton Rouge.  The Bulldogs are tough. A loss to State would cook LSU’s goose. Oh - and Bama’s coming up next week. 

6. Ohio State goes to Purdue.  Buckeyes are just too good. After this, though, they still have to play Michigan State and Michigan.  (The Spartans could break my “no team with two losses” rule if they were to win out - giving them wins over Penn State, Michigan and Ohio State - and then win the Big Ten title game.)

7. Vanderbilt is at Kentucky.  While Florida and Georgia take this weekend off before their big one next week, Kentucky continues to fly under the radar.  The Wildcats, who already have a win over Florida, have an outside chance at a playoff spot.  Their schedule the rest of the way: MIssouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Middle Tennessee and Louisville.  But then, of course, there’s the SEC title game - against Alabama.

8. Oregon is at Washington State. So is ESPN Game Day, in recognition of 15 years of the Cougar flag - Ole Crimson - waving at Game Days around the country. The loser of the game will come out of titwith two losses and can kiss its playoff chances good-bye.  The Pac-12’s last hope for a playoff spot is for Oregon to win this one and win all the rest. The Ducks’ toughest game the rest of the way is at Utah, and then, of course,  the conference title game.  Washington State? If they beat the Ducks, the Cougars still have to beat Stanford, Colorado and Washington, and - out here it’s called “Cougin’ it” - they can’t possibly win them all.

DARK HORSES

9. Duke is playing Virginia in Durham.  Duke - surprise - is 5-1. Virginia, fresh off a win over Miami, will not be easy. Next for Duke: Pitt, Miami, UNC, Clemson and Wake Forest 

10. Iowa hosts Maryland.  Am I the only person who overlooked the Hawkeyes?  They are 5-1 and their schedule the rest of the way is not exactly a killer: Penn State (in Iowa City), Purdue, Northwestern, Illinois, Nebraska. The Hawkeyes are my pick to face Ohio State in the Big Ten title game.

*********** Just a bit more on the Vosean Joseph situation at Florida (where a player was called for unportsmanlike conduct but allowed to remain in the game, without correction or chastisement)…

This is just me, you understand, and I’m not telling anyone else how to coach his team, but anyone who ever played for me knows that anyone responsible for a penalty - encroachment, illegal motion, holding, block in the back - came out of the game.  Immediately.  In most cases, it was just for one play, and the miscreant went right back in.

But everybody on the team knew that if he got his team a penalty, he was coming out of the game. Simple as that. Nothing to negotiate.  It was part of the fabric of the team.

Yes, yes, I know:  But, but, but… embarrassing… humilating… singling him out… blah, blah, blah. 

Look - you don’t want to bring unwanted attention to yourself?  DON’T GET YOUR TEAM A PENALTY!

Who the hell are you that you think you have the right to cost your team a game?

As for the Vosean Joseph sort of misconduct (two unsportmanslike conduct penalties -  in one half of play), a player, no matter how good, would have spent a more significant amount of time on the sidelines, listening to me.  But that was never an issue: I don’t mean to brag, but going back at least to 1993 I can’t remember any player on any team I coached incurring a personal foul or unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.  It just… wasn’t… done.

I don’t think any major college or pro coach can say that (but then, neither could I if I had to coach the kind of barbarians that they bring into their programs, in the hope that somehow their good deeds will outweigh the bad).

Very simply - you have to eliminate the things that beat you, and that takes stones, because it means making it a part of your culture that penalties, like turnovers, won’t be tolerated.

I believe it was  Jack Reed, a coach from Northern California,  whom I first heard say it: “What you tolerate, you encourage.”

*********** RIP Jim Taylor, a fullback’s fullback whose block was indispensible in making the Lombardi Sweep a part of football lore…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/packers/2018/10/13/jim-taylor-dies-packers-hall-famer/1629378002/

*********** Few NFL players have have brought more class and credit to our game than Steve Largent,  all-time Seattle Seahawks’ great receiver and later a four-term Congressman from Oklahoma.

From an interview with Seattle Weekly…

*** I kind of came from a tough background. My parents got divorced when I was 6. My mom remarried when I was 9. And the guy she married was an alcoholic. So there was a lot of friction in the house. It really was football and the people I met through football, particularly coaches, that were real mentors to me. Football was a life-saving event in my life. I’m very thankful.

*** I tell my own grandkids … I encourage them to play. And play hard and have fun. And all that stuff. I don’t think football is any more dangerous than other sports. There is some risk involved, but it’s pretty minimal, especially at a younger age.

https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/seahawks-legend-steve-largent-football-was-a-life-saving-event/

*********** Kimberly-Clark, the giant paper company that makes Kleenex, has caved in to pressure from - who the hell else? - and will “rebrand” (change the name of) its “man-size” tissues.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/kleenex-rebrand-mansize-tissues-gender-complaints-58582322


*********** By any measure, General Robert Neyland of Tennessee was one of the greatest coaches of all time.  He was Nick Saban long before Nick Saban was born.

Tim Cohane, in his  book, “Great  Football Coaches of the  Twenties and Thirties” wrote, “Neyland, by repeated proof and victory, was able to convince his team, as no coach before or after him, that the keys lay in - and in this order, if order there must be - a sound kicking game, a containing defense, and, say, a couple of dozen plays all thoroughly learned, meaning that none of them is run in a game until it has been practiced at least 500 times.”

He was a single-winger.  But he believed in the importance of “position rather than possession.”  His teams were so sound defensively that he didn’t mind giving you the ball - in your end of the field.  He didn’t mind at all punting on an early down if it could get him out of his own end of the field, or if it could pin you deep in your own territory. He would punt on the opponents’ side of the 50, from the 45 to the 35, with strict instructions that the ball should be “angled out or punted dead to the 10 or inside it.”

So thoroughly did he integrate the offense, the defense and the kicking game - long before most other coaches - that it was said that if Neyland could get a touchdown up on you, he had you beaten.  And if he could get two scores up on you, it was a runaway.

As sound a football man as ever lived, the General (he was a West Point graduate who really did earn his star as an Army general) had a well-thought-out reason for everything he did.  For him, nothing happened by chance.

Why did he run a balanced-line single wing when everyone else ran it from an unbalanced line? Why, I was told by Dr. Andy Kozar, who played for the General and then collected and published his notes and journals, he lived to run off-tackle, and he knew that with a balanced line his tailback would get to the off-tackle hole faster. Actually, he told author Tim Cohane in the 1970s, “I was not wedded to the single wing as closely as some thought. I used it because we could get quicker power at tackle.”

Another thing that the General did was position his blocking back in the strongside “A” gap - nowhere near as wide other single-wing coaches (these are the General’s own play diagrams, published in Dr. Kozar’s magnificent book, “Football As a War Game.”)  #10 is his staple off-tackle play.



One major reason why the General put his blocking back where he did (actually, he was still just as close to the off-tackle hole as the blocking backs in unbalanced lines) was that he was a great admirer of one thing that T-formation (with the QB under center) teams could do that single wing teams couldn’t: a quarterback sneak. In the diagram below, General Neyland has shown a sneak from his punt formation in Play 32. (In Play 35 he has also drawn up a toss sweep.)



(Dr. Kozar is now dead and his book is out of print.  If you can find a copy, be prepared to pay.  If you bought one back when I first recommended it, hang onto it and leave it to one of your kids in your will.  Or let them fight over it.)



General Neyland’s respect for the quarterback sneak ought to be enough of a recommendation for anyone, but even now, every Sunday we see genius coaches line up on 4th-and-1 in a shotgun and, already starting four yards deep in the backfield, hand off to the only running back in the backfield (what - you thought they’d have their QB run it?).  Occasionally - you know how the pros are - they’ll even throw the ball on 4th and 1.  Sometimes, they’ll put their quarterback under center, but he’ll hand off to the only running back, who’s lined up seven yards deep! (You do see some of this same crap on Saturday, too, since an awful lot of today’s college coaches are auditioning for the NFL.)

Even when it’s now legal to push the runner from behind, I’m amazed that I don’t see people running a sneak -  with a 300-pound fullback right behind their quarterback as a pusher.

You have to wonder why not.  Michael Salfino, writing on October 10 in the Wall Street Journal, noted that this season, in the NFL, sneaks had been attempted 44 times on either 3rd and 1 or 4th and one, and they’d been successful 42 times - that’s a 95.5% success rate. (Since 2013 - Sneaks in those situations have an 84.9% rate of success.)

For non-sneaks, the success rate is considerably lower - 64.6%

But here’s the kicker: despite the overwhelming odds in favor of a successful quarterback sneak in 3rd and 1 and 4th and 1 situations, teams sneak only 15% of the time!

The "sneakiest" NFL coach is Ron Rivera of the Panthers - he calls sneaks 26.8% of the time. (Of course, he’s got a giant economy-size QB in Cam Newton).

NFL coaches who are most reluctant to sneak:

Pete Carroll: 2% of the time.
Jason Garrett, Mike McCarthy: 3.4 % of the time.

One of General Neyland’s former players, Phil Dickens, did the General one better - he had his QB take snaps and sneak, toss, drop back, and run options to the weak side.  The QB was not exactly under center - he was in the A gap but turned in, facing the center.  From that position, he could take the snap, or he could allow the direct snap to go to the tailback or fullback while he did what a single wing blocking back was expected to do - block. This came to be known as the “side-saddle T.”  He was 29-11-1 running it at Wyoming, and his 1956 team (shown in the photo against Arizona) went 10-0.  That was good enough to get him the Indiana job, but, alas, he got caught cheating and that was his last coaching stop.



WYOMING VS ARIZONA, 1956

John McLaughry ran his version of it at Brown, which I remembered from my college days. I spoke with him not long before he passed away, and he said that his main reason for running it was that it better enabled his QB to spin and lead through on off-tackle plays.  I gathered from that that he was not a single-wing coach trying to acquire some of the deception of the T-formation; instead, he was a T-formation coach trying to acquire some of the single wing’s power.



FROM YALE SCOUTING REPORT VS BROWN, 1959


*********** Whenever there’s talk about “shutting down” the government, it’s always accompanied by a threat:  they’ll close the national parks.

And when the school board says it has to have more more money, it threatens us: it says that unless it gets the  funds it’ll have to cut sports.

Those government types aren’t dumb. They know what’s really important to us.

So now, all their pleas to save the polar bears and keep the oceans from rising having fallen on deaf ears, the climate change zealots are trying the same tack as the school boards.  They’re threatening to take our fun from us.  You see, unless we change our ways immediately, the world’s supply of barley could be in danger by the end of this century.  And since barley is a major ingredient in making beer, well, you can figure out where this is going.   Help us fight climate change or you’ll be cut off.

PS - The end of the century is still far enough away that anyone reading this who is 18 or over will probably be drinking Ensure by then anyhow - if he’s still around.

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

First I heard about the UCLA win and how bad it was for Cal.

As big a fan I am of ND there is NO WAY the Irish are one of the Top 5 teams in the country.  A Top 5 team should beat everyone they play, and beat each one convincingly to earn that recognition.  ND is a good team, but if they want to be considered Top 5, or a National Championship caliber playoff team, they need to step it up big-time.  Otherwise it will be another January 1 bowl game that could end badly for them.

Apparently I didn't miss much in last week's Army game vs. SJSU.  

Mark my words...after Humboldt State drops football next year, SJSU will be the next California State University to follow suit and join the ranks of the following schools that dropped the sport: San Francisco State, Hayward State, Chico State, Sonoma State, Cal State LA, Cal State Northridge, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Fullerton, and Cal Poly Pomona.  Others: University of the Pacific, Santa Clara, St. Mary's, USF, Loyola, Pepperdine, and UC Riverside.

Speaking of Sonoma State and Gary Patterson.  Gary and I met in 1985 while I was a coach at Sonoma State and he was working an Offense/Defense Camp back there at that time.  He was the coach that introduced me to his 4-2-5 defense concept.  Just a concept at that time.  But it was his concept I took back to high school with me after my short time at SSU and have used it ever since.  I follow Gary's TCU teams from afar because of his defense, and briefly visited him at TCU a few years ago.

Have a great week!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

Joe,

I agree with you on the Irish but only Northwestern and  USC appear to be left with a decent chance of beating them. The big thing they have going for them is not having to play a damned useless  conference championship game.

Sorry to see California dropping all those “small school” programs.  The death knell is going to come when then start dropping JC programs.  Oregon and Washington had them when we first moved out in 1975, and within 20 years they were all gone.  Just having JCs and the realistic goal that going to one represented really helped high school programs.

I think that Patterson has done a remarkable job at TCU, and I respect him for having the good sense to stay there as long as he has.

********** Pro football eats its seed corn… 

Defensive linemen Nick Bosa didn’t even make it halfway through his junior season before declaring that his Ohio State career was at an end.

A team captain, Bosa announced that he’s not going to be coming back from his injury, but instead he’s going to drop out of school (I’m sure he’d really been faithfully attending classes) to devote all his time to rehabbing from his injury - and getting ready for the NFL draft.

From a purely financial standpoint, with tens of millions of dollars on the line, Bosa’s decision makes sense.

But, thinking along those lines, how long will it be before top college players begin to “save their bodies,” starting to take it easy and pay attention to little aches and pains once they hit junior year? (If they aren’t already doing so.)

https://www.si.com/college-football/2018/10/16/nick-bosa-ohio-state-return-2019-nfl-draft-plans-injury-news


*********** QUIZ ANSWER: Charlie Justice was a native of Asheville, North Carolina, where he was an outstanding athlete.

After “service” in the Navy (he played football) during World War II he enrolled at the University of North Carolina, where he became the most storied player in Tar Heel football history.

It was while playing at Bainbridge, Maryland Naval Training Center that his running style was compared to a locomotive, earning him one of the most colorful nicknames ever bestowed on a runner - “Choo-choo Charlie.”

In his four years at Chapel Hill, the Tar Heels were 32-7-2 and played in two Sugar Bowls and one Cotton Bowl.

Playing tailback in Coach Carl Snavely’s single wing, he rushed for  3774 yards and threw for 2362 yards and, running and throwing, he was responsible for 64 touchdowns.

He was a four-time All-American, and finished second in the Heisman voting in 1948 (behind Doak Walker) and 1949 (behind Leon Hart).

Following graduation, he was the MVP of the College All Star game, rushing for 133 yards in leading the All Stars to a 17-7 win over the Philadelphia Eagles.

His NFL career with the Washington Redskins was cut short by injuries.

Charlie Justice is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.  His Number 22 has been retired by North Carolina.

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING CHARLIE ‘CHOO-CHOO” JUSTICE:

TUESD

*********** It seemed only days ago that we Portlanders learned that Paul Allen’s cancer had returned, and then today came the sad news that Mr. Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and owner of the Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle Seahawks, had died.  He was 65.

Strange and somewhat reclusive, Mr. Allen was one of the wealthiest men in the United States, and he invested his wealth in a wide number of areas besides sports. I can only imagine how many people he and his many companies employed, but just as one example, his 400-foot yacht, the Octopus, carried a crew of 57. He actually lent the yacht - which had a deep-diving submarine - to governments for use in major salvage and rescue operations.

What a job it’s going to be to sort out all of Mr. Allen’s many and varied holdings.

I suspect that fans in Portland and Seattle may never again have it as good as they did with him, one of our own, owning our major sports franchises.

*********** Hard to tell which was more painful for Cal fans Saturday - the thumping that their Golden Bears got from UCLA, or their loss of first place to UCLA in Times Higher Education’s rankings as the Top Public University in the US.

*********** If you’ve ever been in a spot where the wolves were howling for your job… I’ll bet you didn’t have a guy standing behind you the way Donald Trump stood behind his nominee for the Supreme Court.

*********** John Walters, in The Athletic, asks, “How does a kicker come to be known as “Bubba?’” (Miami’s Bubba Baxa.)

*********** Tua Tagovailoa has yet to play in the fourth quarter this season.

*********** I got so tired of hearing announcers say “Hopkins-Junior” this and “Hopkins-Junior” that as if that’s the last name of Army QB Kelvin Hopkins that I turned off the volume.  And then I tuned in an Air Force game and it was even worse: “Hammond-the-third” this and “Hammond-the-third” that.

*********** What does a spread team do when it’s 3rd and 1 or 4th and 1 and it has to go for it?  Why, first it snaps the ball back to a guy who’s four yards deep…

*********** A holding call in the Vandy-Florida game prompted this bit of professional analysis: “He might have got a LITTLE bit of jersey…”   Yeah, it was just a little bit of jersey.  "Penetration, however slight..."

*********** I would have enjoyed listening to some of the Iowa-Indiana game, but no-o-o-o-o.  Not once I heard that it was Beth Mowins on play-by-play.

*********** Indiana’s secondary appears to be incapable of covering receivers without interfering.

*********** Oklahoma State was on the Kansas State one, third-and-one.  The one-FOOT line, actually.

So what do they do?  Why, they run a jet sweep.  And lose five yards.

*********** A Florida linebacker named Vosean Joseph - more from him later - picks up a Vandy runner and pile-drives him, earning a richly-deserved unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.  And the Florida staff did absolutely nothing about it. Didn’t bat an eye.  Just as if it was business as usual, he was still on the field for the next play. What the hell kind of coaching is that?

*********** The brand… the brand… the brand.  We hear this sh— from the marketing guys at the colleges as if they really have an understanding of what branding is all about… And then they send their product out into the marketplace in a package that’s unrecognizeable. 

What, exactly, is the reason for all the all-black uniforms on teams whose colors have never included black?  This past weekend it was Tulsa and Iowa State.

Maybe it’s all part of the Death of Normal.

*********** A Florida player puts a dirty hit - blind-side, helmet-to-helmet - on a Vanderbilt player and as the Vandy player lies motionless on the ground, his coach, Derek Mason, has words with Florida coach Dan Mullen.  Florida DC Todd Grantham seems to forget that he’s not the head coach, and flaps his mouth, too.

Meanwhile, Vosean Joseph - remember him? - picks up his second unsportsmanlike conduct penalty IN THE SAME HALF and now he has to leave the game.

But not without a tantrum.  The mother, I would say, of all tantrums.  Hmmm.  Maybe that’s why nobody on the Florida staff had the stones to pull him out of the game for a little “coaching” after that first unsportmanlike conduct penalty.

New coaching staff.  Same old Florida.

*********** 4th and 18 and a great fake punt catches Vanderbilt flat-footed.

*********** Nebraska takes a 28-14 lead early in the fourth quarter.  Could this be the Huskers’ day?

*********** Vanderbilt’s deep snapper hustles downfield and  catches the punt in the air.

*********** How an option team takes itself out of its offense…

Georgia Tech, down 14-7 to Duke, fumbles and - like that - Tech is down 21-7.

Georgia Tech, down 21-7 to Duke, fumbles and - like that - Tech is down 28-7.

And now, Georgia Tech is forced to play Duke left-handed -  throwing the ball.

*********** Speaking of playing left-handed… Two very sketchy grounding calls that should have been called against Northwestern. One of them is so bad that the Northwestern QB is “throwing” the ball left-handed.

*********** This is how it happens when you’re going down the gurgler…

There’s 2:02 left. Nebraska leads, 31-24, and Northwestern is on its own one yard line. 99 yards to go.

And then a Cornhusker lineman is called for a blow to the head, and Northwestern is out of the end zone and on its way to the last-second score that will send the game into OT.

*********** Free timeouts for incomplete passes.  Since when do we reward failure?  It’s making a farce of the game.

*********** Pitt comes out wearing its Dorsett-era uniforms - sunflower gold helmets and pants.  All that was missing was the talent they had on those teams.

*********** Derek Mason and Dan Mullen seemed quite cordial in their post-game meeting at midfield.

*********** The Oregon-Washington game saw a targeting call against a UW linemen who couldn’t possibly have made a more beautiful form tackle on the Oregon QB.

*********** Proof that there’s a God - Washington’s kicker missed what would have been a game-winner as time expired, and the game went into OT.  What a sin it would have been if the game - a real classic - had ended, like most NFL "thrillers,"  on a f—king chip shot kick.

*********** For the 1,000th time… coaches should not be calling time out.  Ever,

*********** Washington scored in the top half of OT to lead, 33-30.

In its first series, Oregon was stopped on 3rd and 1, and now faced 4th and 1.

But wait - Oregon was called for holding. What to do?

Take the play and force the Ducks to decide whether to kick or go for it?

Or take the penalty and bet that they can’t make 3rd-and-11?

Washington took the penalty, but Oregon made the first down - and went in to score the winning touchdown.

*********** UCLA 37, Cal 7 - It was that bad an ass-kicking.  How’s that QB demotion working out? Well, since you asked, Cal had FIVE turnovers, all by the QB.

*********** Is there no end to the stupid play?  Virginia, leading Miami 16-13 with :30 left to play, kicks a field goal to go ahead 19-13.

But not so fast - a Miami player roughed the kicker.  Take the penalty and it’s an automatic first down. Miami has no timeouts left, which means GAME OVER.

*********** Lotsa Field Storming on Saturday…

Iowa State
LSU
Oregon
UV

*********** Lost in the crowd?  More like the crowd lost in the seats?

For some reason, San Jose State chose to play Army in Levis Stadium.  You can imagine what 15,627 (announced) looks like in a stadium that seats 68.000

AND THIS IS WHAT SAN DIEGO STADIUM LOOKED LIKE WHEN AIR FORCE AND SAN DIEGO STATE RETURNED AFTER A 1-1/2 HOUR LIGHTNING DELAY



*********** I watched Tom Brady score a TD against Kansas City when he ran out of the grasp of a Chiefs’ defensive lineman. Are you kidding me?  Brady breaking a tackle?  I swear it looked to me as if the defender, afraid of throwing Brady to the ground and getting called for roughing, let up.

I suspect we’re going to be seeing more of this,  and it threatens to make a travesty of the game.

At the very least, in return for the cosseting of the QBs, there should be some tradeoff.  How about when he’s “in the grasp” (remember that?) the play is dead?

There.  That way we’ll find out if this no-roughing garbage is really about the quarterback’s safety… or if it’s about goosing the offensive stats.

*********** Bowling Green didn’t wait until the end of the season to fire Mike Jinks, letting him go roughly at the mid-point of his five-year, $2.1 million contract.

He had to go.  Losses were mounting.  Crowds were dwindling.  Boosters were bailing.

And all because of an AD who had no f—king idea how to hire a football coach.

Back in 2015, coming off a MAC championship and needing to replace his coach, the AD did what any sharp AD would do.  No, he didn’t go to a list of potential hires he’d begun to compile back when it became obvious that his current coach (Dino Babers) was so good that somebody was bound to lure him away.  No, that’s what old-time ADs did.

This digital-age AD went to Google.  No lie.  He searched for the team with the most productive offense, which Google said was Texas Tech.  And then he zeroed in on the top Tech assistant that he could afford.

That turned out to be a running backs coach named Mike Jinks.  So Jinks had never so much as been a college coordinator. So Jinks had never even been in the state of Ohio.

So Jinks was so unready he didn’t even have a list of assistants to hire if he ever got a head coaching job. (His first staff wound up consisting of seven assistants who had never previously coached at the Division 1 level, and had, in toto, zero ties to Ohio.

What could possibly go wrong?

(For what it’s worth, the AD in question, a guy named Chris Kingston, worked at West Point under one of the world’s worst ADs, a guy named Kevin Anderson. Kingston is no longer at Bowling Green.)

https://www.toledoblade.com/sports/college/2018/10/14/college-football-bowling-green-state-university-mike-jinks-david-briggs/stories/20181014165?abnpageversion=evoke


***********  Hugh,

You may be right about the option.  While I never miss an Army game now I can see how the cut block downfield has limited the offense's effectiveness on the perimeter.  I completely disagree with it, and my point is this:  If a defender is allowed to take the legs away from the blocker, how is THAT not considered as dangerous as a blocker taking the legs away from a defender??  Or...if defenders are allowed to leave their feet on a tackle below the waist...why isn't that considered dangerous to both the ball carrier and the defender??

While I briefly watched some of the Yale-Dartmouth game last Friday I couldn't help but notice the crowd in the venerated old Yale Bowl. 

Speaking of crowds, and Andy Kerr, and Stanford...is there a possible connection that crowd sizes at Yale and Stanford last week may have something to do with the progressive mindset on both the east coast and left coast???

Glad to have you back!  Have a great weekend!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

Joe-

I am actually seeing calls of cut blocking against defenders who take on blockers at the knees.  Coaches on the sideline act incredulous.

What pisses me off about what’s happening with the spread guys ganging up on the option is that it’s like Amazon and Wal-Mart and Target favoring legislation that may sound great on the surface ($15 minimum wage!)  but is actually designed to crush the little guys.

As for the Yale Bowl (dear to me because it’s where my wife and I first met)...

The Bowl was once the largest stadium in the United States.  Even adjusted for the greater width of modern-day asses, it still seats close to 70,000.  To see even 20,000 in that big old bowl looks like those incongruous scenes on TV of high school playoff games being played in NFL stadia.

Ivy League football is long gone as a spectator sport. We were borderline big time  when I went there, at least by the measurement of attendance.

To give you an idea of how Yale once drew…

In 1956, my freshman year, Yale played SEVEN home games. They drew 243,825 - and average of 34,800.

Compare that with
ALABAMA - 6 games - 154,000 - 25,700 per game
ARKANSAS - 6 games - 161,000 - 26,800
AUBURN - 5 games - 120,000 - 24,000
FLORIDA - 7 games - 233,662 - 33,400
GEORGIA - 4 games - 110,000 - 27,500
OREGON - 4 GAMES - 55,000 - 13,500
PENN STATE - 4 games - 107,030 - 26,750
SYRACUSE - 5 games - 157,480 - 31,500
TCU - 4 games - 104,000 - 26,000
WASHINGTON - 6 games - 190,000 - 31,700

College football has undergone a sea change since then.

At Yale, we would routinely draw crowds in excess of 50,000 for “big” games.

At that time, that meant Princeton, Harvard or Dartmouth.  For those games, we could make decent money selling our tickets to rich New York alumni who wanted to impress client with good seats (our seats were on the 40). We didn’t consider it scalping because we didn’t pay anything for them. Those rich alumni were the students of the 30’s, when Yale football was a national power.

Nowadays, I think the quality of the play is probably better than when I played,  but the interest is gone. The fan base has eroded.  The old alumni are dead. Today’s students don’t give a sh— haven’t in years, and when they graduate they become alumni who don't give a sh—.  This process has been going on since about the time they admitted women (hmmm.). Soon, there will be no alumni at all who care. Only parents and girlfriends of players will be at games.

It may be a coastal thing, but I believe it’s also a tribal thing - members of the leftist/feminist/LGBTQ tribe don’t care much for football.  Certainly not for glorifying something that reeks of testosterone and male toxicity.

(This appears to be a small but dangerous first-stage cancer even at real football schools, where students party in the tailgate area instead of going to the actual game.)

Thanks for getting me going on this.

Hugh

PS— Thought you might enjoy this, from June, 2001—

*********** Hi coach, Just a couple of things to note. We installed the DW this past week at Benilde-St. Margaret's School in Minneapolis. I was thrilled at our turnout, (over 60 players grades 7 through 12) but more importantly, the players picked it up quickly and they're really fired-up about it. The coaching staff can't wait to get going! Your installation tape, and attending the Chicago clinic made the installation that much easier. I'll be in touch with you periodically to let you know how things are going for the "Red Knights".

 Also, I'm very interested in the "no-huddle" and "new play" information you described on your website "news" and would greatly appreciate anything you can send. Look forward to hearing from you, and again, thanks for all your help.

 Joe Gutilla Head Football Coach

P.S. By the way, my "star" TB I told you about when I first contacted you about running the offense (he was very skeptical about the change) watched the Dynamics video and took part in the installation. He's now convinced there isn't anyone we'll face that will be able to stop him at B back. I may have created a monster.

*********** The Law of Unintended Consequences…

You wonder why our language is going to hell?

My daughter passed this along to me some time ago…

A friend of hers said a speech therapist she knows told her that it has become more and more difficult for her to motivate kids to improve their speech, because now that it's no longer acceptable for others to make fun of the way they speak (“bullying?”), there's no incentive for them to learn to speak properly.

The intended consequence of “tolerance” was to keep kids from feeling bad about themselves. After all, we didn’t want them all committing suicide, right?  But what we got instead was a growing cohort of people who, if they even speak English at all , speak it poorly.

*********** Number one-ranked Mater Dei, of Santa Ana, California, fell to St. John Bosco, of Bellflower on Saturday.

Mater Dei doesn’t lose often.  Bruce Rollinson has been the Mater Dei head coach 1989, and during that time, he’s coached a number of state championship teams, including  last year’s team that was also named the national champion.  Among his better known players are Matt Barkley, Colt Brennan and Matt Leinart. And USC’s current true-freshman QB,  J. T. Daniels, was Mater Dei’s QB just last season.

There’s a nice article in the latest AFCA publication about Coach Rollinson and his approach with parents, which he decribes as “brutally upfront.”

Here’s why: Even after winning the national championship last year, Rollinson said nine different players transferred from Mater Dei to other programs.
A major reason was playing time or “getting their share of the spotlight.”

Said Rollinson, “I was disappointed because they did have potential but I was never going to make their parents happy anyway.”

*********** I have a theory that kids who stare at screens - who never read and never listen to stories - never develop their imaginations.  With everything done for them from the time they’re old enough to hold an iPad, they’re basically unable to create pictures in their minds. 

In popular entertainment, this manifests itself in primitive humor that lacks subtlety because its audience simply can’t put the pieces together. Why take the chance that they won’t be able to figure out for themselves why that guy is doubled over in pain?  Why not simply show him being kicked in the balls?

Matt Groening, whom we can all thank for giving us “The Simpsons,” referred to this recently in recalling the early days of the show. “Our original concept was a little coarser and a little more risque.  We went in that direction and it didn’t feel right. It felt too easy. There are words you can use that will automatically get a laugh.  But it’s more fun to skirt the edge.”


*********** Just checking to verify that Frontier is enrolled for the Black Lion Award.

We’re having another good season despite having just 4 seniors on the squad.

We lost our opening game to a ranked opponent and had the lead at half but couldn’t finish. We lost momentum when we didn’t score in the closing seconds of the half and had a thin 6-0 lead. (We took the kickoff at the start of the game marched right down the field -textbook DW) Since then we 3 straight and average over 30 points per game.
66/77 average over 8 yards per carry. I’ve also worked in a freshman at A back for some carries. He shows real promise and contributes to the rushing stats. Despite the bruising rushing attack a few “Dads”can be heard on the sidelines calling for us to “open it up”.  Yeah right.  Besides running 66/77 the usual way we will run 66 with Liz motion with the QB reversing like on a 56c.  We call it LIZ 66 INSIDE POWER or RIP 77 INSIDE POWER. Our sweeps also look pretty good this year. Something we lacked the past few seasons. 88/99 G-REACH and we sometimes offset the FB play side or flank the FB to play side about 8 yards and have him crack on the outside LB.

Works pretty good - especially after pounding off tackle for a few plays. We continue to practice openwing as well.   Havent unleashed it yet other than in preseason scrimmage but it’s there if we need it or just want to mess with next weeks opponents scouting. It might placate a few of the Dads. lol

Only 3seniors starting on each side of the ball tonight. Wish us luck.

BTW I enjoyed the Army vs Oklahoma game - got to watch it via YouTube.

Don Gordon
Frontier Regional School
Deerfield
Peoples Republic of Massachusetts

PS   Did I read somewhere you’re working on another playbook focusing onformation adjustments?

Coach-

You did read correctly.  But first on my list of projects is the next installment of the Open Wing playbook.

Keep enjoying your season.  I’ve enjoyed watching your team.



*********** Hello Coach,

I hope you are feeling better. I saw on your NYCU that you had been under the weather.

I wrote to you back at the beginning of the season regarding my fumbling problems and you gave me some excellent advise, but we still kept fumbling. Some of the players had improved, but others were not able to really get better, and with play time rules in effect I made a switch after our 3rd game. We had a bye week and I decided to install the Open Wing. In examining my skilled players I came to realize I had 2 guys who are excellent runners (put them at BBack)and a pretty good QB that throws well and can run a little. Since the installation we have put up 42 and 29 points in the 2 games and we have won both games. The transition was pretty seamless for the Oline other than I decided to flop them using an open and tight side, and my center had no trouble with the short snap. The biggest improvement is we have only fumbled once( in the first game in the Open Wing) and the kid got the message real quick when I benched him for the rest of the half. As for the other guys that continued to fumble, well they get to play X and Slot and never have to see the ball. I do have a kid at X that I throw to, and a slot player that is lightning quick so I run him on reach plays, but other than those two no one else out there gets a whiff of the ball.

I do have a question about the Open Wing, I have the videos and maybe I need to look at them again, but when would I use Over, Eastern, or Western? Especially if I am sticking with the G-O's, X-O's, and the traps. When would be a good time to change the formation that may be advantageous to the play calls I hope this makes sense.

Thanks Coach

John Guebara
Craftsbury, Vermont

Glad you’ve been able to make use of the Open Wing.

A brief answer to your question would be that you might use Eastern and Western (moving your slot to the Tight Side) when a defense that’s normally a 3-deep covers your slot back with its safety (and therefore there's no one in the middle).  That means that it’s playing your running game 9-on-9. (TOP)

By moving your Slot Back to the other side ("Western") , you can force the secondary back into its base 3-deep, and  make it an 8-man box. (BOTTOM)



Otherwise, unless you have some plans to throw, there’s no advantage to you to go Western or Eastern. (If you can throw, you have trips to the tight side, and almost certainly one-on-one coverage on the split end.)

Hang tight until I send out playbook pages for “Strong” backfield.

Good Luck!

*********** Hugh Freeze joins Rick Neuheisel!

1. https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/former-ole-miss-coach-hugh-freeze-hired-as-offensive-coordinator-in-new-aaf-league/

Uh-Oh.

2. Have you felt the Push for Notre Dame as NatChamps this year? "It's the feel good story of the 2018 college football season..."  CBS Sports on the 'Net is the worst: A  picture of the ND QB with high cheek bones and a chin carved from a rock from Mount Rushmore appears for a few seconds with whatever story you're reading.  This guy is ready to star in a Superman  movie.  Get ready for another "Fifth-to-First"  year, even with a Playoff System.

Think there aren't strings being pulled for some people?

Charlie Wilson
Crystal River, Florida

*********** Don’t you just love Politial Correctness?

Came across this…

The mascot of Flint Central High School since 1928 was the Indian. In 2001 the Flint Board of Education voted to phase out school mascots that made reference to Native Americans in all of Flint's schools. This affected other school mascots as well including the Pierce Elementary School Arrows (although the mascot name is a reference to the automobile model, not the weapon),

Did you get that?  There was once a car called the Pierce Arrow.  And a very prestigious automobile it was. Therefore, it being Michigan and autos and all that, what a clever nickname for Pierce Elementary School.

But ooooooo. Arrows bad.

*********** I go back a long way with Gil LeBreton, a long-time sportswriter and columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  Back in the days of the World Football League, Gil, an LSU guy,  was the PR man for the Birmingham Vulcans, and I served in the same capacity with the Portland Thunder.  We hit it off pretty well and in return for his hospitality when I visited the Magic City, I reciprocated when he came out to the Northwest.

After a long career with the Star-Telegram, Gil has embarked on a new venture, a subcription-only site devoted to Dallas-Fort Worth sports.
In one of his most recent columns, Gil wrote about Gary Patterson’s losing both of his parents in the past year, and how his upbringing has been responsible for making him the man - and the coach - he is…

Patterson left tiny Rozel, Kan., in 1978, first to Dodge City Community College and then to attend Kansas State, but in a lot of ways Rozel has never left him.

Rozel is smack dab in the middle of central Kansas, 137 miles from Wichita, 135 miles from the Nebraska state line and 150 miles from Colorado. There’s a grain elevator, a water tower and a few dozen houses, but no signal light or even a stop sign on the town’s main street.

The population of Rozel is listed as 156. Patterson’s final year at Pawnee Heights High was the school’s last season to play 11-man football.

*****
“People say, ‘Well, why are you so driven?’” Patterson reflected Tuesday. “You’re driven because you have parents that drove you, and you want to make sure that you paid them back for all the hard work they did.”

Patterson’s father Keith, who died in January, leveled farm land for a living so area farmers could find irrigation. His mother was a career nurse.
His parents valued the necessities of hard work, Patterson said.

“I went back to see her last Sunday after the Iowa State game, and it was the last time,” he said. “Most people, if they knew a parent was going to pass away, would have stayed a couple of days.

“But she was one of those [who said], ‘Now, I don’t want you to get beat by Texas Tech, so you need to get back and get prepared.’

“That’s just the way we do things. That’s the way they brought me up.”

His mom died quietly on Thursday, Oct. 4, four days after Gary visited.

*****
From his parents, Patterson continued, he inherited his zealous drive.

“They were a couple who knew what they were and how they did things,” he said. “They worked hard. The reason myself and my brother and sisters turned out way we did was the simple reason that they pushed us to be that.

“We never knew we didn’t have anything. We didn’t have anything but we didn’t know that. They always found a way to make sure we had an education, clothes, everything.”

When Patterson returned in January to see his then-ailing father Keith, he received a similar scolding as the one his mother would later give him – get back to work.

“If you lose a recruit because you’re back here . . . ,” the elder Patterson told his son.

FRID

*********** The latest Sports Illustrated contains a couple of very deep football articles, neither of which will please someone who dislikes the way the game is headed.

One, “The NFL’s Unfixable Problem,” by Tim Layden, deals with the newest definition of roughing the passer, and how offenses have taken advantage of the near-untouchable status of the quarterbacks  and the added protection of “defenseless” receivers to put up numbers less related to the skills of the players than to the laxity of the rules. It’s part a concern for  player safety, true, but it’s also business-driven, because spectators pay to see offense. (Next:  baseball moving the pitcher’s mound back to 90 feet, and giving the batter four strikes - and saying that because so many pitchers are throwing in the 90s now, it’s for the safety of the batters.)

Jack Lambert drew laughs back in the 70s when Howard Cosell asked him if he could think of any rules change to protect quarterbacks and he answered, “it might be a good idea to put dresses on all of them.”

We are almost there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=IxDUCaUYhnw

The other article, “The Option,” by Ross Dellinger, does a nice job of giving an overview of the various forms of options and how  option football appears doomed. Even its practitioners agree, and most of them seem to feel - as I do - that the rulesmakers “have an agenda.”  The latest attack on option play has been an outlawing of below-the-waist blocking downfield. Passed as a “safety measure,” I have yet to see the data to support it.

There’s no question in my mind that there is an “agenda” to do away with option football.  Non-option coaches are a great majority, and their influence on the rules committee reflects it.  If with just one rule they could outlaw option football overnight, they’d do it, but realizing that that’s impossibile, they’re settling for one bite at a time.


*********** Downtown Vancouver, Washington used to be a fairly rough place, known mainly for its dives, card rooms (legalized poker) and - a sure mark of a place where people live on the edge - pawn shops.

Gentrification is making its inroads.  The cardrooms were sent packing long ago, the dives are being replaced by brewpubs and wine bars, and with the closing of a major pawn shop, only two remain from what was not long ago seven.

The reason for the pawn shops’ demise doesn’t seem to be as much a factor of an improved downtown as it is a result of peoples’ ability to sell things online.

But at least one guy isn’t worried about the future of  pawn shops in Vancouver.

Said Dan Maks, co-owner of still-in-business Lucky Loans, “As long as people still spend more money than they make, there will always be pawn shops.” 

*********** KC Smith, of Walpole, Massachusetts, brought to my attention an NFL player/MD whom I’d overlooked.  And shame on me because he was an Ivy Leaguer.

He’s Dr. Archie Roberts, a native of Holyoke, Massachusetts who played at Holyoke High and then Deerfield Academy before going on to Columbia.

He got his MD at Case-Western Reserve, and became a cardiac surgeon.

By the time he retired, he had performed more than 4,000 open heart operations.

(Actually, he missed the list because he’s not  a former NFL player - he was an AFL player (Jets and Dolphins) and barely one at that, appearing in only one game.)

KC Smith wrote with some amount of personal interest: Archie Roberts played at Deerfield Academy for his dad, Jim Smith.

So did KC.  And so did KC's  four brothers, Mike, Danny, Jimmy and Patrick.

In his 36 years at Greenfield, Jim Smith coached the Deerfield Big Green to a 175-88-12 record.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Roberts_(American_football)
 
https://deerfield.edu/athletics/news/2012/10/smith-football/10198455/

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

Everyone down here is gearing up for the Red River Rivalry between Texas and Oklahoma in Dallas this weekend.  I like Texas' chances and will take the points! (Honest - I got this email before the game! HW)

I think the guy having the tough season is the same guy we both know.  A ton of injuries to his starters, and the drop-off at each position is significant.  He still has great support because his boys are learning a lot about character this year.  Just a matter of time before they start winning.

It's apparent Todd Bridge has a plethora of football knowledge as a player and a coach, and I'm happy to hear he landed a good job.

Sounds like Coach Pierce is facing the same challenge as our head coach here.  Lack of numbers.  He only has 16 healthy bodies including 6 freshmen and 4 sophomores.  They're 0-4 and have cancelled 3 games with only two remaining...provided they have 20 players eligible by decree of our school administration.  The chances of the football program surviving are slim.

Sometimes you have to wonder wtf some coaches are thinking when they don't supervise their athletes.  Likely they aren't thinking, and why we hear and read about those asinine stories.

An old mentor coach of mine (RIP) was the one who advised me on becoming a head coach to always strive to be different than your opponents.  He knew what he was talking about.  While everyone back then was running some form of triple option, or power football he was throwing the ball all over the field and winning championships.

Have a great weekend!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

*********** Coach John Coelho, in Turlock, California, sent me this classic “10 men in the box” shot…



Mustn’t have been too successful, because his Hornets are now 5-1, second in their league, and they lead the league in scoring,

(Remember - the closer defenders get to the line of scrimmage, the more committed they become to that side, and the less of a threat they are to plays run in the other direction.)


*********** Coach - I actually enjoy this Friday Night Ivy League  Game thing ESPN has got going , who ever came up with that concept  should be promoted.  What I would actually like to see is ESPN dedicate a Night  - Wed Night or Thurs Night OR even a time slot on Sat - on one of their Channels for a 1-AA (FCS) Game of the week. I actually think that would catch on. Plenty of good 1-AA conferences
 
John  Muckian
Ipswich, Massachusetts

John,

It’s a great concept and the Ivies have been putting on a good show.

The Ivy has a chance at getting viewers because they are nationally-known colleges with great reputations that turn away large multiples of the numbers of kids who apply.

I actually would prefer something every week like this past Tuesday night’s Arkanas State-App State game.  The non-Power 5 FBS conferences play football that's good enough that the average fan couldn’t distinguish it  from the SEC if they were to switch uniforms with SEC teams. And this would be their chance to shine on a national level.

And don’t forget, it’s almost time for the MAC to start playing two or three nights a week. (Sure hope it’s good for MAC football to be totally turning their backs on Saturday afternoon football.)

*********** In the AFCA Coaches’ Top 25 weekly poll, the top five in the less-publicized classifiations
 
FCS
1. North Dakota State; 2. Kennesaw State; 3. Eastern Washington; 4. Wofford; 5. South Dakota State

DIVISION II
1. Minnesota State; 2. Grand Valley State; 3. Ferris State; 4. West Georgia; 5. Ouachita Baptist

DIVISION III
1. Mount Union; 2. Mary Hardin-Baylor; 3. St. Thomas; 4. Brockport State; 5. Wisconsin-Whitewater

COMPLETE RANKINGS...

https://www.afca.com/fcs-poll-elon-upsets-james-madison-to-shuffle-top-5-in-afca-fcs-coaches-poll/?utm_source=AFCA+Insider&utm_campaign=8a96b6388d-AFCA_Weekly_100317_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_343e846137-8a96b6388d-147880073

*********** Think the fans in Pittsburgh haven’t noticed?

Michael Salfino in the Wall Street Journal noted that  over the last nine games of the 1976 season, the Steelers’ defense allowed opponents a grand total of 28 points.

This year’s Steelers’ defense has given up 21 points in one quarter - against the Chiefs in game #2.


*********** I consider Charlie Wilson of Crystal River, Florida to be as knowledgeable  about the wishbone and/or the belly as anybody I’m aware of, and I knew I’d hear from him after Georgia Tech’s demolishing of Louisville:



Look at the Attachment.  It's a good ol' WT-6 with the Safety at 6 over C and the OLBs out of the picture.  That oughta' work.  So..."Whadya' run against THAT, CPJ?"

Of course!  "I'm gonna Double the DT by reaching the C to the right and Blocking my Right T down whilst I Pull my G around...".  The Louisville D is still looking for TaQuon Marshall who reversed Counter Clock Wise, took a step or two and then cut straight up-field.  Just gashed 'em.

Remember what I've said through the years?  "All Defenses of the Wishbone/Flexbone/Spread Option go back to the Wide Tackle Six and the Defense the Option Team most wants to face is the WT-6."

I may not get to sleep tonight.

Hope yer OK.


*********** With the recent deaths of George Taliaferro and John Gagliardi, the world of football lost two giants in the space of just a few days.  Ironically, they’d both been featured during the past year as subjects of my quiz. (No, I don’t see myself as “jinxing” them in any way.  Don’t forget, the men I write about - if they are still alive - are already well up in their years as it is.  I’m just glad that I happened to bring them to some people’s attention before they passed away.  We need to treasure men like that while they’re with us. God rest their souls.

BACK IN FEBRUARY…..

***George Taliaferro  spent six years in the pro football, with four different teams in two different leagues.

He  was a native of Gary, Indiana. In 1945, as a 17-year old freshman playing with returning war veterans such as Pete Pihos, who would become a Pro Football Hall-of-Famer, and Ted Kluszewski, who would go on to baseball fame with the Cincinnati Reds, he was the starting tailback on Indiana’s undefeated Big Nine  championship team.  (Michigan State wouldn’t become the conference’s 10th member until December, 1948). At the end of the season, he was named All-America - quite possibly the youngest player ever to be so honored.

He was the only black player on his team, at a time when at least one football publication referred to him quite unselfconsciously as a “spectacular Negro back."

He was a twice named All-Big Ten, and named on various All-America teams over three different seasons.

In 1948, he was his team's leading rusher, passer and punter.

Although he  was the first black player ever drafted by an NFL team (Chicago Bears - 13th round - 1949),  he was not the first black draftee to play in the NFL (that was Wally Triplett of Penn State) because he signed, instead, with the Los Angeles Dons of the All-America Football Conference.

He carried 62 times for 330 yards and caught 25 passes for 246 yards, but the Dons went 4-8 in 1949, and they folded following the season. That would be the first of a number of poor seasons he would experience, as his career took him from one bad  team to another.

In 1950, following the AAFC's "merger" into the NFL, he wound up with the New York Yankees. They went 7-5 in 1950 - the only winning season he would experience -  but in 1951, after they finished 1-9-2,  they were moved to Dallas and renamed the Dallas Texans.

After sparse crowds at their first four home games, the Texans' owners gave up and returned the team to the league, and the Texans became vagabonds - officially, a "road team.”  They played the remainder of their schedule on the road, using Hershey,  Pennsylvania as their home base,  but rarely stopping there long enough to do much practicing. They finished the 1952 season a woeful 1-11.

In 1953, after NFL Commissioner Bert Bell persuaded a wealthy Baltimorean named Carroll Rosenbloom  to head a group to buy the Texans and move them to Baltimore,  he went along. Those early Colts’ teams were not yet the team that would win back-to-back NFL titles in 1958 and 1959.  In each of his two years there, the Colts were 3-9.

He was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles before the 1955 season and spent a final year there, playing sparingly on a team that finished 4-7-1.

In college and in the pros, he was a Mr. Everything - in his NFL career, he rushed 436 times for 1936 yards, and caught 70 passes for 1054 yards.  He returned 27 punts for 251 yards and 67 kickoffs for 1415 yards. He punted 93 times for an average of just over 37 yards, and he’s third in the NFL record books for most punts per game, with 14.  He was selected to play in the Pro Bowl in 1951, 1952 and 1953.

Sadly, he played before free agency.  Nowadays, star players shop around for the team that gives them their best chance at a Super Bowl ring, but in his six seasons in pro football - playing on five different teams in two different leagues - he experienced just one winning season.

His teams won a total of only 23 games - 11 of them in his first two seasons - and in 1951-1952 he experienced back-to-back one-win seasons.

In 1972, he was named assistant to the President of Indiana University, responsible primarily for minority recruitment.

In 1981, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, and in 1992 he was elected to Indiana University’s Hall of Fame.

At age 91, George Taliaferro is one of the oldest living former NFL players.

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING GEORGE TALIAFERRO:
JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI - WISCONSIN
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS

LESS THAN A MONTH AGO…

*********** QUIZ ANSWER - In 64 years of coaching college football, John Gagliardi (Gal-ARR-dee) coached at only two colleges -  both of them small Catholic schools -  spending the last 60 of those years at one of them.

One of nine children of an Italian immigrant coal miner in Trinidad, Colorado, he first became a head coach in 1943, at the age of 16 -  when his high school coach went off to war and there was no one else to coach the team.  It was during that time, as he had to learn on the fly, that he began to question - and reject - many of the rituals and practices thought sacred among the football coaching fraternity.

While attending Colorado College,  he didn’t play football. Instead, he coached a local high school team the entire time.

At 22, he got his first college head coaching job, at Carroll College in Helena, Montana (where Bob Petrino’s father would later become the coach). In four years there, his record was 24-6-1.

That led to the head coaching position at St. John’s University, in Collegeville, Minnesota, where he would stay for 60 years.

His coaching philosophy, at which coaches of all levels marveled,  was, to say the least, “different.” He came to call it “Winning with NO,” which meant no titles (such as “Coach”), no whistles, no hollering at players, no blocking sleds, no tackling in practices, no slogans or signs in the locker room, no playbooks, no grading films - that’s a sample.  The list of his “No’s” was long and impressive.

His practices were 90 minutes - no practice on Sundays or Mondays - and just 45 minutes on Fridays.

All his seniors were captains (“that way they can all put ‘captain’ on their resumes”).

“Calisthenics” might consist of “One perfect jumping jack.”

How did it all work out?

Well, first of all, how many other guys can you think of who lasted 60 years at the same place?

When he retired in 2012, he was the winningest coach in college football history.

At St. John’s, from 1953-2012, he was 465-132-10, with 27 conference titles

His Johnnies won national titles - NAIA 1963 and 1965 and NCAA D-III in 1976 and 2003.

In his entire career he had just two losing seasons - 3-4-1 in 1956 and 3-5 in 1967.

He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame - he and Bobby Bowden were the first active coaches to be inducted

Since 1993, a Trophy in his name has been awarded annually to the outstanding player in Division III.

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING JOHN GAGLIARDI
JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
GREG KOENIG - CIMARRON, KANSAS
JOSH COLE - ODESSA, NEW YORK
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
JOHN BOTHE - OREGON, ILLINOIS
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
PETE PORCELLI - WATERVLIET, NEW YORK
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
TOM WALLS - WINNIPEG, MANITOBA
TOM DAVIS - SAN CARLOS, CALIFORNIA
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA - “Nice Polish kid”
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

*********** At the end of the Civil War, there were 112,000 undergraduate students in the US.  Today, 150 years later, the Department of Education estimates that number to be 20,000,000.  Looking at just one measurement of education:  the quality of writing  -  compare  the literature and the newspapers of 150 years ago (even the letters written by Civil War soldiers) with what passes for writing today. Then tell me where the hell all today’s “educated” people are hiding.

*********** Don Gordon, of Deerfield, Massachusetts, wrote me last week:

Since there are few good college games this week might enjoy some of this.

https://youtu.be/evei1dpwREA?list=PL97Cp8D5oEfliAiLms3BYAedUUtn_Pvga

It’s a week late, but no matter - it’s a nice look at his kids at Frontier Regional High running his Double Wing.  Coach Gordon is my kind of guy - he coaches his kids well, he runs what works, and he doesn’t do dumb things.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL -

FIVE GAMES INVOLVING RANKED TEAMS THAT ARE WORTH MY WATCHING:
1. Michigan 9-1/2 over Wisconsin - I’d like to take my chances with the Badgers but that loss to BYU scares me off. Got to go with UM.
2. Washington 3-1/2 over Oregon - It could be a Ducks’ upset, but it could be a Huskies’ blowout. I’d take the points.
3. Georgia 7-1/2 over LSU - Georgia may be even better than the spread, but my heart says LSU will beat the spread. (My heart rules my head.)
4. USC 7 over Colorado - The Buffs had to go and pick Saturday night in the Coliseum for their first tough game and I’m afraid they’ll get it. This could be the Trojans’ team their fans have been waiting for, so I’d take USC and give the points.
5. Penn State 13-1/2 over Michigan State - I like the Spartans and it’s hard to believe the Lions are two TDs better -  but I believe it.

OTHER GAMES THAT I’LL TAKE A LOOK AT - AND STAY WITH UNLESS THEY SUCK
1. Georgia Tech 2-1/2 over Duke - I love Duke and Coach Cut and I know how much he dislikes the wishbone but what the Jackets did to Louisville last week was scary. Still, I’ll take Duke and the points
2. Northwestern 4-1/2 over Nebraska - This could be the Huskers’ best chance at a win. I’ll take Nebraska and the points
3. Iowa 5 over Indiana - Only 5? Can Indiana be that tough? Nah.  I’ll take the Hawkeyes.
4. Boston College 13-1/2 over Louisville -  Louisville admitted it doesn’t have the money to buy Petrino out, but otherwise I’d say he was going down the gurgler. I’ll go with BC
5. Temple 7 over Navy - Sounds about right.  This is not a good Navy team. Air Force crushed them last week in a way few teams - even teams  like Ohio State and Notre Dame  -have ever done. I’ll take the Owls.
6. Cal 6 over UCLA - I think that Cal blew their chances for a decent season when they made a bonehead decision to bench the QB who’d been their starter all last season. Pick of the week: Bruins finally win
7. BYU 11 over Hawaii - I don’t get it.  A BYU team that’s lost two in a row? Blown out in one loss  by 28, the other by 25? If I were in Vegas right now I’d actually bet money on this one.  It’s a lock.
8. Miami 6-1/2 over Virginia - I think the Canes will kill UVa.
9. Virginia Tech 5-1/2 over North Carolina - Not so fast. In their sleep, the Hokies are two touchdowns  better than the Heels.
10. Army over San Jose State - there’s no point spread posted, but if I had to do it, I’d take Army and give 10. San Jose hasn’t seen this sort of an offense.


*********** QUIZ  ANSWER - ANDY Kerr -  was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but his family moved back East when he was young and he went to high school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and then to  Dickinson College in the same town.

After several years coaching high school football, he got a job at Pitt as track coach and basketball coach, and as an assistant football coach under the legendary Pop Warner.

In 1922, Warner agreed to accept the head coaching job at Stanford, but because he was contractually bound to Pitt for two more years,  he sent our guy out to “hold his place.” (As a sign of the high regard in which Warner was held, Stanford agreed to the arrangement.) For two seasons, until Warner could arrive and  take over, our guy was Stanford’s head coach, and he  went 11-7. He then returned to being an assistant under Warner for two more years, at which point he accepted the head coaching job at Pennsylvania’s Washington and Jefferson College.

In three years at W & J, he was 16-6-5, which earned him the head job at Colgate, then something of a football power.

That was 1929, and he stayed at Colgate for 18 years, compiling a record of 95-50-7.

His 1932 team, which went 9-0 and didn’t give up a point, was named national champion. But despite its record, it wasn’t invited to represent the East in the Rose Bowl, as would normally have been the case, and writers conferred on that team the nickname “Undefeated, untied, unscored on - and uninvited.”

He finished his career  close to home, at Lebanon Valley, in Annville, Pennsylvania, where he went 15-8-2.

ANDY Kerr is in the College Football Hall of Fame.

A little known fact is that he was also a college head basketball coach.  In one year at Pitt and four years at Stanford he compiled a record of 54-26.


CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING ANDY KERR

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

*********** MORE ON ANDY KERR…

Most of the “research” I do for my QUIZ subjects is rather cursory since I normally need just a few salient facts about a guy.  And, to be frank, I’m often in a bit of a hurry.  But every so often I see something that makes me want to dig deeper, and when I do, I’m always amazed at the things I  discover.  (I take a little pride in pointing out that the research I’m taking about is not synonymous with “googling.”  The material I’m talking about digging through is old-fashioned print-on-paper.  Books, they used to call the things.  And if you don’t have access to the books, you don’t have access to the information that’s in them.

As I did my Internet research on Andy Kerr, it occurred to me that there had to be a lot more to the guy’s story. Book research - two books on the history of Stanford sports, two on the coaches of the early 1900s, one on the history of Pac-10 football, and one on the history of college football - showed me there was quite a bit more.

Some important things you ought to know about ANDY  Kerr.

1. He will forever live in football lore as ANDY Kerr.  Andy, not Andrew  Never at any time during his career or afterward was he referred to as “Andrew.” If someone today were to refer to a “William” Belichick or “Nicholas” Saban, you would wonder if he’d just arrived from another planet.  I can only assume that those of you who identified him as “Andrew” Kerr drew your information from the sometimes-fallible Wikipedia, where evidently for some time and  for some unknown reason Andy Kerr has been called “Andrew.”  I apologize on behalf of Wikipedia, which by and large does a good job, and with my ability to edit its entries I have already made what changes I could to his entry.  It sure would be a sin to see somebody named Andrew Kerr get the credit that’s due to Andy Kerr. 

2. Andy Kerr’s story offers hope for those of you who might be coaching in high school but still aspire to a job at a college.  After graduation from Dickinson College, Andy Kerr taught at a business college in Johnstown, Pennsylvania while coaching high school football there,  and he didn’t get his first college coaching job until he joined Pop Warner’s staff at Pitt in 1915.  He was 36 years old.

3. On the Pitt teams he coached  were two future coaches who would, like him, also carry on Warner’s legacy:  Jock Sutherland, who would go on to become a coaching legend himself at Pitt and then with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Claude “Tiny” Thornhill, who would later serve on Warner’s staff at Pitt with Kerr, and would accompany Kerr to Stanford to coach the line. He would remain at Stanford  for 11 years as Warner’s line coach, and when Warner left to go to Temple, he became the Indians’ head coach. In his first three years, Thornhill took Stanford to three straight Rose Bowls, and for almost 80 years - until David Shaw did so (2011-2013) -  he was the only Stanford coach to take a team to three straight bowl games.

4. The Stanford football program that Kerr arrived to take over wasn’t exactly big time, and he had to start almost from scratch.  Following a long spell (1906-1918) of playing rugby instead of football, Stanford had only three years earlier resumed playing college football. And after three straight losses - the last two of them blowouts - to hated Cal, Stanford’s leaders decided to do something about it.  They went after the best coach possible - Pop Warner.  So badly did they want him that when he expressed interest in the job but when he informed them that he had two years remaining on his contract at Pitt (people didn’t get out of contracts in those days), they agreed to go along with his proposal to send Kerr and Thornhill west to install his system. 

5. All Stanford people  owe a debt of gratitude to Andy Kerr as the coach who brought Ernie Nevers to Stanford.  One of the greatest players in college or pro football history, Nevers is forever identified at Stanford with Pop Warner, but he actually arrived at Stanford the same year as Kerr, and then played his first year of varsity ball as a sophomore under Kerr. (Part of the Ernie Nevers legend is that, as a native of Superior, Wisconsin, he’d hoped to get a scholarship from the Badgers. When no offer came,  he approached the coaches at Cal, who looked at his size and said they’d be interested in him - as a lineman.  Andy Kerr was smart enough to recognize what he had with Nevers. The big guy remained in the backfield and went on to football immortality.)

6. There were many who said that Kerr and Sutherland were actually greater practitioners of the Warner system than Warner himself.  For ten years their careers overlapped,  from 1929 - when Kerr took over at Colgate - through 1938 - when Sutherland resigned in protest of the university’s lack of support of his program -  and during that ten-year period their combined record was 147-32-8.   Despite their common roots under Pop Warner, there doesn’t appear to have been any particular closeness between them, socially or professionally.  In fact, it was Sutherland’s 1932 Pitt team that got the Rose Bowl bid that Colgate was denied.

7. Andy Kerr deserves some credit for making the forward pass an integral part of the game, and not just a surprise tactic. From a site devoted to the 1932 Colgate team:

one of his biggest accolades was the normalizing of the forward pass. Within a pass happy game these days, it is hard to remember that the forward pass was frowned upon early in the formation of football, and was only seen as a desperation play.  If you could not be manly and tough by gaining yards by running the ball, then you had to resort to the less-masculine concept of passing the ball.  However, Kerr saw past this negative stigma and saw how this had the potential to change the game forever. He saw the forward pass as a vital part to an offensive game plan, meaning that if a team was not expecting a pass, then the ability to pass the ball successfully increases significantly. 

(This is a great site,  including video highlights of the Red Raiders’ game against Brown.)
https://sites.google.com/a/colgate.edu/sharaczy/andy-kerr

8. The same site credits Kerr with popularizing what we now call a play-action pass:

"Without directly saying so, Kerr popularized the concept of a 'play-action pass"' whereas the offense fakes a run play followed by a downfield pass."

9. Probably more than anyone in the history of the game, he incorporated the lateral, long a staple of rugby (where forward passing is prohibited), into all aspects of his offense. 

Allison Danzig,  in his great book “History of American Football: Its Great Teams, Players and Coaches (1956),” called by a New York Times critic "without doubt, the most ambitious and best book ever published on the subject of college football."[ tells of a letter he received from Kerr in 1951 in which Kerr wrote, “I believe my development of the lateral pass is one of my greatest contributions to football.  In the development of lateral passes I put great stress on ball handling.  For this phase of the game I received information from rugby coaches and players at Stanford University as well as from one outstanding Canadian rugby coach.  Our ball handling was perfected to the point where the boys could handle multiple passes with accuracy and precision under tremendous pressure…

“We have made a great deal of use of down-field laterals. Some of these are definitely planned and other are optional. On most of our double wing plays we have a back who is faking taking the ball from the fullback (what he called the player in position to take the direct snap. HW). He continues down field and in many cases he is in a position to receive a lateral pass.”

In 1934, Ohio State  narrowly beat Colgate. Later, Buckeyes’ coach Francis Schmidt told the Saturday Evening Post, “Colgate offers one of the most modern offenses in the country, and they don’t think any more of tossing a lateral pass than they do of taking a shower after the game… Colgate has a squad of ball handlers and they fired the pigskin around like a major league baseball team during the infield practice.”

In 1931 Warner, his season over, sat on the sideline during a game in which Colgate struggled to beat Brown, 13-7.

When the game was won, Warner said to him, “Those touchdowns come hard, Andy. Good thing you had those laterals.”

When Kerr responded, “I suppose you think you could have done better with straight power, Pop?” Warner said, “No. Seriously, Andy, I’m tinkering with this lateral business.”

10. From 1932 until 2001, Colgate was known as the Red Raiders.  Andy Kerr was the reason.  In 1932, he introduced bright maroon uniforms for his team, and as Colgate’s record built (that was the year of Colgate’s famed unbeaten, untied and unscored-on team), so did its reputation.  Just as a sportswriter years later would refer to Army as the Black Knights of the Hudson, Dexter Teed, a young instructor of journalism at Colgate coined the term “Red Raiders of the Chenango Valley.”  The nickname caught on, and Colgate’s teams began to be known as the Red Raiders. Unfortunately, although the nickname  originally had absolutely zero racial connotations, over time there grew some “references to Native American caricatures and mascots,” and the “red” had to go.

In 2001, the University Board of Trustees made the following statement:

The Colgate University Board of Trustees, upon the recommendation of the President, Director of Athletics and the members of the campus Committee on Athletics, has announced that the University will drop the "Red" from its nickname Red Raiders. The change will be initiated immediately.

Colgate adopted the name Raiders to move away from the racial stereotype, which is indeed not the true origin of the nickname for Colgate but may nonetheless be offensive to the general public in ways that undermine the institution's values and commitments.

RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, the nickname Red Raiders was originally coined by Dexter Teed as a reference to the new maroon uniforms of the 1932 football team, but later associations for many years created references to Native American caricatures and mascots,
AND WHEREAS, though Colgate dropped the Native American references in the 1970s, sentiments connected to the old mascot linger and there has been pressure to change the nickname,
AND WHEREAS the on-campus Committee on Athletics - comprising students, faculty and staff - has recommended that "Red" be dropped from the Red Raider nickname to remove any possible inference of a racial stereotype,
AND WHEREAS, the State Education Department is encouraging high schools throughout the state to change nicknames and mascots that signal a racial stereotype, and "Red Raiders" is on that targeted list,
AND WHEREAS Colgate recruits students from those schools and seeks to be a model for them,
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that Colgate teams henceforth shall be known as the Raiders, and further, that as new uniforms, equipment and publications are phased in, they will incorporate the new name.

TUESD

FRID

As everybody with a cause or a project seems to be doing these days, I started a Gofundme page with a hard-luck story about needing enough money to keep me in beer for the next  couple of months; I'm happy to report that with donations now in excess of $450,000 (I had no idea there were so many chumps out there) , I could afford to turn down the extremely generous offer made to me by an Indian casino to provide college football tips to their high rollers, and to continue to publish this page twice a week.

*********** (The following is written by someone who can remember (1) when there was NO college football on TV (mainly because there was no TV); (2) when the NCAA limited  college football on TV to one game a week, and spread the wealth in such a way that it was rare to see teams other than Notre Dame or Michigan or Texas more than once a season.   Now that he’s able to watch maybe 50 or 60 different game on an average Saturday, you’d think, wouldn’t you, that such a person would be grateful as hell,  the last person in the world to gripe about the quality of this Saturday’s offerings?  Well, you’d be wrong.  That’s what happens when you spoil someone…)

Guys, if ever there was a fall Saturday that you could go shopping with your wife, or rake leaves, or watch little kids play soccer, this is it.

Okay, okay - just kidding about the little kids playing soccer.

But damn - with some 50 games on TV Saturday, there’s precious few that you’d call must-see.

How about this: there are just three game between two ranked teams:

#19 Texas vs #7 Oklahoma in Dallas (OU favored by 7-1/2)

#5 LSU at #22 Florida (LSU favored by 2)

#6 Notre Dame at #24 Virginia Tech  (ND favored by 6-1/2)

(To me, they’re all interesting games.  For what it’s worth, although Florida scares me, I would take the favorite in all of them.)

***

Otherwise, there are very few games that anyone  but a football fanatic  would call “compelling.”  Most of the ranked teams are in stinker matchups:

You like #1 Alabama?  You can watch them for a quarter or so and then take your wife out to lunch and not miss much.  They’re 35-point favorites over Arkansas.

#2 Georgia? The Bulldogs play Vanderbilt.  I like Vandy - got a granddaughter who goes there.  Couple of weeks ago, Vandy almost beat Notre Dame. Now, Georgia is a 27-point favorite.

#3 Ohio State?   They’re 26-point favorites over Indiana.

#4 Clemson?  They had trouble with Syracuse last Saturday.  This week it’s Wake Forest.  I like Wake - got a grandson who goes there.  But sheesh. Clemson is favored by 20.

#9 West Virginia?  28-1/2 points over Kansas

#10 Washington? 21-points over UCLA

#15 Michigan?  17-1/2 points over Maryland

#16 Wisconsin? 17-points  over Nebraska

***

MY TEN MOST INTERESTING GAMES

Boston College at #23 NC State - (NCS by 5-1/2) Don’t look now, but State is still unbeaten  STATE

Missouri at South Carolina - USC by 1-1/2 - The Battle of the Columbias. USC has been a BIG disappointment. I’m going out on a limb at taking MIZZOU

Navy at Air Force (Navy by 3)  — Air Force is down this year - NAVY

#8 Auburn at Mississippi State (Auburn by 4) —- AUBURN seems to have State's number

Arizona State at #21 Colorado (Buffs by 2-1/2) — We’ll find out if Colorado really is the best in the Pac-12 South - COLORADO

#13 Kentucky at Texas A & M  (A & M by 6) — Seriously? The Aggies are favored? BY 6 points? KENTUCKY

Florida State at #17 Miami (Miami by 13-1/2) - This one scares me, but - MIAMI

California at Arizona - (Cal by 2-1/2) - Wildcats have to win this one ARIZONA

Iowa at Minnesota - (Iowa by 7) - What happened to that boat, anyhow?  IOWA

Utah at #14 Stanford - (Stanford by 5-1/2) - Both teams have been disappointing.  STANFORD


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

Notre Dame surprised me.  I thought they had what it takes to beat Stanford, but I didn't think it would turn out the way it did.  Ian Book now makes the ND offense consistent, and the defense is getting better each week.  This week's game vs. VA Tech is a definite 'trap' game for ND. They'll need to play extremely well to beat the Hokies in Blacksburg.

I'm with you on the Army West Point stuff.  Really annoying.

My alma mater Fresno State is now 3-1.  Only loss a last minute one to a young, injury riddled and slumping Minnesota Golden Gopher team.

Have a great week!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

***********   I remember Steven Montez's dad. I was coaching at Las Animas, CO, when he was making headlines for tiny Granada, CO. If you haven't seen this, I think you'll enjoy it.

https://www.ralphiereport.com/2016/10/8/13167122/steven-montez-colorado-buffaloes-football.

Greg Koenig
Cimarron, Kansas


*********** A coach I’ve known for quite some time, a guy whom I’ve seen grow into a really good coach, is off to a rough start.

Lest you think that God picks favorites, it can happen any time  to any of us who don’t have control of where and how we get our athletes and who’s on our schedule.

For what it’s worth, once you’ve coached long enough, a bad season doesn’t diminish you in any way as a coach.  In my case, after I’d been through an 0-9 season, I figured I’d been through the worst thing that could happen in terms of  win-loss record, and that seemed to give me added strength in my dealings with anything that might come my way.

If others thought less of me as a coach because of that season, that was their problem.  I knew I could coach and it didn’t affect my self-confidence in the slightest.

In my opinion, you’re not really a coach until you no longer allow wins and losses to define you as a coach; unfortunately,  sometimes that means you have to take a beating to get to that point.

It might help any coach who’s suffering right now  - even a first-timer - to keep in mind that in Chuck Noll’s first three years as a head coach, he went 1-13, 5-9, 6-8. He went on to establish himself as an all-time great.

Tom Landry’s start as a head coach was even worse. In his first FIVE seasons he was 0-11-1, 4-9-1, 5-8-1, 4-10, 5-8-1.


*********** My former head coach, Todd Bridge, played offensive line for the Washington Huskies back in their glory days under Don James. Not once did I see him wear any of the rings he’d earned while at Washington.  Monday, he wore four of them.  He’s now the AD at Elma, Washington High, and this being Homecoming Week, he was prevailed on for some reason to wear them: (From left to right) National championship; Rose Bowl; Rose Bowl; Pac-10 championship.



*********** Although his family moved to Rochester, New York when he was a boy, Don Holleder was born in Buffalo, and that city has begun to realize that it, too, plays a part in the Don Holleder story.

https://www.wgrz.com/video/news/don-holleder-a-buffalo-born-hero/71-8268776

*********** TIMING IS EVERYTHING DEPT…

At a time when the fate of a Supreme Court nominee was being fought over an issue of alleged sexual misconduct, UMASS head coach Mark Whipple, after losing at  Ohio U, 58-42, chose an especially inappropriate time to say,  in his postgame remarks,  that the officials “raped us.”

And in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, of all places.

He was suspended without pay for a week.

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2018/09/30/mark-whipple-umass-football-suspended/

*********** Baseball’s overall average attendance per game continues to decline.

It was down 4 per cent this season, and  Baltimore, Chicago (White Sox), Minneapolis, Miami and Pittsburgh all experienced their lowest average attendance since opening new ballparks.

So what’s baseball doing about it?  Why, they’re going to try to appeal to the “younger” audience - the one that’s been conditioned to expect the sort of antics they see in other sports.  The antics that baseball has long frowned on, such as  taunting and  bringing undue attention to one’s self by - you know, flipping the bat, pausing to admire one’s home run, flexing and pulling off the Clark Kent shirt and tie.

As a start, Major League Baseball is running a promo on TV showing the antics in question and suggesting that it’s time to do away with the game's “unwritten rules” against buffoonery.

Yeah. That’ll get the kids out to the Old Ball Game.

Once, maybe.  Until they get tired of watching batters stepping in and out of the batter’s box and repeated changes of pitchers,  and managers walking out to the mound - and games taking three hours to play.

And no amount of bat flipping or flexing will get them to come back.

*********** My friend Dwayne Pierce split last Friday: he won one and lost one.

He lost when his Coolidge High team fell to Cordozo, 18-0, in a Washington, DC high school varsity contest.

But he also won - simply by fielding a team.  If he hadn’t been able to field the required 19 eligble kids by game time, Friday,  Coolidge’s kids, who had already had to forfeit their first two games, would have had to sit out the rest of the season.

(More likely, the handful of dedicated kids  who really wanted to play football would have transferred elsewhere, driving a stake into any hopes Coolidge would have had to revive the program next year.)

It took Coach Pierce weeks of recruiting.  At one point, he thought he had a deal with the soccer coach who had a similar numbers problem and proposed a swap of players: if Coach Pierce would “lend” him some players for a soccer match - which he did - the soccer coach would return the favor.  But when it came time to do so, he didn’t. 

Coach Pierce endured repeated turndowns by basketball players, good athletes but third stringers on the basketball team, with little chance of ever playing. They  told him that they were going to stick with basketball because they were going to play in the NBA some day. 

Somehow, he pulled it off  I didn’t ask him how.  All I did was tell  him that my wife and I were praying for him and his kids.  It couldn't have hurt. .

After the game several kids came up to Coach Pierce and asked if it was too late for them to come out.

Never too late, he told them.


*********** If what a Gunnison, Utah mother claims is true, there are some sick boys in their high school’s football program.  And some irresponsible coaches.

What is it that goes on in kids’ minds when they - allegedly - pin a kid down while one of them squats and presses his junk in that kid’s face?

And - assuming that this happened as the mother charges - what kind of coaches would allow kids to be unsupervised to the point that this ugliness could take place?

I wish we could say that this has nothing to do with football, but football was the reason why those kids were associating with one another, and any act like this reflects badly on our game.  Those coaches - if this is true - have let us all down.

Let this be a lesson to all coaches who have ever left kids unsupervised - at camp, on buses, in locker rooms:

Utah has lawyers, too, and if this happened the way it’s described,  those coaches could pay dearly for their failure to supervise the kids entrusted to them.

https://usatodayhss.com/2018/utah-football-mom-gunnison-valley-details-alleged-in-practice-sexual-abuse-of-son


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

Hope all is well.

I love reading the news and a few things came to mind this week.

When you were at Eagles Mere I hope you at least hiked the waterfall trails at Red Rock, its a pretty impressive thing to see.   Other than that I agree that there isn't much to do there.  My wife's family cabin is nearby.  We happened to go to HersheyPark yesterday, it was extremely crowded but we had free tickets and only stayed for a couple hours.

I thought you might find this interesting.  The local paper did a piece on high school team mascots.  I graduated from and coached wrestling and football at Hempfield High School, I'm a little more proud of the mascot now than I ever was before.

https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/what-s-the-origin-history-of-high-school-mascots-in/article_a049d366-c1a8-11e8-9711-6310d9d900cf.html

I know you are interested by school mascots.

On a side note, I reffed a youth game on Saturday and noticed the coach had a play drawn up out of double wing.  He didn't know much about it so I directed him to your website.  I hope he contacts you, he seemed interested.  I recommended the new playbook.

Thanks

Dave Kemmick
Mount Joy, Pennsylvania

Coach Kemmick’s high school:

Hempfield: Black Knights
District spokeswoman Shannon Zimmerman found the answer in a speech given several years ago by Don Emich, a 1955 Hempfield graduate, at his induction into the district’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

According to Emich, former Intelligencer Journal sports editor Marvin Miller wrote about Hempfield athletes as the “Red and Black of Hempfield” or “the boys from Landisville” in articles in the early 1950s. By the mid-’50s, the student council decided they needed an official name.

They solicited names from the student body, pared entries down to five and asked students to vote. The Black Knights were victorious.

Emich said the name was submitted by classmate Ken Bowers, who told him he chose the name to honor the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, whose athletes were “at the pinnacle of college football” in the late ’40s and early ’50s.

Their official name was the Cadets but they were fondly known as “the Black Knights of the Hudson,” Emich said. (The Army formally changed its team name to the Black Knights in 1999, some 44 years after Hempfield adopted the name.)

*********** Remember C. J. Fuller from Clemson?  A few years ago, he was a key part of their national championship team.  This past February, he announced that he planned to transfer; the next month, he was arrested and charged with armed robbery.

He was found dead Wednesday of as-yet known causes.  He was 22.

*********** A coach I know was advised that he “needed to make more efforts to get our best athletes more attention by incorporating offensive concepts that they would use at the ‘next level.’”

The irony is that he’s been highly successful. But in our society, everybody wants more, more, more.  It’s not enough to win games - you have to “showcase” your athletes.

He basically told them to shove it.

*********** On the subject of running a spread offense at the high school level, there are certainly some points in its favor:

One of the most significant is that  because so many top college programs are running a spread offense of some sort, you have access to the offensive thinking of some of the brightest people in the game.

But to me, the most significant is that it gives you immunity as a strategist.  There can’t be anything wrong with your thinking, can there, if you’re doing the same stuff they’re doing at Alabama… or Clemson… or Ohio State… or Penn State…? It gives you cover, because (for the Alabamas, the Clemsons, the Ohio States) it works!

But there is a problem.  A HUGE problem. 

If you’re going to do what everybody else does, you’re going to have to do it at least as well as they do.

You’re going to have to have the people… the knowledge of the schemes… the people… the ability to coach the techniques… the people… the savvy to call the plays… the people.

People?  If you’re a high school coach who has to deal with the kids who get off the bus every morning, you can’t depend on having the people.

There’s something else, too. When you run what everybody else runs, you don’t create any special problems for opposing defenses.  They’re used to seeing your offense, and they think they have a way to stop it.  An old football saying covers it: “Familiarity breeds defense.”

There’s a lot to be said for being different: for being the only guy in your league who uses a tight end - two tight ends, even;  the only guy who runs option; the only guy who has a lead blocker; the only guy who runs misdirection; the only guy with a QB under center.

You get the idea - when you choose to be different, you don’t have to be better than everybody else at what they’re doing.  In fact, if you can become good enough at what you’re doing, you will create huge problems for opponents because they can’t possibly be as good as you at running your offense.  What that means is the even the best teams will have trouble trying to simulate your offense with only a week to do it.

***********  A few weeks ago, on national TV, Jets’ running back Isaiah Crowell scored a touchdown, then “celebrated” by wiping his rear end with the ball before throwing it  into the Cleveland crowd. (He’d once played for Cleveland.)

Jets' coach Todd Bowles was not amused.  Nor was the NFL, which fined him $13,000.

Hey, he said afterwards. he was just havin’ fun. You know how that goes, he said:  “You gotta have fun. If you're not having fun with what you do, you might as well stop doing it. That's how I feel about it."

Yeah. I mean, if it gets to the point where you can’t score a touchdown and celebrate by wiping your ass, you might as well give up football and get a job at the car wash.

In the meantime - only in America - it appears that Mr. Asswipe has been signed to an endorsement contract by something called Dude Wipes.

I’m amazed, given Mr. Crowell’s past  (an arrest for multiple firearms offenses that got him thrown off the team at Georgia) that Nike let Dude Wipes get to him first.

*********** QUIZ ANSWER -  Bill McColl was a four-sport star as a high school athlete in San Diego, and at Stanford, at 6-4, 225 (a giant for his time) he was a 2-time All-American.  Playing both ways, he was an outstanding pass receiver as an offensive end and a terror on defense at either end or tackle.

He, along with a quarterback named Gary Kerkorian, were the main reasons why new coach Chuck Taylor took the Indians (as they were then called) to the Rose Bowl in his first season on The Farm. Taylor realized that his best chance of success was to stress the passing game - something for which Stanford became noted over the years, as it turned out great quarterback after great quarterback.

He was a third-round draft choice of the Bears, and in his eight years in Chicago, playing as a tight end and then as a slot back,  he played in all 96 games. For his career, he caught 201 passes for 2800 yards and 25 touchdowns.

He could throw as well as catch.  In 1956, he was on the throwing end of a 79-yard pass play, the longest in the NFL that season, against the Giants.

All the while he played with the Bears, he was studying medicine at the University of Chicago, and after retirement from football he became an orthopedic surgeon.


Bill McColl  and his wife had six children, two of whom, Duncan and Milt, also played football at Stanford.

He and Duncan are the only father and son team in Stanford football history to be named All-American.

Milt McColl played in the NFL for the 49ers and Raiders and is now a physician in suburban Chicago.


CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING BILL MCCOLL

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


*********** Besides Bill McColl, there have been a handful of other former NFL players who became medical doctors.

One current player,  Laurent Duvernay-Tardif of the Chiefs, is already an MD, a graduate of McGill University Medical School

Others:

Tony Adamle - Browns - Ohio State, Western Reserve Med School

Dan Fortmann - Bears - Colgate, U of Chicago Med School

John Frank - San Francisco 49ers - Ohio State (undergraduate and med school)

Bill McColl - Bears - Stanford, U of Chicago Med School

Dave Middleton - Lions, Vikings - Auburn, Tennessee Med School

Myron Rolle - Titans - Florida State, FSU Med School - now a resident in neurosurgery at Harvard

Mike Sommer - Redskins, Colts - George Washington University  (undergraduate and medical school)

*********** QUIZ - He was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but his family moved back East when he was young and he went to high school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and then to  Dickinson College. in the same town

After college, he got a job at Pitt as track coach and basketball coach, and as an assistant football coach under the legendary Pop Warner.

In 1922, Warner agreed to accept the head coaching job at Stanford, but because he was contractually bound to Pitt for two more years,  he sent our guy out to “hold his place.” (As a sign of the high regard in which Warner was held, Stanford agreed to the arrangement.) For two seasons, until Warner could arrive and  take over, our guy was Stanford’s head coach, and he  went 11-7. He then returned to being an assistant under Warner for two more years, at which point he accepted the head coaching job at Pennsylvania’s Washington and Jefferson College.

In three years at W & J, he was 16-6-5, which earned him the head job at Colgate, then something of a football power.

That was 1929, and he stayed at Colgate for 18 years, compiling a record of 95-50-7.

His 1932 team, which went 9-0 and didn’t give up a point, was named national champion. But despite its record, it wasn’t invited to represent the East in the Rose Bowl, as would normally have been the case, and writers conferred on that team the nickname “Undefeated, untied, unscored on - and uninvited.”

He finished his career  close to home, at Lebanon Valley, in Annville, Pennsylvania, where he went 15-8-2.

He is in the College Football Hall of Fame.

A little known fact is that he was also a college head basketball coach.  In one year at Pitt and four years at Stanford he compiled a record of 54-26.

TUESD

Pac-12 referee Steven Strimling performed Saturday’s pregame coin toss in Spanish. He referred to Arizona as Gatos and to USC as Troyanos and used a lot of other words I didn’t understand.

At the conclusion of the toss, won by the Gatos, I could swear Strimling said “buena suerte, muchachos, lo necesitares.”

Good luck, guys, you’ll need it.

It was truly a game neither team seemed deserving to win.

After being scorched by the Troyanos on Saturday, the most daunting news is that Arizona must still play Oregon, Colorado, Washington State and a lot of other teams before coach Sumlin’s first season reaches an end.

Saturday’s loss was sobering on two fronts: First, the Gatos weren’t really competitive until mop-up time. As USC built a 17-0 lead, the Troyanos accumulated a 238 to 52 edge in total offense. Second, only 43,573 showed up at Arizona Stadium. That’s far below the Arizona Stadium average of 52,532 fans for UA-USC games in their Pac-10/12 history.

It was barely more than the 41,493 that showed up two weeks earlier to watch Arizona play Southern Utah.

Is that how far UA football has fallen from grace in this community? It can’t even draw 50,000 fans for the USC game?