TUESDAY,  SEPTEMBER 27,  2016   “When it is absolutely a question of the safety of one’s country, there must be no question of just or unjust, of merciful or cruel, of praiseworthy or disgraceful; instead, setting aside every scruple, one must follow to the utmost every plan that will save her life and keep her liberty.” Niccolo Machiavelli

FRIDAY,  SEPTEMBER 23,  2016   "The first and foremost requisite of a good football player is that he must have a burning desire to play the game. There is absolutely no substitute for this." Frank Leahy, legendary  Notre Dame coach

*********** According to a study in the journal Pediatrics, in the 25 years from 1990 and 2014, nearly 3 million American soccer players between the ages of 7 and 17 sustained soccer-related injuries serious enough to send them to a hospital ER.

Part of the reason is that the number of kids playing soccer nearly doubled from 1990 to 2014.

But it’s more than that:  pro-rata, for every 10,000 soccer players, the number ending up in an ER more than doubled during that time.

The most common types of injuries were sprains or strains (35%), then fractures (23%), then soft-tissue injuries (22%) and then concussions.

Major causes of injury were (1) being hit  by a soccer ball or being “hit by, kicked by, stepped on, elbowed or kneed” by another player; (2) falling, tripping, or being tripped; (3) “twisting,” resulting in knee or ankle injuries.

But, going a long way to explain why soccer is loved by today’s overprotective parents, only 6% of the injuries resulted from a collision with another player.

There was an increase in concussions, attributed  possibly to “more aggressive play,”  but almost certainly in part because of the “growing awareness among players, coaches, athletic trainers, medical professionals and the public in general about the potentially serious consequences of sports-related concussion,” according to the authors of the study.

The number and rate of concussions in youth football have also increased in recent years, and likely for some of the same reasons, the study authors said.

The authors recommend that soccer leagues should also consider requiring “protective headgear.”

No doubt there will be a federal program to provide headgear for the children of refugees so they can continue to play the game they love once they come to our towns.

Wouldn’t want them to become assimilated by  learning to play American games, as millions of other immigrants once did.


http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-youth-soccer-injuries-20160912-snap-story.html

*********** Pointing With Pride - Last Weekend’s Double Wing (and Open Wing) Wins

ST. DOMINIC SAVIO, AUSTIN, TEXAS (3-1) OVER GENEVA (BOERNE, TEXAS) - 17-16
Coach Joe Gutilla - We are now 3-1 thanks to the leg of a freshman kicker that helped us come from behind to win 17-16 on Friday night. With just under 2 minutes left in the game our opponent scored to go up 16-14.  We took the ball at our own 35 with one T.O. left.  After a short drive to their 40, and only 56 seconds remaining we fell short of a first down on 3rd down by 5 yards.  Calling our last T.O. I elected to have my young kicker go in and kick a 42 yard FG (he had made three 40 yard FG's in practice on Thursday).  I know...either ballsy or crazy on my part. Wouldn't you know it.  He calmly went in and drilled it through the uprights to take the lead. Frankly...he cleared the crossbar by 10 yards.  We sealed the win with an interception on their last drive.  Geneva had not been beaten in 23 straight games.

BELOIT, KANSAS (3-0) OVER SACRED HEART (OF SALINA) - 52-7

ELMWOOD-BRIMFIELD, ILLINOIS (4-0) OVER HAVANA-MIDWEST - 60-8

ELMIRA SOUTHSIDE, NEW YORK (3-0) OVER ITHACA - 74-46

HOOSIC VALLEY, NEW YORK (3-0) OVER CORINTH - 49-24

QUEENSBURY, NEW YORK (3-0) OVER  AMSTERDAM - 40- 0

SCIOTOVILLE, OHIO (4-0) OVER GREEN - 51-8


*********** Fellow Yalie Matt Oravetz, Class of ’92, wrote to ask if I’d seen Saturday’s Yale-Colgate score.

I hadn’t.  Gulp. It was Colgate 55, Yale 13.

In 144 years of  Yale football, the 42-point difference tied for Yale’s worst loss ever in the Yale Bowl, along with the Elis’ 63-21 loss to UConn in 1998.

The Colgate loss is not easily explainable.

The UConn loss was understandable.  The 1998 game between Yale and UConn was the final one in a 49-game series that began in 1948, and the programs were growing further and further apart.

After years of being dominated by its more prestigious  Ivy-League in-state rival, UConn began making plans to move to Division I, and as their program grew stronger, they won 14 of the last 16 games in the series.   Can you say trouncings?  UConn won 10 of the last 11 by a combined score of 404-156.

They’ve gone their separate ways now, and it’s not likely that Yale football - or Ivy League football for that matter - will ever return to the position of prominence it once occupied atop the football world.

There actually was a time not so long ago that Yale was able to recruit players of the calibre of Calvin Hill, Gary Fencik and John Spagnola.  Carm Cozza was the coach of those Yale teams, and at the time of the 1998 game with UConn, he put it in financial terms that anyone could understand: ``A lot of the great players I had came to Yale for maybe $3,000 more than Notre Dame or Ohio State. Now it's $30,000.”

He meant that even though Ivy League schools gave no athletic scholarships, it didn’t cost a middle-class family that much more to send their football-playing sons to Yale.

That was 1998.  Now?  The annual cost of a Yale education is north of $60,000.  And still no athletic scholarships.  Prestige or not, even parents who are able to pay the full fare at Yale are going to think hard before turning down a full-ride to a decent FCS school.

The 1998 game was Cozza’s first as color commentator for Yale games.  Coincidentally, the first game he ever coached at Yale was against UConn.  In 1965.  The Huskies upset the Yalies, 13-6, for their first win ever over Yale.  Old Blues - Yale alums - who were accustomed to chalking up a win over UConn before moving on to the Ivy League schedule were not pleased.

Losing an opener is not something Yalies are used to.  Amazingly, according to the New Haven Register, the loss to Colgate was only the 19th opening-game loss in Yale football history.

http://articles.courant.com/1998-09-27/sports/9809270228_1_yale-bowl-football-alumni-uconn


*********** In Sacramento, some creep (he’s 30-some years old and the most significant line on his resume is his having taken  part in Occupy Wall Street protests), walked up to the mayor at a dinner, whispered in his ear, and then shoved a pie in His Honor’s face.  Uh-oh.  Big mistake.

This mayor happened to be former NBA player Kevin Johnson, and according to various eyewitnesses (and no telling how many smart phone cameras) he threw the turd to the floor and then landed anywhere from four to 12 punches  (accounts vary) to the guy’s face.

No doubt the guy will sue, claiming the mayor’s response was inappropriate to the offense.  I agree. He should have broken one of the guys’ legs, too.

Racism test:  Below are photos of the two participants. Without my telling you which one is which, you are to choose the one you’d want to run your city.  Or have dinner with.   If you’re a white guy and you chose the guy on the right,  damn - you ARE a racist!



http://m.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2016/09/21/sacramento-mayor-kevin-johnson-hit-in-face-with-cake-at-event-assaults-protester-in-bloody-scene


*********** Interesting facts about gambling from the Wall Street Journal…

*** Casinos maybe flashier, but lotteries account for 66 per cent of states’ total gambling revenue.

*** Based on the revenue they produce, Indian casinos ($29.34 billion in 2015) aren’t  very far behind commercial casinos ($38.32 billion)

*** Outside of Nevada, the most casino gambling is in California, whose Indian tribes generated about $7 billion in revenue.  But - big surprise - in terms of purely commercial casinos, Pensylvania ranks second.

*** More people are visiting Las Vegas, but they are not gambling as much - the amount of gambling per visitors is down15 per cent from the peak level of 2007.

*** Las Vegas strip casinos derive only 35 per cent of their revenues from gambling. More and more, they have to make it on food, nightclubs and entertainment.

*** 77% of casinos’ revenues come from slots, but younger people don’t seem to care for slots that much, and as a result slot revenue is down 16 per cent since 2007.

*** Hawaii and Utah are the only states that have no form of legal gambling.

*** Including lotteries, New York collects the most revenue from all forms of gambling ($3.2 billion). Pennsylvania is second ($2.4 billion)


*********** Army's Jackson remembered for life of 'promise and purpose'

NEW YORK by Ralph Russo of the Associated Press — The colors of Brandon Jackson's short life filled the church and helped tell his tale of "promise and purpose."

The bright green and gold jerseys on the dozens of high school football players, just like the ones Jackson used to wear. The NYPD blue on the colleagues of his mother, Morna Davis, a police detective. The white and gray uniforms worn by 10 bus-loads of U.S. Military Academy cadets who made the trip from West Point to say goodbye to a teammate, classmate and brother.

The framed black jersey with the dark gold 28, the number Jackson wore while quickly becoming one of the Black Knights' best players in a college football career that lasted just 14 games.

Hundreds of people came together Monday at a funeral for Jackson, the sophomore cornerback killed in a one-car accident during the early morning hours of Sept. 11 at the age of 20.

He was remembered for his uplifting smile and infectious confidence. For rapping 50 Cent lyrics on the school bus and pushing teammates to lift more weight than even coaches required of them. For an accent that mixed Queens with a splash of Savannah, Georgia. For never giving his mom a reason to "raise her hand to him." And for leaving Davis a new extended family.

"You will never have to worry years from now if this group of men will remember your son," academy superintendent Lt. Gen Robert L. Caslen said to Davis, an Iraq War veteran of the Army Reserve. "You may have lost Brandon, but you have gained about 120 new sons. And about 4,000 cadets."

Photos of Jackson were displayed on two large video boards at the front of the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in the Jamaica section of Queens. They told the story "of a life barely 20 years lived, and it was jam-packed," the Rev. Alfonso Wyatt said during a rousing and rhythmic eulogy.

Baby Brandon with a Big Bird doll bigger than him. Jackson in his Bay Side Raiders Pee Wee football uniform. Celebrating at track meets. Prom. Graduation. Receiving his acceptance to the academy. Playing for the Black Knights.

The accident that killed Jackson occurred about 20 miles south of the West Point campus in Westchester County, according to police and the Academy. The crash, which remains under investigation, happened several hours after Army had defeated Rice in the Black Knights' home opener at Michie Stadium.

The team returned to the practice field a few days later and last Saturday improved to 3-0 for the first time since 1996 with a 66-14 victory at UTEP.

"Through you, his spirit was on the field," Jackson's uncle, Fitzgerald Miller, told his teammates.

The Black Knights play at Buffalo on Saturday.


When Davis was deployed, Jackson was sent to live with his grandparents in Savannah. It is in Georgia where he will be buried, Miller said.

Out of loyalty to his mother, Jackson developed a love for Army football.

"We can beat them boys," Miller recalled a young Jackson saying.

"Who is we?" his uncle asked.

"Army. Army can beat Navy," Miller said was the boy's reply.

Jackson mostly grew up in the St. Albans neighborhood of Queens and attended Holy Cross High School, a bus ride away in Flushing. The school has a tradition of playing some of the best football in the city. Recent graduates include former Stanford receiver Devon Cajuste and Carolina Panthers safety Dean Marlowe.

Longtime former Holy Cross coach Tom Pugh, who retired after the 2014 season, said he went to West Point to watch Jackson in the Army spring game this year. Pugh said he told Jackson the old coach expected his former player to make an interception during the intrasquad scrimmage.

"And he started laughing," Pugh said. "He goes, 'Coach, this is Army. We don't throw the ball.'

"And guess what, he got a pick in the spring game. He pointed up to the seats where I was. He was special. Special young man."

Jackson was being recruited by Lafayette College in Pennsylvania during high school, but when the coach recruiting him, John Loose, was hired by Army head coach Jeff Monken, the opportunity to play for the Black Knights became a reality.

Jackson earned a starting job as a freshman and had 68 career tackles and three interceptions.

"Brandon embodied everything it means to be part of this brotherhood," Army linebacker and co-captain Andrew King said. "Because of him, we're not afraid of failure."

Monken said Jackson had a disarming smile.

Even after a mistake on the field, "I couldn't stay mad at him," Monken said.

The program mourners received at the church had printed on the front over a photo of Jackson: "Celebration of a Life Full of Promise and Purpose." A two-hour viewing preceded the service, the casket half open to display Jackson in cadet's full dress and white cap. The service was about two hours and ended with Wyatt imploring those gathered to "keeping on marching."

"March through the tears. March through the fears. March through your pain. Keep on marching," he said to applause and replies of "Amen."

When it was over, the cadets, police officers and high school football players lined the usually busy two-lane street in front of the cathedral. Six cadets carried Brandon's casket, covered with an American flag, out of the church and slid it into an awaiting hearse as the rows of cadets saluted and a police officer played bagpipes.

The black car was filled with flowers, then drove away. Those left behind cried, hugged and slowly dispersed, making it clear that Wyatt's words from earlier would ring true.

"This is a seminal moment. A defining moment," Wyatt preached. "You will remember No. 28."

https://www.armytimes.com/articles/army-brandon-jackson-funeral-west-point-football



TUESDAY,  SEPTEMBER 20,  2016   “I believe that football, perhaps more than any other sport, tends to instill in men perseverance - perseverance means 'not giving up,”'even when something is hard, and you feel discouraged. It is the self-discipline to follow a goal or a dream, with determination and patience, when you want to quit." General Dwight D. Eisenhower

FRIDAY,  SEPTEMBER 16,  2016   “No kingdom can stand when two feeble princes follow in succession.”  Niccolo Machiavelli

The AFC will be sending flowers on behalf of the Brotherhood and we will have some representation in attendance as well.

Grip Hands...

Be Thou at Peace, Brandon.

To be clear -- professional football players have a Constitutional right to demonstrate their hatred of America. They have a right to denigrate our troops and desecrate the flag.

But we have rights, too. We have the right to boycott their games along with the corporate sponsors who finance their anti-American platforms.

Eli Harold, a 49ers teammate who raised his fist in defiance of our nation, told ESPN he was furious that fans objected to the protest.

“What really pissed me off was when Kap was getting snaps at the end of the game and the crowd was booing,” he told ESPN. “I’m not throwing shots at our fans. It’s not about that. Liberty and justice for all. Just because this man is standing up for something he believes in doesn’t give you the right to boo him. I just don’t understand it, man. I really don’t.”

Eli Harold, you dolt, it’s called the First Amendment. Fans most certainly do have the right to boo and heckle and boycott.

Now you understand why so many people are disgusted with the National Football League.

And that’s why it was so refreshing to hear about the edict handed down by the Diocese of Camden. They are teaching young men to be patriots - men of honor and duty. It’s instruction that’s badly needed in the National Football League.

Maybe the diocese could send a delegation of nuns to the next 49ers game -- armed with rulers.

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.

Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.

If you’re among the subspecies conservative intellectual or politician, you’ve accepted—perhaps not consciously, but unmistakably—your status on the roster of the Washington Generals of American politics. Your job is to show up and lose, but you are a necessary part of the show and you do get paid.

The conservatives think that even if the Republicans lose, they’ll still have their jobs and their paychecks - but the author contends that if the Democrats win this one, they’ll be so powerful that they won’t even need the appearance of an opposition…

So what do we have to lose by fighting back? Only our Washington Generals jerseys—and paychecks. But those are going away anyway. Among the many things the “Right” still doesn’t understand is that the Left has concluded that this particular show need no longer go on. They don’t think they need a foil anymore and would rather dispense with the whole bother of staging these phony contests in which each side ostensibly has a shot.

… we can’t win the big ones at all. Because the deck is stacked overwhelmingly against us. I will mention but three ways. First, the opinion-making elements—the universities and the media above all—are wholly corrupt and wholly opposed to everything we want, and increasingly even to our existence.

Second, our Washington Generals self-handicap and self-censor to an absurd degree. Lenin is supposed to have said that “the best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” But with an opposition like ours, why bother? Our “leaders” and “dissenters” bend over backward to play by the self-sabotaging rules the Left sets for them. Fearful, beaten dogs have more thymos.

Third and most important, the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle. As does, of course, the U.S. population, which only serves to reinforce the two other causes outlined above. This is the core reason why the Left, the Democrats, and the bipartisan junta (categories distinct but very much overlapping) think they are on the cusp of a permanent victory that will forever obviate the need to pretend to respect democratic and constitutional niceties. Because they are.

The election of 2016 is a test—in my view, the final test—of whether there is any virtù left in what used to be the core of the American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests, and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it regardless.

http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/

*********** The back story of Central Michigan’s hard-earned but official-tainted 30-27 win over heavily-favored Oklahoma State: the Chippewas' head coach, John Bonamego, is a cancer survivor.   He spent most of the summer of 2015 undergoing radiation treatment for throat cancer.   A big win for a good guy.

*********** In our 14-13  win last Friday night,  our offense was hobbled,  and we couldn’t have won without one of our better defensive performances in recent years.  That includes teams that went 19-2 over the last two seasons.

Many of our kids who’d never played much high school football came up with outstanding plays, none better than that of a kid who wound up at outside linebacker because there was a need and he was available.  Great attitude, very coachable, fair coverage skills and decent size - but to be truthful, we had no idea how he was going to do.

On one particular play midway through the fourth quarter, as we fought to hold onto to 14-7 lead, an opponent broke free up the opposite sideline from him.  The play started on about our forty, and from clear on the other side, this kid took a great pursuit angle and caught the runner at about the 15-yard line, saving the score.   We held. 

They would score later, with 1:30 to go, and miss a 2-point conversion, but the importance of this play, coming when it did, is that if they had scored then they would likely have kicked the PAT to tie the game, and who knows how it would have played out from there?

When I complimented the kid on his effort, he said, simply,  “Texas Drill, Coach.”

No kidding.

Since I got the drill a couple of years again from my friend, Greg Koenig, who got it from a coaching friend in Texas, it has been a staple of our program.

I often find myself, when coaching a defensive player and talking to him about the correct pursuit angle to take, simply saying to him, “Texas Drill!” and I don’t need to say anything further.

TUESDAY,  SEPTEMBER 13,  2016   “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” Benjamin Franklin

New students at Pomona College were welcomed to campus with posters in their dorms giving instructions on “How to be a (Better) White Ally” and stating that all white people are racist.

The signs state white people should “acknowledge your privilege” and “apologize if you’ve offended someone,” adding that offensive language includes words like “sassy” and “riot,” which are “racially coded.”

“Remember, just because POC [person of color] #1 isn’t offended by something, does not mean that POC #2 will not be offended by it either,” it says.

The poster goes on to state that “social justice is about BOTH elevating oppressed groups and simultaneously unpacking the privilege of dominant groups. These aspects are equally as important!”
Additionally, the sign claims that all white people are racist.

“Understand that you are white, so it is inevitable that you have unconsciously learned racism,” it asserts. “Your unearned advantage must be acknowledged and your racism unlearned.”

Hugh,

To be fearless is to be prepared for miracles. To me, courage is courage, whether you are facing an NVA Regiment in the jungle, snarling attack dogs while you are peacefully marching for your Constitutional Rights, or on the football field where maybe it seemed you were outweighed, outgunned, and just about to taste bitter defeat, when one player with the heart of a Lion steps up and inspires his team to let go of their fears, and work together and miracles happen that folks will talk about for the next 20 years. 

To me, that's what your Black Lion Award is all about. I celebrate all those young men and Coaches who pursue greatness selflessly. You have such a great program and it has set wonderful standard for others to follow.

Black Lions!
Dave Aldridge

FRIDAY,  SEPTEMBER 9,  2016   “A lost freedom is defended with more ferocity than a threatened freedom is defended.” Niccolo Machiavelli

TUESDAY,  SEPTEMBER 6,  2016   “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”  Ayn Rand

FRIDAY,  SEPTEMBER 2,  2016   “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

My school has been through 5 principals in 10 years. That should kind of tell you the place I'm at. They also want 100 kids out there playing and practices to be short.  The district told my lawyers that they don't care about winning at all. They just want lots of kids out there enjoying themselves.   The program is terrible here. No pride. No hunger. I feel bad for the kids. Like you know. It's great to have numbers. But losing turns everybody sour.  The kids are the ones who lose in the end. Sad. 

As many of you have heard me say that the number of officials are down this year, in fact there has been a declining trend for the past 3 years, but this year the impact is much greater.  It is not just our Association, as I talk to other Associations they are experiencing the same.  It is not just football, in baseball this past season we experienced the same.
 
Right now I have 3 Friday nights (Sept. 30th, Oct. 14th and Oct. 28th) that we don’t have enough officials to cover the games.  I’ve reached out to other Associations asking for help and they in turn they are asking me for help, folks we are not talking about needing officials like the past we are talking about needing crews.  I’m are working on a game plan on how we will address any night we cannot cover the games, here is the draft that I put together and would welcome any comments.
 
    1    If crews members cancel the day of the game due to whatever reasons, work, health issues, etc. and I don’t have anyone available to take their place I will contact other Associations to try and fill the game, if they can provide help I will bill the school for our regular travel and for the official(s) I’m bringing in from another Association.  I will do my best to move people around at the last minute to make the travel costs as low as possible.  However there may be times that I can’t make those switches and will have to have the incoming official(s) travel longer distances to cover the game.
    2    If crews members cancel the day of the game due to whatever reasons, work, health issues, etc. and I don’t have anyone available to take their place I will contact other Associations to try and fill the game,  if I cannot find anyone then I have no choice but to call that school and let them know they will have to reschedule their game to either Thursday night or Saturday.
    3    If we have more games scheduled for a Friday night than what I can cover, I will go to other Associations asking for help, if they can provide help I will bill the school for our regular travel and for the official(s) I’m bringing in from another Association.  I will do my best to move people around at the last minute to make the travel costs as low as possible.  However there may be times that I can’t make those switches and will have to have the incoming official(s) travel longer distances to cover the game.
    4    If we have more games scheduled for a Friday night than what I can cover and I’ve worked with other Associations and by the Monday before the scheduled game I cannot cover the games;  First I will send out an e-mail to all the schools involved on that Friday night asking for volunteers to move their game to either Thursday night or Saturday, I will give the schools to noon the next day to respond, if I don’t have any volunteers by that time then I will put the schools names in a hat, that are playing that Friday night, and draw out name(s).  For example, let’s say I have 10 games scheduled on Friday Sept. 30th, and I can only cover 8 of those games, I would draw out 2 names from the hat and then notify those two schools that there are no officials available to cover their game on the 30th and they will have to reschedule their game to either Thursday night or Saturday.  I can tell you that Saturday night is easier to cover than Saturday during the day, but we will make it work one way or the other
 
We certainly hope that it does not come to this but we need a plan to activate should this happen.
 
 
In the past I have provided you with a recruitment flyer to place in your faculty room and any other gathering spot for teachers.  I have attached a current flyer asking for help.
 
Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

TUESDAY,  AUGUST 30,  2016   "I take real offense when people insist I am a bigot just to make themselves feel good."   Jonah Goldberg

On Aug. 9, 1945, after dodging 16 rounds of flak to complete a bombing mission over Matsuyama, Japan, Donald and his crewmates witnessed a plume of smoke rising into the atmosphere 200 kilometers to the southwest. The smoke plume originated in Nagasaki, site of the second and final wartime atomic bomb detonation in history.  Donald was the final surviving member of his B-24 crew, a crew that carried out 35 raids without losing a single man.

FRIDAY,  AUGUST 26,  2016   “An efficient hawk hides his claws.”  World War II Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

for most athletes in the Olympics, a medal is the ultimate payoff. Not for wrestlers, however, the sport that remains as pure as it was in ancient times, but whose name has been muddled in the public’s mind with that phony show that is called professional wrestling. Olympic wrestlers do not get the endorsements after a victory that, say, a great track and field athlete does, or a swimmer.

At least in America, where wrestlers are not sponsored by the state, as they are elsewhere, and are mostly dependent for a college education on scholarships to make ends meet. Until now, that is. A billionaire by the name of Mike Novogratz, a private equity tycoon, heads a fraternity of well-heeled former wrestlers, several of whom have made it big on Wall Street. They have offered a prize of half a million greenbacks for a gold, and less lucre for silver and bronze, suddenly making wrestlers the envy of athletes not named Bolt or Phelps.

*********** IT’S TIME TO SIGN UP!

THE BLACK LION AWARD IS FULLY FUNDED BY WEST POINT GRADUATES AND MEMBERS OF THE BLACK LIONS IN THE INTEREST OF RECOGNIZING LEADERSHIP, COURAGE AND AN UNSELFISH TEAM-FIRST ATTITUDE AMONG YOUNG FOOTBALL PLAYERS.

YOUR TEAM’S BLACK LION AWARD WINNER WILL RECEIVE A BLACK LION PATCH (AS SHOWN) AS WELL AS A CERTIFICATE SIGNED BY COL SAM HAWES OF THE BLACK LIONS AND SUITABLE FOR FRAMING

TUESDAY,  AUGUST 23,  2016   “I am a juggler; I never let my right hand know what my left hand does."  Franklin D. Roosevelt

“You have to watch me some night and see what goes on. You'll see what it takes. Lots of little things. You have to see the little things that you have to correct a lot of times. It's the little things, like the old saying, little things become big things. My father used to say, "I can walk through the dining room and see eight or 10 different things wrong." The waiters walk by, they don't see nothing. They don't see no mistakes, nothing wrong. I do the same thing, I see a lot of different things. I'll tell the waiter, "That's not right," or ... all those little things that you see. You see during the day, you see those things. That's not a knock on the wait staff, no. It's because I've done this all my life.”

“The Baltimore Orioles have placed starting catcher Matt Wieters on paternity leave.

“Wieters left the team Saturday to join his wife, Maria, who is due to give birth to the couple’s second child.”

“The typical user is much more likely to be someone at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, whose daily life is driven, at least in part, by the question of how and where to get more marijuana. Just consider the cost. Almost a third of users are spending a tenth of their income on marijuana. And 15 percent of users spend nearly a quarter of their income to purchase the drug. The poor have not only become the heaviest users, but their use is making them poorer.”

Interestingly, marijuana use today resembles tobacco use more than alcohol use: While cigarette smoking is almost nonexistent among the educated and well-off,  the poor and working class have continued to smoke, despite the exhorbitant  - and increasing - cost of cigarettes.

http://nypost.com/2016/08/20/legalized-pot-is-making-americas-lower-class-poorer-and-less-responsible/

*********** THE PHOTO AT LEFT WAS SENT TO ME BY Sent me by Kurt Heinke, a longtime Black Lion coach from San Luis Obispo, California -

It's Link Danninger, 13-year-old his Black Lion Award winner from last year, wearing his Black Lion patch at a recent jamboree.

What about you?  Shouldn't your team be a Black Lion Award team?

IT’S TIME TO SIGN UP!

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO COST TO YOU.  THE BLACK LION AWARD IS FULLY FUNDED BY WEST POINT GRADUATES AND MEMBERS OF THE BLACK LIONS IN THE INTEREST OF RECOGNIZING LEADERSHIP, COURAGE AND AN UNSELFISH TEAM-FIRST ATTITUDE AMONG YOUHG FOOTBALL PLAYERS.

YOUR TEAM’S BLACK LION AWARD WINNER WILL RECEIVE A BLACK LION PATCH (AS IN THE PHOTO) AS WELL AS A CERTIFICATE SIGNED BY COL SAM HAWES OF THE BLACK LIONS AND SUITABLE FOR FRAMING

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO DO

(1)  Have your team’s head coach email me with his contact information. coachwyatt@aol.com

(2) Head coach: Once you’re approved, inform your players that they’re a Black Lion team and one of them will be selected as the team’s Black Lion, based on his leadership, his courage, his unselfishness and his willingness to do anything for his team. Tell them that if they all try to win it, you’ll wind up having a great team.

(3) Head coach: at season’s end, select your award winner.  We strongly suggest that the coaches do it.  We strongly discourage having the players do it.

(4) Head coach: Email us your letter nominating your winner.  We do ask that you send us a letter being specific about why you chose him.  (HINT: Use some of the comments your coaches made when you decided on him.)

Be sure to include the mailing address where the award should be sent.

Be sure that you get an email back, informing you that we received your nomination

(5) Once your nomination is approved, we will send you the Black Lions patch (as shown on the player in the picture) and the certificate suitable for framing.  There will be space on it for you to sign.

(6) Present your award at your banquet or award ceremony.  Where possible, it is a great idea to have a service member - retired or active duty - on hand to present it.  If we can, we will try to find someone nearby who might be able to do it.

THIS YEAR, THANKS TO THE GENEROSITY OF DON HOLLEDER’S WEST POINT ROOMMATE, GENERAL PERRY SMITH, AND HIS CLASSMATES OF THE WEST POINT CLASS OF 1956, ALL BLACK LION AWARDS WILL ALSO INCLUDE  A FREE DVD DOCUMENTARY OF THE LIFE AND CAREER OF THE LEGENDARY DON HOLLEDER, THE INSPIRATION FOR THE BLACK LION AWARD

FRIDAY,  AUGUST 19,  2016   “The history of a battle is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all of the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the exact order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance.” The

*********** Sayonara, shoeshine block.    Hola, slide and turn.  Bon jour, Cutoff/Turnback

I’ve seen this coming for some time.  Anybody who knows me well knows that I’ve been saying for several years that the days of the shoeshine block - the backside tight end’s perfectly legal cut off of an opponent’s pursuit - were numbered.

So long as the block took place in the free-blocking zone - three yards to either side of the line of scrimmage and four yards to either side of the ball - and so long as it complied with other requirements, it was legal,  even when it took place below the waist and from the back, which anyplace else on the field would be clipping.

Not no more, as my grandma would say.

Now, even in the free blocking zone, there will be no more clipping.

I have to confess I didn’t even know we had a problem.  Maybe, because I’ve been way out there on the edge of the continent, I’ve missed what’s been going on, but I just haven’t seen  all those young men on crutches,  and in wheelchairs,  hobbled by low blocks.    Maybe we have another epidemic on our hands, a lower-extremities version of the concussion hysteria that’s being used by football haters to bash our sport.

Otherwise, I have my suspicions that it’s people who have no use for blocking low, and hate to play people that do,  who successfully convinced the NFHS rules makers that it was a serious safety issue that required immediate action.  And if it just happens to hamper an opponent with a powerful running game, well…

But life goes on.  And until the day when NFHS finally makes it official and mandates that we play either flag or 7-on-7, we still have an offense to run.

Relax.  If you’ve been depending on your tight end to shoeshine a defender on the backside, don’t despair.

There’s the slide-and-turn (or "cutoff/turnback")

It’s how we’ve been having our tight end cut off anything between him and the center - without the shoeshine.

It starts with a big slide step with the inside foot.  One big slide should do it, but if not, two quick, smaller ones will.

He slides because he has to stay square.  He has to stay square because if he gets to the center and isn’t needed, he has to turn back.

That’s the slide-and-turn. I used to call it the “pull-hinge” but I changed for two reasons: “pull” could give the player the idea that I want him turning and running to playside, and “hinge” could give him the idea that I want him to give ground, as if he were pass protecting.

Take a look at this clip of 77 Super Power (to the left) and 66 Super Power (to the right).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQbajo1nuSI

Especially on the 66 - watch the way the TE slides inside fast enough to unload on the defender.  If he can makes it to that point fast enough, his job is 90 per cent done.  If the center has already engaged that man, the TE will turn back and take the next thing coming.

Here’s where you’ll be at an advantage if you’ve been running “my” Double Wing - if you’ve been listening to the things I’ve been preaching for, oh, close to 20 years now.

I realize that other double wings do things differently,  lining up on the ball, for example, and they must have their reasons for doing so, but I have my reasons for doing things the way I’ve been teaching this, and - trust me - your Tight End’s chances of getting his job done are greatly enhanced if:

a. Your splits are tight.  This applies to most Double Wingers.  Very simply,  the farther your TE is from the center, the harder it is for him to do his job

b. Your TE’s stance is “light” - if he doesn’t have his weight forward (check his down hand to make sure he’s got almost no weight on it)

c. Your TE has his inside hand down.  If instead he has his outside hand down, it’s likely that his inside foot will be forward, and he might get it tangled with the tackle’s outside foot.

d. Your linemen are back off the ball.  Lining up as deep as legal (basically, the rule states that the top of their helmets must not be deeper than the center’s waist) gives your TE more time to get to where he needs to go before any defender does.

Another advantage to the slide-and-turn is that it’s legal against a blitzing linebacker. (See Left)  It’s always been illegal to go low on that guy - even in the free-blocking zone - unless he started out on the line of scrimmage.  And where a blitzer may or may not have started out is a judgment call by an official,  who may only know that he saw your Tight End blocking a linebacker at his knees.

TUESDAY,  AUGUST 16,  2016   "The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.'" Dr. Thomas Sowell

***********

Grrr. Had to sit through one of these on Monday.  It was either that or not coach.

My disdain for USA Football, a tentacle of the NFL octopus, knows no bounds, but I must give the presenter credit for making the “clinic” endurable.

I’ve been teaching my way of tackling since 1982.  There were two trigger points. First was when I saw an article in Scholastic Coach Magazine (Jeez, I miss that mag) by a coach in New York State who taught hitting up in the chest.  After looking at it on the field, I liked it, and decided to begin teaching it.

The second was at a clinic in Seattle, where I sat in on a presentation by Bud Wilkinson.  Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma teams of the 1950s and early 1960s were some of the greatest college teams of all time. Back in those days I was going with a girl from Oklahoma, and I actually took a job

“People make this mistake all over the country, and everybody can think of one, but there will be a guy who is big, strong and athletic, and everyone gets tempted by speed and if someone has a super strong arm.”

“Then they say ‘Well all he has to do is work on his accuracy. Well ok. He won’t be accurate in high school. Then some college will take him, and then he won’t be accurate there, and then the NFL says ‘all he has to do is work on his accuracy,’ and they’ll take him there, and he won’t be accurate there and then he’ll be out of the league.”

“The thing that’s amazing to me, is that after all of high school he’s not accurate, and now all of a sudden you’re special and you’re going to make him accurate? And then after college he’s not accurate, and you’re special and you’re going to make him accurate? I just haven’t seen that happen. I’ve seen guys improve, but they don’t all of a sudden become accurate.”

http://footballscoop.com/news/mike-leach-quarterback-isnt-accurate-shouldnt-recruit/


*********** Charlotte (NC) Independence High fired their head coach last Friday,

(1) just a week before the team’s opening game…

(2) Just three months after he had heart transplant surgery…

(3) Less than a week after his father died.

Surely there’s a good reason why they’d do this to a guy - and to his team - at a horrible time like this, but if there is, the  school administrators (as usual)  aren’t saying what it is.

So in the absence of any explanation, they’ve left themselves wide open for people like me to accuse them of being heartless pricks.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/high-school/article95369172.html


***********   Morning coach,

Good News You Can Use as usual. Great with coffee.

I want to get your take on a parent/player issue.

On my younger team (13/14) we have 28 players. League rules necessitate a "fair play rule" where substitutes rotate in every other series. No problem with that. I like the rule as it forces coaches to coach every player as every player will be going in the game.

My problem is a parent (who I know well and has typically been very supportive). He is incensed that his son will be one of the rotating kids and not starting for the entire game.

The player is a fine young man, but right now he is short, squat, and slow. I have him rotating in at center and he is barely holding on there.

Dad called me last night (props to him for not hiding behind an email) and wanted to know why other kids were not rotating and that his son would "do what ever I said" and " he loves you and football, but may not come back next year if this continues."

I pushed back without being insulting, but here is my dilemma:

This dad needs to realize we have put his son in the best place to play without the team suffering. He is a good boy, but being short, slow, and weak, limits where we can play him. Mom and Dad are influential in the community and up until this point have been advocates for the program, but they are not afraid to make a stink.

Any advice on how to clearly communicate the fact that his son is not good right now, and we will continue to work with him, but there are no promises that this will change?

Welcome to the Dunning-Kruger Effect -

*********** Ever have a kid who is so good that you just look at him, in practice or games, and go, “Wow?”  Ever wonder why other kids playing the same position don’t see see the same thing you do - and don’t understand why they’re not the ones starting?

All this time, without us coaches knowing it, there’s been an explanation for it. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect,  and it’s named for the two Cornell University psychologists who first researched it and wrote about it.

It describes people who are unskilled and unaware of it.

Seems to me we feed it with all the trophies-for-everybody, nobody-wins-because-we-don’t-want-anyone-to-lose, everybody-is-special, you-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be crap that we expose kids to from the time they’re little.

I’m hoping that Dunning and Kruger aren’t finished, and that their next work will be a study of the phenomenon of parents who spend tons of money on camps and personal coaches and travel teams because they’re too dumb to realize that their kids aren’t as good as they think they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
 

I can’t tell whether “fair play” means “equal Play,” so If this is just about the “prestige" of “starting," Dad is sick.
 
These deals are always tough because parents really are blind to their own kids’ inadequacies.

This is a major reason why - in the future - you want to make clear at your parents’ meeting that there are two items that are not subjects of conferences between parents and coaches: the amount of playing time, and coaching strategy (especially as it relates to where a player is playing or how he is being employed).

But it’s too late for that this year, so…

I think you have to be perfectly frank with Dad and remind him that playing time is a scarce commodity that is awarded on the basis of merit, but to make sure that no one goes without, there are rules in place to make sure that everyone does get some playing time…

That the coaches attempt to put players at the position where they can make the greatest contribution to the team.  Fortunately, there are opportunities in football for players of a variety of size and skills.

That it’s your responsibility as a coach to see to it that the boys all understand that there’s only one criterion that determines who plays when and where, and when one player clearly is the better player at a position, the better player will earn more playing time.

That In the judgment of the coach(es), - - - - -  is not at this point the better player at his position.

That where there might be some disagreement with the coaches’ judgment,  it is possible, at the player’s request,  to set up an open competition, but experience generally shows that this does not have a good effect on the morale of the loser.  We think it’s best to accept the judgment of the coaches and work to improve…

That we understand that players mature and develop at different rates, and we want to make sure that they stay with the sport.  So we coach them up and encourage them and try to show ways that they can get better and play more.  In the case of ——— , he needs to get stronger and faster.  Fortunately, those are things that he can work on, on his own.  He should take this as a challenge.

IT’S OKAY TO REFER TO HIS LACK OF STRENGTH AND SPEED, BUT DON’T REFER TO HIS SIZE -

There’s no question that you have to be frank.  Diplomatic, but frank.  

Argue for the benefits of being a part of a good group of young men who are learning important things as they work toward a common goal.  One of those things is that every player plays a part in a successful team effort.

 If Dad pulls his son, that’s too bad for the son.  Not necessarily for you.   Dad may be influential in the community, but when it comes to advocating for his own kid, who’s he going to influence?  I suspect that those he might try to influence already understand quite well what this is all about.

And in the meantime, two things:

(1) Get the parents’ bulletin updated in time for next year, if not sooner

(2) Make a special effort to recognize the backups.  This might mean, as some successful youth coaches I know have done, forming them into a unit of their own, giving them a small package of plays, and telling them that they can stay on the field until they score, turn the ball over, or run out of downs.

Good luck with this one.


*********** The Seahawks beat the Chiefs, 17-16, on a last-play touchdown, followed by a successful two-point conversion. But don’t let that fool you into thinking it was an exciting game.  Not unless you like SIX field goals and just two touchdowns.

The Cowboys-Rams game, on the other hand, was actually interesting.

Maybe it was because of the huge crowd in the LA Memorial Coliseum, out to watch a hometown NFL team for the first time since 1994.

Whatever - we got to see some very impressive quarterback performances.

For the Cowboys, Dak Prescott looked great.  I feel bad because Kellen Moore broke his ankle, and I like Kellen Moore, but it’s tough business.

For the Rams, Sean Mannion was outstanding, leading the Rams to the winning TD.  Nelson Spruce, a rookie wide receiver from Colorado, was outstanding, not only catching the ball but getting tough yards after the catch.

Highly-touted rookie QB Jared Goff, while okay,  didn’t have the greatest of opening games.  And then he had to come out post-game looking like a doofus (LEFT).

*********** For years the Marines’ ranks have been between 7 and 8 percent female, lowest of all the services (the Air Force is highest, at 19 per cent). But now the Marines (or should I say “the White House) have set a goal of 10 per cent.    See, since Pentagon (White House) orders that they must open combat roles to women, somehow that means they now have a lot of open combat roles to be filled.

Only a liberal in the White House could have thought that somehow the Marines were missing out.

Now, in order to try to add women, they have begun a recruiting push for high school athletes.

One problem - even those who've signed up aren’t ready physically.

Some, we're told,  "can't do a pull-up or hang from a bar for long enough. And sometimes they need to get faster so they can finish the 1.5-mile run in 13.5 minutes."

All female recruits go on a "high-risk action plan" for at least five months that include vitamin supplements, weight management and an exercise regimen that includes weights, cross-fit training and a pull-up program.

Obviously, the Marines haven’t yet figured out the hidden meaning behind the memo from on high - the one telling them that they WILL meet that 10 per cent quota.

Hidden meaning:  don’t let those stupid “standards” you’ve been using get in the way.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MARINE_RECRUITING_WOMEN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-08-13-08-59-00

*********** Have you noticed how the story about the NFL and USA Football using phony statistics to push “Heads Up Football” has disappeared?  That’s what a good PR Department does, and the NFL’s is the best there is.

*********** Turnabout is fair play.  With all the Australian Rules football players earning jobs as punters in the American game, it seems only fair that the Aussies might try to find some talent for their game among American athletes.

Mason Cox, a former Oklahoma State basketball player, has shown well playing for the Collingwood Magpies, and the Aussies are aggressively searching for other Yanks who might not be good enough to play in the NBA or NFL but might be well suited to the Australian game.

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/unreal-crazy-amazing-mason-coxs-debut-for-collingwood-20160425-goeprt.html

Basketball players - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot4YmfZUo_8

Football players - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYXzIcbC1Ow

*********** Neill Armstrong died last week at the age of 90. Not to be con used with the astronaut of the same name, Mr. Armstrong played at  Oklahoma A & M (now Oklahoma State) was the Eagles’ first-round draft choice in 1947.  He played on the Eagles’ back-to-back NFL championship teams in 1948 and 1949.  I just point that out because that was when I first started following pro football, and as a kid in Philadelphia I thought it was just perfectly natural, being the center of the universe and all, that the Eagles would always win. Time, of course, has proved the fallacy of those childish beliefs, and now as I look at my photo of those old Eagles, I note how many of them are now gone.  Rest in peace, Neill Armstrong,

He went on after the Eagles to play a few more years in Canada, then embarked on a long coaching career in college, the CFL and NFL. He was a key member of Bud Grant’s Vikings staff that made four Super Bowl appearances between 1970 and 1977. He was head coach of the Chicago Bears from 1978 through 1981 and earned the hatred of Green Bay fans for a game in which the Bears were winning by a big score in the fourth quarter, yet he still had his quarterback throwing deep.  The final was 61-7 and Armstrong regretted not scoring more. 

There had to be something personal behind it.

From the Bears, he moved on to the Cowboys, helping them win Super Bowls in 1993, 1994 and 1996 before retiring.

Condolences to his wife of 70 years, Jane, who certainly saw her share of ups and downs in her husband’s long coaching career.

*********** Back when Pitt announced its plans to move games off campus, from old Pitt Stadium to Heinz Field, bad things were predicted.  Students wouldn’t go… loyal fans wouldn’t go… etc., etc.

Meantime, Pitt just announced a new all-time record in season-ticket sales:  53,775

(A rare visit by Penn State on September 10 may help explain it.)

FRIDAY,  AUGUST 12,  2016   “The best way to control your future is to create it yourself.”  Peter Drucker

Once while coaching in the USFL the offensive staff was assembled in the film room watching the same four plays over and over again. The time reached midnight and still we watched. Most had glazed over eyes and only stayed awake because heads would bang against the wall often enough to make much needed sleep impossible. Finally, I whispered to one of the other assistant coaches, "Why are we still here?" After a few moments to reflect he said, "Because Dick Vermiel did it this way". After pondering that answer for a while I couldn't resist responding to my colleague. "Does anybody realize that doing it ‘this way’ drove Dick Vermiel out of coaching?"

At the end of conditioning this morning, we started a new tradition in our program. I borrowed it from North Beach High School in Ocean Shores, WA. They are coached by my friend, Todd Bridge, and my mentor, Hugh Wyatt. At the end of every practice session, each of their players shakes hands with every coach before leaving the practice field. It was an outstanding way to finish this morning's workout. I already love this new Trojan Tradition.

*********** I started to laugh when I heard it, but then I got pissed.

The story was about “refugees” in Sweden.  Seems that the Swedish government is having trouble finding housing for them.  And on top of that, for many of the new arrivals, the accommodations provided (free of charge) by their hosts are not up to their high standards.

So the Swedish government, known for its generosity with the Swedish taxpayers’ money, has a great solution.

It’s asking Swedes who own summer cottages,  which they use only three months of the year, to allow refugees to live in them the rest of the year.

What got me was that the radio story said that they were asking “wealthy” Swedes to do this.

That’s what made me laugh - and got me pissed.

First of all, I’ve spent a lot of time in Scandinavia, and I can tell you that there are not a whole lot of “wealthy” people. Not, at least, by American standards.

There aren’t many poor people, either, because of generous government programs.  But you just don’t see that many people living in huge mansions on five-acre lots, either.

High, high taxation, which enables the governments to provide all sorts of “free” benefits to their fellow countrymen (not to mention rolling out the welcome mat for the uninvited human wave that has begun sweeping in) makes sure of that.

But secondly, from my experience with Finns, you can’t assume a person’s wealthy by whether he (or she) owns a summer cottage.

Although Finland is mostly farms and forests and lakes, most Finns live in cities, and most of them live in apartments.

The idea of getting away from it all - getting out of the city and into the woods - is in the Finnish nature, and it’s the near-universal aspiration of every Finn to one day own a kesämökki - a summer cottage.  Preferably on a lake, and always with a sauna.

But owning one doesn’t mean a Finn is rich.  Finns are thrifty people. It means that he did without a lot of other things - toys, conveniences, luxuries - in order to finally buy that kesämökki.

The Finns are generous, trusting people.  But I can’t imagine them letting foreign invaders into their summer cottages.

On the other hand, there is a good reason why they’re unoccupied much of the year. Scandinavian winters are brutal - cold and dark.  And those cottages aren’t winterized.

Maybe the idea is that come spring, after a winter on the shore of a frozen lake, the “refugees” may decide that life in the desert wasn’t so bad after all.


*********** When I played semi-pro football in Frederick, Maryland, one of my teammates was a guy named Clarence “Motts” Thomas. He was a local Frederick guy who’d played college football at Morgan State, in Baltimore, where his roommate was a linebacker named Willie Lanier (the same).

(In the photo at left, taken in the Fall of 1968, Motts is on the left, I'm on the right, and teammate Gene Snowden is in the middle)

As we got to know each other, we tended to bond because unlike most of the other players, we were both college graduates.

My wife and I and Motts and his wife became good friends, and often drove to away games together.  (The “Motts,” he told me, was because as a little kid he loved Motts Apple Sauce.)

After a season together, he was called up to serve in the Army, and we never got to play together again, but we stayed in fairly close touch as our careers advanced.

His career advanced from coaching high school ball in suburban Washington, to coaching at Bowie State, a historically-black college between Baltimore and Washington, to succeeding his college coach, the great Earl Banks, as head coach at his alma mater.  I remember him telling me how difficult it was following a living legend, especially one who remained on the scene as the AD, but as an assistant coach at Morgan State he had had the honor of going against the one and only Eddie Robinson of Grambling in the Urban League Classic in Yankee Stadium.  (Those were still the days before SEC schools got smart and began recruiting black athletes; at that time, Grambling was churning out NFL prospects.)

After leaving Morgan, Motts got a job as an assistant at Williams College, a prestigious liberal arts college in Western Massachusetts, and it was largely on the basis of his experience there, working with that sort of kid, that brought him to the attention of the people at Pomona College and Pitzer College in Claremont, California, when they were looking for someone to be the head coach of their combined football program.  At that point, I was living on the West Coast, and when he asked me what I thought about making a cross-country move, I remember saying, “Go for it!”

He did that, and made a name for himself at Pomona-Pitzer. First, as a good football coach (to the extent that anybody can ever build a powerhouse at schools with Ivy-type admissions standards, and in a league that didn’t permit its coaches to leave campus to recruit).  But second, as a man beloved by the people on campus, and invested with the supervision of an “outreach” program designed not just to identify minority youngsters who might benefit from a quality education, but also to prepare those kids - and their families - for the rigors of the college experience.

As a football coach, with summers free because of the low-intensity nature of Pomona-Pitzer football, Motts took a job coaching football - American football - in Finland.  He did a great job, as a coach and as an ambassador, and as a sign of the high  regard in which he was held, in 1986 he was named head coach of the Finnish National team.  His recommendation was good enough to get me a job in Finland, too, and ironically, in 1989, we faced each other in the national championship game, his Giants against my Colts. They’d beaten us earlier in the season and came into the game unbeaten, but we won the big one, 3-0. We had the offense - we’d scored 296 points in nine games - and they had the defense - they’d given up only 33 points - but in this one, our defense won it for us.  My best running back was hurt and my quarterback, best in the league, had a sore arm, but in the fourth quarter we managed to block a punt in their territory and then kick the winning field goal.

The last time I saw Motts (photo at left), he and his wife, Catherine, stopped by our house just before Christmas.  He was retired and they were living in Bandon, Oregon. ( Bandon, if you don’t know, is home of Bandon Dunes, consistently rated one of the world’s top golf courses, and Motts managed to wangle a job as course marshal, which got him free golf privileges!)

In 2008 and 2009 Motts came out of retirement to coach the Bandon High football team, but his comeback was cut short by a diagnosis of prostate cancer.

Sadly, despite treatment, the cancer got him.  He died in February, 2011.  Getting "the call" from Catherine was one of those events that you never forget. I was in  Florida for a clinic in Orlando, and I was staying with my friend Tom Hinger and his wife, Jane.  I can picture exactly where I was sitting when I got the news.

How here’s the most amazing thing, something he told me the last time we saw each other:

He grew up in  what was still something of a southern town in its attitudes toward race. He was the youngest child of a very large family.  His father, who was fairly old when Motts was born, was also the youngest of a large family.  And his father’s father - Motts’ grandfather - was born a slave.

Motts Thomas, the head football coach and esteemed faculty member of a prestigious California college… Motts Thomas, the head coach of the Finnish National team… was the grandson of a slave.

Please don’t  try to tell me that you can’t make it in America.

This whole thing started when I came across an article in the LA Times recently.  It was written  at the time that another Clarence Thomas was confirmed as a justice of the Supreme Court.

"I've gotten a little bit of ribbing but it's all good-natured stuff," Motts told the Times.  "But as far as I'm concerned, I am the real Clarence Thomas."

He noted that few people actually called him Clarence.  "In some phone books, I'm not even listed as Clarence. People who know me always call me Motts. Only my mother calls me Clarence."

But he said that he and his players all enjoyed a good laugh when Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed.

"We had just had an inauguration for our new (school) president and I was wearing a robe," he said. "But we still had to practice. So after the ceremony, I ran onto to field with my robe on and screamed at my players, 'I got the job! I got the job!' "

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-10-22/sports/sp-259_1_roland-ortmayer

http://www.pe.pomona.edu/sports/fball/2010-11/releases/MottsThomas

*********** I spoke with Art “Ossie” Osmundson on the phone Tuesday.  Ossie (that’s how he spells it but it’s pronounced “Ozzie”) finally retired two years ago, but he taught - and coached football and baseball - at Ridgefield, Washington for 37 years.  He was head baseball coach for 33 years and head football coach for 16.  His 1995 football team went 13-0 and won the state championship, dominating opponents without even so much as a close game. (Running the Double Wing, I should add, and inspiring me to make my first video.)

I had the privilege of coaching with Ozzie for five years prior to that big season, though, and I can tell you there were some tough seasons along the way. That’s when Ozzie showed me what kind of coach he was.  The low point was the year the levy election failed - that would have been about 1991.  The superintendent called all the faculty in and told us that with the failure of the levy (which provided taxpayer funding for all the school items that the state didn’t pay for), it meant that there wasn’t any money for sports. No new equipment, no coaching stipends, no transportation to away games.

A couple of the coaches got up and walked out, as much as saying “screw that.”

But Ozzie and I looked at each other and nodded.  He was in and so was I.  No way we weren’t going to have a football team.

We got a couple of other volunteers to join us.

We didn’t need any equipment, fortunately, but transportation was a bit of an issue.

We managed to get the superintendent’s approval to carpool to away games, and the most part, it worked well.

But in our phone conversation, Ozzie reminded me of a late-season game at Ilwaco.

Ilwaco is on the coast (its teams are the Fishermen), about 2 hours’ drive from Ridgefield, most of it on dark, winding roads.

Somehow, a few cars full of kids got lost along the way, and there we sat, Ozzie and I and a handful of kids, in the Ilwaco locker room as game time approached.

I kept looking out into the parking lot for the latecomers, and Ozzie remembers me coming into the locker room and saying, “Hey Oz - we can play.  We got eleven!”

We played.  And finished the season.  And kept Ridgefield football alive. And Ozzie and the kids went on to reward the town with a state championship, the first football state title ever won by a team from our corner of the state.

And in 2002 they paid him back by letting him go because certain influential parents didn’t think he was throwing the ball enough to showcase their children.  He was only 49, and he stayed on as Ridgefield's baseball coach for another 12 years, but he never coached another down of football.

(Ridgefield went 8-2 last year -  and the head coach stepped down, saying that after four years he'd had enough of the parental interference. “I love coaching and I love coaching those boys,’’ he told a local newspaper.  “If it was just me, the boys and the coaches, life would be perfect. But, we just have people in this community who are relentless and that’s unfortunate.’’)


http://www.thereflector.com/news/article_0bd44e06-f5aa-11e3-b04e-0019bb2963f4.html

http://www.thereflector.com/sports/article_9e8d9ec4-9dff-11e5-a0d5-0f47aa197c31.html


*********** University of Arizona center Zach Hemmila  died in his sleep Sunday night.  Tragic. What else can I say?

Somehow, there's someone out there who'll blame football.

http://www.foxsports.com/college-football/story/arizona-football-player-unexpectedly-dies-in-his-sleep-080816


***********  A friend wrote…  I thought you might find this report interesting in light of our recent discussion about declining participation in football.

https://coachad.com/news/california-sees-decline-prep-football-participation/

On a positive note, we gained 2 new freshmen at our parents meeting last night.

Yes, I wrote, and after reading the article,  another positive is the increase in the growth of soccer.   Just keep bringing in those illegals from Latin America and young male "refugees" from the Middle East and it's sure to continue!

TUESDAY,  AUGUST 9,  2016   “The great promise of socialism is something for nothing.” Dr. Thomas Sowell

***********  Michael Tanks, head coach at Southwest  DeKalb (the locals say “Dee-CABB”) High in suburban Atlanta and a former Florida State star center,  suffered a stroke and died unexpectedly just before the start of the season and his 49th birthday.  Rest in peace, Coach Tanks.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaafb/michael-tanks-southwest-dekalb-ga-coach-and-florida-state-star-dies-at-48/ar-BBvh5sE?li=BBnb7Kz

http://www.tallahassee.com/story/sports/college/fsu/football/2016/08/04/former-fsu-center-michael-tanks-dies/88064518/

***********  It's Olympic time (yawn) and ifyou're like me, and you don't get excited over the gold medals  of a 31-year old jerk who's never done anything in his life but swim,  you'll enoy this  hilarious take on the Olympics, sent to me by John Rockwell, of Austin, Texas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y9z_8fBF5U

*********** The same humor-impaired numbskulls who accused Donald Trump of encouraging the Russians to hack our secret emails (simply because he pointed out the irony that the Russians had her emails and we didn’t) are still at it.

This time,  after Olympic basketball team coach Mike Krzyzewski responded to some joking by former Duke star Kyrie Irving with a joke of his own -  a friendly “F—k you!” -  a headline read:

Coach K Curses Out Kyrie Irving During Team USA Basketball Practice

Obviously, the writer has never played on a big boys’ team.

http://www.12up.com/posts/3488978-video-coach-k-curses-out-kyrie-irving-during-team-usa-basketball-practice

*********** Clairton Pennsylvania quarterback Lamont Wade had Michigan at the top of his list until they pressured him to attend their camp.  Kid sounds a little full of himself - maybe he’s bent out of shape because they wouldn’t bring one of their “satellite camps” to his town.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaafb/michigan-dumped-by-5-star-recruit-after-calling-him-second-level-player/ar-BBvg5qL

*********** From Open Wing newsletter #5 - Two Good questions -

Two quick questions.  First question where would you put your best guard?  Tight side, or open side and why?  

Second question, if you had to strip it all down and just rely on one pass play, besides bubble/smoke, what would it be?

Thanks coach, we open practice Monday.  I’m excited to be back in coaching!

(1) It would be the Tight Guard because of
1. Wedge
2. G
3. Counter to the Open side
4. Black/Brown to the Open side

My better tackle would be the OPEN tackle because I can stick a lesser tackle between the tight guard and tight end and he’ll be double-teaming a lot.

(2) If it came down to ONE SINGLE PASS PLAY at ANY TIME it would be 6-GREEN or 7-GOLD

Otherwise, though,  I would teach RED and BLUE protection and footwork because of all the things we can do with it, to any of our receivers.

Hope you get off to a great start.  VERY glad to hear you sound so excited.

*********** There’s still hope for Levi…

With no concern over whether I’m being a thorn in the side of Yale’s president Peter Salovey, I was a strong advocate of honoring Levi Jackson by naming one of Yale’s two new residential colleges for Levi Jackson, a New Haven youngster who became captain of Yale’s football team and went on to become a vice-president of Ford Motor Company.

President Salovey, to his credit, at least took the time to acknowledge my letters.

Sadly, though, Mr. Jackson didn’t make the cut.  One of the colleges was named for Benjamin Franklin - great person, great American, but without any connection whatsoever to Yale.

Another was named for a person named Pauli Murray.  She did receive a law degree from Yale, but truthfully, when one talks about alumni of a university, one normally talks about those who were bent and shaped by the university as undergraduates.   And despite whatever Ms. Murray may have accomplished in her lifetime, in no way did her accomplishments reflect on Yale one way or the other.  I’ve been reading the alumni monthly for more than 50 years, and I’d never heard of her.

But this is Yale, bastion of everything Politically Correct, and she sure did check a lot of the boxes - black, female, lesbian, feminist, liberal.

Levi Jackson, on the other hand, brought credit to Yale from the time he enrolled, first as the first black athlete to play football at Yale, then as the first black captain of an Ivy-League team.  Yale football was still big then, and his election was an occurrence of such note at the time that it merited a front-page story in the New York Times.

Following graduation, he went on to become the first black executive of Ford Motor Company, and was the driving force behind Ford’s minority dealership program.

To me, Levi jackson was the embodiment of what, back before Yale went coed,  used to be called a Yale man, someone who was expected to represent the university with pride and distinction, and leave the world a better place for his having been in it. 

There’s still hope for me, with the news that Yale will consider once again renaming Calhoun College, named for the South Carolina senator , a Yale graduate, who was a staunch advocate of slavery.

Who better to replace a fiery defender of slavery than Levi jackson, a black kid from New Haven who took his Yale education out into the world and made it better?

Levi Jackson lived the last words of our alma mater - “For God, for Country, and for Yale.”

http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20160801/renaming-calhoun-college-still-possible-as-yale-forms-committee-after-outcry


*********** Not so long ago, I mentioned Tom Walls, of Winnipeg, and the newsletter that he sends out to the players and parents in the organization he founded - the Sunrise Coyotes, of suburban Oakbank, Manitoba. Starting from scratch, he and his partner (his wife, Shandy) have seen  the club grow to its present size of  seven teams  and close to 200 players.

Recently, at my invitation, Coach Walls flew in to Seattle - then drove another three hours to Ocean Shores  - in order to observe first-hand our summer mini-camp.

Interestingly, one of the things that most impressed him was our practice of shaking hands:  before and after every practice, every player shakes hands with every  coach.  It's a manly trait that too few kids get to use nowadays, and on a team it's a wonderful way of building mutual trust. This way, it's unthinkable that a kid could go home angry or upset.

"Coach Tom" as he's known back home  wrote about his visit in highly flattering terms in his most recent newsletter.

*********** I’m looking at a way to easily send in formations (including flipping formations) using the wrist coach system. Sounds like you may have expanded on this already with your new dvd sets. I figure using each column, 1 through 5 or so, for a specific formation would do the trick. Obviously this would limit the formations, but it seems like a quick way to communicate formation and personnel. What do you think?

Mat,
North Dakota

Coach,

I put a play and the formation (and, where applicable, motion) I want to run it from into a square on the card.  (And each individual player's assignment.)

If I want to run the play from another formation, or with a motion other than the one on the card, I signal it or call it in.

Very simple for us to do and it works.

*********** There was just one running back in major college football last year who ran for 100 yards or more in every game - and he’s not even mentioned as a dark horse in the pre-season Heisman hype.

He’s Oregon’s Royce Freeman, and over the last two seasons he’s rushed for more yards (3,201) than any back in any Power 5 conference.

Maybe it’s because he plays in the Pacific Time Zone, and maybe it’s because he’s been outshone on the West Coast by Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, but Freeman, at 6 for, 230, is a horse.  A race horse.

http://www.goducks.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=4880


*********** Amazing what the NFL thinks it can get away with. (Remind you of a certain presidential candidate?)

So someone screwed up royally and  the Pro Football Hall of Fame game wasn’t played. The Hall of Fame (which is technically not a part of the NFL), has announced that it will  stiff thousands of its most loyal fans, who took time off, spent money on gasoline, food, overpriced hotel rooms and highly overpriced tickets to watch the Hall of Fame game by  offering to refund their ticket money.  And nothing else.

Good business sense would dictate making it all good to such devoted fans.

But no.  Not the the NFL.

With billions of dollars in TV rights money spilling out of its pockets, it didn’t get where it is by being considerate of its paying customers.  It knows that they’ll show up with their money no matter how it treats them.

*********** Stephen A Smith tweeted: If @TonyDungy was white, would he be a Hall of Famer?

God, these people who look for discrimination under every rock are a pain in the ass.

I see an awful lot of black guys getting into the Hall of Fame.  Actually, I see an awful lot of black AND white guys getting into the Hall of Fame whose credentials I question.

(The biggest joke, of course,  is OWNERS getting into the Hall of Fame.  What? It isn’t enough to own a piece of property worth a billion dollars or more, but they have to give you a place in the Hall of Fame for being a good OWNER?)

I have the utmost respect for Tony Dungy as a man and as a coach, and I'd be delighted to see him in the Hall of Fame.

But in the meantime it would be better for all concerned if Mr. Smith would go back to commenting and writing on sports and stop trying to stir up  sh—.

*********** Not in Daisy's wildest dreams did they ever think that one day shooting a BB rifle would be an Olympic sport.

FRIDAY,  AUGUST 5,  2016   “I had on occasion to be on the lookout for natural leaders.  Athletes take a certain amount of kidding, especially from those who think it’s always brain vs. brawn.  But, I noted how well ex-footballers seemed to have leadership qualifications and it wasn’t sentiment that made it seem so.”  Dwight D. Eisenhower

***********  Coach; Hope you're doing well. I enjoy reading your News section. You might remember a coach from the 1950s and 1960s named Phil Dickens who coached at Indiana and Wyoming. He ran an offense called the "Side Saddle T." What was the Side Saddle T? How was it aligned?
 
Thanks, Jim Stovar, Houston, Texas



That was back  in 2007, and I came across Coach Stovar's email  while working on the final  video of my 5-part Open Wing series.  To help make a point in the video, I’ve included some clips of the side-saddle.  This still shot (above) is from the 1954 Wyoming-Arizona game.  Wyoming is in dark jerseys, on offense.

Here’s what I wrote back then to Coach Stovar - with a little more added since...

Phil Dickens ran the "side-saddle T" at Wyoming in the mid-50s.  He did well there, which earned him the job at Indiana, where like so many others over the years, he did not do so well. I don't know whether he ran it at Indiana. (Wyoming has always been a real incubator of successful coaches: Dickens' predecessor there was Bowden Wyatt - no relation that I know of - who went on to Tennessee where he was Coach of the Year in 1956;  Bowden Wyatt’s successor was Bob Devaney, who would go on to build the Nebraska program into the powerhouse that it was until a couple of years ago when its current AD dismantled it (remember, this was 2007- HW). Others have included Pat Dye, Dennis Erickson and Joe Tiller.)
 
Dickens was a Tennessee guy, who learned his football as a single wing tailback under the legendary General Robert Neyland.  Coach Neyland's balanced-line single wing originally employed a quarterback close enough to the center to take an indirect "T-formation" snap, while offset slightly  to the strong side so that  the ball could also be "direct-snapped" back to the tailback or fullback.  (The diagram at left  is page one of an abbreviated playbook General Neyland  issued to all incoming Vols.  Note where the blocking back - the quarterback, who actually called the plays in those days - lined up.)
 
That was the offense that Dickens played in at Tennessee in the 1930s, and it's basically the offense that Phil Dickens was running at Wyoming under the name "Side-saddle," which entailed making more use of the quarterback than the General did.

At few years later, John McLaughry ran another version of it at Brown; I remember seeing Brown run it when I was in college.  Several years later, while in Providence, I spoke with Coach McLaughry, who told me that he was not a single-winger like Dickens, but he employed  the side-saddle because he felt that it better enabled his QB to make the toss-and-turn on the off-tackle power play, while still allowing him to run his wing-T attack.

Although Coach McLaughry, from film I’ve seen of his Brown teams, as well as scouting reports I’ve saved from my college days, did employ some direct-snap in his attack, he was basically a T-formation (under center) coach. 

Coach Dickens, on the other hand, was a single wing guy. From what I have seen,  he employed at least as much direct snap as under-center stuff, so it’s a misnomer to call what he was running a side-saddle “T.”
 
What the Wyoming and Brown offenses had in common was their hybrid nature - from the same formation, they could run single-wing or Wing-T plays.
 
As late as 1963, BYU was running a form of it, according to an article by their coach, Hal Mitchell, in which he appeared to give the impression that he thought he'd done  something innovative.
 
General Neyland, by the way, moved his QB away from the "side-saddle" position following the 1948 season.  According to Dr. Andy Kozar, a former Neyland player who compiled and edited the extensive journals of the General: "As teams adopted the T formation in droves, the quick buck (dive) lost its novelty, and Neyland abandoned the quarterback direct pass.  He cited the lack of clever personnel in handling the ball and, essentially, the loss of novelty."

As a young kid on the “pound teams,” (our school had 70, 80, 90, 105, 120 and 135-pound teams) I can remember seeing a few opponents running some sort of side-saddle, and  I can still see the side-saddle having some application in today's youth football, not only because it enables the QB to actually see the ball on the under-center snap, but because it does permit some crossover between wing-T and single wing.

(The page at left is from the 1959 Ivy League'pre-season press guide)

FROM A 1959 ISSUE OF BROWN ALUMNI MONTHLY, introducing new Brown coach John McLaughry…

ONE OF THE QUESTIONS most frequently asked of Brown's new football coach, John McLaughry, since his appointment in February has been:

"Just what is your Side-Saddle T formation?"

Being as good an artist as he is a coach, McLaughry drew the accompanying sketch to illustrate some aspects of his now-famous offense, the only one of its kind in the country.  The large drawing shows the relative position of the backfield, with special emphasis on the quarterback, who is facing the sideline. The two smaller diagrams illustrate the plays that would not be possible from the normal T-quarterback setup. Because of his placement, the side-saddle quarterback can make a handoff nearer to the point of attack than his original station. The play in diagram number two is a standard single-wing cutback by the tailback, in which the quarterback can be used as a key blocker.

How did the Side-Saddle T get its start? "Well," McLaughry explains, "we were using a conventional wing-T at Amherst in 1955, and we were faced with that old problem of tipping our hand on fourth and one situations. If we were going to run, we came out in the T. If we were going to punt, we came out in punt formation. I wanted to do something about it, so we moved our wingback to the deep spot and left the other two backs at their normal positions. Of course, we had to get the quarterback out of the way so we could make a direct snap if we wanted to and yet leave him in position to hand off if that was our strategy.

So, we set him in  this new position where his hands are placed exactly the same as they would be  in the T, but one foot is pivoted so he faces the sideline. We only used the formation several times that year, but, during the winter when we realized its possibilities, we developed a whole new offense around it."

In the three years he used the offense at Amherst, it averaged about 350 yards  per game. In 1957 the Lord Jeffs led the East in total offense with 391 yards per game.

McLaughry 's offense can be deceptive, but it isn't fancy. He doesn't use spreads or flankers to any great extent. "I think you win football games on fundamentals  and toughness. When you see us doing something fancy, it's just to please the  folks in the stands."

Basically, the Side-Saddle T would seem to be a happy combination of the best of  the single wing and the T. The tailback (Barry) stands almost directly behind the  center and will receive a direct pass from him about 20 per cent of the time. The  fullback (Choquette) stands further forward, behind the guard, but is not in a  position to receive the snap. The wingback (Carlin) stands outside the end and  is in a position to take a handoff, block, or go out for a pass.

The key man in the Side-Saddle T, of course, is the quarterback (Pannes). McLaughry listed three definite advantages which a Side-Saddle T quarterback has  working for him. "First of all," he said, "the quarterback can move up and down the line much faster than in the T, which requires a lateral movement. The T quarterback can only gain an average of six inches in his first step, while in the Side-Saddle T he can average four feet. The large sketch shows him taking but two steps to get out behind the end. Secondly, being half-turned, the quarterback can pitch out much quicker and then get ahead of the play faster as a blocker. Finally, he can also hand off much quicker on reserve spins to the fullback, for example, who will line up less than two yards from the ball."

The effects of the Side-Saddle T have already been felt in the Ivy League. The seven other Varsity coaches spent the spring bombarding the officials at Williams College for the films of the 1958 Amherst-Williams game. As Len Watters, Williams coach, said: "Had we charged the seven Ivy schools a rental fee for these films, we could darn near have balanced our athletic budget this spring."

*********** Every time the State Department trots out this “Admiral John Kirby” character, I think, “what a weasel.”

But appearances can be deceiving, because the guy is a retired admiral, a distinguished rank only a select few career naval officers ever achieve, so I figured he had to have done something right.

Was I wrong.  A Wikipedia check reveals that this guy spent just about this entire F-king navy career as a F-king PR guy!

Wow. Such a warrior.

Never went through the rigors of the Naval Academy.  Never been in harm's way. Never been shot at (or fired a shot in combat). Never had to sleep in a tent or eat an MRE. Never had to hump a 40-pound backpack on a 20-mile march. Never had to jump out of a plane or a helicopter.

Never had to do anything but churn out press releases. 

What he did exceptionally well, I suspect, was kiss the right tochuses.

Perfect preparation for his current job.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kirby_(admiral)

*********** A coach wrote me to say that he needed to do something more offensively  than run from one formation - said that for him, the “golden age of the Double Wing” was a thing of the past.

I wrote,

Nothing wrong with the Double Wing.  I love it.  Great offense.  But as you and I know, it’s often hard to sell it to some kids and their  parents, hard to sell it to administration and boosters.

It’s a lot like politics - you have two jobs.  The first job is to get elected;  the second is to do what you’ve been elected to do.

Problem is, you don’t get to do the second job until you’ve done the first one.

*********** Tom Jackson has announced he’ll retire from ESPN following this weekend’s Hall of Fame game.

I’ll miss him.  He was one of the first black former athletes to work on an ESPN studio  show, and while he was certainly a good player, he didn’t get his job because he’d made a big name for himself on the field; he defiitely didn’t get it because he acted like a jackass on the field or a criminal off the field.

Damn.  Time flies.  Tom Jackson is 65 years old.  Doesn’t seem that log ago he was playing linebacker for the Broncos.

*********** In Arcadia, Iowa, a parade celebrating the local fire department’s 100th anniversary featured a “float” consisting of a Hillary Clinton  lookalike (actually a guy in a red pantsuit) in a cage, but close enough).  Parade watchers were handed water balloons and, well…

http://www.carrollspaper.com/Content/Default/Homepage-Rotating-Articles/Article/Hillary-hit-hard/-3/449/22594

*********** Campbell Trophy  winner Ty Darlington, of Oklahoma, is featured in the National Football Foundation’s latest mailing, shown with enlarged photos of the ring he received.  The Campbell Award, named for the late Bill Campbell, nicknamed "the Coach of Silicon Valley," who made the switch from coaching (head coach at Columbia) to  business and attained the very summit of high tech - as VP of marketing for Apple, then CEO of Claris Corporation, then of Intuit Corporation, then named a member of the board of directors of Apple by Steve Jobs. At the time of his death in 2014, he was chairman of the board of trustees of Columbia.  (Not too bad for an old football coach!)

The Campbell Trophy is presented annually to a senior college football player who is judged "absolute best in the country for his academic success, football performance and exemplary community leadership."

Ty is the son of Rick Darlington, highly successful coach at Apopka, Florida High School.

http://www.footballfoundation.org/Programs/ScholarAthletes/TheWilliamVCampbellTrophy.aspx

TUESDAY,  AUGUST 2,  2016   “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”  Milton Friedman

The Heisman winner was Dick Kazmaier, who went to Harvard Business School instead of the N.F.L. There were ten of us around a central living room, where a sign on a wall asked what it might have been like to be a college roommate of Red Grange. As I said in an introduction at an event some fifty years later, we knew what it was like to live with Dick. He had better things to do than play gin rummy. He drew a tight circle around his teammates, roommates, and other friends. Across the years, he often said that what mattered to him most at Princeton was, in his words, “what I was part of: I was like every other student.” He alluded to the Heisman Trophy and all that went with it as “an unusual external part of the picture.”

He was enduringly superstitious. When he went down the tunnel into Palmer Stadium for football games, he was always the last player. It had been so augured. Somewhere. He told George the quarterback never to let him touch the ball on Princeton’s first play. In the old single wing, the tailback and the fullback always lined up where either one could take the snap. Dick was the tailback, Russ McNeil the fullback. After other teams somehow became aware of Kazmaier’s superstition, Russ McNeil, on the first play, went down like General Custer. The number that Kazmaier wore—42—became his lucky number. His Massachusetts license plate was KA42. His e-mail address was RWK4252@earthlink.net (’52 being his class year). When he was in a restaurant, if the check came to x dollars and forty-two cents he was made happier than he could ever be by the sum contents of ten thousand fortune cookies. Seat No. 42 in any kind of theatre or arena was a good-luck seat. His company, Kazmaier Associates, on Elm Street, in Concord, Massachusetts, seemed to have a tentacle in every aspect of most known sports, from the international licensing of basketball broadcasts to the manufacture and sale of baseball uniforms and football helmets. Dick’s parking space at Kazmaier Associates was No. 42. There were thirty-six spaces in the parking lot.

Like the Roman Empire in the early fifth century, Europe has allowed its defenses to crumble.  As its wealth has grown, so its military prowess has shrunk, along with its self-belief. It has grown decadent in its shopping malls and sports stadiums. At the same time it has opened its gates to outsiders who have coveted its wealth without renouncing their ancestral faith.

It is doubtless true to say that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Europe are not violent. But it is also true that the majority hold views not easily reconciled with the principles of our liberal democracies, including our novel notions about sexual equality and tolerance not merely of religious diversity but of nearly all sexual proclivities.  And it is thus remarkably easy for a violent minority to acquire their weapons and prepare their assaults on civilization within these avowedly peace-loving communities.

I do not know enough about the fifth century to be able to quote Romans who described each new act of barbarism as unprecedented, even when it had happened multiple times before; or who issued pious calls for solidarity after the fall of Rome, even when standing together meant falling together; or who issued threats of pitiless revenge, even when all they intended to do was to strike a melodramatic posture.

I do know that 21st-century Europe has itself to blame for the mess it is in now…

“Romans before the fall,” wrote historian Bryan Ward-Perkins, “were as certain as we are today that their world would continue forever substantially unchanged.  They were wrong.  We would be wise not to repeat their complacency.”

“You’re not going to be happy with me,” Kristy McCartney told Aunese when she broke the news to him. She was right. Aunese was so unthrilled, he refused to have anything to do with her. His friends closed around, recommending Kristy have an abortion and not tell her parents.  Kristy, heartbroken, told her parents.

Kristy’s mother, Lyndi, sat down and penned this letter to Aunese:

“Hi Sal,

“I wanted to talk to you in person so I could give you a big hug. . . . I know you’re hurting, too, and I know it’s very scary and difficult to face. I want you to have confidence that the decisions you’ll be making . . . will be totally acceptable no matter what they are–with two exceptions. No quitting school and no quitting the team. These are vital to your future and personal well-being.

“Kristy is so deeply concerned for your future and doesn’t want to hamper your success in any way. We feel the same and I hope this letter will convey warm feelings and no judgments.

“Coach Mac and I think you are a terrific person, and it is not our desire to pressure you or punish you in any way. What you and Kristy are experiencing is life. Perhaps it’s not what either of you planned, but a moment of passion has created a miracle within Kristy, and I know that within Kristy’s heart that moment was filled with love. . . .

“I really need to express my feelings as Kristy’s mom. She is my treasure, my beautiful little girl, her Dad and I love her with every fiber of our being. We have prayed for a loving Christian mate for our children.

“It’s important that the mate she chooses has a lifelong, loving commitment, that she is his treasure and he is hers, that they live a life that gives love and warmth and joy, that they be connected in soul, heart and purpose. . . .

“I don’t see two people getting married if the love isn’t there, just because they created a baby.

“If you and Kristy don’t love each other, don’t get married. We don’t need an unhappy life for either of you. . . . If you or Kristy want our help, we’ll be there for you both. . . .

“Sal, if there’s anything I’d ask of you, as Kristy’s mom, it would be just to be her friend. You don’t have to marry her. You don’t have to love her. You don’t have to date her. You don’t have to be responsible for her or the baby. You and your friends are her closest friends, share this precious secret. Kristy needs you, just to be kind, caring friends. Remember you are loved.”

In a P.S., she added: “I have to say I’m deeply disappointed that you and (your friends) have advised Kristy to kill a defenseless baby. Thank God your parents did not do that to you for the world would be a sadder place without the four of you in it.”

St. Paul couldn’t have said it better.

FRIDAY,  JULY 29,  2016   “Political reformer: one who wants his chance at the trough.”  Malcolm Forbes

As increasing numbers of parents keep their children from playing tackle football for safety reasons, the National Football League and other groups have sought to reassure them that the game is becoming less dangerous.

No initiative has received more backing and attention than Heads Up Football, a series of in-person and online courses for coaches to learn better safety procedures and proper tackling drills. The N.F.L. funds and heavily promotes the program. The league and U.S.A. Football, youth football’s governing body, which oversees the program, have sold Heads Up Football to thousands of leagues and parents as having been proved effective — telling them that an independent study showed the program reducing injuries by 76 percent and concussions by about 30 percent.

That study, published in July 2015, showed no such thing, a review by The New York Times has found. The research and interviews with people involved with it indicate, rather, that Heads Up Football showed no demonstrable effect on concussions during the study, and significantly less effect on injuries over all, than U.S.A. Football and the league have claimed in settings ranging from online materials to congressional testimony.

“Everybody who is involved in trying to improve the safety of youth sports, when parents such as myself are so desperate to have effective solutions, has the responsibility to make sure that any information that they are putting out to the public is accurate, is comprehensive, and is based on legitimate science,” said Elliot F. Kaye, the chairman of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, who has worked with U.S.A. Football and the N.F.L. on improving helmet safety. “It does not appear that this met that standard.”

The N.F.L. and its players’ union formed U.S.A. Football in 2002 to oversee the sport and help it grow among children ages 6 to 14. But participation has dropped precipitously in recent years, from 3 million in 2010 to about 2.2 million last fall — a decline generally attributed to concerns about injuries, particularly to the brain.

In 2013, in consultation with the N.F.L., U.S.A. Football started Heads Up Football, whose primary goals were to improve safety and reassure parents. The program requires one “player safety coach” per team to attend a clinic that focuses on concussion recognition and response, blocking and tackling techniques, proper hydration and other safety topics. A team’s other coaches must take online courses in those subjects as well.

In March 2014, the N.F.L. gave U.S.A. Football $45 million, in large part to get more youth leagues to adopt the program.

While U.S.A. Football is said to operate independently from the N.F.L., the league is its primary source of operating funds, and some researchers consider the two almost indistinguishable.

“In my mind, U.S.A. Football and the N.F.L. are one,” said Dawn Comstock, a professor of epidemiology and the primary researcher into high school sports injuries at the Colorado School of Public Health. “If I’m talking with one about something involving youth football safety, my perception is I’m talking to both.”

Dear Mr. Silver:
Last week, I met with constituents from China who outlined the Chinese government practice of forcefully harvesting vital organs as part of their oppression of religious minorities. Meanwhile, the NBA will start selling tickets for preseason games in China next week.

Is the NBA implying that China’s abhorrent violation of basic human rights is acceptable, but North Carolina saying men shouldn’t use the girl’s locker room is a bridge too far? What is the NBA’s true priority? The unmistakable hypocrisy is clear to me.

Please justify how you can be engaged with a country who [sic] has flagrantly violated human rights with forced abortions and selling vital human organs. There seems to be a gross lack of judgment and moral clarity.

Sincerely,

Robert Pittenger
Member of Congress

TUESDAY,  JULY 26,  2016   "Without promotion, something terrible happens. Nothing."   P. T. Barnum

***********  Answering the question:    What position does the guy on the right play?

Josh Montgomery -  Berwick, Louisiana
Tim Brown - Athens, Alabama
Adam Wesoloski - Pulaski, Wisconsin

The  "guy" was the Cleveland Browns' great quarterback, Otto Graham.  The dapper coach was the legendary Paul Brown.

Coach Montgomery was skeptical when I wrote him that those Browns teams of the late 40s and early to mid 50s were possibly the best teams of all time.

No way, he said, that the football then could have been as good back then.

True, I agreed. The football wasn't better.  Not even close. But those Browns teams were head and shoulders above everyone else, in a  class all their own.

(Graham, Coach Montgomery pointed out, later wore #14.   And the Browns'  Hall of Fame fullback, Marion Motley, switched from wearing #76 to #36. )

Motley, shown at left,  played at 6-1, 240. He was a real handful as a fullback, but he sometimes doubled as a linebacker, where he was considered every bit as good.

*********** Denny Green died.  He was a football pioneer, just the second black man to become head coach of a major college football team.

He was a Pennsylvania guy - grew up in Harrisburg - and played his college ball at Iowa.  (It should be noted, too, that he graduated from Iowa. Cum laude - that means “with honors” - with a major in finance.

He played some ball in the CFL with the BC Lions, then embarked on a coaching career.

After a series of assistant coaching jobs, he was hired in 1981 as head coach at Northwestern.  He was only 32, and just the second black man to head a Division IA (FBS) team.  In 1982, he was Big Ten Coach of the Year.

In 1989, he took over as head coach at Stanford, and in his three years on The Farm, he beat Cal three times. In his final season, Stanford went 8-3, their best record in five years.

He spent ten years as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, and three years are head coach of the Arizona Cardinals.

People got their laughs at his post-game conference when he said of the Bears, “They’re are who we thought they were,” which is all some people know about him.  That’s unfortunate, because he was well thought of among his peers.

Said Tony Dungy, who coached under him in Minnesota, “I’ve never been around a head coach who cared so much about the members of his staff, and wanted to put his staff in position to succeed the way he did.

“Denny was an excellent football coach. He took struggling college teams, Northwestern and Stanford, and made them so much better. He got the Vikings to two conference title games. He was terrific in raising the Arizona program. But to me his legacy is that of a coach who made other coaches better.”

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/07/24/nfl-tony-dungy-dennis-green-remembered

*********** White privilege, Part Two - Orphan Trains

Remember my little story about the Breaker Boys?  How about this little tale from the history that they no longer teach in history classes...

My son-in-law’s grandfather, Bob Tiffany, spent much of his life in Abilene, Texas,  where he settled after World War II, but he grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota.

His father had arrived there by train.  A special train.

He lived in New York, but when his immigrant  parents died and left him orphaned, he and his brother and sister were sent by train to Minnesota, where a family, eager for help on the farm, adopted them.

They were part of what came to be called the Orphan Train movement.

Between 1854 and 1929, more than 200,000 youngsters were shipped by train to various parts of the country.

Sometimes, they were pre-chosen, somewhat on the order of today’s Internet dating services.

Sometimes, the kids would arrive in a town and be put on a stage and looked over by prospective parents in a rather cold-hearted meatmarket fashion..

And sometimes, when adoptive parents could only afford to take on one child, siblings were separated.

Sometimes, the kids were simply seen as cheap labor, but as often as not, they found loving homes.  In almost all cases, they were better off than if they’d remained, homelesss and orphaned, fending for themselves on the streets of New York:

In 1850 roughly 15,000 children were homeless on the streets of New York City. They lived in alleys, under bridges and slept on sewage grates. Those old enough to work sold newspapers, shined shoes, picked rags or labored in dangerous factories and sweat shops. They were left to fend for themselves, to join gangs for protection, and grow up instantly in an environment of filth and violence. Families simply could not afford to support all the children they had. Written in trembling hand, a note pinned to a baby abandoned at an orphanage read, "Take care of Johnny, for God's sake. I cannot."

FRIDAY,  JULY 22,  2016     “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there's the United States of America." Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, 2004

*********** Give Browns’ running back Isaiah Crowell a little credit. He obviously listened to advice.  After jeopardizing his pro football career by posting an absolutely vile illustration of a police officer having his throat cut, he at least attempted to make amends by attending the funeral of one of the Dallas police officers killed in the mass sniper attack.

Crowell had deleted the Facebook post shortly after publishing it, but, alas, too many people had already taken - and circulated - screenshots. 

Whether the guy is sincere is not the point.  The point is that at a time when cooler heads were needed, he did something terribly provocative,  and now his repentant actions may have helped calm things down -  at the very least, they’ve enabled him to stay in pro football, stay on the Browns, and concentrate on his job.

*********** The Vikings’ new $1.1 billion stadium finished and ready to go.  Six weeks ahead of schedule, if you can believe that.

It’s a beauty. It’s twice the size of the Metronome, which it replaced, and in deference to Minnesota winters, it has a roof -  but a transparent one, giving spectators the illusion that they are outdoors..

The Vikings pulled all kinds of levers to get their fans to pay for it - sure hope they were pleased with the $348 million from the state and the $150 million from the city. Now, they’re going to repay the taxpayers by opening up the stadium with - a f—king soccer game! Before the Vikings season even go to camp! I am not Sh--ing you.

The very first sports event to take place in glorious (it really is), new US Bank Stadium will be a soccer match between Chelsea FC and AC Milan. (I think I have the names right, but if not, t.s.)

Talk about jinxing yourself. This can’t bring good luck. You Vikings fans - yes, as your payment for bending over, you will get to host a Super Bowl in 2018.  But if your Vikings turn into the Chicago Cubs of the NFL, you'll know why.

***********Hello coach!  I trust all is well with you!

I know that you are focused on the "Open Wing" but I have a question concerning the "Spread Cat".
 
Would it be a sound practice to pull both the backside guard and tackle when running a power play, and expect the Q.B., after he hands off, to block/interrupt the chase defenders? I see, in the "Open Wing DVD" that both players pull when running "West - 6-C." although the Q.B. does not attempt to block.
 
Thanks, coach.  Your advice is always valued.
 
BTW - The Open Wing, as you already know, is super!
 
Hi Coach-

In “West 6-C,” the QB reads the chasing defensive end.

In Spread Cat, you could certainly try reading it, as we do on West 6-C, but I suspect that the numbers will not be in your favor -  they will have too many people left on the backside for you  to be successful. First, there would be a man on the outside shoulder of your pulling tackle who may or may not chase him - that’s the guy your QB would read.

But even if that guy chased, and your QB kept, there would also be an outside linebacker type who lined up on your running back - and assuming that he stays home when your back takes off, his assignment will be to watch your quarterback.  So I think that the numbers would not be in your favor.

But they are in your favor on the playside, so run the power (or, technically, “O”) even if you don’t pull your tackle.

*********** You need any evidence that the media has a liberal bias?  The story of the murder of a cop in Kansas City, Kansas was buried on page 12 of the Oregonian, the major daily* in The Peoples’ Republic of Portland.  (It’s not really a “daily” anymore -  it’s only printed four days a week.)

*********** You wonder what’s wrong with America?  Start here: I heard a Cleveland police officer say that on the streets outside the Republican Convention there were 20 protestors - and 80 members of the news media.  A guy who planned to set an American flag on fire made sure to notify the media first.  And so, true to their code that when there isn’t any news it’s up to them to go out and make some, the slavish lackeys of the  left showed up, cameras at the ready.

WHAT POSITION DOES/DID #60 PLAY?






*********** Called my old arena coach Babe Parilli, 86 and has a great memory still. Babe coached me in 1994 and 1996 in Anaheim and Las Vegas respectively. Where do I start when you mention a legend? He said he played in 3 bowl games, Cotton, rose, and sugar bowl If I remember correctly. Listen to this, how many men in America right now say they played for both Vince Lombardi and Bear Bryant? His memory was classic Babe. Says when he was Namaths back up, the year after the super bowl Babe says they should have won the next year also. The score was 3-0 with the ball near the goal line and Babe told Weeb Ewbank to go for it but Weeb played it safe and went for field goal. Babe was also the head coach In the World Football League and said they tried to compete with the NFL and that was their demise. I also heard Terry Bradshaw speak and he said his best qb coach was Babe Parilli. Babe also coached Craig Morton in the super bowl for the Broncos against the cowboys.

Babe is 86, lives in Denver, and just fought thru some chemo and he says he cant wait to get back on the golf course.

I bought his rookie card and mailed it to him and he signed it, Ill send you the pic.

Hugh, you said you coached in the WFL, Philadelphia?  I believe Babe coached the New York team

thanks

Pete Porcelli
Watervliet, New Yofk

Pete,

He was definitely Sweet Kentucky Babe.

Kentucky hasn’t had many great years in football, but it sure did when the Bear was their coach and the Babe was their QB.

He was one of the very first of the great quarterbacks to come out of Western Pennsylvania (Johnny Lujack of Notre Dame may have been the first).

Very glad to hear he’s doing well.

He was the first coach of the New York Stars, and I remember meeting him at a press conference in the early days of the WFL.

He was accompanied by their “GM”,  a woman named Dusty Rhodes, who was not a bad looker.  No further comment.

A coaching friend named Mark Kaczmarek, from Davenport, Iowa, played center for the Stars under Parilli.

*********** My friend Doc Hinger is bursting with pride:

On Saturday night, August 5, ESPN “SportsCenter on the Road” will be in his hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania to spend three hours broadcasting, among other things, a Pittsburgh Steelers’ intrasquad  game.

For years, the Steelers have made Latrobe - and St. Vincent’s College there - their training camp headquarters, and much to the delight of Latrobe merchants, Steelers’ fans from all corners of the country descend on Latrobe for the two weeks or so of camp.

A full 14 of the Steelers’ practices are open to the public, and the annual Saturday night intra-squad game is always sold out.  Tickets are $5 for adults, $2 for kids or seniors, and all money goes to Latrobe Area High School activities.  Imagine - an NFL team actually leaving money on the table!  Giving it away, even! And people wonder why the Steelers are as close as any NFL team can come to being a beloved member of the family.

The ESPN broadcast crew will be in the Latrobe area for several days in advance of the broadcast, filming local points of interest.  Latrobe takes pride in being the place where the banana split was invented.  Latrobe is the home of Mister Rodgers of TV Fame, and of Arnold Palmer, perhaps the most famous golfer ever to play the game (and the inspiration for the drink by the same name). I’m guessing we’ll see Latrobe Country Club, where Arnold Palmer’s dad, Deacon Palmer, was the pro and the greenskeeper.  And possibly even the old tractor, made famous in Pennzoil commercials in which Arnold starred.

http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/10816906-74/latrobe-fans-college

*********** A kerfuffle has erupted over the fact that a “person” named Dana Zzyym has been denied a United States passport because of refusal to check one of the two boxes (male or female) denoting his gender.  See, he doesn't "indentify as either male or female.

The poor thing.  He’s trapped in the rigid choice between two genders, when, as all children in our Washington public schools are about to be taught, gender is a “social construct.”  And hey - other oh, so enlightened people have been quoted as calling gender “fluid,” depending, I suppose, on your mood at the time.

Anyhow,  thanks to this misfit and his lawsuit - and a sympathetic judge -  taxpayers are likely to have to fork over megamillions to overhaul our passport regulations.

Hmmm.  Maybe, before we worry about shipping illegal aliens back,  we could first find a place that will give Mr./Ms.  Zzyym a passport more to his/her liking.  And ship his/her sorry ass there.

*********** A year or so ago, Jarryd Hayne had the people Down Under all excited about his tryout with the 49ers.  Hayne, a rugby star, showed flashes of promise, but never quite panned out.

Now it turns out that his next stated goal - to represent his native Fiji in Olympic rugby - will also go unfulfilled, with the news that he’s been cut from the squad.

http://espn.go.com/rugby/story/_/id/16964196/jarryd-hayne-cut-fiji-rugby-sevens-squad-rio-olympics

*********** I consider David Maraniss, biographer of Vince Lombardi ("When Pride Still Mattered") to be one of America's great writers.

I just got this from my daughter Vicky, whose daughter (my granddaughter, Annie) will be their fourth child to attend Vanderbilt:

Hey, guess what? The Vanderbilt freshman book (they all read it and then discuss it in groups) is Strong Inside by Andrew Maraniss, David's son and a Vandy grad! It's about Perry Wallace, a Vandy basketball player who was the first black player in the SEC.

The will to fight requires anger, not sadness.

If we call what’s happening to us at the hands of  Islamic Terrorists “tragedy,” then we’ve lost our collective stones, and we might just as well roll over and let it keep happening.

*********** Mike Lude celebrated his 93rd birthday recently at an event on Bound Brook, New Jersey.  On hand to celebrate it with him were 35 of his former players from the University of Delaware, where Mike was Wing-T inventor Dave Nelson’s offensive line coach and his chief recruiter. 

Quite a thing when guys think so much of their old coach to honor him like this, especially when you consider that Mike left Delaware in 1962 to become head coach at Colorado State. 

He hadn’t coached any of those guys in 55 years!

*********** Tim Duncan announced his retirement recently, and pro basketball is really going to miss him.  You may not have noticed him in games, because wasn’t the flashy type, and he was never  one to draw attention to himself, but he  is going to be missed.

What a team player!  Not many people realize that for the past several years, he has played for far less money than a player of his stature could have commanded, in order for the Spurs to have more money under the salary cap to pay other players more.

In Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, Ben Cohen told how, when Duncan was a student - yes, a real student - at Wake Forest, majoring in psychology, he served as a research assistant to Mark Leary, a social psychologist, in writing his book, “Aversive Interpersonal Behaviors.”

Leary asked Duncan to write a chapter on the subject of egotism, and some of what he wrote helps to explain why he became one of basketball’s great team players.

“Egotistical behavior,” he wrote, “is behavior that conveys to others that the individual holds an exaggerated perception of himself. Few interactions are a annoying, exasperating and unpleasant as the with people whom we perceive are behaving egotistically.”

In summary, he wrote, “Simply put, we don’t like egotistical people.”

When the book was published, the publisher gave Leary four free copies, and after keeping one for himself, he gave one to each of his three assistants -  but not before Wake’s NCAA compliance department could get the NCAA to rule that it was okay for Duncan to receive the gift of a book for which he had written a chapter!

Leary, justifiably proud of his best-known student, told Cohen, “He’s probably the best-paid person to write any psychological chapter or article ever.”

*********** Not that I’m an Income-Inequality geek or anything like that, but if I were, the first place I’d go to demonstrate wouldn’t be Wall Street.  How many of the tools who’d vote for one of these “Down With the One Per Centers” even knows where/what the hell “Wall Street” is, anyhow?

No, I’d go after professional athletes.  Perhaps the reason no politician has is because so many highly-paid professional athletes are people “of color.”

I began thinking about this because it was baseball’s All-Star game time - a game that we used to think was at least as important as the Home Run Derby that precedes it -  and I read about “our” Seattle Mariners’ Robinson Cano.

Now, this is a guy who comes from the Dominican Republic, a poor, poor country, and I am not going to argue that he shouldn’t  make as much money as he can while he’s able to.

But as I said, if I were the sort to go after a privileged group, I’d start with guys like Robinson Cano, who claims to own “a couple of thousand” pairs of Air Jordans, in innumerable colors and shades and patterns.

This is sartorially important, according to Cano: “It’s good whenever I want to wear something with a shirt I don’t have to worry about if I have to get a sneaker to match this shirt.”

Yup.  That’s where I’d start.



*********** I just heard a guy refer to D.B. Cooper as “the guy who pulled off one of the most daring skyjackings in history.”

“Pulled off,” my ass.

On a stormy November night in 1971, a guy (supposedly) named D. B. (or Dan) Cooper, having been paid a large sum of money after hijacking a plane, jumped out into the rainy darkness over Southwest Washington state. (He was smart enough to have hijacked a Boeing 727,  the only commercial airliner with a real exit, enabling him to parachute out safely.)

“Pulled off,” they say? Not a chance, I say.  Take a look at the map above. The white area to the left of "Gifford Pinchot National Forest" is snow-capped Mount St. Helens; the one underneath is snow-capped Mt. Adams.  Somehwere in the middle of that vast, roadless area is almost certainly  where D.B. Cooper wound up.

I happen to live just east of Vancouver, Washington,  within 100 miles or so of the place from  he exited the aircraft.  It is a several-thousand-square-mile area of rugged, heavily forested mountains, with not a single east-west or north-south road passing through.  

Inexperienced hikers get lost in there all the time - in the summer.  Late fall and early winter are out of the question.

Other than the occasional logging road, there’s no way out. 

Not that Cooper ever had a chance to make it out.

Back in 1980, nearly nine years after his escapade, some of the cash Cooper had been given washed up on a Columbia River beach, not far from where we live, suggesting that something happened to Cooper to separate him from the money.

For anyone who’s flown over the area, it’s not hard to believe he got hung up and never got out of the woods alive.

The tree cover is thick, and where  there aren’t giant trees to catch a parachutist, there are enormous clear-cuts (areas that have been logged over) that are now covered with sharp, thorny blackberry vines as thick as your arm,  growing in a hellish tangle.  It would be absolutely impossible for anyone who fell into the middle of one of those mountain blackberry patches to escape. 

The belief among many of the locals - with which I concur - is that while so entrapped, he involuntarily "entered the food chain" via predators and/or scavengers, and over the next several years the money, of no interest to the animals, eventually made its way through a series of streams  into the Columbia.


*********** Over the past four years, Commissioner Roger Goodell was paid $145 million -  $65 million more than Drew Brees, the highest-paid NFL player during that time. 

Goodell may have his detractors, but he has helped make his employers, the owners, wealthy beyond imagination.

Forbes magazine’s list of the  50 most valuable sports franchises includes 27 NFL teams.

Number one in the world:  the Dallas Cowboys. They’re valued at FOUR BILLION DOLLARS (!) putting them ahead of  Real Madrid ($3.65 billion), Barcelona ($3.55 billion), the New York Yankees ($3.4 billion) and Manchester United ($3.32 billion).

This was the first time since 2011 that a non-soccer team has topped the list.

The most astounding example of the league’s money-making power was the news that back in February, CBS and NBC contacted to pay a total of $900 million for the rights to broadcast ten games each over the next two years.  On THURSDAY nights.

Let the players and coaches  bitch all they like about short preparation time and short recovery time, blah, blah, blah, , but then show them the math:  that’s $14 million (!) per year (!)  per team (!) just for having to play on Thursday night once or twice over a two year period.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2016/07/13/dallas-cowboys-head-the-worlds-50-most-valuable-sports-teams-of-2016/#3eb5a9656bd7

*********** Ever have a kid who is so good that you just look at him, in practice or games, and go, “Wow?”  Ever wonder why other kids playing the same position don’t see see the same thing you do - and don’t understand why they’re not the ones starting?

All this time, without us coaches knowing it, there’s been an explanation for it. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect,  and it’s named for the two Cornell University psychologists who first researched it and wrote about it.

It describes people who are unskilled and unaware of it.

Seems to me we feed it with all the trophies-for-everybody, nobody-wins-because-we-don’t-want-anyone-to-lose, everybody-is-special, you-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be crap that we expose kids to from the time they’re little.

I’m hoping that Dunning and Kruger aren’t finished, and that their next work will be a study of the phenomenon of parents who spend tons of money on camps and personal coaches and travel teams because they’re too dumb to realize that their kids aren’t as good as they think they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
 

*********** Disclosure: I am partial to Temple football. Temple is in Philadelphia and I, despite many years and miles of separation, am a native Philadelphian.  And while Philadelphians are hard on their teams, when outsiders oppose them, we are fiercely loyal.  We circle the wagons. Except when they play each other, we want Philly teams to be successful.  To be Big Time.

Nevertheless, I have to admit that ever since Temple announced plans to build an “on-campus” stadium, I’ve been skeptical.

First of all, while Temple football has been reasonably respectable over the past decade or so, its default condition over the years has been “struggling.”

I grew up maybe five miles from old Temple Stadium, and as kids, on Friday nights, partly because of the novelty of night football (I am old, remember), we’d ride the the “S” bus out to watch the “Als” (that’s “Owls” in Phillyspeak) play the likes of Albright one week and Syracuse the next.

Temple football was really good in the late 30s - Temple played in the very first Sugar Bowl game. Its coach - a fella named Warner.  Glenn Warner, aka Pop Warner. Two of the defensive stalwarts of the Philadelphia Eagles’ 1948 championship team, Mike Jarmoluk and Bucko Kilroy were Temple guys.  Also Philly guys, as were most Temple players in those years. 

But Temple football was on life support during the 50s,  at one point losing 21 in a row. It was a little better in the 60s, playing .500 ball (45-44-4 to be exact).

There was a 13-year spell from 1970 through 1982  when Wayne Hardin, who’d coached Heisman Trophy winners Joe Bellino and Roger Staubach at Navy, went 80-52-3, but he would be the last coach to leave North Broad Street with a winning record. 

When he left, Temple football declined. 

He was followed by 30-year-old Bruce Arians (the same one).  In six years (1983-1988), Arians went  22-44.

Jerry Berndt followed.  From 1989 through 1992, he went 11-33.

Ron Dickerson was 8—47 from 1993-97.

Bobby Wallace  was 19-65 from 1998-2005

During that time, Temple football hit rock bottom when the Big East kicked them out.

The current revival began in 2006 with the hiring of Al Golden.  He went 1-11 his first year, but in his last two years, 2009 and 2010, his Owls were 9-4 and 8-4, good enough for Miami to hire him away.

Steve Addazio went 9-4 in 2011 and 13-20 in two years, and he was off to Boston College.

The current coach, Matt Rhule, is 18-20 in his three years, but the 2015 Owls went 10-4, only the second 10-win season in school history - and beat Penn State.

But there is no guarantee that Temple, which has gone 48-40 over the past seven seasons, will continue to play the kind of football that enabled it last year to finally beat Penn State after years of futility (Temple is a state school, too).

The second factor, every bit as important as the quality of football, is Temple’s location.  Temple is, uh, an urban school.  Broad Street, Philadelphia’s main north-south drag, cuts right through the campus, but if you didn’t see the large “Temple” banners hanging from street lights, you wouldn’t know it.

Temple’s is a concrete campus, and it’s surrounded on all sides by, to be blunt, rough neighborhoods.   There is next to no on-campus housing, and the notion of living “off-campus” as students do at most colleges is too dangerous to contemplate.    Every day, tens of thousands of students descend on the campus - and then they go home.

If they want to get a college degree - Temple is well thought-of - they have to leave the safety of their homes and fight the traffic and the parking and crime-ridden surrounding area.  They have no choice.  But It’s hard to imagine them surviving a week there and then voluntarily returning on Saturday to watch a football game.

It’s impossible for me to imagine an average fan, a guy wanting to take his kids to a college football game, even considering it.


*********** The first weekend of Pokemon Go was an eye-opener for me.  I saw people going into the cemetery across the street.  I saw people parking in dangerous places.  And I saw a guy on a motorbike stop in the middle of a street, holding his phone out in front of him.

From what I read, nothing - not signs, not barking dogs, not heavy traffic - can deter these fools in search of virtual “creatures” whom they can “capture.”

Trust me - It’s only a matter of time before someone gets shot while trespassing on someone’s property at 2 in the morning.

And then, the President of the United States will appear on television and - using the word “I” innumerable times - lecture us on how it’s no longer safe for our children to play childrens’ games and that it’s all because of our gun culture.

And then we’ll find out that the guy who was shot was 30 years old and having an affair with the shooter’s wife.