FRIDAY

If you've been following my site for any length of time, you know that I worked for some time to combine the solid, sound blocking and running game of the Double Wing with the passing game of the Run and Shoot that I once ran - way back in the early 80s.  
 I came to call what resulted the "Open Wing" (thanks to my friend Brian Mackell for the idea), and in our first year of running it at North Beach High (Ocean Shores, Washington), while testing it and refining it,  we finished 7-3, only the school's second winning record in ten years.  The next two years, as we got better at what we were doing, we had back-to-back unbeaten regular seasons, finishing 10-1 and 9-1.  In the 2015 regular season, we were the highest-scoring team in the state of Washington at all levels. 

It's a series of five DVDs, each roughly an hour in length: the first one gets you started with the basics, and from there, each DVD can stand on its own - the second one offers a basic offensive package to run (if that's all you need);  the third introduces the basics of our passing game; the fourth shows how we have expanded the offense through formationing; and the fifth gets into employing the Open Wing principles with a QB under center - plus an overview of the very basic but solid Double Wing package that we jump in and out of.

LINE COACH'S SPECIAL - TWO GREAT O-LINE VIDEOS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!

We Double-Wingers take pride in doing things differently - especially  on the offensive line

We employ blocking schemes that have stood the test of time

And we teach  real blocking -

none of this shove-and-grab stuff that the pros call "blocking."

SHOW THE LINE COACH  WHAT TO TEACH -  AND HOW TO TEACH IT

Regularly $39.95 EACH - NOW BOTH FOR $39.95 - http://www.coachwyatt.com/LINESPECIAL.html


"DOUBLE WING DUO" -  2 GREAT VIDEOS! 1 GREAT PRICE!

NOW ONLY $49.95 - http://www.coachwyatt.com/DYNAMICSVIDEO.html



*********** My son Ed - and a lot of other Australians - lost a friend named Damien Lovelock, a former Australian rocker (his group was called Celibate Rifles) who loved sports. Ed describes him like this:
 
 a good friend who I worked with at SBS. An amazingly unique character. Loved soccer but also loved the NFL. I had him co-host a few Super Bowls with me because he was passionate, funny and just because I liked him. Got sick years ago during his rock and roll years in the 80s (he’d been clean for decades) and it finally caught up with him. Fascinating guy – His Dad brought him a Jets helmet from NY after Super Bowl III so he was a lifelong Jets fan. I got a tip from a friend that he wasn’t well so I called him and spoke to him for 4-5 minutes. Told me he ‘always rated me very highly’ which I took as a big compliment. Always had pugs that he took on air with him sometimes. World will be worse off without him.

In this great piece written about him, I came across this:

Once, in the 1990s, a highly influential ABC radio manager was giving him some unsolicited advice about how he could improve his regular segment on (a network).

"In my experience as a producer…" he began.

Damien did not like what he was hearing and cut him off mid-stream.

"Mate," he said in that distinctive drawl, "I don't think you could produce a turd with a bowl of All-Bran."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-03/celibate-rifles-frontman-damien-lovelock-dead/11373500
 

*********** I’ve read that with more and more states legalizing “recreational” marijuana, the NFL may wind up taking a more relaxed stance toward its players’ use.

That brings up the matter of sports gambling, soon to become a growth industry to rival legalized pot.  How will legalized sport gambling affect the subject of gambling by players, which for most of the NFL’s existence has been completely taboo. 


*********** A Baton Rouge attorney who is defending a guy on murder charges is looking for jurors who won’t prejudge his client based on his facial tattoos.



Good luck.

https://www.fox8live.com/2019/08/06/attorney-wants-jurors-who-wont-judge-clients-face-tattoos/

*********** Wednesday, I had to drive up to Aberdeen (where I coach) and on the way - a 2-1/2 hour drive - I kept hearing updates on the police-shooter incident that was going on at the time.
Couple of things:

Those radio “news” people are real bad.  They must be cranking them out  so fast in those “schools of journalism” (talk about an oxymoron) that they’re a dime a dozen.

There is no such thing as “northern Philadelphia,” and in Philadelphia there is no such thing as a “northside,” two ways in which I heard the location of the incident described.  It is North Philadelphia, or - to the locals - North Philly.

In Philly, all you have to say is “North Philly” and they see the picture: block after block of beaten-up (and in some cases boarded-up) old row houses,  lining narrow streets that were laid out long before there were  such things as automobiles and  therefore long before everyone would own an automobile and need a place on the street to park it. As with most slums, North Philly is crime-infested.  Most of its people have no hope of ever making it out of there.

One of Philadelphia’s main drags, Broad Street, runs right through it.  I strongly advise anyone driving on Broad Street, even in the light of day, to keep moving - red lights be damned. 

Temple University is a good school.  But it has the misfortune to be located in the heart of North Philly, right smack on North Broad Street.   (Now do you see why it’s tough to recruit kids to Temple?  Now do you see why any time a coach is successful at Temple - Al Golden, Steve Addazio, Matt Rhule - he gets the hell out as soon as he can?)  Some geniuses have actually proposed building an “on-campus” stadium.  Sheesh - no one who knows the area would ever think of driving to a game, parking his car and then walking the rest of the way to the stadium.  In the daytime, even.  That leaves taking public transportation.  Right. Taking the subway.   So that leaves the visiting teams’ fans, who when they made their travel arrangements were thinking of  Betsy Ross-Benjamin Franklin-Independence Hall-Liberty Bell.  That Philadelphia.  Boy what a story they’re going to be able to tell the folks back in Memphis, or Orlando, or Dallas about their trip to watch their team play Temple.  Assuming they make it out of North Philly.

If there’s anything at all positive that could come from this guy - anyone -  shooting at police, it’s this:  After watching all sorts of TV footage of the Philadelphia standoff, I’d have to say that after seeing the massive number of police cars and armed officers being held at bay for some 12 hours by just one shooter,   anyone who worries that Big Government will one day try to confiscate the close to 400 million firearms out there in the US can rest easy.

*********** Ohio State is by any measure a major university. One of the nation’s largest institutions of higher learning, it's  a major research university offering quality graduate education in dozens of fields.

Its athletic teams are top-notch, whatever the sport.  Its band is one of the nation’s finest.

Its graduates, its students, and loyal Ohioans everywhere have a right to be proud of their state’s flagship university.

Yet with all that their college has going for it,  they have this need to remind us, one and all, that they graduated from, or go to, or play for, or root for, THE Ohio State University.

Come on, Buckeyes - you’re not like upstate New Yorkers insistent on distinguishing themselves from New York City-dwellers by saying they’re from “New York - State.”  You don’t face what we Washingtonians do when we’re away from home, having to tell people that we’re from “Washington  - State.”

It's not as if you have to say, “We’re the REAL Ohio State University," to separate yourselves from some fly-by-night online college down in Chillicothe.

No, there’s no possibility of  confusion.  There’s only one Ohio State.

Which means that either you’re suffering from the World’s Largest Inferiority Complex, or you’re hopelessly addicted to a display of unsurpassed arrogance.

With the recent  news that the University has applied for a trademark on the word “THE” (I am not making this up) - ostensibly so it can begin selling apparel with simply the word “THE” on it - the answer would seem to be the latter.

*********** Maybe Ohio State people, with all that their school has going for it, with all the national titles it’s won, still feel a little insecure - still feel a need  to be reminded of the successes.

It brought to mind  the following exchange that took place in a Senate committee hearing a few years ago…

BRIGADIER GENERAL MICHAEL WALSH: Ma'am, at the LACPR ...
SENATOR BARBARA BOXER (D-CA): You know, do me a favor, could you say “Senator" instead of "ma'am"?
GNERAL WALSH: Yes.
SENATOR BOXER: It's just the thing. I worked so hard to get that title, so I'd appreciate it. Yes, thank you.
GENERAL WALSH: Yes, Senator.

Ohio State has worked so hard to be called THE Ohio State University…

*********** Charges against Georgia Southern’s starting quarterback, arrested earlier this summer for possession of cocaine, were dropped when the white powdery substance found on the hood of the car proved to be bird um, “droppings.”

Let this be a lesson to all real cocaine users - always carry a baggie of bird sh— with you.  Just in case.

Anticipating a big demand,  my wife and I have been busy filling plastic bags with locally-sourced bird droppings.  We’re getting ready to advertise. We’re going to call it Crow-Caine. (Trademarked.)

Distributorships are available in your area for an initial purchase of 100 baggies.(And then you sell sub-distributorships for 100 baggies each, giving us 10 per cent of the sale. And so it goes.)

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/timothymeads/2019/08/09/drug-charges-dropped-after-cocaine-on-college-quarterbacks-car-turns-out-to-be-bird-crap-n2551473


*********** With football not due to start officially  until next Wednesday (the 21st) we’re currently in the “dead period” that started on August 1,  during which time we can’t coach football. But we CAN condition them, and that we do.  Our workouts are extremely strenuous. We had 40 kids at the field on Wednesday night, and at the end, the sunset was so pretty that head coach Todd Bridge decided to conclude the workout with a John Gagliardi-inspired “Nice Day Drill.” 



*********** Got this from our friends at USA Football (You know - the self-styled “National Governing Body for Amateur American Football) inviting me to a free Webinar entitled “Building Players and Participation.”  You probably got one, too.



Talk about clueless:   Wouldn’t you say September 24 is a little late to be talking about increasing participation?

And that time - a Tuesday at 2 PM Eastern (11 AM Pacific) - just might catch a few coaches at work.

(I looked in vain for a button that says “Kiss My Seat.”)

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

I will talk with our HC about the Black Lion award.  Only problem I can see is that he is a former assistant coach at the Air Force Academy, and his son just graduated from the Naval Academy this past spring.  However...he IS a strong advocate for the military, and especially for the academies football programs.  I'll let you know.

Can't help but wonder about #2 regarding Jeffrey Epstein.  

Having raised two daughters who are full grown adults now they have made me well aware of the numbers of predatory girls that exist in this society, and that the numbers are increasing.  They are master manipulators and we need to help our sons identify and avoid them.  

After watching that video on football in Finland I have to wonder when American college coaches will start taking a serious look at some of those Finnish offensive linemen!  Or, will those Finnish offensive linemen ever consider spending time in the U.S. getting a college education??

We both know the inner-city high school coach of whose email you highlighted.  We both know he is a coach who has always been an advocate for his kids no matter where he has coached.  He's a teacher/coach who works for the red-headed stepchild of the district, but unlike most in his situation he has chosen to remain because too many run out on those kids.  The parents support him 100% (for obvious reasons), and I told him that it's just a matter of time that the word will get out in his community that he is a coach who TRULY CARES.  In time those kids will WANT to be there with him, and some who left will want to return.

Have a great week!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

Joe, being a former Air Force guy didn’t prevent your HC from sending his son to another service academy, so he’s obviously a service academy guy.  There is no connection between the Black Lion Award and the USMA  other than the fact that the Army Football Club (the association of former Army football players) sponsors the Black Lion Award to a West Point football player.

*********** QUIZ ANSWER:  One day, maybe we’ll know the real story - why Anthony Davis, who may have had the most impressive college career of all the great USC Trojan tailbacks, flamed out so quickly.

In his three years at USC, the Trojans were 31-3-2, and won two national championships.

He became the first player in the history of the (then) Pac-8 Conference to rush for more than 1,000 yards in three straight seasons (in those days of freshman ineligibility).

In all, he rushed 784 times for 3,772 yards and 44 touchdowns, and overall he amassed 5,400 all-purpose yards and 52 touchdowns.

In 1972, as a sophomore, in a 45-23 rout of Notre Dame, he scored six touchdowns -  a school record -   two of them on kickoff returns of more than 95 yards.

Two years later, against a 10-1 Notre Dame team, he thrilled a huge crowd in the Coliseum when he led the Trojans back from a 24-0 second-quarter deficit to an almost unbelievable comeback that turned into a  trouncing of the Irish.   With the Trojans trailing 24-6 at the half (he’d scored just before the half),  he returned the second half kickoff 102 yards, then scored twice more before the third quarter was halfway over - accounting for 26 of USC’s 27 points - as the Trojans took the lead.  The stunned Irish never recovered, and the Trojans pummeled them, 55-24.

If ever there was a “Heisman Moment,” that was it.  The game of a lifetime in the comeback of a lifetime - not to mention 10 touchdowns  in two games against Notre Dame -  and on national television to boot.  But he finished second to Archie Griffin of Ohio State.  You see, his big game against Notre Dame,  on national television, and all that,  had taken place late in the season - November 30 - and because of the Heisman voting rules at the time, all the ballots had been cast before the USC-Notre Dame game took place.

Never again.  From that point since, balloting isn’t concluded until the last regular season game has been played,  and for that alone, football fans should thank him.  (In my opinion, they should wait until after the bowl season, which would allow voters to take into account a player’s refusal to play in his team’s bowl game.)

In addition to the two national championship football teams he played on, he played outfield on three winning College World Series teams, giving him a total of five national championships!

He declined to play professional baseball, and chose instead to play football, and when the Jets, who had drafted him,  would not meet his salary demands, he opted instead to sign with the Southern California Sun of the World Football League. 

He wound up leading the WFL in rushing, putting up some good stats - 239 carries for 1200 yards and 16 touchdowns - and caught 40 passes for 381 yards and a touchdown. And he returned nine kickoffs for 235 yards.

But the WFL folded after 12 games, and the following season he was in Canada, where the Toronto Argonauts me him the CFL’s first Million Dollar Player.

He didn’t play well, on the field or with others, and he lasted just the one season up North.

He returned to the US for a brief and undistinguished career in the NFL.

His life since then has been a series of ups and downs, mostly downs, with a long list of people who claim he owes them money.

Perhaps this will cast a light on things:

“There’s a natural tendency among Trojans to overestimate who we are,” said former teammate Marvin Cobb. “It comes with the swagger, the legacy, the tradition you try to live up to.

“You can get carried away sometimes.”

Or this:

In 2005, after being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, he received a blazer and a ring.  After he gave up the ring to a collector, he was asked why he did so, and he said the ring “looked like it’s come out of a bubble gum machine.  I felt if we were going to be honored that way, we deserved something better than that.”

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING ANTHONY DAVIS:

JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
GREG KOENIG - COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
BILL NELSON - THORNTON, COLORADO
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON
MIKE FORISTIERE - TOPEKA, KANSAS
CHARLIE WILSON - CRYSTAL RIVER, FLORIDA
TOM WALLS - WINNIPEG, MANITOBA


*********** On the subject of Anthony Davis...
Please give whatever good feelings I get for giving my correct answer to some collector.  I got a lot of good things from the penny bubble gum machine in my youth.  It never let me down...

Charlie Wilson
Crystal River, Florida

*********** Those of us who are Domers will never forget that game.  Thankfully USC gave up on tailbacks, and Irish fans are grateful.

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

*********** I realized that I have been derelict in my fatherly duties when neither one of my boys had ever heard of the “real” Anthony Davis (Not the b-ball player with the unibrow).

The World Court should have put him on trial for genocide, because he KILLED the Irish.  Worst thing to happen to mah peeps since the Potato Famine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=304&v=iceQZSOGH-8
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=91&v=S6ivTXDWZZw

Shep Clarke
Puyallup, Washington

*********** QUIZ - He blew his $350,000 NFL signing bonus… stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from family,  friends and employers…  wrote hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad checks…  defrauded a wealthy widow out of everything she had. 

There’s more, and it’s all bad.

He is currently serving time in a federal prison in South Carolina.

All because of a gambling addiction.

But at one time he was an outstanding high school quarterback, one who never lost a game.

He was a four-year starter at Ohio State.

He was Woody Hayes’ last quarterback.  That’s because he threw the interception late in a bowl game against Clemson that resulted in Hayes’ firing for taking a swing at a Clemson player.

In his sophomore year, under a new head coach, he led the Buckeyes to within a one-point Rose Bowl loss of a national title.

TUESDAY

*********** Tough choices…

(1) Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. (But he had so much to live for.)

    Conclusion: The government is incompetent, which is totally believable

(2) Jeffrey Epstein was offed.  Dead Men Tell No Tales.

    This means it was either done on the inside by our government or, even worse, by forces of evil more powerful than our government

(3) Jeffrey Epstein has already sung, and he’s now in the witness protection program

(4) Jeffrey Epstein has already unpacked his bags and sent for a planeload of (very) young ladies to be delivered to his private island somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

I absolutely do not believe that (1) was possible, and I don’t want to consider the possibility that it could be (2) so until I (or someone I trust explicitly) positively identifies the body, I’m debating between (3) or (4)

*********** General Perry Smith, who as a young Air Force jet pilot flew combat missions over North Vietnam was Don Holleder’s roommate in college.

Sine his retirement from the Air Force as a Major General, General Smith has had a long and career as an author, speaker and TV commentator or military affairs.

I have been informed that he has been nominated for membership in the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame, and I have offered to assist him.

General Smith is a real gentleman who been extremely helpful to me in promoting the Black Lion Award, and it’s the least I can do to ask my readers to consider voting for him.

Go here and read about the qualifications of this outstanding man.

https://www.gaaviationhalloffame.com/nominations/2020-gahof-nominees/

If you feel that you can vote for him,  a “4” is the correct vote.

*********** I kept seeing the movie “Brian Banks” being promoted, so I checked it out.

Since they assure us that it’s based on a true story, it has to be (somewhat) about the promising young athlete whose career came to an end when he was convicted of rape and sent away, spending six years in prison before his accuser admitted that she’d lied.

I don’t know how they managed to make this without massive protests by the MeToo gang, so I’m suspicious that somehow, as they do with everything else, they’ll make this about race (Brian Banks is a black man).

I hope not.  Instead, I hope they’ll use this story to deal with an issue that plagues today’s  young men.

I used to look back at when I was young and think how great it would have been if we’d had the “hook-up” culture when I was in college.  I mean, none of that “first date, second date” crap.

No sir.   If it’s the way I hear it is now, it’s just a matter of taking your pick.  (And well before closing time at that.)

But not so fast.  After stories about what’s been happening to young men falsely accused of rape - sometimes long after the “event” has taken place (or at least long enough for buyer’s remorse to set in), I’ve changed my mind.

So, nah.  I grew up at the right time. 

*********** “We all wore number 11.  Three brothers, all at the same university, all at the same position, all wearing the same number - it’s the only situation like that in history, anywhere.  Our number 11 is one of only five numbers that have been retired for eternity at Michigan.  That’s as good an honor as you can have.”

That was Al Wistert, who played at Michigan, like this two brothers, and went on to play in the NFL and captain the 1948 and 1949 Eagles’ championship teams.

“Eternity,” eh?

At the time he said that, Al Wistert couldn’t have foreseen the “Legends” program, thought up by an ambitious AD named Dave Brandon,  who evidently tired of waiting for this eternity thing to pass,  and decided to bring Michigan’s retired jerseys out of retirement.  The idea was to use the jerseys as glorified Buckeyes, awarding them to special players.  Who knows?  Maybe next, they’d use them as inducements to come to Michigan.  That was 2011.

As a result,   the “immortal” Devin Gardner was allowed to wear the previously-retired-for-eternity number of Old 98, Tom Harmon, one of the greatest Wolverines ever.

Who can forget Junior Hemingway? Good enough football player, but sheesh - in 2011, they let him wear the Wisterts’ number 11.

Give Jim Harbaugh credit.  Being a Michigan man himself, he agreed with the suggestion that the Legends program come to an end.

In 2015, the numbers were retired again, this time for a more permanent eternity.  They’re now four years into this one.

https://www.mlive.com/wolverines/2015/07/michigan_officially_ditches_le.html


*********** If you know Finnish but don’t know American football, this video will help greatly.

But if, as is more likely,  you don’t know Finnish but you do know football, you won’t understand a damn word of it but it will give you an appreciation for the level of football being played in that small country near the Arctic Circle, with a population about the same as the state of Minnesota.

I can’t believe the improvement in the quality of play since I coached there some 25 years ago..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=460&v=frKAk0DwbjI

*********** Purple Heart Day was last week, , and my friend Tom “Doc” Hinger, of Winter Haven, Florida, was good enough to send me a nice article on the Medal.

Some interesting facts about the Purple Heart:

Established by George Washington in 1782,  it is the oldest of the awards presented to members of our armed forces.

It is one of the first awards in history given to lower-ranking soldiers (those below the rank of officer).

It was originally only for members of the Army, until changed by President Franklin D, Roosevelt during World War II.

It was originally for “meritorious service” until World War II, when the criterion was changed to being wounded or killed in combat.

It is the only award service members do not have to be recommended for. If they meet the requirements, they have earned it.

http://www.dodlive.mil/2015/08/07/the-purple-heart-how-it-has-changed-over-time/

***********  “Michigan State’s Lime Green Uniforms are the Ugliest Things I’ve Ever Seen” goes the headline. 

I wouldn’t go that far - Maryland retired that trophy a few years ago - but these gooney guys sure as hell ain’t the Spartans I’ve enjoyed rooting for.

Line-green my ass.  That's road-crew green.

But either way - A road-crew green  Spartan on the helmet???


https://fanbuzz.com/college-football/big-ten/michigan-state/michigan-state-alternate-jerseys/

*********** Growing Pains, related to me by a coach who’s getting ready for his second year at  an inner-city school. (This is for those people who think that football coaching is just drawing up plays and telling kids to run those plays.)

Hugh,

There are many reasons why this is a losing program, but I am going to let you know on a daily basis or weekly what I would deal with, and as you well know it basically had nothing to do with football. As we talked before there are really no standards that have been set here. For the first year as always I let kids come out when we officially started in August and true to form most of them quit  in the preseason or within the first few games because they were not starters.

Now as we progressed to the first game things were ok,  but  the time from after school ended to when we went thru walk-thrus at 5 pm was when I knew there were going to be issues. First, the players didn't know how to prepare, so I had to constantly fill them in.

Then at 4:30 a starting D lineman got in a fight - an actual fight - with his girlfriend in the hallway. He punched her 3 or 4 times and, yes, the cops came and arrested him, and of course I kicked him off.

Then the following week I lost my starting safety and C back after he  got in a fight Thursday at lunch and was suspended for the next game.

Then on the Friday my starting A back did not bring his cleats and so I sat his ass.

Hugh, this stuff went on daily, every week,  for the entire season., wth the concussions we had, to the dramas of the players who would walk off the field not wanting to be disciplined - and I wouldn't go after them to bring them back as the previous coaches had done.

So we dropped in number of players from low 40's to upper 20's by mid-season and beyond. As I was told by the seniors, they had never been disciplined before in their entire playing days. In addition,  I also had a very young staff that thought telling a kid to do something was actually coaching him. As you well know, telling and coaching are two separate things.

Not to make this any longer but as I look back,  I have to do a better job of coaching my coaches and establishing an atmosphere of success. The hardest part for me was realizing very early in the season that you can talk all you like about commitment, honor, accountability, being a great teammate, etc.,  etc.,  but my players had no idea what any of those things were because they had never been modeled or displayed to them before.  90 per cent of my players have no fathers to show them anything.  

So we as coaches here have to model these things and constantly - talk the talk and walk the walk of what we are looking for.in this program. I know this all sounds negative, but it is reality, and it can be changed.

In my evaluation they really liked how I have brought standards where they had not been before. This is going to be a slow process, but I feel I am up for the challenge. As you well know, nothing good comes easy.

Discrimination and Disparities
By Walter E. Williams - May 1, 2019

My longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published a revised and enlarged edition of "Discrimination and Disparities." It lays waste to myth after myth about the causes of human differences not only in the United States but around the globe. Throughout the book, Sowell shows that socioeconomic outcomes differ vastly among individuals, groups and nations in ways that cannot be easily explained by any one factor, whether it's genetics, sex or race discrimination or a history of gross mistreatment that includes expulsion and genocide.

In his book "The Philadelphia Negro" (1899), W.E.B. Du Bois posed the question as to what would happen if white people lost their prejudices overnight. He said that it would make little difference to most blacks. He said: "Some few would be promoted, some few would get new places -- the mass would remain as they are" until the younger generation began to "try harder" and the race "lost the omnipresent excuse for failure: prejudice."

Sowell points out that if historical injustices and persecution were useful explanations of group disadvantage, Jews would be some of the poorest and least-educated people in the world today. Few groups have been victimized down through history as have the Jews. Despite being historical targets of hostility and lethal violence, no one can argue that as a result Jews are the most disadvantaged people.

Jews are not alone in persecution either. The number of overseas Chinese slaughtered by Vietnamese mobs and the number of Armenians slaughtered by mobs in the Ottoman Empire in just one year exceeds the number of black Americans lynched in the history of the U.S. From 1882-1968, 4,743 total lynchings occurred in the United States, of which 3,446 of the victims were black. Sowell concludes this section suggesting that it is dangerous for society to depict outcome differences as evidence or proof of malevolent actions that need to be counterattacked or avenged. Politicians and others who are now calling for reparations to blacks for slavery should take note of Sowell's argument.

There's considerable handwringing among educational "experts" about the black/white academic achievement gap. Part of the persistence of that gap can be laid at the feet of educators who replaced what worked with what sounded good. One notable example of success is the achievement of students at the all-black Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., from 1870 to 1955. During that period, Dunbar students frequently outscored white students on achievement tests in the Washington, D.C., area. Sowell, who studied Dunbar and other high-achieving black schools, says Dunbar "had unsparing standards for both school work and for such behavioral qualities as punctuality and social demeanor. Dunbar's homework requirements were more than most other public schools. Some Dunbar parents complained to the D.C. Board of Education about the large amount of homework required."

Dunbar High School was not the only black school with a record of success that would be the envy of today's public schools. Schools such as Frederick Douglass (Baltimore), Booker T. Washington (Atlanta), PS 91 (Brooklyn), McDonogh 35 (New Orleans) and others operated at a similar level of excellence. By the way, these excelling students weren't solely members of the black elite; most had parents who were manual laborers, domestic servants, porters and maintenance men.

Observing the historical success of these and other black schools, one wonders about the catchwords of Chief Justice Earl Warren's statement that separate schools "are inherently unequal." That vision led to racial integration going from being a means to an end to racial integration becoming an end all by itself. Sowell doesn't say this, but in my view, integration becoming the goal is what has made diversity and inclusion the end all and be all of today's educators at many levels.

Dr. Thomas Sowell's "Discrimination and Disparities" is loaded with pearls of wisdom from which we can all benefit, and as such, this will not be my final discussion of his masterpiece.

https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/05/01/discrimination-and-disparities-n2545550

If you ever heard Dr. Williams  speak, you’d know immediately that he’s not a liberal because he has a  sense of humor.  Evidence of the way he’s able to introduce humor into his work is his “PROCLAMATION OF AMNESTY AND PARDON” for All Persons of European Descent.  (I would consider printing a bunch of them to hand out to sufferers from White Guilt - except that I do everything in my power to avoid those self-loathing fools.)


http://walterewilliams.com/WalterWilliamsAmnestyProclamation.pdf

FOR SOME IN-DEPTH LOOKS AT THESE TWO REMARKABLE MEN,  DR. WILLIAMS AND DR. SOWELL…
CAUTION: THEY WILL MAKE YOU THINK!

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

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


*********** Marshawn Lynch may be a beast and all that, but once he decided to pass himself off as a youth coach, he stepped into the same arena as anybody else who’s ever coached little kids.

And,based on his, uh, “manner,” I’d have to say that he’s got a lot to learn about dealing with mommas.

https://youtu.be/L6BDnHrwOys


*********** One-time Army fullback Mike Viti was a Black Lion Award winner.  Unfortunately, he played on some bad teams, but he was one tough sucker, and after he graduated and Army went to running a triple option offense, I’d get pissed off every time I thought about how great he’d have been in some sort of the ‘bone.

But  justice has been served, to an extent, because now he’s the coach of  Army’s fullbacks, and anyone who saw last year’s Armed Forces Bowl  demolition of Houston knows that they’ve got some big dudes who can pack it up the middle.

I found some things he said in  a recent interview to be very instructive.

First of all, there’s no such thing in the Army scheme of things as “the” fullback.  There’s the “fullback unit.”  There may just be one position, but Army puts such a focus on power football that, says Viti, “If we are going to play that brand of ball, then it’s not just going to be one guy.  So, Coach Monken and Coach [Brent] Davis (offensive coordinator) and myself  really believe in that philosophy. It’s a 3-4 people position.”

He talked a little about how he manages that “fullback unit,” and brings up a point that I’d never considered - that no team is as deep in linebackers as Army is in fullbacks, and running fresh fullbacks into the game can wear down the opposition’s best defenders:  “I always talk about those linebackers (opposition) that are in the game that are in there for a 15 play drive which is like a 15-round fight. So now you put a fresh Sandon McCoy in round 8 and Connor has been busting them up for 7 rounds and then you get Rashaad Bolton in for 11 and 12 and closing back up with Slomka against that same linebacker who has been in there for the whole 15 rounds/15 play drive.”

Managing a group of guys who all want to play has become a skill in itself: “We make a big emphasis that the yards are our yards; the touchdowns are everybody’s touchdowns; and whoever landed that knockout blow ... that’s not just you, but it’s the collective group.”

He talked about returner Connor Slomka and the importance Army places on the 10-yard dash.  Slomka, he says, “he has THE best get-off and 10-yard time on the team. That’s a really important time for us. Many guys talk about 40 times, but I really put a lot into that 10-yard time. They are getting to the line to get a 5-yard running head start and we are expecting that group to average 4-5 yards collectively to have the team we want. So, Slomka has one of the best 10’s in the entire program and so his explosiveness and get-off, and his yards after contact and once he gets that bout with a guy, he’s really a powerful dude. He’s 240 pounds and he is one of the strongest guys on the team and he is tough to bring down.”


The kind of guy their coach was.

https://army.rivals.com/news/gbk-exclusive-q-a-with-fullback-coach-mike-viti

*********** A basketball player named Donell Cooper, who’s been playing in various places overseas, has been banned by FIBA, the international governing body, after failing a drug test.

He didn’t fail it exactly.  But it did raise eyebrows when it showed that he’s pregnant.

You be the comedy writer.  All I did was give you the setup.

https://news.yahoo.com/donell-cooper-basketball-star-banned-151542433.html#

*********** A friend who’s a retired Army officer told of the time the Congressman from his area suggested fudging a story in order to get government funding for a project he needed.

When he declined to do so, the Congressman said,  “It’s just a white lie.”

Replied my friend,   “That’s the difference between your job and mine.”

*********** Watching this Marianne Williamson woman who’s “running for president” as a way to become famous so she can sell books and go on a lecture tour, I’m reminded of some of the most dismal days of my teaching career, “in-service” days, when the faculty would be herded into an auditorium to hear how to become better teachers from a succession of Marianne Williamson types who’d never spent a day in a classroom full of kids.

*********** The people at Clemson are holding their breath, hoping that the NCAA won’t vacate their national championship after they self-reported a serious violation: “improper use of confetti during a recruiting visit.

https://sports.yahoo.com/clemson-football-selfreported-an-ncaa-violation-involving-the-improper-use-of-confetti-221759854.html


*********** There’s a new Trump story every day.  Back when I wrote this, the Story of the Day was the guy who was being barred from  White House press conferences.

That led someone whose name I don’t know to write about Olympic ice hockey coach Herb Brooks’ experience with the whiners in the news media…

When the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team was playing its way through the tournament that would eventually result in their "Miracle on Ice" gold medal, coach Herb Brooks held a press conference every day where the media could ask him questions. He had a standing policy of refusing to allow the players to speak to the media. He had spent months molding these players into a team, and he never wanted them to be in a position where one player would be in the media spotlight while others were not.

The reporters covering the Olympics weren't happy about this -- especially after the team began to play far better than anyone expected and attracted more and more public attention. At one of his press conferences, a reporter basically accused Brooks of implementing this policy so he could have all the glory while his players remained in obscurity.

Brooks -- who was a bit of a prickly character on his best day -- got so pissed off at this suggestion that he simply stopped showing up at the press conferences after that. He'd send an assistant coach or trainer out to do it instead.

The way to deal with an @sshole in the media is to stop doing the events at all. Let the other reporters in the White House press corps stew on that for a while, and maybe they'll get rid of the @sshole themselves.

TUESDAY

*********** A peek into the future under the Government of the People…

It’s that time of the year again:  on Monday my wife mailed out the Black Lion Award annual reports to Black Lions, and to friends and supporters.

The postage for each booklet (it goes up every year) is now $1.75, and  rather than pay more postage than necessary, she makes it a point to figure out the right combination of stamps to use.

With some 21-cent stamps left over from last year’s mailing,  she used three of them (63 cents combined) for each booklet, until she ran out.

And then she headed for the Post Office.

There, she was told that there wasn’t enough postage on some of the booklets - the ones with last year’s 21-cent stamps on them.

It seems that since she bought them (for 21 cents apiece, in full expectation that in return we’d receive 21 cents worth of postage), they’ve been devalued - they’re now worth just 15 cents each.

WTF? They increase the postage and devalue the stamps? What a business plan!  Why haven't restaurants who sell gift cards thought of this? ("Sorry, sir - I know that your friends paid $50 for the card, but that was last year. It's only worth $35 now.")

Hmmm. Maybe this is how the Dems plan to pay  for Reparations, Forgiveness for student loans and Medicare for illegals.

I know, I know - it’s only pennies.  But you young guys better pay attention - one of these days, when you’re not looking, they’re going to figure out how to do this with your social security.

*********** I took your advice from your Open Wing DVD to stop in Abilene and visit the Eisenhower Presidential Library on my way home from Reno.  I really enjoyed my visit there.  However, you messed up on your visit to the library.  For me as a train guy you failed to mention that a train museum shares the SE. boundary of the library.  I had spent 2-1/2 hrs. at the Eisenhower Library and was in a time crunch to leave, but when I saw the train through the fence on the boundary of the property, I knew I had to go there!!  I drove over and spent a quick 15 minutes there.  I am going to text you a couple of pictures of what you missed.  Many thanks for the suggestion to stop in Abilene!!

David Crump
Owensboro, Kentucky

********  When Don Holleder was cut down in the jungle in Vietnam in October of 1967, he was a young Army Major, just 33 years old. Had he lived, Saturday would have been his 85th birthday.



Those were the days when the quarterback called the plays. And in the upset of Navy, Don Holleder, in the final game of his only season as a quarterback,  called for runs, runs and more runs.  He threw only one pass, and it fell  incomplete.

 (Even at the time, 64 years ago, they called it “old-fashioned football.”)

Explaining his play-calling to reporters after the game, he sounded like a Double Wing coach:

“I remembered what the Colonel (Army players always referred to Coach Blaik by his military rank) always told me: 'If it works, stick with it.' So I did."

 https://www.si.com/vault/1955/12/05/596421/the-army-arrived-by-land


*********** Gordon “Gordie” Buslach  died recently.   He was a career Washington coach, with head coaching positions at White Pass, White Swan, Mountlake Terrace and Prairie High.

It was at Prairie, in nearby Brush Prairie, Washington, that he built a new program from scratch. He believed in the Veer and the 5-3 defense, and he knew his stuff.  His teams were very sound.

Something he did when he first got the Prairie job has always stuck with me: in the summer prior to the start of football, he met with every potential player and their families - in their homes.  He would schedule two or three appointments every evening, and he’d sit down with the parents just as if he were a salesman - which, in fact, he was - and explain to them what football would do for their sons, and what they could expect from him.  And then he’d answer their questions. 

It took him weeks, but his initial turnout was impressive, and he built a program that was solid for years, under him and then under his successor, Butch Hill, his longtime offensive coordinator.

Butch Hill’s son, Zak, went on from Prairie to star at D-II Central Washington (where he passed for 8,882 yards and 76 touchdowns from 1999-2003, with 11 games of more than 300 yards passing and 24 games of more than 200 yards) and he’s now offensive coordinator and QB coach at Boise State.


*********** A recent study by some organization called US Foods found that 28 per cent of food delivery drivers admitted to tasting the food they’re delivering.  Seems they’re “tempted by the smell.”

The article I read went on to say that “the survey found that most people think it’s unacceptable for drivers to sample the food they’re delivering.”

Uh… “Most people?”


*********** Coach,
1. When you go live on tackling, are most of your drills just pop and drive for 5, or are  the players trying to take man to ground?

2. When you first go live on drive blocking, do you allow D to use hands or not? We did first time and O knocked kid on butt because I just made D stand there and get blocked because I have to get them used to blocking a real man now and not just shields.


1. Coach, we seldom if ever tackle a teammate “live” (without a shield between the players) and we never take a man to the ground.

2. Occasionally when we scrimmage (thud) we get rid of shields but we seldom block without shields and we never block in drills without them.

If the defender is using his hands, then it’s no longer a blocking drill - it’s now a competition. When we’re teaching something, we don’t want  interference. When we use drills to teach blocking and tackling, we structure them so that it’s either “offense wins” or “defense wins.”

I would venture to say that, given relatively equal ability,  a defender who knows when, where and how he’s going to be blocked - and by whom - will win most encounters. But that’s not how our blocking works in real life. So what would our blocker be learning?  If people say “toughness,” I’ll tell them we have other ways of doing that. But right now, we’re teaching how to block.

Safety is a major reason for our using shields. So is helping newbies overcome their unfamiliarity with contact.  So is teaching kids to “bring it” without their holding back. With shields, a twink can take on a stud.

Others will disagree with our methods. We don’t care. We are perfectionists in our drills and I know we hit harder in practice than those who are hitting teammates “live” (and without risk of injury),  and I bet we block and tackle in games better than most.  As one example, you seldom see one of our players on the ground.

Most important of all, though - we have drastically reduced practice injuries. Having all your players ready to play on Friday night is an important advantage.

Just because “everyone does it” doesn’t mean the guy who does it differently is wrong.



*********** The headline stated, “Navy football Going to the Run and Shoot? Not Really, But this Year it Will Come to Pass.”

Wrote Gene Wang in the Washington Post…

Navy football coach Ken Niumatalolo, following the program’s worst season since 2002, spent a significant portion of this past offseason considering ways in which the Midshipmen could become less predictable on offense.

The broad conclusion he reached was the need for more effective passing plays.

Last season the Midshipmen averaged 72.8 passing yards per game, which ranked last among 129 schools in major college football. They finished with a 3-10 record.

“They’re crowding the line of scrimmage. They’ve got 11 guys up there,” Niumatalolo, referring to opposing defenses, said Saturday during the team’s media day at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. “You run out of hats. You can’t block everybody. You can’t crack everybody. You run out of people.”

What - is this something new, crowding the line of scrimmage against a triple option team?  You telling me defensive guys are so stupid it took them this long to think of that?  Funny - they crowd the line against Army, too - and Army still runs.

My suspicion?  After the way Arizona QB Khalil Tate reacted ("I didn't come to Arizona to run the triple-option”) when Coach Ken’s name was mentioned in connection with the job out there, my suspicion is that Coach Ken realizes that he’s going to have to throw the ball to make himself marketable.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/08/03/navy-football-going-run-shoot-not-really-this-year-it-will-come-pass/

*********** I’m not sure what the commercial is for, but it features American businessmen dealing with foreigners through an interpreter. A poor interpreter. One who misinterprets the desire of Americans to agree on a merger and tells the foreigners that the Americans want hugs.

Big problem here.  The interpreter is interpreting “Dutch.”

The problem?  It’s not believable.

I have no idea why they chose “Dutch,” but from long experience, I’ve found that the Dutch all speak English, they do so quite fluently, and they do it with  little discernible accent.  I wouldn’t think that there would be much work for  English-to-Dutch interpreters.

On top of that, the Dutch are the world’s tallest people, and the “Dutch” businessmen in the commercial are short.

They are also swarthy.  Dutch tend to be fair haired.

But other than that…


*********** FROM CNN.com

Gen. David Berger, the new Marine Corps. commandant, said he was "troubled by the extent to which drug abuse is a characteristic of new recruits and the fact that the vast majority of recruits require drug waivers for enlistment." He also said over the last ten years more than 25,000 Marines were dismissed from the service for misconduct, and drug and alcohol offenses.



*********** Old friends Greg Koenig and Brad Knight got together a week ago, as they’d been doing for the past 13 summers, this time in Colorado Springs, where Greg has taken on the assignment of building a program at Banning-Lewis Prep Academy.  Adding to the excitement - for me - was the inclusion of one of my former players and assistants, Cole Shaffer, who now runs a number of NAPA stores out of Boulder, Colorado.  Now that he’s coaching his own son in youth football,  he jumped at the chance to help Greg.  That’s Coach Shaffer on the left, then Coach Knight, then Coach Koenig in the middle. Next are Coach Koenig’s two assistants at Banning-Lewis, Mike Cortesi and Wayne Freeman.




*********** Last week we held a 3-day mini-camp at Aberdeen (Washington) High and were joined by two guest coaches. On the left, Josh Montgomery, from Berwick, Louisiana did a great job coaching, and as a bonus he introduced our kids and coaches to a real Cajun accent. In return, he got an introduction to non-humid Northwest summer weather - and a crash course in deep snapping from our head coach, Todd Bridge (who'd deep snapped at the UW). I never saw a guy pick it up faster than Coach Montgomery, and I'm sure it'll come in handy in his coaching. I'm in the middle, and on the right is Carson Ketter, a former player who'd just been released a few days before by the BC Lions. We're all hoping that he gets picked up by another CFL club, but if not we have a place for him on the Aberdeen staff. (The photo wasn’t taken  in Mayberry. That's a beautifully-restored Montana Highway Patrol car in the background.)

*********** I got the sad news this past weekend that Jack Dolbin died.

I first heard of him when he played against my team, the Hagerstown Bears, in 1971.  Twice. 
 
He played for a team from his hometown of Pottsville, Pennsylvania called the Schuylkill (pronounced “SKOO-kull”) Coal Crackers.  The season before he’d played for possibly the best minor league team ever, the Pottstown Firebirds, the subject of an NFL Films documentary, but with the Firebirds out of business in 1971, he was keeping his pro football hopes alive by playing minor league ball.

A Cowboys’ scout once told me that when he was scouting lower-level teams, all he looked for was someone who dominated the competition.

At our level, that was certainly Jack Dolbin.  Although a running back in college (Wake Forest), he was small, but with his blazing speed, he was well-suited to be a receiver.

In 1971, he caught 53 passes for 1134 yards (21+ yards per catch) and 14 touchdowns. (Stats provided by old friend Don Shipley.)

I never got to know him, but he impressed me as a class act.

When the World Football League got under way in 1974, he signed with the Chicago Fire, and after one year, he was signed by the Denver Broncos.

He played five years with the Broncos, and in the 1978 Super Bowl (XII) he was their leading receiver.

After pro football he became a chiropractor with a practice in his native Pottsville.

Rest in peace.

https://godeacs.com/news/2019/8/2/football-in-memoriam-jack-dolbin.aspx

*********** You knew it was just a matter of time… In Massachusetts, there is now a rehab center for video game addiction.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/treatment-center-for-video-gaming-addiction-proposed-for-western-mass/ar-AAF5R1M


*********** I've had a longtime affection for Mike Leach, admittedly without detailed knowledge. I had a friend (he died at 85 about five years ago) who knew Texas football well. He said that before one big game, the cagey Leach knew there were spies somewhere in the stadium, so at the end of practice he made it appear that he'd unintentionally dropped a sheet of paper...that contained what were putatively the opening offensive plays for the upcoming game. The spies, of course, snagged the paper gleefully, only to learn too late Leach had tricked them.

John Vermillion
St. Petersburg, Florida

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

Just returned from a two day team retreat.  No X's and O's, no practices, and no film, just a team-bonding experience that included team-building exercises, ropes course, water sports, and...a lot of giving thanks to our Savior.  Got to know the coaching staff.  We have 7 coaches.  Combined we have over 200 years of coaching experience at the collegiate and high school levels!  Our head coach is a former FBS assistant (Air Force among others) and head high school coach.
 
One of our assistants is also a former FBS assistant (Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas).  Another assistant has been a high school head coach and assistant coach in Texas for over 40 years.  Another assistant has also been a high school head coach and assistant in Texas for over 25 years.  Another assistant has been an assistant coach at our school for eight years (his dad is currently on David Shaw's staff at Stanford), and our "young" guy is a former UT defensive lineman with a couple of years of coaching under his belt.  Then there's me...48 years of coaching at both the collegiate and high school levels.  Heck...our head coach quipped if schools could count years of experience in the won-loss record we'd have most of them beat!  I'm really excited to be part of this group and looking forward to the season.

Ironically, one of the many "stories" shared at the retreat had to do with what Mike Locksley talks about.  Doesn't matter what level of football you're in character and relationships are what truly matter when it comes to building a coaching staff.  Like most everything it has a direct impact on the relationships and character of the team being coached.  Young people are imrpessionable.  Give them a good impression and they are likely to mimic that impression.  Give them a bad impression and they are likely to mimic that impression.  It's not rocket science.  Although...there are many in our society today who would argue that.  And...likely...they get an argument back.

Sports Illustrated has evolved into the true meaning of its title.  Covers everything, yet doesn't for "some" things.  Covers things that it has no business to cover, yet doesn't cover them equally.  Turns out it has become just another casualty of liberal journalism practices which equates to a lack of journalistic quality and ethics.

Did you also notice in one of those debates that one of the candidates didn't place his hand over his heart?  Actually I was waiting to see if anyone would kneel.  If one of them had I would bet he/she would have been given a "standing" ovation.

As quirky a guy as Mike Leach is you just gotta love that dead-pan demeanor.

QUIZ:  Carl Weathers  (I saw him play against Fresno State in 1967 at Ratcliffe Stadium in Fresno.  San Diego State was voted the number one "small college" team in the country that year).

Have a great weekend!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

(That "candidate"  - yeah, right - was that a$$hole Ryan, from Ohio.)

*********** QUIZ ANSWER:  Carl Weathers was born and raised in New Orleans, and played his high school football there. At the same time, he was involved in boxing, wrestling, and martial arts.

He played JC ball at Long Beach City College, then transferred to San Diego State, where he played defensive end for two seasons under the great Don Coryell.

After graduation, he signed with the Raiders as a free agent, and played in eight games in two seasons before being released.

He played three years in the CFL with the BC Lions, and then retired and took up an acting career.

He appeared in a number of so-called blaxploitation films, and landed his first big role as boxer Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” films.

Carl Weathers has appeared in films such as “Action Jackson,” “Semi-Tough,” and “Happy Gilmore,” in  a music video with Michael Jackson,  in TV series such as “Street Justice” and  “In the Heat of the Night,  and in a series of Bud Light commercials.

CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING CARL WEATHERS:

KEN HAMPTON - RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
JOSH MONTGOMERY - BERWICK, LOUISIANA
GREG KOENIG - COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO
MIKE FRAMKE - GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN
TIM BROWN - FLORENCE, ALABAMA
ADAM WESOLOSKI - PULASKI, WISCONSIN
JOHN VERMILLION - ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
MARK KACZMAREK - DAVENPORT, IOWA
BILL NELSON - THORNTON, COLORADO
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH - LAKEVILLE, INDIANA
JOE GUTILLA - AUSTIN, TEXAS
SHEP CLARKE - PUYALLUP, WASHINGTON
DAVID CRUMP - OWENSBORO, KENTUCKY
OSSIE OSMUNDSON - WOODLAND, WASHINGTON
MIKE FORISTIERE - TOPEKA, KANSAS

*********** Any self respecting Philadelphian or fan of malt-liquor, knows your quiz answer is Carl Weathers. I didn’t know, but am not surprised, that he was a professional football player.

Tom Walls
Winnipeg, Manitoba

*********** Predator:  “What’s the matter, Dillon?  They got you pushing too many pencils?”

Shep Clarke
Puyallup, Washington

*********** You left out my favorite film with Carl Weathers in it.  My favorite film with him was the film Predator with Arnold Schwarneger. It has the greatest space alien of all time in my opinion and the ugliest!!

David Crump
Owensboro, Kentucky


*********** QUIZ: He led his Montana high school to a state title and was heavily recruited.  Miami wanted him to play linebacker.

He chose to play quarterback at a Northwest School and in his junior year he threw for 330 yards per game and set a conference record with 33 touchdown passes.  He also led his team to its first Rose Bowl appearance in 67 years, and finished third in the Heisman balloting.

Passing up his senior year, he entered the NFL draft and was the second player - and the second quarterback - taken. There was considerable debate as to which of the two quarterbacks was better, and the team that chose him actually traded up in order to make sure it got him.

He turned out to be the ultimate jerk, disliked by teammates, coaches, fans and the media. On top of his personality defects, he proved to have a terrible work ethic.  He missed all of his second season with a shoulder injury, and after his third season,  tired of his act, his team released him.

He barely made it through one more season, and then his NFL career was over. He retired.

His name is sure to be near the top of any list of “greatest busts of all time.”  In his brief NFL career, he started 21 games - nine of them in his first season. He completed 48 per cent of his passes, and threw for 14 touchdowns - and 36 interceptions.

A former teammate summed up the feelings of most NFL people when he said, “Personally, I could never rest good at night knowing my career ended like that. Normally in this game, you get back what you put into it, and he pretty much got back what he put into it."

And then he embarked on a weird odyssey that included a series of different jobs punctuated by a series of drug-related incidents that culminated in his serving time in a Montana prison for breaking into a home in search of drugs.

Now, based on his word that he is clean, he is involved in helping others deal with drug abuse.

We will see.  He has been hired by ESPN to do college games this fall.

FRIDAY

Locksley realized he needed to be more meticulous in his hiring process. He needed to do his due diligence. This particular lesson was reinforced during his three years at Alabama under Nick Saban, as an offensive analyst, then as the wide receivers coach, then as the offensive coordinator. Saban has lost multiple assistants each of the past few years, but he has never panicked about replacing them. He never rushes the hiring process.

“I remember him telling me it’s like a puzzle,” Locksley says. “You just can’t hire a guy because he’s supposedly the best receivers coach. It’s, how does he fit in this culture? And how does he fit with the philosophy of our program and how we do things? He was really meticulous with how he went about it. We all had to sit through numerous interviews. He’d fly a guy in on a one-way ticket and the guy will be there for three days. Basically, he’s trying to figure out, is he a fit. A guy would come with one suit, thinking he’s flying in and flying back. And he’ll be there for two, three days, and then you’re speed dating — (Saban) wants you to meet everybody in the program that’s going to be there and get everybody’s opinion.”

not a single young male athlete  did anything worthy of recogniton)

There’s an article entitled “Backcourt Mates,” about two members of a WNBA team’s backcourt who - I am not sh--ting you - are  married to each other.  If one of them ever gets cut - or traded -  will the media complain about “family separation?”

And then there’s a pre-Olympics article that dwells on the question that’s on every sports fan’s mind:  “How many athletes will use their visibility to criticize Trump?

I’ve been a subscriber since 1956, and it’s been sad for me to see what’s been done to a once-great publication.

*********** As he was carted off the field with a broken leg, (former) Seattle Seahawks’ safety Earl Thomas gave the finger to his coach, Pete Carroll.

He was pissed, see, because after all his bitching and complaining about wanting a contract extension,  the team hadn’t yet caved. And now he was injured.

According to the genius who wrote a recent article on Thomas,  “He admitted that might have kept him from getting a new contract with the Seahawks.”

Well, duh.

Thomas is now with the Ravens.

*********** I was thumbing through my copy of Athlon’s 2019 College Football Magazine and for some reason I started looking at the Big Ten schools’ lists of recruits.

I came away convinced that something is wrong - definitely wrong - with college football, when state schools’ football teams scarcely represent their states.

Michigan?  Exactly TWO of their signees  are from Michigan.

How can that be? I thought.  Michigan is a good football state.   You wouldn’t see Penn State going out of state to that extent, would you?

Well, actually, you would. Penn State signed THREE kids from the Keystone State, a state which once prided itself on being a recruiting mecca.

Same with Wisconsin - three in-state recruits.

Minnesota?Nebraska? Indiana?  Four each.

Iowa and Illinois signed five each. Likewise mighty Ohio State. (Maybe that’s because Michigan beat them to six Ohio kids.)

Purdue is bringing in seven in-state kids, as is Maryland.

Rutgers signed eight kids from New Jersey.

Of all the Big Ten schools, only Michigan State, with ten in-state recruits, could plausibly say that it represents the state whose name it bears.

So, Go Spartans.

*********** Shep Clarke, of Puyallup, Washington, sent me a screen shot of the Thursday night “debate” of the ten Democrat “presidential candidates,” asking “Sayyy…Where’s that – whaddayacallit – that starry, stripey thingy?”

Yeah.  Kind of funny.  Usually, proving Samuel Johnson's  point that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” Democrats make it a point to drape themselves in the flag.



I did, however,  see something circular overhead  - something that  looks a lot like the EU flag, with the addition of a few more stars- I’m thinking for California, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, Oregon and yes, sadly, Washington.

*********** UConn is going to have to pay the AAC a $17 million severance fee, just so that it can become a basketball school. 

 http://a.msn.com/02/en-us/AAEUs4c?ocid=se

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

I was moved reading that first bit of news you shared today.  I couldn't help but be reminded of a young man I coached in high school in Fresno.  His name was Justin Garza.  Justin was one of those smaller quiet kids on your team who just worked his tail off every day to improve his strength and his skills.  A good natured kid who you couldn't help but like...a lot.  By his junior year he was a starter on both sides of the ball.  Smart, tenacious, and a real student of the game it didn't surprise me to find out years later that my daughter, who had graduated from that high school with Justin in 1994 had told me that Justin had become a very successful teacher and a football coach.  And a darn good one at that.  I followed his progress when he became a head coach early in his career, re-building two struggling programs, and eventually became the head coach at Fresno Central High School where he turned the Grizzlies into a powerhouse program.  He could have been one of the best the Central Valley has ever had.  Unfortunately, after a long six year battle with Hodgkins (they thought he had beaten it, but it returned), Justin stepped away from coaching in 2016 to continue his fight, but passed away in 2017 at the age of 41.  May he also rest in peace.

Heck, 9 am kickoffs may be tough to get the cameramen to show up on time!  Wonder how that will affect the College Game Day crew?

How much you wanna bet Washington will start to consider eliminating that spring jamboree rule?

I belong to the other PETA:  Prefer Eating Those Animals.

Did I mention the acronym for the SQUAD?  Socialist Queens Undermining American Dreams.

Have a great weekend!

Joe Gutilla
Austin, Texas

*********** Mike Leach’s other occupation and how he got banned from it - from The Athletic

By Bruce Feldman

LOS ANGELES — This year marks the 30th anniversary of the most bizarre tenure of a sports information director perhaps in the history of college athletics. At the time, the guy also held five other jobs at the same NAIA program — and he taught two classes. He was the school’s offensive line coach, the offensive coordinator, the recruiting coordinator, the equipment manager and the video coordinator and did at all for a $12,000 salary. The guy’s name? Mike Leach.

Yeah, that Mike Leach.

In addition to helping his boss Hal Mumme set offensive records at Iowa Wesleyan, Leach had proven to be quite adept at his new job, doubling as the school’s SID and spreading the gospel about the Tigers. The 28-year-old Leach even got them mentioned in USA Today several times. The only problem was the school’s Director of Public Relations who oversaw Leach’s job as the SID didn’t appreciate the national attention from USA Today. In her mind, the SID was supposed to write a press release about the game’s outcome, and because this was in the days before email, Leach was to mail that release to the papers around the state. Her system made no sense, Leach thought.  The mail wouldn’t go out until Monday and the papers wouldn’t receive it until Tuesday or Wednesday. By the time they got the score, statistics and information on the game, it was no longer relevant. Because the information was so untimely, they wouldn’t write a story.

Leach had a better idea, he says.

He’d call the main newspapers locally with their score from Saturday so that their readers — and Iowa Wesleyan’s recruiting targets — would know how the team did.

The Tigers were breaking all kinds of school records and led the nation in passing.

“I kept reaching out to the USA Today, and soon they began writing about us,” Leach said. “Well, someone tells her that her school is in the USA Today and she gets all flustered. She calls me screaming: ‘How dare you contact the USA Today?’

“Mike, I know you’ve been talking to other newspapers, and that’s bullshit. I told you that you have to write a press release and mail it out, so that it’s fair for everyone. So everyone gets the information at the same time. It’s not fair to the weekly newspapers. I know for a fact there was an article in the USA Today about Iowa Wesleyan.”

A number of times Leach had explained to her how ridiculous it was for them to get the Iowa Wesleyan score on Wednesday. By then, he pointed out, they’re supposed to be talking about who you’re playing next, not who you played five days ago. It is called “news” after all.

She was still incredulous. “That’s bullshit, Mike!”

Mumme, who was in the next office to Leach, could overhear the conversation.

“It was one of those deals where she was yelling at him for like 30 seconds straight and he has the phone pulled away from his ear,” Mumme says. “And then Mike, in that monotone voice of his goes, ‘Iowa Wesleyan sports information had gotten Iowa Wesleyan into the USA Today three times this year. Your office couldn’t get Iowa Wesleyan into the USA Today unless there was a mass murder on campus.’ And then she really lost it.

https://theathletic.com/1096673/2019/07/26/mike-leachs-other-occupation-and-how-he-got-banned-from-it/

FRIDAY

*********** When I decided, at the age of 30, to go back to playing football, it was with the newly-formed Frederick (Maryland) Falcons, and Don Boyer was one of the first teammates I met.

We were both defensive backs.  I’d played in college -  ten years before.  Back then, you had to play both ways, and although I was much better on offense than on defense, I was smart enough to know by age 30 that I’d get killed playing running back at the semi-pro level.  (Not that it was exactly a smart move to even be playing semi-pro ball at my age.)

Don had never played football.  His small-town high school didn’t play the sport.  But he was a good athlete and very fast - he’d run track at Maryland.

He was a few years younger than me, but at the same time, he was older than some of the really young guys, who were just a year or two out of high school, and I became something of a mentor to him.

He played just the one year, and then his first love - track - took over, when he wound up coaching cross country at two different high schools. Simultaneously.

But we stayed in touch - for a while - and several years after that, in 1976, after I’d moved west, he and his wife and son stopped by our place on their way to watch the Olympic Trials in Eugene.

That was our last contact, and since then I’ve depended on Don Shipley, son of our late coach, Dick Shipley, to keep me up to date on the old teammates.

Sadly,  he informed me recently that Don Boyer had died at the age of 75, after dealing with dementia for some time.

In Don’s nearly 50-year career  as a coach at Middletown, Maryland High, 76 of his former athletes became state champions, and ten of his track teams and six of his cross country teams won state titles.

His wife, Sharon, whose interest in track began early in their courtship as his personal timer for his workouts, became a coach herself, and her Middletown girls’ cross country teams won six state titles.

Their kids, Monte and Donna, were among the state champions they coached.

Job well, done, Coach. Rest in Peace.

https://www.fredericknewspost.com/sports/level/high_school/don-boyer-titan-of-track-and-field/article_f76f5569-5cc2-5ec8-be9d-96cd51e560f3.html

*********** Larry Scott, Commissioner of the Pac-12, has to be the dumbest sumbitch ever  to run a sports conference.

He no doubt expected to excite the writers on hand at the conference’s annual pre-football media gathering with the announcement that instead of playing the conference title game in the unexciting environs of Silicon Valley, the Pac-12’s championship game would now be played in - tada! - LAS VEGAS!

But then,  before the writers could even send in that story, he went and trumped that big, glorious  announcement - the one that he hoped would finally show that the Pac-12 is serious about football - with one guaranteed to steal the headlines, and at the same time to enrage anyone with even the slightest interest in the Pac-12. 

Desperate to get more exposure for the conference in the major markets of the East and Midwest, he said that he and Fox had been kicking around the idea of scheduling a conference game or two (or three or four) with a Noon Eastern kickoff.

In fact, he said, they might even give the idea a try as early as - this season.

Wait, I thought.  Surely Commissioner Larry knows “Noon Eastern” translates to a 9 AM kickoff on the West Coast, which for players means waking up at 6 AM (at the latest).  But what the hell. Because TV money, blah, blah, blah.

For season ticket holders,  it means playing the fool for the TV people,  given less than two weeks’ notice that that “TBA” next to the “TIME” on their tickets now means having to leave at the crack of dawn to drive to the game and, for most of them, foregoing the usual pleasures of tailgating.  But what the hell. Because TV money, blah, blah, blah.

For casual “walk-up” fans, it means looking at the alarm clock and saying, “screw it.” But what the hell. Because TV money, blah, blah, blah.

Commissioner Larry probably sees such a scheme as a win,  because it shows everyone how he’s thinking “outside the box.”  Fox probably does, too - I think - because this would give it a Pac-12 game to start off its Saturday programming.  But the biggest winners are sports columnists all over the Pac-12’s big footprint, as they outdo each other looking for clever ways to say “WTF can the Pac-12 be thinking?”

Ultimately, for all those SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 fans a couple of time zones to the east - the ones Fox and the Pac-12 really think will switch over to watch their early game -  it means “ho-hum.”

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2846948-pac-12-commissioner-larry-scott-reveals-discussions-for-possible-9-am-pt-games


*********** Coach, one more question:

Do you have WR (SE) and Slots (wings) block with hands out or “picks in pecks” on bubbles, smoke screens, and downfield blocking?

Thanks,

Coach,

When we are passive on the line, and when we are outside the box or downfield, we use hands.

There is no limit on the questions if they can help.


*********** Dr.  Seuss (aka Theodore Seuss Geisel) is a perfect example of Going through the door that’s open.

He was producing advertising, mainly for Standard Oil Company and its big spray called “Flit” and he was good at it - so good that he made a lot of money, which led to an employment contract that prohibited him from working with a competing firm.

He thought he saw an opportunity in a completely different area - children’s books - and after a number of near misses, became a great success, so much so that his publisher stopped counting  the fan letters it received, and instead, weighing it. In one year, it received 9,267 pounds of mail.

“I would like to say I went into children’s book work because of my great understanding of children,” he said before he died in 1990. Actually, though,  “I went in because it wasn’t excluded by my Standard Oil contract.”

 In football terms, it’s called, “Taking what they give you.”

*********** Hockinson (Washington) High’s chances to win a third straight state 2A title took a terrific hit when Sawyer Racanelli, a 6-3, 200 pound University of Washington commit who in 13 games last season caught 101 passes for 1700 yards and - rushing and receiving combined - scoreD 35 touchdowns, tore his ACL in a spring jamboree.

He has had surgery, and he’ll miss the entire 2019 season.

“I feel more that God has a plan for this,” he told the Vancouver Columbian. “He’s all-knowing and He knows this would’ve happened before it happened. I put trust in Him that this happened for a reason.”

Washington said it will honor its scholarship commitment.

https://www.columbian.com/news/2019/jul/18/torn-acl-means-hockinsons-racanelli-will-miss-2019-season/

*********** Good God - will there ever be an end to the PETA inanity?

As part of a wider campaign, they spent the money of the people that donate to their cause to buy billboards in Baltimore showing a crab (a great delicacy in Baltimore and the rest of the Chesapeake Bay region) with the message “I’M ME, NOT MEAT!”

Native blue crabs, when steamed in a large pot, turn bright red, and seasoned with lots of Old Bay, and accompanied by lots of ice-cold beer, they make a feast much loved by Marylanders.  (in the "photos" below, the bottom billboard has been photoshopped to look just like the ready-to-eat crabs that generations of Marylanders have enjoyed.)

Good luck with this one, PETA.






*********** Tim Brown, of Florence, Alabama, sent me a collection of quotes from Cleveland Browns’ coach Freddie Kitchens, a former Crimson Tide quarterback.

"If you've ever been around a loud coach, one that just screams & yells, listen to what he's saying & see if he's even teaching."

"We have players that need to be taught & we need teachers."

"There aren't any bad days, only hard days"

"One of the greatest signs of bravery is asking for help. To me, probably the biggest form of being selfish is not asking for help when you won't even admit it to yourself that you need the help."


"As coaches, we're teachers. I'm sure you've all had a teacher in your life who's made you a better person. As a coach and a teacher, I'm invested in people. Not players. People."

"I grew up the son of a tire maker at Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Gadsden, Alabama. Benjamin E. Mays said 'Those who start behind in the game of life must run faster to catch up,' and I feel like I've been running fast my whole life."


"Right now we're just a bunch of good players, a bunch of good individual players....until we do something, that's all we are"

TUESDAY

*********** Happy Anniversary (Wednesday) to my wife, Connie. Marrying her will always be the best thing that ever happened to me.

*********** Years ago, when I taught and coached at Central Catholic High in Portland, I used to love talking with the priests.  I came to really like and respect those men - Father Dernbach, Father Murphy, Father Forbes, Father Karath.

Father Karath spent one summer in the Holy Land, and he made a point to tell everyone that he packed two suitcases.  One of them was full of toilet paper.

Yes, there were places in the world - still are - where one of life’s simplest luxuries is absent.  (That’s for the edification of any America hater who might be reading this.)

But maybe I’m already too late.  Now comes word that the lefties are after our toilet paper. (Save the trees, don’t you know.)

If you hit the link and don’t feel like reading the entire story, go right to the comments.  They’re well worth the read.

Meantime, I’m stocking up on Charmin.


https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/making_america_venezuela_the_left_is_coming_for_your_toilet_paper.html


*********** What’s the number one career choice for America’s kids?

Hint: It’s not Astronaut.  It’s not Fireman (sorry - firefighter). It’s not even rapper or pro athlete.

Get ready for this.

It’s “YOU-TUBER.”

God help us all.

https://summit.news/2019/07/19/survey-number-one-career-choice-for-american-kids-is-to-be-youtubers-for-chinese-kids-its-an-astronaut/


*********** (If you don’t like some of the drug ads on TV, you might not want to read any further)

Friday, I had a cystoscopy.

For those who don’t know what that is, it’s an inspection of your urethra and your bladder by means of a tube with a camera in it.

A friend refers to it as the “Upthedickascope.”

I usually hate having to wait in the waiting room, but this time I was hoping I could maybe wait a little while.  That was not to be.  I was seated for maybe three minutes when I was hailed and led into a room in the back by a very pleasant woman who proceeded to check my pulse and blood pressure.

And then she informed me that she was going to leave for a few minutes, and while she was gone,  I was to remove all my clothes from the waist down, and have a seat on a table. She handed me a surgical gown and told me just to put it over my lap.

And as she headed for the door she added, matter-of-factly,  “Then I’ll be back to wash you…”

“Okay,” I said,  as though there was nothing at all unusual about that - as though every night before I go to bed a different woman stops by the house and washes my privates.

But she wasn’t done.  “And then,” she said,  “I’ll inject an anesthetic into your urethra.”  Inject?  I thought.  Inject to where?  Whoa.  There’s only one way that can be done.

“It won’t hurt,” she assured me, “But it may feel as if you’re peeing backward.”   Never having had that experience,  I didn’t especially care to.  She spoke as if she had, which I doubted.

I took my time getting ready, but soon enough, there came a knock on the door, and instead of saying, “There’s no one here!” I made the mistake of saying, “Come in.”

She entered the room and after asking me to lie down on the table,  she lifted the gown and began to - wash.  “This isn’t really happening,” I told myself, but then I began to feel something strange happening at that most sensitive of locations on the male body, and damned if I wasn’t getting this strange sensation, as if I were - peeing backward.

Now that I was properly prepared, the urologist came in and proceeded to, um, run the camera all the way into my bladder.  The only good thing about the whole deal was that I could watch on the monitor.  Talk about an idea for Disney: the UrethraSlide - thrills galore as you slide, your special suit coated with a surgical lubricant,  between the lobes of the enlarged prostate all the way into… Lake Bladder!


*********** Going through an old program - 1954, Pitt at USC - I came across a photo of a Pitt player whose name seemed familiar: Gene Steratore.


Gene Steratore… Gene Steratore… Where have I heard the name?

And then it hit me - is it possible to watch a big game without at some point hearing  an  explanation of a rule or ruling from...

Tony and Gene Steratore

By Harry Funk

On any given Sunday – or Monday, Thursday or the occasional Saturday these days – you’ll be treated to the spectacle of National Football League officials taking earfuls from exasperated coaches.

One of them is back judge Tony Steratore, and he’ll field the more-than-occasional question about how he handles such tirades.

“I tell ’em, ‘I’m from Western Pennsylvania. I’ve seen all this stuff before.’”

So has his brother, Gene, who served as an NFL official for 15 years prior to transitioning to the TV booth. And if the surname sounds especially familiar, sports enthusiasts will remember their father – Washington native Gene Sr., who passed away recently – as a college football official and basketball referee.

Dr. Jack Ramsay: My 60 years in basketball

By Coach and Athletic Director

This article, written by Hall of Fame basketball coach Dr. Jack Ramsay, was published in our October 1994 edition.

My interest in basketball began as a youngster in Milford, Connecticut, where the father of one of my friends was headmaster of a private prep school. On Saturday mornings, he would allow a bunch of us to play “basketball” in the gym.


It was totally unsupervised — wild, error-filled forays up and down the court, the player with the ball dribbling at top speed toward his basket, his eyes riveted on the ball. Teammates ran after him, shrieking his name, begging him to pass the ball. The only time the dribbler gave up the ball was when defenders knocked it loose or cut off all possible avenues to the hoop.


I learned that a major part of coaching was teaching, not just showing and telling.


The process was then repeated by the next player with ball possession until someone took a shot. Occasionally, a goal was scored. After everyone had had a chance with the ball, the process was repeated. Basketball it was not, but we had fun and kept at it until totally exhausted.


As crude as those efforts were, I felt a great fascination for this game. My dad attached a hoop to the barn behind our house and I spent hours out there, year round, learning to dribble and shoot. My backyard soon became a kind of center for other kids who liked basketball.


We played half-court games, and like most kids in rural lots or urban playgrounds all over the United States, we accidentally learned to pass, screen, rebound and defend, as well as dribble and shoot. That experience helped prepare thousands of kids like myself for organized basketball at the school level.


My family moved to the Philadelphia area when I was in 10th grade. I enrolled in a larger school and faced a much stronger level of basketball competition. The reigning power in Pennsylvania at the time was Lower Merion High School, a conference rival of my school, Upper Darby. In my three years of basketball, Lower Merion won the State Championship each year.


The experience taught me what kind of impact a coach can have on his team. Lower Merion’s coach, Bill Anderson, played the same game every year, executing crisp passes, quick give-and-go cuts, flash post-ups, and tough man-to-man defense. No frills or gimmicks. Just good, solid, fundamental basketball. Years later, I heard that style referred to as “eastern” basketball.


Other area teams tried to emulate Lower Merion, but never came close, It was clearly the coach who was responsible for the team’s exceptional success. His players were sound and well-schooled fundamentally — good enough to make All-State, but rarely all-anything as college players. Coach Anderson made an indelible impression on me.


My coach at St. Joseph’s College was Bill Ferguson, who was also a math teacher and part-time banker. Fergie was not much of an X and 0 exponent. He allowed his teams to create their own play action, but he did insist on hard, aggressive effort.


In those years (early 1940s), St. Joe’s hosted double-headers along with La Salle and Temple in Philadelphia’s Convention Hall. They were part of a regional program organized by Ned Irish for Madison Square Garden. Irish scheduled the best college teams in the country to play first in Buffalo (against Canisius, Niagara or St. Bonaventure), then to meet our group in Philadelphia, and finish in New York (facing St. John’s, CCNY, Manhattan, NYU, or LIU).
 

The program provided great intersectional competition. UCLA, Southern Cal, Oklahoma A&M, Texas, Kansas, Kansas State, Kentucky, Western Kentucky, Tennessee, Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Rhode Island State, and other perennially strong teams appeared regularly at the three sites. The host colleges also played each other.


During my four years at St. Joseph’s, interrupted by three years of Navy duty during World War II, I played against some of the best teams, players and coaches of that time. It was fascinating to see the different styles that some of the giants of the coaching profession brought to Philadelphia.


Coach Frank Keaney’s Rhode Islanders were the first to race up and down the floor with what he called “Firehouse” basketball. In contrast, Coach Hank Iba’s Oklahoma A&M teams played a physical, bruising defensive game; then stressed a ball-control offense.


Eddie Diddle combined the two styles at Western Kentucky, with an array of tall, talented, agile players; and CCNY’s Nat Holman had a slick, quick game that won both the NIT and NCAA championships in the same year (1950) — the only grand slam in history.


My Navy duty gave me the chance to play briefly with the San Diego Dons while awaiting re-assignment on the west coast. The Dons were a strong AAU team that featured the great Jim Pollard. It employed a “western” style, using weak-side screens and ball reversals rather than the give-and go “eastern” style I had grown up with.


I was lost in the system, and was transferred before I had time to really adjust to it. But I learned again, this time from first-hand experience, that there were other ways to play the game effectively. I also left the Dons with a deep appreciation of Pollard’s tremendous skills. He was the Michael Jordan of his era.


Before my playing days ended, I also managed to play against Bob Kurland, Dick McGuire, Slater Martin, Paul Arizin, Joe Fulks, and Neil Johnston — like Pollard, future Hall of Famers who had an impact on how the game was played. I learned something from each of them.


I came out of those years with a strong desire to coach. There was something intriguing about taking a group of players, teaching them to play your game, and finding a way to win with it.


I wanted the opportunity to help increase the player’s skills; to get them to play selflessly as a unit; to demand that they go at it with intensity and poise; and to play only to win in the same way those great coaches appeared to have done.
The game is always being played in greater numbers and with constantly improving skills — everywhere.


By combining high school teaching­-coaching jobs with playing in the Eastern Professional League for the next six years, I was able to continue my awareness of the game from a player’s perspective while teaching the game and developing an effective system of play.


Two of my teammates in the Eastern League were Jack McCloskey and Stan Novak, also high school coaches in the Philadelphia area who went on to have distinguished NBA careers. We traveled together by car to weekend pro games and, during the long rides, we shared ideas about how to coach the game and discussed strategies that had or had not worked for our high school teams. The trips became a kind of coaching clinic on wheels.


I needed all the help I could get. My adjustment to coaching was more difficult than I had expected. I had thought because I played against great teams, players and coaches, I could easily transfer those experiences to my players. It wasn’t that simple.


I learned that a major part of coaching was teaching, not just showing and telling. I found that, although all coaches had a system of play, the good ones often adapted it to fit the special skills of their players. Well-coached teams were never surprised. They seemed prepared for anything that happened in a game. They could make an effective adjustment for any quickly changing situation.


I watched opposing coaches do a better job of motivating their players and teams. And I wanted my players to exhibit more poise under pressure, but understood that I could not expect it from them until I could demonstrate it myself. I needed to become a better coach.
   

After my St. James (Chester, Pennsylvania) H.S. team struggled through a couple of seasons in the tough Philadelphia Catholic League, I increased my intensity to improve. I saw as many games as I could — high school, college and professional — live and on television. And I carefully observed coaches and noted their attention to detail and their inner team relationships.


I sent to the NCAA office for game films of the tournament finalists and pored over them, I attended coaching clinics to hear the great coaches speak about their techniques.


Defense, these coaches said, was the key to winning. And it didn’t have to be the conventional man-to-man. At that time, teams were having success with various zone defenses — matchups, traps, and combinations, like box-and­-one. These were different tactics from those I had experienced as a player, and so I gave them full attention — ultimately incorporating some of them into my system.


The first zone trap I ever saw was used by Coach Woody Ludwig at Pennsylvania Military College (now Widener College) in 1949. Legendary coach John Wooden achieved enormous success with it during his incredible run at UCLA and it helped my teams win a ton of games at St. Joseph’s College and in the NBA.


The matchup zone defense, popular among Philadelphia area high school coaches, reached its peak of effectiveness with Harry Litwak’s great Temple teams of the late ’50s. Then Frank McGuire won an NCAA title with North Carolina in 1957 with a standard 2-1-2 zone defense.


Aggressive, jump-switching man-to-man defense — which I first saw used successfully at the college level by Pete Newell at California (1959 NCAA champions) and by Eddie Donovan at St. Bonaventure — wrought havoc with the opponents’ carefully executed plays.


Dean Smith did the same thing at North Carolina, and added an in-and-out, shuttling system of substitutions.
Red Auerbach’s Boston Celtics brought pressure defense into the NBA, and combined it with the shot-blocking and intimidation threat of Bill Russell to win eight consecutive titles (1959-66).


Russell was the first player to make the blocked shot an offensive as well as defensive weapon. He blocked the shots and his teammates ran for fast breaks with the possessions. Big Bill was also the mainstay of Coach Phil Woolpert’s San Francisco team that won back-to-back NCAA titles in 1955 and ’56.


I believe Bill Russell had a greater impact on the game than any other player in history. Offensive styles also changed during my period of observation. In the late 1940s and early ’50s, the half-court series run by Adolph Rupp at Kentucky was totally different from the five-man weave of Ken Loeffler at La Salle — but both won NCAA championships.


Ed Juecker showed it wasn’t necessary to fast break to win, when he took his Cincinnati team to consecutive NCAA championships in 1961 and ’62 with a ball-control game similar to that of Newell’s at California.


Bob Knight used a passing, screening game — somewhat related to the old, “eastern” style — to win three NCAA titles for Indiana; while Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke teams won back-to-backs with a combination passing game and pro-type screening offense. Both schools played rock-ribbed, man-to-man D.


In the NBA, the Celtics used the same six half-court plays during their reign of terror, on those occasions when they weren’t fast breaking. The plays were fundamentally sound, yielding shots well-suited to the abilities of their players.


My championship Portland team ( 1977) used the consummate passing skills of Bill Walton to feed cutters at the basket. Magic Johnson was the master floor general of Pat Riley’s fast-breaking Lakers that dominated the 1980s; although Boston bounded back to win two championships sparked by the all-around wizardry of Larry Bird.


Then Detroit won back-to-back titles with a productive, three-guard attack orchestrated by Chuck Daly; and later Chicago won its celebrated “Three-peat” with Jordan, the game’s greatest player, at center stage.


Bulls coach Phil Jackson didn’t just give Michael the ball and clear the floor, Chicago used an offense that assistant Tex Winter developed at college. It designated spot positions on the floor and required specific screen, pass and cut continuities. The positions were interchangeable to accommodate Jordan’s considerable skills, and the offense was flexible enough to afford M.J. some one-on-one bursts to the hoop.


Those varying, sometimes conflicting, styles of offense and defense proved once again that theory, however sound, is less important than execution in determining success … And that attention to detail is the key to good execution.
Since ending an active coaching career, I have stayed close to the game, mostly as a television analyst, but also giving coaching clinics around the world for the NBA.


The level of international basketball has greatly improved, and so have its players. The number of great NBA players whose roots are in foreign soil attest to that: Olajuwon, Ewing, Schrempf, Petrovic, Kukoc, Divac, Mutombo, Marciulionis, Herrera, Smits, and Seikaly have made their marks in the NBA — and more will come.


The game is always being played in greater numbers and with constantly improving skills — everywhere. But no matter where or when I have seen the game played, it has always had constants — indigenous, never-changing concepts. I have thoroughly enjoyed playing this great game and have always felt honored to be known as one of its coaches.


https://coachad.com/articles/dr-jack-ramsay-my-60-years-in-basketball/

(Steve) Conn, who has worked at Yale since 1986 and has been in his present role as Yale’s sports publicity director since 1993, has used scores of features from Barton in the program guides for Yale game programs over the years. And he always has been mesmerized by Barton’s ability to keep score, even against computer programs.

“It was amazing to watch him chart a football game, especially while our stats team was inputting every play on a computer,” Conn said “If we thought we missed something, we could always go to Bob for confirmation … and detail. Speaking of detail, he blew our minds every time he came to a Yale Football Media Luncheon at Mory’s. Almost regularly, Bob would be asked to shed some light on a game of the past. He would provide the weather, the score and significant details.”

***

Barton, a member of the New Haven Gridiron Club Hall of Fame, voted in the first New Haven Register Top 10 high school football poll in 1961, and in the final GameTimeCT/New Haven Register Top 10 poll this year — despite not officially working in the sports department. Ned Griffen, who now works at the Day of New London, recalled Barton calling in from Europe to submit his ballot early for the Register poll after Barton’s flight was diverted due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Griffen was one of countless young football reporters Barton mentored, teaching many the importance of attention to detail, both with statistics and grammar.

Griffen recalled a play in a state championship game in 1994, when Ansonia used a trick play including a lateral from one receiver to another that led to a touchdown. There was confusion in the press box on how to award yardage.

Then, Griffen said, a calm, deep voice came from the back:

“The receiver gets credited with a catch and the yardage to the spot where he pitched the ball,” Barton said. “The second player gets credit for the yardage where he got the pitch, but not for a catch.”

***
He also was approached by different authors chronicling the history of Yale football, including Ansonia’s Rich Marazzi.

“When I wrote a ‘Bowl Full of Memories: 100 Years of Football at the Yale Bowl,’ Bob was my guiding force along the way,” Marazzi said. “One of the best decisions I ever made in my life was reaching out to Bob for his help. My original intent in writing the book was to recall my memories of Yale football and the Yale Bowl. When I sent him the first 100 pages of the manuscript, I was expecting a “job well done,” response. Instead, he candidly said, “Nobody cares about your memories.”

“That was the best advice I ever got,” Marazzi said. “From that point, I decided to solicit the memories of decades of former Yale players going back to the 1940s to the present, the coaches, the fans, the media, etc. It totally expanded my thought process. If I was the heart of the book, he was the soul.”

Through five seasons of the Playoff, three teams — Ohio State (2016), Alabama (2017) and Notre Dame (2018) — advanced to the semifinals without a winning a conference title, but no team has earned a bid with more than one conference loss.

The message is clear: To best position yourself for a Playoff bid, teams should win the conference title, but they must win big in conference play.

And in the CFP era, four Power 5 teams have done this better than anyone else: Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Oklahoma. Those four programs have won at least 80 percent of their conference games over the past five seasons and, unsurprisingly, they’ve accounted for 70 percent of the Playoff bids.

Meanwhile, only one Pac-12 team, Stanford, has even won 70 percent of its conference games during the Playoff era. That kind of parity has hurt the conference’s perception on a national scale.

https://theathletic.com/826338/2019/07/18/pac-12-football-playoff-perception-scheduling-personnel-finances/

FRIDAY

As the story goes, Balme became an orthopedic surgeon. In 1967, he volunteered for a mobile Army surgical hospital unit in Vietnam. After graduation, Humphrey joined the Marines and was sent to Da Nang, where he was riddled with shrapnel during a rocket attack.

While stretchers of wounded Americans were being left at his unit, Balme's orders were to prioritize the injured and leave Humphrey to die -- he was too far gone.

But Balme looked at the Marine and recognized him as Yale's former QB, who he'd watched play.

"He not only didn't let Watts die, he saved his life and his arm," Marazzi said. "Watts is now a businessman in Pittsburgh."

They risked everything for it, not for some idea or abstraction but for the piece of fabric itself.

The American flag’s place in our culture is beginning to look less unassailable.

The symbol itself is under attack, as we’ve seen with Nike dumping a shoe design featuring an early American flag, Megan Rapinoe defending her national-anthem protests (she says she will never sing the song again), and protesters storming an ICE facility in Aurora, Colo., and replacing the U.S. flag with a Mexican flag.

U.S. soccer had a pretty good statement a while back setting out, in response to Rapinoe, why it has an expectation that players will stand during the national anthem (which, of course, is all about the flag):

Representing your country is a privilege and honor for any player or coach that is associated with U.S. Soccer’s National Team. Therefore, our national anthem has particular significance for U.S. Soccer. In front of national and often global audiences, the playing of our national anthem is an opportunity for our Men’s and Women’s National Team players and coaches to reflect upon the liberties and freedom we all appreciate in this country.

(Rapinoe called the sentiment “cowardly.”)

The U.S. soccer statement could have added that men have fought for the flag, and not just in the sense of fighting under it as members of the U.S. armed services. Our troops have literally fought for the flag, for its physical advance and preservation. This is the story of color sergeants during the Civil War.

Color sergeants carried the flag —typically, both the U.S. flag and the regimental flag — into battle, and not a weapon. They depended for protection on the color guard, a small contingent of troops dedicated to the task. The flag, held aloft and leading the way, was important as a matter of tactics (to mark the location of the unit in the confusion of battle), of morale (to provide a rallying point for the troops), and of devotion and honor (to lose the flag to the enemy was a deep disgrace).

Needless to say, this was hazardous duty that demanded the utmost bravery and dedication. According to Michael Corcoran in his book on the flag, For Which It Stands, the 24th Michigan Regiment lost nine color bearers on the first day of Gettysburg alone.

The commander of the the Sixth Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Dawes described his unit’s charge at Gettysburg:

Any correct picture of this charge would represent a V-shaped crowd of men with the colors at the advance point, moving firmly and hurriedly forward, while the whole field behind is streaming with men who had been shot, and who are struggling to the rear or sinking in death upon the ground. The only commands I gave, as we advanced, were, “Align on the colors! Close up on that color! Close up on that color!” The regiment was being broken up so that this order alone could hold the body together. Meanwhile the colors were down upon the ground several times, but were raised at once by the heroes of the color guard. Not one of the guard escaped, every man being killed or wounded.

Corcoran notes of the inception of the Medal of Honor during the Civil War: “Nearly one thousand of the medals were awarded and, in a great many cases, they were bestowed upon men who had carried the Stars and Stripes into battle or who captured Confederate flags.”

Consider a few examples. There’s John Gregory Bishop Adams, awarded the Medal of Honor for his conduct with the 19th Massachusetts Infantry at Fredericksburg. As the citation recounted, he “seized the 2 colors from the hands of a corporal and a lieutenant as they fell mortally wounded, and with a color in each hand advanced across the field to a point where the regiment was reformed on those colors.”


There’s John Gilmore, awarded the Medal of Honor “for extraordinary heroism on 3 May 1863, while serving with 16th New York Infantry, in action at Salem Heights, Fredericksburg, Virginia. Major Gilmore seized the colors of his regiment and gallantly rallied his men under a very severe fire.”

There’s William Carney, the first black serviceman to perform an act deemed worthy of the Medal of Honor, who saved the flag during the doomed but valorous assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina.

Part of the famous Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Colored Regiment, the exploits of which were depicted in the movie Glory, Carney saved the flag when the unit’s flag-bearer was wounded and, despite getting shot up himself, kept it aloft. He supposedly said when he finally turned the flag over to his comrades, “Boys, I only did my duty; the old flag never touched the ground!”

There are countless such stories of men risking everything, not for the idea of the flag or any abstraction but for the actual piece of fabric itself.

Ancient history, you say? Regardless, the sacrifice and blood of these men are inextricably caught up in the meaning and moral status of the American flag. The historical illiteracy of those who protest it is perhaps understandable and on some level forgivable; their rank ingratitude and disrespect are not.

According to an arrest report, Williams showed up at a residence in Pahokee, Fla. where Alkeria Davis was on Dec. 6, 2018. Police say Williams tried to get in by hitting the outside door with a skateboard.

Davis came to the door and there was a struggle as Williams tried to force her way into the residence, according to the report. It says Williams managed to get inside and then punched Davis multiple times in the head and pulled her hair.

Two men spent 10 minutes attempting to break up the fight before they were able to separate the two women and get Williams outside.

At that point, according to the report, Williams walked to a blue Camaro, grabbed a gun and pointed it at one of the men, saying "You'll get all 18" before speeding away.

TUESDAY

Thousands of people in Sweden are having futuristic microchips implanted into their skin to carry out everyday activities and replace credit cards and cash.

More than 4,000 people have already had the sci-fi-ish chips, about the size of a grain of rice, inserted into their hands — with the pioneers predicting millions will soon join them as they hope to take it global.

“It’s very ‘Black Mirror,’” Swedish scientist Ben Libberton told The Post of the similarity to the TV series highlighting futuristic scenarios.

Like glorified smartwatches, the chips help Swedes monitor their health and even replace keycards to allow them to enter offices and buildings.

They have particularly caught on, however, by enabling owners to pay in stores with a simple swipe of the hand, a big deal in a forward-looking country that is moving toward eliminating cash.

FRIDAY

By JIM VERTUNO, Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Part of late billionaire H. Ross Perot's legacy is a clear-cut rule about Texas high school sports: If a student can't pass class, they can't play.

The law, with its catchy "No Pass, No Play" nickname, has been in place since 1984. When first signed by Gov. Mark White, coaches and communities worried their best players, most notably in football, would be sidelined and troubled students would drop out of school.


The resulting firestorm helped lead to White's re-election defeat in 1986. Although softened a bit to help students get back on the field quicker if their grades improve, the law is still in place.

Perot, who died Tuesday of leukemia at 89, was appointed by White in 1983 to lead an initiative to improve Texas public education. The result was a series of proposals to reduce class size and to create both teacher merit pay raises and a high school basic skills graduation test.

But in the land of "Friday Night Lights," where coaches were often paid more than principals, and the excesses of high school football saw some wealthy schools charter airliners to state championship games, it was No Pass, No Play that sparked an uproar.

Failing students had to sit out for six weeks. Not just games, but practice too. Until then, local schools decided eligibility and the Texas law was hailed as the first of its kind in the nation.

"If the people of Texas want Friday night entertainment instead of education, let's find out about it," Perot said at one public hearing.

The impact was immediate. The first semester it was in place, more than 15 percent of all varsity football players and 40 percent of all junior varsity and freshman players statewide were benched. One Houston school lost 90 out of 190 players.

Charles Breithaupt, executive director of the University Interscholastic League , the governing body of Texas high school sports, was a basketball coach in 1984. He said coaches resented the diminutive big city businessman with the quirky voice telling them what to do.

"They looked at him as an affront. We were all offended. We were trying to protect our turf," Breithaupt said. "What was lost was that his message was 'school is first.' He was one of the few people who had the courage to say what he said. No one else would have gone against the coaches association."

D.W. Rutledge, who had just been promoted to head coach at a state championship program near San Antonio, said while some coaches worried about winning and losing, others didn't want struggling students booted out of their programs entirely.

"I lost a couple," said Rutledge, who would go on to win four state titles. "They dropped out of the program, dropped out of school and got in trouble with the law. We were taking them out of a wholesome environment and putting them on the street."

Legal challenges followed. A lawsuit to overturn No Pass, No Play reached the state Supreme Court in 1985 and the law was upheld. The next year, the state's influential coaching community mobilized to support Republican Bill Clements in a successful bid to unseat White.

"It was heated," Rutledge said. "We had a deal where every coach wore a red dot on their watch to remind them not to vote for White."

White implored lawmakers to leave No Pass, No Play intact when he left office.

"Leave it alone," White said in 1987. "Let's be real: Anyone who can study a playbook can study a textbook. Americans didn't get to the moon on a quarterback sneak."

Within a decade, lawmakers reduced the law's punitive measures. Failing students are allowed to practice even if they are suspended from competition. And they can return in three weeks instead of six if they show progress academically.

"Perot, his heart was in the right place," Breithaupt said. "He was trying to raise the standard of education in the state ... It was best for Texas in the long run."

http://www.fox4news.com/sports/high-school/-no-pass-no-play-rule-part-of-ross-perot-s-legacy-in-texas

Hi Coach Wyatt,

I wanted to share a little bit about my story with the first year double wing coaches. Feel free to repost any or all of it that you think would be valuable to a young coach getting started in our system.

As the season approaches, I’ve been reflecting a lot on my very first year running the offense way back in 2000. It was quite a year. After attending my first double wing clinic I was sold. I worked hard learning the offense, installed it by the book and proceeded to go out and get killed.

And to make it worse, I had no idea how to fix the problem. I would study our games and was baffled at how little the kids seemed to be retaining. We were all over the place.

Well, to make a long story at least bearable, it was a very timely visit from Coach Dwayne Pierce that got our team moving in the right direction. After watching about an hour or so of practice Coach Pierce’s diagnosis was a simple one. He told me “Coach, I think you’re trying to do too much.” The rest of it he was nice enough not to say. Of course that was that we weren’t very good at all at the things we were doing.

We immediately threw out about 80% of the playbook and he helped me get serious about teaching the kids how to run 3 or 4 plays well. I believe we started with a wedge, a power, a counter, and one pass. That was it. After just a few days we started to look like a solid double wing football team. And all it took was to have someone that knew what it was supposed to look like, take a look. I’ll never forget Coach Pierce’s kindness and willingness to help a first year guy.

Looking back on it, my struggles were pretty natural. Everything I knew as a player and a coach led me to believe that I would need a weighty playbook if I was going to compete at the high school level. So I took my fresh Double Wing playbook and proceeded to teach  (along with the base stuff) a screen, a shuffle pass, a trap,and  an option play with G blocking all because I thought I needed that variety to win.

Of course this was totally the wrong approach. It was waaaay too much, waaaay too soon. I hadn’t even learned how to teach the fundamentals properly. It was only when I went back to basics that our kids started to turn it around. They weren’t punks. They didn’t lack heart. They weren’t lazy, or forgetful. They just needed better coaching. They needed more reps, fewer plays, greater attention to detail, and a wealth of encouragement and we got better pretty quickly.

I say all that to say this to the first year guys. Take it one step at a time, and get damn good at running a good power play before you do anything else. Make sure you get the fine line DVD, it’s as important as the playbook.

I’ve been studying the Open Wing dvds recently. It’s a great addition to what we already do. But even if you plan to use it, please get good at running the core double wing package from under center. It will provide the necessary context you need be be a successful Open Wing team AND you will have the sheer power of our beloved core double wing system at your disposal.

One more thing.. The best thing you have at your disposal is a community of coaches that love the offense. And if you reach out to them,  they will gladly help get your team going. We can’t help it. We love it that much.

I can’t forget your friend and mentor Coach Wyatt who backs up his system with the best customer service you could ever hope for. Reach out to him and I can promise you he’ll reach back. Thanks for everything, Coach.

Have a great season guys! If you’re doing it right, in every game you’ll either win or learn. Hopefully both!

If there’s anything I can do to help, you can reach me through Coach Wyatt or email me at bkevinlatham@mac.com

All the best,

Coach Kevin Latham
Decatur, Georgia

Man, he nailed it.  Beautifully written and well said.  Maybe coming from Coach Latham, a guy who’s been there and done that, it will help drive the point home to younger coaches who’ve been convinced they need 50 or 60 plays: keep it simple and teach it well.  I try to say it in my playbook, but I probably ought to say it even more frequently and emphatically - nobody can run every play in the playbook.  Yes, you can win with just four plays - wedge, power, counter, pass.  Nothing wrong with adding a new play - but just one - every week. But first, make sure that your kids can run those four plays VERY well and that they’re VERY confident in their ability to run them. (If I were a young coach in the Atlanta area,  I’d want to tap into Coach Latham’s wealth of knowledge.)

*********** It’s a good thing that Yale didn’t hire Don Brown…

Yale twice had a shot at him but for reasons known only to those in the inner sanctum who make the big decisions, he was found wanting.

Instead, in 2009 they hired a guy named Tom Williams.  At the time, Don Brown was DC at Maryland, after having spent  five years  as head coach at UMass - the most successful five-year run in that school's history.  Under him, the Minutemen had gone 43-19, and never had a losing season.

In three years at New Haven,  Tom Williams, with no previous head coaching experience,  went 16-14. But the 14 losses including three straight to Harvard.  In one of them, the Bulldogs led, 10-7, late in the fourth quarter when, deep in their own territory, Williams called for a fake punt.  It failed.  And 53 seconds later, Harvard threw for a score to make the final Harvard 14, Yale 10.

Williams was fired after three seasons when his claim of having been a Rhodes Scholarship finalist proved to be spurious.

With the Yale job open once more, this time it went to an unknown assistant named Tony Reno.  In his seven years at Yale, Reno has gone 38-32.  Yes, he did win one Ivy League championship, and he has beaten Harvard twice, but he’s had just three winning seasons,  and he’s only 2-5 against Harvard.

The word at the time was that Don Brown, then the DC at UConn, was offered the job - and turned it down. 

Good move, coach.

He’s now Michigan’s DC - has been since 2016.  Michigan pays a lot better than Yale.

He just signed a new three-year contract extension that’s said to be worth $4.9 million.

In addition, he’s eligible for up to $500,000 a year in incentive pay, based on these potential bonuses:

$50,000 if Michigan finishes in the top four in the Big Ten in scoring defense
$50,000 if Michigan finishes in the top four in the Big Ten in total defense
$50,000 if Michigan finishes among the top 20 in the Power Five in the Big Ten in scoring defense
$50,000 if Michigan finishes among the top 20 in the Power Five in the Big Ten in total defense
$75,000 if Michigan wins nine regular season games
$75,000 each for wins Number 10, 11, and 12

My intimate, personal encounter with Don Brown:  It was the Friday before a UMass-Army game, and I was in Michie Stadium following Army’s workout when the UMass team came onto the field.  I wanted to stay and watch,  but obviously I wouldn’t do so without permission, so I managed to find the head coach - Don Brown -  and I introduced myself and asked him if it was all right for me to watch.  No problem at all, he said.  He was very cordial.

That was my only exposure to the guy.  He could just as easily have been a prick.  But he wasn’t.  So I came away liking him. And now I'm glad he's making maybe four times what he'd have been making as head coach at Yale.

*********** What few people know about Michigan DC Don Brown is that in 1992,  after Yale fired its head baseball coach right before the season, he was named as the replacement.

He didn’t have a lot of baseball experience - he’d played in high school, he’d been an assistant coach at a high school, he’d thrown batting practice occasionally at Yale.  And he was a big Red Sox fan.

But Yale didn’t want to be rushed into making a hasty hire, so Brown,  then a Yale football assistant, was asked to take the job on an interim basis.

In his first meeting as a head coach, he told the players not to worry about his lack of baseball experience: “I’m a good coach, and you’ll enjoy playing for me.”

How’d he do? Not bad.  The Bulldogs were 26-10, and made it to the  NCAA post-season tournament, their first appearance in 44 years.  The last time it happened was 1948, when the Elis made it to the College World Series. where they lost to USC, three games to one. The captain of that Yale team was a Navy veteran named Bush.  George H. W. Bush. (In the photo below, with baseball immortal Babe Ruth.)


https://www.toledoblade.com/College/2018/04/13/Season-as-Yale-baseball-coach-left-lasting-impact-on-Don-Brown-players.html


*********** I think the simplest solution to the “equal pay for equal play” crap that’s been occupying the minds of every fan of the US women’s national soccer team is to cut the pay of the men’s players.

Number one, it would shut the women up. Maybe.

Number two, considering the mildness of Americans’ interest in American men’s soccer, and considering how many of the American men are minor leaguers by world standards, it would pay the men what they’re really worth.

*********** John Krupinsky is an assistant coach with a minor league hockey team in Danbury, Connecticut, and before the team’s first practice, he set a few things straight.

“We’re not women’s soccer. We’re not the NFL,” he starts out. “If there’s anybody here that’s going to be disrespectful to either the American or the Canadian national anthem, grab your gear and get the f–k out now ‘cause you’ll never see the ice in this arena.”

He goes on…

“We don’t have that problem in hockey.  We’re better than that, but there was no sense in wasting anybody’s time if that shit was going to happen. I don’t believe it would happen here. We’re the most patriotic sport that they have out there, so just keep that in mind. Thank you.”

Of course, he’s addressing minor league hockey players, most of whom will never see an NHL arena except as spectators.   In women’s soccer and the NHL, though, they NEED their star players, so they tolerate them, whether they be America haters or wife beaters.

https://sports.yahoo.com/hockey-coach-respect-the-anthem-or-get-the-f-out-were-not-womens-soccer-220707485.html

*********** Jim Bouton died.  Blame him and his book, “Ball Four,”  for opening the door to the baseball clubhouse and letting the public see for the first time what jerks professional athletes could be.

In his New York Times obit:

“Ball Four,” published in 1970, reported on the selfishness, dopiness, childishness and meanspiritedness of young men often lionized for playing a boy’s game very well, and many readers saw it, approvingly or not, as a scandalous betrayal of the baseball clubhouse.

TUESDAY

********* I’ve already mentioned that we lost our dog, Lainey,  a week ago.  I know.

I’ve been really bummed - as has my wife - and I’m sorry to say that the following is by no means written to amuse or enlighten.  Feel free to skip over it as you wish.   I simply had to write it, and as I did, it seemed to write itself.

Lainey hadn’t been her usual active self for the last month or so, and we’d had no success finding out what was wrong.  In fact, the afternoon before she died,  we’d had blood drawn for testing.  We’d resisted having the radiographs that the vets recommended to see if there was something seriously wrong internally, because we didn’t want to have her put under.

After the sedation required to draw blood, she was quite lethargic, which was understandable, and she went to sleep early.  But a little after  midnight she began breathing heavily and was barely able to move.  When she didn’t improve, we rushed her to the 24/7 emergency veterinary hospital at about 3:30 AM, where they admitted her - as critical (!).  They even asked, as they wheeled her away, if we wanted them to perform CPR if necessary.

Come on, I wanted to say.  Just fix her up and let the three of us go home and go back to bed.

But as we waited for word,  a vet came out and said that Lainey had a fair amount of fluid in her abdomen, and there was blood in the fluid, which indicated a bleeding tumor, likely malignant.  Surgery was an option, but she wasn’t in great shape at that point, and with the likelihood of the tumor being malignant,  even “successful” surgery - followed by chemotherapy - meant at most another six months of life, and probably a miserable  life at that.

It took me a few moments to digest what we’d just been told. But I just couldn’t accept  that it was over - that suddenly, our beloved dog was at her life’s end.

Near shock at the realization, we nonetheless elected to have her put to sleep.

We petted her and kissed her and watched her leave us.  We kissed her again and left her forever.  Just like that.

It was in the fall of 2010 that we “met.”  We were back in Durham, NC for the Duke-Army game, and our daughter and son-in-law, who live in Durham, were fostering this dog, one of many they’d had over the years,  a dog with one blue eye and one brown. She was a year or so old.  Her name was Lainey.  I took her for a walk and played with her, and before the weekend was over I was in love with her. I even mentioned offhand to my wife the ridiculous idea of adopting her and somehow getting her to the Northwest.

Shortly after we flew home,  someone actually did adopt her.  I was upset.  But as luck would have it,  the adopting party found herself allergic to Lainey and had to return her.  This time we went for it. Lainey was flown across the country in the hold of a plane (or two), and when we went to get her  the air freight people warned me that there might be some skittishness on her part after the trauma of the long flight.  But as I approached her kennel, all I could hear was the thump-thump-thump - of her wagging tail.   That was Lainey.  Whenever her tail wagged, the whole dog wagged.  (And as we were to discover,  her tail was usually wagging.)

Maybe most amazing of all - after she’d spent more than 10 hours in a crate, everything inside it was dry.

One of the first things she did was to teach our Cairn Terrier - whom we’d rescued after she’d outlived her usefulness to a  puppy mill in Missouri, and who was still scared of her own shadow - how to be a dog.  Lainey’s influence on that poor, little, much-abused dog was near-miraculous.

I had almost nine years with Lainey.  I wouldn’t exactly say that she was a one-man dog, but  being a pack dog - a Carolina Dog -  I was definitely her pack leader. (My wife thinks she may have worked her way up to second in the pack).  In Lainey’s eyes I could do no wrong, and she lived to please me. She wasn’t entirely happy when I was out of her sight, and when I was away, she would camp by the front window to wait for my return.  When I would sit down to write, she would lie down under the table.  When I would talk on the phone, she would lie down under a nearby desk.  When we ate dinner, she lay at my feet.  (We found ourselves doing a lot less traveling over the last few years because I just couldn’t bear to leave her alone in a kennel for any length of time;  in truth, I was hers as much as she was mine.)

She was well trained. She never tried to get on furniture, never took food that wasn’t hers, never ate anything on the ground outside, and never had an “accident” indoors.  She was able to learn all sorts of things (and words) because she had the key ingredients of coachability - intelligence and a desire to please the coach.

She had a marvelous disposition.  Extremely affectionate, she wanted to meet - and be liked by - everyone she saw.  The most common word used to describe her by those she met was “sweet.”

I’ve never seen a dog so capable of fixing you with a stare.  She would paw me to get my attention, then sit and gaze at me with those two eyes - the blue one could bore a hole in you - as if to ask, “Whaddaya want to do?”  She was up for anything, but she’d happily settle for a protracted petting:  “How about I just sit here for an hour or so and you pet me while you think of something to do?”

She was curious and always wanted to know what I was doing, often standing on her hind legs to see what I might be holding in my hand.

She was the most athletic dog I’ve ever seen.  She could go bounding into the woods and out of sight and then, five minutes later, show up someplace totally unexpected - and  a considerable  distance from where I’d last seen her.  She would jump into the river or a lake or plow into surf to retrieve sticks or balls.  She was always the fastest dog at the dog park, exasperating other dog owners by chasing down their dogs’ balls - then taking them back to the owners and sitting, waiting patiently for them to throw again.  

A pack of dogs like Lainey could rid us of soccer.  She could spot a soccer ball left behind on a field from a quarter mile away, and once she did, that ball was hers. She’d proudly trot home with the damn thing in her mouth, and over the years our back yard resembled a soccer ball graveyard.  In the spring, when we’d walk past a softball field, she’d disappear into the woods for a few minutes and invariably return with a long-lost softball in her mouth. 

She was my constant companion on our three walks a day.  We walked the hilly streets of Camas, we walked the wooded trails around our home, we walked along the river, and we walked the beach at Ocean Shores. I figure that in our time together, she and I walked well over 6,000 miles - that’s the equivalent of walking across the US and back).  She was my constant companion, as close as I’ve ever come to having a bosom buddy. Now, I find I can’t walk anywhere without remembering having walked there with her.

A few years ago, she tore ligaments in her right stifle (hind knee), and with surgery required,  the vet recommended doing both knees at the same time, given the strong possibility of imminent injury to the other knee as well.  The surgery went well and so did the rehab process, a long and slow test of my patience and persistence, and she returned to maybe 90 per cent of where she’d been before.  It was the most we were told we could expect, and we were delighted with the outcome. So, too, was she.

Last Thanksgiving, we lost our little Cairn, who had grown to be a very nice dog.  My wife really loved her, and missed her dearly, but at least Lainey was there to pick up the slack, and she did her damnedest.

Now, with Lainey gone, for one of the few times in our married life we’re without a dog. There’s a great emptiness in our lives.  We turn back, hoping to see her lying there in our Expedition.  Our house, which seemed perfect for the three of us, now seems unreasonably large for only two.

I could go on, but there’s no point - other than catharsis.  Everybody loves their dog, or should, the way I loved Lainey, and everybody who’s ever loved a dog has felt the pain we feel, and understands.

I’m heartbroken. But I’m grateful to God that He lent Lainey to us for all those wonderful years.

*********** Lee Iacocca died recently. 

He was blunt and straight-spoken, and although he was a rising star at Ford Motor Company, evidently he pissed off Henry Ford II, which is not a wise career move.

One Iacocca story: After he had managed to get huge concessions from the United Auto Workers in their bargaining,  a reporter yelled at him:

“You got what you wanted from the workers, but what did the workers get?”

At that, Iacocca stopped, turned around to face the guy, and said,  “A job, you idiot!”

At one time, he was one of the most famous men in America, and was even suggested as presidential material.

A reporter happened to ask Mrs. Pat Nixon what she thought of his prospects.

As I remember the story, she said she didn’t think his prospects were very good, because he was a lot like her late husband.

How so? asked the reporter.

Well, said Mrs. Nixon, just like her husband, Mr. Iacocco didn’t suffer fools gladly.

The problem with that, she said, was first of all, there are so many fools.

And second of all, not everyone that you think is a fool turns out to be one.

*********** I’ve read a good deal about Ike, but my attention never has been drawn to his abilities as a coach. That was fun and enlightening reading. Off topic a bit, but I knew well a really fine tackle on the 1969 Army team (Bob Ivany) who I thought was president of St Mary's of San Antonio. When I double checked, though, he's president of St Thomas in Houston. In any case, I've never met a man of stronger character than Bob Ivany.

Guess I'm surprised at all the comments about Dan Riley.

Megan Rapinoe: since this round of women's soccer started, I've been looking closely at the media coverage. Every day in this state's largest-circulation paper, there are two photos of her, and every story centers on her, almost to the exclusion of the other players. They love her because of her sexual preference, but mainly because she's anti-Trump.


John Vermillion                                
St Petersburg, Florida

*********** I had breakfast with coach Wilkinson, Duffy Daugherty and Lou Holtz one early morning in Louisville at the old Kellogg's Clinic that coach Wilkinson and Daugherty started.  I had a table by myself in the corner and it was standing room only at the time for the breakfast buffet.  I was reading and eating when a voice from behind, asked me if I was eating alone and when I said yes he asked if he and two friends could join me at my table.  Without ever looking up I said certainly be my guest.  The voice that asked me for a seat had been Lou Holtz, he sat down on my right, followed by Duffy Daugherty who sat in front of me and last to sit on my left was coach Wilkinson.  Needless to say I was speechless!!  I was surrounded on three sides by three famous college football coaches. 

Coach Wilkinson asked my name and where I coached and I stammered thru who I was and that I had just gotten my first paying job.  Coach Daugherty told some jokes and talked about Michigan State and Coach Holtz was asking if I knew of any good players in western KY. that he might recruit to come to Arkansas. I gave him the name of a running back who was all state that played for a school that had kicked our varsity teams butt the last game of the season.  Here's the kicker, coach Holtz recruited this kid and gave him a scholarship to play.  The kid played for coach Holtz and graduated and became a doctor!  That was the most amazing breakfast that I have ever had!!!

David Crump
Owensboro, Kentucky


*********** Army’s former AD, Boo Corrigan (really? a grown man named “Boo?”) is now off to NC State, but his legacy will be a lasting one. It will be years before Army sheds the football schedules he left them.

Sure, it’s nice to schedule people you can beat, but check out this analysis by Jack Morrison, a former Army football player who writes a very incisive newsletter for Army fans:

This is  follow-up to several of my earlier emails lamenting the weak Army 2019 schedule (especially at Michie).

FYI, as a self-confessed college football stat Junkie, I subscribe to several pre-season College Football Preview magazines, including Street & Smith, Athlon, and Lindy's. IMO, Phil Steele's is far and away the most complete and accurate. It is available in most Book stores, Drug stores, and Super markets.  At $16.95 it ain't cheap, but IMO it is worth every penny.

I just bought Steele's 2019 Preview issue and was blown away by his Strength of Schedule listings for both 2018 and 2109:

                           Army         Navy        AF
          2018        #112          #81         #41
          2019        #128          #71         #81

Guys, there are only 130 FBS teams total. Army's 2019 SOS beats only TWO other FBS teams: UAB (which dropped football completely after the 2014 season, then went on hiatus for 2 years before returning in 2017); and Appalachian State (which just joined the FBS in 2016 after a 2-year probationary period.)

Army plays 13 games this season since teams traveling to Hawaii are permitted an extra game (ostensibly to help defray the travel costs to play in Hawaii). Just one team on Army's 2019 schedule (Michigan - #6) is rated above Army in the final 2018 Sagarin ratings:

Michigan #6
Army #44
AF #77
Tulane #86
Navy #107
Hawaii #117
W. Kentucky #130
UMass #138
San Jose State #145
GA State #147
UT San Antonio #169
Rice #178
Morgan State* #227
VMI* #232
    * = FCS/Div. 1AA

While using last year's ratings may not be a totally accurate reflection of the respective teams in 2019 ( ie:  doesn't reflect number of returning starters or loss of key players to graduation/NFL, etc.), it is one way to make direct comparisons.

Using Sagarin, after #6 Michigan Army should be favored in every game with the possible exceptions of AF (at Colorado Springs/altitude/travel), Tulane (one of only 3 Army 2019 opponents who played in a 2018 Bowl game, but we get them at Michie), and possibly AT Hawaii (long travel/time zones).  Of course, the A/N game is always a toss-up.

Most 2019 Previews have Army winning at least 10 games.

*********** From a coach…
Couple questions:

1.      Out of shotgun on the ‘Switch’ play, how many steps is the QB taking?

This was Mouse Davis’ companion play to his all-verticals “Touchdown” Play. He called it “Touchdown SWITCH.” (We call it “RED SWITCH” or “BLUE SWITCH.”

We’re trying to fill all the deep lanes, forcing a single deep safety to choose between two men running up the seams.In both cases, the QB takes three steps as he reads the safety.

Since catching the snap requires the QB to take his eyes off the coverage briefly,  he needs to take those three steps after catching the snap (which equate to five steps from under center) in order to make his reads. Any more steps, though, would mess up the timing. 

2.      “SWOB”- can you explain?  I must be overlooking it in my materials.

Sorry for not making that clear.  It’s an acronym for “Score Without the Ball.” I believe the first person I heard use it was my friend Greg Koenig, and I have found it to be a most effective way to describe how a fake should be carried out.

3.      On the 6/7C, when the QB ‘rides’ is he sliding at all, or does he simply open up, extend arms and stay in the mesh for a step while pointing ball at backside DE trying to bait him?  Wasn’t sure if there were any slide steps like on the 6/7 G-O.


The QB doesn’t slide on 6-C (or 7-C). There is not a true “ride.” The QB only “rides” the ball in the running back’s pocket from the time the ball first contacts the back’s belly until the ball is even with the QB’s front hip. So it’s no more than a back-hip-to-front-hip “ride.” The QB opens to face the key (in this case the backside defensive end) and extends the ball at him. He doesn’t move his feet, and only “rides” the ball far as that front hip. (If he still has his hands on the ball beyond that point there’s a good chance of a bad exchange.)  One thing that does buy the QB a split second more timing to make his backside read is that we don’t allow the running back to start until the ball has hit the QB’s hands.

*********** I am at the tail end of a vacation in Lewes Delaware. We went to the U of D today and looked at my dad’s trophies and plaques. We found the Director of Football Operations and he toured us around the facilities. Here is a picture of Tommy, myself and my father at the player exit from the locker room to the stadium. The DFO let Tommy throw some passes on Tubby Raymond field. It was a good day.

My father hears about you and your blog often. He wanted to contribute a possible quiz question:

Identify four universities that have produced a president and a Super Bowl winning quarterback. Hint, Delaware is not one of them (yet).

Tom Walls
Winnipeg, Manitoba

(The first three were easy, but I had to do some digging to come up with the fourth:  MIAMI (OF OHIO). Readers are on their own for the others!)



*********** At the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Brad Henton, director of tourism and admission sales, says he’s seen more than a 19 percent increase in the last year in international visitors. The British Airways flight has helped.

Interestingly, behind Canada and the UK, the museum’s third-largest international market is Australia.

It might surprise you to know that Australia, one of the world’s most urbanized nations, has long had a solid country music tradition of its own.

Slim Dusty and his classic "The Pub With No Beer." -----

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1l40SUGabg&list=PLzQXqXHFdDKo8rA5S2pehtHwtcbyb3TV3&index=10

*********** IN 1935, ’36 and ’37, three straight games between eastern powers Pitt and Fordham ended in 0-0 ties.

In the 1937 game, Pitt fumbled the ball eight times,  five of them by their star running back, Curly Stebbins.   A few days before the game, he’d suffered a broken hand when someone had stepped on it, and to protect the hand, he was wearing a leather glove, similar to those that boxers wear to hit a light bag.

Pitt coach Jock Sutherland was the classic dour Scotsman,  often called - behind his back - The Great Stone Face.

"He never smiled," said one of his former players. And if he did, he never laughed. Football came first."

He was also a man of few words who did not suffer fools gladly.

Asked why he hadn't pulled Stebbins  after his fourth fumble, Sutherland replied,  "I had no way of knowing that he was going to fumble a fifth time.”

*********** “Did the Russians pay the 2020 Democratic candidates to throw the 2020 election to President Donald Trump? Watching all four hours of the first Democratic debates, it became increasingly difficult to reach any other conclusion.” Larry Elder

*********** Drowned out by the clamor by the members of the USA women’s soccer team to be paid the same as their men’s counterparts  was the whining coming out of college baseball.

Mike Bianchi, of the Orlando Sentinel, with one of the most idiotic articles I’ve read in a long time, gave the whiners a voice.

The gist of his article  was that college baseball - a non-revenue sport at all but maybe a dozen major colleges - should have more money.

Well, yeah - and so should track and field, and rowing, and swimming, and beach volleyball and gymnastics and - you get the idea.

Big college baseball programs,  should they get the money,  would use it to to hire a third assistant, and to provide more scholarships.

Bianchi calls the current system, with “only” two paid assistants and a dozen or so scholarships - divvied up among a squad of 30-some players -  a “monumental injustice.”  He could be perhaps  forgiven the hyperbole if baseball were a moneymaker - but it’s hard to justify even two paid assistants not only when you’re losing money, but when there are D-III colleges that don’t lose nearly as much money as their D-I counterparts - and their HEAD baseball coaches aren’t full-time employees.
 
Writes Bianchi,  “NCAA member schools should be ashamed of themselves for the cheap, chinchy way they treat college baseball’s players and “volunteer” coaches. This was brought to light by two of the most prolific figures in the sport during the just-completed College World Series in Omaha.”

Bianchi quotes a Vanderbilt "coach," who tells of his plight: “I’m 32 years old,” he said.  “I’m married, I have a child, I leave the home at 7:30 every morning, I come back at 8, 9 at night. I do it Sunday through Sunday. I don’t get paid. I don’t get compensated. My wife stays home with a baby, can’t afford daycare. And God forbid he goes to daycare, gets sick; I don’t have benefits, so I can’t pay for that.

“Can't get a ticket to a football game, can't get a ticket to a basketball game, can't eat with a recruit.

“Why? I'm a volunteer.

“I stay all year, I work; I've got to go off in the summer, work camps.

“Why? I can't recruit. I'm a volunteer.

“I make camp money, I come home, put stress on my wife, can't have another child. Costs money to have children; can't do it.

“I’m a volunteer."

He wrapped it all up, saying, “It's the most short-sighted-thinking aspect of our game that we've been a part of. We lose good people to other jobs, other sports. … They leave baseball because they can't afford to stay in it. … Why that hasn't been changed, why that hasn't been turned over in the last couple of years is really, really sinful. It's dehumanizing in so many different ways.”

I mean, come on, man.  "I'm a volunteer," you say? You’re 32 f—king years old! You’ve got a family to feed!  And you’re still a volunteer?  WTF is wrong with you? 

TUESDAY

********* We lost our great dog, Lainey,  early Saturday.  We are shattered.

*********** Joe Paterno was once partway through a canned answer to a reporter’s question about what caused him to make a call that resulted in a come-from-behind touchdown (you now how it usually goes: “well, we saw the strong safety creeping up…”) when he suddenly stopped and made a startling admission: “I’m afraid I can't tell you why,” he confessed.  “After spending over 20 years on the sideline, you go with a certain call you know is right."

*********** Because nature abhors a vacuum, I will be coaching our club bantam team this summer. Bantam is age 14-15 (think of it like JV football). Because numbers are so low, the league has decided we will be playing 7 man football. That means my latest adaptation of your program will be for 7 man, Canadian rules. “For those of you following along at home,” that means, I have adapted your program to the following scenarios:

    •    12 man Canadian football
    •    11 man American football (not much to do there)
    •    6 “man” Canadian football
    •    9 man Canadian football
    •    7 man Canadian football

Oh, and this makes it even more fun, the league has passed a new rule where we have to throw once every three downs. I plan to run Double Wing, Wild Cat. From there, I can use a shovel pass for Reach, Power and Criss-Cross, which would allow me to “pass” but still run the ball. Tommy will also be helping me coach this team. Things are very busy, but good football busy. I am heading home to Delaware on Monday. We will stay there for July 4th week. My father is getting on and it's important for the kids to spend time with him. I am planning on a trip to Newark, so Tommy can see his grandfather’s name on some trophies.

Hope all is well with you and Connie, and happy bleated birthday.

Football is fun.

Tom Walls
Winnipeg, Manitoba

PS. Attached is a picture of our prototype helmets for the high school team. Please tell Coach Lude that our kids will know the story of where that funny looking helmet design comes from.



DID YOU HAPPEN TO CATCH COACH WALLS’ CLEVER WAY OF DEALING WITH THAT IDIOTIC RULE THAT HE HAS TO THROW THE BALL AT LEAST ONCE EVERY THREE DOWNS?  Outstanding!  Several years ago, a coach named Mike Emery won a state championship or two in Groton, Connecticut running my Double Wing from “slot” formation - and one of his best plays was a shovel pass to a wingback.  In the game stats, it was recorded as passing yardage, which helped his QB lead the league in passing,  much to the chagrin of the other coaches (and their quarterbacks).

PS - Coach Walls is a Delaware guy, which explains the helmet.  "Coach Lude - Mike Lude -  who played for Dave Nelson at Hillsdale, then became his line coach and moved with him to Maine and then to Delaware, would know for sure!   Dave Nelson, the coach who put Delaware and the Wing-T on the map, was a Michigan man to the core, and when he took over in 1951 as head coach of the Blue Hens - whose colors are yellow and blue - it was only natural that he adopt the helmet design - originally brought to Michigan by coach Fritz Crisler, who’d first used it at Princeton. (The yellow “wing” in the front was the main front panel of the old leather helmets,  and the yellow “stripes” were actually narrow leather battens that held the wider leather panels together.)

***********  Whenever I think of taking a bunch of high school kids to an overnight camp, I think of the perverted things some kids decide to do with broomsticks.

And then I read about some criminals-to-be who branded other kids on the buttocks. 

Branded them, for God’s sake!

https://www.nj.com/news/2019/06/high-schoolers-who-branded-students-buttocks-during-trip-to-nj-military-base-sentenced-to-jail.html


*********** Why is it so often a football coach?

A Tennessee football coach, while on vacation in Panama City, Florida, saved a seven-year-old from drowning in the Gulf of Mexico.

https://usatodayhss.com/2019/tenn-high-school-football-coach-saves-life-of-7-year-old-on-florida-beach

*********** UConn’s men’s and women’s basketball may be better off in the big East, but now that they’re no longer in the AAC, things don’t look promising for UConn football as an FBS independent: they just put a damper on future season ticket sales by scheduling games against FCS opponents Central Connecticut and Lafayette.

*********** The thought had never occured to me, and it had to be one of the strangest things I’d ever known an athlete to say:

“You can’t win without gay players,”  said Megan Rapinoe.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/jun/28/cant-win-without-gays-usa-megan-rapinoe

*********** The Man puts on a wing-T clinic.

The Man is none other than the great Eddie Robinson - Coach Rob himself - and he’s out on the field, getting down and coaching players in a way that I suspect few of today’s head coaches can no longer do.

(One thing worth noticing is how he managed to keep his composure after discovering that he is attempting to teach shoulder blocking to players - the ones he’s been provided with for the clinic - who’ve been thoroughly trained to block with their hands. I guarantee you that if that had been his Grambling players, he’d have pitched a fit.)

https://youtu.be/jueKHlC2Tzo

*********** The BC Lions lost their third straight on Saturday, and they really blew this one.

Up 32-20, and with some three minutes to play, they allowed the Calgary Rough Riders, with their starting QB out of the game, to put on a nice drive.

Meantime, the clock was stopped after every play.  How could that be?

And then, uh-oh, they scored with 1:20 to play, and after a successful two-point conversion, they trailed by only three.

And then they onside kicked - and recovered.  And now, said the announcers, they had plenty of time - not just to kick the tieing field goal, but to drive for the winning touchdown.

WTF???  I kept saying. Why isn’t the clock running?

And after all that, BC still had 21 seconds left to run a couple of plays.

WTF???  Why didn’t the clock run?

My wife, who was watching with me, decided to do a little research, and came up with this…

In the last three minutes of each half, the clock stops at the end of every play. If the ball goes out of bounds, there's an incomplete pass, or there's an accepted penalty, the clock starts again at the next snap of the ball; otherwise, the clock starts again when the next play is whistled in.

Said Calgary coach Dave Dickenson, “That clock goes slow in those last three minutes and we were able to take advantage of it."

Hmmm.  Maybe the Canadians are on to something.  At least they're honest about it, which is less than you can say about  spiking the damn ball.


*********** Years ago, when  Hayden Fry took over at Iowa, one of the first actions of his great turnaround was copying the Steelers’ black-and-gold uniforms.

It was a great move, and to their credit, the folks at Iowa have stuck with that same look for the last 40 years or so.

Few NFL uniforms are, in my opinion, as elegant as the Steelers’.  For years, they played - and dressed - like ragmen, but once they finally got it all together back in the 70s, they looked - and dressed - like the sharpest team in football.

Over the years since, for the most part, that’s the way they looked -  and, the way they played.

But every so often, perhaps in a money-grubbing attempt to sell apparel to all the fans who already have their classic jerseys, they’d go back in history to their ragmen days, and dress in uniforms so ugly that all they lacked to win an all-time Ugly Uniform Contest was vertical-striped stockings, like those once worn in their early days by the Denver Broncos.

Now, sadly, comes news that the Iowa Hawkeyes have decided to go all-Oregon on their fans, and - at least for one game a year - come our wearing all yellow.

https://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2019/06/27/iowa-unveils-new-alternate-all-yellow-uniform/


*********** This was written just before the 75th anniversary of D-Day, to celebrate a one-time Army football player who once had aspirations of becoming a coach…

Before the world knew him, Ike was a five-star football coach
By John Henry

Staggering is a word often associated with the largest seaborne invasion in history, marking the beginning of the end of the horrors of Nazi Germany.

In one night — 75 years ago this week — 175,000 men and equipment, including 50,000 vehicles, made the journey across upwards of 100 miles of open water for the beaches and cliffs of Normandy’s Côte Fleurie. The operation also included thousands of sea vessels, 11,000 aircraft and the coordination of 350,000 soldiers of the French Resistance.

That makes moving 22 players around in football schemes seem as uncomplicated as doing nothing, even at the speeds they play these days, compared to what Dwight Eisenhower and his staff achieved on June 6, 1944.

History leads to the belief that the commander of Operation Overlord would have been quite the football coach.

And, in fact, Ike was a football coach, a very good one, according to two assessments, most often with intramural Army teams at various posts during a career that before the war wasn’t anything of the stuff of the best-selling non-fiction books he became.

“Coaching more football” was a phrase seen often in accounts of his stops as an Army officer.

He possessed, as good leaders do, all those things good football coaches excel at.

An uber-organized, strategic thinker with a tactical view and a relationship builder whom coaches and players trust.

It takes a special leader to blend the personalities of Patton and Montgomery and all the other Type A’s into a cohesive, effective force.

The subject matter is one few historians have explored.

Ike’s football career is known. He played parts of one season on the West Point varsity before a knee injury ended that pursuit. He almost left the academy because he couldn’t play football anymore.

But the sport, as well as baseball, was important to him, so much so that as a high school freshman he preferred to risk death than lose a leg because of an infection that had become so bad a doctor recommended amputation.

“I’d rather be dead than crippled, and not be able to play ball,” Ike recalled in his memoir At Ease: Stories I Tell my Friends. “Doctors were frustrated by my attitude. But my parents understood. While they were against such contact sports as football, they agreed to accept my decision.”

Ike missed so much time at school because of the infection that he had to repeat his freshman year.

It would be difficult, he said years later, “to overemphasize the importance I attached to participation in sports.”

“I believe that football, perhaps more than any other sport, tends to instill in men the feeling that victory comes through hard — almost slavish — work, team play, self-confidence, and an enthusiasm that amounts to dedication.”

Ike was the subject of controversy over alleged participation in a semi-pro baseball team in Kansas during or just after high school, thereby compromising his amateur status. The accusation was either denied or ignored by the general and his staff over the years, but Mel Ott, the major-leaguer, swore that “the General admitted that as a youth he had [played semi-pro ball] under the assumed name of Wilson.”

After graduation from West Point in 1915 – the class the stars fell on … 59 of the class of 164 attained the rank of general — the newly commissioned lieutenant was assigned to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. The city was also home to the Peacock Military Academy, designated an honor school in 1908 by the Department of the Army.

Peacock administrators asked Eisenhower to coach the football team, an overture Ike initially declined, believing he lacked the time to be both an exceptional Army officer and a football coach.

Gen. Frank Funston, the post commander, ordered Ike to take the job. Any chance to lead young men is an opportunity to grow.

The topic is one the San Antonio Express News has explored.

“Those who have seen this officer operate with a football squad believe him to be one of the best coaches in Texas — bar none,” a correspondent wrote at the time of Ike’s season at Peacock.

The next season, Ike moved up to the college level, again encouraged by a superior to take the job offered by St. Mary’s of San Antonio.

Then St. Louis College had been dreadful. Cleveland Browns terrible. The Catholic brothers and priests who had coached the team literally turned the other cheek, going winless in the school’s first four seasons. Losses included margins of 50-0 and 80-0.

Ike, however, turned them around.

After tying its opener under Supreme Commander Eisenhower, St. Louis won its next five games and closed 5-1-1.

“We thought more of him than we did of any other coach we ever had,” said quarterback Jim Sweeney, a quote found in the archives of the San Antonio Express. “We respected him from the time he showed up until he left. He was very frank and honest, and we learned more about honor and discipline from him than we did anywhere else.”

Watching every minute of every game that season were Ike’s new bride, Mamie, so adored she remains the only woman to receive a St. Louis or St. Mary’s football letter, and her parents.

“We fought as much for Mamie and the Douds [Mamie’s parents] as we did the school,” Sweeney said.

That was his only season at St. Mary’s. Officer life demanded Ike and Mamie move.

If the coaching profession paid as well then as now, who knows? Ike might have been Bill Parcells.

No one will ever know.

It’s fairly clear, though, that Ike’s coaching stints in San Antonio were part of his evolution as the man who saved the world from the designs of evil men.