FRIDAY,  AUGUST 18,  2017  - “God protects children, drunkards and the United States.” Otto von Bismarck

*********** A friend who’s out of coaching for the moment - he’s an AD - told me of a conversation he had with his principal:

“He brought up the disturbing lack of numbers out for football this season (22).  But then added... "once the boys figure out that they're running a spread offense now (instead of the Double Wing) I'm sure more of them will come out for football."  I bit my tongue.  But couldn't help remind him that I had 35 boys out for football and that we won more games in one year than they had in a spread offense the four previous years.

He could have pointed out to the principal that every additional player attracted by the spread offense will be an “aspiring wide receiver.”  Not sure how much it helps to have 33 kids when 20 of them will quit if they have to play anything other than wide receiver.


*********** Ran across this and KNEW it was something I would have to share with you.  Can't wait to hear what you have to say about it.

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

Here it is, in a nutshell:

According to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, 17-year old Robbie Lopez is suing his former high school head baseball coach at Los Altos HS (CA) for benching him during his senior year. The lawsuit, which is asking for $150,000 in damages, claims that the coach opting not to play Robbie displayed a pattern of “harassment and bullying.”

“For over four (4) months and 14 games, (Robbie Lopez) has been benched and not (had) the opportunity to show his offensive or defensive capabilities,” the lawsuit reads, according to the SGVT article.

http://footballscoop.com/news/former-hs-player-suing-coach-claiming-benching-form-bullying/
   
I can’t imagine that the kid will win, but still, if it gets to a jury anything is possible.  

In the meantime, though, as is usually the case in our litigious society, when you're sued, even when you win, you lose,  because you had to pay to defend yourself, and on top of that it’s going to cost you in time and stress.

The only solution, which America’s trial lawyers will never allow to get through Congress (if you know what I mean), is “Loser Pays”: you're still free to sue me, as you always have been, but if you lose, you pay all costs, including my legal fees.  No more contingency fee lawsuits, where it costs the plaintiff absolutely nothing, win or lose, and the plaintiff’s attorney works for a large percentage of any settlement or jury award.  That's why we hear about so many frivolous lawsuits. With nothing to lose, the plaintiff has every incentive to sue, and absolutely no reason not to.

*********** Hi Coach,

I was so sorry to hear of the passing Coach Mac (Dick McPherson). He was a class act and great personality. He came from Old Town, Maine a place where I taught school and coached football  from 1969 until 1981. He was regarded as a living legend in the community but never forgot his roots. He was very approachable and we went to Syracuse for clinics on several occasions. Each time he gave us unprecedented access and was a perfect host.

In the small world department fast forward to today. We retired and now live in Rangeley Maine and became friends with Zenna Innis, who's college roommate and best friend married Coach Mac. So I was able to follow him in his latter years through the period of failing health. When  she mentioned she knew me to him he remembered me and commented to her about my years in Old Town as being a good coach. Wow even at my age it made an impression.

He will be missed and his legacy of being a true gentleman will stand the test of time.

Jack Tourtillotte
Rangeley, Maine

Jack,

I always liked him, and I appreciate what he did to revive Syracuse football.

I liked the freeze option that he ran.

And I liked his Down East accent!

*********** I’m getting tired of writing about great coaches who’ve left us.

Now it’s Frank Broyles. 

I wrote this about him in July, 2003, when he was a “QUIZ” item:
 
A native of Decatur,  Georgia, Frank Broyles  played his college football as a quarterback for Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech, while lettering in basketball and baseball as well. After graduating from Tech with a degree in industrial management, he decided to become a coach.

He paid his dues, serving as an assistant at Baylor, Texas, Florida, Georgia Tech and Georgia before becoming a head coach at Missouri in 1957.

But after just one year there, a 5-4-1 season, he was hired by Arkansas, where he would remain for the next 19 years. When he retired after the 1976 season, he was the winningest coach in Razorbacks' history, winning 144 games, losing 58 and tieing 5.

His teams won seven Southwest Conference championships, and played in 10 bowl games. His unbeaten 1964 team was voted national champion by the Football Writers of America, and he and Ara Parseghian shared AFCA Coach of the Year honors.

After retiring as football coach, he spent several years as a top analyst on college football broadcasts, as well as serving as athletic director at Arkansas.

Under his leadership, Arkansas became a national power in numerous sports. He  oversaw the expansion of the football stadium to 72,000 and in 1990, he was instrumental in Arkansas' move from the the Southwest Conference to the Southeastern Conference, setting into motion the events that led to the breakup of the SWC, then second only to the Big Ten in age.

In 1983 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame,

More than 25 of his former assistants went on to become head coaches, among them Doug Dickey, Hayden Fry, Joe Gibbs, Jimmy Johnson, Johnny Majors, Jackie Sherrill and Barry Switzer.

“Coaching tree?” My friend Joe Gutilla wrote.  “That's more like a Sequoia.”  Yes - and add to that the coaching trees of those men.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/columnist/george-schroeder/2017/08/15/frank-broyles-appreciation/569959001/


*********** I’m on the beach this year - literally, because we still have our place at Ocean Shores, and figuratively, because with my head coach Todd Bridge taking an AD job, I chose to sit out.  I was spoiled by the great coaching climate we had.

I must confess that I miss the actual coaching.  But I sure don’t miss what high school coaching is becoming.

It has hit Oregon.  It was inevitable.  AAU Football - 7-on-7 Leagues, that is -  is growing, and along with its growth is its increased use by high school coaches as a vehicle for poaching talent from other schools.

http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/index.ssf/2017/08/football_coaches_blame_surge_i.html#incart_most-read_

QUIZ ANSWER: Fred Gehrke was a running back/defensive back (two -way football)  player for the Rams following World War II.  He’d been an art major in college (Utah), and he’d worked in the offseason as an illustrator. After the 1947 season he convinced the Rams’ coach that the team’s drab, brown helmets needed some kind of design on them.  With the coach’s approval, he painted one of  helmets dark blue, with yellow ram’s horns, and showed it to the team’s owner, Dan Reeves.  Reeves liked the design, and cleared it with the league office (which told him "You're the owner; do what you want!”).  During the summer of 1948,   Fred Gehrke  was paid $1 a helmet to paint the team’s 75 (leather) helmets. 

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING FRED GEHRKE…
JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUSIANA - I assume the picture you provided of him is in his Maryland helmet? It looks much better than that airbrushed diarrhea their helmets feature now.
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA


http://toddradom.com/athletes-as-artists-andrew-mccutchen-and-the-1948-la-rams/

 http://theramswire.usatoday.com/2017/08/08/nfl-los-angeles-rams-helmet-concept-design-artist/

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/news/rams-move-los-angeles-st-louis-la-coliseum-stan-kroenke-helmets-uniforms/819wgb51t6gp1qp0y7h5xl8r9


QUIZ -  He was a coal miner’s son from a tiny town called Yatesboro, Pennsylvania.  At Maryland, he was a 6-3, 225 All-American center-middle linebacker on teams that finished 10-1 in both his junior and senior years. In his senior year the Terps ranked third in the nation,  losing only to  Number 1-ranked Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl after  wins over teams like UCLA, LSU and Clemson.  As you can see, he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He finished fifth in the 1955 Heisman voting, and was drafted first (fourth overall) by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1956 draft. He played 10 years in the NFL, with the Eagles and the Redskins.  He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.

TUESDAY,  AUGUST 15,  2017  - “Generals are not known for a lack of self-confidence.” Peggy Noonan

He and the OC rubbed me the wrong way in our first coaches meeting in April when they both spoke ignorantly negative comments about the Double Wing...too numerous for me to type but during this meeting I felt that my offense that had proven its worth and success was under attack and I held myself in check that day and just nodded my head but was absorbing everything they said like a sponge.
 
It almost felt like they were attacking my child.  But I held back and didn't walk out of the meeting but they stained my thoughts of them being open minded coaches.  Add to that  the fact that I was then handed a thick playbook of Spread 10, 11 & 22 personnel packages and was asked "can you teach this?"  My response was, "you guys saw my HUDL footage...I ran a version of Spread without compromising my core belief of a Power running game." (He was referring to Open Wing- HW)
 
Truth be told, the Spread playbook I was handed in my opinion was by far inferior to anything that I have gotten from you or other materials I have collected over my years.  I was used to how detailed and descriptive your playbooks are, but this one was simply formations and diagrams, no real rules, no real description.  I felt like I was handed a playbook that was drawn up on the fly or something straight from a Madden video game.

*********** After hearing about Ezekiel Elliott’s six-day suspension, Rush Limbaugh said,  “They’re going to have to legalize domestic violence or the NFL’s not going to have any players.”

***********  Not much news coming out of Long Island after the tragic death of the young football player who had a log fall on him.

Someone suggested to me that  Marines migth have been involved in the drill somehow.

Five or six years ago at North Beach  we had the Marines come in during spring practice and run our kids through some PT (Physical Training).  We thought it was great and our kids did, too.

But things happen, and you have to feel terrible for everyone involved.

Especially the boy’s parents. I'm grateful to them for letting  their son play football, and sad that before he even got to play, something totally unforeseen took him from them.

*********** Rookie QBs Mitch Trubisky (Bears) and DeShaun Watson (Texans) both looked really promising in this past weekend’s games.  Both teams need QBs. And for the Dolphins, who just signed former Chicago Bear Jay Cutler after the injury to Ryan  Tannehill, David Fales, another former Bear, looked pretty good, too.

The Raiders made their debut in their new temporary digs, the StubHub Center.  It seats make 25,000, but that’s all they’re going to need, based on how bad they looked against the Seahawks, and based on the wide array of choices - college and pro - that southern California  fans have when they want to watch football. 

Meantime, the night before, the Rams drew close to 90,000 to watch them play the Cowboys. Granted, the Cowboys are a big draw, but still - you have to wonder why the Chargers would want to move into the area knowing that they’ll always - always - play second fiddle.


*********** QUIZ ANSWER:  Larry Brown came off the streets of Pittsburgh and when he received no college offers, he  went off to Dodge City (Kansas) Community College.

From there, he went to Kansas State.

He was drafted in the eighth round by the Redskins, who with All-Pro QB Sonny Jurgensen and the NFL’s top two receivers in Charley Taylor and Jerry Smith were primarily a passing team.

The Redskins’ new coach, Vince Lombardi, noticed that Brown  was having trouble getting off on the count, and after learning that it was because he was deaf in one ear and couldn’t hear Jurgensen’s signals, Lombardi received permisson from the League to have a hearing aid installed in his helmet.

He became the Skins’ starter as a rookie, and he gained  888 yards - a team record - as the Redskins posted their first winning record in 15 years.

He went to four straight Pro Bowls, and in 1972 was the NFL’s Most Valuable Player.

Larry Brown  rushed for 100 yards or more 21 times, and he finished in the top five among NFL rushers on five occasions. In 1970 he became the first Redskin to rush for more than 1,000 yards.  He was a good receiver, catching more than 30 passes in a season on five occasions.

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING LARRY BROWN -
JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
GREG KOENIG - CIMARRON, KANSAS
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
PETE PORCELLI - WATERVLIET, NEW YORK
TOM DAVIS - SAN CARLOS, CALIFORNIA
SHEP CLARKE - PUYALLUP, WASHINGTON
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON

MORE ON LARRY BROWN -

http://www.thehogs.net/History/legends/larry-brown.php

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/10/24/redskins-history-a-case-for-larry-brown-in-hall-of-fame/

https://www.hearinglikeme.com/4-deaf-nfl-players-you-probably-didnt-know-about/

QUIZ: A player for the Rams,  he’d been an art major in college, and he’d worked in the offseason as an illustrator. After the 1947 season he convinced the coach that the team’s brown helmets needed some kind of design on them.  With the coach’s approval, he painted one of  helmets dark blue, with yellow ram’s horns, and showed it to the team’s owner, Dan Reeves.  Reeves liked the design, and cleared it with the league office (which told him "You're the owner; do what you want!”).  During the summer of 1948,   our guy was paid $1 a helmet to paint the team’s 75 (leather) helmets.  The result is shown at left. (That is not him!)

FRIDAY,  AUGUST 11,  2017  - "Be the hunter, not the hunted: Never allow your unit to be caught with its guard down." General James Mattis

*********** Oh, the headlines. 

“Player Killed During Football Practice”

“L.I. Teen Dies From Injury During Football Practice”

“11th Grader Dies After Injury at Football Practice”

It’s the Football Monster again! 

But wait.

According to police on Long Island, New York, a high school junior named Josh Mileto was taking part in pre-season conditioning at his school,  and he and some others were carrying a large log overhead when something went amiss and the log fell on him and struck him, killing him.

Wait - that wasn’t football at all.

We’ve seen this sort of drill in all sorts of contexts.  Sports.  Military.  Business, even.  (You know - team-building!)  The idea is that without a joint effort you can’t lift that sucker.  And, once it’s been lifted, the only thing that keeps it from falling on you is the concerted efforts of you and your teammates.  Talk about building trust!  Talk about instilling in kids the need to work together and to depend on each other!

I did not see what they were trying to do or how they were doing it, but at risk of going off half-cocked, I think that an interested observer would probably have looked at what was going on and concluded that while, yes,  there was a risk of the log falling, the incentive to work together that the risk engendered was so strong that it wasn’t likely the kids would allow that to happen.

How great a risk, anyhow?

How many times had kids at that school done that same drill without incident?

How many times had other schools and institutions all over the country done it safely?

Not for a minute would I diminish the tragedy and heartbreak that befell this young man and his family - the entire school and community.  And I don't dismiss the possibility that someone was genuinely negligent.  But I do worry that not only will a drill whose chief benefits derive from the fact that there is risk involved be outlawed, but that football itself will take another hit. (You did notice that although nothing remotely involving football was taking place, the headlines called it “Football Practice.”)

I'm left with two questions:

Is there such a thing as an acceptable risk?

Or, in the future, would it be better if our boys just stayed indoors and played Madden?

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/sachem-east-football-player-joshua-mileto-dies-after-practice-injury-cops-say-1.13966482?firstfree=yes

*********** If you know your football, you’ve almost certainly heard of Long Beach Poly.  No high school has sent more players to the NFL (more than 60 at last count).

Until just a few years ago, Poly had more than 200 players in its program, composed of three levels: varsity, junior varsity, and frosh-soph.
This year, however, for the first time in its history, Poly will not be fielding  a JV team.

There simply aren’t enough kids.  There’ll still be  the varsity squad, of course.  And they’ll be good - pre-season, they’ve been ranked number 10 in the country by MaxPreps.

And there’ll be still be the frosh-soph squad,  but the numbers there are alarming.  Fewer than  40 freshmen have turned out.

Said head coach Antonio Pierce, “Six years ago when my son enrolled they had 130 freshman in that class, and we haven’t had close to that number since.”

Poly is one of three schools in its seven-school league that won’t be playing a JV schedule.

http://www.presstelegram.com/sports/20170809/long-beach-poly-drops-junior-varsity-football-due-to-low-numbers

*********** There's a lot more to coaching a receiver than just throwing him passes, and with one receiver drill I'm able to  accomplish three things (besides running a route and catching a pass).

First, I can watch carefully to make sure that  they step first with the outside foot. Most of my pass patterns require receivers to count their steps, and so for the sake of uniformity, they have to   step first with the outside foot.

Second, I can make sure that they get practice avoiding a “holdup man” lined up over them.

And third, by lining the receivers up on the opposite side of the ball so that the “next guy up” plays the role of the defensive hold-up man, I get everybody out of the way of the QB’s path  when he’s rolling out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQMDZrY1qTk&feature=youtu.be


*********** Hello Coach, hope you are having a great summer!

I wanted to tell you about the trip my wife and I took to Ireland and Scotland.  I've seen you write about your extended stays in Europe before.  The parts that we enjoyed the most were definitely seeing the scenery in western Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland.  Truly unique places.  The worst parts; driving and the crowds.  We stayed in Edinburgh, Scotland for the last leg of our trip and this happens to be the festival season for the city.  Apparently the population over DOUBLED in size while we were there and I was very thankful to get on tour buses that took us out of the city.  Thankful until one of the tour guides left early with his bus and left me and my wife stranded at Rosslyn Chapel (we had to ride a public transit bus back into the city).

We were glad to get home yesterday after way too much time in an airline chair.  Overall the people in Scotland and especially Ireland were very friendly and helpful.  For years I was told about how Europeans in general do not like Americans and our (apparent) arrogant attitudes.  But on the contrary they all seemed thrilled to have Americans there spending money.  As I am sure you have seen, it seems like everything is twice as expensive and half the quality to what we are used to in America.  The service in pubs and such didn't seem that great either but its a different culture I suppose.  I was also baffled by the behavior of the news outlets which spent their effort peddling vicious rumors and and out-of-context stories aimed at President Trump.  People in Europe apparently care more about Trump than we do and it kind of pissed me off.  Oh well.

As for sports, we spent a great evening with a semi-pro rugby player (BIG guy) in Ireland who kept buying us beers.  My wife even tried Gaelic Dancing in the pub!  There was Gaelic Rules football happening around Ireland, too.  They PACK those stadiums for Gaelic Football, very impressive.

The trip was a fun experience but I don't have much ambition to go back to Europe (except hopefully a pilgrimage to Rome someday).  I am going to send a separate email about the football season soon.  Have a great week Coach!

Mat Hedger
Langdon, North Dakota

Coach,

I appreciate the note and your impressions from your visit.

As you well know, there is not really a “Europe.”  It’s geographic construct that they’re trying to turn into a United States of Europe, but - good luck.

You can go anywhere in the United States and although you may hear different accents and maybe see some different foods on the menus, you’ll seldom get the sense that you’re not in the same country.

But while they may call it “Europe,” those “states” have developed their own unique cultures over many centuries. People differ in the languages they speak and (despite the spread of McDonalds) the foods they eat.  And in the way they look at life.  And in their openness to outsiders.

The Spaniard has nothing in common with the Laplander.  The Italian has little in common with the Scot.  (Actually, the Italian of Sicily has less in common with the Italian of Milan than you might think, and in tiny Belgium there are two large sections of the population that don’t even speak each other’s language.)

There is so much more, and so much of it is so beautiful and exciting.

You were very fortunate to see a part of “Europe” that I have yet to see and would love to see.

I know that flying is a pain in the arse, but I hope you change your mind about going back.

Thanks again and have a great season!


***********  Coach Wyatt,

I received the dvd yesterday, thanks.  I have 2 follow-up questions.
    1    In the video you briefly mention a quarterback option.  Do you have any information/advise on running the QB option from the double wing double tight formation?
    2    You also mentioned not running superpower from unbalanced tackle over formation.  What plays do you recommend from the tackle over, tight formation?

Coach,

1. In general, I discourage people from running option from the Double Wing except as a gadget simply because  option football is “expensive.” Running option consistently well - getting the reads down, and getting the pitch relationship consistent - is very time-consuming, which means it takes a lot of time away from the base Double Wing plays that never get all the reps they need.

As a coach in Texas told me one time, “If you’re going to run option - run option.”

HOWEVER: One relatively easy option play - and one  that sets up other base double wing plays is this one:

ROAR OPTION 6-O


2. One great advantage of unbalanced is the surprise element.  When you run it a lot, though, you lose the element of surprise. Now it’s the defense's turn at the chalkboard, and they may have some surprises for you - some defenses that you can’t possibly have prepared for. My advice is to use unbalanced sparingly, as a surprise, and to run only one or at most two plays from it. My favorite is 6-G.  

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

When I was named as the Minnesota state delegate to the NFL Youth Summit way back in 2002 one of our "perks" was a free ticket and tour of the Pro Football HOF in Canton.  Thinking back to that visit it dawned on me why they insist on inducting team owners.  The NFL obviously needs their support ($$) to exist, so why not give those guys a statue?  A few I can swallow.  But Jerry Jones??  

Craig James is a product of SMU.  Need I say more?

I wonder if June Jones is wearing any of those Hawaiian shirts on the sidelines in Canada?

My wife and I saw the movie "Dunkirk".  I did not realize that at one point during the evacuation that the Brits were so close to surrender.  The storyline in the movie was good, and overall a good movie adaptation.

QUIZ:  The coach in the forefront of the cover is Notre Dame's Frank Leahy, and the coach behind him is Army's Earl "Red" Blaik.

Speaking of famous coaches.  Did I ever tell you that my wife found an old coaching book while she was going through her dad's personal belongings after he had passed?  She showed it to me and asked if I wanted to keep it.  I almost fell over.  It's a first edition written by Fielding H. Yost.
 
The binding is falling apart, and the pages are loose, but it is still intact.  The diagrams are all handwritten, and the offense was definitely unique, especially the plays with 5 men in the backfield!  Not sure how, or even if I should, have the binding repaired.  What do you think?

Have a good one!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

Joe,

It might  be worth showing the Yost book to an appraiser.

My initial inclination would be to get ‘er repaired.

BUT -  many years ago, my father-in-law gave me a set of golf clubs that he’d acquired somewhere (he didn’t play golf) and it turned out they were valuable - McGregor Tourneys - and in those pre-metal wood days, the woods were genuine persimmon and evidently quite desirable to collectors.  So I went and spent a couple hundred dollars having the woods refinished.  And a collector told me it was the worst thing I could have done - that real collectors wanted to get them in their original condition.  Lesson learned.

*********** I was saddened to learn of Dick McPherson’s passing.

He was a Mainer, as New England as you can get, and he was a head coach at UMass and Syracuse, and with the Patriots.

It was at Syracuse that he became best known. In ten years there, three of his teams were nationally-ranked.  His 1987 team was 11-0-1 (tieing Auburn 16-16 in the Sugar Bowl) and ranked 4th Nationally, earning him Coach of the Year honors.

Two of the better knownplayers he coached were quarterback Don McPherson and fullback Daryl “Moose” Johnston.

http://www.syracuse.com/orangefootball/index.ssf/2017/08/former_syracuse_football_coach_dick_macpherson_dies_at_86_years_old.html


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

1.) How do you change the formation during a game when you have the formation written on the wrist coach? Or do you have all the formations you plan on using on the players card with the play? example do you have West 6 G-O, East 7 G-O, Eastern 7 G-O, and Western 6 G-O

This may answer your question: 



I’ve shown a typical play card from a bygone game. This one is for the  Tight Guard (TG).  (Each position has its own specific card, with its own assignments on it.)

As you can see, the formation and the play are called as one. If we call “40-5” it tells everyone on the team that we are running “West (the formation) 6-GO (the play)”  And then comes a short version of each player’s assignment on “40-5.”

If I wanted to do this from a sightly different motion or backfield set - if I wanted, say, to move our slot back wide to the opposite side - I would simply say “WESTERN 40-5”

That’s it.

I ordinarily wouldn’t even bother putting the Open side (East or West) on the linemen’s cards, except that I have been flip-flopping the line, so they need to know  which side of center to line up on.  And just to be sure, I print the linemen’s  info in RED which is code for “LINE UP ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF CENTER” or BLUE (“LINE UP ON THE LEFT”) - a simple reminder of which side to line up on

(Notice also that 40-1 and 40-5 are simply the left and right versions of the same play - and notice on the Tight Guard’s card that because I flip-flop the line, his assignment is exactly the same on 40-1 as on 40-5.  He does the exact same thing,  just from opposite sides of the line. This applies to our other linemen as well. And to our backs and ends.  I find that this is much more efficient and allows us to run a wider variety of plays than if players had to learn two different assignments for the same play - one each for the left and right versions.)


*********** The AFCA just published Ara Parseghian’s  talk from the 1974 Coach of the Year Clinic.

I have it in the original clinic notes book, and it’s a masterpiece. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to Coach Parseghian’s talk and  and read - and re-read - it.

There’s so much in it that I wouldn’t begin to try to summarize it.  I strongly suggest that you print it out.

Coach Parseghian was coming off a National Title, and he’d won it running the Wing-T, which was old even then.     He wasn’t afraid to drop what he was doing offensively or defensively and go to something different - something that he felt was going to give his players their best chance to be successful.  For him,  that meant “Jumping a cycle” - going back in time and running  what nobody else was running.  For him, that meant the Wing-T.  And once he decided to run it, he went right to the pros - the people who knew the most about it.  That meant  the people at Delaware.

Interestingly, the formation he chose to illustrate his talk had two tight ends and two wingbacks.  Hmmm.

http://www.afcaweekly.com/2017/08/ara-parseghian-notre-dame/?utm_source=AFCA+Weekly&utm_campaign=d465319e1e-AFCA_Weekly_080717&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_343e846137-d465319e1e-147880073

TUESDAY,  AUGUST 8,  2017  -  “I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad, I take something.” Robert Benchley

*********** CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING TOMMY MCDONALD-

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



QUIZ: The two coaches on this 1980 program cover were already retired.  Both were legends at their respective schools, and both were alumni of those colleges.  Both won multiple national championships and at the time of this printing both were already in the College Football Hall of Fame.  Both won more than 100 games as head coaches. They each coached seven undefeated teams and between them they won eight national championships and coached seven Heisman Trophy winners. Both began their head coaching careers at New England colleges. Both were influential in Vince Lombardi’s career - one of them as his college line coach, the other as the head coach under whom he served as offensive assistant. NO HALF CREDIT - YOU’VE GOT TO GET THEM BOTH!

FRIDAY,  AUGUST 4,  2017  -  “We don’t HAVE a breaking point.  We want to drive YOU to YOUR breaking point.”  Ara Parseghian

*********** It was the spring of 1974 and I was sitting at my desk in the offices of the Philadelphia Bell when my phone rang.

I answered and the voice on the other end said, “This is Ara Parseghian.”

Right.  And I had Prince Albert in a can.

But it really was Ara Parseghian. The same Ara Parseghian whose Notre Dame team had just a few months earlier beaten Alabama to win the National Championship.

He was calling to try to interest us in signing a couple of his seniors who hadn’t been drafted by either us or the NFL, and hadn’t been signed by anyone as free agents.  The main reason, he said, was that these guys hadn’t been starters for him.  But, he assured me, they could definitely play pro ball. 

For weeks, day after day, I’d been fielding calls by the dozen from players and former coaches and - they had just begun to crawl out from under rocks - agents, swearing that they had the answer to all our personnel needs.  Blah, blah, blah.

But this call was special. This was Ara Parseghian, one of the best-known coaches in America and certainly one of the busiest, and he was taking his time to call us on behalf of kids whose usefulness to him had ended - kids who hadn’t even started for him.

The upshot was that we invited two of those players to an invitation-only free agent tryout, and we signed them both at the end of the tryout.  Both of them made our squad. One of them wound up starting at offensive tackle, and the other saw significant action at linebacker.

And all because of Ara Parseghian.  To this day, I still marvel at the type of man who would go the extra mile like that to help out his players. Even backups.

Ara Parseghian died Wednesday,  He was 94.

It’s become a cliche to say that someone was an even better man than he was a coach, but I truly believe that in Ara Parseghian’s case that was true.

And he sure was a hell of a coach.

He was born Ara Raoul Parseghian in Akron, Ohio.

He was of Armenian descent, and here’s how he once told people how to pronounce his name: “ ‘Par’ as in golf, ‘seag’ as in Seagram's and ‘yen’ as in the Japanese yen. Think of a drunk Japanese golfer. “

He was exposed quite early to some of the best coaches in the business. He played for Miami of Ohio from 1946-47 under  Sid Gillman and with teammate  Paul Dietzel. He also played in 1945 for Great Lakes Naval Training Center and from 1948-49 for the Cleveland Browns. His coach at both  places was  Paul Brown. The head coach who gave him his first job at Miami was Woody Hayes.

He served as freshman football coach at Miami of Ohio (1950); as head football coach at Miami of Ohio (1951-1955), Northwestern  (1956-1963) and Notre Dame (1964-1974).

When a hip injury ended his career with the Browns, he accepted a job at MIami coaching the freshman team under head coach Woody Hayes.

When Hayes took the Ohio State job in 1951, Parseghian became head coach at Miami - just two years after he’d graduated.

He was the first non-graduate to be hired to coach Notre Dame, and only the second Protestant (Knute Rockne was the first).

It’s hard to describe the depths to which Notre Dame had fallen at the time he’d arrived.

Frank Leahy retired following the 1954 season, ending a spectacular run. During his 11 seasons in South Bend, the Irish had won 87 games, lost 11 and tied 3 - an .888 percentage. There were six undefeated seasons and four national championships.

He was succeeded by one of his former players, the very popular Terry Brennan.

In five years as the Irish head coach, Brennan went 32-18.  He did have one poor season, 1956, in which Notre Dame went 2-8, and although they cameback to 7-3 in 1957, with a 7-0 win over Oklahoma that snapped the Sooner’s 47-game win streak,  his head was on the block. Despite an upset of USC in the final game, 1958’s 6-4 record sealed his fate, and the Irish replaced him with Joe Kuharich.

Kuharich, a Notre Dame grad and a South Bend native, had the credentials.   He had coached the San Francisco Dons, one of college football’s greatest teams, and he’d coached in the NFL as head coach of the Cardinals and Redskins, where in 1955 he’d been NFL Coach of the Year.

At Notre Dame he was a disaster.  In four years, he had three 5-5 seasons and one 2-8 season, in which the Irish lost eight straight games, and when he resigned in March with three years left on his contract to take a job with the NFL as Supervisor of Officials, he left  behind a record of 17-23.

At that late date, Notre Dame chose to go with an interim coach, Hughie Devore, a loyal and beloved long-time Irish assistant.  Things didn’t go well on the field - the Irish finished 2-7 in 1963 - but to his credit, Devore held things together.

And then Ara Parseghian arrived on the scene.

As head coach at Northwestern, his work could not have gone unnoticed by the large and influential group of Notre Dame alumni in the Chicago area.   How must the  Wildcats’ four straight wins over Notre Dame (1959-1962) have stung?  How much must it have impressed them? 

His initial hiring had the appearance of  a fiasco when he walked out of the press conference called to announce his hiring.  No one knows what caused it - some say it was  his insistence on naming his own assistants -  but things were quickly patched up and at a second press conference, he signed his contract.  Athletic Director Moose Krause said,  “He should be with us a long time; after all, he signed twice.”

Parseghian joked about it. He said it was because “Father Joyce (who really ran the athletic program) wanted a shamrock on the new helmets, but I wanted a camel crossing the desert.”  (In those days before sensitivity training and safe spaces, you could still joke around like that.)

To say that he was an instant success understates what he did.

He took a  team that had finished 2-7 in 1963 and with basically the same players, Notre Dame finished 9-1 in 1964, coming within 1:33 (and a questionable holding penalty when the Irish were on the USC one-yard line)  of an undefeated season and a national championship. “I prefer to think of our record as 9 3/4 - 1/4, not 9-1,” he would say later.

In his first year at Notre Dame, he was named Coach of the Year.

When he resigned after the 1974 season because of his health, he had compiled a 170-58-6 overall record and a 95-17-4 record at Notre Dame. He coached the Irish to two national championships, in 1966 and 1973.  (He had a 9-0 record against Northwestern.)

And, perhaps his greatest achievement - he made a Notre Dame fan out of me.  Until he retired.

His book, "Parseghian and Notre Dame Football," and his Wing-T offense and Split-6 defense, had a huge influence on me.

He was only 53 years old when he retired, but he never coached again.  He had put everything he had into what is possibly the most demanding job in all of football, and he was worn out.  Besides, he responded when someone asked him about it,  “After Notre Dame, what is there?”

In the years that followed at Notre Dame, through good times and bad, he supported whoever was coaching the Irish, often with handwritten notes of encouragement, and never - never - uttered a word of criticism.

From 1975 to 1981 he was a color analyst for ABC Sports and for CBS Sports from 1982 to 1988.  That was a very big job, because those were the days when the NCAA controlled football on TV, and there was usually just one game per Saturday.

Early in his TV career he was working a Notre Dame-Pitt game and he said, “That's a big break for us!”  His partner, Keith Jackson gently reminded him where he was: "It's not 'us' anymore, Ara."

His life was not without its share of pain and heartbreak.  He lost three grandchildren, all before the age of 17,  to a rare pediatric disorder  known as Niemann-Pick Type C disease, and in the true tradition of a fighter, he helped raise millions of dollars for research into the disease.

Then, just five years ago, he lost his daughter, Karan,  after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis. From the time she was first diagnosed more than 40 years ago, he served on the board of the  National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
He attributed his ability to fight on to the lessons he learned from coaching.

This December, he and his wife, Katie,  would have celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.


As you might expect, the South Bend Tribune had some wonderful features on this wonderful man.

A TRIBUTE TO THE MAN, NOT THE COACH
http://www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/notre-dame-legend-ara-parseghian-was-a-great-coach-but/article_bbbc41a0-7781-11e7-8cd8-5b45fd0b2705.html

PHOTOS OVER THE YEARS
http://www.southbendtribune.com/multimedia/photos/ara-parseghian/collection_884685f4-67fc-11e7-8971-efae9baef872.html#1


The photo below was on the back cover of "Miami of Ohio - The Cradle of Coaches" by Bob Kurz



*********** Gerry Ford was almost killed in a typhoon during WW2.  Don't know if it was "Halsey's Typhoon", or not.  As I recall the story, his strength saved him  -  hanging onto a cable or railing or somesuch.  I guess Chevy Chase would have gotten a good laugh out of that...

Shep Clarke
Puyallup, Washington

*********** A major reason why I never left the Pacific Northwest is the climate.

But then, there are times like these.  As I write this,  Seattle is on the verge of hitting 100 degrees this week.

Only a third of Seattle’s housing units has air conditioning.  No wonder. Seattle has only recorded three 100-degree readings in the last 120 years.  Five or six days in the 90s.

But Seattle is virtually surrounded by water.  By Puget Sound and its many arms.  Its climate may be rainy in winter, but it is always moderate.

Three hours (depending on traffic) to the south,  Portland  may be on the water, but it’s  about 100 miles from the sea.  It’s a river town.  Camas, Washington, where I live, is across the river, about 30 minutes to the northeast of downtown Portland, and our local public buildings showed readings yesterday  of 107 degrees at 4 PM.  Tonight - Thursday - a cool front blew in and it dropped to 106.

Like many of the older houses in Camas, ours doesn’t have air conditioning.  It was built in 1950.  It’s well-insulated and we’ve had our large windows  double-paned.  When heat is predicted, we open up the house in the early morning and turn on fans to pull in the cool air. (Even after being 107 the day before, it was only 64 at 6 AM Thursday. The beauty of low humidity.)  By 10:30 or so,  when the outside temperature is no longer cooler than the inside, we shut everything down.  The cooler air stays trapped inside, and yesterday, with outside thermometers reading 107, it never got above 81 in our house.

And there’s always the basement.  Our house is built into the side of a hill, and down below, in our daylight basement, it never gets above 74 degrees on the hottest summer day or below 69 degrees on the coldest winter day.

And then there’s our ultimate bail-out.  There’s always our place in Ocean Shores, where yesterday’s high was  - omigod - 77 degrees. (For Ocean Shores, that’s HIGH.)

So we’re okay. But what about the homeless?  I can hear you asking.   Portland is  legendary for its concern for those less fortunate (as some like to portray them).  No need to worry.  Portland has set up “cool places” for them to congregate.  If they wish.  And for those who still prefer Life On The Streets, Portland Police (Motto: Serve and Protect) have been serving and protecting the city’s citizens by handing out cases of bottle water to the poor souls.

And then there’s the “light rail” (trolleys to those of us old enough to remember them) that Portland is oh, so proud of.   The mass transit geeks love to brag about the speed and convenience of those tax-suckers.  (They also brag about their increase in ridership, an increase mainly brought about by eliminating parallel bus lines and forcing people onto the trains.) Speed and convenience? Not in winter ice storms, when the switches freeze and ice forms on the overhead power lines.  And not in the heat of summer, when concern over possible  expansion of the rails causes them to reduce train speed to a walk, or shut down operations entirely.

*********** John Reaves died- he was a great college quarterback, and a so-so NFL quarterback.  And under Steve Spurrier, he was a decent assistant college coach.

But… he had his problems with drugs.

And his son, David, was fired by the Oregon Ducks before he had even signed a contract.

And his daughter, Layla, married a guy named Lane Kiffin.

How much stress could any one father take?

*********** Coach, I am sorry to bug you, but I want to learn and get better as a coach.  We have the potential this year to be tremendous.  Our OL is the biggest I have ever had, and they can move, but I do not feel we are getting off the ball quickly enough or low enough.  How can I teach them to fire out and stay low?  We have a trap chute, but I just get frustrated watching them use it because they seem to waddle through and are even slower.  
 
Once again Coach, sorry to be bugging you, but I value your experience.
 
P.S.  I put the PowerPoint you sent for the RT on our iPad and Coach Bailey showed them individually on the field with their practice film.  I think that stuck with them.  Thank you for that.



Coach,

First of all, you are not bugging me.  I invited you to keep coming to me with your questions and concerns and that is a standing invitation.

First of all, if all we needed to do was fire straight ahead, we would get in four-point stances with bent arms, and fire at opponents’ knees.

But we are at something of a disadvantage when we want to “fire out low” because we also have to be in stances that enable us to go sideways as well.  And we do want to make sure that the eyes are up.

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t deal with one big problem - a tendency on the part of most linemen to come right up out of their stances on the very first step, and this is what we have to fight.

Assuming a drive block...

We would like the player at the end of his first step to still be “in his stance.”  We say, “Stay in your stance.”  Another thing we look for is “number on the knee."

The length of that first step is a major factor in his coming up.  If the first step is too long, the player will have to pick up his upper body to allow the step.

Another thing to check on is what happens with the down hand when the player starts to move: does it come straight up off the ground?  That’s a sure sign that the shoulders are coming up.  Tell them to act as if they are snapping the ball with that hand - that will keep them from coming right up.

One drill that helps is the Bird-Dog drill.  Do it as a group drill.   Have the players take just one step and freeze, like a bird dog.  You will be surprised at first at how few guys can do it. Don’t let anybody out of his stance until you’ve checked them all.  (They will complain.)

Then, set up an ofensive line and call a play.  At the snap, have everyone take his first step - and freeze. Check not only for a short first step, but check also for stepping the correct foot and  in the correct direction.  It’s a great way to check assignments without having to run through the whole play, because if they don’t know the correct first step, they probably don't know their assignment.

You’re not going to see immediate improvement.  You’re going to have to keep working on it.

Next drill would be to fire against a sled, starting out no more than a foot away from it and aiming at a spot at eye level (when they're in theirstances).  You want them to be able to move the sled, so don’t stand on it or overload it with weight.  You do need the sled to provide enough resistance so they don’t fall on their faces, but you also want them to keep moving.

Five minutes a day devoted to those drills will help as a start.

Good luck!


*********** Had a nice visit last weekend with David Crump.  David, from Owensboro, Kentucky, is a longtime coach whom I first met at my very first clinic, in Evansville, Indiana, back in 1996.  His late Mom was a special fan of my first video.   She was blind in her last years, but she didn’t care about watching the video anyhow - she just loved the college fight songs on the sound track.

*********** I hope Jared Lorenzen can lose all that weight.

It’s easy to make fun of overweight people.  From the time we’re little kids we hear  kids and  adults with making fun of them.

And the overweight people laugh off the jokes and  take the nicknames in stride - what else can they do? - and we interpret that as meaning that it doesn’t bother them.

I’d never given it a thought until several years ago a good friend confided that he was sick of being looked at as fat.  He did something about it.

But he also did something about my attitude.  He woke me up to the fact that a person who’s overweight didn’t set out to be that way. 

It may have taken years to put on the extra weight, and now it’s going to take years of effort and deprivation.   That’s discouragement enough for a lot of people to just give up the fight before they even start out.

I’d never even given it a thought.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/jared-lorenzen-the-ex-qb-known-as-the-%E2%80%98hefty-lefty%E2%80%99-is-on-an-emotional-mission-to-lose-weight/ar-AApgk8X?li=BBnb7Kz


*********** No doubt a holdover from the Art Rooney-Dan Rooney days, the Steelers are still one of the few teams (1) to go away to training camp, (2) to stay reasonably close to their home market so their fans can come watch them, (3) to open practices to the public and (4) to not charge admission. (Sorry for the split infinitive.)

Surely there’s some young marketing genius in the Steelers’ organization who shakes his head at the thought of all the money they’re leaving on the table. 

http://triblive.com/sports/steelers/trainingcamp/12570071-74/take-a-quick-tour-of-steeler-training-camp-2017


QUIZ:  John Henry Johnson was born in Louisiana but his family moved to Pittsburg, California when he was young, and he went to high school there, starring in football, basketball, baseball and track.

He started college at St. Mary's, but after the Gaels gave up football, he transferred to Arizona State, where he was a football and track star.

After college, he played a year in the CFL with Calgary, then signed with the 49ers in 1954, teaming up with two other outstanding runners, Hugh McElhenny and Joe "The Jet" Perry. Together with QB Y.A. Tittle, they were probably the best backfield in the NFL at the time, and were given the nickname "The Fabulous Foursome."

In 1957 he was traded to the Detroit Lions, and after two years there where he was bothered by injuries, he was traded to Pittsburgh.

He played with the Steelers from 1960 through 1965, gaining more than 1,000 yards in both 1962 (1,141 yards) and 1964.(1,048 yards)- in 12-game seasons.

He was 6-2, 225 - at the time that was the size of many linemen - and  in addition to his running ability, he was a formidable blocker, and defenders all over the NFL came to fear and respect him as one of the hardest hitters in football.  (Some claimed that he could be a tad dirty on occasion.)

After one season with the Houston Oilers of the AFL, he retired in 1966.

In his career, he rushed for 6,803 yards and scored 48 touchdowns. He had 186 receptions for 1,478 yards and 7 touchdowns.

In 1987, John Henry Johnson entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame.





*********** CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING JOHN HENRY JOHNSON

JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA
TOM DAVIS - SAN CARLOS, CALIFORNIA
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON

***********QUIZ- He was recruited out of Albuquerque by Bud Wilkinson.  In college, he played on two national championship teams, made All-American twice - and didn’t play in a losing game. 

Although a running back in college, he was converted into a wide receiver in the NFL.

Only 5-9, 170, he made up for his lack of size with great speed, hands and toughness.

For four straight years - 1959-1962 - he was either first- or second-team All-Pro.

In 1960, he teamed up with Norm Van Brocklin   to help their team win its last NFL championship.

Before he retired, he played on four more teams.

He was the last player (other than a kicker) to play without a face mask.

He’s in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

TUESDAY,  AUGUST 1,  2017  -  “If a man is a quitter, I’d rather find out in practice than in a game. I ask for all a player has so I’ll know later what I can expect.” Bear Bryant

***********  Free meals will no longer be given automatically to all students at 12 Portland Public schools, as has been the case for a few years.

The federal "community eligibility" program, which has been in effect since 2013, gives schools money to provide free meals to all students in a school if 40 per cent of the student body are served by income-restricted programs, primarily food stamps.

But 12 schools have fallen below the 40 per cent threshold.

Partly it’s because of the economy, but partly it’s because some of the students were illegals - they didn’t apply “out of fear” - and some wouldn’t even get off their asses to apply for free meals for their kids - “they feel the process is too arduous."

Students who no longer qualify will now have to pay $2.80 or $3.30, depending on their grade level.

But the news isn’t all bad, we were told: ”The schools will continue to serve free breakfasts to any students who want it"

Said some school district administrator type,  in charge of giving away taxpayer-paid-for food, “We are really saddened that we can't continue this program and optimally we would love to be serving all kids at no charge. We don't charge for textbooks why should we charge for meals?"


*********** In 2008, James McCloughan retired after a long career  teaching psychology and sociology and coaching football, baseball and wrestling at South Haven, Michigan High School.

I’m willing to bet that none of his students knew he was a war hero.   I’d bet my house on the fact that if they did, it wasn’t because he told them.

In 1969, he spent what he would later tell the Associated Press was “the worst two days of my life.”

It was in Vietnam, and McLoughan, an Army medic who had been drafted into the Army, was caught up in ferocious fighting. And he performed acts of such heroism that last week he was presented the Medal of Honor by President Trump.

A statement by the White House said Medic McLoughan "voluntarily risked his life on nine separate occasions to rescue wounded and disoriented comrades. He suffered wounds from shrapnel and small arms fire on three separate occasions, but refused medical evacuation to stay with his unit, and continued to brave enemy fire to rescue, treat, and defend wounded Americans."
Seeing that he was covered with blood, a captain suggested that he seek treatment for his wounds, but Mr. McLoughan wasn’t having any of it.

"He knew me enough to know that I wasn't going," he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/07/31/trump-to-award-first-medal-honor-to-vietnam-army-medic.html


***********  Coach,

Hope all is well in your neck of the woods.  I wanted to write to tell you about a surprise encounter I had this weekend in Kansas City.  I was early to pick up my daughter from a summer camp at Union Station downtown so I went across the street to the Liberty Memorial (aka WWI Museum) and immediately noticed it was much busier than normal.  As I was walking around, I noticed that many of the people had name tags with the First Division's Big Red One on it.  I soon found out that it was the Division's 100th Anniversary and reunion.  It made sense that they held it in Kansas City since Company K of the 28th Infantry Regiment (Black Lions of Catigny) were the first to set foot in France during WWI in 1917.  

There was one gentleman that caught my eye and I approached him and introduced myself and asked about the Black Lions insignia he was wearing.  He did not serve, but his brother died on October 17th, 1967 at Ong Thanh.  The gentleman's name was John Durham and his brother was Harold Bascom Durham Jr., better known as Pinky.  He was a forward observer from the 15th Artillery Regiment of the 1st Division, but was with the Black Lions that day and was relentless in calling in artillery strikes despite his severe wounds.  As a result of his actions and the lives he saved, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.  

Here is a link to an article about a new exhibit at Abraham Baldwin Agriculture that honors the life of Pinky Durham.

https://www.abac.edu/current-news/2016/freedom-gallery-opens-at-abac-on-october-13

I went back Saturday afternoon to the hotel where the reunion was at and spent time talking with many different Vietnam vets.  They were all great men and it was humbling to hear some of their stories.  Most of all, I was impressed with their eagerness to share.  I imagine as they are entering the later stages of life that they realize their stories need to be told as well and want to have someone pass them on.  Being around some of the Black Lion vets was great and those who did not know about the award were glad that young men were being honored in memory of Don Holleder.

I remember you talking about the David Maraniss' book, They Marched Into Sunlight, and when I was talking to one of the Black Lions about that day he mentioned that the regiment was walking in sunlight and were perfect targets for the ambush. His word choice stood out to me and actually gave me a slight chill.

This was a great weekend and one I'm glad I had the opportunity to enjoy.

(in the words of John Durham) Black Sir!

Joel Mathews
Independence, Missouri

Coach,

What an amazing experience!

Yes, that was the BIG reunion of the Big Red One, and one major reason for KC was its (relative) proximity to Fort Riley, home of the Big Red One.

It was quite an honor to be able to meet Pinky Durham’s brother.  Pinky Durham is held in the highest esteem by his brothers in the Black Lions, who in fact held their annual reunion in Tifton, GA in conjunction with the opening of the Freedom Gallery.

I applaud you for taking the time to meet those men.  They are in many ways the last of their kind, and they are a precious resource to anyone wanting to know what it was REALLY like "over there.”

Thanks so much for letting me in on your great experience!

Black Lions!


*********** By the way, that was a nice picture of your grandson.  Very handsome lad!
 
So he’s gonna go with footy, rather than rugby?
 
Shep Clarke
Puyallup, Washington

In Victoria (state) where he lives, Australian Rules is THE football "code."  (Except among ethnics - Italians, Greeks, Croatians - where it's mostly soccer. )  In New South Wales, Sydney's state, it's rugby, with union being more popular than league. Australian Rules is working very hard to grow outside Victoria, but I'd estimate that half the teams in the AFL are in Vic, which basically means in the greater Melbourne area.

Which is my long way of saying that in Victoria, most kids get started playing Australian Rules.

*********** If you have  kids in school, you might want to find out whether their teacher has been helping them discover the right gender for them by introducing them to the “Gender Unicorn.”



http://www.transstudent.org/gender



*********** My old coach’s son, Don Shipley, was visitng with his uncle in New Hampshire, and his uncle, a Dartmouth man,  showed him an old newspaper clipping in a scrapbook.  Don, of course, just had to show me because of its headline:

“DARTMOUTH BEATS YALE ELEVEN, 14-6, FOR FIRST TIME IN 51 YEARS”

Wow.  Talk about dominance.

When they first met in 1884, Yale was a real football powerhouse, and the Blue trounced Dartmouth, 113-0.

That may have been cause for some bruised feelings, but for whatever reason, the two schools didn’t play again for nine years. When they did, things were only slightly improved on Dartmouth's end: in their six meetings between 1893 and 1900, Dartmouth was outscored 191-0.

And then another hiatus ensued, and they didn’t play again  until 1924.  Then, Dartmouth not only managed to score - they scored twice. Not only that, but they tied Yale, 14-14.  And tied ‘em again in 1931.  But otherwise, they kept on losing.

And then Dartmouth hired a new coach, a Miami, Ohio grad named Earl “Red” Blaik, who’d been an assistant at West Point. And Dartmouth’s football fortunes changed.

Blaik put an end to the softness that had characterized Dartmouth football, selling the players on what he termed a Spartan approach. And he installed a single wing offense that combined the best of what Army had been running and the best of what Jock Sutherland was running at Pitt.

I want to say something now. I have said it once or twice, but I'll say it again. I am sick and tired of hearing the term, "Black and white."

I wish we could forget the term. As I look out in this room, unless I see an Indian, there is not a true-blooded American from the standpoint of descent.

Where are you from? Ireland? England? Sweden? I came from Africa, they tell me. I'm not homesick!

Wouldn't I be crazy to go over to Africa and ask those folks where I can find the Gaithers, my great-great grand uncle? They would think I was crazy. I can go to Statesville, North Carolina and find some Gaithers.

I am an American. I want you to think in terms of Americans. Black, white, blue or yellow, we are all immigrants. You came from England, you came from France, you came from Sweden. I came from Africa, they say, but we are in America now.

Everything I have, everything I hope to be, my loyalty, my love, my devotion, is to this country. I don't owe Africa anything.

And I want to do this- salvage the good in your people. Salvage the good in my people. Take the bad in your people and try to make them good. Let me take the bad in my people and try to make them good. Let us put our shoulders to the wheel as Americans. That's the way God intended we should live.

My friends, I'll be on the sidelines watching the coaches. I'll be athletic director, but I won't be actively coaching. I am going to turn it over to you, You do the job. You have this raw material, this new breed, to deal with, I hope before I die, I can see black, white, blue and yellow - American citizens - with our shoulders to the wheel, trying to make this democracy a better place to live.

(It was reported that Coach Gaither received a standing ovation from the coaches in attendance,  more than 200 of whom then lined up to shake his hand.)

FRIDAY,  JULY 28,  2017  -  “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”  Edward Abbey, American author and environmentalist

***********  Coach,

Since you hit my home state and I have personal rule of not responding if I have to google  (I do most of the time) I can actually get this one with Gerald Ford.   We are in the midst of camp getting ready for the 2017 season after a solid season hopes are high but like everyone with only a couple practices under our belt the amount of work we have to do and the limited time we have can seem overwhelming.   We do have the addition of Joe Gutilla helping us with some film breakdown from Texas, and I'm certain if you see our film you'll quickly see your influences.  

Are you Coaching again this fall?  I do like following your seasons and always cheer for your teams to get a win each Friday as I do for many in he DW fraternity.

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

Coach,

You are right.  I suppose that most of the guys answering have resorted to Google so there’s no disgrace.

I envy you right now.  My head coach got fed up with our new Supt and her destructive policies - on the field and in the classroom - and when an AD position came open at a nearby high school, he took it.  He had no choice.  I encouraged him to do so, even thought it meant the end of the line for all of us at North Beach.  

It was a great run.  I worked with a young coach in his first head coaching job and in six years I watched him become a top notch head coach, and I’m personally sorry that he’s not continuing someplace else.  In the meantime, I’m prepared for a great football season as a spectator/analyst.  Not the same as coaching, but the name of our game is adapt.  

Not sure how many rodeos I have left in me, but we’ll see.

The very best of luck to you this season!

Stay in touch!


*********** On Rolling Stone’s cover, they show a picture of Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin “Pretty Boy” Trudeau, and ask,  “Why Can’t He Be Our President?”

Even knowing that this is the same ultra left mag that had one of the Tsarnaev brothers on its cover, the same one  that concocted  a phony rape story about a fraternity at the University of Virginia, I still can’t get too angry.

That would be hypocritical of me, because I have to plead guilty to the same sort of wishful thinking.

Without thoroughly checking back issues of my NEWS, I'm sure that  somewhere  in the last, oh, eight years or so  I asked why Netanyahu couldn’t have been our president. 


*********** Poor Lucky Whitehead.

If he’d been really good, he could have beaten his “fiancee” and killed a couple dozen fighting dogs  and Jerry Jones would have been out there telling us what a fann, fann young may-un he ee-is.

But while he’s an okay wide receiver, he isn’t  that good, so even though he was cleared of shoplifting charges against him, he became a useful foil in the Cowboys’ phony show of uprightness.  The ‘Boys went ahead and cut him anyhow. By throwing him under the bus, the management of America’s Team (or, in terms of accomplishment-to-hype ratio, the Notre Dame of the NFL) think they’ve shown one and all that they’ll do whatever’s necessary to polish the Star - to preserve the good name of their team.  A team that harbors the likes of Dez Bryant and Ezekiel Elliott. Who are really good.


*********** Tell me about all those poor inner city kids again, would you?

Julio Jones lost a $100,000 earring in a Georgia Lake…

http://www.businessinsider.com/julio-jones-lost-a-100000-earring-so-he-hired-a-dive-team-to-get-it-2017-7

*********** “Hey!”  My son wrote me. “I found that Texas online documentary I was telling you about. It’s a Fort Worth Star-Telegram project:”

 http://www.titletowntx.com/?play=XcScJRCx

*********** Vincentian Academy, a private Catholic high school in the Pittsburgh area, won’t have enough kids to field a football team this year.   And according to an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, we’re supposed to feel sorry for all the poor coaches who’ll have to try to fill the hole in their schedule left by Vincentian’s announcement.

Yeah, that’s too bad - but what about the handful of kids at Vincentian who still want to play football, but aren’t going to get that chance?

The solution is obvious,  even to state high school sports administrators, often an obtuse lot not fond of easy solutions.

In Washington, where I live, and in many other states, a kid whose private school doesn’t offer a sport is eligible to play for the public school in the area where he resides.  After all, he may not be going to the local public school, but his parents’ taxes sure as hell are.

The solution is not that obvious in Pennsylvania.

In the Keystone State,  according to Tim O'Malley, executive director of the WPIAL (the governing body of high school sports in Western Pennsylvania), those Vincentian kids are S-O-L.

Vincentian's administration asked if the WPIAL would permit its football players to play for schools in their home districts,  but the answer from on high was no.

“You can only play where you're in attendance,” O'Malley said. “There's nothing in the rule that would permit that to happen.”

I don’t see how that policy could hold up in court.  Where’s a pit bull lawyer when you need one?

http://triblive.com/sports/hssports/football/12543347-74/vincentian-academy-wont-field-a-football-team-this-season

*********** For all their technical competence, sometimes the best thing that  TV networks can do is just shut up and show the event.

That’s what Fox News did last Saturday, and my wife and I sat transfixed, watching  the commissioning In Norfolk of the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford.

Give the Navy this: they sure know how to conduct a ceremony.

The tradition, the observance of protocol, the dignity, the order, the discipline - I marveled at it all, from the “Very Well” with which officers acknowledged underlings’ reports to them, to the “Aye, Aye, Sir!” with which the underlings acknowledged their orders and agreed to comply.

I was impressed by the way the crew - or at least a substantial portion of it - hustled onto the ship in order to stand at attention around the edge of its deck.

But I was most impressed when the Captain accepted the enormous personal responsibility for a crew of several thousand and a ship worth billions of dollars by saying, simply, “I am in command.”


QUIZ ANSWER: Gerald R. Ford was born Leslie King, Jr., but his mother left King, who it is believed was abusive, and when she married a man named Gerald Rudolf Ford, he was given his stepfather’s name.  He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he was captain of his high school football team.  He went on to the University of Michigan where he played single wing center and linebacker. 

The Wolverines were undefeated his sophomore and junior years, but in his senior year they won just one game.  Nevertheless, because of his fighting spirit and his toughness, he was voted Most Valuable Player by his teammates.

He was selected to play in the East-West Shrine Game and the College All-Star Game (against the Chicago Bears).

He turned down offers from the Lions and Packers and instead attended Yale Law School.  While at Yale, he coached football on the staff of legendary coach Greasy Neale from 1937 through 1940. +++

Then World War II broke out, and he enlisted in the Navy.  After the war he returned to Michigan and embarked on a career in politics, which culminated with his serving as President of the United States.

+++ This wasn’t  correct.  In keeping with tradition, Yale’s titular head coach was a former player named Ducky Pond.  But who’s kidding who - his chief assistant, Greasy Neale, had been head coach at Virginia and West Virginia, and in 1922 had taken little Washington and Jefferson to the Rose Bowl, where it held mighty Cal to a 0-0 tie.

Many alumni objected to Pond's hiring, and felt it was time for Yale to break with tradition and go outside to hire the best coach available. They wanted Michigan's Harry Kipke. My guess is that Neale was brought on board to appease the angry alums - and to provide the experience that Pond lacked.

Neale arrived at Yale  with Pond in 1934. The quarterback of that 1934 team, Jerry Roscoe, told  William N. Wallace, author of ‘Yale’s Ironmen” that Neale was the brains behind the team:

“Ducky Pond had been a great Yale player in the mid-20s and an assistant coach ever since. I don’t mean to denigrate him in the slightest, but it was Greasy Neale who had the football brains and experience that contributed in a major way to whatever success Yale enjoyed in the years he coached there.”

Roscoe added,   “His West Virginia accent and his nickname tended to deflect on occasion what he was really about.”

Greasy Neale was certainly “country,” and there were times when the cultural differences between him and the Ivy Leaguers he coached were striking.  Wrote  Wallace, “that Neale could be crude in his coaching, there was no doubt. After an unsatisfactory effort, Neale might say, “You block like a sick whore getting off a pisspot.”



Yale’s coaching staff, 1937? 38? 39? 40?
Front row, L to R: Bill Renner, JV; Ducky Pond, Head Coach; Greasy Neale, Chief Assistant; Frank Wandle, Trainer
Back row: Gerald Ford, JV; Marsh Wells, line; Ivy Williamson, ends

"Marsh" Wells was the uncle of my wife's best friend. He was a native of Superiot, Wisconsin who played at Minnesota.  A career line coach,  he went on to coach at a number of big schools.  Ivan "Ivy" Williamson would go on to become head coach and then AD at Wisconsin.


CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING GERALD FORD:
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
TOM WALLS - WINNIPEG, MANITOBA (Gerald Ford. All of the US History Teachers/Coaches got that one right.  Isn't it ironic that Chevy Chase made a career out of portraying him as a klutz, when he was a college all star?)
PETE PORCELLI - WATERVLIET, NEW YORK
JASON MENSING - WHITEFORD, MICHIGAN (Since you hit my home state and I have personal rule of not responding if I have to google  (I do most of the time) I can actually get this one with Gerald Ford.)
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA (I too was complete enamored with this weekend’s launching of the “Ford”)
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
TOM DAVIS - SAN CARLOS, CALIFORNIA
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
JOE BREMER - WEST SENECA, NEW YORK
LOU ORLANDO - SOUTH BERWICK, MAINE


***********  Years ago, Lou Orlando, of Sudbury, Massachusetts, shared this story with me. Lou was a football player at Yale in the late 1970s, and, like President Ford, Lou was a center...
 

"...when Gerald Ford lost the presidential election to that peanut farmer, his first "public" appearance after leaving office was to accept the Chubb Fellowship at Timothy Dwight College (part of Yale's system of residential "colleges within a college." For his or her three upper-class years, every student lives and eats in his/her residential college, attends its parties, plays on its intramural teams, etc.) at Yale. He came to the school for a few days, meeting the students, and we had a reception for him up at Ray Tompkins House (the football offices).

There were 5 of us on the football team that lived in Timothy Dwight, and we wrote him a letter inviting him up to our room for a beer. Never dreaming we had a snowball's chance in hell of meeting him, the Secret Service called us and told us that he couldn't come up because of security issues, but we were welcome to come down to the suite where he was staying.

We excitedly and nervously all went to his room; we sat, talked, and drank a Michelob with him for about 30 minutes. When we were about to leave he offered to pose for pictures. I used to show everyone the picture: "Hey, do you want to see a picture of me and President Ford? I'm the one on the left.." Used to get a lot of laughs. This episode with President Ford and my teammates was mentioned in Coach Cozza's book "True Blue."

At one of the Yale football golf outings a few years ago Carm (Coach Carm Cozza) actually brought up to us that at first he was upset with us because we offered to have a beer with the President; to our surprise he even expressed that sentiment to President Ford during one of their meetings. The President waved him off by saying “Carm, it wasn’t a problem at all…we had a great time and I enjoyed being able to relax and talk football with them.”

The best part of the entire experience happened the next morning at a breakfast the President attended with 15 Yale football players prior to his departure. My roommate Drew Pace was one of the 5 at our meeting the night before; he and I were lucky enough to be included in the breakfast meeting as well. When President Ford came in the room he walked around the table and shook hands with each player. When he came to us he shook our hands and said “Hi Lou, good morning Drew.” You should have seen the looks on the other players faces!! PRICELESS

TUESDAY,  JULY 25,  2017  -  “Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are stupider than that.” George Carlin

FRIDAY,  JULY 21,  2017  -  "A liberal will cut off your leg to hand you a crutch.”  Jim Brown

*********** It’s fair to say that Jim Brown has  has always been his own man.  A proud black man.

Just imagine the greatest running back in the history of the game (my opinion) walking away from football - and a big contract -  while he still had plenty in the tank. All because the owner of his team had treated him like his boy - had issued him an ultimatum to report to training camp on time or else.  Jim Brown wasn’t one to be bullied. He happened to be busy making a movie at the time, and he refused to drop what he was doing and report.

And with that, the great Jim Brown  walked away from pro football.  He was 30 years old and in his prime,  but he never played again.

That’s by way of saying that Jim Brown has never been anybody’s “boy, ”  and when he talks about race,  he’s worth listening to.  And let the young loudmouths  who’d rather the races be at each other’s throats take their best shots at him.

Jim Brown on CNN: “The three greatest people in my life were white.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75Au1GgdxA

*********** Darren Carrington is a very talented wide receiver, but he’s been a bad boy while at Oregon, and after a recent DUI, new Ducks’ coach Willie Taggart finally decided to cut him loose.

Carrington has another year of eligiblity, and a few other Pac-12 schools are courting him.  There’s never a shortage of people willing to give a guy a second chance.  Make that third chance. Oops - that should be fourth. Or would it be fifth?

Oh, well.  Whoever finally lands him, you’ll know all you need to know about their coach’s standards - and his worries about his job.

http://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/index.ssf/2017/07/darren_carrington_disappointed.html
 

*********** Hi Hugh,

Could not let the blog on "don't nag to be loved" in today's News  go by without a comment. I know this was done tongue in cheek and I remember well the first time you ran our All State A Back, a six two one ninety young man who could fly, from practice because he was five minutes late to the pre practice meeting. You sure got the attention of everyone else and no one was late again. But even more I know how you feel about discipline, now a bad word, and rules which make a team better. One only has to look at your career to know that " to nag is to be loved" I know those kids loved and respected you. By the way those rules applied to your coaches as well as the kids and I like to think part of the reason we took a team that had not won in nearly a decade to 8-2 was clear expectations for all. But most certainly importantly I like to think they made us all better people.

All the best to you Connie and the family.

Jack Tourtillotte
Rangely, Maine

Right after he retired, and right after I took the head coaching job at North Beach High, Jack, a veteran of several state championships in Maine, came out and spent a season on the Washington coast coaching the offensive line for me.  What a blast we had! What a great job he did!  Those kids had been 1-9 the year before and we went 7-3, losing those three games by a total of 11 points.  Considering Jack’s experience as an assistant, a head coach, and a principal, it’s very important to me to know  that I measured up to his high standards.


***********  It’s been called AAU for football. (High school basketball coaches will understand.)

It advances the culture of entitlement.

It costs money.

It teaches bad habits.

It encourages celebratory antics.

It doesn’t enhance your chances of being recruited by a college.

It’s associated with enticement of athletes to transfer high schools. 

Of 40 Tacoma-Washington area high school football coaches who responded to a survey by the Tacoma News-Tribune, 39 of them - 97.5 per cent - said they’d rather their players play a school sport during the winter or spring.

It’s 7-on-7 - the travel version.  It sucks,  and it’s being accused of ruining our game.

But, like it or not, there's money involved, which means that it’s here to stay.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/high-school/article161493228.html#storylink=cpy


*********** “Prosper” is an appropriate good name for a town that can afford to spend $48 million on a high school stadium.

That would be Prosper, Texas, a Dallas suburb.

Be sure to check out the video…

https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/high-school/high-schools/2017/07/18/video-proposed-prosper-venue-another-blast-high-school-football-stadium-boom


*********** When I donate my millions to establish a college…

*** Instead of classes addressing the  frightening subject of White Privilege, we’re going to require all incoming freshmen (no, not “freshpersons”) to take a class in  “De-entitlement.”  Its theme: You are not special. You are not as important as you’ve been told you are.”

*** It doesn’t matter if you’re the only person on earth who spells (or pronounces) your name that way -  you’re not as unique as your mommy and daddy thought you were when they named you.  There are 5 billion people in the world, and you’re just one of them and you’re not that f—king important. Get used to it.

*** Nobody really cares what you think nearly as much as you do.

*** Yes you have a right to speak freely. But nobody has to listen to what you say.

*** Yes, you have a right to speak freely , but so does that guy who just called you a f—king sh—head.

*** It’s admirable that want to fight  for cleaner air and water, but if “the planet” really is being destroyed, relax - there’s not a damn thing you or anybody else can do about it. (I refer you to that statistic of 5 billion people on earth.)

*** Taking something from the “haves” and giving it to the  “have-nots”  robs the “haves” while doing nothing to enrich the “have-nots.”

*** You will get the grade that you earned.

*** You will not be excused from schoolwork or exams so that you can demonstrate.

***There will be a foreign language component. Lesson Number One: No, non, nyet, ei, nej, nein.  Translation: it means the same in every language:  NO.

*********** I was doing a remote clinic this past week, and for the occasion I wore one of my old “IT TAKES A SET” tee shirts.  Look at the back.  Look at all those clinic dates.  Can it have been that long ago that I would willingly go out on the road that many times? How long ago was it? In travellers’ terms, it was another era. Check the dates - it was before 9/11.  Travel was a lot easier back then.  A whole lot easier.

*********** There had been rumors for some time about the job security - or lack of same - of Ole Miss’ Hugh Freeze, but things finally came to a head Thursday night when he resigned, following rumors of “explosive” new information.

For sure, when you’re Ole Miss and you start  doing something way out of the ordinary - beating the top teams in the country for the best talent - you get their attention, and the NCAA gets their offer to “help” find out what really happened. Moral: know your place.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/ole-miss-coach-hugh-freeze-resigns-amid-explosive-new-information/?linkId=40010456

You into irony?  On the same day that it was reported that Ole Miss’ Hugh Freeze was in imminent danger of being fired,  the Carolina Panthers released Michael Oher, who as a top-rated high school prospect was the subject of the best-selling ‘The Blind Side.”  Michael Oher’s high school coach:  Hugh Freeze.

https://www.seccountry.com/mississippi/carolina-panthers-release-former-ole-miss-standout-michael-oher


*********** That’s my grandson, Sam Wyatt, in the middle of the photo. He’s about to turn nine, he lives in Melbourne, Australia, and this is his first year of Footy - Australian Rules football. He’s having a great time.

That’s all I care about.  We talk every week, and all I ever say is, “Play hard and have fun.”

After last week’s game, he was awarded a medal for being the outstanding player (skill, effort, sportsmanship) on his team.

Okay, enough bragging.

This medal thing is a hell of an idea - the idea of his coach, who sold other coaches on it.

The recipient of each team’s medal is selected by - the other team’s coach!

In one stroke, they get across the idea of a merit award - one that has to be earned - rather than a meaningless trophy.  At the same time,  they’ve removed the politics usually associated with such an award  by putting its selection in the hands of the opponents’ coach.

Now, unfortunately, I’m spoiled. Fun be damned. This is serious business. I'm thinking next level.  Now, the next time I speak to Sam, I’m going to make damn sure he knows that I expect nothing less than a medal every time.

*********** Pete Porcelli sent along these very interesting memories  of the recently-departed Babe Parilli by longtime Denver Broncos executive Jim Saccomano:

As a coach with the Denver Dynamite, Saccomano remembers a conversation with Parilli about a future Hall of Fame quarterback who was flying under the radar in the Arena League.

“When he was an Arena League coach – I mean it’s the Arena League, right? You’re just playing. Now, the Rams have signed Trent Green from Kansas City as their quarterback. The Rams are awful, they were always awful. This was before the championships,” Saccomano remembered. “They had finished 4-12 and they signed Green. Boom, preseason game and he’s out for the season. I’m saying to Al King and Babe – Al King is long time publicist – ‘You know, the Rams, it’s a shame, already their season is done.’ Parilli comes back and says, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry much about the Rams. They have this young guy that plays quarterback for the Iowa Barnstormers. He’s going to be terrific.’ And I thought, ‘Are you insane?!’ [It turns out] it’s Kurt Warner.”

“The top wide receiver for the Patriots was Gino Cappelletti – also Italian American,The Patriots radio announcer, when they would score a touchdown would say, ‘That’s grand opera! Parilli to Cappelletti.’

You presumably would react the way Sonny Sixkiller (see cover) reacted last year when, as a sophomore, he led the nation in passing and kept reading about how he was making heap good medicine and scalping and massacring people all up and down the Pacific Coast.

"I was dumfounded," says Sixkiller, shaking his head. "One guy asked if people gave me any trouble over my name—like I'm supposed to get mad and stab 'em in the back or set a trap for 'em. Jeez."

American Indian history, when you think about it, is not a great mine of surefire yoks and sprightly references, especially from the point of view of the Indians. So Sixkiller felt that his being described in print as "the most celebrated redskin since Crazy Horse" was tasteless and demonstrably reactionary. Once, questioned was there much folklore practiced at his house, he replied, "Well, we didn't sit around weaving baskets.

"If I'd been a black quarterback people wouldn't have been writing that kind of stuff," he says. "The blacks wouldn't have let them get away with it. Or even if I'd been a Chinese quarterback." But Sixkiller's bemusement over his image was heightened by the fact that he had never seriously thought of himself as an Indian, even a modern one.

Sixkiller certainly looks Indian. He is as bronze, raven-haired and strong-featured as you would expect the great-grandson of a Cherokee chieftain to look. He sounds like you would expect any with-it middle-class West Coast collegian to sound. His grandfather was a Baptist minister and his parents never lived on a reservation. They did once see a reservation. When Sonny was one, the family moved from Tahlequah, Okla. to Ashland, Ore., and Stella Sixkiller, Sonny's mother, suggested that they stop by a reservation on the way, because she was curious to see what one looked like. She was disappointed by the absence of wigwams.

TUESDAY,  JULY 18,  2017  -  "I don't want any special treatment.  Just treat me like an illegal alien." Howie Carr

*********** I got an email last week from Don Shipley.  Usually, I love to hear from Don, the son of the late Dick Shipley, my former coach when I played semi-pro ball in Frederick, Maryland.  Don is my link to a lot of the guys from those days.  Don’s latest email, though, wasn’t one I enjoyed reading.  It was about a guy who’d played for me, a guy named  Joe Kundrat.  Joe had played offensive line for me when I took a coaching job in Hagerstown, 30 miles away.  Joe Kundrat was a very tough guy.  At the time, he was a Baltimore cop, and he feared no man.   The  name “Joseph Kundrat” was in an  article Don Shipley had sent me.  Kundrat itself is not exactly  a common name, but Joseph? What are the chances that a person named Joseph Kundrat, described in the article as someone who had served in the Marines and on the Frederick police force, could be anyone else but the guy I coached?  (I figure that he managed  to land  a job  in Frederick, a small city about an hour’s drive west of Baltimore, which might share some of the bigger city’s problems, but on a far smaller scale.)

The story was a very sad one.  Again, I’m assuming that this is “my” Joe Kundrat, but either way, Joseph Kundrat and his wife, Lynda,  lost their 33-year-old son, Marine Staff Sergeant William Joseph Kundrat when a plane crashed in central Mississippi and killed him and 15 other Marines.

Whether it was “my Joe” or not, my deepest sympathies to those parents, and to the loved ones of the other Marines killed in that awful plane crash.

Said staff Sergeant Kundrat’s mother, Lynda, “Every breath of air you take, all the things you’re able to do, you can do those things because of people like my son. I’ll never forget that.”

https://www.fredericknewspost.com/content/tncms/live/

*********** Want  your players to love you, instead of thinking that you’re just an old nag?

First of all, get rid of those stupid rules.  What do you care whether they get to practice on time?  Or whether they have all their equipment?  Or whether they even show up at all?  Just so long as they show up for the games.  Especially if they’re good enough.

Stop being a nanny about using correct English.  What’s the difference? They’re never going to make it out of their neighborhood anyhow.

And hey - If they want to show up at the team banquet in the same old grubby tee shirt that they wear to school every day, what do you care? 

It’ll be a lot easier if you no longer make them say “please” and “thank you” when it’s called for.  Don’t teach them how to shake hands properly -  gripping firmly and looking the other person in the eye.  And stop insisting that they say “Hello” and use peoples’ names when they greet them.  And who cares whether they call you “Coach” or some clever nickname that makes them laugh?

Just so they play ball on Friday nights, right?

Look - they’re just kids and all they want to do is play football.  When their eligibility’s up, they’re no more use to you anyhow, so what do you care?

Once they’re gone, they’re gone,  so what difference does it make to you whether they get into the college - or service - of their choice? Or get the girl they want? Or get that good job ahead of all the other applicants?

Keep nagging them and they won’t love you.  Get off their backs and they will.

*********** (Back in February) Hello Coach Wyatt, I am a rule 10 coach in Kansas that took over our Valley Falls Middle School team a couple years ago.  I had never coached football before but my High school coach (from 20 years ago) called me and asked if I would coach a season because the previous coach had to quit un-expectantly.  My son was an eight grader and I had coached his class in tournament baseball and basketball through the years so I said if my work will allow it I will do it, So I did.  The middle school hadn't won a game in 5 years and had only scored 2 or 3 touchdowns total in that time, so needless to say we were struggling. I ran the veer for my old coach but I didn't feel that this was what this team needed.  We have been a very small team in physical size and numbers, (14 on average) but injuries and grades have left me with 11 and 12 for several games and just not very athletic for a quite some time.  I came across the double wing and studied it and was excited about its possibilities with misdirection, power and angle blocking.  We did win 2 games this year scoring over 40 points both games so that was nice to see.  I am organized and detail oriented but I feel I get to obsessed with running drills to see a certain result and next thing I know a half hour has gone by.  I am looking at buying some of your coaching material and I wanted your thoughts on what I should by.  I am buying this on my own dime so I want to purchase the material in the correct order over a few months.  I was looking at your dynamics of the double wing package, and the installing the system dvd, and also a fine line dvd. I really want to make my practices more efficient, very double wing focused (meaning I am not going to run other offenses in an attempt to confuse teams) and have fun. I run the double wing with the super power my primary play, then counter and the trap.  Quick passes mostly to tight ends and a few to wing back. I have experimented with different formations, single slot right or left and double slot, but missed blocks have plagued us.  I know I am not explaining the real time changes in blocking assignments well and that's what leads to this confusing.  Let me know what material you think would be best.  I would greatly  appreciate it.  Thanks for your time.

(Last week, in July) Coach, camp went great last week with all the things I have learned from your videos.  It has simplified so many things and answered so many questions that I know we will be a much improved team.  I will be sending you a check for A FINE LINE DVD, and TROUBLE SHOOTING THE DOUBLE WING DVD, to finish off my dvd collection.  I also was wondering your take on Defenses in Middle School.  We play smaller schools for the most part so we typically see heavy running game offenses.  I was just curious if you like even or odd fronts and whether you would spend much time with blitz calls and stunts.  I have received conflicting information from everyone I have asked and would love your opinion and insight.  Thanks for all of your help and taking the time to make the videos through the years.  Thanks again.
 
Todd F. Pickerell
Topeka, Kansas


***********Coach,  A few years back I was coaching on a staff that ran some under center jet sweep and we did not block any DLine inside of a 3 tech. The center and all backside linemen would immediately climb to the 2nd level. Do you have any opinions on that?

Coach,

I agree that on a jet sweep it isn’t necessary to block anyone from a “3” down, but I also feel that on a jet sweep those backside blockers are just as useless as the defenders.

I woiud do what a very good coach in Connecticut named Mike Emery did.  He won a couple of state titles at Fitch HS in Groton, CT running the Double Wing but a lot of his offense was jet sweep.  I don’t remember his exact scheme, but since he ran the sweep in tandem with a trap, he had the backside linemen (from the playside tackle on back) blocking the trap.

He showed it at one of my clinics, but this was at least 10 years ago, and I can’t find the exact info.  We did this and taught it with the QB holding two footballs - one that he handed first to the motion man, the other that he then  handed to the B-Back.  Nice drill.



*********** “Depressing” is not a word I normally use to describe Sports Illustrated.  I mean, it’s about sports, and heroic performances, and beautiful,  popular, overachieving  people we’d all like to learn more about, right?

But this past week’s issue was depressing.  Really.

Very sad was Tim Layden’s article about runner Gabi Grunewald, and her struggle to keep running despite a rare form of cancer that keeps returning, bringing discouragement and despair whenever it does.  But that wasn’t what was depressing. The story was beautifully written, and Ms. Grunewald is so admirable in her persistence to compete that it was uplifting.

No, that wasn’t what was depressing.

What was depressing was a story about a couple named Brent and Miko Grimes.  Brent Grimes is an NFL corner back who was signed as a free agent out of a Division II Pennsylvania college and has gone on to have moments of brilliance in the NFL but for some reason can’t seem to stick with any club.

Okay, okay.  There’s no mystery.   The guy’s wife is every coach’s nightmare.  She’s a vulgar witch, who has dedicated herself in the crudest and most public way possible to promoting her husband and his abilities.  Unfortunately, her method of doing so frequently involves - crudely and publicly - insulting her husband’s coaches and teammates.   And, on occasion, their wives.

“I could tell Miko to shut up,” says Brent. “But then she wouldn’t be Miko.” (And that’s bad?)

Depressing, did I say? What’s most depressing to me is not that there are a&&holes like that woman in the world. Professional sports is full of them.

What was depressing to me was the non-judgmental way the story was written, as if we’ll just have to understand that Miko is her own person, and we’ll just have to accept her as she is. That’s Miko.  No editorializing whatsoever.

But if she’d been a born-again Christian and had expressed - without her usual  vulgarity -  her sincere belief that people of the same sex shouldn’t engage in sexual acts, much less marry, much less adopt children - well, she’d have been held up as everything that’s wrong with America.

https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/07/12/brent-miko-grimes-twitter-tampa-bay-buccaneers

***********  A little boasting here: I’ve been to all 50 states.  Big deal.  But one thing I’ve found out is that there’s not one of them where I couldn’t live.  Someplace.  And happily at that.

So when I saw “America’s worst states to live in 2017,” I fell for it. I clicked on the link.  Admit it.  You’ve fallen for click-bait, too.

Surprisingly, West Virginia didn’t make it.  Seems as if it’s fashionable to insult the Mountain State, even if you’ve never been there.  Especially if you’ve never been there.

I knew, of course, that Alabama and Mississippi would be on the list, simply because they’re in the Deep South, and, well, it’s okay to look down your nose at almost anything concerning the Deep South.  In fact, in most elite circles, it’s encouraged.

But I had to see what other states would make this list of deplorables.

Counting down from 10th to first, I only got as far as the 10th worst - Kentucky - when it became clear to me that things that made these states bad in the eyes of the author of the report, one Scott Cohn, were things that made absolutely no difference to me one way or the other.  He writes, “More than a quarter of adults are regular smokers in Kentucky, the highest rate in the country.” So how does this affect me? Is he trying to tell me that in Kentucky, they walk up to you on the street and blow smoke in your face? Do they grab you off the sidewalk and blindfold you and take you someplace where they duct-tape you to a chair and force you to take deep drags on a Marlboro?

Mississippi - there it was, but only in seventh place - got low marks because a lot of its people are fat.  “Mississippi has one of the highest obesity rates in the nation, and its population is among the most sedentary.”  So the food’s good, but unless you get up really early and jog, it’s too damn hot to exercise.

Indiana’s in sixth place.  Worse than Mississippi, Hoosiers! No doubt taking a shot at former governor Mike Pence (I did notice that all the states on the list were “Red” states), Cohn writes,  “the state still lacks some basic protections against discrimination based on marital status, sexual orientation and gender identity.”  Omigod.

In Indiana’s favor, though, author Cohn does praise its air quality.  I don’t know about you, and maybe it’s because I live in the Pacific Northwest (God’s Country), but I seldom give much thought to air quality.

Missouri is in fifth place.  High crime is a problem (Ferguson didn’t help matters by prompting out-of-state criminals to come visit), but so, too, is the ugly specter that  “Missouri also lacks statewide protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, marital status, and gender identity.”

To be honest, living as I do in a state whose biggest city’s mayor (a male) has a highly-visible “husband,”  this wouldn’t be enough to place  Missouri on my Ten Worst States list.

Louisiana is the “fattest” state.  What a surprise.  If you’ve ever lived there and eaten their food, you’d understand. I know, I know, overweight is not healthy.  But what a way to go.  Louisiana also gets marked down for its high crime rate, but then, if you don’t like crime, stay the hell out of New Orleans (except when you slip in to town for a good meal) and you’ll be fine.

And then there’s Alabama. It’s Number One, which means its the Worst.  Listen -  I’ve been to Gulf Shores on the south and Huntsville in the north.  I’ve been to Birmingham and Montgomery and all sorts of places in between.  And I like Alabama.  And I like its people.  But, see, Alabama’s in the Bible Belt, and those Christians have these weird ideas about inclusion: “Sweet Home?” Cohn asks. “Not if you are over 50, a minority, gay or transgender and you are concerned about discrimination. Alabama is one of only five states with no statewide legal protections for those groups, making it one of America's least inclusive states.”

Interesting that the top (or bottom, actually) four Worst states are Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Alabama.  Maybe it’s just a coincidence that they’re all football mad states.  But I could easily spend a football season in one or all of those states, and as long as I stayed out of high-crime areas (something I learned to do at a very young age) and didn’t frequent gay bars (if they even have them in those states), I’d see some great football played in front of passionate fans.  And I’d eat the food, and just consider the added pounds a small price to pay for living in my kind of America.

The List
10 Kentucky
9 (tie) New Mexico, Tennessee
7 Mississippi
6 Indiana
5 Missouri
4 Arkansas
3 Oklahoma
2 Louisiana
1 Alabama

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/11/americas-10-worst-states-to-live-in-2017.html

*********** I sure am glad that Pete Porcelli, of Watervliet, New York, suggested that I make his ex-coach, Babe Parilli, one of my recent QUIZ subjects.  I’ve got a long list of guys to honor, and if Pete hadn’t written me, I might never have written about Parilli.  But I did, which was fortunate, because, sadly, the Babe passed away last week.

Pete sent along this praise for the Babe from Terry Bradshaw:

“Babe Parilli was my one and only quarterback coach. I didn’t have an offensive coordinator or quarterback coach. One year I had Babe Parilli and he did to me what they did to me in college. He picked me up and encouraged me. I flourished under his knowledge because he played so many years in the NFL and shared it. Babe Parilli is someone whose name is never mentioned."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/sports/football/babe-parilli-dead.html

Which got me to thinking - is there a particular football coach or player you know of  that you think the guys on this site might want to know more about?  If so, drop me a line.

*********** Quick - what was the last NBA scandal you can remember?  Gotcha, didn’t I?

Meantime, how about the NFL? I’ll bet you can name a dozen, right off the top.

I’ll bet more than half the teams in the NFL will start this season with  at least one  player suspended for at least one game for misconduct or drug issues.

Give David Stern credit.  He’s the former long-time commissioner of the NBA.  He realized that the NBA was infested with thuggery, and somehow,   he managed to get teams - and players - to realize that at some point the American public was going to stop buying that act, and for the good of everybody they needed to put an end to it.

Which brings us to the Seahawks’ Richard Sherman.  Here’s a guy outtta Compton who’s making millions, but - it’s not enough! Oh, no.  He’s seen what professional basketball players make, and he’s upset.  He thinks pro football players are underpaid, and they  should strike for more money.

To Mr. Motormouth Sherman, I would point out that NBA teams carry rosters of maybe 15 players, while NFL teams pay 53 guys.  I’d be happy to see the NFL go back to 40-man rosters, but the NFLPA isn’t going to agree to that.

Oh - and the NBA guys play some 80 games.   Just the mere suggestion lengthening the NFL schedule causes the  NFLPA to cry “safety hazard.”

Finally, though - the NBA players seems to understand that good conduct is the least that can be expected in return for their outrageously high pay. 

When NFL players show that they grasp this seemingly simple concept, perhaps they’ll have a chance of rallying public support for their cause.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/texans-rookie-rb-foreman-arrested-on-drug-weapon-charges/ar-BBEwdZh?li=BBnb7Kz


***********  This followed an article about Ezekiel Elliott’s latest sign that he might not yet be fully ready to take his place in Western Civilization:


Hmmm - could it be that the natives are increasingly expressing their  disgust with their NFL heroes in the comments?

Truthfully, I’m normally more interested in the post-story comments than I am in the stories themselves.

Unlike the writers and the editors, the commenters’  opinions can’t be bought.  But, evidently, they can be silenced.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/elliott-accused-of-breaking-mans-nose-after-verbal-spat/ar-BBEBnCa?li=BBnba9I

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING HERMAN WEDEMEYER:

ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS (QUIZ:  "Squirmin' Herman, or the "Flyin' Hawaiian" either way Herman Wedemeyer was the greatest football player to ever play for the Gaels of St. Mary's College.  The San Francisco Bay Area college football fans were spoiled watching some of the best college football players in the country during the late 40's and early 50's.  Frankie Albert, Wedemeyer, Ollie Matson, Gino Marchetti, Bob St. Clair, Hugh McIlhenny etc. etc. )
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKESVILLE, INDIANA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA


***********  Herman Wedemeyer was the first native Hawaiian to earn national recognition as a football player.

Talk about diversity - although his surname was German, his ancestry was German, Irish, Scottish, Hawaiian and Chinese. His father was a German-born seaman who met and married a Hawaiian woman. Between them, they raised nine kids.

He was recruited out of Honolulu’s St. Louis Prep and played for St. Mary’s College, a West Coast Catholic school that no longer plays football.  With “Squirming’ Herman” Wedemeyer  at single-wing tailback, St. Mary’s enjoyed great success in the post-war years, beating USC and losing only to UCLA his senior year, and playing in the Sugar Bowl.

Only five players were named to the All-American backfield that year, and Wedemeyer  was one of them, along with Army’s Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis, Alabama’s Harry Gilmer, and Oklahoma A & M’s Bob Fenimore.

He finished fourth in the Heisman voting - at the time, the highest-ever finish for a “non-white” player, and until Marcus Mariota’s Heisman win in 2014, he was the only native Hawaiian ever to become a  Heisman finalist.

After a brief pro career with the Los Angeles Dons in the AAFC, he returned to his native Hawaii to go into business.

Later in life, Herman Wedemeyer  enjoyed a second career for which he became even more famous, when he played officer Duke Lukela in the very popular TV series, "Hawaii Five-0." (The name "Duke" was given to the character as a tribute to the legendary Duke Kahanamoku, the man credited with popularizing surfing as a sport in the 1920’s.)

In 1979, he became the first native Hawaiian to be inducted into the College Football hall of Fame.

*********** QUIZ -  The Ballad of

FRIDAY,  JULY 14,  2017  - “Prayers work better when the players are big.”  Frank Leahy

  It’s what’s known as a patronymic - a last name based on the name of the father.

Not unlike what we see in so many languages -   Bogdanovic, Sergeyevich, Janowicz, O’Brien, Olafsson, Hansen, DiGiovanni, etc.

Anyhow, stop mispronouncing the man’s name.

*********** Coach- Could you please explain the “GOAL” assignment of the playside linemen on Super Power?  What exactly do you mean by “GAP,” and “ON?”

Good questions.

To answer, here’s something I’ve been working on to illustrate.  It’s going into a new Double-Wing playbook I’m working on.

Here, let’s look the right tackle on Super Power.

His assignment is GAP - ON - ANGLE LATE (Hence the acronym “GOAL”).

Basically here’s what I tell him:

Imagine yourself in a lane as wide as your shoulders.

* if the defender is in the inside of your lane - his helmet is inside yours but part of him is still in your lane -  I consider him to be threatening your gap, because if you don’t block him, the guard to your inside can’t prevent him from penetrating.    So as far as I’m concerned,  he is GAP

Our tight gaps mean that because he isn’t entirely in your lane, part of him has to be in the guard’s lane. And since the guard’s assignment is the same as yours, you will most likely be double-teaming with him

* From head-up on you to any part of him lined up in the outside of your lane - he’s ON you

Our tight gaps mean that because he isn’t entirely in your lane, part of him has to be in the Tight End’s lane. And since the Tight End’s assignment is “GAP, DOWN”, you will  be double-teaming with him

* And if no one is in your GAP or ON you, you will come inside at an angle - you will not fire out straight ahead - and you will do so after a slight delay to make sure that no one is threatening your area after the ball is snapped.

To illustrate, here’s a test:

1: ON - (A DOUBLE-TEAM WITH THE TE)
2: ON - (A DOUBLE-TEAM WITH THE TE)
3: ON - (A DOUBLE-TEAM WITH THE TE)
4: ON - (A DOUBLE-TEAM WITH THE TE)
5: GAP - (LIKELY A DOUBLE-TEAM WITH THE GUARD)
6: ANGLE LATE - (LIKELY A DOUBLE-TEAM WITH THE GUARD)
7. GAP - (LIKELY A DOUBLE-TEAM WITH THE GUARD)
8. GAP - (COULD BE BLOCKED AS “ON” BUT THERE IS NO CHANCE OF A DOUBLE-TEAM WITH THE TE)
9. GAP -  (LIKELY A DOUBLE-TEAM WITH THE GUARD)

The "ladies and gentlemen" greeting on Tube announcements is to be scrapped, Transport for London (TfL) has announced.

London Underground staff have been told to say "hello everyone" in an effort to become more gender-neutral.

TfL said the move was to ensure all passengers felt "welcome".

LGBT campaign group Stonewall welcomed the decision, which was supported by London mayor Sadiq Khan at a session of Mayor's Question Time last month.

The revised phrasing will be applied to all new pre-recorded announcements made across the capital's transport network.

Mark Evers, director of customer strategy at TfL, said: "We want everyone to feel welcome on our transport network.

TUESDAY,  JULY 11,  2017  - “Every serious achievement in education involves forgetting yourself.”  Larry Arrn, President, Hillsdale College

From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.

It used to be a point of pride with some football coaches to see how many plays they could include in their offense.

In the early days of the “T” formation George Halas had more than 300 plays in his Chicago Bears’ offense.  I remember Sid Luckman often telling that it took him most of his first year with the Bears just to learn all of Halas’ plays.

The late Francis A. Schmidt, who coached at Texas Christian, Ohio State and Idaho, was another who thrived on a gigantic accumulation of plays.  Schmidt had so many plays that his teams never really had a chance to learn them all. On the practice field, Schmidt would show the players a “flash card” with the play diagrammed on it.  Then they would run it and he’d go to another play.

Not even Schmidt’s quarterbacks could learn all his plays and at times this led to comical circumstances. There was the afternoon in 1936 when Ohio State played Notre Dame. 

The Buckeyes’ quarterback that day was William Harrison “Tippy” Dye, a mite who weighed only 145 pounds when wringing wet.   Tippy is now the highly successful head basketball coach at the University of Washington.

This day, one of the big Irish linemen hit Dye with a jarring tackle.  His headgear became dislodged as he hit the ground, and out of his head spilled several dozen index cards on which the Ohio plays had been written.

The wind blew the play cards to the four corners of the stadium, and play had to be halted for a few minutes while the Buckeyes scurried about, reclaiming their “offense.”

University of Kentucky football fans were unhappy with Coach Blanton Collier in 1959, and they wrote a lot of letters complaining and asking that he and his incompetent aides be gone. The staff was gone by 1961. Of the eight coaches, exactly eight went on to success in pro football, five of them becoming NFL head coaches. Beginning from the left, they are Ed Rutledge, an NFL scout; Howie Schnellenberger, head coach at Baltimore; Ermal Allen, assistant coach at Dallas; Collier, who succeeded Paul Brown at Cleveland and won an NFL championship; Don Shula, of whom you may have heard; John North, head coach of New Orleans; Bob Cummings, his assistant; and Bill Arnsparger, who is taking over the New York Giants. Another Collier assistant, Chuck Knox, was on the staff in 1961 but not in 1959. He was just named Coach of the Year following his first season with the Los Angeles Rams. Fired anybody else lately, Kentucky?

FRIDAY,  JULY 7,  2017  - “Happiness begins where selfishness ends.” John Wooden

*********** Nearly 30 years ago, I spent a summer as an intern in the LSU Athletic Department, and while I was there I had the great privilege of getting to know the Tigers’ baseball coach, Skip Bertman.  Skip, who  would later become the AD at LSU, had arrived a few years earlier from Miami, where he’d been associate head coach under the great Ron Fraser. Skip hadn’t yet won one of the five College World Series titles that he’d win in his 18 years as head coach in Baton Rouge, but it was obvious in talking with him that he was the real deal.

One of the things that always stuck with me was his saying how subtle he had to be when he was trying to get his players to think about a career other than baseball.  These were top-notch athletes, who had always been the best player on their team, or in their town or county or state, all their lives, and now he had to be the first one ever to suggest that maybe - just maybe - they might need something besides baseball to “fall back on,” as the old cliche went.

He said he’d start out by saying, “Look - you know, and I know, that you’re going to be playing in the majors someday.  But just in case…”

This conversation with Skip Bertman came rushing back to me when I read an article sent to me about the lengths to which the football programs at Clemson and Cal are going to provide for their players - “just in case.”

As much as I despise the NCAA, this looks like an area for it to get into.

Instead of building luxurious facilities that simply foster the culture of athletic entitlement and promote materialism, colleges should begin spending their money on programs like Clemson’s and Cal’s.

And then the big-time schools would have to recruit on the basis of who can do the most for players once their usefulness to the football team is at an end.

Wouldn’t that benefit the players more in the long run than a couple of thousand dollars a year walking-around money?

http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/19758226/clemson-tigers-cal-bears-robust-development-programs-preparing-players-life-football


*********** John McEnroe caught hell recently for saying that Serena Williams was the best female player of all time.  What he did not say, as his female questioner wanted him too, was that she was the best ever, male or female.

No, he refused to play the PC game - and feminists,   the “we can do anything men can do” crowd,  went nuts.

Never mind that   everybody who understands tennis knows that as great as Serena Williams is, there are at least 500 men in the world who could beat her.  Even Ms. Williams knows this.

Simply put, men on the whole are bigger, stronger and faster than women - a biological fact that our military, in its drive to someday have a female Chief of Staff, seems willing to overlook.

Fortunately, to help settle once and for all the issue of God’s unequal distribution of talents,   Joey Chestnut stepped up. Mr. Chestnut, the world famous competitive eater,  has made  eating more hot dogs than any other human being on  July 4 an American tradition.

In doing so, he provides, every year,  a  clear, convincing example of male physical superiority.

Tuesday, he wolfed down 72 hot dogs - buns and all - in 10 minutes. The second-place finisher, a guy from New Jersey named Carmen Cincotti, could manage “only” 64.  Matt Stonie, whose defeat of Chestnut in 2015 is Chestnut’s only July 4 loss since 2007, finished third, with 48.

Over on the ladies’ side? The winner, Miki Sudo ate 41. Are you kidding me? Forty-f—king One hot dogs?  I don’t hear any feminists, arguing that she’s the greatest hot dog eater of all time, male or female.

Keep believing in Wonder Woman all you want, girls, but the evidence is in.  Forget competing against men.  It’s useless. Your biggest worry isn’t men, anyhow - it’s all the damn scammers starting to “identify” as women. If you're not careful,  there aren't going to be any women's sport left.


*********** A birthday present  from Down Under, its an official Australian Football League ball, a special indigenous art edition, designed by Gavin Wanganeen, “Indigenous artist and AFL legend.”

The official explanation of the art:

“There are 18 circles on the ball, with each circle representing one of the 18 clubs in the AFL competition. Even though Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians make up approximately 3 per cent of the population in Australia, they make up close to 11 per cent of players in the men’s league. In 2017, every AFL club will have Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander players on their list and so these circles are significant as they represent opportunity for current and future Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander generations. As a 300-game player this is particularly personal to me, as I was once one of those kids, chasing my dream to play in the Australian Football League.”

Which got me and my son, Ed, who grew up in the States but now lives in Australia, wondering which of the major American sports leagues might do something similar.

Soccer? (Can't you read???  I said “major.”)  Next -

Baseball?  Are you kidding me?  They only mess with the ball when they think the pitchers are getting too far ahead of the hitters.  And in fairness, it really would be a different game if hitters couldn’t depend on seeing  a white ball with red stitches. Next -

Hockey? The puck is way too small to be used as an object of art. Next -

Football?  The NFL’s so worried about proper inflation that it wouldn’t even want to consider the idea - even if it could get the Player’s Association to approve. Yikes. I can already hear the wide receivers howling. Next -

Basketball? Bingo. We both agreed that if anybody’s going to do it, it’s the fan-friendly NBA.  Remember the old ABA and that red-white-and-blue ball? That sucker was popular with kids, and it didn’t seem to affect the ABA’s game. Actually when you think of it, you need  to see the ball to catch a pass, but you don't need to see the ball to shoot it.  In my opinion, it was a huge mistake for the NBA not to adopt that ball -  as it did the 3-point shot - when the leagues merged.


*********** This past June, there were six homes in the Los Angeles area,  built in the 1930s and 1940s, that  were on sale for prices ranging from $2.4 million to $88 million. They were all designed by one man.

The architect was  Paul Revere Williams, and  in 1923 he became the first black architect to be admitted to the American Institute of Architects.

It’s not easy to identify a house as one of his, because he didn’t have a signature style.   Instead of forcing his ideas on his clients, he tended to give them what they wanted.

Although his work was widely admired, and many of his houses were bought by the rich and famous of Hollywood, his clients were not exactly color blind, and he knew it.

For example, he wrote in a 1937 article that he learned to draw his renderings of houses upside-down,  so that his white clients could sit opposite him, rather than feeling forced to sit beside him.

 

*********** A coach who’s been looking at the Open Wing asked…

Is there any merit in just blocking your West 6-G-O play as an X block between the tight end and the tight tackle with the backside power pull and the wing inserting?  Just curious.


My answer:


Under certain circumstances - given the right defensive alignment - there is a lot of merit to a 6-XO.



For sure, against an Okie front, it could be something of a key breaker, with the Tight Guard firing out on the Tight side backer.



And I could see it working against a 3-5-3, or  4-4 or possibly even a 4-2-5 look.



But against a defense with an aggressive “3” technique player, which we see a fair amount of,  I have my doubts about a tight end’s ability to get down on that guy.













*********** Keyshawn Johnson may have been a jerk as a player (“Just give me the Damn Ball,” “written”  (as told to Shelly Smith) after just one year in the NFL), but he sounds as though he may have the makings of a good father.

When his son, Keyshawn, Jr., had to take a “leave of absence” from the Nebraska  team after being caught with marijuana in his dorm room,  Keyshawn, Sr. went off.

"You're in college now," Johnson Sr.  told the Omaha World-Herald. "You're an adult. You're not a kid. You take a look at it from afar and let me know how important it is to you."

Added Dad, "One thing you will not do as my son is you will not embarrass Nebraska, you will not embarrass Mike Riley and you will not embarrass this family. If you mature and you're ready to resume your football career and academic goals, then Nebraska will be ready to embrace you."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/bigten/2017/06/21/keyshawn-johnson-chastises-son-keyshawn-johnson-jr-marijuana-possession-citation/416078001/

*********** I played high school football a long time ago, and many of the guys I played with are dead now. But I’ve been saying for years now, ever since this whole concussion hysteria started, that no one that I’m aware of ever showed signs of mental problems that could be associated with their having played football.

Now comes a new study suggesting that there is no connection between playing football and cognitive problems later in life.

Well, er, not exactly.

High school football, anyhow - that’s all it measured.

Oh - and  high school football the way it was played when I played - it studied a group of men who graduated from high school in Wisconsin in 1957.  That was a year after I graduated.

Some of the men had played high school football and some hadn’t. The study, published in the Journal of the American medical Association (JAMA), found that  playing football  did not lead to cognitive impairment by age 65, and those who had played football  were actually slightly less likely to have experienced  depression.

Up to now, most studies linking football and a head injury that has come to be known as CTE have been done using the  brains of former football players,  donated by relatives who suspected that something had been wrong. On top of that, the subjects had been professional football players.  “There was very limited studies on the long-term effects for more limited exposure like high-school exposure,” says Dylan Small,  a co-author of the study and a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania.

Before any of us jumps to conclusions - FOOTBALL IS GOOD FOR THE BRAIN! -this study does not deal with today’s players, playing today’s game.

The game was different when I played. Today’s game is much more aggressive, and I attribute that to the use of the helmet as a weapon.

At the time I played,  the transition to plastic helmets was almost complete, although some players still wore leather helmets.  The inner protective cushioning  of the various sorts of plastic helmets ran the gamut from all-foam to canvas strapping.  Almost no one wore face gear (I was the first on my team to wear face protection - a simple plastic bar across the mouth.)  None of my teammates wore a mouthpiece.

We tackled low, around the legs.  No one led with his helmet.

The point of tackling was to bring the ball carrier down. I don’t recall ever hearing the word “punish” associated with it.

At some point, the helmet became widely used as a weapon, and  while the people in charge of our game passed rules to try to curtail the practice, the reality is that out on the field, little has been done to make our game safer.

Part of the problem is that the penalty for leading with the crown of the helmet - or hitting above the shoulder -  has been made so severe that officials are reluctant to call it.

My suggestion - all tackles must appear to involve an attempt to wrap with the arms. This means that  at the moment of contact the hands must be extended ahead of the helmet.  That way, a tackler would be more concerned with tackling, and less with punishing.

Oh,  and one more thing, while I'm still king - a penalty box, like ice hockey and  many field sports - the offender to be removed from the game (and his team  to play a man short) for four plays from scrimmage.


https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/3/15913454/high-school-football-concussion-health-chronic-traumatic-encephalopathy

http://footballscoop.com/news/study-no-association-playing-hs-football-cognitive-impairment-depression-later-life/


*********** Gene Conley died.  A great two-sport athlete, he played on a World Series winner (Milwaukee Braves) and an NBA champion (Boston Celtics)

And, playing in a a time when there was very little movement between leagues, there can't be many  guys like him, guys who played for both the Boston Braves and Boston Red Sox.

One thing that pisses me off is that stories about him mention his being born in Oklahoma, without also mentioning that he went to high school in Richland, Washington and then went to Washington State, where he pitched the baseball team  to the College World Series, and was leading scorer on the Cougars’ basketball team.

http://www.wcvb.com/article/boston-mourns-former-sox-celtics-player-gene-conley/10262881


QUIZ - Vito “Babe” Parilli was among the first in a long line of great  quarterbacks to come out of Western Pennsylvania, and he was among the first of Bear Bryant’s outstanding quarterbacks.

He took Kentucky, far better known as a basketball power, to three straight bowl game wins - Orange, Sugar and Cotton -  and in one of them, the 1951 Sugar Bowl, he led the Wildcats to an upset of top-ranked Oklahoma.  Nicknamed “Sweet Kentucky Babe,”  was an All-American, and the runner-up in the Heisman Trophy balloting.

He was a first round draft choice of the Green Bay Packers - the fourth selection overall - but for several seasons he went back and forth between the NFL and the CFL until with the founding of the American Football League he landed a job with the Raiders.  He was traded to the Patriots, where he spent seven seasons as their starter. He spent his final two seasons with the Jets, backing up Joe Namath.

He is one of only 20 players to have played in the AFL for the entire ten years of its existence.

Babe Parilli was head coach of two different World Football League teams - the New York Stars in 1974 and the Chicago Winds in 1975.

He finished out his coaching career with several stops in the Arena Football League.

He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and the Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame.

(I screwed up by originally calling the Babe the “first” of the Bear’s great QBs.  I totally overlooked  George Blanda, who also came out of Western PA, and also  at Kentucky  - before Parilli. No, Blanda never won three bowl games - at Kentucky, yet! - and Blanda never played in the CFL or backed up Namath. But to those who were thrown off by my first clue, I apologize.)

*********** CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING BABE PARILLI:
JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDAc
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA - Ouch!...Babe certainly blamed centers for all QB/C exchanges I can tell you that!!! (“Coach Kaz,” as a rookie out of Western Illinois, played center for the New York Stars, Babe Parilli’s first head coaching stop.)
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
PETE PORCELLI - WATERVLIET, NEW YORK - Babe coached me in 1994 in Las Vegas and in 1996 in Anaheim in the Arena Football league where I played center and nose guard playing ironman football. Man the guy had to be 66 or 67 at the time and could still throw pretty well.  Great guy and a great coach. On the phone with him a few months back, I sent him a few football cards to sign and the stories he told. Coached by Weeb Ewbank, Vince Lombardi, and the great Bear Bryant. He still thinks to this day Lombardi got rid of him because he beat Lombardi in a game of golf and everyone warned him "don't beat the boss.” Babe is 86, still plays golf as much as a he can - lives in Denver.
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA

*********** QUIZ - A native of Arkansas, his high school didn’t have a football team, and he never played a down of football until after World War II service in the Navy, when he attended a junior college.  After two years there,  he transferred to Kentucky and  played under Bear Bryant.

After just one year as an assistant at Vanderbilt, he went to LSU in 1953 as an assistant to Paul Dietzel, and as LSU’s defensive coordinator, he helped the Tigers win the National Championship in 1958.

In 1962, he got his first - and only - head coaching job.

He stayed for 18 years, the longest tenure of any coach in the school’s history.  He compiled a record of 137-59-7, the most wins of any coach in the school’s history, and took his team to 13 bowl games.  He had only one losing season (5-6) and his teams finished in the Top Ten on five occasions.

Some of the  outstanding players he coached were Bert Jones,  Jerry Stovall,  Charles Alexander and Tommy Casanova.

After retiring from coaching, he spent 13 years as the Executive Director of the American Football Coaches Association.

TUESDAY,  JULY 4,  2017  - “Little things make the difference. Everyone is well prepared in the big things, but only the winners perfect the little things.” Bear Bryant

*********** Happy July 4. It's the one day of the year I hate my town.   After years of people complaining about the near-war conditions forced on us by the a&&holes who enjoy setting off explosives in the dead of night, the city fathers finally got around to restricting the use of fireworks to July 3 and 4 only.  Big deal. Enforcement is another matter.  Last night (Sunday, July 2) we were awakened after midnight by patriots noisily wishing our nation a Happy Birthday. (Actually, after watching Jesse Watters' interviews of brain-dead college students, I rather doubt that any of them have any idea why July 4 is a holiday.  Or what date the Fourth of July falls on.) 

For people with pets, it's a very unpleasant time.

Oh, well.  What can't be cured must be endured.  Happy July 4.

*********** Hugh:

I hope all is well.  Your blurb about Bill George reminded me about a few things I learned about him when I was President of the Bill George Youth Football League for nine years and a rep/coach for another seven.. It is a  league that has always been the standard for youth football since the 1960's. Hundreds of leagues have come and gone, including the "play for a National Championship in Florida" ones that keep popping up from the woodwork but the BGYFL has always remained strong.
Bill Pope was a founding father of the BGYFL and its President from 1963-1975. In 1963 Bill Pope was able to get Bill George, Joe Fortunato, and Larry Morris (the Chicago Bears first string linebacker corps off of what was to be the 1963 Championship team) to travel from franchise to franchise to pitch the new league. While all Bears players committed to make cash contributions, Bill George was the only one to send money so Bill Pope named our League after him. The cash contribution to start the BGYFL was $100.00.  
The family does not have any roots in Chicago but I did get an e-mail from a daughter who was curious about what the league was doing and why we were using her father's name?  Right away I was thinking about a law suit but after I explained what we were about  she was sooo happy that she reported back to her siblings and nieces and nephews about us.  I sent t-shirts out to some of the family members.  They were ecstatic that his name was living on with the game of football.
Raising a three year old has kept me from coaching high school but I did coach a really great group of sixth graders two years ago and I am hoping to help out with my nephew's eighth grade season this fall.  I wanted to tell you that I have only run double wing since 1998 at every level from 8 year olds to Varsity High School and my record with the offense is a winning percentage of 90%.  I have done some minor tweaking with terminology and with how we get outside but for 18 years we have won with double tight, power, trap, criss cross, base and keeps.  I still only throw 4-6 times a game and that is fine with me.  I also still lead with my QB on super power.......Although, I may have him boot this year and I may run 7-8 plays out of West.  Every year I come up with 20 new plays or formations but then I never feel right installing most of them when what we do just works.   I am grateful ever day that I bought that VHS tape from you in 1997.  I could talk about a million things going on but that will have to wait until another day.   Have a great Holiday Weekend!!!
 

Bill Lawlor
Palatine, Illinois

I've known Coach Lawlor a long time, and I was hoping I'd hear from him.  Very good coach.  Pictured below are the backs of two "Bill George Youth Football League" tee shirts that he gave me , one in 2006 and the other in 2007, that I still wear:







*********** Good piece on Phil Jackson. Trying to think of anyone in the non-scandal, non-criminal, non-addiction category who has fallen further. From coaching genius and guru to laughing stock.

Ed Wyatt
Melbourne, Australia


It's Emerson: “Every hero becomes a bore at last.”

I'm trying to picture Vince Lombardi showing Aaron Rodgers - and the current Packers’ offensive line and wide receivers -  his famous Green Bay Sweep.  And getting them to run it. Over and over and over.  ("Who is this old fart, anyhow - and what does he know about football?")


https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/sports/basketball/phil-jackson-new-york-knicks.html?em_pos=medium&emc=edit_sp_20170629&nl=sports&nl_art=0&nlid=23696377&ref=headline&te=1&referer=


*********** Mark Kaczmarek, of Davenport, Iowa, just got back from a trip to Alaska. Not only was that his 50th state - but it was his entire family’s 50th.  He said his wife, Kathy deserves much of the credit - especially, he said, doing it on his “Catholic school salary.” (If you didn’t know, Catholic schools generally pay a good bit less than public schools.  ON THE OTHER HAND… .I taught one year at Portland Central Catholic, and my son taught for several years at Tacoma’s Bellarmine Prep, and our experience, and that of most people I know, is that the teaching is much more rewarding in a Catholic school. The simple fact that you have parents (plural!) who have aspirations and expectations for their kids means that the student apathy that’s become an epidemic throughout public education is seldom seen in a Catholic school.)

The fact that the Kaczmareks did it as a family is remarkable and admirable.

Our four kids had the benefit of starting out on the East Coast, where states are smaller and more easily checked off the list, and then travelling across the country when I took a job in Portland.  And we always tried to take the kids on trips.  But I doubt that any of them has been in all 57. (or was it 50?)

For our 50th wedding anniversary the kids chipped in and gave us an all-expenses-paid trip to Fargo - so my wife could pick up North Dakota, the only one she was missing.

(I read somewhere that for people trying to hit all the states, North Dakota is most often their last one.)

*********** Hi Coach!

Just finished watching the "Evolution" video and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the changes and adaptation over the years. I so appreciate you acknowledging the Raiders. That was quite a surprise.

I am tossing around getting back into coaching football after I retire from teaching next June. I have had a few offers over the past several years, however, they just never seemed right. I am very concerned about coaching something other than the DW. I don't think I could do it! This might keep me back in the youth level, but, doing what I love and believe in. I'll keep you posted!

Best,

Michael Norlock
Atascadero Raiders
Atascadero, California

Coach,

No need to apologize for staying “back in the youth level.”

Based on what I know and saw, you did a lot of really good coaching there and sent kids off to high school very well prepared.

*********** Joe Don Looney never played a down of football in Philly, which is remarkable considering all the places he did play, but for some reason, Frank Fitzpatrick of philly.com chose to write a piece about him recently.

If you never heard of the guy, or if you weren’t around in the 1960s when he played - or if you just want a good read about one of the real characters in the history of football - you owe it to yourself to read it…

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/eagles/Remembering-football-rebel-Joe-Don-Looney-Frank-Fitzpatrick.html

*********** I mentioned what a great year Latrobe, Pennsylvania High had, with a place in the state playoff field in basketball, and a state championship in baseball.

The topper came when Latrobe’s Austin Butler was named the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Boys Athlete of the Year.

Butler, a three-sport athlete, threw for 1285 yards as quarterback of the Wildcats’  football team, led all of Western Pennsylvania in scoring in basketball, and finished sixth in the state in the javelin.

He’s going to be attending Holy Cross, where he’ll play basketball.

“It is rare to have an athlete that can not only participate in three sports, but excel in them,” Latrobe athletic director Mark Mears said. “He is certainly a very special athlete, and a very respectful and classy young man. Holy Cross landed a good one.”

And rarer, still, to have a basketball coach who won’t - very subtly, of course - point out to his top scorer the dangers of playing football.

http://triblive.com/sports/-topstories/12452488-74/latrobes-austin-butler-named-tribune-review-boys-athlete-of-the-year

*********** Good morning Hugh,

I knew there was something fishy about that USA Football Rookie Tackle idea.

Good to see that picture of you with Mike F. and his QB's.  That's Mike.  Always doing what it takes, and doing it well just because it's the right thing to do.  When it comes to his boys you won't find a union bone in his body.

Quiz answer:  "Sleepy" Jim Crowley.  One fourth of "Four Horsemen" (Crowley, Miller, Layden, Stuhldreher).  All four of them spent time coaching college football, with Miller in the shortest stint eventually becoming a lawyer.  Layden became coach of the Irish, and Stuhldreher was successful at Villanova.  Also Gus Dorais (who teamed up with Rockne as a player and introduced the forward pass in a mighty upset of Army) ended up coaching college football at Detroit U.

Have a great Fourth of July my friend, and God Bless America!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING JIM CROWLEY-
JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
GREG KOENIG - CIMARRON, KANSAS
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
JACK TOURTILLOTTE - RANGELY, MAINE
Usually I am  terrible around quizzes but I had an interest in the "Four Horseman " so I recognized Jim Crowley. My interest stems from Adam Walsh who was a captain on the 1924 Team and its center. Walsh coached at Bowden college a couple times. Anyway I think I finally got one of the quizzes. lol
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON


*********** QUIZ:  Jim Crowley's high school coach in Green Bay, Wisconsin was Curley Lambeau, his college coach at Notre Dame was Knute Rockne, and he was Vince Lombardi’s college coach at Fordham.

He was a member of one of the most famous college backfields of all time, the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame,

and he was head coach of one of the most famous college lines of all time, the famed Fordham Seven Blocks of Granite.


The right guard is Vince Lombardi; the real star of the team was center Alex Wojciechowicz (Woe-juh-HOE-wicks), who was a two-time All-American and went on to an outstanding career in the NFL with the Lions and Eagles (and I grew up in Philly, which is how I learned how to pronounce his name). "Woe-jie" is a member of the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame.

FRIDAY,  JUNE 30,  2017  - “When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

*********** In Utah, six girls and their parents are suing to force schools to offer football as a girls’ sport.

Not much chance they’ll succeed, but you watch - since it’s too expensive for schools to add girls’ football, the court, realizing that the only option is to let them play on boys’ teams, will order the Powers That Be to make tackle football more “accessible” to girls. And the Department of Education, with its Title IX enforcement powers, will devise ways to determine whether schools are in compliance with the order. 

Not unlike the orders from the Obama administration and its nancy-boy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to do whatever is necessary to make  sure that the Marines have females in combat, and females qualify as Army Rangers, making football  more “accessible” to  girls  can only mean “making football  easier.”

Right now, of course, there’s not a huge number of girls wanting to play tackle football.

If you're into conspiracy theories,  here's where USA Football’s bright new idea, Rookie Football, comes in: its stated aim is to make football safer for our little fellas, but once football’s made easier  (sorry, “safer”) for little boys, you’ll soon see more little girls playing.

And then, with an increasing number of little girls wanting to continue to play once they get to  high school, the burden will  be on high schools to make football “more accessible” to girls.

Remember, you read it here.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/5438621-155/six-female-students-sue-school-districts

*********** The things you hear when you listen to Portland radio: “A study shows that people of color are less likely to use bike sharing”

*********** Near the small town of Gaston, Oregon, where I once coached, an injured bald eagle  was captured by Oregon State Police and turned over to the Audubon Society, which determined that it had been shot. Shooting a bald eagle is a very big deal, and the State Police and the US Fish and Wildlife Service both left phone numbers in the Portland newspaper for people to call with information about the shooting.

All the excitement over one wounded bird.  As it should be.

Meanwhile, out in open fields and up on mountain ridges all over the United States, unsightly wind farms routinely chop to pieces thousands of bald eagles, golden eagles, assorted raptors and a wide variety of other birds and bats - all with the permission of the government and the blessing of the  environmentalists.  Nobody said saving the planet wouldn’t require sacrifice.  They just forgot to tell the birds.



*********** (LEFT TO RIGHT) Me, Jose Celeya, Oscar Rodriguez, Mike Foristiere, Tony Avalos

My friend Mike Foristiere coaches at Wahluke High in Mattawa, Washington, about 3-1/2 hours from me on the “dry side” (desert) of the state.

On Wednesday, he brought his three quarterbacks over to work with me - picked them up at 6:30, drove them over here and then, when we were done our workouts at 4:30, turned right around and drove them back. (The kids all had to be at work at 5 AM on Thursday.)

It says a lot about a coach who’ll do that for his kids.  Football coaches do this sort of thing all the time, I can’t help thinking that a non-coaching teacher’s-union-type wouldn’t have done it without reimbursement of some kind.

And it says a lot about the three kids, who all have summer jobs, that they’ll give up a day of work - and the money - to spend time working at getting better.

As we went through the drills - passing fundamentals in the morning and Double-Wing -specific skills in the afternoon - I was so impressed by how coachable the kids were and how much fun it was  working with them.

***********  Good morning Hugh,

I was reading through your News and was reminded of the first time I had a Rolling Rock.  I was dating my bride to be (unbeknownst to me at the time) and had decided to take her to eat and have a beer at a local Hofbrau in Fresno (yes, believe it or not we actually had TWO of those bad boys),  Their food was all home-made, and the beer menu was expansive, and being the suds doctor I was back then I was always willing to try something new.

I had visited the Hofbrau a number of times prior to meeting Bernadette.  As I mentioned the food was great, and they had just about any beer from anywhere.  Under the heading "Regionals" on the big board was one I had not noticed before from Latrobe, PA and ordered it.  Green bottle. Hmmm.  Long story short...after a knockout Reuben sandwich and about 5 of those green bottles Bernadette had to drive me home. Man... that was Damn good beer!

Have to agree with you on that Stanford-Rice game in Australia.  Stanford-ND maybe, but Rice??

Quiz:  That would be #61 Bill George of the Chicago Bears.  After the Cardinals left town my dad became a Bears fan.  Until Butkus came along Bill George was all my dad could talk about. Really teed my old man off though when the Bears traded him to the Rams.

Have a great week!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

 Joe,

A marriage made in Latrobe has to be a good one!

No doubt that was REAL Rolling Rock, made in Latrobe by the Tito brothers, who started the brewery back in the 1930s.

In Pennsylvania, “Rock” was sold mainly in seven-ounce bottles, the package of preference at the bar when guys would come in after work and order "a shot and a beer.”  Just enough beer to chase down the whiskey in time to order another one.

Jim Mickinak, a high school classmate of Tom Hinger, has what undoubtedly is the world’s greatest and largest collection of Rolling Rock memorabilia.  It’s so extensive that when the brewery was in operation, its marketing executives would often consult with Jim and his collection when they were discussing packaging and display ideas.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/28/unity-mans-bar-pays-homage-to-latrobes-rolling-roc/

*********** Mike Lude just turned 95, and if there’s a spryer and sharper man his age - anywhere - I’d like to see him.  It’s now been two months since he had a knee replaced, and his rehab is well ahead of schedule. He says sure, there’s pain, but you have to expect it.  I think part of his stoic toughness is being a member of that great generation of people who survived the Depression and fought the Second World War. Also, he was raised on a farm in Western Michigan by a tough, German-immigrant dad, and he was a Marine during World War II.  But he agrees that a major part of his outlook on pain was learned playing football. For an awful lot of boys, the bumps and bruises of football are their first exposure to the vital life lesson that pain is something you can’t allow to get in the way when something has to be done - and you have to do it.

This week, he’s off to New Jersey for the annual reunion of guys he coached at Delaware back in the 1950s.

While we were talking, we got on the subject of  head coaches berating  assistants in front of players, and he told me about the time he and his head coach, Dave Nelson, were in Columbus to talk about the Wing-T at Ohio State’s spring clinic.

He said that after lecturing, he and Coach Nelson were walking with Woody Hayes as practice was going on, when something caught Hayes’s attention. Moving swiftly over to where the offensive line was working, he hollered at the line coach, something along the line of “That’s not how we teach things at Ohio State!”

And then, shoving the assistant aside,  he proceeded to run the drill himself.

That’s more than likely going to damage the credibility of any assistant, and  it’s surely going to damage the credibility of the head coach. One unintended result might actually be to to strengthen the bond between the position coach and his players, uniting them in an us-against-the-boss sort of way.

Those were the days, of course, of smaller staffs, and more hands-on head coaches.  The management of a football program  was still evolving into today’s staff organization, in which the head coach assumes the role of a CEO, and does very little actual coaching.

Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd was definitely among the first major college coaches to delegate all on-field coaching to his assistants. Although the term “coordinator” had yet to be assigned to the jobs, he had Frank Boyles in total charge of his offense, and Ray Graves in total charge of his defense.

One way for coaches to make sure that they  allowed their coaches to coach was to observe practice from towers.   Bear Bryant became the most famous of the “tower coaches” - head coaches who physically removed themselves from actual coaching. Surveying their kingdoms from high above the practice field, they would observe, occasionally commenting on the goings-on down below, but mostly reserving comments until later.

One great coach who admitted to being influenced by Coach Bryant was Don James of Washington.  (Mike Lude, as AD at Kent State , gave Don James his first head coaching job,  and later was his boss at Washington.)

In his book, “James,” Don James tells why he decided to become a “tower coach.”

I wanted to be involved in everything, but not run everything with a “hands-on” approach.

I had known some coaches who were tower coaches. Bear Bryant, of course, is the best known for using that method. There are two things about being a tower coach that made it feel right for me.

First, if you are down on the field with either the offense or the defense, you can’t know what is going on with the other side of the ball.

Secondly, if an assistant coach is working with his position players, it would be easy to step in and say, “No, that’s not the way I want it done.  I want it done this way.”

That could be perceived by the players as putting the assistant down.  I want the players to have a total respect for their position coach.

When up in the tower observing, I take lots of notes. Then, in our daily staff meetings, I’ll coach the coaches on what I want done.  Then the assistants will coach the players.

We always film or video the practices. At the coaches’ meeting the next morning, when we critique the practice, everyone has input. That’s when I can say to an assistant, “I don’t want it done that way,” or ‘That’s not the way to coach that guy.”

(Note: Mike Lude said that while Don never got on an assistant in front of players, some serious ass-chewing took place in the staff meetings.)

Once in a while, although it’s rare, I might get mad and come down from the tower to straighten out something during practice.  But in most cases I try to put it in writing.   I also try to avoid getting on a coach right after practice.

Sometimes I feel like doing so if I’m mad at them. But I’ve learned that I do the poorest job of coaching the coaches and players when I’m angry.  A favorite phrase of Tex Winter, a former Washington basketball coach who is now an assistant with the Chicago Bulls, is, “for every minute you’re angry, you lose 60 seconds of happiness.”

I’ve learned how not to say anything until after I’ve slept on it.  It might not seem so serious the next day.  And I can be more constructive in my criticism.  I just do a better job.  You can correct in a way that the assistant will get something out of it.

I seldom have the time to bring a coach into my office individually to critique every mistake.  I do, however, try to be as positive as I can because I want the coaches to be positive when they correct the players.   And I certainly don’t have the time to correct 150 players one at a time.  So you must learn to take constructive criticism in our program.

Our practices are well planned in advance and very detailed. Everything is scripted from start to finish.  At any moment during the practice I can tell by the play being run down on the field exactly where we are.

I don’t just sit up in that tower and say nothing.  If things aren’t going as well as I think they should, I can either come down or use a megaphone to get a point across.

I suppose some of my players, particularly the younger ones, may have been intimidated by my being in a tower during practice.  But it allows me to make objective decisions without personal involvement.   More importantly, it gives me a clear view of the entire field and everything that is going on.

Although I never coached under him, I’m sure Bear Bryant had a great influence on my desire to be a tower coach.

When I was in college at Miami, I played against his teams.  And then he became “The Guy” in college football - a real legend.

That’s the way people looked at him. He had a great influence on the methods used by many coaches.  When I was coaching at Florida State, it was just amazing.  We’d go over and watch Alabama practices.  Or we’d listen to The Bear speak at clinics on his ideas about speed and quickness and discipline.  In those days, any young coach in his right mind should have been listening and had his note pad out.

“When he and I were captains, we would go out for the coin flip before the game. Someone mentioned to me that one of Bill’s superstitions was that he had to be the first one off the field after the coin flip. So the next game, when it came time to shake hands with the opposing team captains, a plan was put in place.  I would shake hands with the captain in front of Bill, which would cut him off from the other captain. Then I would shake hands really quick with the other captain and then beat him off the field. It drove him crazy. I would come off the field, and Bill would be in hot pursuit.  Everybody would be yelling.  It looked like we were sky-high for the game, when we were really trying to piss Bill George off about being so damn superstitious.”

“We kidded Bill about being Greek, and he’d get furious. ‘I’m not a goddamn Greek!’ he’d scream.  Early in the exhibition season, we were playing in Little Rock. I took Bill out to dinner to the best Greek restaurant in town. When we got there, I took the owner aside and told him Bill’s nickname was the ‘Golden Greek.’ I told him he was sorta shy, but he was one helluva guy. The owner came out during dinner and poured us a glass of wine. ‘Opaa! To my countryman, the Golden Greek!’  Everyone in the restaurant stood up and cheered. Then the owner turned to Bill: ‘This one is on me, my friends.  You don’t pay for a thing.’  After that, when we went on the road, Bill and I always went to the best Greek place in town. Never paid a nickel for anything when I was with the Golden Greek.”

TUESDAY,  JUNE 27,  2017  - “There is one guaranteed formula for failure and that is to try to please everyone.”  Will Rogers

Hello coach,
It has been a couple of years since I last contacted you. I hope you are doing well.  I looked to see if I could attend one of your clinics, but it seems you are not holding another one this year.  I did not coach last year as I was busy with my job as a justice, but this year I am coaching at the freshmen high school level again, here at what is considered a "program" school in Arizona.  The head coach loves my double wing.  The varsity OC is a very good friend of mine, who runs a true single wing.  He and I debate which is the superior offense.  We were having dinner with our wives the other day, and were speculating what our records were using the two offenses.  I had no exact idea, but my wife said she did as she kept mementos of each season for me in a box.  I had no idea she was doing that, although she does attend each game.  Anyhow, she showed me my coaching record was 75-14.  I told my buddy that, and am still waiting for his comparable number . . . (Maybe he will switch to DW this season!)

Anyhow, I went to review your films and various items I purchased from you over the years and discovered I could not watch much of it as it was on VHS.  Normally not a problem, except that my wife and I moved recently and she threw away the only VHS player we had!  When I told her I needed a VHS player, she reminded me that we are in the 21st century now.

On my frosh team, we always use the Go! ReeeaaadyHut! count I took from your video 14 years ago.  Never have used anything else.  Still, opponents jump constantly.  Anyhow, I simply name every play we have, no numbers.   Our SuperPower, for example, is Gorilla (I stopped using motion on that play years ago because the X counter timing works better with no motion). Our Wedge is Goat.  Our X counter is Goofy.  All plays without motion start with GO.  All other plays have motion (or shifts) and are on Hut and obviously are named without a Go in the beginning.  Kids remember the cadence based on the play name.

A 9-year-old in Los Angeles, Havon Finney Jr., recently received an offer from the University of Nevada. The news was reported by his trainer, Mike Evans, a former Louisville football player.

The organisation had used the previous name since it was established in 1973.

However, it felt in the "digital age" the slang of the old abbreviation was "unrelated to our organisation and so it was important that we rebranded to better engage with our fans".

The change was made before the start of the 2017 World Taekwondo Championships.

The event is taking place in Muju, South Korea.

"World Taekwondo is distinctive and simple to understand and reinforces the global nature of our sport," said World Taekwondo president Choue Chung-won.

"Our vision is taekwondo for all and as World Taekwondo we are confident we can build on our success to date and achieve that vision."

FRIDAY,  JUNE 23,  2017  - “One of the mysteries of the ages is why the political left has, for centuries, lavished so much attention on the well-being of criminals and paid so little attention to their victims.”  Dr. Thomas Sowell

Colschen, who is the running backs coach for the Highlanders, made quite an impact in the high school football community this past season with a simple gesture of compassion. The junior varsity team he was coaching took a knee near the goal line ― and subsequently suffered a loss ― against Katy Tompkins in September after an opposing player went down with a serious injury with mere seconds left on the clock.

"We're here to teach kids, and there's a lot of lessons learned through football and sports," Colschen told The Courier last fall. "When I looked across the field and saw their players together praying, I saw tears in their eyes and their coaches had tears in their eyes. There was not going to be a win-win here."

The USS Fitzgerald is an Arleigh Burke class destroyer with a top speed well in excess of 30 knots. Speed is helpful in preventing collision because it allows you to put more distance between you and a dangerous ship in the same amount of time. (Yes, speed can also be dangerous.)

She is powered by four gas turbine engines with over 100,000 horsepower available to turn her propellers.

Gas turbines are expensive and burn lots of fuel but the Navy uses them because they can provide an immense amount of torque in a very short period of time. Torque translates to acceleration and acceleration is important if you need to get out of the way of something fast.

The USS Fitzgerald is highly maneuverable with a very tight turning radius.

(You’ve got to see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vih4tGmqjs )

The fault,  Konrad argues persuasively, likely lies with communications.

On the ACX Crystal, as on all container ships, , the captain is in compete command at all times.  He sees all, knows all, does all.

On the USS Fitzgerald, however, as on all Navy ships, responsibilities are widely dispersed and delegated among several parties, and there is  a chain of command to be observed in communicating even such a matter as a large ship bearing down on you.

Armed with that information, a ship as fast and agile as the USS Fitzgerald could easily have avoided the collision.

But somehow, Konrad suggests, the  need to act may have become lost as it was transmitted up the chain. 

The Captain  wasn’t even informed of the impending collision and in fact was injured because he was in his quarters at the time, rather than on the bridge.  Nonetheless, it is longtime Navy policy that the Captain is responsible for what happens to his ship, and this will almost certainly be a career-ender for him.

Sound at all like a head football coach with a big staff? 

Obviously, there are advantages to delegating responsibilities, but at the same time there are dangers.  There are also great advantages to being small and flexible: any head football coach will tell you how important it is to have your hands on the wheel - or very close to it -  and to have a streamlined chain of command.

Think about this before you try to set up an organizational structure along the lines of an NFL or big-time college staff: when something goes wrong, it’s your career that’s on the line.

When you do delegate, you’re no better than your weakest subordinate.   Or the chain of command itself.

http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-fault/

*********** Evidently some unelected judge-for-life has decided that it’s unfair to a defendant to have  a jury see him/her wearing handcuffs or ankle restraints.  The idea is that  in  a system supposedly based on the presupposition of innocence,  the sight of the shackles might make the jurors prejudge the defendant.

Funny how the defendants never gave that a thought back when they were getting those tattoos on their necks and foreheads.

*********** Malik Zaire, who once showed some promise as Notre Dame’s quarterback,  is transferring to Florida.

Florida coach Jim McElwain,  asked whether bringing in Zaire might somehow be unfair to the quarterbacks already on the Gators’ roster: 

“I was the guy they always tried to replace at Eastern Washington, so I get it.”

*********** Kavell Bigby-Williams played two years of basketball  at a JC in Wyoming then  this past season at Oregon, backing up Jordan Bell and Chris Boucher at forward.  He averaged 3 points and 2.8 rebounds, but he did block 28 shots.

Now, with one year of eligibility remaining, he’s announced he’s transferring to LSU.

“At this point in my career,” he tweeted, “it’s solely a business decision…”

Spoken like a true student-athlete.

But, uh… Considering what he’s shown so far, you have to wonder what business, exactly, he could  be talking about.

*********** New OU head coach Lincoln Riley has been given a contract  that will pay him $3.5 million a year. 

It’s not exactly a rags-to-riches story.   He was already making $1.3 million as the Sooners’ OC.

*********** University of Washington point guard Markelle Fultz is almost certain to be the number one pick in the NBA draft.

Couple of red flags:

You want a 65 per cent free throw shooter playing point guard for you?

If he’s such a difference maker, how come the Huskies only won nine games?

Following up on LSU’s Ben Simmons last year,  doesn’t it seem strange that for the second straight year the NBA’s top draft pick would be a guy  who couldn’t even get his college team to the playoffs?

*********** I was reading the obituaries the other day and read about a guy named Jim Schmitz who’d died recently.  He was 73 and it sounded as if he was quite a guy:

“Jim had a great life fishing and hunting North America, a suite at the 50 yard line at the Seahawks, Super Bowls, and a summer residence on Babine Lake in the bush in Canada.

“His adventures are not done yet! His ashes will be going with family fishing and hunting exploits, including his grandson’s first moose hunting trip in Alberta, Canada.

“No flowers, please. Instead, take a kid hunting or fishing in honor of Jim.”
 
*********** Why all the fuss about nonexistent Russian interference in our elections - but crickets about $30 million spent by California liberals to influence people in Georgia to elect a guy to Congress - a twerp who didn’t even live in their District?

*********** A 20-year-old Vancouver, Washington guy has been accused of filming co-workers - female co-workers - in the shared employee locker room.  He was discovered  when one of his fellow employees noticed his cell phone sitting in one of his shoes, and found, on closer inspection, that it was filming.

The guy’s name - no, this isn’t a porn film - is Perry Beaver.  Really.

http://www.columbian.com/news/2017/jun/20/man-accused-of-filming-coworkers-in-employee-locker-room/

***********  “I didn't come over on the Mayflower, but I came over as soon as I could.”   Anton Cermak, running for mayor of Chicago, responding to a rival’s slurs about his ethnicity. (He won.)

*********** Bill Dana died. If you’re old enough, you remember him playing a Hispanic character named Jose Jimenez.

Like so many comedians, he was discovered and brought to the public’s attention by Steve Allen, an early late-show host and one of the most talented of American entertainers.

One famous exchange between Allen and Dana, in his role as Jose Jiminez...

Steve Allen:  “I understand you own a ranch…

Jose Jimenez: “Yes, the name of my ranch is the Bar Nine Circle Z Rocking O Flying W Lazy O Crazy 2 Happy 7 Bar 17 Parallelogram 4 Octagon 9 Trapezoid 6.”

Allen: “Do you have many cattle?”

Jimenez: “No. Not many survive the branding.”

***********Good morning Hugh,

Sorry I missed wishing you a Happy Birthday, and a Happy Father's Day!   From what I read it appears both were extremely enjoyable for you and Connie.  Belatedly Happy Birthday and Happy Father's Day!

Great to see the picture of you and Connie with Mike and Cielo.  I've known Mike since our high school football days in Clovis, CA.  We lost track of one another after high school, but believe it or not it was a guy named Coach Wyatt and his double wing offense that got us reconnected!  Mike's wife Cielo is courage defined.  He and I would talk on the phone when they were going through her cancer treatments.  What Mike and his boys were able to do for her was amazing, and I couldn't be more happy for all of them.  Mike and I still stay in touch, and are actually planning to attend this year's Army-Navy game.

I'm very familiar with Linfield College.  A coaching friend of mine  that I'm sure you've heard of (or maybe even met having been coaching in the Pacific Northwest for as long as you have) used to face Linfield every year when he was the head football coach at Willamette.  Mark Speckman.

Now... there's a coach with an inspirational story!  

I met Mark years ago while coaching the club football team at the University of San Francisco.  
We got to know one another while working a youth football camp in NorCal.  What an incredible man.  I've followed his coaching career with great interest.  Everywhere he's been he's been a success with that Fly Offense of his.  Currently he's the Assistant Head Coach at UC Davis.

QUIZ:  That gentleman would be Marshall Goldberg.  My dad and my uncle saw him play for the Cardinals while they were growing up in Chicago.  

Have a great week!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

Coach Gutilla is so right on Mark Speckman.  Recognized as the leading authority on - if not the  inventor of - the Fly Offense, he was born without hands.  His inspirational story goes back to what he says his mother would tell him whenever he was having problems as a kid (such as trying to tie his shoelaces): “Figure it out.”

They ought to make him Secretary of Figuring it Out, and send him out to talk to all the whiners and complainers who think it’s the job of the  government to make their lives easy!

If you've never heard him speak (or even if you have) you need to check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiorA6Mna54

TUESDAY,  JUNE 20,  2017  - “Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.” Plato

***********   I thank everyone who was kind enough to wish me Happy Birthday or Happy Father’s Day - or both.

Father’s Day is wonderful because the thing I’m proudest of is our four children… and the people they’ve married and brought into the family… and the grandchildren they’ve given us.  My three daughters all married men who are great fathers, and my son, with a nine-year-old of his own, is experiencing the joys of fatherhood. It enrages me when I hear of young men who make babies and then cut out and have nothing to do with those children, but it also saddens me because that selfish, immature decision will cost them some of the most rewarding moments a man can have.

So many of the birthday wishes are from people I’ve met in some way through football.  Many are from coaches.  Youth, high school, college or pro,  as football coaches we share a bond that can only be understood by someone who’s been through it. The people I’ve come to know through football are a blessing. They’ve enriched my life and I’m thankful beyond words.

The biggest events of my weekend were not my birthday or Father’s Day, but first, being with our daughter Cathy and son-in-law Rob Tiffany and their family at the graduation of our grandson, Mike Tiffany, from Cedar Crest High School in Duvall, Washington.  The ceremony was really well done - even the speeches by the students.  Especially impressive was a speech by a faculty member.  My big takeaway from it: “Rather than ask how much this opportunity will cost, ask how much it will cost to miss this opportunity.”  Sure hope some of the kids were listening, but if not - no matter.  I was.  Never too old to learn something.


The second biggest event took place Saturday morning in Seattle, where long-time friend Mike Foristiere brought his team from Mattawa, Washington, about three hours away, to compete in a spring football jamboree. Mike and I correspond often, going back to when he was a young pup starting out coaching in Boise, and he was kind enough to introduce me to his players, including his youngest son, Rock, who’s the A-Back and Middle Linebacker.  But what really put me over the top was when Mike told me that his wife, Cielo, had come along, and was on her way over to our sideline to see me.  She is a great young woman.  She and Mike have raised three fine sons, including one, Randy, who’s now at West Point.  Not all that long ago, her life was in grave danger when she was diagnosed with a form of cancer known as spindle cell sarcoma.  At the very least, there was concern that if could cost her a leg.  She and Mike had to make several trips back and forth from Boise to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and it was touch and go for a couple of years until she was pronounced cancer-free. Now, she looks great.  Cielo is tough and resilient, and I admire her courage, but I also admire the way their three boys, Ross, Randy and Rock pulled together to do their share around the home during a difficult time, and I salute Mike for his devotion to his wife.



*********** If you’re following the College World Series… Check out the Oregon State catcher, Adley Rutschman.

Strange first name, but if you know anything about Northwest sports, the first thing that comes to mind when you see that name is Ad Rutschman.

Ad's real name as Adolph, but he’s Adley’s granddad.

For 24 years, Ad Rutschman was head football coach at Linfield College, and for 13 years he was also Linfield’s head baseball coach.

Outside the Northwest, Linfield is well-known in small-school circles.  Inside the Northwest, Linfield is the small-school gorilla.  Year-in and year-out, Linfield is the team to beat.

From 1968 to 1991, his Linfield Wildcats were 183-48-3.  During that time, they won 12 Northwest Conference championships, and three NAIA National Championships.

He took his 1971 Linfield baseball squad to the 1971 NAIA World Series.

He is believed to be the only coach to win national college titles in both baseball and football.

His influence on football in the Northwest has been enormous. The coaching tree of guys who played for him and then went on to coach high school football in Oregon is more like a giant Douglas Fir.

AD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_Rutschman

ADLEY: http://www.oregonlive.com/beavers/index.ssf/2017/05/oregon_state_catcher_adley_rut.html


*********** Stuff we used to joke about because it was so absurd…

In Oregon they’re going to give people a third choice on their driver’s licenses (besides “Male” and “Female”)


*********** It’s okay for them to continue calling themselves The Slants.

They’re a band made up of Asian-Americans. Their  name so offended some people that the government, assuming the role of  protector of the offended  and the guardian of all that’s correct, refused to register it as a trademark.

But on Monday the Supreme Court ruled - unanimously - that no government agency has the power to do that.

What’s this got to do with football?

Well, see, there’s this professional football team in Washington, D.C. called (omigod - I can’t believe I’m actually gong to print this) the Redskins…

And up to now, unable by other means to persuade the team to change its name, the government had been resorting to the exact same refuse-to-register-the-name tactics that the Supreme Court just said isn’t legal.

Sounds to me as if they’ll be the Redskins, at least until the next Democratic administration.

Actually, I was sorta hoping they’d become the Washington Swamp. 

*********** In less than a week the Oregon strawberries will be done for another year.  Back to the dreck that they sell in supermarkets. You know, the kind they grow in faraway places like California, or even Mexico:  hard and firm so they can stand up to  all the handling - but when you cut them open, the cores are solid  white.  And dry.  And tasteless.  Might as well be cardboard on the inside.



But not these Oregon strawberries.  Slice these suckers  and they’re red and juicy and sweet all the way through. Without the cardboard innards, here’s no way you could ship them any distance, so the only place you see them is at roadside stands

*********** Let’s see…

The Portland Thorns (that’s women’s soccer)  just had  Gay Pride Night…

The Seattle Storm (that’s women’s basketball) will be holding a Stand With Planned Parenthood Night…

The NBA champion Golden State Warriors may decline an invitation to visit the White House…

And Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, that Great Uniter,  has announced that he plans to invite a prominent Washington couple to be “honorary captains” at one of Michigan’s games this year. (HINT: they are such avid football fans that the male member of the couple once said that if he had a son, he’d have to think twice about letting him play football - and as Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, he attended only one Army-Navy game in eight years)

Isn’t it great to be able to go to a game where everybody can put politics aside for a while?  Isn’t it a great feeling to know that we’re all on the same side?


*********** When I think of parents nowadays who leave even the most enormous of decisions up to an 18-year-old without so much as giving him/her input (“We don’t want to pressure him”) I think of Mike Krzyzewski.

He was, in his words, “conned” into going to West Point.

But, in his words, “Other than marrying my wife, it was the best decision I ever made. Or, more accurately, it was the best decision my parents ever talked me into. Or conned me into."

Famed writer John Feinstein wrote about how it all came about…

Krzyzewski readily admits he wasn't the least bit impressed or tempted when the new coach at Army, a 24-year-old novice named Bob Knight, showed up on his doorstep on a June evening in 1965. Knight had come to Chicago to visit Loyola Academy to talk to coach Gene Sullivan about one of his players.

While they were talking, Sullivan mentioned that the leading scorer that season in Chicago's Catholic League was still undecided about where he was going to go to college. Knight called Al Ostrowski, Krzyzewski's coach at Weber High School who, in Mike's words was, "blown away," by the thought of one of his players going to Army. That evening, Knight visited William and Emily Krzyzewski and their younger son.
"The thing is, my parents were overwhelmed by the notion that I might have the chance to go the United States Military Academy and then serve my country," Krzyzewski says. "They thought it was an honor just to have coach Knight come to their home to talk about it.

"I didn't feel the same way. I was NOT blown away by the thought of going to Army, not at all. I did NOT want to go into the Army for four years, no way. It really had nothing to do with Vietnam, it had more to do with the fact that I knew I wanted to be a coach. I didn't think going to Army and being in the Army was going to get me there."

Knight suggested the Krzyzewskis take a few days to think about Mike's decision. For the next couple of days, William and Emily staged an evening ritual.

"They would stand in the kitchen talking, knowing I was in the next room listening. They spoke Polish to one another and I didn't understand very much. But there's no word in Polish for 'stupid,' or for 'dumb.' So, I would hear, 'Mike stupid; Mike dumb.'

"I knew what they were doing. They were goading me. Finally, I just walked in one night and said, 'Okay, okay, I'll do it.'

His eyes glistened just a little at the memory. "Other than marrying my wife, it was the best decision I ever made. Or, more accurately, it was the best decision my parents ever talked me into." He smiles one more time. "Or conned me into."

FRIDAY,  JUNE 16,  2017  - “What do you despise? By this you are truly known.” Michelangelo

Elon
Houston
Oklahoma State
Vanderbilt (4)
Villanova
Wake Forest

Mark McKechnie is executive director of Youth, Rights and Justice, a nonprofit defense and advocacy firm in Portland.

"Most of our work is representing individual clients," says McKechnie, who has 18 years training as a social worker and is court-appointed to represent juveniles and parents in juvenile court. "We'd have represented someone like Luke if charged in Oregon.

"Research shows the longer someone goes without engaging in these type of offenses, the less likely they are to do it in the future. After a couple of years pass and the person hasn't committed the offense, (he) is very unlikely to do so.

"The recidivism rate for juveniles adjudicated of a sex offense is less than 3 percent. Multiple studies across multiple states, including Oregon, all landed in the 2.5 to 3 percent range in terms of re-offense rates — and those percentages are usually figured by arrests, even without conviction."

"There is a body of evidence that when treated like criminals — required to register as a sex offender — it has no effect in terms of committing another sex offense, but it creates a risk.

"When they have to answer the question, 'Have you ever been convicted of a sex crime,' and they have to answer, 'Yes,' it makes it more difficult to get housing. They're more likely to wind up homeless, not accepted in school, in jobs and so on. It's important for them to be held accountable and required to do treatment, but a very small percentage are dangerous. For the most part, a young person who creates a sex offense is in a low-risk category."

"A recent study out of South Carolina looked at registered vs. non-registered juveniles," Stanulis says. "It shows the idea behind it is flawed. We need to round up suspects, but we find out 96 percent of the cases occur with somebody in-family. Registration is useless, because (sex abuse) rarely happens with someone (the offender) doesn't know.

"The Department of Corrections did a five-year followup (on sex abusers); around four percent re-offended a sex offense. The unintended consequences are, they end up committing more other crimes than they would have they been non-registered.

"Look at the average apartment lease. If you're a registered sex offender, they won't rent to you. You'll have trouble getting federal student loans as a felon. You'll have a hard time finding a place to live, find it hard to go to school. As an 18- to 21-year-old young man, you become a sex offender rather than boy who committed a sex offense. We label people and they become what they did. That's the crime he committed, not who he is. Registration causes more harm than it fixes.

"The real issue here ultimately is, do we want them to succeed or want them to fail? Registration is simply not necessary. It satisfies our need for revenge, under the idea that sex offenders never get well, which is not true. The vast majority do not re-offend. That's not to say there are not serial pedophiles out there, but they're the exception rather than the rule."

After his sex abuse conviction, Heimlich entered a diversion program, received two years of probation and successfully completed two years of sex offender treatment.