BACK ISSUES - JULY & AUGUST 1999
August 31- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL": Number 9-. When high school teams change their uniform design, it's usually because the old uniforms are wearing out - when pro teams change uniforms, it's to try to increase their sales of merchandise to little kids.
Jim Hagen, an old friend of mine, is a die-hard Oregon State Beavers fan, and last Thursday night he attended an OSU function in Portland along with his friend, Max Wiebe, a former coach at Palomar Junior College in California. New Beavers' coach Dennis Erickson was the featured speaker, and afterwards, as Jim and Max sat in the bar, Coach Erickson joined them. Soon enough, Coaches Erickson and Wiebe, who had never met before, found they had dozens of coaching friends and associates in common. Jim was astonished at the way they connected, and said he came to realize what a fraternity football coaching is!
Our Middle School (7th grade and 8th grade teams) held its football meeting last week and had the largest signup of boys in years. I'm telin' ya, guys - football is coming back. Soccer just ain't deliverin' the goods.
Southwest Louisiana defeated LSU in soccer Sunday night at the LSU soccer complex, in front of 518 fans.
"Hugh, I have really been working hard since March to build a solid foundation for the football program here at Kingwood. We have put in a $8,000.00 weight room and had great participation during the summer off season program. We won our fall jamboree game by a score of 14-6. Last Friday night we opened the regular season with a 28-6 win, which ties the wins for last year ( they were 1-9). We had 321 yards of offense. I had a sophmore C back rush for 171 yards on 12 carries and score 3 touchdowns. Last spring I started out with 22 players. Now I have 30 on the varsity team and 23 on the junior high team. Each day I have more players wanting to come out. I have already had to buy extra equipment. The players are real excited about the Double Wing offense. You were right, it is really easy to teach. I have 1 Russian, 1 Frenchman, 1 African, and 3 German foreign exchange students and they have already picked up the system very well. I will keep you posted as the year goes along." Coach Jerry Stearns, who retired this past spring after a long, successful run at Birmingham, Alabama, Woodlawn High, has just taken over at Kingwood Christian School in Alabaster, Alabama.
Dave Daubenmire, coach at London, Ohio High, said he stopped leading his players in prayer last year when he was told it was illegal. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sued Daubenmire in June, charging that the prayers violated the separation of church and state. Faced with the lawsuit, Daubenmire told the Cleveland Plain Dealer he would leave religion up to his players, even though he doesn't like it. "As a Christian man, my faith teaches me that I have to come to authority," he said. "I will follow the law and I will continue to follow the law, even though I don't necessarily agree with it." Daubenmire refused a request for his team captains to be interviewed at practice Thursday, saying it would be a distraction. The coach, who has been at London since 1989, says if his players decide to pray before or after the game, he and his coaches won't be anywhere near their huddle. "We've been advised that we're not allowed to be around, but it's not affecting the way that I coach or the way any of our coaches coach," he said. "I've been through this so many times that it's a nonfactor with our football team."
I have been coaching high school football in the Pacific Northwest since 1976, and today was the first time we'd ever been driven off the field by lightning. It rains a lot in the Northwest in the late fall, winter and spring, but electrical storms are extremely rare. Because it does rain quite a bit, many elementary schools have covered open-air play areas, and we were able to duck inside ours and get a whole practice in.
August 30 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL": Number 8. High school players don't come off the field after three downs needing oxygen; in fact, many of them don't come off the field at all, because they go both ways.
With my reading time cut to a minimum now that football's here, I manage to get through maybe ten pages daily in Willie Morris' The Courting of Marcus Dupree. I find that reading it for a second time is like revisiting a favorite place after a long absence: it's always great to see the old familiar sights again, but it's amazing how many things you see that you'd completely forgotten about, and how many others that you hadn't even noticed before. Nearly 20 years later, the book is still a masterpiece.
According to David Greenfield, a psychologist in West Hartford, Connecticut, six per cent of all Internet users are addicted to the web. It would seem that the next step would be to have this "addiction" classified as a disease, then as a disability. From there, who knows? Perhaps a handicapped-parking permit, the current hot item among a handful of UCLA football players.
Congratulations to Coach Mike Benton and his staff, from Lincoln, Illinois. Coach Benton and four members of his staff attended my Chicago clinic this past spring, and on Friday night their efforts were rewarded as the Railsplitters ended an 18-game losing streak with a 16-14 win. Coach Benton did mention on my answering machine that his team rushed for 340 yards, but in his excitement, he neglected to tell me who his team's opponent was.
Coach Jim Chambers, in Nipomo, California writes, "I am interested in contacting coaches Robert Tierney and Cliff Gray authors of The New Doublewing Attack: Featuring the Revolutionary AT Blocking Technique. The book was written in 1971 so I am hopeful they are still around. If you have any info I would appreciate it." (I told Coach Chambers that I have a copy of the book, very graciously sent to me a couple of years ago by Coach Jim Sinnerud at Creighton Prep in Omaha, Nebraska, and I offered to publicize his request on this page.)
"Hugh-We won our opening game 22-7. We did throw four times. Our total offense gained 407 yards. The beauty of this offense is that we controlled the game and ate the time off the clock . Our opponent runs the run and shoot very well and are very explosive with it. However they did not see the field very much on offense. This week we play a division one school from Toledo. You can check out our web page at http:\\www leaguelineup.com/nllfootball. Sincerely, Ray Pohlman, Perrysburg, Ohio"
Early result: Montgomery, Alabama Saint James 14, Alabama Christian Academy 0. Coach Robert Johnson: "We had 377 total offense and no turnovers but had 12 penalties. We had 2 touchdowns called back. It wasn't pretty, but ACA was good and we won. Cut out the mistakes and we win 28-0 easily."
"Dear Coach Wyatt, E-mailing you with great news. This past Friday the Brookville (Ohio) Blue Devils won 19 - 0 over Milton - Union, a school which plays in one division higher than us. They will be joining our league in two years and were a member of our league in the 70's and early 80's. Brookville has not beat them in quite some time. We lost 1st team all - state running back Jason Stephan to graduation last season (playing for Wittenburg University), and thought we had a nice sophomore back to replace him. We were right. Randy Hubley carried 30 times (mainly on the power) for 249 yards (8.3) and three touchdowns. We were scoreless at halftime, but opened things up in the second half with some different formations and added motion. Mike Schlosser (former head coach at Mechanicsburg, Ohio and a veteran Double-Winger) is calling the offense with my imput every now and then. He did a fantastic job, and I am extremely pleased with his work ethic, knowledge of the offense, and relation to the kids. He was a good addition. Hope every thing is going well. We open up with league play next week for our home opener. Best wishes and God bless. Marc Gibson (Brookville, Ohio)"
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August 28 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL": Number 7- High school stadiums are named for local war heroes - Never a business.
"Coach, Just wanted to drop you a note to say that after 3 weeks of practice implementing your DW system things are going great! I was concerned that no one on my staff was with me - but after speaking to you my offensive coach, Mike Cahill, was immediately excited and that was all I needed. The rest of my staff, who looked at Mike and me like we were crazy, are now fully involved. Of course it does help that in scrimmages with our sister team (5-3 last year) we (1-7 last year) have consistently outplayed them. Looking forward to a Weds scrimmage with a team that beat us soundly last year and opening day Sept 12. Thanks, Jim White, Head Coach - Guilderland NY Pop Warner - Jr. Pee Wee "B" team
Thursday, at the end of offensive practice, I concluded as I often do by asking each offensive lineman if he had any particular play he'd like to run. And then, one by one, we ran the plays requested. (I rarely ask the backs.) One kid standing in the background (remember, this was a passing team last year) asked, quite innocently, "why would a lineman care what play we ran?"
Coach: "Forgot to tell you one more thing about yesterdays scrimmage. I told the team to meet at the opposing team's field at a cetain time. I went against my usual grain because my SOP is usually to meet at a "staging" location beforehand and then caravan to the destination. I learned this from an old timer coach in Virginia when my oldest son played. Anyway, one of the assistants bet me the previous night that we would have at least 5 late for the scrimmage, since we did not stage beforehand. I took the bet. Well we had 7 late for the scrimmage - 5 starters! I was livid. I benched all of them for the first half of the scrimmage. I started 4 players who have never played in a "real game" yet. Immediately after, I met with the parents and stressed to them the importance of timeliness and responsibilities. That it was my job to teach them football but I could not do it if they did not do their job and get them to the field on time. My wife said that I was a little too "harsh" with them. Today I received a message on my answering machine from a parent stating that she APPRECIATED me bringing the issue of timliness and resonsibility to her and that she had taken the practice game too lightly and that it would not happen again. She thanked me for volunteering my time and effort. I still had to pay the coach $5 but what the heck, I made my point."
August 27 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL": Number 6- High school fields have hash marks that are considerably farther apart than the width of the goal posts, and actually have a bearing on game strategy.
"We had our first scrimmage against another team on Saturday. We outscored them 8 touchdowns to 1. We ran a total of 30 plays and our opponent ran 40. Using the methods in your SAFE & SURER TACKLING tape, I'm pleased to say that we had only 1 missed tackle. The kids didn't have any problems learning the system . We installed the system using the same methods as the INSTALLING THE SYSTEM tape. We're now fine tuning and repping. Our first league game is September 11th. Thanks again, Howard Johnson, Cerritos (California) Steelers"
This past Monday, lightening and thunder interrupted our practice. Fortunately, we had access to the school where we practice. We took the kids inside and showed them the plays they know shown on your "Dynamics of the Double Wing" video. I can't tell you how much they've improved over the last 2 days. Our backs are finally respecting their blockers and the line better comprehends their assignments. During our daily scrimmage we measure the offense's effectiveness based on the following point schedule: 1 point for each yard gained (maximum 30); -5 for each no gain or minor penalty; -15 for any major penalty; and -50 for a lost fumble. Our goal is to break 100 points in 20 plays which would average 5 yards a play. Our first team offense set a new record yesterday with 350 points. Our second string (against the first team defense) had a respectable 64. We play our first opponent in a controlled scrimmage next week. I'll let you know how we do. Keith Babb, Northbrook, Illinois
"I know this isn't a win but in a way it is. Our JV team just tied Gobles 12-12. Last year they were beaten 35-6 by this team. We actually played well enough to win but a missed clipping call let them have the lead at half time. The highlight was a 4th quarter, minute drive to tie the score with only 39 seconds left in the game. The 2 point conversion failed". Coach Mike Hause, Kalamazoo (Michigan) Christian HS
"Recently our 7th grade coach quit due to personal reasons so I was asked to coach the 7th grade team. I agreed to do it but since I also coach at our highschool I haven't had time to really get a lot done. I put in the double wing offense immediately. The kids only have an hour to practice it 3 times a week so going into our first game yesterday I was a little scared of how we would look! Well we moved the ball up and down the field all day, never punted once!!! We scored on wedge and 47 counter twice. The kids were running the old coach's wishbone before we switched to the doublewing. Our kids LOVE this offense.... the 45 minute bus ride home the boys shouted NO SPLITS, NO SPLITS, the entire way home, I was happy to see the boys truly feel as if they can't be stopped in their new offense!!! The defensive coach on the other team used all 3 of his time outs in the first 5 minutes of the 1st quarter trying to figure out our offense.. thanks for your video, it made a difference!!!! " Shawn Clayton, New Augusta Middle School, Indianapolis, Indiana
For obvious reasons, I can't disclose my correspondent's name, but he tells me that arrived at a scrimmage recently and discovered, much to his surprise, that his opponent was also running the Double-Wing, too. Not The Double-Wing, actually. A Double-Wing. Trying to run it might be a better way of putting it, he told me."They really have no idea what they are doing and I offered to helped but it was sad to see what they have done to a great offense." You would be surprised to learn of the number of people who call me and tell me, "We're running the Double-Wing, etc., etc." when what they are really doing is lining up in a Double-Wing formation and running plays. What they describe is not something they have learned from my materials or from any of Don Markham's adherents. Ultimately, I am afraid they will not succeed, and in the process they will spawn a legion of defensive coordinators who will claim that they know how to stuff the Double-Wing, and they will discard their "Double-Wing," blaming their failure on a system that they never really understood.
"Coach, we won our first game 20 to 0. Our fullback had 125 yards and 2 tds off of 3 trap at 2 ,2 wedge,5lead,and 6g. Our A back had 90yards off of 88 super power and fake 47 crisscross. C back made several crucial 4th and long conversions - one of his crisscrosses went for 60 yards on 4th and 10. We passed for one extra point off of 6g pass. This is a great offense. We never punted once or turned over on downs. We just kept moving the ball. They couldn't stop us - they never knew where the ball was.We have a very tough team next game but they will be just as confused. Thanks for all of your work and help and I will keep in touch on every game." Kurt Young, Rigby, Idaho 7th Grade Coach
August 26- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL": Number 5. Like the NFL, high schools have a two-point conversion. Unlike the NFL, high schools actually use it.
My 400-pound sophomore is doing quite well, but his helmet - size 8! - seems a bit snug, and the bottom of his face mask is about 1/16 of an inch from his chin. I am really impressed by the small town of Washougal, Washington, and its atttitude toward football. There are times when I wonder if I'm not actually somewhere in the South.
Tomorrow night is the first big night of high school football in many states, and here's wishing Good Luck to all those Double-Wingers who open on Friday! Best of luck on Saturday to Coach Joe Paterno, whose Penn State Nittany Lions open against Arizona. My roots are in Pennsylvania, but it is hard to root against Dick Tomey, Arizona's head coach, who in a recent article by Ken Goe in the Portland Oregonian sounds like one heck of a family man. Together with Lute Olson, noted or his devotion to family, he would appear to give Arizona one very impressive football-basketball tandem.
The ultra-liberal state of Oregon has leapt to the front in the race to be declared most nurturing and most caring. A state agency is offering businesses a window sticker that says, "Breast-feeding Welcome Here."
Go Eagles! You have got to wonder what a guy like Andy Reid is doing, coaching in the NFL. According to an article in the Atlantic City Press, faxed to me by Coach Frank Simonsen from Cape May, New Jersey, Reid, the Philadelphia Eagles' first-year coach, evidently still thinks that a coach - even an NFL coach - has a right to deal with selfishness on his club. When Eagles' left guard George Hegamin, ticked off because he had been demoted, missed a day of practice recently, Coach Reid didn't stop at the chump-change fine that clubs routinely assess for such childish behavior. He actually had Hegamin drive a sled the length of the field - in full view of TV cameras and a handful of spectators. According to reporter David Weinberg, Hegamin needed nearly 10 minutes to do the job, driving the sled 10 yards at a time , and twice dropping to his knees exhausted. Reid handled the discipline personally. "He didn't say anything," said Hegamin," except, 'Set, hut, go.' He kept telling me, "Set, hut, go...c'mon, get up...I don't care how you get it...Set, hut, go...Set, hut, go, George, set hut, go." Hegamin's truancy didn't set well with his teammates, many of whom apparently resent remarks he made after a 34-0 Monday night loss to Dallas last year, accusing some of them of quitting. A tip of the cap to Andy Reid, who still has some high school coach in him.
August 25- (It has already been pointed out to me that I was grossly unfair yesterday. Not to pro athletes; to BMW. I am so-o-o-o not with it, I have learned. The new pro athlete vehicle of choice, I am told, is the "oversized" SUV like the Lincoln Navigator and Ford Expedition. My apologies to BMW.) Anyhow, "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL": Number 4. High school fans are not enticed by roving TV cameras into acting like jackasses.
After two days of practice, I feel as if I have a "Dear Coach Wyatt" question of my own. No problems, really. The kids continue to work hard and continue to impress me. But as I was looking over at one of our young kids running through a drill - a particularly big kid who has impressed me with his stamina and his ability to handle our conditioning circuit (weights, dots, plyometrics, heavy ropes, etc) - a visiting middle school coach said to me, "Andy does pretty well for a 400-pounder, doesn't he?" My reply was something like, "you mean 300 pounds, don't you?" He insisted I was about two 45-pound plates shy, and one of my assistants, who coached him last year as a freshman, confirmed it. Dear Coach Wyatt: do you think maybe I should look at a 405-pound sophomore at nose guard?
"Dear Coach Wyatt, We had our first scrimmage the other day and scored on the first play (88-super-power) from 50-yards out. The first pass we threw (tight-2-black-0) was also a touchdown. We also love over-rip 6 as a veer option play. thanks for the offense - Rick Desotell - Rochester Hills Lutheran Northwest"
Humorist Dave Barry writes about exercize fads: "We spend millions of dollars on 'exercize', defined as 'activity designed to be strenuous without accomplishing anything useful.'...It would not surprise me if yuppies started paying potato farmers for the opportunity to go into fields and burn fat by pretending to conduct a harvest, taking great care not to dig up any actual potatoes. If you think that's ridiculous, then you haven't seen 'Tae-bo.' This is the current hot fad, advertised exclusively on TV by perspiring mutants. As I understand it, Tae-bo is based on martial arts; the difference is that martial artists actually defend themselves, whereas Tae-bo people throw pretend punches and kicks strictly for fitness purposes. While they're checking out their abdominals, an actual mugger could walk right up and whack them with a crowbar. But never mind practicality. The point is that right now Tae-bo is very hot, which means that soon everybody will get bored with it. That's what always happens with exercise trends: people realize that after countless hours of climbing stairs or punching the air, they still bear a stronger resemblance to the Michelin Man than to the TV mutants."
August 24- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL": Number 3. Pro football players sneak out the side door after games and practices so they don't have to be bothered talking to you, and get into their BMW's; high school players walk right out the locker room door and take the time to talk to you before piling into their pickups.
It finally hit 90 degrees in Southwest Washington, on the first day of football practice at my new school, Washougal. Our afternoon workout went from 2:00 to 5:00 PM and it was HOT, but we could see the results of the pre-conditioning program we had run.We did have one kid who blew chips, but he was a transfer on his first day in Washougal, and in his first conditioning workout. "I haven't done anything all summer," he managed to say as he leaned over the trash can. "That's pretty obvious," I told him. Our first unit was able to run - with reasonable proficiency - 88/99 Power, Super Power and Power Keep; Red-Red and Blue-Blue; 6-g and 7-g; 47-c/56-c, xx-47-c/56-c, 7-c/6-c; 58-Black-O/49-Brown-O; 3 Trap 2/2 Trap 3; Thunder/Lightning; 4/5 base lead; 4 Black-O/5 Brown-O; Rocket 38 Reach/Lazer 29 Reach; 29/ 38 G-O Reach; 38 G-O Keep Left/29 G-O Keep Right; and - of course - 2 Wedge.
Heard from Coach Jim Ferdon, in Georgetown, South Carolina, who says he saw nearby Andrews High, coached by Allen Poston, at a jamboree, and they are running exclusively from the Wildcat set, and running it pretty well.
I got a call from Jon Newman, who played fullback for me the last three years at La Center (Washington) High School. Many of you have seen him on some of my tapes - he was 6-4, 245, and he did a great job for us. He was my example of the kid who (at least in a small school) needed to be in the middle of your offense. He is now at Weber State, playing guard at 6-5, 275, and when he tells his fellow offensive linemen that he played fullback in high school, they all say, "No way!" When they ask him if he gained any yards and he tells them that he gained over 1,000 yard each of the last three years, they ask him what kind of offense would make that possible. He points to his tee-shirt with the "Set of Stones" pictured on it, and they all say, "Whoa! I've never seen anything like that!"
From Bill Lawlor, youth coach in the Chicago suburbs: "Received your fine tuning video last night and was able to review it this morning. Thank you for sending it so quickly! We had our annual pre-season invitational bowl game today. Three refs and about 300 fans, so it did not seem like the pre-season to me or the kids. We beat Streamwood 36-6. My A-Back, Leon Wiggins ran for over 225 yards in the first half alone on just Rip 88 Super Power and Liz 56-C. He is quite an athlete (and human being), who also ran back two punts for 124 yards and two touchdowns! Obviously you can see why I skipped 47-c and went right to 56-c, in order to get him more touches. We have had thirteen practices (8 offensive) so I am happy with the total offensive output of 313 yards. None of my starters played in the second half. What was really fulfilling to watch was my three second string backs. All under 100 pounds in a 125 pound league, drive 68 yards and eat up 9:57 of the third quarter clock.
"As an aside, Leon Wiggins, who I spoke about earlier has garnered alot of attention over the last three years in our area and I recently have been fielding calls from area Catholic High Schools trying to recruit him and sway him to their program. Now this is the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago, where the local public schools usually average 24 on ACT scores and are actually better academically then the private schools. Unlike the South Suburbs, where Mt. Carmel and Providence Catholic are power houses and recruit the stud kids. I just never thought I would have to be bothered by coaches recruiting junior high kids. Oh yeah....one of them told me I was wasting his talents in that "goofy tight double wing"....OK....I guess over two hundred yards of total offense in the first half, just by him...is a waste of his talent! Give me a break! Regards, Bill Lawlor " (Just another example of a guy who doesn't know anything about the offense and won't spend the time trying to learn about it, but is nevertheless willing to spout stuff about "wasting a kid's talent," like it's our job to make all the other kids bust their butts just to showcase one kid. That's the kind of crap that two-bit street agents pump into kids' heads, to get them to switch high schools. With idiots like that, it's no wonder that pro athletes become the jerks that they are. HW)
August 23- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL": Number 2. High school quarterbacks don't hook slide.
There are bigger things to worry about than football, but ... Bill Bradley, a youth coach in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, tells me that the East Coast drought - and Pennsylvania's state-wide emergency restrictions on water - have resulted in rock-hard fields, and grass burnt to the texture of a scrub brush. With no relief in sight, there is talk about postponing the start of the high school season.
"Coach - I have been reading quotes from the other coaches and have sensed their excitement and amazement at times with the Double-Wing. We had our first scrimmage today and did well, I was neither suprised nor amazed. Just glad for the Double Wing. The main reason I was not suprised or amazed is that in being a DW "veteran" coach I am already aware of its potential and ability to neutralize a faster team. As usual we were a lot slower than our opponents, however with your DW we were able to "pound it out" with our ball-controll offense. We had our first scrimmage yesterday and scored 4 times. Once on an 88 Power, once on 47 C, once with 99 Super Power and once with 3 trap at 2! Total yardage amassed was 357 yds. Our A back had 71 yds, B-Back had 106 and the C-Back had 131! To get some of the newer players some playing time and game-like experience we played them 9-on-9 (we went to a spread offense) for a while. We also ran slot and over tight. Did I mention that our opponents today, a team from the San Fernando Valley, did not score? Good luck with your new team this week! "Coach John Torres - Castaic (California) Cougars
"First off, what more could you ask for than to be on a football field on a crisp Colorado Saturday morning warming up a bunch of kids who are out there begging you to teach them the game!??" writes Coach Scott Barnes, from Parker, Colorado --- Stole my son's dream today - moved him from TE to Left Guard. He's been working all off season on receiving skills and has really become a dependable receiver. But he's smart and hits - It's obvious that I've got to have my quickest, smartest and most athletic guys at Guard positions, with a close second at tackle for this to work. I talked to him about that (along with the fact that he still gets to play Linebacker!) and he stepped right in and made an immediate impact on 88 and the trap. He digs catching big guys from the side and putting them on the ground! --- First issue with a parent p----d because his son is on the O-line and not in the backfield - wrong day to catch me with this issue! Apparently this guy was some stud QB in high school and somehow thinks that means his kid is gifted. Wrong answer - I told him his kid was lucky to even be practicing with the starting 0-line and unless he picked it up a notch he wouldn't start the season there or anywhere else - and, as a matter of fact, look who stepped in at left guard today - MY son - who is a much better athlete than his son - so if the O-line is good enough for my boy, then it's certainly good enough for anyone else - period. Not much he could say, because deep down he knows I'm right. What is up with parents who want to continue to live through their sons - just LET THEM PLAY FOOTBALL! geeze..--- Shouldn't have introduced the wedge so early - now every freakin' huddle, all the goofy lineman keep saying "let's run the wedge"! They fell in love with this play from the moment I described it - First I asked them if they'd seen the Mighty Ducks, then asked them if they remembered the flying V - they related to that IMMEDIATELY - Seriously, I had to get mean in the huddle and tell them to shut their little traps and run the play I called - geeezee...(but ya gotta love a play they love, huh?)"
Coach Barnes' kids lost last year to a team on which John Elway's son played, which prompted this note: "I had a call from a parent today telling me that they heard John Elway had taken over coaching his son's team this year (like I was supposed to be all worried). I told them that was great news for us, because I'm pretty sure that big Elway had never seen the D-Wing in his Bronco years so he won't have a clue how to defend it! September 11th - mark it on your calendar!"
August 21- The latest GQ Magazine contains a piece-of-trash list of the 50 reasons why NFL football (profootball) is better than college football. (Sample reason: "The NFL has John Madden." Funny - I always considered that to be one of the major reasons why college football is better than profootball.) Guess what, GQ? I have my own list. I call it, "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL": Number 1. Most high school players still think their coaches know more about football than they do.
Danny Ainge was just installed into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame. Ainge was two-time Oregon basketball Player of the Year as he helped lead North Eugene High to two state titles. You might want to point out to your kids who are tempted to specialize in one sport (notice it's never football?) that Danny Ainge was also All-State in football and baseball. He actually played three seasons of major league baseball before deciding finally to concentrate on basketball. Tell those kids - when you got it, you got it.
Joe Paterno, 72-years old and still full of fire, in Friday's USA Today: "Coaches never grow up. Basically, I'm still involved in a kid's game. I still like the game part of it. There's a lot of people who do something for 50 years and say, 'Hey, I'm bored.' I've never been bored, but if I had been, I don't know what else I could do. Maybe that's part of the reason I stay in it." Amen to that, Coach Paterno. I can't think of a time I've ever been bored coaching. Now teaching, that's another story. I'd love to see Coach Paterno trying to sit through an in-service presentation on Cooperative Learning. ("In-service," for those not on the inside, is what happens on those days when the school kids have the day off so their teachers can sit and listen to "educational experts," pumping them full of edubabble, and introducing them to the latest in ineffective educational fads. In-service survival tip for rookie teacher/coaches: sit in the back and bring something to draw plays on .)
Exactly one day after showing our rules video to prospective players and their parents, I had my first chance to put it to use. We had already begun our 5 PM circuit workout, when a kid walked in, five minutes late. My first reaction was to hand him the usual penalty of having to make up 10 minutes afterward, but since this was a kid who hadn't even shown up at workouts until yesterday, and the weight room was filled nearly to capacity, I told him to wait outside until we were done, and then we'd let him do a circuit on his own. When we finished, he came up to me and started giving me the usual crap about being only a few minutes late, and besides, it was my mother's fault, etc. I called over the assistants and the seniors who were present and asked him to repeat his complaint. No sympathy. I asked him if he remembered watching the rules video the night before, since I had a sheet of paper he had signed indicating he had. He said he did. I asked him if he remembered that we had said players were expected to be not on time, but early. He said he did, but he just couldn't be early; his mother couldn't get him there on time, and it wasn't fair that he was being punished. With tears in his eyes, he said, "you're ruining football!" I suggested that for him that very well might be true, and that if that were in fact the case, he probably ought to hit the road as soon as possible. (I can't wait to hear his mom wail about how I "punished" her son when "it wasn't his fault." I am going to tell her never to drive anybody to the airport.)
August 20 - We had our pre-season all-sports parents' meeting last night at Washougal, Washington High. As might be expected on a warm Thursday evening, with the Seahawks on TV against the 49ers, we had less than 100 per cent attendance. Nevertheless, we were pleased to have 41 footballers there, out of an expected first-day turnout on Monday of 60 or so. As I have done for the past three years, we required every player to watch a video covering our rules and expectations, then sign a contract indicating he understands the rules and agrees to abide by them. We'll catch the stragglers as they come in for workouts over the next few days, and they'll be required to watch the video, too. This way, nobody slips under the radar and gets out on the field without hearing how to act in our program. It really does eliminate a lot of problems. Virtunally all of the players are familiar with the coaches and our expectations already, through their participation in our pre-season workout program. Unable to require players to attend workouts, we offered them the choice of getting them done over the past few weeks - when they were not mandatory - or doing them next week after practices - when they would be. Nearly 50 chose the former.
From Coach Jon McLaughlin at Rich Central High in Chicagoland - "We have been working on the tackling drills that were in your tape. We have spent a lot of time on this in practice. We are using the wristbands and the kids have eaten it up. Our freshman coaches were explaining it to their guys on the chalkboard and one of the Freshman said, have you ever thought about using two colors? One across the top and different ones going down the side. Bill remarked in the coaches office that it was scary when your kids are smarter than the coach. We did have a bit of trouble with no-huddle. The kids were making some blocking mistakes and I felt I was putting the cart before the horse. So I backed off and had the kids start huddling again. I have to be confident that the kids know their assignments first. We were scrimmaging last night against ourselves and the kids can really run the superpower. I would tell the defense here it comes again and the defense couldn't stop it. Our second team did the same thing."
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From Coach Paul Maier at Mt. Vernon, Indiana HS: " (In our recent scrimmage) our first group moved the ball extremely well. In 18 plays they gained 146 yards just running super powers, 47/56 C, 66/77 power, and one wedge. I wanted to keep it real basic and not show tomorrow's opponent anything but the basics. Our 2 best backs didn't even carry the ball--they just played defense and our fullback who is a real force just carried one time. This was against Mater Dei who is the defending regional champion and consistently a very tough opponent."
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From Coach Scott Barnes in Denver: "on Coach John Braganini's comments- 2nd day and coaching blocking/tackling interchangeably is a REAL winner! We had a great practice tonight - much better than the previous - ran Tight 88/99 - will add power/super and Rip tomorrow - piece of cake - I went over the numbering system for about 20 minutes having the kids point and run up and touch the number - I also had them yell out the position name(some first year players) - then we went to blocking drills, tackling drills, some conditioning and the tire relay (something else I stole from your videos!) - ended up practice bringing them back full circle to the beginning and having them name the number/position of the offense when I pointed - they NAiled it! then I called a few numbers like 38, 47, 88 - I asked them "where does the fullback go"? and "where does the ball go" and "who carries" ? they got it(with a couple of exceptions) --- you ALWAYS have some of those, huh?) anyway, I'm pumped right now! "
August 19 - Who, me? PC? - I never thought I'd see the day that I would join the ranks of the Politically Correct, but according to USA Today, Lawrence Phillips' signing by the 49ers was protested by PC types.
Wonderful. We had our annual officials' meeting last night, attendance at which is mandatory for head coaches. Now I have to go in to school tomorrow and find out if the dozen new footballs I ordered in June have the stupid NFHS t"authenticity mark" on them. And the supposedly exciting news about the lengthening of the coaches' box is more than offset by the dismal thought of being driven even further back into the shadows by overzealous wingmen who want a two-yard-wide swath of sideline all to themselves. Even the chains are being moved back two yards from the sideline. What the #&+*/ is going on here? Hell for me is an eternity of standing on a sideline listening to a non-stop recording of "Get back, Coach."
Coach John Braganini, of Kalamazoo Christian Junior High, had these kind words to say: "First two nights awesome! Kids worked on conditioning and we worked 'em real hard. Already well into drive blocking and the shield tackle. What a SUPER video!!!!!!!! Safe and Sure Tackling is the best coaching help I have ever had. Thank You! We are teaching blocking and tackling interchangably. What a great idea. We got hitters. Most of the kids already know the plays so we will ready to start srimmaging next week. I've never been so excited about coaching a team and your system is the biggest reason. Thanks for giving me the tools to do the job right!. A father came up to me and told me that the only reason he was letting his son play was because the coaches in our program weren't "jerks" and that we were teaching proper techniques. What a boost.
Don Capaldo, head coach at Keokuk, Iowa, High is deep into early football drills, but he's got a lot more on his mind than how to duplicate last season's 9-0 record. His wife, Cindy, is going in to the hospital on Firday for major surgery, and his mother-in-law is seriously ill as well. Don asks that we remember "his girls" in our prayers: coachcap@interl.net
Coach Kurt Young, middle school coach in Rigby, Idaho, called excitedly to describe his first scrimmage as a Double-Wing coach: 23 plays, nine touchdowns. Two touchdowns each on 88 Super Power and 2 Wedge.
John Torres, in Southern California, is busy getting his youth team ready, but also eagerly looking forward to his son Zack's season as a high schooler. Zack, it appears, will be the starting QB at his school, and John commended his coach for taking the time to warn John and His wife to prepare themselves for some of the inevitable critical comments in the stands.
August 18 - "Coach- I had to tell you I just had my smoothest first day of practice I've ever had with an offense and it was because of your offense. In one hour I was able to teach the J. V. team, who had never heard of this offense before, the cadence, stance, motion, hole numbering, etc...We even were able to run 88/99 Super Power and 47/56C in team. Anyone who wonders about this offense will become a quick believer after the first day.I had to let you know. I'll let you know how are first game goes. Thanks and Good Luck with your new team." - Joe Cantafio- West Seneca, New York
This from Coach Don Capaldo, coming off an unbeaten season (his school's first-ever) at Keokuk, Iowa: " Just finished our first day of regular season practice w/o pads. Ran a 3 day camp last week. In all four practice sessions we were able to work on blocking and tackling progressions and not risk injury to our kids. We are light years ahead of our previous seasons in teaching fundamentals. Thanks mainly to the ideas we learned watching your video, Safe & Surer Tackling. Our coaches liked it so much they felt it would be good for me to show our parents at our parent meetings just conducted recently. What a huge success. I know we have won some parents over with our methods of teaching fundamentals of a violent sport. In particular I am looking to see if it helps bring our middle schoolers along quicker. No fear, no reason not to hit. If they can experience success this way our numbers will undoubtedly improve."
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), state governing body for high school sports, reports that there were 138 athletes ejected from state high school contests in the 1998-1999 school year. (Officials are required to file ejection reports after every incident.) Boys' soccer led, as usual, with 54 ejections, more than the combined total of the next three sports - baseball with 26, football with 19, and girls' soccer with 8. (I think I may have my work cut out for me. My new school finished tied for third in all-sports ejections in the entire state last year, and is one of only two schools with five or more ejections in each of the last three years. The Superintendent is not pleased. Needless to say, a major part of my job is to please him. )
"Consistency is the key. That's why it aggravates me when I have a rough day. I try to be a perfectionist. If it doesn't bother you when you make a mistake, there's something wrong." Doug Flutie
Roger Kelly, youth coach in Delta, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver, called to tell me how well his first scrimmage went. Playing with 12 men as Canadian football rules allow, he has been using the 12th man as a flanker to one side or the other, and playing normal double-wing otherwise. NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Coach Kelly is a former PR Director for the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League, and so he was rather excited to pass along the news that the Toronto Argonauts had made effective use of the Double-Wing when they were in town recently. Coach Gary Etcheverry of the Argos is an old Double-Wing guy, and he has been instrumental in persuading the head man to install a "Big Man" package. They use a very athletic defensive back at quarterback, and a very athletic (aren't they all) defensive end at fullback, and their 12th man is an extra offensive lineman on one side or the other. They ran it at the start of the 3rd quarter against BC to run off some clock, and in the process drove for a crucial score in their 28-26 win. The last thing that a defense in that wide-open style of ball is prepared for is a team that lines up Double-Tight and shoves it down their throats. Those of you who attended my clinics last spring may remember some clips I showed of a Canadian team - the Argos, I am now free to state - running the Double-Wing successfully. I said that I was showing them to answer those ignoramuses who insist that the Double-Wing is (a) a Pop Warner offense; (b) a small-school offense; or (c) a gimmick offense. Now, Coach, if you happen to know one of those guys who's been belittling our offense without really understanding what it's all about - I don't care how big his school is, or how great his program is- just tell him there is a team up in Canada that can line up in this Pop Warner offense and kick his butt.
August 17- There is a fabulous article in this past week's Sports Illustrated about an American reporter, visiting Australia for the Broncos-Chargers game, who hooks up with two Aussies, one a rugby fan, the other a "footy" fan. (Tip: It's best not refer to an Australian as a "rooter") The writer is hugely unsuccessful in converting either Aussie to the NFL game, and in fact has to listen to all sorts of abuse concerning the lack of action, the tremendous amount of down time, and the phony acting. "They're running amok!" shouted one of the Aussies as he watched the idiotic high-fiving of the Chargers during their pre-game intros. "At least our blokes wait till they've done something to congratulate themselves." Shannon Sharpe, who whined about the 17-hour plane ride (the pampered stars each had an entire row of three seats to themselves) and then whined further because he thought Australians had been rude to him (poor baby), came in for special treatment. "Where's the wanker who slammed us for being rude?" asked one of the Aussies. (You will not find "wanker" in any American dictionary, but suffice it to say that any translation would be unprintable.) When Sharpe was pointed out to him, standing on the sidelines in street clothes because of an ankle strain, the Aussie howled. "You mean the blouse is sitting out because of a strained ankle? A regular toe-stubber, eh? Rude, he thinks we are? If he'd met me, he'd have wanted to go home 10 days before he got here." Somehow, I don't think Australia is quite ready for the prima donnas of the National Football League. (By the way, with respect to the NFL's announced crowd size of 73,000-some, SI's writer, Gary Smith, said "blowfish washing up from the week-old spill in Sydney harbor weren't that bloated." Remember where you read it first.)
From Coach Bruce Reeder, Nashville, Illinois: "We are going to run a lot of no huddle with the wrist bands as you suggested at the clinic. We did it in our first scrimmage and it worked great. I have put another twist on it and it worked fine. I bought enough wrist bands for the whole team and we have the grids. I signal from the sideline to the whole team the coordinates. Each player then looks at his band to get the play without any discussion. We still have the plays listed many different times according to how many times we run that play. I think it has great possibilities. I know in practice by not huddling and doing the same thing we run more plays and the players get used to the fast tempo. One last note: if you want to add Nashville to the state playoff list we were the state runnerup in class 3A." Be happy to add your name, Coach!
From Coach Steve Fickert, in Seinäjoki, Finland: "Coach, We ended the regular season Saturday against the Roosters (#2 rated team in Europe). We gained more yards (345 Total Offense) than any other team that played them including Braunschweig (#5 rated team) and scored 11 Points, more than any other team in Finland. We still lost 44-11 and you know, 6 Defensive starters either injurred or could not make the game. I am getting tired of that excuse! We are really the #2 team in Finland right now, however we may not get to prove it. The Playoffs begin this Saturday and we have to play the Roosters again. How about that schedule, we have the #2 team in all Europe in 3 of the 11 games! That is fun! However, I am learning a lot and feel I can take many things with me to build a Euro Bowl contender in the future! I think I told you we ended with the #2 Offense in the Maple League, behind only the Roosters. We were ahead of the #3 Offense by a lot of yards and quite a few points! I was pleased with that!"
Coach Jimmy Williams, at East Wake High outside Raleigh, North Carolina could scarcely contain his enthusiasm after his first scrimmage running the Double-Wing. It took some persuading to get him to tighten his line splits, but going up against what he described as a "very physical" Cape Fear High, his guys led off with the wedge. Five yards. Then another wedge. Four yards. And one more. Four more yards. "That wedge is awesome," he told me. Next, they ran 88 Power, for 30 yards. Then, after a few more powers, the first time they ran a counter, it went for a score. They only ran one trap, and it went for 40 yards, causing his players to tell him, "Coach, it happened just like you said it would!" Best of all, said Coach Williams, "There are so many little things we can get better at!"
August 16 - Are you as sick as I am at the stuff that's being shoved down our throats in the interest of what the limp-wristed social engineers call "diversity?" Noted author Pete Hamill, although an unapologetic Irish-American, had this to say about what he calls "the wormy self-pity that is at the core of identity politics," in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal: "The genius of the American experience has been its great levelling power. Human beings from a great variety of cultures arrived here, collided, went to schools or wars together, married each other, and built an amazing country. Most of them were too busy to feel sorry for themselves. Much of that healthy attitude has eroded. Today, we too often find Americans whose essential slogan is, 'I'm offended, therefore I am.' That oh-woe-is-me attitude is paralyzing. If you believe the deck is stacked against you from the beginning, then why bother struggling? If you think that you will never have a real chance at a full life because you are a woman, a homosexual, short, bald, or fat, or if your ancestors came from Africa or spoke Spanish, you will never have that real chance because you will not take it. If you reduce yourself to some sociological category instead of being fully human, you will also be building your own little psychic jail. No human being is simply Irish, gay, American or bald; if they were, nobody would write novels. But if you are such a sensitive soul that you are frozen into fear, or moved to anger, by the existence of evil, banal, or meaningless symbols, then this rough American democracy has nothing to offer you or your children. Here we must bump up against much idiocy and laugh it into the ash pit." Ah, if only society could operate - and work together - like a football team.
I got this from a coach in the South (Without wanting to paint a target on him just yet, I have left his name off, although I will go so far as to say that he was at the Durham clinic) : "Thought I'd let you know we had our first jamboree Saturday night. We played a half vs a team that beat us 52-0 last year. In that game we had minus yards rushing. WE WON!!!! Beat them 13-7 and had 150 yards rushing in a half. OUR SHORTEST RUSHING PLAY WAS FOR 2 YARDS, WE NEVER LOST AN INCH. We got the ball with two minutes left. In days past that may have been a problem, but Saturday night it was over for them. We are only running power,superpower,G,wedge,blue,red,and keep left, and 47-c. We just put in slot and have only been in it one time. Keep Left has scored in every scrimmage and Jamboree every time we ran it except once. Hope things are going well in your new job."
From a reader in the Los Angeles area: "I've enjoyed the "recruiting" bit on your website. Down here it's pretty much a given. In fact, there was an article last week about a girl basketball player at Crossroads School (where Baron Davis went), who was tired of being the "only star" at a smaller school and was looking around for a school where she could be part of a winning team. While I actually do think that's a refreshing change - most kids would rather be the star - she and her parents basically shopped around looking for a school that had a superb basketball program. Also, don't forget that one of Washington's legendary basketball coaches pioneered the recruiting of Europeans a long time ago...I'm thinking of Marv Harshman (long-time U. of Washington coach) with Petur Gudmundsson (sp) at Mercer Island HS, Flossi Sigurdsson (sp) at Capital, Detlef Schrempf at Centralia and Christian Welp at Olympic. That couldn't have been coincidence." (All of them wound up at Washington, Schrempf and Welp after leading their high schools to state titles. Partly in reaction to the uproar over the Schrempf-Welp state championships, the state governing body (WIAA) passed a regulation barring exchange students from participating in varsity competition. That regulation was challenged in court, and has just been overturned. Finland and Germany, here I come. Just kidding.)
With my apologies to U of Kansas fans - I refuse to take sides - this came off the Kansas State football site (you will no doubt appreciate its adaptability to any comparable rivalry anyplace else) : Two Kansas Jayhawks boarded a shuttle flight out of Kansas City. One sat in the window seat, the other sat in the middle seat. Just before take-off, a K-State Wildcat got on and took the aisle seat next to the Jayhawks. He kicked off his shoes, wiggled his toes and was settling in when the Jayhawk in the window seat said "I think I'll get up and get a Coke." "No problem," said the Wildcat, "I'll get it for you." While he was gone, the Jayhawk picked up the Wildcat's shoe and spit in it. When the Wildcat returned with the Coke, the other Jayhawk said, "That looks good, I think I'll have one too!" Again, the Wildcat obligingly went to fetch it and while he was gone, the Jayhawk picked up the other shoe and spit in it. The Wildcat returned and they all sat back and enjoyed their flight. As the plane was landing, the Wildcat slipped his feet into his shoes and knew immediately what had happened. "How long must this go on?" the Wildcat asked. "This enmity between our peoples? This hatred? This animosity? This spitting in shoes and peeing in Cokes?"
August 14- From Coach Paul Maier, heading into his second year (and his first 1999 scrimmage) at Mt. Vernon, Indiana: "I am still cautiously positive. Our line is coming along nicely, we still occasionally have breakdowns, but they are becoming fewer and fewer. We even have a couple of linemen that regularly correct Kyle (offensive line coach) and me! They are right 99% of the time!! " Coach Maier is discovering the wonder of a system in which linemen know their jobs - really know their jobs. If it's true as they've alwasy said, that confused players can't be aggressive, you've got to like it when your players are correcting you. Coach Maier also mentioned the recent barge spill of toxic materials into the Ohio River at Mt. Vernon: "We have had to bring in bottled water to practice and school--what a pain.The barge company donated a semi trailer load of it. What caring people they are. Hope my sarcasm doesn't ooze from your computer!"
While spending several hours behind the wheel last week, I had an opportunity to listen to Michael Medved, a syndicated talk-show host out of Seattle. He was interviewing Dr. Katrina Himberg, a professor of PE at Cal State-Chico, and head of an organization called CASPER - Concerned Adults and Students for Physical Education Reform. She and the organization are adamantly opposed to (1) Dodgeball and sports like it; and (2) "captains" choosing sides in elementary PE. According to Dr. Himberg, they are "discussing dodgeball at the university level." (Can't you just see these bearded stuffed shirts sitting around a big table, showing charts showing the percentage of kids eliminated early in PE dodgeball games who grow up to become serial killers?) She told of kids who had been picked last and developed a life-long hatred of physical activity, but when host Medved asked for callers to share their experiences, what he got were guys like the one who said he was so ticked off at being picked last that he became an Army Ranger and now competes in triathlons. Another guy said he made sure that he was never taken last, because even though he was never good at anything, at least he tried; the ones who were taken last were the "banana slugs" who didn;t even try. Dr, Himberg did make a great deal of sense, though, in advocating better ways of choosing teams than allowing the same poor kids to be picked last. I can remember in 1974, convincing the head coach of our World Football League team that the civil way to cut guys at a free agent camp was simply to announce at the end of our morning session which ones would be invited back to the afternoon session. That way we didn't have to single out the ones who had been cut. Wonderful. Except right in the middle of a passing drill, he watched a young quarterback throw a wobbly pass - the WFL was still looking for a unique ball comparable to the ABA's red-white-and-blue basketball, and we were using a Rawlings ball that had two extra laces, which nobody was throwing particularly well - and announced, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, "you can send that c---s----er (Lewinsky) home." So much for people's feelings.
On the subject of recruiting came this note from a highly-respected coach who runs a highly-respected program at a highly-respected school: "Coach, Aw come on. Not that same old cry baby stuff. Our state is open enrollment, as are some others. At a private school we recruit everyone, from 3rd chair violin to our QB, for the opportunity to spend $3000 to go to (our school). Everyone pays something as well as student work-study, and parent work programs, to get a quality Christian education as well as to compete for state championships in every sport." This was my response: "I'm just passing along what people cry about, and in many cases I believe they have a legitimate concern. It is not a problem for me and never has been. I wish I could recruit kids to my program, because I think we run as good a one as there is around here - every coach should think so. I'll bet your recruiting does not involve a quick fix, and goes on for the most part before those kids are even in high school, and you are not picking up too many first-year seniors whose parents suddenly decide it is time for their kids to receive a Catholic education. But Coach, tell me the truth - would you want one of your opponents to have someone over in Europe scouting for talent, sending them a couple of instant all-stars every year, tuition-paid?"
August 13- Time and again, I hear from public school coaches upset at what they perceive to be certain competitive advantages enjoyed by private schools. (The advantages usually seem to boil down to one word, spelled r-e-c-r-u-i-t-i-n-g.) Wait till they hear this: thanks to a program called "NFL Futures" and run by NFL Europe, three German youngsters will be attending U.S. high schools - private - as exchange students this year. These are not your run-of-the-mill AFS exchange students, either. None of that Youth-for-Understanding stuff. These kids are players. They are teenagers, true, but they have been playing in Germany's Bundesliga against grown men, and the expectation is that they will follow the example of Konstantin Ritzmann, the young German who played last year at North Florida Christian School in Tallahassee, and was signed last winter to a grant-in-aid by Tennessee. This year, Claudius Osei, a 19-year-old wide receiver and Kalle Stubbe, a 19-year-old linebacker, both members of the Hamburg Blue Devils, runner-up in the Eurobowl competition, will also attend North Florida Christian. Both players have had international experience as members of Germany's Junior National Team. Sergeii Berezhniuk, an 18-year-old offensive and defensive lineman, will attend Cardinal Gibbons High School in Baltimore. NFL Europe Director of Football Development Marshall Happer was quoted as saying "The NFL Futures program gives these players a chance to develop their skills in the competitive atmosphere of an American high school.The success of Constantin Ritzmann has shown kids all around Europe what is possible - a place in a major college football program and maybe even a career in the NFL. His example should inspire those who are part of NFL Futures this year and the many youngsters who are playing American football all over Europe." Are you kidding me? Did anybody ask the opponents of North Florida Christian and Cardinal Gibbons what they think about their role as the stooges in this NFL development scheme? How were those two schools chosen? Is this another way, comparable to Nike's selective generosity, in which one school in an area is designated to receive advantages not available to its competitors? Most of us can't even look at a kid who lives across the street, if that happens to be another school district. In fact, our butts would be in a sling if we even mildly suggested he might really enjoy our offense. Or our uniforms. Don't get me wrong. Based on my experience in Europe, I personally think such exchanges can be a wonderful thing for the sport of football in general, and they certainly will do wonders for the further development of American football in Europe. But I can't get one question out of my mind: why those two schools? Obviously, coaches all over the US will want to know: how do I get some of these kids? The answer, I regret to inform them, is a Pandora's box they don't want to open - an ugly word spelled r-e-c-r-u-i-t-i-n-g. Much of the purity of the high school game - one of the few places remaining where there is any semblance of purity - lies in the fact that you're supposed to play the hand you're dealt.
Bill Parcells, head coach of the New York Jets, makes a point of letting his players know of any incient in which an NFL player gets in trouble with the law. It's his way of trying to keep his players out of trouble. He tells them, "Don't go any place where you're not known or welcome."
Early returns from a coach somewhere in the South whose team just held its first scrimmage: "COACH !!!!!! Last year we could not get a play off! This year we drove up, down, sideways, and crossways across the field !!!!! We started with the wedge and got 5 then the power, G, 47-C, we scored on 38 G keep left . It was a three way scrimmage and you should have seen the other team's defensive coordinator scratching his head too! We are pre-season picks to finsh last in the region. The other teams are picked to finish second and third. COACH! WE KICKED THEIR BUTTS ALL OVER THE FIELD! WE DID ANYTHING WE WANTED TO DO ON OFFENSE! I know that my enthusiasm may be premature, but when you are coming off a 1-9 season, this is a confidence builder for the kids and coaching staff. Thank God for the internet." (Those of you already running the Double-Wing can perhaps remember the revelation of seeing your own team running it for the first time, and may identify with this young coach's exuberance.)
I was not going to say anything about yesterday's letter from Michael Carman, a center for the Port Townsend Redskins, but then, passing through Boise, Idaho, I came upon this: the Salmon, Idaho School District is being threatened with a lawsuit by something calling itself the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media unless it drops its nickname - Savages - and its Indian mascot. I'm sure I have mentioned that the P.C. Press - oops! I meant that Portland Oregonian - which like most newspapers fights fiercely against the agents of censorship, nevertheless protects its readers by referring to the Washington Redskins as "the Washington team, the Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves as "the Cleveland team," and "the Atlanta team." My thinking there is, if they can perform that sort of blue-pencilling, why, then do they refer to the Aloha Bowl (for example) as the "Jeep-Eagle Aloha Bowl?" (Think advertising dollars could have anything to do with it?)
August 12- Nothing like a sincere compliment from a guy who uses the product, this one from Michael Carman, in Port Townsend, Washington: "As a Senior on (Coach) Dan Fountain's upcoming Port Townsend H.S. Redskin football team, I'd like to say a thank you for helping to repopularize this extremely effective and fun to play offense. I play Center and I especially enjoy Wedges and the criss-crosses. Having played on the scout defense for two years I can attest to how many problems this offense causes for defenses. Even those that see it every day in practice."
While in Nevada, I had a chance to take advantage of some of the local color, eating dinner at BilTo'Ki, a Basque-American restaurant in Elko, about 50 miles (and, at 75 miles per hour about 40 minutes) east of Wells. There are three Basque restaurants within a block of each other, and it is said that nobody ever leaves any of them hungry. The Basques, natives of the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, are neither French nor Spanish - and very proud of that fact. They speak a language in no way related to any other on earth, and many of them came to the open spaces of the West - Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming - to pursue their ancestral livelihood of herding sheep. (Needless to say, lamb is a featured dish in a Basque restaurant.)
If you like Letterman or Leno, you'd love living in NE Nevada. They are in the Pacific Time Zone, but they get their TV news out of Salt Lake City, which is in the Mountain Time Zone. Throughout the Mountain Time Zone "prime time" ends at 10 PM, when the local news comes on. But at that time, it is only 9 PM Pacific. You get to watch the late night news at 9 PM, and Letterman or Leno at 9:30.
I wonder whether there is any other state that comes close to Nevada for its population imbalance. The Las Vegas area, in the far southwest corner of the state, is pushing a million in population and growing like crazy. It has to outnumber the rest of the state by four or five to one. The distances on this state are enormous, and when you are a small school in a remote area, the travel is almost unbelievable by most state's standards. The population imbalance results in the rest of the state being consistently outvoted by "the South," and alignment and scheduling decisions being made by people in Las Vegas, many hours away.
To all my friends whom I cherish...These things I wish for each of you
By Paul Harvey
We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse. For my grandchildren, I'd like better. I'd really like for them to know about hand-me down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meatloaf sandwiches. I really would. My cherished grandson, I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated. I hope you learn to make your bed and mow the lawn and wash the car. And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen. I hope you have a job by then. It will be good if at least one time you can see a baby calf born and your old dog put to sleep. I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in. I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother. And it's all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he's scared, I hope you let him. When you want to see a Disney movie and your little brother wants to tag along, I hope you'll let him. I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where it you can do it safely. On rainy days when you have to catch a ride I hope your driver doesn't have to drop you two blocks away so you won't be seen riding with someone as uncool as your mom. If you want a slingshot, I hope your dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one. I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books. When you learn to use those newfangled computers, I hope you also learn to add and subtract in your head. I hope you get razzed by your friends when you have your first crush on a girl, and when you talk back to your mother that you learn what Ivory soap tastes like. May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole. I hope you get sick when someone blows cigar smoke in your face. I don't care if you try beer once, but I hope you don't like it. And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I hope you realize he is not your friend. I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your grandpa and go fishing with your uncle. May you feel sorrow at a funeral and the joy of holidays. I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through a neighbor's window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Christmas time when you give her a plaster of Paris mold of your hand. These things I wish for you - tough times and disappointment, hard work and happiness. Written with a pen. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sealed with a kiss.
(I think Paul Harvey illustrates the difference between mega-city American and small-town America. Years ago, when my job required me to travel through Virginia and West Virginia, I was astonished at the number of business people who listened to this guy named Paul Harvey, whom I'd never heard of. And I started listening in. He is an American institution that most big city sophisticates have never heard of. Now, I live near a big (sort of) city, and I can't get him. But there are still millions of Americans who still look forward to "Hello Americans, this is Paul Harvey...Stand by...for N-E-E-E-WS!"
August 11- I'm in Wells, Nevada, in the high desert where last year at this time it was a sunny, toasty and dry 100 degrees. Today, the skies darkened, the winds blew in gusts of over 40 miles an hour, the temperature dropped below 60 degrees, and torrential rain and lightning started just as we finished the afternoon session. And for the first time in my life I was treated to the pleasant smell of wet sagebrush in the air.
Anybody tune in ABC Monday night to hear Boomer Esiaison and Al Michaels chit-chat with each other, to hear them interview Eric Dickerson and to hear the lovely and knowledgeable Leslie Visser interview Carmen Policy, only to find, without any explanation for them, some guys in football uniforms running around on the screen? It's very distracting when the camera cuts to some people playing a stupid game and all you want to do is listen to the experts. Seriously, though, the TV networks are becoming so obsessed with the celebrity of their announcing crews that the game itself seems to exist just to provide a backdrop for the real stars, the crew in the press box, who don't mind at all talking right through the actual play. Exhibition or not, there were two minutes left in the Monday Night's Browns-Cowboys game, but Al and Boomer were far too busy passing along pearls of wisdom to us to keep us involved in the game. The NFL keeps telling us what a great product they have, while the networks and their announcers keep dissing the actual games by treating them as a minor annoyance that keeps interrupting their blathering. It's as if we are forced to sit behind two loud, obnoxious, know-it-all guys in a bar, hoping they'll shut up while we look over their shoulders to try to see what's going on.
Still ragging on the NFL: Two games played, two games won by last-second field goals. Wow. What excitement. Be still, my beating heart. Tell me it doesn't gall you, if you are a real football man, to see people hoisting the kicker in the air, as if he single-handedly won the game. Write your Congressman and demand a two-point field goal.
I got this from a California youth coach: "Funny converstation last night with a fellow coach from another team. I am having trouble finding scrimmages and short of begging, no one is returning my calls. He finally took my call last night. He said, 'Coach, I don't want to get off on a bad foot by scrimmaging you all...Not only are you guys big, you run that damn double wing. I don't want my kids to face that.'"
And this from another youth coach who has to remain nameless: "The guy that runs our league sent a couple of first year coaches over to me for "tutoring" - they started by telling me they were going to split coaching responsibilities because neither could really commit to twice a week practice, and 8 full Saturdays of no golf! give me a freakin' break - they both had been drinking - I started by telling them that this wasn't the NFL, so forget about the s--- you see on TV...I told them to consider an 8-3 or even 9-2 Defense - they were glazed - no clue what I meant - we then had to move outside for their smoke break - then I had to explain what an "inside gap" was! They wanted to know if they shouldn't just wait until "after Labor day" to start practicing (first game is the 11th) - I was so frustrated that I had to walk away before I slugged one of them - to think that my kid could have gotten stuck with such a toad for his first coach - he never would have played again. For the most part we've got GREAT guys that are really committed to the kids - but boy, just a couple of worthless sacks like this can really screw a few kids - I'm recruiting COACHES next year, not players!!!"
August 10- Just a reminder, as the football season approaches, to keep me up-to-date on your results. I will be happy to post them weekly, and you can be sure that other coaches around the country will follow them with interest. (At the very least, let me know of a newspaper whose web site will carry your scores.)
Coach Tony Nicolino, from Maple Shade, New Jersey, is new to the head job there, but not to the town or its football program. He is a lifetime "Shader," and was elevated to the head position from defensive coordinator. Last April, shortly after he was hired, he allowed me to use his squad at my Philadelphia clinic to demonstrate how to install the Double-Wing. Now, before he has even held a varsity practice of his own, he has been out in the community working with its youth football coaches, convincing them to adopt our Double-Wing, too. Coach Nicolino, a very persuasive and enthusiastic guy, won them over, and this past week, he assisted the Township's coaches in installing ithe Double-Wing at the 65-, 75-, 85-, 95-, 105-pound and unlimited levels. What a great investment in the program's future. And he said he had a blast -"75-pound kids running 2-Wedge is the greatest thing I've ever seen."
From Coach Scott Barnes, a native Texan now coaching youth ball in Colorado- We just finished up our High School Sponsored Youth Camp tonight - talk about a difference between Colorado & Tejas football! My little guys were soaking wet and having to rotate into the equipment shack to stay warm - must have been all of 55 degrees out there tonight - just in time for the Watermelon relay - didn't stop the kiddos one bit! they carried the melons across the field, broke them and ate them right off the ground - in the cold rain! you should have seen the traffic slow to watch these hard core little ball players as they passed the field! probably get some soccer mom calling child protective services - but I bet there was more than one adult passing that thought "if only I had that kind of commitment at work"... man..I'm glad it's football season again!!!!!!
On my way to northeastern Nevada, I stopped by Glenns Ferry, Idaho and briefly visited with Coach Bill Brock as his team went through its first afternoon of work. It was 93 degrees, but it didn't seem to bother the kids. All told, frosh included, there were over 30 kids on the field, which for a school of 200 kids, ain't bad. Evidently, Glenns Ferry is a college town - as I was driving through, I noticed a sign advertising the "Academy of Equine Dentistry."
The big news in Nevada concerns the closing of the famed Mustang Ranch. I heard a former competitor, who owns two brothels himself, saying on the radio that he had "interviewed" 40 or so former "employees" of the Mustang Ranch. I would give almost anything to hear (or see) how those "interviews" were conducted.
A team of sociologists from the University of Michigan has found that attending religious services on a "regular basis" can help you live longer. What they found was that people who attended services - Christian, Jew or Muslim - at least once a month had a 25 to 40 per cent lower mortality rate than the rest of the population. Not so fast, though. Going to church or synagogue or mosque may not be enough. It doesn't sound as if the study allowed for the fact that those people studied may very well also drink less and smoke less, and may be less likely to engage in other risky behavior.
August 9- An estimated twenty million people play flag or touch football in the US; just 1.8 million play tackle football. There are a zillion books about tackle football, but they are of limited use to flag coaches. Now there is a book about flag football: John T. Reed's Coaching Youth Flag Football. Jack Reed, author of a number of football publications, says that although flag is surprisingly similar to tackle football, there are some significant differences: flag football, for example, generally has fewer than eleven men on a side. There is also limited blocking, and a higher percentage of eligible receivers, among other differences. Some leagues eliminate or minimize some of the kicking game of regular football. These rule differences mean that the best tactics and strategy in flag football are often different from what's best in tackle football, Jack says. Coaching Youth Flag Football gives the flag football version of some of Jack's other strategies such as the contrarian approach, and how to run a ball-control offense. (A ball-control offense, enabling you to keep your defense off the field as much as possible. - something a Double-Wing coach can appreciate - is even more important in flag than tackle football because it is so hard to succeed at defense in flag.) Jack also alerts readers to the little known fact that flag is a surprisingly dangerous sport, and recommends safety measures that should be taken. Find out more about it on Jack's site.
Noted stripper (and part-time soccer player) Brandi Chastain was spotted this past week in TV ads for Houston's Gallery Furniture. Her tag line: "You don't have to give us the shirt off your back."
The NFL suffered a blow to its pride this past week, with its discovery that Los Angeles is not Nashville, or Charlotte, or Jacksonville. Los Angeles, entertainment capital of the world, doesn't need a sports franchise to affirm its importance, doesn't have to come on its knees to the NFL owners, begging, "Please, Mister. Take me money. Take me car. Take me wife and me first-born. Anything. But please - give me a pro football team." Los Angeles' rejection of the NFL's demands (or, if you will, the NFL's rejection of LA's offer) is a far more serious blow to the NFL's image than it is to Los Angeles, a huge metro area that clearly is content to take its pro football straight off the tube. It threatens to move the NFL a giant step closer to the day when it might just as well be playing its games in a TV studio, for all most sports fans care.
The NFL announced a crowd of around 73,000 for this past weekend's Broncos-Chargers game in Sydney, Australia. Not that I am suspicious of the announced attendance, but from my experience with the papered houses of the World Football League, I always thought that when a stadium was three-quarters or so full (the Sydney stadium seats 110,000), the crowd is fairly dense in the good seating sections - the ones directly across the field from the press box. The empty seats, for the most part , are up in the nosebleed sections, and you don't see them on TV. (Skillful camera work can see to that.) Funny, then, how many empty blue seats we saw, no matter what the TV angle. You would have thought that in taking their product to another part of the world, the vaunted NFL marketing geniuses would have been astute enough to create the illusion of fanatic interest, arranging the seating so as to show us a backdrop of packed stands. In the days of the North American Soccer League (NASL, pronounced "Nasal") the Philadelphia Atoms didn't even sell seats in the upper decks of Veterans' Stadium, keeping the crowd packed more tightly in the lower deck. (Plus saving a little on stadium costs.) In two weeks, Australia will play New Zealand (the All-Blacks) in the same stadium in an important Tri-Nations Tournament Rugby match. All 110,000 seats have been sold.
Oh, boy. Real football starts soon. Not just high school, either, but college, too. Have you checked out the first weekend's action? On Saturday, August 28, it's Florida State, Number One in USA Today's pre-season poll, against Louisiana Tech, and Number Three Arizona against Number Four Penn State in the Pigskin Classic. Penn State, whose Lavar Arrington and Brandon Short make up perhaps the best pair of college linebackers since Simeon Rice and Kevin Hardy left Illinois, must stop Arizona's quarterback pair of Ortege Jenkins and Keith Smith. Look at the Wildcats' offense for traces of Homer Smith's concept of using one man (either Jenkins or Smith) as both your runner and your passer, thereby creating an additional receiver for a defense to contend with. Not enough football for you? How about Texas against North Carolina State in the Black Coaches' Association Classic and Notre Dame against Kansas in the Eddie Robinson Classic - still on the same day? (Why, why, why - when we wait so long for college football to resume - do they have to cram all those games into one day?) The next day, Sunday, August 29, Ohio State plays Miami in the Kickoff Classic. Don't miss it - it may be your last chance all year to see real football - real running plays 'n' everything - on a Sunday.
August 7- Honk if you've received an e-mail offering to show you "PAMELA ANDERSON LEE NAKED."
The Wall Street Journal's Friday "weekend" sections often contain articles by Allen Barra, using sports statistics to try to settle some rather interesting arguments. Yesterday's attempted to determine the greatest running back in NFL history. My personal choice is Jim Brown, despite the fact that there are now four men - Walter Payton, Barry Sanders, Eric Dickerson and Emmitt Smith - ahead of him in career yardage. Brown's stats are impressive: he averaged 5.2 yards per carry over his entire career (Sanders is next at 5.0) and 104.3 yards per game (Sanders is next at 99.8, and of the others, only Dickerson, at 90.8, is in the 90's). And Brown's total career yardage is somewhat deflated (or the others' inflated) by the fact that he played only nine seasons (winning the NFL rushing title in eight of them), retiring healthy and at the top of his game, and even more important, by the fact that for his first four seasons the NFL schedule was only 12 games long and for the final five it was 14 games long. Had Brown played nine of today's 16-game seasons, he would have played in as many as 26 more games (assuming he maintained the robust health without which none of the great runners could have put up the numbers that they did). With an additional 26 games, Brown conceivably could have gained another 2600 more yards, leaving him still behind Payton and Sanders in career yardage; but extending his average of .9 touchdowns per game, he might have scored 129 career touchdowns, placing him number one. Barry Sanders is the only one of the so-called "modern" runners with statistics comparable to Jim Brown's, and Mr. Barra's argument in favor of Sanders as the greater of the two is a strong one. One area in which Sanders ranks right up with Brown is in the difference between his average yards per carry and that of the NFL as a whole: with the exception of his rookie year, he consistently exceeded it by 2 yards per carry. An additional factor in Sanders' favor is the fact that the entire pro game was more run-oriented in Brown's heyday, and the NFL's overall yards per carry was higher. Even Jim Brown might have had his problems with today's overstuffed offensive linemen and unsophisticated blocking schemes. Okay , okay - edge to Sanders. But so long as we are going to compare players according to the way the game was structured when they played, then what are we going to do for the quarterbacks - Otto Graham, John Unitas, etc. - who played before the game was tilted in favor of passing by moving in the hashmarks, legalizing holding, putting dresses on receivers more than five yards downfield, and designing an intentional grounding rule that's about as easy to explain as a balk in baseball? (Bring back real football to the NFL!)
Think the game isn't designed to favor the pass? Why, then, does the clock stop after an incomplete pass or a sack? Why is offensive incompetence rewarded and good defensive play penalized? Why not stop the clock after every running play that fails to gain yardage? You mean to tell me that after an incomplete pass they can't get a football spotted at the line of scrimmage in time for the next play? How do they manage to do it when a running play goes out of bounds?
A Little League coach in Ashland, Oregon, is accused of offering $5 bills to players getting base hits in an All-Star game.
CBS says it plans to spend more time in its post-game NFL coverage focusing on the losing coaches and players. Says that they're often "more compelling" than the winners. I'll try to remember that the next time I get my butt beat.
August 6 - "Every little lie erodes trust invisibly, like acid rain." Bill Bradley, not specifically naming any other politician, living or dead.
There are now 600,000 Russian-speaking immigrants in the Los Angeles area alone, according to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. And those of them who served in the Soviet army can't understand why they aren't eligible for veterans' benefits here in America, since they also fought against the Nazis in World War II. I say, what the heck - why not? It's only money. I'm sure America's vets would be only too happy to give up some of their hard-won benefits, if need be, to help the people who enslaved two generations of Eastern Europeans. Hey - we're already printing ballots in Russian.
Now that the Boy Scouts of America have been told by the New Jersey State Supreme Court that they cannot bar homosexuals from scouting or, for that matter, leadership positions, it seems to me to be high time that we address the discrimination being waged against a large segment of our population - a group whose membership cuts across lines of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender and sexual orientation. I am referring to left-handers. Unlike homosexuals, left-handers can't hide in the closet. From taking notes, to eating, to shaving, to perofmring the simplest of acts, left-handers are constantly forced to "out" themselves. "Sinister?" It comes from the Latin word for "left." "Gauche" (pronounced GOESH) is the French word for "left," but it's used in the English speech to describe someone as "crude," or "awkward," or "lacking in the social graces." We can't be sure how to take a "left-handed compliment." Clearly, the forces of "PC" don't yet think a left-hander's self-esteem is worth protecting. Including left-handers in the hate-crime legislation now before Congress is out of the question. And it should be obvious even to the most casual observer that major league baseball, just to name one large employer, openly discriminates against left-handers; in fact, the very structure of the game itself seems to have been designed to exclude them. Is it just a coincidence that one never sees a left-handed shortstop, second baseman or third baseman? I think not. And what are you supposed tell your little left-handed son when he says he wants a catcher's mitt for his birthday? Since the baseball establishment has turned being left-handed into a de facto disability, it should be organized baseball's responsibility to accomodate that disability. I suggest a federal law requiring a coin toss before every baseball game to determine whether the bases will be run counter-clockwise or clockwise.
Johnnie Morton is having his tattoos removed. Having defaced his body in the manner of so many of today's young athletes, the Detroit Lions' wide receiver is now undergoing painful laser surgery because, he says, "Sometimes, people get the wrong idea, or sort of stereotype people."
Just in case anyone asks: in the interest of accuracy, Lawrence Phillips once dragged his ex-girlfriend - by the hair - down three flights of stairs.
August 5- My father's dead now, God rest his soul, and can't defend himself, so I guess I can say without fear of contradiction that there was more than one occasion when he "abused" me by smacking me on the backside. That's right - hit me. It hurt, too, I now recall, thanks to my psychotherapist's help in "recovering" my memory. Nobody told me about my rights back then, and there was no Child Protective Services to report my father to, anyhow. But now, I've learned from my President and his beloved wife that forces beyond my control have "caused" me to do some stupid and downright sinful things over the years. Turns out something similar happened to him, too. All this time, I thought it was my fault. In fact, though, I've learned that a disorder, set in motion by my being abused as a child, has caused me to do things I'm not proud of. Like my President, I am working on my weakness; like him, I am married to a good woman who sticks by me, even though she thought we had put all this behind us 10 years ago. But people are just so mean-spirited. They don't believe that I am really disabled. They don't believe I was really abused. For a long time, they have been out to get me. Still are. It's a wonder that with all I've been through, I've turned out to be the leader that I am.
Oregon State has reported some possible violations in its football program to the NCAA. Punishment would not normally be expected to be severe, since the violations did not result in any competitive advantage for Oregon State. No kidding. The Beavers have gone 27 years now without a winning season. But watch the NCAA come down hard on the Beavers, as an example for the big-time cheaters.
An article in the latest issue of Pediatrics magazine says that children under the age of 2 should not watch television. And older children should not have televisions of their own (it doesn't say anything about telephones, video games, or unlimited access to the Internet). Furthermore, it recommends that pediatricians ask for a child's media history when conducting an examination.
"On this hot September night, Number 22 walked through the door of the gymnasium with his fifty or so teammates. He stood there beyond the end zone and waited with them to run onto the field. They were a small-town Mississippi football team.
"The stadium behind the old brick high school was crowded with four thousand people. There was a pale quarter-moon on the horizon. A train whistle from the Illinois Central echoed across from Independence Quarters, and crickets chirped from a nearby hollow. The grass was moist from yesterday's rains.
"He was big. He was carrying his helmet, which he put on now over a copious Afro haircut kept in place by a red hairnet. He was seventeen years old and he was wearing glasses.
"A group of children had gathered near him, and a few dogs. "Get 'em, Marcus," a little white boy shouted. He acknowledged this injunction with a slight wave of his hand. Under the helmet, his glasses reflected the lights of the stadium.
"From the grandstands the home band burst into an off-key fight song. The team sprinted onto the field through a large papier-mache' sign with the words "Go Tornadoes!" The crowd stood to cheer.
"There was more behind his entrance on this night than football itself."
August 4 - If being in the middle of a conflict between two women is the worst thing that can happen to a boy, as a psychologist supposedly told Mrs. Clinton (and who can doubt anything she tells us?), then shouldn't she be calling for an end to adoptions of boys by lesbian couples? And what about her buddies at NOW, who've been trotting out studies that show that fathers aren't necessary?
Wow! Maybe those of us who deplore the conduct and appearance of all too many pro football players have been right all along! At least, Mike Holmgren seems to think so. The new coach of the Seahawks sounds like one of us high school coaches - but what do we know? - based on the rules he's laid down: jerseys tucked in, mouthpieces in, chin straps buckled. And helmets, although they may be removed from the head, must never touch the ground. (Hey! Where's a guy supposed to sit, when he's on the sidelines?) "I know they sound like little things," Seahawk Chad Brown said, "But we are starting to look and act like a team. Last year, everybody would come out with their own shoes, their own shirts, orange gloves, because they are cool. But now, we all wear the same stuff, and we have to have our chin straps buckled, mouth piece in. I think it just goes along with winning. It's a sign you are serious about it. I mean, how serious can you be if you have your chin strap flopping aroud?"
As great a running back as Barry Sanders is, isn't he playing the adult version of the ugly kids' game that gets some awfully good high school coaches fired? ("I'm not turning out for football because I don't like the coach.") Place your bets right here if you really believe he'll never play football again.
Willie Morris died Monday in Jackson, Mississippi. Morris, one of a long list of great Mississippi writers that includes William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, made it to the literary big time in New York as editor-in-chief of Harper's Magazine, but his heart never left his native Mississippi. Better known in literary circles than in the sports world, Morris nevertheless produced a classic when he wrote "The Courting of Marcus Dupree." It's been 17 years since the senior year of Dupree, a 210-pound running back from Philadelphia, Mississippi who ran a 4.4 40-yard dash, and was the most-recruited running back in America. (That 40 time was legitimate: Archie Manning - Peyton's dad, for you younger guys who never knew what a stud Ole Archie was - was a Mississippi boy, and he recalled how he once paid a visit to Philadelphia, where somehow or other he found himself playing catch with a young kid. And for some reason they decided to time each other in 40's. Archie timed the kid - Marcus Dupree, then a high school freshman - in 4.6. The kid was wearing sneaks and blue jeans.) Twenty years before Marcus Dupree, Philadelphia, Mississippi was known for something else - for a time, it was ground zero in the civil rights struggle, a town made infamous by the murder of three young civil rights workers nearby. Morris did a masterful job of interweaving the machinations of recruiting Marcus Dupree, a young black man, with a look at the often bloody civil rights struggles that had taken place in his home state and hometown not long before. Good writers occasionally venture into the field of sports, but their lack of sports knowledge usually gives them away, and they are seen for the imposters they are. In "The Courting of Marcus Dupree," Mr. Morris brought it off successfully, and I strongly recommend the book. The story is no less gripping today than it was when it was published in 1983.
August 3 - Anybody have a kid miss the first day of practice yesterday and have his mother claim that it wasn't his fault - it was all because he was abused when he was four years old?
There was quite an article by John Riehl in the Burlington, Iowa Hawk Eye about Keokuk's Craig Lewis. (Lewis, who played A-Back in Coach Don Capaldo's Double-Wing attack, was as good at that position as anybody I saw last year.) What is important is that Craig is going to play Division I basketball next year - but he played football! So did Allen Iverson. Tell that to those weenies who are not going to be playing football so they can "concentrate on basketball.") "Craig Lewis treated Keokuk High School basketball and football fans to quite a show during his varsity career. Lewis, a 6-foot-1 guard, led the Chiefs to back-to-back appearances in the Class 3A state basketball tournament the last two seasons. Last fall, he played key roles as a wingback and strong safety on a Keokuk football team that finished the regular season undefeated for the first time since 1957 and qualified for the playoffs. 'Every time I get the ball I want to put on a show, no matter what it is -- basketball or football,' said Lewis, who has signed to play basketball at Division I Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. 'On some of my runs, I just used my instincts and went with it. I didn't try to reverse the ball all the way to the other side of the field and come back and score a touchdown. I wasn't planning it. It was just something as an athlete I learned to do over the years.'
"As a senior, Lewis was a repeat first team all-state selection in basketball by the Iowa Newspaper Association and an elite all-state pick in football by the Des Moines Register. He was The Hawk Eye's Player of the Year in both sports. The list of honors continues to grow, as Lewis has been named The Hawk Eye's Male Athlete of the Year.
"As a senior, Lewis rushed for 1,217 yards on 101 carries, an average of 12 yards per rush. He caught 17 passes for 523 yards and scored 27 total touchdowns. 'When it comes time for men to become men and separate themselves from the boys, he'll be there,' Keokuk football coach Don Capaldo said of Lewis. 'When he ran three straight kickoffs back for touchdowns his junior year, that was Craig Lewis. We had a good scheme and he stuck with it. People didn't realize he was that good, then they quit kicking to him. His senior year, he was a known entity and they would not kick to him or have really good coverage. He was hit by seven kids on a touchdown run against Mount Pleasant. He scored the first touchdown against Macomb and broke five tackles. He wasn't down unless his knee touched. You were never safe with him with the football if you were the other team. He had an innate ability to score. He didn't run out of bounds much.' Capaldo was equally impressed with Lewis' improvement as a defensive football player. 'I don't know if I'll ever have one quite like him again in terms of talent,' Capaldo said. 'He could put the game away offensively for sure. I was surprised how he grew between his junior and senior year as a defensive player. He was pretty much in charge of taking care of the run alley on all options. There was not a time all year that a running back made a yard after the initial hit.' Lewis missed three games his junior year with a knee injury, but still rushed for 658 yards and scored nine touchdowns. He also had 16 receptions for 271 yards and two scores. Lewis, the Southeast Conference Player of the Year, decided to attend Eastern Illinois after visiting Creighton and Northern Illinois. There was some talk that Lewis might play Division I football. Iowa and Nebraska both recruited him, but Lewis decided to pursue his dream of one day playing in the National Basketball Association. 'I think if I go in and do the right things -- work hard, stay in the weight room and work on a couple other things -- I can be an important player in that conference,' Lewis said. 'In my four years, I want to be the leading scorer, assist leader, get my degree and enter the (NBA) draft," Lewis said. "I think that would be the best career I could have.'
Scott Dion, a male student at Montana State University College of Technology in Great Falls, is suing the female director of the school's nursing program for "creating a hostile and intimidating environment for male students." In other words, sexual harassment. Now, apart from the generally-held belief that a man ought to be able to stand up and take it, this guy does describe the kind of crap that, if it is true, shows that certain women are taking advantage of a double standard. An editorial in Monday's Wall Street Journal relates his allegations that the director would refer to the male reproductive organ as "the worthless male appendage." She offered the opinion that men's only useful function was as "sperm donors," and is accused of saying that men would be well advised to "keep their genitals in their pants." Now, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Mr. Dion, but on the other hand, there are lots of American men who have had to suffer similar accusations of harassment from the likes of this man-hating administrator. Maybe this case will bring some sense to the whole idea of speech codes.
Monica Lewinsky rolled her car recently when she briefly took her eyes off the road. No comment.
August 2- Best wishes to all the teams - especially Double-Wing teams - starting football practice today. In many places, the start of official practices coincides with one of the nastiest heat waves in years. Fortunately, we are far removed from the days when it seemed as if at this time of year every day's newspaper carried a story about a high school player somewhere who had died from heat stroke. Those were the days when we showed up in only so-so shape, expecting the coaches to get us in shape - and the coaches were only too willing to comply ; the days when we put on full pads under heavy cotton shirts and started hitting on the first day; the days when "water breaks" - if we had them at all - consisted of ladling mouthfuls of water from a galvanized bucket, under the watchful supervision of an assistant coach ("Just rinse out your mouth"..."Make sure you spit it out"..."Don't swallow any" ... "If you drink it you'll cramp up"...etc., etc.). I can remember being so desperately thirsty that we'd wring out wet towels (not sure why they had them on the field) and suck the water out of them. Really enlightened coaches made us take salt pills before practices. Now, many coaches run summer programs to pre-condition their players to the demands of hot-weather football. Most states require a certain initial period before allowing full-scale contact. And water breaks are frequent and often mandatory. A word of warning: even in the benign climate of the Northwest, we have to keep a special eye on the kid who's been dodging summer workouts - his body may not be ready to handle the heat-exchange demands of early practices, and he could be the first to drop.
I had a great talk with Coach Jim Fisher, in Newcastle, Virginia. He said that the new coach at the local high school, Craig County High, will be bringing in the single wing. His name is Rodney Tenney, and he's been an assistant in Coach Steve Isaacs' very successful single wing program at Bath County (Virginia) High. Coach Isaacs retired as head coach to become the principal at Craig County, and when Coach Tenney was not hired to succeed him at Bath County, he was smart enough to hire him at Craig County. Coach Tenney will be the 15th coach in the last 30 years at Craig County, which has not had a winning season since 1984. (Double-Wing coaches beware: Coach Isaacs' single wing won Bath County a state title in 1994, with a couple of 9-1 seasons since then, but the rumor is that Coach Tenney didn't get the job there because certain members of the school board didn't think the single-wing would properly showcase their quarterback sons.) Coach Fisher has had excellent success raising funds for his program, but I would imagine that there are a few places in our country where his fund-raising methods just won't work. Newcastle is in the hills of Southwest Virginia, in great hunting and fishing country, so Coach Fisher holds a series of gun raffles - that's right, gun raffles - year-round, selling 100 tickets for $10 each. This month's raffle features a Remington 7 mm Magnum, and he's selling 1,000 tickets at $1 each. Hillary Clinton, eat your heart out. And last year he was fortunate enough to receive a $1,000 donation from the huge buffalo ranch near Newcastle.
This came in from Coach Paul Maier, in Mt. Vernon, Indiana, where they're getting ready to start today in 100+ degree temperatures: "Got a recruiting flyer in the mail today from a school near Chicago whichis starting a football program, Rockford College. It was a great flyer promoting all the great things about the college and why the Regents feltit was important to add a football program, one of the reasons was shocking--they weren't in compliance with Title 9------THEY HAD TOO MANY GIRLS SPORTS! Something like 68% of the student athletes were girls, they said they were hoping for around 75 football players to even their numbers out." (An interesting note is that at most colleges in the US, women comprise more than 50% of the student body. One way to address the supposed "imbalance" or "gender inequity" that has occured to some schools is not to increase women's sports, or reduce men's sports, but - to increase the percentage of males in the student body! Now, I don't know how they're going to do that without stirring up the femmies, but I do know this: the fastest way to scare prospective male students away from your school is to drop the football program!)
The men's sport in which international competition is dominated by Southern Hemisphere nations is - rugby. The Tri-Nations Championship, taking place between New Zealand (The All Blacks), South Africa (The Springboks), and Australia (The Wallabies), will almost certainly determine the top team in the world. Rugby is also very strong among such smaller nations in the South Pacific as Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. Native New Zealanders, a Polynesian people known as Maoris, have contributed heavily to the success of the All Blacks, and the Hakka, a Maori dance that the All Blacks perform before all matches, is a fearsome sight for opponents. Samoans in the U.S. have certainly made their mark in American football, and BYU, thanks in part to the LDS Church's missionary work in the South Pacific, has benefitted greatly from a succession of Tongan athletes.
July 31- The Seat Belt Crusade gathers momentum! After years of living in the shadow of her husband, Mark O. Hatfield, Antoinette Hatfield has just taken on the job of getting every bus rider in America into seat belts. She and her husband were in a bus that was hit head-on by a car whose three passengers were killed. Five passengers on the bus, including the Hatfields, were taken to a hospital, then released. Needless to say, they weren't wearing seat belts. Mrs. Hatfield recalls that several of her fellow passengers noted as they took their seats that the bus had no seat belts! I guess that could come as quite a shock when you're rich and you don't ride buses a whole lot; and Oregon is, after all, the Vermont of the West in terms of constantly inventing ways of improving other peoples' lives for them, with or without their consent. "I would never have had any of these injuries if I had been strapped in," Mrs. Hatfield told the Portland Oregonian, without specifying what those injuries were. "We can't teach our children to use seat belts if we don't even have them in school buses." Look out, guys. Mrs. Hatfield sounds like a Hillary clone when she says, "This is an issue I am committed to now. I've been such a model political wife. I've never taken on an issue of my own. But now I have my own political crusade."
If you wondered whether southerners were crazy about football or just plain crazy - Coach Ron Hennig called me from the middle of Kentucky's heat wave to tell me that he and his Frankfort Western Hills squad had just finished their first two weeks of practice, and were headed to team camp this weekend. And from the western end of the state, Coach David Crump, from Daviess County High in Owensboro, wrote to tell me that they had just finished taking their team picture at noon - it was 102 degrees. (Out here in the Pacific Northwest, where it got up to 81 degrees today and may make it into the 80s again tomorrow, we can't start until August 23!)
This from Coach Frank Simonsen in Cape May, NJ - youth coaches will understand. "Just another plug for the numbering system. This is the first year I have ever gone into the season with everyone on the team knowing the "O." These are 12 to 14 yr. olds. Usually the younger and slower kids go through the entire season never playing "O," because they do not know the plays etc. We end up letting them run out for a pass or play a little safety. This year I feel we will be able to spot play them without worrying about them running to each other.
More shameless self-promotion. An early return on my Tackling video from Fred Pardey, Jr., head of a youth league in Attleboro, Massachusetts: "Just like to say thanks for the great tape on tackling. I have done a clinic on the drills and shown the head coaches what we are looking for. It is one of the best done tapes I have gotten over the years...I would just like to say thank you again, it is what has been needed for years."
A group of people in Columbia, South Carolina has set up a site as a way to search for old classmates from any one of 24,000 different high schools in the US. Check out www.highschoolalumni.com - you may be the first from your school to check in.
Here's a good one for you - in what men's sport is international competition dominated by nations from the Southern Hemisphere?
July 30- Coach Scott Barnes, of Denver, passed along this little pearl of wisdom from the esteemed Bill Walsh, which may seem puzzling in light of his recent signing of Lawrence Walsh. It's from Mr. Walsh's book, Finding the Winning Edge. Mr. Walsh wrote, "While a 'new lease on life' or being 'reborn' is theoretically possible, it is foolish for a team to acquire a free agent whose circumstances are contemptible -- regardless of how well he performs on the field."
Coach Barnes also sent me a copy of the pre-season newsletter that went out to all his youth team's players and parents. It is very well done, and represents exactly the kind of efforts we should all make to communicate with the kids and parents of the 90s- and beyond. It's getting late for most of you youth coaches out there, but I'll bet if you were to e-mail Scott (scott.barnes@coachbarnes.com) he would send you a copy for your information. Tell him I said I'd reimburse him for the postage if it gets to be a problem.
Like the old fire horse that used to get excited whenever he heard the fire alarm, an old liberal salivates at an opportunity to stick the nose of government further into our lives. So it was, when former Senator Mark O. Hatfield, an Oregon Republican (meaning somewhere to the left of a New York Republican and slightly to the right of Teddy Kennedy) was riding in a bus travelling west of Portland when it was hit head-on by a car that crossed the center line. Never mind the fact that the three occupants of the car were killed. The significant thing is that many of the passengers on the bus were thrown about. A few of them were injured. Senator Hatfield, breathess TV and radio reporters informed us, escaped injury, and he had some thoughts on the accident. Had Hatfield been in office last winter, he undoubtedly would have told us that what William Jefferson Clinton did was wrong, but didn't "rise to the level of an impeachable offense," and now, in retirement, he showed he hasn't lost the old liberal touch. Ever the opportunist, he has found in the tragedy a new political cause - mandatory seat belts on buses. The Senator says that now that we have "trained" (his very word) drivers of cars to buckle up, it is time for bus passengers of all types (including your team on its way to and from games) to be similarly "trained." He vows to contact his many friends in the Oregon legislature and in the US Congress about a bus-belt law. Forget the fact that there is no major problem, no slaughter of bus passengers; this is the sort of legislation that could pass easily, because it will allow bombastic lawmakers to claim that they are doing one more thing "for our children," and because it won't cost the federal government a nickel - it will be just one more unfunded mandate, passed on to local school boards and their taxpayers. No doubt an unsuspecting public will become "trained" to sit in long lines of traffic waiting for students on school buses to sit down and buckle up before the buses pull away from their stops. And school kids will become "trained" to get up earlier in the morning to catch buses that used to take 30 minutes to get to school and now take 45. And when the first Commissioner of the soon-to-be-created Federal School Bus Safety Administration is introduced, it shouldn't suprise anyone if it is none other than former Senator Mark O. Hatfield, of Oregon.
This was circulated on the European Federation of American Football's web page. It is interesting because it represents one European's view of football in the U.S. I was especially impressed by his awareness of the destructive effects of our legal system, and its potential to destroy our sport.
"This letter will bolster the confidence of American Football in Europe. At the present time there is a significant drop in attendence of people playing American Football in Europe. This drop will be a temporary one, for two reasons.
"1) The WFL (I think he means World League of American Football) has done little if anything to promote the game in the younger age groups. Especially at the High, Jr. High and elementary schools.The new league, the EFL will solve this problem.
"2) The current trend in America will help the situation. In the year, 2005, High School Football will be gone in the U.S. Why?? Astronomical amounts of money to insure a buss (he must mean "squad") of 55 football players will not be available. If a player gets hurt, law suites are in the 7 digit figures.
"The math, science and reading classes are without the basic tools to teach, but yet the football team has new uniforms each year. Accountability is being questioned by many parents. The women want their 50 cents on every dollar and equal times on the field. In the year 2010, there will only be the top 10 college teams playing football. The players will be paid, and the NFL will finally wake-up and make greater contributions to these Universities.
"Right now, the NFL, takes a polished product in their draft, and has nothing invested in that product. The University has foot the entire bill. The future of American Football is in Europe. Here, socialized medicine takes care of the injured. Here, lawyers do not get involved sueing teams when a player gets a blister on his toe.
"There also seems to be a trend in toughness. The American is getting complasive (complacent?) and spends more time on the computor than on the field. European kids are getting tougher due to their more survival lifestyle. So hang on European Players, things are looking great for the future.
July 29- A guy named Richard Lapchick seems to earn a living as director of something called The Center for the Study of Sport at Northeastern University, in Boston. He's a sort of "advocate," for those of you who know what that dreaded term means nowadays. Actually, behind his organization's pretentious name is a sixties-style sports-revolutionary organization that really seems to study mainly things like "the way women and other minorities are underrepresented in sports management and ownership, and don't you guys all feel ashamed of yourself?" I, feeling absolutely no shame whatsoever because I don't own a profesional team and have no immediate prospects of doing so, feel free to challenge the likes of Mr. Lapchick, who thinks it is - gasp! - a scandal that the NFL has only 7 per cent female vice-presidents. Huh? Listen, Mr. Lapchick. I know your dad, Joe Lapchick, was an all-timer as coach of the New York Knicks, but in terms of sports management or ownership, you ain't done squat. I don't know where you get the money to fund your crusade up there in Boston, but you have never, to the best of my knowledge, had to hang out an "open for business" sign in your ticket window and hoped that people would show up; nor have you ever had to meet a player payroll, whether or not anyone ever bought a ticket (talk about pressure). Yet every time you have a pronouncement on the subject, the liberal media lap (no pun) it up. Now, I can tell you that if I owned an NFL franchise, I might hire my wife and two or three of my daughters - just because it was my money and I could do as I damn pleased. But if I really wanted to be successful, I would go out looking for the best people in the business, and who knows? I might find a well-qualified woman. If I did, I might hire her, if I thought she could halp us be successful. But I wouldn't go out of my way to hire anybody just to satisfy your well-publicized craving for "diversity" - as you apparently want NFL teams to do. This is football, Mr. Lapchick. It is competitive. It is not a government-run social program. As an old-time beer salesman told me on my first day in the beer business, "this ain't the butter-and-egg business."
Meantime, while noting that the WNBA (that's women's pro basketball if you didn't know) is having attendance problems, in addition to having to deal with fights... you had to wonder when the US soccer men were going to stop biting their lips and say something about those darlings of the media, the Womens's World Cup Champion US Team. The men really have been back there on hind teat while the girls got all the attention. Bruce Arena, head coach of the U.S. men's soccer team sounded as if he'd about had enough of the women's socer team and the lickspittles in the sports media. When asked by John Powers of the Boston Globe what he'd learned from the Women's World Cup, Coach Arena let it all out. "You actually think we learned something from watching the U.S. women?" he asked. "We didn't learn anything. There are reporters who think Mia Hamm could play for our team. Our women couldn't beat our under-16 boys' team." (Hey, wait a minute - is it possible that Nike commercial showing Mia Hamm whupping Michael Jordan in a variety of one-on-ones was...staged? Would Michael really have sold out his fellow males for money?)
The 1959 Street and Smith's Football Yearbook published its pre-season All-American picks, as it always did. Many of them were names you might recognize today. At running back were such future pro standouts as Bob Anderson of Army, Dick Bass of Pacific, Chris Burford of Stanford, Billy Cannon of LSU, Abner Haynes of North Texas, Don Perkins of New Mexico, and Larry Wilson of Utah State. For some reason, Pitt's Mike Ditka was overlooked at end. SMU, led by quarterback Don Meredith, was picked to take the Southwest Conference title. TCU was expecting big things from a young lineman named Robert Lilly. Arizona State was the favorite in the "Border Conference", over - get this - Hardin-Simmons, New Mexico State, Texas Western (Now UTEP), West Texas State and Arizona. Oklahoma, 67-0 over the last 12 years in Big Eight play under Bud Wilkinson, was prepared for another year of "Oklahoma and the Seven Dwarfs." One of Oklahoma's key players was Prentice Gautt, "first negro ever to play for OU." (That's how they wrote back then.) Miami of Florida was rebuilding: its only returning starting lineman was Jim Otto. Another Majors - this time Billy - appeared to have earned the nod as the starting tailback in Tennessee's single wing; the starting tailback in UCLA's was going to be Billy Kilmer. USC featured the McKeever twins, Marlin and Mike. Syracuse was excited about a big incoming sophomore (frosh did not play varsity football then) named Ernie Davis, said by some to be "another Jim Brown."
July 28- The Texas High School Coaches' Association's annual coaching school, held this year in Fort Worth, started on Sunday and ends today. One of its highlights is the annual All-Star football game, which was played last night in TCU's Amon Carter Stadium. It's usually a North-South affair, in a state that really doesn't divide neatly into north and south rivalry. Texas is a big state - there are actually several Texases - with a lot of kids playing football, and although I don't know anything about the rules involved, and I know college coaches hate to see their recruits being exposed to injury before they can get to college and be exposed to injury, and nobody in Texas asked me... what if there were two Texas all-star games? Select four teams: one would represent the greater Houston area and portions of East Texas, another would represent Dallas-Fort Worth, North Texas and parts of East Texas; a third would represent Austin, San Antonio and South Texas; and the fourth would represent all of West Texas. Call them North, South, East and West if you want. Alternate opponents yearly. You've got some serious football rivalries here. You can get a good argument going anywhere in Texas by asking which part of the state plays the best football. And you'll get twice as many deserving kids involved. I did a recruiting study some years ago when I was doing an internship at LSU, and found that in the two years studied, the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas by themselves produced more Division-I signees than all but five states: California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Georgia.
"Our hope is that his deep troubles are behind him," said the pious Bill Walsh, in announcing the 49ers' signing of Lawrence Phillips. Interesting how one of those "deep troubles" is now described as merely "assaulting a former girlfriend in college." (Picture, if you will, your sister or daughter or friend being dragged by her hair down a couple of flights of stairs.) But, hey - it's time to "put all this behind us" and "move on," as today's excuse-makers like to say. Duffy Daugherty, Michigan State's great coach, had such a great sense of humor that you could never be competely sure whether he was serious, but he seemed to describe the NFL's attitude toward thugs when he said, "If a player screws up, I call him in and talk to him. If he screws up again, I pick up his uniform, unless he is really good." Maybe someday, Mr. Phillips will join another Lawrence - Taylor - in the NFL Hall of Fame. See you in Canton.
The 1959 Street and Smith's Football Yearbook had Notre Dame's new coach, Joe Kuharich, on its cover, with his predecessor, Terry Brennan, in the background. Brennan, a former ND player, was only 25 when he succeeded Frank Leahy as Irish head man in 1954, perhaps too young to have heard about the near-impossibility of replacing a legend. Brennan's first two teams - made up mostly of Leahy's recruits - went 17-3; his last three went 2-8, 7-3 and 6-4, and at age 30 he was unemployed, let go after five years for failing to deliver on Notre Dame's "commitment to excellence." The college took a lot of heat for having espoused noble academic goals but, in the end, being just as obsessed with winning as any other football factory. In other coaching news, Marv Levy was back at New Mexico, after being named 1958 Skyline Conference Coach of the Year. In a move not likely to happen today, Florida State lost its football coach when Tom Nugent took the head job at Maryland. Wayne Hardin took over at Navy and inherited junior running back Joe Bellino, who would win the Heisman Trophy his senior year. Hardin would have the rare honor of coaching two Heisman winners when Roger Staubach won it three years after Bellino. Army was getting ready to enter a season without Earl Blaik for the first time since 1939. At Arkansas, Frank Broyles was said to be installing a "belly wing," incorporating the Georgia Tech belly series - which he had learned under Bobby Dodd - with the wing-T. BYU's new head coach planned to run the ball - from an unbalanced line. The first crack in the one-platoon system developed this year when, essentially, one player would be permitted to enter the game whenever the clock was stopped. That, combined with the widening of the goal post uprights from 18 feet, six inches to their current 23 feet, six inches, was supposed to add more field goals to the game. Unfortunately, (in my judgment) it did just that. (More tomorrow)
July 27- Hey! You out there working for a living! Get busy! Just in case you might wonder why there is not widespread support for a tax cut, or, for that matter, widespread squawking about tax increases - does it help if I tell you that a full 40 per cent of the households in the United States pay NO income taxes at all? If you are part of that Shrinking Sixty Per Cent - stop reading this and get back to work. We need your taxes.
The latest Sports Illustrated (July 26 issue) contains a truly beautiful feature article about the Cotton Bowl game of 1957 and what went on in the pre-game locker-room of one of the participants, the TCU Horned Frogs. Those were the days before sideline reporters and the public's "right to know"; a team's pre-game locker room was as sacrosanct as a confessional booth. But somehow, photographer Marvin Newman prevailed upon TCU Coach Abe Martin to allow him in, as the Horned Frogs prepared to meet Syracuse. Now, it is more than 42 years later, and some of the members of their team have passed on, but the memory of that moment is still fresh in the minds of the old Horned Frogs, especially when they talk to author Gary Smith about preparing to face the great Jim Brown. None of them could know then that Brown would go on to become perhaps the greatest runner in the history of professional football, but his illustrious pro career served to confirm what they remember years later about having to tackle him. Perhaps most interesting was the fact that although the end of segregation was not yet in sight - there was not a single black player in the entire Southwest Conference, nor would there be for another nine years, until SMU recruited Jerry Levias - any worries about how Brown, a black man, would be treated by the all-white TCU players, and by a crowd of some 68,000 mostly-white Texans, proved groundless. "They were nice human beings," Brown recalls. Brown, then considered a giant of a back at 6-3, 225 (author Smith points out that Notre Dame's starting line, the largest in the country that year, averaged 203), was perhaps the greatest all-around athlete of our century. Befoe you start arguing, listen: A great running back in addition to having to play defense, Brown once scored 33 points in a Syracuse basketball game and was drafted by the NBA; he once won six events in a Syracuse track meet, and, with only 10 days' preparation, managed to finish 5th in the national decathlon championships. To say he also played lacrosse at Syracuse is an understatement: he is still considered by many lacrosse people to be the greatest player in the history of their sport. ("Forgive me if you knew all that," author Smith writes, "but some legends get so large, the particulars get lost.") Brown put on quite a show in the Cotton Bowl, rushing 26 times for 132 yards, scoring four touchdowns and returning three kickoffs for 96 yards. Oh - and he kicked three extra points. Unfortunately for Syracuse, one of his PAT attempts was blocked by TCU's Chico Mendoza - ironically, the only Mexican-American on the Horned Frogs' squad - and TCU won, 28-27. Now, more than 40 years down the line, "Possum" Ellenburg, a TCU player who would nearly be killed in an oil-drilling accident that left him paralyzed for a year, and would lose a bundle when oil prices collapsed, muses on the importance of football as a test of a man's character. "It's funny," he says, "but all your life people tell you that football's just a game, that so many things will happen to you in life that'll make sports seem insignificant. But it's not true what people tell you. I'm fixing to be tested in this moment (before the game), and I'm going to be tested again and again in my life, and I'm gonna get nervous and wonder about myself every single time. Your priorities as a kid are just as important to you as your priorities as a 60-year-old man, because all your aspirations and goals are on the line. At any age, each thing that's important to you...is important to you, and each fight needs to be fought with every effort." What an eloquent testimonial to the value of a game.
It's hard to believe that at this time 40 years ago I was still in summer school at Temple, trying to recover enough credits to be eligible senior year. (Nobody's perfect.) I was reminded of all this when I came across a box full of old programs and old Street and Smith College Football Yearbooks dating back to 1952. Stay tuned tomorrow for some stuff from the 1959 book. Even if you're a young coach in your twenties, you'll hear about some people you probably know - or should.
July 26- The Sporting News just came out with its annual "Best Sports City" list and ranked New York number one. Evidently college football isn't considered an important part of the makeup of a "Best Sports City," since there is not a Division 1-A school within the New York area as the editors of TSN define it. New Haven, Connecticut, where I went to college, is down at 255th, while Emmitsburg, Maryland, near where I once lived, is up at 187th - 68 places ahead of the Elm City. Are you kidding me? Granted,neither place is sports Valhalla, but if you were a sports fan and you were stranded, where would you rather be - New Haven or Emmitsburg? I know Yale football ain't what it once was - or could be - but Yale still has a lot of sports, not to mention New Haven's minor league hockey and minor league baseball teams, and the University of New haven has a very good Division II football team. Emmitsburg, on the other hand, is a town of fewer than 2,000 souls. It is home of a tiny college called Mount St, Mary's, which plays decent basketball. And that's it. Next bus leaves in three hours. What's really annoying about the list is the sheer geographic ignorance it displays: Cambridge, Massachusetts, indistinguishable from Boston,is nevertheless ranked separately; Ann Arbor, Michigan is ranked separate from Detroit; Berkeley and Palo Alto are evidently not part of San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose. Hamden, Connecticut, is even ranked ahead of New Haven, of which it is merely a suburb, without even a daily paper of its own. Hey, if they're going to cut it that fine, then shouldn't Secaucus, New Jersey be up near the top? After all, that's where the Giants and Jets play, not to mention the Devils. But, no - in order to justify putting New York at the top of their "Best Sports Cities" list, the Sporting News guys very conveniently have to overlook the fact that a lot of NYC's sports "greatness" takes place in New Jersey. From a purely personal standpoint, I have to take exception to Portland, Oregon - which, other than the Trail Blazers, has two mediocre college basketball teams, a Division 1-AA football program, a Class A baseball team, and, uh...a great women's soccer team - being ranked ahead of Charlotte, with its NBA and NFL franshises, and UNC-Charlotte basketball. In fact, judging by what we have to read about in our local sports pages, I can't imagine anyone ranking Portland ahead of any major college town; certainly not like Columbus, Madison, Tucson, Austin, Baton Rouge and many, many others. Of special interest to me is the fact that of the top 20 "cities" (actually, they're metro areas, judging from the combining of Baltimore and Washington, for example) there are only two - Detroit (if you count Ann Arbor) and Seattle - where a college football team still outdraws the local NFL team. Phoenix is close. Los Angeles, without an NFL team, is another matter. In fact, it's amazing how many of the "Best Sports Cities" get their ranking without much in the way of big-time college football.
I saw Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher on TV Sunday talking about a subject all too familiar to coaches - out-of-shape kids. He confirmed what most of us have known all along: that there has been a general decline in physical activity among our kids. Large numbers of them, grossly overweight, are being referred by their doctors to "wellness centers." Naturally, computer and video games came in for their share of the blame, but Dr. Satcher made it a point to mention what "educational reform" has done to our kids' health and fitness: where not so long ago, practically every state had some K-12 PE requirement , now it's rare to find one that hasn't chucked PE over the side. Dr. Satcher would like to see a return to the way things were. "We would like to see more PE classes," he said. In the meantime, the people who gave us Jazzercize are attempting to profit by addressing the lack of fitness caused by computer/video game addiction. Their $70 "Cyberstretch" program isn't exactly designed to improve our kids' fitness, though. Instead, with 26 different exercises such as "wrist stretches, head tilts and facial exercises," it's aimed at helping kids prevent "bad work habits that can lead to repetitive-strain injuries." Can you believe that? Kids who have never done a pushup in their lives, developing the sort of problems found in adults who have to do that stuff every day for a living? A Jazzercise spokesman recommends that kids sitting in front of computers "take a stretch break every 30 minutes." For Deborah Quilter, author of "The Repetitive Strain Injury Recovery Book," the answer is a lot simpler. "Kids are fatter than ever, " she says. "They should be getting up out of their chairs and playing outside."
July 24- Happy 40th Anniversary to my wife, Connie, without whose encouragement I'd never have become a coach - or remained one. You guys know how that works. To show you what a football wife she is - we honeymooned in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and spent a lot of our days watching the Philadelphia Eagles (Norm Van Brocklin, Tommy McDonald, Tom Brookshier, Chuck Bednarik) train.
Coach Ron Timson, of Bennington, Nebraska, told me that he was planning to visit some relatives in Florida, and asked me if there were any Double-Wing coaches near where he'd be going - said he couldn't go two weeks without somebody to talk football with. I gave him the name of Coach Tim Smith, newly-appointed head man at Umatilla, Florida after a successful stop at Warner Christian, in Daytona Beach. I gather that they had some enjoyable and productive talks while Ron was down there - they both e-mailed me and told me so - because the updhot of it all is that Ron is going to be packing up and moving to Florida to be Tim's offensive coordinator. They'll be great together, I know. In the meantime, the Bennington kids have done such a great job of running the Double-Wing the past few years, and the community has come to like it so much, that it would be a shame to see them running anything else.
Andy Bulfer, who has been having good success running the Double-Wing at Tucker Creek Middle School in Havelock, North Carolina (his team averaged 50 points a game last year) wrote to tell me that he has just been appointed head JV coach at the local high school - and the head guy is going to let him run the Double-Wing. He is already working with the kids, and expects a turnout of about 80 or so - a lot of them Marine kids, with Cherry Point Air Base nearby.
How'd you like to have to replay the fourth quarter of the championship game - the one you pulled out in the final seconds - because somebody lost the results? Or would you be willing to accept someone expert's "projected" game result, based on how you played in the first half? It may seem far-fetched, but something akin to it has happened to 50 Advanced Placement students at Cottonwood High in Salt Lake City, whose AP tests arrived damaged - or not at all - at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, which administers the test. (Satisfactory scores on Advanced Placement tests, usually taken following intensive, semester-long class preparation, enable students to take advanced college classes while bypassing required ones.) The slip-up seems to be a matter between FedEx and Educational Testing Service, but regardless of who is at fault, the kids involved are SOL: Educational Testing Service has made them an offer of (1) allowing them to retake the tests (obviously, not identical to the ones that were lost or damaged) at no charge; (2) refunding their money; or (3) accepting a projected score based on the portion of the test ETS has received. Meanwhile, many of the kids have already registered at colleges, and, to their dismay, have had to sign up for entry-level classes. Just last month, 695 SATs sent from high schools in the Torrance, California area by FedEx overnight service never made it to ETS in Princeton. Those students must now retake the exams.
July 23- San Francisco defensive end Charles Haley has no problems with the 49ers' going after troublemaker (I can't stand the pop word "troubled") Lawrence Phillips, whose 1,000 yards rushing in the NFL Europe appears to have expunged from his record a laundry list of "troubles", including the fact that he once dragged a woman down several flights of stairs. "There's nothing wrong with Lawrence," Haley is quoted as having said, apparently with a straight face. "Everybody should get a second chance, a third chance and maybe even a fourth chance." Still on the subject of second, third and fourth chances, it would be interesting to find out what happened to that young woman who bounced down the stairs, a basketball player at the University of Nebraska who made the mistake of breaking off with Mr. Phillips.
Just when you thought you had problems - Sean Elliott , a superb athlete and a member of the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs, has been diagnosed with a kidney disorder that requires a transplant in order to avoid dialysis. He joins the list of tens of thousands of people around the country with similar hopes of finding an acceptable donor. Two coaching associates of my acquaintance, Adam Craven, of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia and Clarence Watts, of Abington, Pennsylvania have been in the same situation, and life on dialysis can be really rough.
Team not paying you what you've got coming? Then buy the team. That's what Mario Lemieux is trying to do. It's not quite that simple, but Lemieux, who is owed $33 million by a bankrupt Pittsburgh Penguins franchise, has agreed to convert $20 million of that into a share of team ownership. Lemieux, already a sports idol in Pittsburgh, is now seen as the savior of the town's hockey, as he scrambles around the country attempting to raise the additional $50 million necessary to keep the team in Pittsburgh. Before Lemieux came to Pittsburgh, as an 18-year-old French Canadian who didn't speak a word of English, the Penguins were a sorry lot. After his arrival, though, they won back-to-back Stanley Cups (1990-91 and 1991-92) and he won six NHL scoring titles. Part of the Penguins' financial problems resulted from the seven-year, $42 million contract the team gave him in 1992, and when the team ran into difficulty coming up with the money, Lemieux agreed on several occasions to defer the money. Finally, in 1998, after Lemieux had retired - he was diagnosed in 1993 with Hodgkins disease, a cancer of the lymph glands which he seems to have beaten - the team stopped making salary payments to him, and filed for bankruptcy. Lemieux was its largest creditor. Rather than accept any of the deals offered him, such as settling for 40 cents on the dollar, Lemieux and his advisors came up with the ownership idea. Within days of a bankruptcy judge's approval of the plan, excited Pittsburgh fans bought up hundreds of season tickets. Even if things work out, though, Lemieux's job will be a difficult one - so badly in need of a big network TV contract is the NHL that only six of its 27 teams made money last year. (People who are still so giddy about the Women's World Cup win as to suggest a women's professional soccer league would do well to make note of that.)
July 22- Those who insist on saying the Double-Wing is a "small-school" offense might want to read this: thanks to Jack Reed, coach and author of several books on coaching, for sending me a story from the Contra Costa Times about the 34th Annual Times-United Cerebral Palsy All-Star game between teams from Contra Costa and Alameda Counties, two populous counties in Northern California's East Bay area. I mentioned some time ago that Coach Tim Murphy, on the strength of the job he has done at Ygnacio Valley High, was chosen to coach the Contra Costa All-Stars, and that he - being a man with stones - planned to run the Double-Wing. Contra Costa, which had won only once in the last seven games, had gone two years without a win, and Tim evidently had a bit of a struggle at first, convincing the kids, especially his runners, that the offense was going to work. "They didn't trust the offense at first because there were so many blockers in front of them. I took them in to watch some of Ygnacio Valley's game film, and I got them to believe. It took until Tuesday or Wednesday of this week before they said, 'OK Coach.'" Okay, indeed. The game is usually close, Jack Reed tells me. Not this year. Contra Costa rolled up 333 yards rushing on 48 carries, routing Alameda 35-7, Alameda's only score coming in the final minute of play. Terrell Roberts of El Cerrito High scored three touchdowns and rushed for 82 yards, 80 of them in the first half. Ronshay Jenkins of DeAnza High rushed for one touchdown and 115 yards, while Travis Vandevoir of Clayton Valley rushed for 58 yards on seven carries and Ygnacio Valley's Walter Olsen ran for 41 yards and caught a TD pass from Vince Padilla of USA Today's National Champion De La Salle. Those who have observed how ineffectively offenses normally perform in All-Star games, and how seldom All-Star coaches are able to put together any kind of a running game, have to respect the job Coach Murphy was able to do in just one week.
If you've ever wondered what's wrong with the sports segment of your local TV station's news-weather-sports show, check this out: KGW-TV, Portland's NBC affiliate station, gives its sports anchor exactly 1-1/2 (that's right - one and one half) minutes of time in its 5 PM to 6 PM news block. And KGW is considered to be one of the local leaders in sports coverage. Perhaps you've waited for an important score, and wondered why, instead, you see a lot of freak stuff ("there's a new kid on the Central High wrestling team, and her name's Wendy"), feel-good stuff ("and the champions paid a visit to the White House today, where President and Mrs. Clinton..."), doofus "highlights" ("and wait'll you see what happens to a guy who tries jumping across Lake Michigan on a motorcycle"), self-promotion ("we visited East High to present our 'athlete of the month' award at a special assembly...") and banter with the other talking heads ("So, Vince...I guess the Lakers were in town tonight?"). There's a reason, and if you're a hard-core sports guy, you're not going to like it: they really don't care about you. Instead, they're trying real hard to get "non-sports" viewers to take an interest in the sports show - all 1-1/2 minutes of it - because there seems to be a feeling among the decision-makers that people like you don't care about local sport shows. Know how they "know" that ? Because you don't call and complain. No kidding. If they don't get calls, they figure people don't care. Now, I ask you- how many of you would know how to call and complain to your local TV station at 11:25 at night, when their main switchboard has been closed since 5 o'clock? (And have you ever tried calling a major network on a Saturday, to complain about the college football game that the people in New York have decided to show you? You might as well try calling the Kremlin.) I would suggest that part of the reason why there is a lack of interest in local sports is that the cable networks can do sports so much better. But another reason may be that they have their logic reversed: they figure that because people aren't interested, they can keep the sports short and stupid; maybe, people aren't interested because the sports shows are so short and stupid.
I had an interesting conversation with Coach Rick Desotell, offensive coordinator at Lutheran Northwest High in Rochester Hills, Michigan. He stepped into a program that was 1-9 in 1997: it "racked up" only five first downs all season, and its only win came as a result of a forfeit, when an opponent was later found to have used an ineligible player. Progress is coming slowly, but it is coming: in 1998, Lutheran Northwest won a total of three games and played several others close. In the process, they broke every school offensive record. Coach Desotell told me about running into an opposing coach during the off-season, who boasted, "we knew every play you were running." Evidently that knowledge didn't do them a lot of good, because Lutheran Northwest beat them by more than 30 points.
FYI: "silly point" and "short-square leg" are positions in cricket.
July 21- In what sport would you play a position called "silly point?" Or "short-square leg?"
They're not fooling the little kids. My seven-year-old grandson Will's baseball season just ended, and his team finished second. And then an interesting thing happened - only the first two teams got trophies. My daughter said that Will, who's been playing all the sports and collecting all the routine everybody-gets-one trophies at the end of every season, was really excited. "Wow!" he said, "this is the first trophy I've ever had to work for!" Yeah, Will - great for you. But what about those poor kids who finished third and didn't get a trophy? How do you think they feel about themselves? Makes you wonder if trophy manufacturers are behind all this self-esteem stuff.
The Yankees and the Twins, between them, will earn some $66 million in local TV money this year. The problem is, $60 million of that will go to the Yankees, playing in the nation's largest TV market. And since there is no requirement that baseball teams share local TV or radio moneys, that would seem to give the Yankees a heavy advantage when it comes time to bid for free-agent talent. It does. And pleas for revenue-sharing from the "small-market" franchises such as Milwaukee and Pittsburgh are scoffed at by the "large-market" franchises such as New York and L.A. Their argument is, "It's our money. We earned it. Why should we have to share it with you?" The argument of the small-market teams is - or ought to be - "You need us to to help you make all that money. If we don't show up, you've got no show." I think of this conflict when I see "elite" high schools, especially their basketball programs, receiving the largesse of certain shoe companies - free shoes, nice uniforms and gear, trips to tournaments in exotic places. It is dishonest of state associations to pretend that wealthy, doting parents won't move the family in order to get their kids into programs like that. I tend to side with the Milwaukees and Pittsburghs of the world, and think that if I were one of the have-nots that those "elite" high schools depended on to fill out their schedule, I would begin asking them for a guarantee.
More than 30 per cent of the babies born in the US are born out of wedlock. That's likely to mean a full one-third of our kids growing up without a man in the house. A real man. One who cared enough to marry their mother and look out for her and them. Kathleen Parker's July 14 column points out that marriage is no longer aspired to by large numbers of young Americans, and the reason is, they're afraid they won't be "happy." Most kids nowadays learn very early that "nothing lasts, not even families, and that the solution to problems lies just beyond the exit." She goes on to ask where we ever came up with this "happiness" garbage, anyhow. "Like most things of value," she writes, "marital happiness is earned, mostly through hard work and self-sacrfice...the rule in marriage shouldn't be: I want to be happy in my marriage. Rather, it should be: I want to make my spouse happy in our marriage." There is value, she writes, in placing the marriage - the family, the common good, the higher goal - above one's individual wants and desires. (Sound like asking a kid to put the team ahead of himself?)
July 20- Bill Bradley, former All-American basketball player from Princeton, former starter for the New York Knick's championship teams of 69-70, 71-72, 72-73, former Senator from New Jersey and currently a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, has a good lesson for your kids: "My first year (at Princeton) was not easy - I didn't know if I was going to make it. And what happened is that I went back and drew on the phrase of the old coach at basketball camp who said, 'Remember, if you're not out practicing, somebody else is...and if you have equal ability, he's going to win.' So I spent more time studying."
As part of its participation in last September's Folsom Street Fair, held annually in San Francisco and called "the world's biggest leather event," Anheuser-Busch, brewer of Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob, Busch, etc, created an ad showing a bottle of Bud Light criss-crossed with leather straps, with a leather cap on top. Coors displays pink triangles in ads that it runs in certain publications. A glass of Miller beer, in similar publications, is rainbow-colored. Maybe you've seen the Bud Light ad showing two men holding hands, accompanied by the slogan "Be yourself and make it a Bud Light." Can't say that I have. The nation's three largest brewers are not alone in their blatant appeals to the gay community, according to Monday's Wall Street Journal. A Subaru commercial shows two cars with vanity license plates, one reading XENA LVR (The TV show, "Xena: Warrior Princess" is a favorite of lesbians), the other reading "P-TOWNIE" (a reference to Provncetown, Massachusetts, a "gay mecca" on Cape Cod). So aggressive is the competition to market products to gays that Anheuser-Busch recently ousted Miller as sponsor of the "International Gay Rodeo Association." I am not making this up. Scott Barnes, of Denver, just sent me an article about the recent Gay Finals Rodeo, one of the events of which was "Goat Milking."
I sat in on a coaches' meeting last night at which our AD went over the final draft of our new athletic policy. Some of it is pretty tough - a kid who is suspended from school for any reason will automatically miss 20 per cent of the season (2 games in a 10-game football season, 4 games in a 20-game basketball season). But there is one section which any coach should applaud, especially one who lives in a community where people feel free to call school board members direcly any time they have a gripe with their kid's coach - it's calledthe "grievance procedure for parent concerns"
"1. The student will discuss the concern with the coach.
"2. The parent-guardian and the child will discuss the concern with the coach, if the coach and the student were not able to resolve the concern.
"3. The parent/guardian will contact the athletic director to discuss the concern, if the meeting with the coach did not resolve the concern.
"4. The parent/guardian will contact the principal, etc.
"5. The parent/guardian will contact the assistant superintendent for consideration by the board, etc.
"When stating your concern to a coach, athletic director, principal, district administrator or board member, they will ask you to explain where you are in the grievance process. If you have not followed procedure, they will ask you to go back to the proper step."
July 19- If you are not a golf fan, you missed a classic example Sunday of how a golfer - and, yes, a football coach as well - can hurt himself by not employing a strategy that takes into account the score and the time remaining. Jean Van de Velde, a relatively unknown 33-year-old French pro, led by five strokes going into the final round of the British Open, one of golf's four "Majors" (along with the US Open, the Masters and the PGA), and possibly the one best-known worldwide. And even after signs of collapse during Sunday's round, he managed to keep his game steady and lead by three strokes as he teed off on the final hole. In football terms, it was time to take a knee. He had it won. He could practically have played with a croquet mallet and won, but instead he chose to pull out his driver and play spectacular golf. He got away with it on his drive, and in continuing to go for the glory with his second shot, still seemed to be life's lucky golfer, as his shot hit a fence, then caromed off the rocky wall of a creek, bouncing back up into the grass short of the creek. But his third shot went into the creek, and after taking a penalty stroke and finally scrambling onto the green, only a clutch putt enabled him to salvage a three-way tie for the lead. He lost in a four-hole playoff. The whole collapse reminded me of an inexperienced football coach holding a comfortable lead late in the game, needing only to control the ball and the clock, who decides to put a little icing on the cake by putting it up - and throws an interception. Another great lesson in competing was provided by Australian golfer Craig Parry, who missed a tough putt near the end and, evidently figuring he'd lost any hope of catching Van de Velde, got a little careless and also missed the short tap-in that followed. He might have made the playoff, too.
The article in my local paper said only that Cal State-Northridge head coach Ron Ponciano had been let go. In mid-July. Then, thanks to Coach John Torres, I received a copy of an article by Vincent Bonsignore in the Los Angeles Daily News entitled, "Trust Has to Go Both Ways." Evidently, football - and its many scholarships - may be getting in the way of gender equity at CSUN:
Cal State Northridge asks us to trust its judgment.
Interim president Louanne Kennedy said she had no choice but to fire football coach Ron Ponciano on Friday. Kennedy said when we see the report investigators presented to her, then examine the full scope of Ponciano's infractions, we'll agree with her that Ponciano had to go.
"Absolutely," Kennedy said.
Of course, the report wasn't ready for public consumption Friday, so we'll just have to take her word for it. But Kennedy promises that in two weeks, when the report is released, we'll see the same thing she saw. Even new athletic director Dick Dull pleads for our faith. "I think the process needs to be completed," Dull said. "It makes it more difficult, but all I'm saying is, `Give us a little more time and then decide.' "
Kennedy and Dull are asking for too much. History isn't on CSUN's side and a doubting public isn't about to show confidence just because Kennedy and Dull ask nicely.
All we know is, two loyal, popular coaches are out of jobs -- don't forget offensive coordinator Rob Phenicie stepped down last week -- and not one piece of evidence has been offered to justify their ousters. Only the word of a university that's made hollow promises and Bozo-ish blunders time and again.
That makes it so much easier to believe Ponciano, who seemed anything but guilty as he defended himself Friday after he was told he was no longer wanted. If Ponciano is as corrupt as Kennedy claims he is, if his actions are so deplorable that Northridge fired him before the investigation was completed, then why didn't he just accept the terms of the buyout he was offered and walk away with his dignity intact? Because Ponciano insists he is innocent, and says he will be proven so in due time. The next step is petitioning the university for reconsideration -- "An exercise in futility," said Ponciano's lawyer, John Jamgotchian. Beyond that, expect a lawsuit and a messy court battle.
"I think it's inevitable," Ponciano said. "That final report -- bring it on." Does that sound like a guilty man?
The obvious question is why is CSUN doing this? If Ponciano is innocent as he claims, then why did Kennedy choose to believe the contents of an anonymous letter and the findings of an inexperienced investigator at whom Ponciano scoffs?
It seems conspicuous that nobody from the CSUN administration ever once stood up for Ponciano during the investigation. In nearly every instance, colleges publicly at least back coaches under investigation. The administration's pointed lack of support differed greatly from Ponciano's friends in the football program, most of whom defended Ponciano throughout and were there for him Friday.
Ponciano believes the anonymous letter came from the inside. Only two coaches were absent at Ponciano's press conference -- Keith Borges and Craig Wall. Borges is known to have been angry at former quarterback Aaron Flower's appointment as quarterbacks coach. Wall, the defensive coordinator, had most of his responsibility stripped by Ponciano midway through last season when the defense struggled.
From the outset, there seemed to be an intent to prove Ponciano's guilt rather than his innocence. Lead investigator Peter Dinauer has been described as pushy, arrogant and out of line by more than one person during the probe. Carrol Sessa, a travel agent questioned about Ponciano allegedly purchasing a plane ticket for a recruit, said Dinauer's tactics were "Gestapo-like." "He kept saying, `This fellow did that, right?' Or `That person did this, right?' He was outrageous," said Sessa, who insists Ponciano never purchased a plane ticket for the recruit. She told Dinauer that all three times he called.
Dinauer's actions hardly paint the picture of somebody who's seeking the truth, unless it's the truth as HE wants it to be. "They were looking for a reason to get me," Ponciano said. But why?
"I'm sure everybody has their ideas of why," said Ponciano, obviously alluding to speculation that some at CSUN are looking for cause to dismantle the football program. There are compelling reasons to do just that. A costly stadium issue looms and the school must get in compliance of an agreement with Cal-NOW regarding gender equity. It's easier to kill a program that looks like its spinning out of control. Again, Kennedy -- who has no experience with athletics -- asks us to trust her. She guaranteed Friday that CSUN will play football in 2000. Of course, she won't be around to make good on her word. Kennedy's tenure ends a year from now.
20,500 fans - the largest crowd ever to attend a regular-season American football game in Europe - turned out in Braunschweig, Germany to watch the Braunschweig Lions play the Cologne Crocodiles. In all fairness, it should be pointed out that the ticket included a free concert afterward, but, hey - here in the US, minor league baseball teams don't apologize for having a different promotion every night. ("Don't forget, next Friday is Guaranteed Health and Happiness Night," I once heard a comedian say.)
July 17- As all sorts of politicians and so-called sports reporters continue to applaud the recent Women's World Cup win as a "victory for Title IX," it is important that you know what is being done to our country and its young males by the enforcement of a law designed to provide athletic opportuntiies for women. In an article in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, Jessica Gavora and Kimberly Schuld pointed out some of the idiocy of Title IX's enforcement. First of all, in order to achieve "gender equity," somone had to define exactly what that laudable goal really means. Unfortunately for us, there are plenty of social tinkerers in Washington who have the time to do just that, and as you may or may not know, they have interpreted "gender equity" as meaning that if a college's student body is 50 per cent female, then so must be 50 per cent of its scholarship athletes. Forget about interest or proficiency. So if a school only offered football as a scholarship sport, and had 60 football players on scholarship, full Title IX compliance would require it to provide 60 athletic scholarships for females. Whether or not there were 60 females in the school interested in participating. We're not talking about providing them with a team; we're talking about scholarships. And worst of all, guess where the money will come from to provide those scholarships, in non-revenue-producing sports such as volleyball, crew, and women's soccer? If you guessed football, you may qualify as a feminist. As an example of Title IX's lunacy, authors Gavora and Schuld point to Central Connecticut State, which in just four years has increased the percentage of its athletes who are women from 29% to 49%. Pretty good, but not enough - you see, women currently make up 51% of all undergraduates! So Central Connecticut has to locate 20 more female athletes ("Hey, you look like you could float. Wanna play water polo? Wanna row?"). Either that or, in the likely event that its heroic efforts of the last four years have left it just plain maxxed out, Central Connecticut will just have to cut back on its male athletes. Probably even eliminate a sport. No problem. It's only men. Similar radical surgery has already happened at colleges all over the US, including Providence College (with a 57% female student body), whose Big East championship baseball team was just eliminated, along with men's tennis and golf. Miami of Ohio recently dropped wrestling, men's soccer and men's tennis. Boston College dropped lacrosse, water polo and wrestling. Between 1985 and 1997, according to the General Accounting Office, opportunities for women to participate in collegiate varsity sports increased 16%; unfortunately, during that same time similar opportunities for men decreased 12%. The Independent Women's Forum, which opposes elimination of men's programs, has documented the loss of more than 350 of them since 1992. Women increasingly call for reductions in scholarships for (ugh!) football. Where will it stop? Give credit to authors Gavora and Schuld, who represent the Independent Women's Forum's Play Fair Project: despite the party line being fed us by our PC sports pages, not all American women think that the appropriate remedy for one form of discrimination is to replace it with another. Women may be females, but they are mothers, too - and half their children (okay, okay - 49.7 per cent of them) are boys.
July 16- I am indebted to Houstonian Jon Walk for the following: " You forgot Houston Christian made it to their state championship game in Texas' TAPPS 3A. They lost to Arlington Grace Preparatory, coached by former Houston Oilers and Los Angeles Rams tight end Mike Barber, by a score of 35-17." Houston Christian was coached by Ted "Rock" Knapp, a devoted Double-Wing enthusiast whom I first met at my '98 Houston clinic.
Sports, like politics, is local. It's amazing how often I'll visit a city and find a story all over its sports pages that barely made it into my local paper. If you like to see what's hot in other cities, remember who told you about this web site < www.Sportspages.com > It may be the best thing that ever happened to a sports fan. Instead of your having to jump around from one sports page - or one columnist - to another, this site has organized links to newspapers, radio and TV stations, and sports organzations, and has organized them by region, by sport, by conference. Rich Johnson, a former Portlander, runs the site out of New York, and as a special service to subscribers, every day he and his staff cull the nation's sports pages for stories of interest. It is awesome.
Donna DeVarona (pardon me if I misspell, but I'm not interested) was on MSNBC recently, saying colleges spend too much money on football, and that they ought to take the money from football and spend it on women's sports. Listen. Donna Devarona was a swimmer. A very good swimmer. Swimming is a great sport. But it doesn't pay the bills. Donna Devarona never put a dollar in any college sports program's cash register. People who play non-revenue sports should be grateful for football and men's basketball, because without them there would be no non-revenue sports. I don't want to call them "minor" sports because that's not PC, but this is a classic case of people having a goose that lays golden eggs, and wanting to cut the goose open to get more eggs. Why do people have so much trouble understanding something that was so easy for a blind Greek named Aesop to understand more than 2,500 years ago?
If you build it, they will come: without putting anyone on the spot by naming him, a Double-Wing coach at a small school back East is expecting a turnout of 50 boys when they start in early August. There are only 125 boys in his entire school, but the football program has been increasingly successful over the past few years. Meanwhile, the soccer coach is not sure whether he will have enough boys to field a team.
It's bad enough, but it's a fact, that high schools nowadays have to have security guards patrolling their halls and grounds. But who's patrolling the security guards? In Los Angeles last week, an investigation by John Torres, assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (and Double Wing coach) resulted in the arrest of a 22-year-old Marshall High School security guard for selling a sawed-off shotgun to a student. Agent Torres' investigation found that the security guard was a member of a prominent Asian street gang, a fact of which school officials were unaware when they hired him.
It was beautiful to see the respect shown to Ted Williams at baseball's All-Star game, not only by fans, but by the players, who frequently display little knowledge of or respect for the people who made the game. Williams himself, 80 years old and hobbled by a stroke, now devotes much of his time to advancing the cause of restoring official recognition to Shoeless Joe Jackson, a player whose accomplishments and ability he has come to respect. Williams enjoyed an especially heart-warming reception from the Boston fans, with whom he had an on-again, off-again relationship during his long career with the Red Sox. Now, as Mainer Jack Tourtillotte says, New Englanders would follow Ted Williams out of the Union, if that's where he wanted them to go.
July 15 - I heard from one of my former players from Finland, Timo Jokela, asking for help. I had to turn him down. That's not something you want to do to a friend, or a former player who needs help. The problem is, Timo is still playing, and his team is getting ready to play Steve Fickert's Seinäjoki Crocodiles, and their Double-Wing. Guess what he wanted to know. I told him (1) I don't have the answer to stopping the Double-Wing; if you have better people, you can stuff any offense with a good base defensive scheme, but this year I will be facing two Double-Wing teams where I have coached previously, and I am not looking forward to it; (2) If I did have the answer, my sense of loyalty to other Double Wing coaches would prevent me from letting it out. There are enough good defensive coordinators working on this problem right now. Our trick is to be a moving target. For example, I thought we had a pretty good scheme last year when we got ready to play Ridgefield, where I introduced the Double-Wing back in 1990. It looked pretty good until the fourth series, when my buddy Ozzie - Art Osmundson - threw an unbalanced set on us and we couldn't adjust. You can only do so much in one week with a gimmick defense - and we had the advantage of getting a decent look from our scout team offense. (I must confess to enormous pride in the fact that Timo, who had never even seen a game of football when I first met him, is now in his 10th year as a player.)
This from Dick Morris, in the Chicago Tribune: "Do you think we're all trying a little too hard when it comes to this Women's World Cup thing? We seem to be telling ourselves that if we blow it up big enough, women's soccer eventually will become big. It will either succeed or fail based on its own merits, not because someone in a corporate boardroom is pushing it, hoping to sell more athletic shoes. That Nike has decreed it to be important doesn't mean it is. What we have here is Madison Avenue hawking a new product, which is fine, but let's accept it for what it is at the moment. It's the free sample at the grocery store. For now, it tastes great."
By the way, soccer's bizarre way of settling ties has to do with a real cultural difference between Americans and Europeans. They don't mind games that end in ties. We HATE them. So for years, they never had a provision for ending tie games. Then somebody came up with the "Shootout." And anybody who thinks it's peculiar that two teams, playing a team game, can play two hours to a standstill and then settle their contest with a series of one-on-one drills, had better take a closer look at what the NFL has allowed kicking specialists to do to its game. How many times is an otherwise great game decided by an anticlimactic last-second field goal? Excitement? Field goal kickers miss about as often as female goalies make saves in a shootout. How much of the offensive stategy of a last-minute drive is totally dedicated to getting into position to make a field goal? How many times is the collective effort of great athletes, playing as a team, nullified by one kick by a guy who wears a junior high helmet and shoulder pads? How much of the offensive futility of the NFL game is the fault of coaches' knowing that they have a guy who can bang it in from 50 yards away? How can we preach the merits of a team sport and then put the outcome in the hands of a guy who doesn't even practice with the team? (For just one of the dangers of keeping specialists around, read on.)
It is all well and good that girls have taken the sword of Title IX and begun to slay the evil dragon of male domination of sports. It is quite another when they decide they want to play football. Ask Fred Goldsmith, former coach at Duke. I am unsure of the particulars, other than the fact that four or five years ago, Coach Goldsmith allowed a woman to try out as a placekicker. I do remember his saying some complimentary things about her kicking. (What was he going to say? He's a gentleman. Besides, she really wasn't bad.) But she evidently wasn't the best kicker Duke had, and she evidently was cut. And now her Title IX discrimination suit against Duke and Coach Goldsmith goes forward. Just another reason why I will never have a kicker on my team who isn't also a football player - as in offense or defense. Even if she is a former member of the USA Women's World Cup soccer team.
July 14- Yep, we sure are proud of our girls. And are they ever role models for our young girls. Especially Briana Scurry. Scurry, goal keeper of the Women's World Cup Soccer Team - the Team That Finally Justified Title IX (never mind all the potential Olympic Gold Medalist wrestlers - males - who never got to wrestle because their sport was eliminated to satisfy Title IX), admitted that she intentionally cheated by illegally moving out of her goal and cutting down on the shooting angle of a Chinese shooter in making the save that assured the US of its win. "Everybody does it," she said afterwards, unapologetically. "It's only cheating if you get caught." Actually, Ms. Scurry, I would be happy to introduce you to hundreds of football coaches who DON'T do it. Not because they might get caught. Simply because it's WRONG. I'm still waiting to see if any sports reporters will jump on this one - or will they continue to justify banning some people for steroid use - on the grounds that it gives them an unfair edge - while glorifying someone who admitted right after a game that she cheated and got away with it? ("It's only using steroids if you don't get caught.")
This came in yesterday's mail- Hugh- here's a great story for you - All my life I was a baseball kid. I played non stop. As I was going from Little League to Pony my dad noticed the Pony game was a little rough (pick offs and you could run into the catcher back then) I was a catcher and my dad told me it would probably be in my best interest to play football to get ready for baseball (bet you never heard that one before) It was going to be rough also as I was 6'0 tall and weighed over 160 pounds as a 12 year old. I had to get down to 125 lbs to play on the Pop Warner team. I hated football. Making weight each week just about killed me. I got picked on because I was big and could not hit. We ran because I was lame and could not figure out a snap count, we did updowns because I would block the wrong guy. In bull in the ring (remember that drill?) I would get killed by most of the team. I hated football. But an assistant coach told me one day after practice that one day it would all click for me and I would be a great player one day. When a summer baseball league conflicted with Pop Warner I quit the football team. The next year in 8th grade I was 6'2 and 260 lbs. Our Junior High coach was always bugging me to come out for the team (that was back before Prop 13 took all tackle football out of our junior highs in California) I transferred from our public school to a private school and played 4 years of football went to college and played. Now I am the head coach of my alma mater and a football junkie who's football career started because he was getting ready to play baseball.
Football saved my life. I've learned great lessons from great men and now I passing those lessons on to my players. I struggle with my weight every day and I have many fat kids on my team because I understand them. Most of the high school coaches cry that we have no big kids for our line, but are we running them off at an early age. Those fat kids can be made into great football players if we take the time as coaches to coach them up. How come we will work with the kid who comes from a broken marriage or the kid who is not that bright but we will run off a fat kid because he's "lazy". If I ran off all my fat kids as freshman I would not have had 3 linemen in division 1 college and in the NFL. The one kid in the NFL was the fattest, laziest kid around as a freshman. He could not finish a lap without walking; now he's getting paid to play football.
I work in a Christian high school where all the parents baby their kids. I usually get 1 kid each year who has ever played tackle football before. The key to them (parents) is to tell them your expectations about their son. The biggest thing I tell all my parents is "I will not let your son quit" he may run as slow as possible but he will not walk that lap. He may never see the field but he will make a career as a practice player. Football is such a great sport that kids can make a reputation as a practice player. In all other sports you can say I whooped you up in practice and it means nothing, but in football I can say "I stuck you" and it means something. Those practice kids become legends and have there own fan clubs who came to the game and every 4th quarter start the cheer "Put in Bobby, Put in Bobby, Put in Bobby..."
To see a player who has no ability or talent and never sees much playing time become a legend in his own school That is what makes the game of Football above all other sports (especially women's soccer)
This was my response: Well said. I couldn't agree with you more. I tell our coaches that we must never give up on the so-called fat kid, and never tease or taunt him about his size, his weight or his condition. We do cut him extra slack on physical exercizes, knowing that it is often downright painful for him to do the things that come painlessly and easily to most of the other kids. That's the kid, I tell them, who may some day be playing in the NFL. And who knows? He may come back here and donate us a weight room.
You are absolutely right about coaching kids up - I have never been in a situation where we could discard players. I think that some of the letters I get about fat kids are more expressions by youth coaches of frustration at overindulgent parents who won't let their kids grow up - and also at a society which more and more enables a kid to drop out.
Like you, I admire any kid who plays the game of football.
A Marine of my acquaintance scoffs at the notion that a sports figure can be rightly called a "hero." Nor, for that matter, does he consider someone who has been held captive by an enemy as a hero. He defines heroism, he told me, as the capacity to endure under extreme conditions, not just doing what is expected of you. When you have a choice- when you could cut and run, but you don't. Heroism, to him, involves having a choice - and making the heroic decision. I would also add that the choice involves the strong possibility of some personal sacrifice.
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I just finished reading all the papers that had accumulated at home during a two weeks' trip back East, and was saddened to learn of the deaths of two football greats. The first was Angelo Bertelli, Notre Dame's first Heisman Trophy winner, in 1943. Nicknamed the "Springfield Rifle" after the weapon of the same name made in his hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts, was the first of four Notre Dame quarterbacks to win the Heisman. The other three were Johnny Lujack, Paul Hornung and John Huarte. (Joe Theismann, despite allowing the Notre Dame sports information director to change the pronunciation of his name from THEES-man to THIGHS-man, the better to remind people of his candidacy, did not win it.)
The other great loss was that of Marion Motley, great fullback of the Cleveland Browns of the late 1940s and early 1950's, perhaps the greatest of pro football's dynasties. This is the guy who defined the modern fullback. He was 240 pounds, at a time when 220-pound linemen were commonplace, and he had a sprinter's speed. It was with Motley that Browns' coach Paul Brown developed and popularized the "draw" play that is now a standard feature of any passing team. Motley was 27 years old at the end of World War II, and with a family to support, had taken a job in a mill in his native Canton, Ohio. He had played only one year at Nevada prior to the War, and hadn't played enough service ball to be noticed by pro scouts, but Brown, who had coached against Motley at rival Massillon Ohio, remembered him well. "Motley became our greatest fullback ever," Brown would later write in his autbiography,"because not only was he a great runner, but also no one ever blocked better - and no one ever cared more about his team and whether it won or lost, no matter how many yards he gained or where he was asked to run...Marion's tremendous running ability also was what made or trap and draw plays so effective. When he ran off tackle, people seemed to fly off him in all directions. He possessed tremendous speed for a big man,and he could run away from liebackers and defensive backs when he got into the open - if he didn't trample them first. I've always believed that Motley could have gone into the Hall of Fame solely as a linebacker if we had used him only at that position. He was as good as our great ones." As we celebrate the 50th annversary of the first baseball All-Star game in which blacks played, I must point out that thanks to Paul Brown's signing of such gifted black football players as Marion Motley, Len Ford and Bill Willis, the Cleveland Browns were the first truly integrated team in all of professional sports. "I never considered football players black or white," Brown wrote, " nor did I keep or cut a player just because of his color. In our first meeting before training camp every year, I told the players that they made our teams only if they were good enough. I didn't care about a man's color or his ancestry; I just wanted to win football games with the best people possible."
July 13- The recent death of former astronaut Pete Conrad - killed in a motorcycle accident at the age of 69 - brings to mind the following exchange that took place years ago, and sent to me by Scott Barnes, a Denver coach:
Senator Metzenbaum (to Senator Glenn): "How can you run for the Senate when you've never held a real "job"?"
Senator Glenn: "I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps. I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions. My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different occasions. I was in the space program. It wasn't my checkbook; it was my Life on the line. It was not a 9 to 5 job where I took time off to take the daily cash receipts to the bank. I ask you to go with me ... as I went the other day ... to a Veterans Hospital and look those men with their mangled bodies in the eye and tell them they didn't hold a job. You go with me to the space program and go as I have gone to the widows and orphans of Ed White and Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee and you look those kids in the eye and tell them that their dad didn't hold a job. You go with me on Memorial Day coming up, and you stand in Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends than I'd like to remember - and you watch those waving flags, and you stand there, and you think about this nation, and you tell me that those people didn't have a job. I'll tell you, Howard Metzenbaum, you should be on your knees every day of your life thanking God that there were some men - SOME MEN - who held a job. And they required a dedication to purpose and a love of country and a dedication to duty that was more important than life itself. And their self-sacrifice is what made this country possible ... I HAVE HELD A JOB, HOWARD! What about you?"
Commenting on our changing language in the Yale Alumni Magazine, professor and novelist David Gelertner compared the words of naval officer Frederick Tobin to his crew working furiously on the ground beneath the blazing airship "Hindenburg" ("Navy men, stand fast!") to what a modern educator would say today: "Navy men, run away! But don't run any faster than you're confortable with. And while deserting your posts, repeat to yourselves: I am special!"
If someone has to rain on the parade (and speaking of parades, itsn't it awesome what a job American sports reporters can do when they put their real jobs aside for a few weeks and get out in front and twirl the batons?) I don't mind being the one: Women's soccer is NOT big elsewhere in the world. Soccer is. Women's soccer is NOT. My European soccer sources tell me that the Women's final was not even televised in England. The recent Women's World Cup was analogous to the 1948 Olympics, the first held after World War II, when the US kicked butt, largely because most other nations (including the Russians) were still getting back on their feet. It would be what the recent "World Cup of American Football" would have been like if we had sent our team of mostly Division II and Division III All-Stars, not to mention the Green Bay Packers. So much for "World Supremacy."
And for those of you who considered somewhat bizarre the sight of Brandi Chastain peeling off her shirt after the winning goal - does it explain anything if I tell you that she was wearing an all-new sports bra - which she helped Nike design - which will by sheer coincidence be introduced this month, to retail for $40 at a store near you? That she has stripped for Nike before - in their "Evolution of Skin" ads? That a Nike spokeswoman was quoted in today's Portland Oregonian as saying, "Officially, it's known as the Pullover Racerback. Unofficially, it's now known as Brandi's bra?" Anybody sense another "I'm going to Disneyland!" stunt? Oh, well. I'm not going to worry until my players start wanting to wear them.
July 12- In response to my article about fat kids these days, Bill Lawlor, a youth coach in suburban Chicago writes: "I found your comment about how fat the kids are these days very interesting. I just went to the Illinois Bill George (Youth League) Board meeting on Wednesday and that was a hot topic. When I played youth football in the early 80's, the highest weight class was 125 and if you had two or three kids over 120 you had a big team. A few years back they had to add a 140 and then two years ago a 150 team. Most of the coaches stated they are still turning away kids because they are 6th, 7th and 8th graders who are 160+. The really sad thing is that 90% of the kids are what we call "Jelly Rolls" and not tall, lean athletic kids. We have to deal with third graders playing up two or three classes, sometimes at 110 when they should be with their age group of 75 pounds. It is a joke...the parents want them playing with kids their own age, but are not willing to pull their little chubby hands off of the Nintendo joy stick and take the kids for a bike ride or go play catch. It is a sad and frustrating situation. Our board was thinking of having a new fundraiser involving how many pounds can we sweat off our fat kids in the sauna (Joke), rather then a 10 mile walkathon, which some of the heavy kids usually can't make all the way through. Anyway, next year the Bill George League is looking at a 125, 140, and and unlimited division for 7th and 8th graders. All to keep the parents happy in towns like Wheaton, Downers Grove and St. Charles (Average income aprox $300,000/yr) where there are plenty of spoiled, lazy, fat kids who want to wear a jersey on Saturday afternoons!
If 18-year-old Leon Smith, first-round draft choice of the Dallas Mavericks, makes a career of it in the NBA, some poor coaches could be looking at another 15 years or so of dealing with this kind of scene: at a recent camp, when assistant coach Donnie Nelson announced that someone's poor performance in shooting free throws meant that the entire team would have to run an additional set of sprints at the end of practice, young Mister Effort said, "Why don't you run it?" Giving the youngster the benefit of the doubt, Coach Nelson asked him to repeat himself. And when he did, Coach Nelson responded the way most coaches would, saying, "That's two more for you, Leon." At that, our newest role model tore off his practice jersey, threw it to the floor, and stalked out of the gym. Good luck disciplining him: the kid's contract is worth $1.8 million a year, and the most he can be fined is $1,000 per incident. This obviously was not the first time this kid lipped off to a coach, and it's easy to jump to conclusions and ask what kind of a high school coach would have prostituted himself to the point of tolerating this kind of insubordination, no matter how talented the kid; but it's quite possible that his high school coach has just been through his own personal hell, having to deal with a mouthy kid like this and all the stuff put in his head by AAU coaches, agents, shoe people and assorted other "advisors".
I had breakfast yesterday with Jim Sinnerud, a native Portlander who played a little ball at Stanford in the 1950's - where his freshman coach was a young graduate assistant named Homer Smith - and since then has taught and coached high school ball at such places as Jesuit High in Portland, Seattle Prep, Brophy Prep in Phoenix, and Creighton Prep in Omaha, where he currently teaches. Jim is a student of the game and a great teacher, and I always come away from a meeting with him, or an exchange of correspondene, with new insights into football, education, society in general, and life itself. Did I mention that Jim is also a Jesuit priest? As a member of the world-renowned teaching order, Jim's approach to education is not touchy-feely: "It is an act of love to hold kids to a standard." I laughed when he said that the first thing he does on the first day of school is to sit the students alphabetically - "just to let them know who's in charge." The second thing he does is to tell them there are only two places for book bags: (1) against the back wall, or (2) against another book bag that is against the back wall. (Ever notice how one kid will start to pack up when there's about three minutes left in class, and suddenly all the kids are doing it - and you're still trying to teach something in the midst of all that chaos? Imagine talking to your team after practice while they're busily unsnapping helmets, unwrapping tape, taking off shoulder pads, checking out scabs - think many of them are listening to you?) The third thing he does is to tell them that at a certain time they are going to hear a bell: no sense in their getting excited, though, because all it means is that from that point on, he is free to dismiss them. (I don't know about you but I would love to be King for a Day - or even principal - because I would deal with the many "teachers" I have observed over the years whose kids are milling around the classroom door the last five minutes of every period, waiting for the bell to ring. Many of these so-called "educators" are the same ones who love to sit in the faculty room and put down down athletes, coaches and sports. Shoot, on the practice field, we never have enough time.) Jim mentioned that he'd been working on a swap with Coach Mike Roark. Coach Roark, an assistant coach at Chapman University in California, has a great web site. It's devoted primarily to defense, and Coach Roark has access to lots and lots of playbooks. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out: http://www.letstalkdefense.com/
July 10- I don't know whether to celebrate or mourn, but today is the 25th anniversary of the first games played in the World Football League, an ill-fated venture that didn't make it through two complete seasons - a venture into which an awful lot of good men sank a lot of dreams and a lot of effort, and a few greedy little men sank precious little cash. To the former, I extend my best wishes. From time to time, I will post a few remembrances of my two years in the WFL.
My President made me feel warm all over when he was interviewed on TV at halftime of the Women's World Cup soccer game today and said, in response to a softball question lobbed at him by interviewer Robin Roberts, "In some ways, it's the biggest sporting event in the last decade." Right, Bill. And while we're on the subject of women's soccer, is anybody else tired of that phony Gatorade spot ("Anything you can do I can do better") in which Mia Hamm bests Michael Jordan in every imaginable athletic test? Are you kiddin' me? The problem is, such is the American intellect today that impressionable young girls (and many of their moms) will watch those commercials and actually believe that a woman, no matter how talented, can beat the man who is still perhaps the world's best athlete - in anything, let alone everything!
Speaking of Gatorade, Coach Bruce Eien wrote me to make sure I didn't leave "Almighty Gatorade" as he calls it, off the list of soft drinks that are contributing to youthful obesity. Actually, the so-called "Sports Drinks" have become a category all their own - stealth soft-drinks, masquerading as something that's actually good for kids. I mean, even if school officials do throw Coke and Pepsi out of their schools, how could they possibly deny their children access to sports drinks?
July 9- I had dinner last night with Frank Simonsen, veteran youth coach in Cape May, New Jersey, who laughed when I asked him about his practice facilities. It's not so much that he's been coaching kids in his area for over 20 years and still doesn't have a field to call his own: depending on the needs of the local schools, Frank often has to move from field to field - and notify the kids and their parents of the move - on short notice. What set him off was a recent expenditure of $84,000 by the local government - on a skateboard park! Maybe it's a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. Maybe it's simple bribery of the young Bart Simpson imitators. Frank didn't make any friends among the local politicos when he suggested that maybe the way for his kids to get a field all their own would be to go into town as a group, block sidewalks, endanger elderly pedestrians, intefere with traffic, shout profanities and vulgarities, and spray-paint graffiti on every flat surface in sight.
Ever noticed how many fat kids there are nowadays? I'm talking about 10-year-olds and younger, kids who used to be so active that they never seemed to sit still long enough to get a whole meal in them. I can remember being told I couldn't go back out and play baseball - or football, or whatever - until I finished something on my plate that I didn't like. There really are a lot of fat kids these days, and it's not all due to lack of exercise brought on by Nintendo, TV and overindulgent parents. Check this out: Last year, American kids drank an average of 64 gallons of soda (or "pop" or whatever it's called where you live) per capita! That's triple what the figure was 20 years ago, in 1978! Back then, they drank twice as much milk as soda; now, the ratio has been reversed! If you're scoring at home, 64 gallons a year per capita works out to more than 2 12-ounce cans a day for every kid in America; allowing for the ones who for various reasons don't drink any soft drinks, that means some of them are really slammin' 'em down! As people who work with young kids, we can't ignore those figures, because the average 12-ounce can of soft drink contains seven teaspoons of sugar, and enough caffeine that a few cans can produce a hyperactivity identical to attention deficit disorder. And I'm sure that most of you who teach have seen kids guzzle a couple of cans of pop before school even starts. And where did they get it? Why, from vending machines in the school itself - vending machines put there by by one of the cola giants in return for some sort of payment to the school. Many schools have become as addicted to the profits from the vending machines as any high school freshman is to the product they vend. It may look like free money to the school administrators, but recently, when schools in Colorado Springs failed to meet the sales targets stipulated in a vending contract their district negotiated with Coca-Cola, their principals were notified in writing that they had to work harder to push the stuff! Welcome to the world of sales quotas, fellas! Oh well, it's only a matter of time before the trial lawyers save us all by bringing a class-action suit on behalf of Americans everywhere, and the soft-drink industry is forced to cough up billions for "education" programs (and fees for the trial lawyers) designed to convince teenagers that soda is bad for them - those billions to be paid for by heavy taxes on soft drinks. Soon, a single can of soda will wind up costing as much as a pack of cigarettes, leading inevitably to large-scale smuggling of Coke and Pepsi from elsewhere in the world (where it still sells at a normal price) by gangs of English, French and Germans; soon, bootleg soda pop deals will be made out of the trunks of automobiles in school parking lots, Brinks guards will accompany soft drink trucks, and teen gangs, armed to the teeth with weapons bought by their soda pop profits, will be fighting over territories. Some adventuresome souls will try to circumvent the soft drink tax by brewing root beer at home, and poisoning deaths will result. And the President, recognizing opportunity in this crisis, will go on national television to declare unconditional war on illegal sales of soft drinks ("it's for our children") and announce a plan to put 100,000 soda police on the streets of America by the New Millennium.
July 8- Louisiana's legislature has just done its high school kids a big favor, passing a law requiring students to address teachers as "sir" and "ma'am," as in "yes sir... no sir...yes ma'am...no ma'am." Use of courtesy titles (Mr., Mrs. or that godawful "Ms.") will also be required. Not much will change on the football fields, where most football coaches I know have long gone by the well-earned courtesy title of "Coach." And I assume their youth soccer coaches will still insist that kids call them by their first name or some pet nickname. Having grown up in the East, where calling somebody by his last name was nearly the same thing as asking him to step outside, I have never been able to accept the crude and fairly commonplace Northwest practice of kids' addressing teachers by last name only - and teachers' allowing it. I'm reminded of a story about the great Paul Brown, a firm believer in the importance of character and a stickler for proper conduct: one day, a highly-rated draft choice was shown into Coach Brown's office; he was rather scruffy and wore only a tee-shirt (Coach Brown coached games in a shirt and tie), and he stood in the doorway and asked, "You Brown?" Coach Brown, one of the pioneers of the science of team-building, recognizing immediately a player who wouldn't easily fit into the Browns' organization, supposedly replied icily, "There's been a mistake. You've just been traded." And that was that.
As coaches, we are in a unique position to pass along good work habits to kids, especially those who might think that our schools' "everybody has a right to express themselves" attitude is shared universally by people in power. Do them a big favor, and at least let them know that there is a place to put the teenage antics and costumes aside, for the sake of their futures. Consider this recent letter to Newsweek magazine by Katherine I. Bandujo, of Midlothian, Virginia: "As a human-resources manager, I have chosen not to hire many bright, well-trained men and women, black and white, because they showed up for the interview looking like they just rolled out of bed for an 8 a.m. class. Their appearance signalled a complete lack of understanding of a professional workplace setting, and their "take me as I am " attitude was a red flag for potential problems of teamwork and interpersonal relations."
There was a nice story in the Atlantic City Press about Robert Jordan, a recent Millville, NJ high school grad who recently set the all-time New Jersey high school high jump record in the USA Junior National Championships in Denton, Texas - 7 feet 4-1/4 inches. It's the number one jump by an American high schooler this year. He claims that as a freshman he couldn't dunk a basketball as well as most of his buddies ("I would just dunk with two hands, and other people would be doing two-handed windmills"), and he only took up track as a 9th-grader in order to get out of off-season football weight training! As a 6-3, 170-pound freshman, the best he could manage on his first jump was 5-6. But by the end of his first season he was clearing 6-6, and at the Penn Relays at the start of his junior year he did 7-2 1/4. After this weekend's Junior Pan-American Games in Tampa, Jordan is headed for Barton Junior College in Barton, Kansas. In an age full of teenage bragadoccio, he comes across as a refreshingly modest young man, giving credit to his high school coaches ("they pushed me hard") and saying, "I don't want to say I'm the best and go out and jump 6-4. I don't want to make a big deal about it."
July 7- I always thought the most incongruous sign I ever saw was on an establishment outside Middletown, Maryland: "RUDY'S WELDING SERVICE AND COLD BEER." Not any longer, though. Driving down Broad Street in North Philadelphia the other day, I saw a sign advertising "HUMAN HAIR...COLD BEER." (Huh? It's a pretty rough neighborhood, and parking spaces are so scarce that people park in the median strip - no lie - so I didn't stop and ask. And now I can't get this scenario out of my mind: "Uh, gimme a 40 of St. Ides and a couple of them pony tails." )
Monty Dahm, the owner of an Atlantic City pub called the Tun Tavern, honored the Fourth of July by unveiling a statue of George Batten, a 20-year-old New Jersey Marine killed in France in World War I. Owner Dahm learned about Batten as a result of his work with the Tun Tavern Foundation, dedicated to preserving the history of the Marine Corps, and named for the 17th-century Philadelphia Tavern in which the Marines were formed on November 10, 1775. The statue is a copy of one erected at Batten's gravesite in Mantua, New Jersey by funds contributed by his fellow Marines. Batten's nephew and namesake, George Batten, 71, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who served in World War I, Korea and Vietnam, learned of the honor while hospitalized for heart surgery. He said that when he was a boy, whenever he and his pals went off to play baseball, he would always stop by the cemetery "to visit my uncle." He and his two brothers all served in the Corps.
Part of the reason the Marines revere their history is their tradition of teaching important lessons through the telling of what they call "sea stories." (Think of them as parables.) In a recent visit with retired Marine Colonel Bill Dabney, at his home in Virginia, I was treated to a few of them, including this one: "In '83, I took the 9th Marine Regiment to Hong Kong for a four-day liberty. The Navy task force commander demanded that our troops not get tattoos, because the needles were common transmitters of hepatitis B. The regimental and battalion surgeons reinforced this proscription with graphically-illustrated lectures about the virulence - and frequent fatality - of the disease. (AIDS, not yet a problem in Hong Kong, was not discussed by the surgeons.) I noticed that the troops were apathetic in the lectures - it was obvious that hepatitis B was simply not important to them. Knowing how troops will often haul their drunk buddies to tattoo parlors, I was concerned. My staff was fresh out of ideas. Finally, my sergeant major suggested that I let him handle it through the NCO chain. Lacking a better alternative, I agreed. Tattoos are recorded in the medical record to identify remains. We checked each man against his record upon departing from Hong Kong and had zero tattoos among 3200 men. The sergeant major latter confided that he'd passed the word through his chain that tattoo needles caused AIDS. Now, given what little they knew about AIDS then, the troops - the indestructible young - were no more afraid of it than they were of hepatitis B. But they knew its reputation as a disease common to and transmitted by homosexuals, and in their view, contracting it was tantamount to announcing you were one. Thus 3200 men, four days in Hong Kong, no tattoos."
Eddie Cahoon, coach at Mattamuskeet High in North Carolina, has a standard question he always asks a kid who starts missing school or letting his grades suffer and tells him it's because "I hate school." He asks the kid, "How'd you like to spend the rest of your life doing something you hate?"
July 6- Make that 100 degrees, tieing the old record set in 1919. And humid.
In Palermo, Sicily, in the final game of the first-ever World Cup of American Football tournament, Japan defeated Mexico 6-0 in Kansas Plan overtime. The tournament lost most of its meaning when at the "height" of the so-called Kosovo "crisis" the U.S. chose not to send its team overseas.
Coach Steve Fickert writes from Finland: We (Seinäjoki Crocodiles) survived Midsummer. Actually, I, my family and our 2 American Players decided to stay in Seinäjoki and not join the team at the summer cottage! The players decided they needed to workout (too much partying, and they were getting out of shape) and my son needed to lift/run to prepare for Prep School. We played cards and watched videos and RELAXED!!! We beat the East City Giants yesterday (Saturday) 42-3 in Seinajoki. Their coach (I don't remember his name, was very nice and he said he remembered you...and the Double Wing!). We played without our best RB (we kept him out because he was injured in the first half against the Roosters and we wanted him ready for the Stars-next week's opponent in Roveniemi, AND our starting Left Tackle got injured in warmups. Anyway, I tried to keep the score down and we still had 293 yards Rushing on 39 attempts, 7-12 passing for 159 yards 2 Interceptions and 2 TDs, for a Total Offense of 452 yards on 51 plays! Not bad for 48 minutes and we did not play our a few of our best players and really kept it basic in the 4th Quarter! We are tied for 2nd Place in the Maple League with a 3-1 record with the loser of the Trojans-Roosters game today. Next week is against the Artic Circle Stars. They won the Bronze Medal last year, have an American Coach (Scot Frear), are well coached and have 2 good American players. IT WILL BE A REAL CHALLENGE (on the road against a real quality team!).
The Seattle Mariners, after years of whining about having to play indoors, have played their last game in the Kingdome. They will complete their rape of the taxpayers of Washington by moving into a shiny new stadium, built for them largely with tax dollars, present and future. And whoever negotiated the deal on behalf of the taxpayers threw in a little lagniappe, very graciously allowing the Mariners to sell the name of the taxpayers' stadium to some insurance company named Safeco (somehow, "Safeco Stadium" or "Safeco Field" doesn't have quite the same ring as "Yankee Stadium," but I don't want to give George Steinbrenner any ideas). They need the extra money, to "remain competitive." But while the governor preens and takes credit for "saving the Mariners", that's not the end of the generosity of the citizens of Washington, whose average teachers' pay has dropped in the last 20 years from top-ten ranking in the US to 24th in 1998. Tax dollars have already built Key arena for the NBA Sonics, but what do you know? - its floor isn't large enough for an NHL rink. Hey, guess that means the Sonics won't have any competition in the wintertime, doesn't it? (Unless, of course, the taxpayers can be convinced to build another arena for a hockey team. It's possible.) And then there's Paul Allen, the wealthiest owner in professional sports. He "saved" the Seahawks for Seattle by buying them (I'm sure he had no idea of how the value of an NFL franchise has been appreciating). But, just to make sure he keeps them in Seattle, a grateful citizenry is going to build him a new stadium, too! First, though, the Kingdome has to come down. No more sitting in comfort inside while it rains outside! Yes, I know it's the reason why Seattle was awarded an NFL frachise in the first place, but see, you can't retrofit it with enough luxury boxes, and without the money from the rental of luxury boxes, Mr. Allen can't give us the team we deserve! So Seattle's ruling classes will stay warm and dry in their luxury boxes while they occasionally take a peek out at the game going on down below, and the proles will sit and watch in the cold and rain. The Kingdome's demolition does have an important downside that's been downplayed, in the interest of ramrodding Mr. Allen's stadium project through - no more Final Fours for Seattle. If you hadn't noticed, a city's chances of landing a Final Four without a dome are near zilch. Forget the fact Seattle was in the rotation to host Final Fours and had already done so several times. Forget the fact that Seattle was far more likely to host another Final Four than to host a World Series or Super Bowl. Forget the fact that "economic benefits" that supposedly accrue to cities that build new stadiums just plain don't - the most recent example being Baltimore. No city is deeper in hock as a result of new stadium construction than Baltimore. Those stadiums were sold to the taxpayers of Baltimore - and Maryland - using the spurious argument that professional teams bring money into a community. So Baltimore lost 3.9 per cent of its population over the last two years, a greater pecentage than any other major American city. My guess is that those 26,000 Baltimoreans who left were taxpayers, deserting a city that desperately needed their taxes to help pay for a public school system in near-terminal condition - not to mention two state-of-the-art stadiums.
J.C. Penny has agreed to stop selling basketball shirts bearing the trash-talkin' insult "YOUR GAME'S UGLIER THAN YOUR GIRL," after feminists complained. I'm no fan of trash talk, but where, oh where, is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), defender of flag-burning and all sorts of obnoxious freedom-of-expression issues, on this one?
July 5- While enjoying Atlantic City's 97-degree temperatures (with humidity to match) without benefit of air conditioning (the old-timers say, "we don't need it"):
Jerry Sandusky, Penn State defensive coordinator and the assistant who earned Penn State the nickname "Linebacker U," has announced he will retire following the 1999 season, ending 32 years as an assistant to Joe Paterno. Coach Sandusky, 55, played for Coach Paterno at Penn State, joined the Lions' staff after graduation, and never left. Among the linebackers Sandusky has produced are Kurt Allerman, Greg Buttle, Andre Collins, Shane Conlan, Jack Ham, Lance Mehl, Ed O'Neil and John Skorupan. Returning junior linebacker Lavar Arrington was the 1998 Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year. For several years, Coach Sandusky has been involved with a program called The Second Mile, an organization he founded to work with underprivileged kids, and his retirement from football will enable him to devote himself to that cause full-time. Along the way, Coach Sandusky had numerous opportunities to become a head coach - in the mid-seventies he actually was head coach at Marshall for an hour or so before changing his mind. He turned down the job at Temple, and twice withdrew from consideration at Maryland. Such is the loyalty of Penn State staffers to Coach Joe Paterno, now 72 years old and showing no signs of letting up, and such was the loyalty of Coach Sandusky to The Second Mile, a cause he couldn't bring himself to walk away from. "Yeah, I dreamed of becoming a head coach," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer's Ray Parrillo, "but I also dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player or professional football player. All dreams don't come true. But I did dream of putting together a program for kids, and that dream did come true."
Our government has decided that the way to prevent more Columbines is to punish parents when their kids break the law. But what exactly are parents supposed to do, when they slap their kids on the backside - and get reported to Child Protective Services, or whatever it's called where you live - by some nosy onlooker ? When Congress proposes a bill requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortions - and the current administration fights against it? When a school, with the support of a large majority of its parents, institutes a dress code - and is sued by the American Civil Liberties Union? "In other words," in the words of a Wall Street Journal editorial, "let teens express themselves, even if that means wearing Nazi regalia. Treat their rooms as sanctuaries, even if they happen to be putting a pipe bomb together. Staff their schools with administrators and counselors trained not to be 'judgmental.' And when things blow up, as they did so tragically in Littleton, do what this generation has done for the past 30 years: blame mom and dad."
Faced with having to hire as many as 1,000 new teachers, the Philadelphia Public Schools have had to relax their requirement that newly-hired teachers move into the city within a year of their hiring. The pay differential (often called "combat pay") that the city once enjoyed over nearby suburbs has largely disappeared, so Philadelphia will now allow new teachers up to three years to move into the city. They ought to be able to find plenty of places to live - just kidding - the latest figures just released show Philadelphia losing a greater percentage of its population over the last the last two years than any major city except Baltimore and Washington, D.C.