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BACK ISSUES - MARCH & APRIL 2000

 

April 28 - "Our communities can use the discipline of football - only your teaching will protect the game, its name, and the position it holds in our society." Harold "Tubby" Raymond, University of Delaware

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The May 1 issue of US News and World Report contains an article entitled, "What's Your Favorite Class?" It's about recess. Recess is endangered. In the 1950's it was common for schools to have three recesses a day, but according to the article, 40 per cent of American schools have eliminated recess or are considering doing so, largely because of the perception that statewide testing requires them to spend more time in the classroom. That perception is wrong, say many educational experts, who claim that breaks in the school day actually promote learning. Others point out that recess provides kids with rare chances to work on badly-needed social skills, like working out who plays on whose team, and dealing with a kid whose behavior is out of line. Furthermore, say some educators, many kids' lives are so structured nowadays - school to soccer practice to dance lessons (same difference) etc., etc. - that recess affords them a rare opportunity for them to do something totally on their own. Not to mention blow off steam before heading back to the teacher.

 

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In a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, Wade Evans, from Boone, North Carolina writes, tongue-in-cheek: "According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, in 1997 1.4 million people were arrested in the U.S. for driving under the influence. In 1998, one out of nine intoxicated drivers in fatal crashes had a prior DWO conviction within the past three years. Eight youong people a day die in alcohol-related crashes. Based on these statistics, it would seem that we need to take more drastic action to protect Americans, especially young people, from this terrible fate. In order to do this, I suggest that the following laws be adopted:

1. All auto drivers be required to take safety courses in driving;

2. All drivers should be licensed by a governmental agency;

3. All vehicles should be registered with a governmental agency.

Uh-oh. It appears we already do this. The only action left is to take everyone's car. If there are no cars, there will be no drunk drivers and no one will be killed by drunk drivers."

 

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It has really hit the fan at the University of Oregon, where the administration typically thought it could have things both ways. Recall that in reponse to campus protests by the great unwashed, the University's president caved in and decided to join the Workers Rights Coalition (WRC), which ostensibly is devoted to improving working conditions in third-world factories, including Nike's. His note to the WRC said that the University decided to join "after a great deal of reflection, research and consultation with students, faculty and staff." Perhaps, in retrospect, they might have done a little more consultation - say, with Phil Knight, an Oregon alum and co-founder and president of Nike, Inc., who felt blindsided when he learned of the UO's decision. As a major donor to the University, he felt that the least Oregon's president could have done was to call him and inform him personally of his decision. Oregon's president, lamely forgetting that we now have cell phones, said he was unable to call Mr. Knight because he was out of town. Nike, which manufactures shoes and clothing in several third-world countries, has been trying to clean up its act through membership in a rival organization, the Fair Labor Association, formed by manufacturers and the US Department of Labor; although at first glance it would appear that it and the WRC would seem to be share the same goals, they are in fact bitterly at odds with one another. (Some suspect the motives of the WRC, said to be bankrolled by US unions and perhaps less interested in improving working conditions overseas than in creating jobs - union jobs, naturally - in the US.) So, as rumored earlier, Mr. Knight has publicly declared, "for me personally, there will be no further donations of any kind to the University of Oregon." When Mr. Knight talks "donations," he is in the big leagues. He has already given some $50 million to the UO, and his leadership - and personal contributions - have been considered essential to the planned $80 million enlargement of Oregon's Autzen Stadium from 41,000 to 53,000. Sorry, Ducks. That's the price you pay when you led the rabble run your schools. Actually, I would like to be able to stand firmly behind Nike in this, but as a high school coach, it is difficult. Too bad that instead of building up a reservoir of goodwill among grassroots coaches, Mr. Knight's company has alienated so many of us with its commercialization of our sports without apparent concern for its effect on us: Thanks to Nike's bestowing enormous shoe contracts and consulting fees on college coaches in return for requiring their athletes to wear the Nike logo, it is growing harder to oppose pay for college players... in Nike's summer basketball camps, premier athletes are flown in and "showcased" for onlooking coaches like so many cat-house girls being paraded in front of the customers... Nike's funding of summer leagues and elite teams diminish the importance of their high school teams and coaches, while promoting athletic transfers between schools... Nike's adoption of a few select high school programs provides them with benefits such as slick outfits and funding for trips to exotic places that enhances their ability to "entice" (recruit) athletes from outside their districts... Nike's glorification, for marketing purposes, of notorious athletes has often been at cross-purposes with what we try to teach our kids. As for Nike being body-slammed by activitists, it is only fair that Nike, be tarred with its own brush. Nike has enjoyed playing the role of social activist itself - don't forget the preachy Nike ads in which they implied, years after Title IX, that there was still some vast conspiracy in society to deprive our little girls of chances to play sports ("If You'll Just Let Me Play") and thereby avoid spousal abuse. What a shame that the University of Oregon has lost its largest donor. What a shame that Nike, which in its effort to redefine our culture in its own image ran like a steamroller over so many of our values, finds itself smack up against the student protestors who can never be appeased. What a shame that a company which could have done so much good for our sports is under attack, and yet it's hard for many of us to generate a lot of sympathy for it. Oh, well. There may yet be a bright side to all of this - maybe Nike will pull all those video-game-character uniforms it designed for the Ducks last year, so they can go back to looking like a football team again.

 

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Have we found the ultimate magnet? If Florida Governor Jeb Bush's "One Florida" plan to eliminate affirmative action is successful, it will replace a system of racial "preferences" with one that will guarantee admission to a state university to any student graduating in the top 20 per cent of his or her high school class. It depends for its success on the reality that many Florida high schools are highly segregated, and therefore, the top 20 per cent of a school whose student body is largely minority will likely be largely minority itself. Without getting into arguments about whether academic standards might be lower at so-called "Inner-city" schools, it would seem probable that even after skimming off the top 20 per cent at a high-academics school there would still be a fair number of good students left out in the cold. With college admissions at stake, is it possible that the parents of such kids - ranked in the top third of their class but not in the top 20 per cent - could begin buying ghetto property so their kids can enroll in less academically-competitive inner-city schools?

 

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Tough Question: Practically unnoticed by the media was the death two weeks ago in suburban Chicago of J. Emmett Clair. Mr. Clair was 102. What was his contribution to football?

 

April 27 - "To do nothing is in every man's power." Samuel Johnson, famous 18th-century English writer and wit

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Why football is better for America than baseball: two brand-new ball parks opened this year, in San Francisco and Houston, have foul lines shorter than 325 feet, the minimum specified by the rules of baseball. More home runs, you understand. (Fans like home runs.) Hey, it's only the rules of the game. According to Commissioner Bud Selig, hired to uphold the rules of the game, "There's nothing wrong with pleasing your customers."

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You might just as well call it the "professional athlete defense." Former heavyweight boxer Ike Ibeabuchi is accused of sexual assault by a Las Vegas woman. A doctor who examined him to determine whether he is competent to stand trial testified, "he doesn't share the same sense of reality as the rest of us in this courtroom."

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"Soccer is a gentlemen's game played by hooligans. Rugby Union is a hooligan's game played by gentlemen. Rugby League is a hooligan's game played by hooligans." Australian saying.

 

You probably don't know the difference between Rugby League and Rugby Union. One looks a little like American football and the other is practically impossible to understand. (I played it for two years and still don't completely understand it.) But the Aussies do. And once they do, they support one or the other - there is no room in between.

 

Just to help anyone Down Under who didn't know the difference, one Australian sport reporter, Spiro Zavos, writing in the The Sydney Morning Herald last week, was glad to assist them. It had something to do with the Australian Rugby League's calling a match an "Anzac" match.

 

April 25th was Anzac Day, or Remembrance Day, on which they honor the memories of the brave young Australians who went off to fight in World War I - and never returned. In Australia, they really do use the day to remember. (In America, we take a day off.) Evidently the Rugby League people did something akin to burning the flag (which used to be a Bad Thing in America), which was just too much for reporter Zavos. He chose the occasion not only to remember, but to reveal a major difference between Rugby League and Rugby Union.

 

True, he says, many rugby league players did serve and die heroically in WWI.

 

However, he points out, an essay published in 1979 called Sport, War And Society, by Michael McKernan, a leading authority on World War I, disclosed that rugby league officials, concerned that a rival organization might take over their sport if they were to have to close down because of the war, did little to support the war effort. McKernan noted that three-quarters of the unmarried rugby league players called up in September, 1916, somehow managed to avoid the draft.

 

"The contrast with rugby union," wrote Zavos, "could not be more stark. Ninety per cent of all rugby union grade players enlisted." Competitions were cancelled until the war ended. The New South Wales Rugby Union's 1916 Annual Report listed 115 former players killed in the War. Seven members of one club, the Wallabies, were buried on the Dardanelles Peninsula (Gallipoli).

 

One Wallaby, Clarrie Wallach wrote home: "We arrived at Hellipolis about three weeks ago. We have been in pretty solid work but expect the real stuff next week. All the rugby union men are well here, from the Major down to the privates. 'Twit' Tasker told me how Harold George died a death of deaths, a hero's, never beaten until the final whistle went."

 

(Harold George was an outstanding forward for the Wallabie. "Twit" Tasker, another Wallaby, died of wounds in Europe in 1918. The major refrerred to was Major James McManamey, a leading rugby official. He died on Gallipoli a few weeks after Wallach's letter was written. Clarrie Wallach himself was killed at Gallipoli not long after the letter was written and later awarded the Military Cross for bravery.)

 

"In March, 1998, on Remembrance Day," Zavos wrote, "the Wallabies visited Villiers-Bretonneux (France), the site of a crucial battle on the Western Front. The experience had been profoundly moving for the young Wallabies as they wandered through the memorial cemetery picking out the graves of soldiers whose age most approximated their own.

 

"As the great crowd in the Millennium Stadium a year later waited for the two teams, Rod Macqueen read to the Wallabies an extract from the diary of a young soldier who was in charge of a machine-gun company during the battle of Villiers-Bretonneux. These were the last words the Wallabies heard before they walked out to face their own historic destiny.

 

"The instructions the soldier had been given were to hold the post, at all costs. 'If the section cannot remain here alive, it will remain here dead,' he wrote, 'but in any case it will remain'".  

 

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I think we've found a way to get more kids to shower after PE class. An 18-year-old Powers, Oregon high school girl has been suspended for taking a post-PE-class shower - in the boys' shower - along with five boys. She claimed that she was just doing it to call attention to the lack of security at the school. Right (" I was only throwing up to show what drinking can do to you."). She evidently is not totally stupid, because she was the school valedictorian. Was. Not any more. What I don't understand is why the boys were disciplined, too. For what? Taking a shower? What I do understand is the girl's mother jumping to her defense - the punishment is too severe. (It always is. You know how that goes - the school is always wrong.)

 

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They're called Coach-killers. You know, guys with all sorts of talent who can go out and set things on fire when they're so inclined - then skip practice the next day. And act as if they haven't done anything wrong. If there's a coach-killer for Lenny Wilkens, late of the Atlanta Hawks, then none of us is safe. You would think that when you reached the stature of Coach Wilkens, winningest coach in NBA history, you would be able to side-step having to deal with such jerks, but then, if is the NBA, and thre are such things as general managers. Their job often seems to be to know more about what's good for the team than the coach himself. That was the case with Coach Wilkens, whose GM knew that J. R. Rider would be just the thing to turn the Atlanta Hawks around. Of course, as anyone breathing could have told him, he was wrong. From the Hawks' very first practice - which Rider missed supposedly because he wouldn't take the commuter plane to training camp ("I don't fly in no crop-dusters") - until he was finally released, he was a stone in the coach's shoe. Lenny Wilkens deserved better. I first met him 25 years ago, when he was coaching the Trail Blazers and I was new to town. You had to be impressed by the guy - the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers is easily the biggest man in town, but there were no airs about Lenny Wilkens. He was friendly and humble. And now, Lenny Wilkens has "retired." If he stays "retired", the league will be missing a whole lot of class.

 

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BELOW: Coach Jerome Anthony, of Detroit, was kind enough to send along a great photo he took at the Toledo (Perrysburg) clinic, taken at the precise moment the left guard and left tackle have taken their first steps. It illustrates perfectly the "hand on" technique used to keep them from over-turning their shoulders.

 

April 26 - "Embarrassment is a great motivator." Hayden Fry, long-time Iowa coach (although I shouldn't have to identify him)----------

 

I thought the point was to attract more bright young people to the teaching profession. Alabama's school superintendent proposes raising the salaries of the state's most experienced teachers by 5 per cent. No argument from me there - they need to get caught up. But he's only asking for a niggling 1 per cent raise for beginning teachers! So while experienced teachers making in the $30,000 range would get a well-deserved extra $1500, those just starting out - at $20,000 or so - would get a hefty $200 increase. Spread out over 52 weeks, that's nearly four dollars a week! Put another way, that's an extra two gallons of gas! That will go a long way toward luring those bright, young math and science majors away from lucrative careers in high tech. -------

 Steve Duin of the Portland Oregonian, one of my favorite columnists, was writing recently about a visit to a scrap-metal yard, where the down-and-outers - "the peddlers, the scrappers, the homeless scavengers" - come to sell whatever they've managed to come across on roadsides, in abandoned buildings, in Dumpsters. And, one of these days, your school. "When the markets go way up," the head scrap-metal buyer told Duin, "the bleachers at the high school stadiums start disappearing."

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"Dear Coach Wyatt: I coach in a small single A high school in Virginia. Thanks to your insight into the Double-Wing, you have helped make our football program successful. Two years ago we started running some of the Double-Wing along with our regular wing T offense. The two years before, we ran an I formation - we won three games total, all in the second year. The first year we were 0-10, and scored 82 points the entire year. Last year our football team was 8-3, losing in the first round of the regional playoffs. This was the first time in 13 years our school made it to the playoffs. Our offense scored 314 points. This past year we concentrated on the Double-Wing a lot more, still running our regular WingT offense. However, we ran the superpower and the wedge play a lot especially in the red zone. Our team record was 10-0 and ranked 2nd in the state. Our offense scored 415 points, our three backs combined for 3400 yards rushing and 49 touchdowns. Thanks for the web page and the Double-Wing. I keep telling people how terrible the Double-Wing offense is with hopes of discouraging coaches in my area from running it. I dont want to defend it." Coach Robert Casto, Riverheads High, Staunton, Virginia -------

 

Bob Cook, writing in the Chicago Tribune recently, had another take on the Bob Knight situation. He works in another department at the Trib, but having covered basketball for the IU Daily Student in the 1980's, provided his unique perspective to the sports page. Ever notice, he asks, that Coach Knight never shows up at any of the rallies drummed up whenever he's in a jam and it's necessary for his supporters to show that they're still out there? He never even acknowledges them, says Cook, who likens the relationship between Coach Knight and supporters to what psychologists call co-dependency. It's a sort of abusive relationship. "Perhaps the fact that Knight withholds his love is the key to the relationship," Cook writes. "Fans are constantly seeking his attention and approval, never getting it...it's about a successful guy who holds back the love." Cook speculates that Knight 's keeping his job depends on his maintaining his aloofness. "People talk about losing games being Bob Knight's undoing," he writes. "I say the moment he starts appreciating his followers, he's finished."

 

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First in on the answers to the trivia question was Coach Bruce Eien, from Brethren Christian, in Los Angeles - "all the players hail from the Big Ten." (He's earned a plug - you have probably already visited Coach Eien's BC Warriors Football Coaching Site, but if you haven't, check it out - he does a great job with it); second was Coach Keith Babb, from Northbrook, Illinois. A graduate of the University of Tennessee, he also got a plug in, writing, 'It looks like all of those guys played in the Big 10 - the country's second conference behind the SEC." Third was Coach Bill Lawlor, from Elk Grove Village, Illinois, who wrote, This may be a simplistic guess but I think all of those players played on Big 10 teams and were overall #1 picks in the NFL draft. As an aside, many people think it is stupid that the Big 10 retained that name when Penn State came in but I believe the charter name of that conference is something like the "Western Conference" or "The Great Western Conference." The Big 10 has always been just a slang term I believe, hence there was no real reason to change the name of the conference....I could be wrong....this was a minor fact I learned when pledging the Delta Chi fraternity at U of Illinois, when I wasn't being hazed....just joking."; Fourth was Adam Wesoloski, of dePere, Wisconsin: "They all played in the Big Ten/(Eleven)." When he was selected first overall, Penn State's Courtney Brown became the 10th Big Ten player in the history of the NFL draft to be so selected.

 

April 25 - "Humility is only seven days away" Barry Switzer

 

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It's been a little over two years since Reggie White stood up in front of the Wisconsin state legislature and rejected the comparison of the gay rights movment with the civil rights movement. "Homosexuality is a decision," he told the lawmakers. "It's not a race." Ooh-wee. Did he catch it! The gays jumped all over him. Homophobe. Bigot. Sponsors - including Campbell Soup, a company that spends millions trying to associate itself with wholesomeness - dropped him as a spokesman. Wouldn't want gays and lesbians to boycott our chicken noodle soup, now, would we? CBS Sports pulled out of a plan to hire him as a network commentator. To his credit, despite all the pressure, Reggie White has not backed down, saying, "God owns a whole lot more than CBS could ever give me." And in an article in "Focus on the Family" magazine (www.family.org), he doesn't sound as if he has any plans to back down any time soon. "The greatest lesson I've learned," he says, "is that too many of us don't want to suffer, and we let other people back us down from what we believe in. The Bible says that we should rejoice in suffering that comes against us."

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Pianist/Comedian/Political Satirist Mark Russell says of The Man From Hope: "He places such a value on his integrity that he only uses it on special occasions."

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Great. The Portland Oregonian's new feature sports columnist, Chuck Culpepper, has arrived in town from Lexington, Kentucky, and Friday he wrote his first column, introducing himself to us by telling us about his likes and dislikes. Sounds like a positive guy, who likes a lot of things: "I like basketball. (that's good, Chuck, because outside of the Trail Blazers, it's pretty slim pickings in your new burg.) I like football. (At least you're not a commie.) I like American football." Whoa! What is this? "American football?" Hey, Chuck - I've been to Europe. "American Football" is what they call our sport in places where "real" football ("futbol") is played by guys with no last names (Maradona, Ronaldo)... who react to injury by rolling around on the ground holding their legs and writhing in pain as if mortally wounded, only to return to play minutes later... who are disciplined by being given tiny little yellow cards, the sports equivalent of having their names written on the chalkboard... whose "fans" set fire to grandstands (sometimes each other) and occasionally crush each other against chain-link fences designed to keep them from going onto the field and attacking the players. Hey Chuck - you may not be in red-blooded SEC country, and you may be on the westernmost edge of America, but it's still America. And we ain't giving up the name of our sport without a fight.

 

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"A sound defense is one that has every player on defense carrying out his assignment. Then it is impossible for the offense to score. Note that I said every player, which makes defense a team proposition, and eliminates the individual defensive play. By this we mean that every defense is coordinated and each player is an important part of the overall defensive unit. We try to instill in every boy that he is personally responsible to see that the opposition does not score." Bear Bryant

A recent Zogby Poll reports that while college students overwhelmingly support the concept of diversity on campus, eighty per cent of them oppose the use of racial preferences to achieve that diversity. Fifty per cent of those surveyed declare that political correctness is interfering with what they learn. -------

"In modern times, the census is taken by the Census Bureau every 10 years, as required by the Consitution. (For the other nine years, Census Bureau employees play pinochle while remaining on Red Alert, in case the Consitution suddenly changes." Humorist Dave Barry

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And you thought "jock sniffing" was just a figure of speech. The Dallas Cowboys, through their web site, are selling used socks. For $19.99 a pair. You can also buy an old pair of Troy Aikman's shoes ("Future Hall of Famer Troy Aikman wore these shoes during an NFL game last season. Walk a mile in his shoes! These Adidas size 14's come with a signed certificate of authenticity from the Dallas Cowboys Football Club."). For you - $1,999.99. I am not joking. Emmitt Smith's old practice pants? Just $799.99. How about a pair of Deion Sanders' Prime Time gloves? $299.99. Or Michael Irvin's ... never mind. Think I'm kidding? Check it out.

 

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Question: What do the following #1 NFL draft picks have in common: Tom Harmon, Randy Duncan, Jim Grabowski, Bubba Smith, Tom Cousineau, Jeff George, Dan Wilkinson, Ki-Jana Carter, Orlando Pace and Courtney Brown?

 

 

 April 24 - "Even in a clutch situation, I hear some part of my mind saying, 'Hey, God, let's make this thing work,' but I catch myself. The idea of God taking my side in a football game embarrasses me." Joe Paterno

 

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Bob Verdi, of the Chicago Tribune, may very well be the only sports writer in the world outside the state of Indiana who has come to Bob Knight's defense, writing that the coach is "caught in the middle with his rough edges." Verdi argues that if Coach Knight were a total user of kids but managed to win big every year - "if he declared the library off-limits and worried less about discipline and acountability, but posted a 38-1 record" - everyone would call him a genius. On the other hand, "if he won 10 games a year, while stressing academics and lessons for the future, he'd be a 'teacher.'" Coach Knight's problem, as writer Verdi sees it, is that "he's just himself, capable of occasional tantrums and frequent acts of decency that make lasting impressions."

 

Verdi argues that the "perfect people" who would crucify Coach Knight for venting in locker rooms ("it's where all our children go for lollipops. They are children, aren't they? At least, they are until they leave early for the pros, and that's when all these perfect people wonder why these raw recruits lack not only basketball skills but social skills") conveniently overlook the excesses of today's athletes, many of whom could use a healthy dose of Coach Knight's discipline at some point in their lives: "If only Knight were an indipensible athlete," Verdi writes, "he could choke his coach, drag a girlfriend down a flight of stairs by her hair (uh, if that would be Lawrence Phillips, wasn't it a couple of flights?), accost (rape?) a teenage babysitter, brandish a gun at his wife's head or engage in drug trafficking and then receive absolution from an arbitrator before forcing a trade to another team that will pay a heftier salary.

 

"However, Knight is only a red-sweatered senior citizen who can't shoot a three-pointer, licks nobody's boots and, what's worse, hasn't earned any of those precious championship trophies lately."

 

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Based on the large color photo at left from the sports pages of the Melbourne Age, Political Correctness has yet to make its way to New Zealand. Perhaps our State Department has a few billions in foreign aid lying around to provide diversity training for those "homophobic" cricket fans of New Zealand who greeted the Australian team and their "Vice-Captain" Shane Warne by holding aloft a professionally-done, 15-foot-long self-explanatory banner, (In America, can't you just see the stadium security detail tripping all over themselves to confiscate the sign before a newspaper photographer or TV cameraman can shoot it? Not that any US newspaper would ever print the photo, anyhow.) Come to think of it, maybe instead of foreign aid we could just ship all of our professional diversity trainers to New Zealand. That ought to be far enough away, and from the looks of the work ahead of them, they'll be there a while.

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Noted sports fan Janet Reno used a sports analogy to describe her frustration with negotiations with Elian Gonzalez' Miami relatives, accusing them of "moving the goal posts". She had to be referring to soccer goals. The kind with wheels on them. We don't move our goal posts.  -------

 

I don't know whether any one else has noticed, but entangled in the whole Elian Gonzalez story, has been some pretty ugly stuff. "Send him back," said many Americans - perhaps the vast majority of them. Fair enough. Reasonable people can take sides on the issue. But they didn't stop there. "Send them all back," they went on. Given the political correctness of our times, the way presidential candidates bend over backwards to curry favor with one group or another, I have been amazed at the way the public and the news media have felt free to take shots at Cuban-Americans. Time Magazine has actually referred to Cuban-Americans as a "privileged, imperious elite, who set themselves up as a pueblo sufrido, a suffering people." Can you imagine the uproar if Time had written that about any other group in America? They might have said that same thing about gays. But would they have dared? Time should know better, but other Americans might be surprised to learn that Cuban-Americans - many of whom have been in this country for 40 years, and most of whom are as American as those of us whose ancestors came from Europe - have benefitted America by the values they have brought with them. They are people of faith. They believe in family. They are law-abiding. (Why didn't they burn down Miami this past weekend? We've seen worse riots in America over routine traffic stops.) They are hard-working. (Many of them came here as engineers and lawyers, but the only jobs available to them here were as janitors. No matter - they took those jobs and worked at them and saved their money and educated their kids.) They value their independence, and do not depend on the government for assistance, yet only yesterday I heard some caller on a radio show suggest that they were all on welfare, which was why they had the time to be protesting. (They actually go the other way on welfare and tend to vote Republican, which may be their greatest sin in the eyes of the news media.) They believe that America is far superior to Cuba. (Go back? Those who have visited recently say, "No way." One Cuban-American coaching associate of mine who has gone back in the last year to visit calls it a "hell hole." There was a time, back in the 1960's, when they willingly would have gone back; as a matter of fact, with the approval of President Kennedy, they even planned and conducted an invasion to liberate their homeland, one which turned into a slaughter when the air support promised them by the US government never materialized. Don't believe me? Look up "Bay of Pigs.") Michael Gonzalez, deputy editor of Wall Street Journal Europe's editorial page, writing in last Thursday's Journal and himself a Cuban-American, said that other Americans have been led in the Elian Gonzalez case to pile on Cuban-Americans because they are "The Ethnic Group Liberals Love to Hate." He wrote, "To me, there's never been a bigger sign that Cubans have succeeded in America than the total absence of any political correctness in the whole Elian story. Media commentators feel free to attack Cuban-Americans in a way they never would any other ethnic group... Cubans irk liberals for two reasons. First, liberals harbor a latent sympathy for Fidel Castro and for communism. Second, our very success disproves the claim that 'Hispanics' or other minority groups cannot thrive in America. The latter point really rubs some people the wrong way. I've seen it in the eyes of every liberal who has lectured me about America's unfairness only to be cut off by my saying, 'I'm one of these Hispanics you keep talking about and. really, I've done fine'... We refuse to play the victim. We just get on with it, and in today's culture of victimhood, this is a major infraction."

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Funny how the same fluffy-haired TV news guys who would have had conniptions over the sign in the crowd at the New Zealand cricket match - name-calling is a form of "violence", they're so fond of telling us - informed us Saturday with straight faces that the armed raid to sieze Elian Gonzalez was not violent - because "no one was hurt."

 

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Finally, some honesty. I was talking with Coach Jay Minyard, head man at South Albany, Oregon High, who has two very successful years behind him as a head coach and a Double-Wing coach. He said a former assistant, now a head coach himself, was at a clinic recently, and overheard a highly-respected Oregon coach depart from the usual disparaging description of our offense (Mickey Mouse, Pop Warner, etc.) that has been typical of a lot of otherwise intelligent opponents. Instead, this coach was heard to say, in effect, that "the Double-Wing is going to revolutionize high school offense."

 

 

 April 22 - "From the player's standpoint, the most important characteristic of the game is the personal transition of individual achievement into the context of the team." Woody Hayes

 

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Food for thought... last week, on the first anniversary of Columbine, Patrick Welsh, an English teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, wrote in USA Today that to some black kids (T.C. Williams is 45 per cent black), the refrain common after school shootings - "We believed it couldn't happen here" - is seen as subtly racist, a way of saying, "We didn't think white kids could do a thing like this." He quotes T. C. Williams senior Janelle Loving as saying, "Adults associate school violence with black and Hispanic kids... When white kids commit some horribly violent act, people look for excuses... 'He has psychological issues.' Black guys are simply labelled as thugs." Before dismissing her statement, consider the school where I held last weekend's clinic. Rich Central High in Olympia Fields, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, is more than 80 per cent black, but it resists any attempts at stereotyping it. The words "substandard," or "violent," or "gang-ridden," all too often used in association with "black school," simply do not apply to Rich Central. The school sits in a large, grassy campus, overlooking a small lake, in the middle of a prosperous residential area of large, single homes. Broken windows? Get serious. Metal detectors? Why? There is no graffiti in evidence. Anywhere. Halls are clean and spacious, classrooms are neat and well-equipped, lockers are freshly-painted and unmarked. By any standard - facilities, faculty, athletics, academics, administtration, expectations for student behavior - Rich Central is an exemplary suburban high school. The community it serves is upper-middle-class and upwardly-mobile; it supports its schools and expects a lot of them in return. It is living out another familiar stereotype - the American Dream.

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Former player and former assistant Cole Shaffer is originally from New Mexico - a big fan of the Lobos and Brian Urlacher - and he wrote me to say. "I've been a Bears fan since I was born and the Bears selecting Urlacher was like the all the planets aligning themselves."

 

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Picky, picky... "Hugh,, Just read your web page and Ted Brown is our Ted Brown. Don't know why it came from Wiscasset but Ted lives in Boothbay Harbor and is the new father of a bouncing baby girl. Given the rivary between the two communities I know Ted would want people to know he resides in BOOTHBAY HARBOR." Jack Tourtillotte (Principal and Offensive Coordinator, Boothbay Regional High, Boothbay Harbor Maine)- Hey Jack, Ted's e-mail is HarborRealty@wiscasset.net

 

April 21 - "In my view, achieving an understanding of character without relating it to faith is nearly impossible." Tom Osborne

 

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SORRY... Regretfully, I am forced to re-schedule - possibly even cancel - the LA clinic scheduled originally for May 6. The original location at Glendale High School became unavailable when the host coach ran into unexpected and unavoidable problems, and in searching for a hotel room to hold the clinic, I found myself a victim of my own bad scheduling - good luck finding meeting rooms in the LA area on Cinco de Mayo weekend. Unfortunately, ith my present schedule, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find another date, but it will have to be sometime in June or even July, and those dates are getting booked up.

 

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Did he or didn't he? Every school should have an alumnus like Phil Knight. While Phil Knight was a runner on the track team at the University of Oregon, his coach was the late Bill Bowerman. Together, he and Coach Bowerman founded the company that became NIKE, Inc., and Phil Knight, now the chairman of NIKE, is Oregon's wealthiest man. And he is sports-minded. Is he ever. He recently donated $30 million to the University to help in the explansion of Autzen Stadium. But last week, in a classic case of biting thje hand that feeds you, the university, known in some quarters as the Berkeley (or Boulder) of the Northwest, caved in to demonstrations by students and agreed to join a consortium of colleges fighting "sweatshop conditions" in third-world countries. One of the main targets of the demonstrators - most of them snot-nosed rich kids who've never done an honest day's work in their lives and wouldn't know what "sweat" is, much less a sweatship - was none other than NIKE, Inc., which has been known to make a few pairs of shoes. Reports out of Oregon are that Mr. Knight is so upset at the University's caving in to the demonstrators that he has taken back his donation. The university is denying the reports; Mr. Knight's office won't comment, saying that his donations are confidential.

 

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Frederick Klein, writing in the Wall Street Journal, March 31: "Several years ago the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced it would issue press credentials for the Final Four rounds of the Division I men's basketball tournament only to representatives of newspapers that didn't carry point-spread listings on college games. That pretty much would have limited the press sections to me and the reportrs from the Christian Science Monitor and the Washington Post, and while I admit to having fantasized about the space and access such exclusivity would have provided, I didn't ecpect publishers to change their policies to accomodate the organization. They didn't, the edict was lifted, and the Final Four...proceeds amid the usual news-media squalor."

 

"I don't believe in change just for the sake of changing. However, I've always admired Bear Bryant as he not only changed his offensive and defensive philosphy with the times, but he changed the way he handled players. And over the years he continued to win and win big." Grant Teaff, Executive Director of the AFCA (American Football Coaches Association) in the March/April "Extra Point," the AFCA's member publication

 

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Anybody now doubt that Michael Jordan was worth what they paid him? Maybe it's just a coincidence, but since he retired after the '97 season (can it possibly have been that long?) the NBA's TV ratings have dropped 20 per cent. And whereas in 1995 nearly 12 per cent of all ads had an athletic endorser appearing in them, now, even mega-sponsors Nike and Reebof are bailing out of the endorsement market. "It isn't just the lack of Jordan," writes Collin Level in the Wall Street Journal, "but the lack of Jordan's class." Good point. Can you imagine Michael Jordan handing out Michael Jordan dolls at a game (a la Allen Iverson handing out Allen Iverson dolls), Michael Jordan rapping (Shaquile O'Neill), Michael Jordan demanding more money from a shoe company (Vince Carter and Puma) when his endorsement wasn't selling any shoes? The difference between Jordan and today's pretenders to his throne is that "Jordan lent dignity to the brands and projects he endorsed. With his successors, its the oppoisite...they make the game seem like a sideshow. That's something Jordan never did." The NBA's marketing of the post-Jordan era is a flop, he says, because it isn't fooling the people who are hardest to fool - hard-core fans and little boys. They can see right through it - "it is a transparent attempt to engineer a new superstar."

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First three answers to yesterday's question:

(1) Hi, Hugh - Knowing you are not a soccer fan and that your son is in Australia, you must be talking about Australian Rules Football. Ted Brown, Wiscasset, Maine

 

(2) Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day is a National Day of Remembrance consecrated in Australia and New Zealand in memory of those brave men who lost their lives 25th April 1915 World War I. Collingwood Magpies play the Essendon Bombers in Australian Rules Football (AFL) related link: http://www.afl.com.au/news/story_176707.htm - Adam Wesoloski, De Pere, Wisconsin

(For an insight into the Australian national character and the Anzacs' contributions in World War I, you might want to check out one of my all-time favorite movies, "Gallipoli". It is impossible to characterize it, because you'll laugh a lot, and it is one of Aussie Mel Gibson's first movies, but I guess in the end you would have to call it a rather intense war movie.)

 

(3) I'm probably late again, but that has to be Australian Rules Football, a sport that deserves more coverage in this country. Keith Babb, Northbrook, Illinois

 

April 20 - "You coach for a love and not a living." Frosty Westering, head coach of NCAA Division III Champion Pacific Lutheran 

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Two members of the Portland Trail Blazers, Bonzi Wells and Damon Stoudamire, recently cut a rap single entitled "Can I Get a Headband?" designed to cash in on their latest attention-getting fashion quirk. Not that they asked me, but if they are giving any thought to taking it a step further and making an album, I could suggest a few titles that some teammates might want to join in on: Can I Get a Groupie?... Can I Get a Lawyer?... Can I Get a(nother) Tattoo?... Can I Get My Contract Renegotiated?... Can I Get a Shoe Contract?... Can I Get a Wake-up Call? (single, by former Blazer J.R. Rider)... Can I get a Technical? (single, by Rasheed Wallace)

Among the books I am currently reading is "Faith in the Game," by former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne. It is great. In it Coach Osborne quotes fellow Nebraskan Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (which, for those of you scoring at home, closed Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange at $58,600 a share), and one of America's wealthiest men. Mr. Buffett did not get to where he is by being stupid, and Coach Osborne writes of some remarks Mr. Buffett made at a symposium at the University of Nebraska. "One friend of mine," Mr. Buffett told the gathering, "said that in hiring he looks for three things - intelligence, energy and character. If they don't have the last one, the first two will kill you, because it's true that if you go in to hire somebody that doesn't have character, you better hope they are dumb and lazy because if they are smart and energetic, they will get you in all kinds of trouble."

With all the wailing about the harshness of "zero tolerance" for one thing or another, and of the cruelty of minimum sentences for repeat offenders, I keep reading about crime being down. Does anybody else see a connection here?

"Coach Wyatt, I received the "Safer and Surer Tackling" video yesterday, watched it last night after I came home from Bible Study Fellowship and I am glad that I purchased it. You do an excellent job of breaking the elements of tackling down and demonstrating how to teach it safely. I especially was pleased with your comment about "Bull-in-the-ring". And the quote from Bud Wilkinson was right on! There may only be six "things" that a person must do in order to play football: run, block tackle, show courage, give great effort and execute. Perhaps the most important is to show courage; without courage you can't do the others the way they need to be done. And courage doesn't happen unless there is some degree of confidence. I'm a Wishbone Triple Option coach but there is a lot of your offense that I truly appreciate! Thank you for your efforts in promoting this great sport! God Bless!" Dennis Metzger, Connersville, Indiana -------

I received this from Coach Kyle Wagner, of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, asserting his national pride in pointing out that lacrosse's origins are Canadian, and that despite what most people think, ice hockey has only recently been named Canada's national sport - for most of the nation's history, it was lacrosse! Coach Wagner sent me a clip from Encyclopedia Brittanica: "Several of the sports played in Canada are derived from those of the indigenous peoples or the early settlers. Lacrosse, adopted as Canada's national game at the time of Confederation, was played by Indians in all parts of the country and adopted by later immigrants. By 1867 definite rules had been established, and the game had become organized." (The name itself came from French missionaries, describing the resemblance of the Indians' sticks to the Cross carried in church processions.) Many people are not aware that professional lacrosse - the indoor version - draws extremely well in the East, far outdrawing indoor soccer, perhaps because indoor lacrosse somewhat resembles ice hockey. This condensed version of the sport, sometimes called "box lacrosse," was originally played in Canada in the summertime on iceless hockey rinks, partly as a sport for out-of-season hockey players. Outdoors on a grass field, as a springtime sport in the US, it is a natural for football players, and I remember when I lived in Baltimore how it would gall the lacrosse purists there whenever Navy, its lineup studded with football players, would beat traditional power Johns Hopkins.

Poor Vermont. First it was the cancellation, following revelations of hazing (and lying to cover it up), of the remainder of the schedule of the state's lone sports team of any national consequence, the University of Vermont's hockey team. Then came the state supreme court's ruling, despite the opposition of an estimated 2/3 of the state's residents, that gays in the Green Mountain State have a right to enter into something close to marriage; the state legislature has complied with the court's wishes by coming up with something called "Civil Unions". Finally, in perhaps the cruelest blow of all, came the recent sale of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, the Vermont-headquartered icon of "socially-responsible capitalism", to corporate giant Unilever, not particularly noted for sharing Ben and Jerry's adoration of the earth's rain forests. Now, the best things about Vermont - a state whose proud history includes the deeds of fearless Ethan Allen (the man, not the furniture) and his Green Mountain Boys, and a period as an independent republic - are ski resorts and Bag Balm. Little could Ethan Allen have dreamt that one day, when people talked about the Green Mountain Boys, they'd be referring to a slowpitch softball team sponsored by a gay bar in Burlington. The day may even come when Vermonters think "Ben and Jerry" are two guys applying for a marriage license.

Question: Next Tuesday, Anzac Day, a sellout crowd of more than 90,000 will be at the MCG ("The G") to watch the Collingwood Magpies play the Essendon Bombers. What sport will they be playing?

April 19 - By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard 'round the world.

From "Concord Hymn", by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Carved on the monument at Concord, Massachusetts

memorializing the patriots who started the Revolution,

and first read at its dedication, April 19, 1875

 

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Talk to your players some time about that small band of Massachusetts farmers - the Minutemen - who 225 years ago today took on the British army - and lived to tell about it. In fact, they pulled off one heck of an upset, the first - if not the biggest - in our history. How did they do it? First of all, they were prepared; they had the opponent well scouted; they were highly motivated; finally, they forced the other guys to play their game. (Any lessons there for a football coach?)

 

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First person to guess America's fastest growing sport: Coach Glade Hall, of Seattle, who wrote: "Lacrosse , It's the only other game I can think of which has all those qualities . I played in high school , upstate New York." Coach Bryan Oney, of North Fairfield, Ohio was second by a nose.

 

"Lacrosse still isn't soccer," says Steven Stenerson, executive director of US, the sport's national governing body, "but lacrosse is, we believe, the fastest-growing team sport in the country."

In 1994 there were 4,600 men's programs in the US; in 1998, just four years later, there were 5,600; the number of women's programs increased in that same time from 1,500 to 2,400.

It appears in many cases to be stealing kids fom soccer. As Stenerson says, "people are saying, gee, let's try something different." In the words of one Pennsylvania 9-year-old, "You get to run around a lot. You get to hit people with sticks. You get to score goals, knock people over."

Unlike football or basketball, smaller guys can play the game, and it is a great "carryover" sport with guys well into the thirties playing in recreational leagues. The equipment is expensive: for girls, who play it as a non-contact sport, the only expense is the stick, which can run $40 to $60. But for boys, add another $200 or so for helmet, shoulder pads, elbow pads, and gloves. Because it is expensive to start, lacrosse has often been considered something of a preppy sport, but it is worth noting that many people around Baltimore, where they take their lacrosse very seriously, remember a certain guy from Syracuse named Jim Brown (the same) as the greatest lacrosse player ever. Brown went to high school on Long Island, like Baltimore a hotbed of the sport.

The game has begun to spead to city schools. Northeast Catholic, in Philadelphia, started the sport last year, with 25 kids, most of whom had never played before. "We went 0-19," said Luke Hogan, who started the program. "But we played. The bottom line is that 0 and 19 is better than 0 and 0."

 

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Ouch. Skip Bayless of the Chicago Tribune, calling Michigan State's Plaxico Burress "a 6-foot-5 tease, an occasionally dominant college player, a bully when he has the physical edge, " wrote that he "has Curtis Enis written all over him." Enis has, to say the least, been a disappointment to Bears' fans, but Bayless says Burress would have been worse: "At least Enis can turn on his Eddie Haskell charm when he first meets adults. Burress is straight-up Puff Daddy." Bears' fans needn't worry about getting another Curtis Enis: the Steelers, selecting before the Bears in Saturday's draft, chose Burress. So grateful to the Steelers was Bayless that "Cowher got my vote for coach of the year."

 

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Serve and Protect. The Portland (Oregon) Police Bureau (kinder, gentler Portland no doubt thinks "Bureau" sounds less "confrontational" than "Department.") has been having problems lately getting people to take it seriously, what with bogus overtime claims and a generous buddy-system of awarding retirement for questionable disabilities, The recent "disability" claim of Damon Woodcock is a case in point. In 1991 Deborah Woodcock (more about the name a little later) joined the Portland Police Bureau. Dedicated to "diversity," Portland actively recruits gays for its Fire and Police Departments - oops, Bureaus. In December 1998, Deborah, perhaps hoping to contribute to department diversity, underwent a sex change. I am not making this up. And she/he remained on the force. No doubt in the name of diversity. (Got to make sure that sex-changees are represented.) But "Damon," as Deborah then chose to be called, balked when told last summer to move out of the women's locker room and into the men's locker room. "Damon's" lawyer said that the switch to the male locker room was "uncomfortable for everybody, since everyone had known him as Deborah." But the switch took place as ordered, and shortly after Damon moved into the men's locker room, someone defaced the nameplate on his/her locker - drawing a slash through "part of his last name," as the Portland Oregonian put it. (near as I can figure, the "part" had to be either the "Wood" or the "cock.") This, said Damon's lawyer, who perhaps has never heard of the Holocaust, amounted to a "hate crime," and she filed a disability claim on Damon's behalf, based on the stress that all this has caused the poor thing. Amazingly, Damon's claim couldn't even get past the pushovers at the Disability and Retirement Board. They turned him down. It was close, though - the vote was 5-5. Damon will appeal.

 

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This is worth remembering, just on the chance we may occasionally find ourselves becoming overly dependent on times and measurements for evaluating our personnel. Wall Street Journal sports editor Frederick Klein tells this story about a conversation he had with Jerry Krause, Vice-President of the Chicago Bulls. (Many people may not be aware that Krause spent years as a baseball scout.) "When I was with the Chicago White Sox," he told Mr. Klein, "we had a long, long meeting about a prospect, going over things like his arm strength, bat speed, growth potential and time going from home plate to first base. Freddy Schaefer, an old-time scout, was sitting in a corner, not saying anything. I asked him if he had any observations or questions. 'Yeah, I do,' he said. 'Anybody know if this kid can play baseball?'"

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By now, John Rocker will have spend his first full day of the 2000 season in uniform. A Wall Street Journal article yesterday is worth reading, because it goes a long way toward explaining why John Rocker is still in Atlanta - a majority African-American city - and still playing ball there, after the anger his comments stirred among community leaders. But one very prominent black Georgian, Andrew Young, played a crucial role in Mr. Rocker's rehabilitation. Mr. Young, now practically an American icon, was a co-worker with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the civil rights movement, then mayor of Atlanta, US Congressman, and US Ambassador to the United Nations. Home recovering from prostate surgery, Mr. Young found himself watching a news conference in which leaders took turns denouncing the "hate-filled" Rocker, and finally, grown weary of the "ranting and raving", he called the Atlanta Constitution to ask if it would publish his views on the Rocker situation. Are you kidding? Turn down the city's most distinguished citizen? In his article, Mr. Young explained that everyone is likely to react with fear and insecurity to unfamiliar cultures. "I took sides with him," he told the Journal, "because I thought he was more integrated in his lifestyle than either the press, the league management, or the blacks who were criticizing him." (Mr. Young was referring to an assortment of ethnic-minority minor-leaguers who have lived with the Rocker family.) Mr. Young said Rocker's comments about New York are understandable: "The fans in New York spat on him, poured beer on him, threw batteries on him, and then they asked him what he thought of New York. More baseball fans probably agree with him than disagree about New York." Bottom line? "I resented all these people pushing on this kid who lost his temper." Salvaging Rocker wasn't easy and it wasn't a one man job. The black mayor of Rocker's home town of Macon, Jack Ellis, also worked on behalf of Rocker, receiving advice at one point from Reverend Jesse Jackson to hate the sin but love the sinner. John Rocker's rehabilitation is not yet complete, but the nation does seem to have recovered to the point where most people are prepared to give him another chance. For that, credit Andrew Young, whose job in the civil rights movement was to go into places after there had been some unrest and make peace with the local leaders. "Our success in the South has been in converting racists, not condemning them," he told the Journal, "We always worked to give our opponents a face-saving way out."

April 18 - "The finest series in single wing football, or all football for that matter, is the complete spin with the fullback." Forest Evashevski and Dave Nelson, in "Scoring Power with the Winged T Offense," 1957

The Chicago clinic was held for the second year in a row at Rich Central High School in Olympia Fields, courtesy of head coach Jon McLaughlin, principal Von Mansfield, and AD Jimmy Daniels. (Principal Mansfield played football at the University of Wisconsin and played professionally with Philadelphia and Green Bay.)   Coach McLaughlin told the clinic that the Double-Wing has enabled him to build a solid program at all three levels: in the three years prior to installing the Double-Wing, the entire RC program - varsity, JV and frosh - generated just 29 wins; but in just two years since installing the Double-Wing, the program is a combined 41-15. His frosh and JV's have both been 15-3, and his varsity went from 4-5 in 1998 to this past season's, 7-4 record and a state playoff spot. "The Double-Wing works for us," Coach McLaughlin said, "because we want to run the football; we want to physically punish people who play us." He pointed to the improvement in his defense this year, and attributed it to the fact that not only does the Double-Wing allow him to control the clock and keep his defense off the field, but being a physical running team on offense, "I know our kids play tougher on defense." He also likes the fact that the Double-Wing is easy to teach, pointing out that with kids coming to Rich Central from five different feeder schools, none of them under his direction, the challenge of the freshman coaches is to blend kids together quickly at their new school. (Coach McLaughlin is blessed with unusual coaching talent at the freshman level: one of his frosh coaches - there is no head coach - is Bill Snedden, recently inducted into the Illinois High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame, who was himself head coach at Rich Central for 17 years. Coach McLaughlin says RC's frosh will never be outcoached.) Coach McLaughlin says the Double-Wing gives average, hard-working kids a chance to be successful, with the result that kids, coaches, parents and administration have bought into his approach 100 per cent. (His numbers are way up - football is now the sport to play at RC, and his program's philosophy of having 22 starters each on both the frosh and JV teams hasn't hurt any. ) He showed the coaches a list of the plays and sets run at each level, followed by a video showing a representative sampling of plays. His approach is very basic and very sound, and he sticks totally to our numbering system, beginning with a handful of plays at the freshman level (Frosh coach Snedden won't run a play unless he is confident it has an 80 per cent chance of success) and expanding the arsenal - partly by adding new plays, partly by running it from multiple sets - as the kids move up to the JV level with Coach Ed Schmeski and on to the varsity. Coach McLaughlin is guardedly optimistic about 2000, but if returning B-Back Tyreece Jones plays up to his potential as one of the top runners in Chicagoland, and the Olympians can get through a suicidal first-three games, Rich Central could be very tough.

Coach Theotis Pace, of Kankakee, Illinois has been a youth coach for over 20 years. He is used to success. He told me how this past year, after his second game, Kankakee High coach Dan Wetzel showed him my "Dynamics of the Double Wing" videotape. That was on a Monday. The next day, Coach Pace installed the Double-Wing. His kids practiced it on Thursday and Saturday, and Sunday, he unveiled it - against a team that was "definitely ready for our I-formation." His first offensive play went for 60 yards and a touchdown. The second went for 45 yards and a touchdown. The third went for 50 yards and a toouchdown." To say the least, Coach Pace and his staff at Kankakee East Side are believers.

Yum. My flight to Chicago, originally scheduled to leave Portland Friday at 9:30 AM, finally took off at 1:30 PM - four hours late. About an hour after takeoff, at 2:30 PM Portland Time (4:30 PM Chicago Time), the flight attendants, perhaps operating on Tokyo Time, offered us our choice of corn flakes or an omelette.

Talk about lifelike. So many visitors to a wax museum in Australia kept unzipping Our President's fly that it finally had to be sewn shut.

Keith Babb, one of the coaches who attended the Chicago clinic, wrote me to tell me, "I'm sure glad I attended your clinic this past weekend. I can't wait for preseason practice to start. I'm also glad that all of the other coaches in the room were from areas that I don't have to coach against." He is so right about that. As I travel the clinic circuit this year, it is very impressive to me to see how the increased level of understanding of the system is reflected in the intelligence of the questions that are being asked.

This one was a no-brainer You'd only have to look at the student parking lots at most high schools to figure that out. One suburban Philadelphia school district has finally gotten smart, and is considering eliminating busing for its high school students. Only 81 of Lower Moreland High's 521 students ride the bus on an average morning, which works out, according to the principal, to an average of nine riders per 50-seat bus. The superintendent estimates that cutting the bus service will save the district $350,000 a year. The only opposition seems to be coming from parents who live in the Lower Moreland district but send their kids to private schools; the district is required by law to provide them with transportation.

It's being called "the fastest-growing team sport in the country." No, it's not soccer. It's nowhere near that big, but it's growing at a faster rate - increasing by 15 to 20 per cent per year - and winning more and more converts from the "beautiful game." In the words of one of its strongest advocates, "It has many of the physical aspects of football and hockey; it has the teamwork you have in soccer and basketball, and it's end-to-end like soccer and basketball." What is it?

April 17 - "No offense should be viewed more seriously than disloyalty." Bill Walsh

The Chicago clinic on Saturday drew a record number of Double-Wing coaches, with high school and youth coaches representing a new record ten different states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin - and California. Tomorrow: host coach Jon McLaughlin and the up-and-coming Rich Central program.

The Chicago papers this past weekend, as might be expected of a Big 10 city, were full of stories about Indiana's Bob Knight. Surprisingly, at least one influential columnist was not part of the media mob delighting in piling on the Indiana coach. Coach Knight, accused well after the fact of having choked a former player, is now in something of a jam thanks to a videotape of the incident released by a treacherous weasel of a fired former assistant, who supposedly told an associate AD at IU that he had been holding onto the tape as his "trump card."

"Coach Wyatt, I was in Chapel Hill attending a Leadership Program for Assistant Principals. Participants in the seminar cover a cross-section from our entire state. Of the 31 participants, there were 4 males.

Thursday's session dealt with a comparison and contrast of schooling in America and Asia. We were assembled into five groups and I served as the only male specimen in our group. The particular chapter we were assigned was the heart and soul of the book (The Learning Gap). I "nailed" the thesis of chapter but none of the other group participants did. As I waited patiently for my turn to speak, I scribbled some notes down for the presentation.

Our chapter spoke to the fact that the majority of Americans today believe that their innate or natural ability enables them to succeed in life. In Asia, success is determined by hard work, perseverance, dedication, and preparation. Because of our (not my) belief in natural ability, when we encounter difficulty or failure, we naturally quit. Difficulty and failure, to Asians, are viewed as tools to learn from. It is also perceived that "one did not work hard enough, and that is why they failed." It is not uncommon for students in Asia to spend 15-20 minutes at the board, in front of the class, trying to find out why they got the problem wrong. Can you imagine what would happen to that teacher if it happened here?

I likened education in Asia to coaching football. More often than not, we take the field on friday night with less talent (innate ability) than our opponents. Only through the lessons of hard work, committment, dedication, and perseverance are we able to compete. We stress the values of working harder and working smarter.

My group really didn't embrace my theories. They did allow me to speak, after they had finished with the majority of the presentation. I spoke about the things that I related to you earlier. The facilitator, who was a black lady, gave me a standing ovation. She communicated to the entire group that all classroom teachers could learn valuable lessons from the coaches in their schools. She challenged them to attend a practice next week on their campus. I echoed her beliefs and took them to a higher ground by asking them to attend football practice during August. I grew up in a society whose heroes were men and women who had overcome difficulty and had persevered. How did we wind up where we are today?" Coach Ross Renfrow, Kenly, North Carolina

Sid Hartman, sports columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, is, I gather, highly-respected. But I caught him in one last weekend. He was touting one Tom Jurich, currently the AD at the University of Louisville, as a potential candidate for the vacant athletic directorship at the "troubled" University of Minnesota. "His first job," Hartman wrote in praise of Jurich, "was at Northern Arizona, where he put the athletic department on the map." Huh? Overlooking the dreary cliche, what exactly did he accomplish there to make the world suddenly aware of Northern Arizona? Oh, well. But then, Hartman went on to say something that just isn't so. "He advanced to Colorado State," Hartman went on, "where he was the reason the football program became very successful." Uh, Sid - not to spoil your story - but wouldn't that be Sonny Lubick?

Just in case you think they don't notice the things you do for them... H. F. "Gerry" Lenfest, who made several billion dollars when he sold his suburban Philadelphia cable TV company to giant Comcast last January, has donated $35 million to his prep school, Mercersburg Academy. He said that Mercersburg, located in south-central Pennsylvania, taught him more than he learned in college at Washington and Lee, or law school at Columbia. "The teachers there not only taught education," he said, "they taught what you should be as a person... that if you develop the right qualities and get an education, you could do something of value in your life." The money, donated outright (no strings attached), is expected to be used to increase teachers' pay, add some buildings, and increase diversity. The latter goal is one that eludes most prep schools such as Mercersburg whose annual tuition is $24,000. And even though 40 per cent of Mercersburg's student body receives financial aid, and even with an average aid package of $14,000, the balance still puts a Mercersburg education far out of reach of most Amercian families. Mr. Lenfest, who graduated from Mercersburg in 1949, was sent there by his dad after his mother died. He said he was inspired to go there by another Mercersburg grad who was a distant cousin of his mother - a fellow named Jimmy Stewart who had gone on to Princeton and from there to Hollywood.

Coach Mike Lane, of Avon Grove, Pennsylvania was first to provide the answer to Friday's question, although he did lose style points for disparaging the question by telling me "this is too easy!" Anyhow, this was the answer - Seifert, Switzer and Martz all took over as new head coaches of defending Super Bowl champions. (Second was Don Capaldo, of Keokuk, Iowa.)

April 14 - "I've got a great gimmick - let's tell the truth." William Bernbach, founder and president of New York advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach

Happy birthday to my wife, who has saved me from myself on more than one occasion, and has made it possible for me to be a coach.

There's still a lot of year left, but a southern New Jersey high school has jumped out to a big early lead in the running for this year's Golden Screw Award. In a decision that could only have been made by bureaucratic types who have never strapped one on, tiny Wildwood High has been told by the members of the Cape-Atlantic League, all of whom have enrollments at least three times that of Wildwood, that it must compete against them in football. That's what Wildwood used to have to do, until four years ago, when after a 10-year span in which it was outscored by Cape-Atlantic League rivals 1,008-196, it was allowed to play an independent schedule in football. This past year, in its fourth year as an independent, Wildwood made it to 6-4, its first winning season since 1965. That was all the evidence the other members of the Cape-Atlantic League needed that Wildwood was back. Time to jump back in with the big boys. Wildwood argued that its varsity team last season - it had no junior varsity - consisted of 26 kids, nine of them freshmen. (Of Wildwood's 235 students, 107 are boys.) No matter. "We felt four years was long enough to rebuild their program and come back, " said the (female) AD of one of the conference schools, who presumably doesn't know a whole lot about the dangers of football mismatches, or the frustrations of coaching and playing under those conditions. So Wildwood must play football in the Cape-Atlantic League, says the league, and the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association supports the League. It would have taken a unanimous vote by the league to release Wildwood. Unanimous! Fat chance. The vote of the league's executive committee, made up of principals, AD's and superintendents, went 24-5 against Wildwood,with five abstentions. If I had been a fly on the wall at that meeting, I'm sure I'd have heard the AD's bleating: Hey! If we let Wildwood go play an independent schedule, we'll all have to get on the phone and find a replacement game! And it's already April!

"Art Rooney, the Pittsburgh owner, had taken a fancy to me. But after I got to Pittsburgh he no doubt was a little disappointed in me. He pressed me to go to confession, to make a better Catholic of me. Let's just say I came under the heading, but spell it with an "i", and "n", and an apostrophe. I was a roamin' Catholic." Johnny Blood, NFL Hall of Famer

Dear Coach Wyatt: I am sending a very big thank you along with this email.I want to thank you for making the football materials available and for being accessible to other coaches, who may need some advice. I contacted you last summer in regard to the double wing system, more in desperation than anything else. I have been coaching youth football for 13 years and thankfully, our teams have had a lot of success. This due to a lot of hard work and great kids and coaches, who have been a pleasure to work with.

Last season, though, was the first year, that we knew going into the season, that we would be extremely inexperienced in a very competitive league. To make matters worse, because of our past success our schedule was brutal. We had to play the defending state champs at our weight classification-who retained the core of their talent-in the first game of the season. As a coaching staff, we knew we had no players with any quarterbacking experience at all. We had two returning starters and 15 players on a squad of 27, that had never played a down of organized football.

While other teams were fine tuning plays and working on strategy, we were absolutely starting at square one. We have always run a multiple offense, the veer and veer option package and we also really liked to throw the ball, a lot. This is unusual for our age group, since the ground game is much more prevalent. With next to no line experience, I could not see our team driving opposing teams 5 yards off the ball. I needed a new perspective and that is when I called you. To make a long story, short. We went through our season with a 7 and 4 record and we made the state playoffs again. Our only losses were to high ranked playoff teams, including the defending state champions, twice. They beat us in the playoffs and repeated.

Our teams normally score a lot of points, but realistically I could not imagine that before our season started. I was wrong. Once we started to get enough reps for the guys to get familiar with the rhythm of the offense and the blocking schemes, we started to score with surprising regularity. The amazing thing about the offense is the long range capability, since it is a run oriented offense. We have had teams that scored more points in the past, but they were good, experienced teams that should have been able to do that. This team was very inexperienced and they still executed because the offense allowed them to grow with the reps and the blocking schemes did not demand that they physically outplay a more experienced player. 80% of our touchdowns came from 45 yards or more, with 18 of them from 65 yards or longer. We had the third most passing touchdowns our team has ever recorded, not bad for a running offense. Our passing touchdowns averaged over 60 yards per play.

 I just wanted to say, I do not believe we would have had this same success, if I did not switch to the double wing this past season. I have seen the offense work. Our kids grew in confidence every week and it was great to see a group of inexperienced kids have success, instead of suffering through a losing season. I think the double wing leveled the playing field, so their efforts were rewarded. Thank you, Coach Wyatt - Coach Charlie Swetnam, Jackalopes Football Team, Peoria, Arizona

You could field an NFL All-Star team wearing orange coveralls. Now comes the disgusting case of the Green Bay Packers' Mark Chmura. You almost expect NFL players who come off the streets and out of the projects to be "troubled," that is to say, to be thugs; the wonder is that so many of them are not. But it is mind-boggling when a person of Eugene Robinson's caliber leaves his family to go slumming on Super Bowl's Eve, and when a guy like Chmura, supposedly a pillar of his team, is accused of, uh, "taking liberties" with the family's 17-year-old babysitter. I know, I know. He hasn't been convicted yet. But the description of the behavior fits perfectly the all-too-familiar pattern of pampered children who think they are entitled to anything - or anyone - they want. Admit it - wouldn't it be great if all professional sports were just to shut down for a couple of years, long enough to force those overpaid creeps out of their stretch limos and gated communities, and help them rediscover that their excrement actually does stink?

Washington Post Columnist William Raspberry says that school vouchers solve the problem of poorly-performing public schools in the same sense that gated communities solve the problems of housebreakings, loitering and street crime.

What do the coaching careers of George Seifert, Barry Switzer and Mike Martz have in common?

April 13 - "Kicking, either directly or indirectly, decides the issue in practically every close game." Bobby Dodd

It's too late this year to warn those slacker seniors at your school who've already gone in the tank, but it might be worth telling this year's juniors - more and more colleges are reneging on earlier offers of admission to students whose classroom performance has faltered since being admitted. They've fallen "victim" (there's that word again) to "senioritis" a condition all too familiar to high school teachers. They've "misjudged the finish line," in the words of one college admissions official, and now some of them are being dumped by colleges that had accepted them. "Our research and experience dealing with academic failure indicate that students whose performance falls off markedly during the senior year are not yet ready to undertake the demanding and competitive programs offered here," went the letter sent by the University of Michigan in changing its mind about a senior previously awarded admission. "We are disappointed to learn," Boston University informed another student, "that you received a failing grade during your last semester. Our acceptance of your application was based on our understanding that you would maintain passing grades in all subjects through the end of your senior year." Those poor children! That's not fair! Nobody told them! Senior year is supposed to be for kicking back! No doubt certain parents of this new class of victims are searching right now for the doctor who is willing to sell his integrity and declare senioritis a new disability. (SSD - Senior Slacker Disorder) Meanwhile, I have a question. It has been my experience in Washington, with its incredibly lax graduation requirements, that many students manage to complete all state graduation requirements before senior year - except for one class called CWP (Contemporary World Problems) which is offered only to seniors. As a result, an unmotivated college-bound senior's schedule at a school with a four-period day might look like this: Period One: Teacher's Aide (Roam the halls and occasionally run off a few copies for the teacher); Period Two: Foods of the World (That'll impress the admissions folks at Michigan and Boston U); Period Three: CWP; Period Four: Early Release. (Got to get to the job.) That schedule alone ought to be enough to cause any self-respecting college to rescind admission.

"I was very lucky to have pitched with that team instead of against them. Never has a day passed when I don't think of how fortunate I was to have played there." Carl Erskine, who pitched for the great Brooklyn Dodgers' teams (Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Billy Cox, Don Newcombe, etc., etc.) of the 1950's, and is soon to publish a book about his playing days entitled "Tales From the Dodger Dugout."

Rick Pitino, who coached Florida's Billy Donovan at Providence College, sounded as if he might be ready to return to the college game himself when he talked about Donovan with the Boston Herald's Peter May. "Looking at him out there," Pitino said, "I was amazed at how much polish he had, and how he had gotten his young team to sacrifice. And I realized, although it's very small, I had a small part in his life. I'm going to give some thought process of whether I'm making a difference in the lives of athletes. Because that's where I get my gratification. I've been to four Final Fours, and that's nice. It really is. But I look at what I've accomplished in developing athletes as basketball players and as people, and that's where I get my gratification, as a teacher. What I'm saying is if there comes a day where I don't feel I'm teaching all of those things, then I will look at myself and say, 'maybe it's time for a change in scenery.'" (Poor Coach Pitino. Maybe he really thinks he can continue to coach in the NBA - and make 100 times what a high school coach makes - yet still enjoy the intrinsic rewards that come with high school coaching! Come on - if he really thinks he's having an impact on the lives of today's pro athletes, he's not as sharp as I thought he was.)

Anyone for a little irony? Columnist Maggie Gallagher notes that with polls showing two-thirds of Vermonters opposed to same-sex marriage yet few of them willing to stand up and endure being called bigots by the gays and lesbians, it is now the straight people, the advocates of real marriage, who are being driven into the closet.

"A little while back I offered Allie Sherman, the Giants coach who was my third-strong quarterback in the early forties, the defense I used to stop Graham and the Browns. But he wasn't interested. Too bad. I still think there are a lot of things from what they call the old days that still could help the game today." Greasy Neale, Hall of Fame coach (NFL championships with the Eagles in 1948-49) speaking in 1969.

April 12 - "Don't save your pitcher for tomorrow;  it might rain tomorrow." Leo Durocher, great baseball manager

I asked Coach Frank Simonsen, long-time youth coach from Cape May, New Jersey, if he would talk to coaches at last Saturday's Philadelphia clinic about the importance of good relations between the youth coach and the high school coach. I wasn't disappointed. "Captain Frank" (he's a retired Texaco oil tanker captain), has 30 years of coaching experience, and he had a lot of wisdom to pass along. I have seen his kids, and I can vouch for his ability to coach. He is a great believer in drills. "We spend more time setting them up, teaching them, and then running them than we do scrimmaging," he said. "The Pancake Drill (from the Dynamics of the Double Wing video) is one of the finest drills in football," he said. "We have incorporated it into every phase of football." Coach Simonsen pointed out a number of ways in which coordinating the youth program with the high school program can benefit the high school coach, especially in the area of evaluating and placing kids in the best positions for them before they get to high school. (It really is amazing, especially if the youth team and the high school team are running the same system, how often the youth coach's judgment in this area is correct.) Frank also is a great believer in encouraging kids not to concentrate on one sport; he believes that's an important part of a youth coach's job in counseling kids. He especially likes to steer kids topward wrestling. "I think wrestling is the most comparable sport to football," he said. "I encourage wrestling." He appealled to high school coaches not to look down on youth coaches, but instead to bring them into the overall program. "Treat us like a member of your staff, " he urged them. "Treat us like coaches. Respect our input." Some of the ways he suggested that high school coaches might reach out to youth coaches would be to invite them to high school staff meetings and ask them to attend clinics with them; to issue youth coaches an open invitation to high school practices and let them down on the sidelines at high school games. Coach Simonsen also urged high school coaches to attend youth games, and talk with the players before and after the games. Finally, he said, "Be brave - come to the youth football booster meetings!"

"...there were no breaks, no water buckets, even for games on the hot late-summer afternoons in September, and our players could not sit or kneel during timeouts unless they were injured. If a player was hurt, then he lay down and we took care of him. Everything was built on a spartan, toough, fight-your-way-to-the-death basis, and as the attitude seeped into the players, they began to realize they didn't need any comforts on the field. When they saw other teams hit the water bucket, they said, 'We'll take care of them.'" Paul Brown, on taking over at Ohio State in 1941 (OSU won the National Championship in 1942)

When we get letters like these, they remind us of what a great calling coaching is. This came Monday from Janne Haapanen, a former player - pretty good one, too - on a team I coached in Kotka, Finland. I hadn't heard from him since 1994. "Hi Coach !!! I was really surprise, find to your fine homepage in net. And I was very glad to read some stories in your coaching times in Finland (particularly Kotka). The time which you were our coach in the Kotka was most growing time for me (I don´t only mean football, also "how to be good human" I really learn a lot of that time ) and I´am very grateful . Now a day I´m working in the most biggest dairy co. in Helsinki (responsibility : butter cheese process), and I still play football in team of Varkaus (very young and decent team, last season -99 we were I division play off, without any "real" coach!) Sincerily ! Janne Haapanen (former member of South East Eagles team)"

Just in case you thought you were the only one... "Coach Wyatt I suddenly find myself facing the basketball monster. I would like to take my returning lineman and some younger kids to a 2 day lineman camp. I think it would help our fundamentals and our aggression. Unfortunately a lot of my returning lineman are also basketball players. They are signed up for 6 team camps this summer. So when I ask them to make one more camp the cost of all these camps has become an issue. I can understand that the cost is probably getting outrageous. The camps for the basketball players range from $10 to $55. The basketball coach thinks this is very cheap. I must admit not bad but when you string 6 of those together it will start to add up. I love basketball in fact I'm the assistant coach and we have been very successful over the past few seasons. It is becoming very obvious to me that it will be very difficult to build a good football team unless I can get some of these guys to put some summer priority on football." (The time to get really upset is when the Booster Club makes most of its money at the concession stand at football games, then uses most of it to pay entry fees to summer basketball tournaments and tuition to basketball camps.)

"Two items concerning "out of hand" parents/youth coaches, that tell me the apocalypse is upon us.... 1)At our (Bill George Governing Meeting, concerning rules changes) A group of us tried to eliminate having the Silver Division (B-level/instructional division) from getting to play the "Super Bowl" at Northern Illinois Stadium. The reason - towns that had average talent were putting their teams in the "B" division and going after championships, rather than putting them in the "A" division where they should have been and could compete. So rather than work and push their kids to succeed and compete at a high level, they are teaching their kids to take the easy way out and go for the trophy at the Silver division. It really sickens me, what that is teaching a kid. Of course the towns that do this state it is not about championships, but rather playing time and self esteem. (Funny, if you go to their respective web sites, the first thing you see is pictures of their Silver divisions teams at NIU, holding their trophies.........) Scary

 2) You will like this, one of the towns brought up a rule change asking that the 85 lb. level (5th graders) should switch to a smaller ball (one used by the flag program) Their reasoning for the rule change would be that a smaller ball would be easier to grasp and then they could promote more throwing of the ball!!!!! As one brainiac parent stated...."We gotta start being able to teach our QB's how to open it up" -.....IN FIFTH GRADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The second rule bit the dust, by a vote of 14-6. Thank God. Regards, Bill Lawlor, Chicago"

April 11 - "If you make every game a life-or-death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot."  Dean Smith

Travelling this past March to places such as Toledo, Ohio and Portland, Maine, I'd managed successfully to avoid foul winter weather. In fact, the weather in those places, where winter has been know to last well into spring, was glorious. And Saturday, outside Philadelphia, it was sunny and 72 degrees out, the kind of day when even the most dedicated football coach has to strap it on to sit inside and learn about the Double-Wing. But there they were, some 25 coaches, and when we said our good-byes, we routinely wished each other a safe trip home. Little did we know. Overnight, the weather turned nasty, with temperatures in the low 30's, gusty winds - and snow. Lots of it. The New York Mets' game was snowed out, as was a major CART race scheduled to be run at Nazareth in Northeastern Pennsylvania. It wasn't all that bad for me, driving to Baltimore-Washington International for my flight home, but the roadsides along the way were strewn with cars that weren't quite so lucky. Three of the coaches at the clinic, having travelled quite a distance from upstate New York, decided to spend Saturday night in Fort Washington, PA and drive home Sunday morning. I wonder what their reaction was when they woke up to see snow on the ground.

At my request, Coach Doug Baker spoke with the Philadelphia clinic. Coach Baker is unique in that, despite a suvvessful 1999 season, he likely won't be coaching this year. After two years in which he turned things around at Snow Hill, Maryland, he assessed the level of support for his program and decided to move his wife and son closer to their families back in Western Maryland, 200 miles away. Among Coach Baker's 1999 accomplishments at 1-A Snow Hill, smallest school playing football in the entire state, were taking the eventual state 2-A champs to a narrow Double Overtime loss, and finally defeating much larger Cambridge South Dorchester, after 30 straight unsuccessful tries. In 1998, South Dorchester's kids had ridiculed the Double Wing, chanting "NINTENDO! NINTENDO! NINTENDO!" After Doug explained to his kids what the chant was supposed to mean, they took special pleasure in doing the same chant following their 1999 win. One humorous incident Coach Baker related was the time an official threw a flag on an 88-Super Power and came over to tell him, "In all my years of officiating, I've never called a holding penalty against a quarterback before." He told of the "mud bowl" in which the Wildcat was "a real life-saver." (He called the formation "Q-Squared" because he ran it with two QB's side-by-side.) A great bit of advice he passed along was to sneak a unique formation in against an opponent, then put it in hiding for a couple of weeks before showing it again. Coach Baker showed us his version of the 77-power, with the A-Back faking the criss-cross exchange, and his "trips" formation with the B and A backs lined up just outside the C-Back. Since the topic of cooperation between youth coaches and high school coaches was a point of some discussion at the clinic, Coach baker told of his frustration with his inability to persuade his youth coach to run the Double-Wing, despite the fact that the youth team scored only 7 points, while Snow Hill's varsity was scoring 378 points. Coach Baker encouraged Double-Wing coaches to attend clinics like this one and to stay in touch with each other, saying that with this offense, "You've got to tap into this small group of coaches, because you can't just talk to the guy across the street." A young coach, Doug Baker says he's learned one really important lesson which he passed along to any coach who might feel the need to give his seniors an edge, even when they haven't paid the price in the off-season. "I used to be soft, " he said, but not any more. "Twelfth-graders should know better. You don't owe them anything. They should have been out working. Find your best 11 kids and go with them, no matter what grade they are."

Taxpayers in the Twin Cities are enraged after hearing of accusations in a recently published book by Jay Weiner, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star-Tribine, that their governor - no, not Jesse "The Soul" - may have been part of a fictitious plot cooked up to trick Minnesota legislators into building a taxpayer-funded stadium for the Twins. In his book, "Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big-League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles," Weiner claims that the idea originated with the chief of Staff of Governor Arne Carlson, who back in 1997 supposedly told Twins' officials to crank up the pressure on taxpayers by concocting a deal to "sell" the team and move it elsewhere. The Twins allegedly went along with the plot, supposedly finding a "buyer" in the Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point, North Carolina area. But for all their efforts, the scheme (if, in fact, that's what it was) failed, and now Weiner's tale of the story behind it would seem to complicate further efforts by the Twins to get in on the free stadium giveaway.

Owners of a downstate Illinois nursing home, which was only half full, cooked up a great idea to fill their empty beds and make money. For $75 per person per day, paid by the state, they offered to house 26 young, homeless drug addicts from Chicago among their elderly patients. Bad idea. After reports that the young city lads terrorized staff members and elderly patients, the scheme has been discontinued.

I received this e-mail yesterday: "Greetings Coach Wyatt: I would not have believed it until I saw it in black & white. A well-known YOUTH football league has mandated that all football, cheer and dance squads must have an APPROVED patch on competition uniforms. What is the logic or mystical powers of this mandatory patch? I wonder what will be next?? Of course these NFL style patches are only available from ONE Source. The cost per 1.50 retail, bulk possible 75 cents to one dollar. With this non-profit?? league claiming 300,00 youth participants, an easy $150,000 to $450,000? the location of website is www.dickbutkus.com/dbfn/popwarner/home.html . A sad commentary on where the true interest may be."

Could this really be possible? I asked. Could some national organization really be trying to shake down hard-working volunteers at the local level? This, I had to see for myself. So I looked up the site and sure enough, there it was:

COACHES/ADMINISTRATORS - FYI Don't forget the important rule change taking effect next January. In 1999 ALL Pop Warner football teams, cheer and dance squads must have an approved Pop Warner patch on competition uniforms. Pop Warner's Regional Management, together with the national staff, agreed last Spring that APPROVED PATCHES MAY NOT BE LOCALLY PRODUCED... and are ONLY available from Pop Warner's official merchandise source... The Warner Corner. CLICK HERE to go to THE WARNER CORNER or call 1-800-910-4POP (1-800-910-4767) for pricing and order information.

These "prayers" come from Coach Herb Persons, in Kalamazoo, Michigan:

Lord help me to relax about insignificant details.....beginning tomorrow at 7:41:23 AM PST.

Lord help me to consider people's feelings .....even if they ARE hypersensitive.

Lord help me to take responsibility for my own actions.....even though they're NOT my fault.

Lord, help me to not try to RUN everything...But, if You need some help, please feel free to ASK me!

Lord, help me to be more laid back .....and help me to do it EXACTLY right.

Lord help me to take things more seriously,.....especially laughter, parties, and dancing.

Lord give me patience....RIGHT NOW!

Lord help me not be a perfectionist. .....(Did I spell that correctly?)

Lord, help me to finish everything I sta ..

Lord, help me to keep my mind on one th -- Look, a bird! -- ing at a time.

Lord help me to do only what I can, and trust you for the rest......And would you mind putting that in writing?

Lord keep me open to others' ideas.....WRONG though they may be.

Lord help me be less independent.....but let me do it my way.

Lord, help me slow down .....andnotrushthroughwhatIdo.

April 10 - "You should never let anybody that doesn't like you, doesn't care about you, have the authority to critique your situation." Bill Russell, basketball great

NCAA President Cedric Dempsey has proposed a revision of basketball recruiting rules - to be voted on next January - decreasing coaches' summer "evaluation days" in an effort to reduce the influence of summer camps. Not so fast, you football coaches. Don't start cheering just yet. This may mean less demand on kids' time in the summer (although there'll still be AAU tournaments), but in return for a curtailment of their summer recruiting, college coaches would now be given 70 "evaluation days" - up from 40 - during the "academic year." Has it occured to you that most of the free time these coaches have during the "academic year" comes during football and baseball/track seasons - meaning that the talent pimps and AAU coaches will now be enticing your football players to play in weekend and weeknight tournaments during football season - maybe even giving up football entirely - "because that's when the colleges will be watching?"

I must say that the XFL did bring to my attention something that I really wasn't aware of. The new football league will allow just 35 seconds between plays, rather than the 40 seconds the NFL allows. 40 seconds! I wasn't aware it was that long. No wonder their game sucks! No wonder there is a substitute for every situation. No wonder the blabbering bozos in the booth have become more important than the game itself! If the NFL really wants to improve its game, it'll cut the time between plays down to about 20 or 25 seconds.Maybe it'll mean no more Lovely Leslie Visser sideline interviews, but I'm willing to take that chance. The current 40 seconds still isn't long enough for her to conclude a sideline interview without talking over the game action itself, anyhow.

I do like Minnesota, but remember, that's where they elected Jesse Ventura. Jeff Huseth, a reader in the Twin Cities, passes along the latest from the Land of Cold Weather and Warm Hearts: the adults involved in youth soccer in Blaine, Minnesota, will not longer use such terms as "opponents," or "rivals," and certainly not "the enemy." They will be referring to those guys on the other side of the field as "necessary friends."

Home schooling anyone? As a teacher, I would always marvel at those idiot parents who liked to make big noises about holding teachers and schools "accountable," but would think nothing of taking their kids out of school for a week to go skiing, or to go to Disneyland - or Hawaii - the week before vacation starts ("to beat the crowds"); even worse were those numbskulls who would go away for a few days by themselves and leave teenage kids home alone. The big story in the Philadelphia suburbs right now is the conviction of four male high school students of "sexual assault" at a party thrown by a fellow student last October 1 when his parents were out of town. During the party, at which condoms were handed out at the door, and students "guzzled" vodka and marijuana, a girl claimed to have had too much to drink, and to have fallen asleep in a bedroom. She was awakened, she said, by five boys holding her down while at least three and possibly four of them took turns raping her. Sorry. I should have said, "sexually assaulting" her, even though it sure sounded a lot like rape. The four "children", two of them baseball players and a third one a basketball player, were convicted. And, boy - did they get the book thrown at them. Tried as juveniles, the "children" face a little juvenile detention - or probation. (I'm betting on probation, because "they're basically good kids who made a mistake" - isn't that how it usually goes?) But wait - that's not all. The law's not done with them yet. They also face - counseling! That'll scare them straight. Oh, yes - and the two baseball players have been "temporarily suspended" from the team, because "we are very concerned about having students found guilty of felonies representing our district in extracurricular activities," according to the president of the school board. Yeah, very concerned. Not concerned, though, about returning convicted felons to the classroom, because on Friday, they were all back in school! (Their victim has been home-schooled since the incident). According to a fellow student, the return of the four perps was no big deal. Just another day at school. "Same as normal," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Nothing different. Just a normal day, and nobody talked about the trial today." Actually, I'm willing to bet that among a substantial portion of the student body, those guys are heroes. Like pro wrestlers and NFL gods. I tend to side with the local resident who told the Inquirer, "This just confirms that the students are out of control." He might have included Boomer parents, who can't quite seem to come to grips with the idea that they are supposed to be the adults in all this.

"One of the greatest challenges that faces a football coach is coaching the offensive line. Because linemen seldom get as much public recognition as they deserve, it often takes a real selling job on the part of the coach to convince them of their importance to the team." Jim Owens, University of Washington - coach of two consecutive Rose Bowl champions (1960-1961)

Guess some people are just slow learners: 18 per cent of all new AIDS cases in Maine last year were over the age of 49.

Answer to Friday's Question (Can you name the only five schools in the history of NCAA championships to have won a national championship in football and an NCAA basketball tournament?) - Arkansas, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, UCLA

April 7 - "The best thing you can do with an enemy is make him a friend." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Want to get something started in your house? Take a cue from what WIP Sports Radio in Philadelphia did the morning after UConn's women defeated Tennessee for the NCAA Women's Championship: tell the females in the family that your state's boys' high school champion could beat UConn's women. Then stand back and protect yourself. The guys at WIP used Pennsylvania class AAAA state champ Chester to make their case, but they could just as easily have chosen Philadelphia's Roman Catholic High (Philadelphia's Catholic schools are not eligible to play for the state title) and its 6-9 blue-chipper, Eddie Griffin. Granted, you could have a tougher time arguing if you live in a small state that is less, um, "ethnically diverse," but hold your ground, anyhow. You're still probably right. And as for states such as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York (California doesn't have state champions) - get serious, ladies. UConn's women are good at what they do - women's basketball. But you shouldn't have let yourself get too carried away by those PC ads that NIKE brainwashed you with - you know, the girls on the playground beating the guys... Mia Hamm dusting Michael Jordan in a sports medley. Those ads were meant suck up to female viewers and give them a warm, fuzzy feeling about NIKE. But they weren't reality. The reality is that those high school boys' champions are bigger, faster and stronger than the college women, and the difference in their jumping abilities is laughable. Where is the woman who can handle an Eddie Griffin?

Those who really think that the Chicago Cubs-New York Mets' season-opening series in Japan might lead to some sort of global baseball league any time soon are dreaming. Writes Kevin Baker, in the Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Selig (Bud Selig, Commissioner of Baseball) has spent the last three years unsuccessfully trying to realign the American League's Central and West Divisions. Scheduling in the Hiroshima Carp or the Nippon Ham Fighters is beyond his capability."

Not shilling for anybody, but - you may remember my saying that I had bought an iMac DV Special Edition (DV for Digital Video) a few months ago. This is what Walter S. Mossberg, Personal Technology Editor of the Wall Street Journal, wrote yesterday: "The top model, the iMac DV Special Edition, is the best MacIntosh I've ever used, period, and one of the best PCs ever."

Sleep well, citizens of Boston. Four Boston police officers have asked to be excused from a rule requiring them to establish a residence in the city within a year of being hired, claiming that living in Boston is too dangerous.

See if you can connect the dots: (1) The three top-rated shows on TV last week were different versions of the same show. Three different nights of "Millionaire," with its imbecilic opening-round questions - multiple choice, yet - occupied spots one, two and three. (2) Orkin, the pest control company, reports that the "cockroach" crawling across the screen in its TV commercial is so convincing it has caused some viewers to throw things at their sets.

Here's a great fund-raiser for your school. Not only did Michigan State win the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament on Monday night, but it also earned the right to buy the actual floor - all 7,200 square feet of it - on which the Final Four was played. For $80,000. It probably bought it, just as Kentucky and UConn, the last two NCAA champions, did. Why? You realize how much money they can make selling mementoes featuring 3" x 6" pieces of that hardwood floor? If they cut the hardwood carefully, (and if my math is correct ) that will work out to 57,600 pieces. Mount each piece on a nice plaque with an engraved brass plate on it, sell it for $75 or so to alumni and fans, and, even after purchase of the floor, marketing and manufacturing expenses - and giving away a few to your largest donors - it is still possible to net well over a million dollars. Don't know about football, though - somehow, I just can't see a chunk of sod mounted on a plaque.

Can you name the only five schools in the history of NCAA championships to have won a national championship in football and an NCAA basketball tournament?

April 6 - "Unless you have patience, your players will not improve much."  H.O. "Fritz" Crisler, Coach at Minnesota, Princeton, and Michigan

Soccer may be making inroads in much of our over-feminized United States, but there are places in northern New England where football is coming back. Actually, it's not a comeback, but more of an emergence. Surprisingly, there are still some schools in Maine and New Hampshire - some of them fairly large - that have never had football, but their number is declining as more and more of them have begun to field teams. In fact, two such schools were represented at my clinic held last weekend in Gorham, Maine. One of them, Kearsarge Regional High, in North Sutton, New Hampshire, just completed its second season of football, running the Double-Wing and compiling a 5-4 record. Coach Dennis Hoffman, who has been a coach for over 20 years, was instrumental in getting the program going, starting first with a youth program and patiently grooming the kids until they were old enough for him to convince the school to let him start football as a club sport. Now, with the community donating lights for the field and the school making football a full-fledged sport, he is eagerly looking forward to a great year in 2000. I had a chance to see some of his game tapes, and was very impressed by the job Coach Hoffman and his staff - and kids - have done. At the other school, Gorham High, Coach Dave Kilborn has a somewhat different situation. He is headed into his second year, at a school known mostly for its powerhouse soccer teams. Gorham high has excellent facilities, one of the most obvious being its nice, lighted stadium - for soccer. But Coach Kilborn, with an enthusiastic staff that includes John Beedy, whose dad is a football coach, and his own dad, Art Kilborn, a coaching legend in Maine football before "retiring", is not intimidated, and is making great strides in building football in the community.

"Dante," a caller to Philadelphia's sports radio WIP, noting that the NFL is going to have to do something to keep young males from deserting Monday Night Football for wrestling, suggested weekly human sacrifices at some point in the contests, possibly bringing in some ancent Mayans, who would be able to pull of sacrifices because "it's part of their religion." One of the WIP radio guys observed that ABC had already begun paving the way for such entertainment, with its axing of Dan Dierdorff, Frank Gifford and Boomer Esiason.

The amazing thing I noticed while driving through New Hampshire, in my first time back since 1981 and only my second time since 1955, is its resemblance to Finland - from the narrow roads cutting through thick forests of birch and evergreen trees, to the solid granite through which the roads sometimes have to be cut, to the "Moose Crossing" signs. Hitting a moose is not a pleasant experience, as my Finnish friends pointed out to me - a moose weighs a lot more than a deer, and its body is just about windshield-height.

Road kill seen while driving inside the city limits of Manchester, New Hampshire: a dead beaver.

Hypocrisy Alert. Amid all the furor over the Confederate Battle Flag's flying over the South Carolina state capitol - originally put there, incidentally, by a Democratic governor, one Ernest Hollings - it is amusing to take note of another state, Arkanasas, once governed by The Man From Hope. Arkansas law specifies that the Saturday before Easter Sunday be celebrated as Confederate Flag Day.

Isn't it amazing how the news media allow liberals get away with twisting the First Amendment to serve their purposes? It is just fine, they say, for an artist to disparage your religion by depicting - in a public place, such as a museum - a crucifix dipped in urine or the Virgin Mary covered with dung. But - depending on how the Supreme Court rules in a current case - it is not all right to pray for players' strength and safety prior to a high school football game - because it's in a public place? And isn't it interesting how it is okay to burn the American flag (that's protected speech, you know, and besides, it's just a symbol), but the same people who like to set flags on fire can bar the doors to a public building to keep you from delivering a speech opposing something they hold dear? Wonder why the free-speechies at the ACLU think it's all right for it to cost you your job if you're a police officer and you express your opinion that women are unfit to be police officers? Or if you're a football coach and you state openly that you don't believe girls should be allowed to play football? Or if you're any male, and you tell the wrong female co-worker that she's looking good today? Let Reggie White express his deeply-held religious belief that homosexuality is wrong, and just watch cowardly legislators - once they learn that he has offended gays - rush to be the first to condemn him. (Memo to liberal student groups: don't try standing in the doorway when Mr. White arrives to give a speech at your college.)

Answer to yesterday's question - The pitcher who plunked and injuredYankee first basemen Wally Pipp, opening the door for Lou Gehrig to replace him and of course start the Iron Horse's streak of 2130 consecutive games played, went on to become a college football coaching legend? Charlie Caldwell, of Princeton

April 5 - "Education is experience; the rest is only information." Albert Einstein

Tell the guys in Cooperstown not to start on the Pete Rose plaque just yet. Somehow, I don't think he swung any votes his way with his performance on Wrestlemania Sunday night. Rose, who probably has a better shot at immortality as a guy who will do anything for money than as a member of baseball's Hall of Fame, took his act to a new low. Charlie Hustle's opening act was to threaten some wrestler with a baseball bat. It's important to know that the wrestler in question (I don't know these guys' names and couldn't care less) weighs in the neighborhood of 400 pounds and wears only a thong. That's it. We're talking about a lot of sweaty flesh. It's especially important to know this, if you're the kind of father who for some unknown reason lets his kids watch this dreck (Yiddish for crap). Give yourself 100 parenthood points if you have the stones to tell your kids they can't watch. Deduct 100 points if you don't. Because this 400-pounder's next act was to slam Mr. Wannabe Hall of Famer, and then, as Rose lay (supposedly) dazed in the corner of the ring with his head against the lowest rope, ram his corpulent butt into Rose's face. Wow. What great entertainment. No wonder the kids love it. And ole Rose - what a class act. (Seriously, what kind of man would allow somebody to do something that sordid and degrading to him - for any amount of money?) Setting Mr. Rose aside for the moment, a few other, even bigger questions arise: Is this the "excitement " we can look forward to when the XFL tees it up? Was Dick Ebersol of NBC sports - who only last week said of the WWF "I have not seen anything I would classify as vulgar" - watching Wrestlemania Sunday night?

A lethal combination. Driving through New England Sunday, I heard some NFL guy on a Boston station saying that there are two very important unanswered questions regarding anybody they consider drafting, even a "can't-miss" guy: (1) what's he going to do when he has time? and (2) what's he going to do when he has money? Time and money are two things most college football players don't have a whole lot of, and sometimes when they find themselves with both the results can be ugly.

After the spectacular success of Minnesota's Randy Moss, who wouldn't be interested in drafting Plaxico Burress, the wide receiver from Michgan State who is bigger than Moss and almost as fast, with great hands? The Philadelphia Eagles certainly were. Until, that is, Burress blew off two workouts in order to follow Michigan State's basketball team through the NCAA toournament. And until they learned that Burress and the 76ers' Allen Iverson, who both grew up in Tidewater Virginia, are buddies. Now the Eagles are said to be concerned about whether Mr. Iverson, not noted for hanging around libraries on his off days, might introduce Mr. Burress to unproductive ways to spend his time and money. (See the preceding story.)

Would a mountain be okay? How about Yosemite? Poor Joe DiMaggio. Dead just a year. In life a symbol of class for all athletes to aspire to (not exactly a Pete Rose), in death he is being used by others as a symbol of petulance and greed. When his native city of San Francisco proposed honoring him by naming a playground for him, his executor said, nothing doing. A playground? Are you kidding? Nothing short of the Bay Bridge or the San Francisco Airport will do, he informed city supervisors. Go ahead with that playground idea without permission, he wrote them, and he'll take legal action.

Karl Malone, who not so long ago, as part of his endorsement of Rogaine showed how over time it had lessened his male-pattern baldness, has now shaved his head.

Here's a great football trivia question sent in by Coach Bill Lawlor, from Chicagoland: "He was the pitcher who plunked and injuredYankee first basemen Wally Pipp, opening the door for Lou Gehrig to replace him and of course start the Iron Horse's streak of 2130 consecutive games played. He would go on to become a college football coaching legend." (Answer tomorrow.)

April 4 - "God so loved the world that he sent not a committee." Church sign in Gorham, Maine

Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports, the man who has brought America TV sports at the highest level, now finds himself, metaphorically speaking, crawling on his belly. With NBC buying 2.3 million shares of WWF at $13 a share - almost $30 million, Ebersol has taken on the task of presenting the WWF's new XFL ("Not your mother's football league," Ebersol says) to the American public, particularly that part of the American public that we coaches work with. "The objective," he said, " is to get young males to the television set. Fans crave a much more wide-open brand of football than they are seeing today. There will be no committees voting to ban on-field celebrations. There will be cameras on the field, on the players, on the sidelines and in the locker room. There are no fair catches, much faster play clocks, a 10-minute halftime, and it will clearly fit in a three-hour time period. The four teams that win each week will receive a cash bonus. We can't in prime time just be doing traditional dramas and sitcoms." NBC is not paying the WWF for television rights in the conventional manner - instead, it will promote the games and air them on its network, while WWF will provide the "content" - the games - and sell the commercial time. NBC and WWF will split the revenues 50-50. The plan is to televise 10 regular-season Saturday-night games beginning next February 3. The XFL has announced its intention to play in eight cities - "Miami and seven other cities" is how they put it at this point, indicating that only Miami is set, with less than a year to get going. The tie-in with the WWF addresses two of NBC's problems. The first is demographics - the age of its audience. Nielsen Media Research shows that the typical NBC viewer is 45 years old, up three years since 1997. The second is its chronic weakness on Saturday night.(The last NBC hit on Saturday night was "The Golden Girls," which went off the air in 1992.) Nielsen Media From the standpoint of those who love football, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot in the rules changes boasted by the WWF that seems threatening. A 10-minute halftime? Wow. What a radical change. That's really exciting. The NFL takes a whole two minutes longer! Be still, my beating heart. I have a feeling that the real bas news is going to be the antics of the people on the field, the people on the sidelines and those in the stands - who are not always going to be distinguishable from each other. Regarding the incongruity of a guy who's brought us some of the finest moments in TV sports now soiling his hands with some of the crudest, lewdest garbage shown on TV, Ebersol sounds like the piano player in the bordello who claimed he had no idea that was going on upstairs when he says of the WWF, "I have not seen anything I would classify as vulgar." Right, Dick. And those signs in the audience saying "Suck It!" are referring to lollipops.

Wing-T enthusiasts will appreciate this. I spent Sunday night in Newark, Delaware (pronounced NEW-ahrk, as opposed to New Jersey's NEW-erk), the home of the University of Delaware.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (www.isi.org) celebrates each April Fool's Day by giving out its "Polly" awards for outstanding displays of Political Correctness. This year's winner was San Diego State's graduate education program, a degree requirement of which includes an unusual lesson in "tolerance." It involves making a presentation in front of a class, stating aloud "I am gay," or "I am lesbian," then describing that it is like to be a gay or lesbian in various situations, and what it is like to be discriminated against. To learn what it is like to be discriminated against, the Wall Street Journal suggests students attend an Al Sharpton rally and announce to all in attendance, "I'm here to collect funds for the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association." Or raise their hands at freshman orientation and ask why Mayou Angelou is a core requirement - and Shakespeare is not.

Next time a kid tells you he's going to concentrate on another sport year-round, be sure to ask him how he supposes Mateen Cleaves, of Michgan State, managed to find time to play quarterback as a high schooler.

Maybe you can tell me. The typical U.S. Air Force Academy cadet, in return for an all-expenses-paid top-notch education, benefits (including pay) that would dazzle most college students, and a guaranteed job upon graduation, is expected to commit to serve at least five years, following graduation, in the United States military. Since there seems to be no public outcry against the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars per cadet to educate and train a leader, the taxpayers must think it's a good deal for them. And since I have heard nothing about a dearth of qualified applicants for admission to the Academy, evidently its requirements are not frightening away potential leaders. So why, then - other than purely for athletic recruitment purposes - have the regulations been loosened in the past few years to permit graduates to appeal, after 2 years, to be given a year's leave to make a professional sports team's roster? And why, if they do make a professional team's roster and are signed to a professional contract, are they permitted another appeal to allow them to serve six years in the reserve? What does this have to do with our nation's defense?

As a result of an out-of-court settlement with one state, whose streets and schools are evidently perfectly safe and now has time for such frivolity, the Nintendo Corporation has agreed to give away protective gloves (!) to purchasers of one of their recent games. (Because now that this game requires the joystick to be spun rapidly, kids were developing (sniff!) cuts and (waah!) blisters from it.)

April 3 - "A little luck and a little government are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them." P. J. O'Rourke

This past weekend I was in Portland, Maine, at a clinic put on by Jack Tourtillotte, from Boothbay Harbor, Maine in conjunction with six other head coaches and their staffs from New Hampshire and Maine. The clinic was held at Gorham High in Gorham Maine, thanks to the hospitality of Coach Dave Kilborn, with 30 coaches in attendance. What really changed the character of this clinic was the fact that every coach there had at least a year's experience with the Double-Wing. More about the clinic tomorrow, but many thanks to Jack Tourtillotte for all his work, and to Dave Kilborn for setting things up so nicely. For three weeks in a row now, I have been forttunate enough to have great host coaches taking care of a lot of the on-site details.

New Hampshire is a small state, without any major college athletic programs, so when one of its kids attracts interest from big-time schools, it is statewide news, as I discovered in a recent trip throught the Granite State. Take a look tonight at Matt Bonner, Florida's giant redheaded freshman who'll come into the game in Coach Billy Donovan's first wave of substitutes. He is the pride of Concord (pronounce that KONK-ud if you want to sound like a native), whose high school coach admits that he really wasn't familiar enough with basketball at Florida's level to know whether young Matt could play there. Now he knows, and confesses to have watched most of Florida's games on cable this year, eyes glued to Matt whenever he's in the game. Interestingly, the coach was named New Hampshire coach of the year this year - because of what he was able to accomplish without Matt Bonner. Matt's sister, New Hampshire coaches inform me, is a super athlete herself, and has committed to play basketball at Stanford next year.

The census folks are out and about, making sure all the homeless get counted. We read in last Thursday's Portland Oregonian about "a small army of census workers," hired just the day before, setting out with their census forms, plus hundreds of donated blankets, coupons for free sandwiches at Arby's, and cash. (The cash was to pay "gatekeepers" at homeless camps up to $12.50 an hour for their "cooperation." In business, that's called a "B-R-I-B-E." Let an American businessman make a similar payment to a foreign government official and he winds up in jail, but I guess it's okay if all we're doing is trying to count the rare and endangered homeless. ) I can't believe this administration overlooked voter registration forms, but the article didn't mention them. The work sounds very rewarding for the census workers, at least according to one of them. "It's a wonderful thing," she said, "to at least give people the dignity of being acknowledged." (I think she really believes that. If I commit a murder, I want her on my jury.) You really have to feel for these people. One guy, 39 years old, is supposedly homeless because, in the words of the Oregonian, "he was en route to California from Missoula, Montana, last year when traffic fines left his car impounded." Notice how that was written? It's not his fault he's homeless! It was those darn traffic fines, not his failure to pay them. The writer, perhaps respecting this homeless person's "dignity," didn't get around to asking him why he didn't consider doing what once would have seemed the logical solution to getting a car out of impoundment or finding a decent place to live: WORKING. (I'll bet Arby's is hiring.)

John Rosemond, family psychologist from Indianapolis writes: "It is not only unnecessary to praise a child, regardless of age, for every single accomplishment, it is also counterprodcutive in the long run. Too much praise creates a dependency on being praised, which inhibits, rather than promotes, accomplishment and independence...once a child is fairly proficient at doing something, the message fom his parents should be, in effect, 'What you're doing isn't special. It's simply the right thing to do.'"

March 31- "Political correctness is tyranny with manners." Charlton Heston

I had the guy all wrong. Here I thought Rae Carruth was a murdering lowlife, when it turns out that all he really wanted to do was have his pregnant girlfriend beaten up. So she'd abort. So he wouldn't have to pay child support. So he'd have more money to spend on himself. But somebody botched the job and the woman is dead. So a child will grow up without a mother or a father (unless, of course, you count guys who wanted him aborted).

Interestingly, the key factor in causing the NFL to vote 30-0 (with one abstention) to ban "celebrations by two or more players" was embarrassment. The owners were shown a videotape in which high school kids, in imitation of NFL players, were doing the same idiotic stuff that passes for "celebrations" on Sunday afternoons. Apparently never having heard of the Three Stooges, they evidently were shocked to learn that kids actually imitate things they see on TV. (Maybe, while the owners are in the mood to watch videotape, I could put together another one that would really embarrass them - one showing high school teams playing interesting football.)

The Rutgers women's basketball team, winners over Georgia in the West Regional held in Portland, flew back triumphantly back to New Brunswick, New Jersey - commercial. Waah! They were expecting to fly charter, but evidently there was a problem getting a flight crew at the last minute. Waah! So now they feel dissed, because the Georgia team got to fly on a charter. Waah! But at least our country is safe and running smoothly, without any urgent national problems. I know this to be a fact because New Jersey Senator Robert Toricelli took time out from keeping the peace, providing better pay for the military, feeding the poor, providing medical care for the indigent elderly and fixing social security to raise hell with the NCAA about this outrageous slight to his constituents. No doubt Senator Toricelli, not up to now known for any particular interest in sports, sees a vote or two here by pandering to the ignoramuses who just read the headlines and assume that here is another case of little girls being mistreated. Not to diminish the achievement of the Rutgers team and their inspirational coach, Vivian Stringer, but girls, get serious. And, Seantor Toricelli, damn shame you were so busy Monday night making the streets of Newark safe that you couldn't have been in Portland and looked around. At the "crowd." Hey, Senator - there were 4,000 people there! At a regional final! Now, I know from your grandstanding that you are sports-challenged, so for you and others like you, I'll go slower: that's at least 10,000 less than a comparable men's game would have drawn! Now, where do you suppose the money comes from to pay for commercial - not to mention charter - flights cross-country to play women's games? Not, I can assure you, from crowds like the 4,000 in Portland, or the 3,600 that showed up to watch Penn State's women beat Louisiana Tech. You don't suppose the money's coming from those nasty men, again, do you? You know, those overpublicized men who play in front of all those big crowds (crowds that are only there because the mens' sports hog all the sports pages!) and make all that money? Money which, by the way, nobody seems to mind taking from the men because it's for such a good cause - gender equity? Hey - I have no sympathy for these young women, who have had the chance to share in an adventure most of their classmates can only dream of, and now whine because they want egg in their beer. They should be glad that at least somebody's making the money to subsidize their cross-country trips so they can play in front of near-empty arenas. I remember all too vividly the 1975 World Football League season, when our team, the Portland Thunder, like every other WFL team, had to fly commercial - to every game. And we had some long trips - to Birmingham, Jacksonville, Philadelphia, San Antonio. (Actually, when you're based in Portland, Oregon, every trip is a long trip.) Even allowing for the fact that we tried to provide three seats for every two linemen, and even allowing for the fact that back then the rows in coach (we obviously didn't fly first class) were a tad farther apart than they are now, it could not have been very comfortable for those 250-pounders. But those guys, many of whom had played in the NFL and remembered a life of travel by charter, accepted it as something they just had to live with if they wanted to play a game. Something the Rutgers women, caught up in envy and self-pity, might want to remember.

Nobody gave them any credit... They stepped up... They're in the red zone... They brought their "A game".... It's about respect... Blah, blah, blah... With so much sports on so many channels nowadays, and with the same cast of announcers appearing over and over, night after night, game after game, it really is difficult for them to describe the same thing several times without repeating themselves; throw in an unending series of post-game interviews with athletes and coaches who tend to parrot what they hear the announcers say, and the air waves are crawling with sports cliches. (A cliche is an expression that has lost its originality and cleverness because of overuse.) Now, along comes a great web site, Sportscliche.com , to amuse us with a great collection of dreary, worn-out sports phrases. They've hit a home run (whoops!). Just a sampling from the gridiron (sorry - football): "It's a game of inches.... They're feeling each other out.... Denver draws first blood... It's going down to the wire... It's a real pressure cooker... It's a nail biter... It's a nip and tuck game... It's a see-saw game... That changed the complexion of the game... That really silenced the crowd... The crowd is really into it now... The crowd is going wild... You can feel the momentum swinging... This place is bedlam!.. You can feel the electricity... They're within striking distance now... Now we've got a football game!.. It's a whole new ballgame... They've scratched and clawed their way back into the game... They dodged a bullet there... They got a big break there... That'll give coach Jimmy Johnson a few more grey hairs." On the basketball front, Dick Vitale has "taken a commanding lead" (if I may use a cliche there) in a poll to select the most cliche-ridden basketball announcer. Absolutely. He's on another level. In a class by himself. No question about it.

"After we gave our little tribute to the crowd, at the end of the game, and we ran off the floor and up the ramp, it hit me - this is the last time I'll feel any of this." Matt Santangelo, Gonzaga senior, after his team's second straight Cinderella performance in the NCAA tournament came to an end against Purdue.

"I wonder how many people have chidren because it's the next thing to do in life, rather than because they want children?" Rush Limbaugh

March 30- "A lot of soul-searching goes on when we lose. To become a winner you have to do the same soul-searching when you win." Bear Bryant

I got a call a couple of days ago from Chuck Raykovich, in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, telling me that Jim Van Gorden, who coached for 32 years at nearby Bloomer, Wisconsin until his retirement a few years ago, will be installed into the Wisconsin Football Coaches Hall of Fame this Saturday evening. (Chuck's Dad, Joe, is also a member!) Jim ran a little of the Double-Wing his last season or two at Bloomer, but as a former little All-America QB at Wisconsin-Eau Claire, he was a wild and crazy creative guy who would rather not commit to any one philosophy - he was forever thinking up new plays, always looking for new and untried ways to do things. Chuck Raykovich is Jim's polar opposite: he runs the Double-Wing right out of the book, stressing flawless execution. The result has been a pretty impressive run for Chuck and Chippewa Falls the last two years, as the Cardinals went 8-3 in 1998, and 11-1 in 1999, losing only in the playoffs to eventual state champ Marshfield in Wisconsin's largest classification. Twice in this past season's playoffs, Chippewa Falls helped set new state attendance records, first in a 50-12 win over defending state champion D. C. Everest, then in the loss to Marshfield. Chuck thinks the Cardinals could be tough again next year, too, returning seven starters from a defensive unit that gave up only 12 fihe told me, "We didn't have anybody coming back on offense this past year, either."

Anybody seen North Carolina's Julius Peppers yet? The basketball player? Take a look. This guy is a stud! He is about 6-7, 250 or so, a true freshman who also started 11 games at defensive end for the Tarheel football team. In high school, he was a running back in a wishbone offense. (Now there's a coach who knew how to make use of an athlete like that when he had one.)

Reports of its death were greatly exaggerated... The biggest upset in the NFL this year may very well be the owners' decision to retain instant replay for another year.

Of Newsweek's 100 Best High Schools in the US, fully 26 are in New York, exactly the same number as there are in all the states west of the Mississippi. (And of those, 16 are in California and seven are in Texas.) Solidly in third place, behind only New York and California, is Virginia, with 13 schools.

A best-selling novel about World War II told of Japanese snipers, knowing Americans' love for baseball and well aware of Babe Ruth's stature as a sports hero, hiding in trees at night and hollering, "Hey, Joe! Babe Ruth eats s---!" Their intent was to so enrage Americans that they would fire at the voice in the darkness, and give away their position. I thought of that as I read about the Pentagon report on harassment of gays in the military, and the continued drive to open the military to gays. Imagine, if you can, World War II fought under different circumstances: "Hey, Joe! Babe Ruth's gay!" "Really? How wonderful! That big savage!"

An NCAA ruling outlawing large blocks of white on home uniforms means that BYU will have to junk those football jerseys after just one year. It was a year of well-deserved ridicule, one in which the Cougars ditched the standard royal blue and white by which they were known far and wide for a foo-foo design by somebody at NIKE who obviously had never seen a football game before (in trendy marketing talk, that's called "thinking outside the box"). The jersey front featured something that looked very much like a white bib and made onlookers wonder whether the Cougars were going to ski down a Utah ski slope or sit down to eat a Maine lobster. With BYU now out of the Ugliest Uniform contest, Oregon, another victim of NIKE design, takes over first place. At the moment, there is no contender in sight.

"In order to stop a long run, you have to be able to tackle well. If you tackle well, you won't have many long runs against you." Lou Holtz (Psst - anybody want to buy a tape on tackling?)

March 29- "In football you use your body to control an opponent, which means if you can't control your own body, you can forget it ." Bud Wilkinson

A Pentagon survey released last Friday reports that anti-gay attitudes and harassment are common in the U.S. military, especially in the form of offensive remarks and gestures. The results of the survey varied by service: more than 45 per cent of the Marines questioned reported hearing offensive comments often or very often, compared with only 23 percent in the Air Force. (One explanation given was that Marines, generally, tend to be younger and less educated than personnel in the Air Force, where greater technical expertise is required. The Marines' warrior attitude could have something to do with it, but no one seems to want to touch that one. Horrors! Warriors in our military!) There are those who see the release of such findings as an effort to promote acceptance of open homosexuality in the military, rather than the government's current "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. "Nothing is going to change until the uniformed military leadership, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down, send clear and unambiguous signals that this type of harassment will not be tolerated under any circumstances," said David M. Smith, a spokesman for a group calling itself the Human Rights Campaign, Washington's largest gay political organization. This report has the potential of turning the subject of homosexuals in the military into a major campaign issue. Democrat Al Gore is on record as vowing to eliminate "don't ask, don't tell" and allow gays to serve openly in the military, and in fact has said that he would require anyone he appoints chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be commited to ending the present policy. Republican George W. Bush has expressed support for continuing on with "don't ask, don't tell." Secretary of Defense William Cohen, in a memo sent to the civilian and military leaders of the services Friday, said that harassment of gays "seriously undermines the good order and discipline that is critical to an effective fighting force." At least he seems to be so concerned about "good order and discipline" - that's exactly why many of us are opposed to gays in the military.

The lords of the NFL, few of whom have ever had to go out and sell a product of any sort, and none of whom has ever actually had to do anything to sell the pro game to the public other than sit back and let the TV networks do it for them, are showing once again what marketing geniuses they are. Faced with the choice of continuing with instant replay or killing it, they are almost certain at their annual spring meeting next week to give it the axe. It slows the game, don't you know. Of course, it's perfectly okay to interrupt the games with arbitrary timeouts - which fans hate - so they can cram in two or three minutes of commercials - which TV viewers hate. That makes the lords richer. But instant replay, which the fans like, doesn't bring in any money. So kill it. It "wastes time". (You guys ever hear of the word "suspense?") Maybe the US Government, which seems to have an endless supply of our money to tell us that if we don't get counted in the Census our kids will go to school in an outhouse, could take over as the title sponsor of instant replay. "Remember, if the Steelers' appeal is upheld, this won't count as a time out. And you won't count either, unless you return your census questionnaire..."

Amid talk about the Web and its potential for educating "the disadvantaged," a professor at an inner-city community college in Brooklyn, where many of the students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, says, "not so fast" - don't be in too big a hurry to dump the flesh-and-blood teacher for a "Web University" just yet. Writing in Monday's Wall Street Journal, he says that despite the idealism of those who claim that all we have to do is deliver the information electronically to the "disadvantaged" and they will lap it right up, the reality is a lot grimmer. According to this professor, "my colleagues and I provide not only course content, but also motivation and study habits. We check homework, check to see if books have been brought to class, talk to students about being absent and late, stress the importance of study, listen to problems and give our students as much encouragement as possible. Even with our help, less than half the class graduates. Without hands-on involvement, disadvantaged students do not have the motivation, study skills or maturity to take advantage of a Web University." (I just thought, before we get back to blaming the teachers for the poor schools in our inner cities, we ought to hear from one. And by the way, sure sounds as if one of major ways in which those people are "disadvantaged" is in the absence of somebody at home strong enough to instill some discipline and motivation. Somebody like a F-A-T-H-E-R.)

"Regarding your story about the fired BB coach in California from 3/27/00: Some day we may have an opening for a coach that fits that description here at - - - - - H.S. where I work. This guy sounds exactly like the guy we have now. If our current coach ever resigns, maybe we should get ahold of this guy, because we all know that football ruins basketball players! Since the mid 70's, that has been our philosophy here at - - - - - -. Our football record since 1976 is a whopping 51-167! This can be partially attributed to our Basketball-year-round philosophy. What is sad is that the parents, and the kids in this community actually buy into this hogwash! Oh, and by the way our basketball program is above average, probably due to the fact that all of our best athletes play basketball."

And to think the English fought beside us in two world wars... England's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, with his wife expecting their fourth child, is debating hard - whether or not to take paternity leave!

My friend Jack Reed, author of several publications on youth football and acknowledged expert on football clock management, has scheduled a rare eastern clinic to coincide with a trip to watch his son's spring game at Columbia. Jack will be in Saddle Brook, New Jersey on Sunday, April 30. For more information.

March 28- "There is nothing more discouraging to that opposing team than for you to block their punt." Jerry Glanville

The Double-Wing couldn't ask for a better testimonial than the one it got at Saturday's clinic from Coach Ray Pohlman, of Perrysburg, Ohio. Coach Pohlman runs a program that, now that it has established itself as a winner, would be the envy of any football coach. Perrysburg, just 15 miles south of Toledo and just off the major north-south Interstate connecting Detroit with Dayton and Cincinnati to the south, is an idyllic town of prosperous homes and tree-shaded streets straight out of "Leave it to Beaver". Named for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, hero of the War of 1812's Battle of Lake Erie who announced his victory (an upset) with the note, "We have met the enemy and they are ours," Perrysburg was a stop on an Underground Railroad that helped runaway slaves escape to freedom in Canada. The townspeople of Perrysburg have provided their kids with great school facilities. Perrysburg High School, built in 1964, has been well kept-up and shows few signs of wear, but its current student population of 1300 has outgrown it, and a new school is in the works. Perrysburg's graduates include former NFL coach Jerry Glanville (see today's quote) and major league baseball manager Jim Leyland, but its football tradition had slipped over the years when Coach Pohlmann took over, and, after first running the wing-T, decided to run our Double-Wing. He started by attending my 1998 Cleveland clinic, and decided to commit to it fully. He asked the same of his coaches. "You're either in or your're out," he says he told them. "You can't be in-between." He was fortunate in being able to surround himself with quality assistants who bought in, but his early going was enough to shake the confidence of a less resolute man: his own son, Brett, a freshman, came home one night after the frosh team had lost one and tied one and had yet to win, and said, "Dad, this isn't a very good offense." Fortunately for things at home, the frosh swept the rest of their games, and Brett and his teammates were convinced. The JV players and coaches were convinced, too - they finished 7-2. But the varsity struggled. Going into the final game of the year against arch-rival Maumee, the Yellow Jackets were 1-8, and fell 14 points behind in the second half. But almost miraculously, Coach Polhlman stood the course, his players rallied, and Perrysburg came from behind to pull out a 22-21 win. And the Yellow Jackets were on their way. 1999 produced an 8-2 season, Perrysburg's best record since 1985, and a near-miss at a playoff spot. After one game, a win over traditional power Toledo Waite High School, the reporter from the Toledo Blade called the Perrysburg offense "equal parts magic show and textbook ball-control offense." (Perrysburg controlled the ball for 18 minutes to Waite's 5!) Coach Pohlman doesn't leave a lot to chance. He spends a lot of time in the weight room, which because of its size requires him to divide his kids into three groups and run three sessions daily - including two night sessions - five days a week. He finished the winter weight program with 53 kids, in addition to those involved in winter sports. He puts out a monthly newsletter to keep kids, parents, community and faculty up-to-date on the program, and is getting ready to begin his annual May in-home visits to every senior and his family. Within the bounds of Ohio's regulations that limit a coach's involvement with kids to 10 total days between June 1 and July 31, he'll keep as busy as he can running a 7-on-7 league and taking his kids to weekend tournaments, and fills in whatever spare time he might have running the annual Northwest Ohio All-Star game for graduating seniors. Come August, he runs a "Mom's Offensive Night" in which he explains the offense to his players' moms, then has the players at each position coach their moms so that they can actually run a few plays! He hold a Dad's scrimmage and a family picnic, and recognizes the players by having footballs painted on the outside wall of the school, one for each player with his name and number inside. Some of the reasons why Coach Pohlman told the coaches at the clinic that he likes the Double-Wing: "we never have to coach line splits"... "play-calling is consistent, week-to-week"... "You get more quality reps"... "It puts a defender in conflict."... "Blitzing is not effective..." "It's team-oriented, not personnel-dependent." Coach Pohlman found it interesting that even when the game tapes picked up the voices of the opposing coaches in the press box calling out "watch the counter!" it was still hard for their kids to stop it. He shared some typical pracrice schedules with the coaches, emphasizing that Perrysburg was running the same plays and the same drills the last week of the season as they were the first week. He seems to be over the hump with the job of selling the offense to the community. Now, he says, fans have begun to call the plays from the stands - especially the Wedge! And he may or may not have converted one "fence-sitter" (every school's got them - they roam the sidelines and tell one and all how dumb the coach is) who had just finished bad-mouthing the offense when the Yellow jackets broke one for a 45-yard TD. Maybe the highest praise came from a Toldeo Waite fan as the Yellow Jackets were in the process of mauling a proud Waite team. Asked by another fan what kind of offense Perrysburg was running, he said, "I don't know... But that is one mean machine!"

If the rumored trade of John Rocker to the Montreal Expos does take place, he's going to run into something that all that diversity training he was sentenced to - as therapeutic as it may have been - hasn't prepared him for. Dr. Wyatt's free introductory lesson in Canadian multiculturalism, tailored specifically to the needs of Mr. Rocker, will start out something like this: "Uh, John? All those people on the streets speaking French? THEY'RE NOT FOREIGNERS! In fact, I'm not sure how to break this to you..."

Is this any way to sell your game? Who are the geniuses at ESPN behind the timing of last night's women's regional final between Rutgers and Georgia? Two teams from the Eastern Time Zone, starting to play at 9:07 Pacific? Far too late to draw a lot of interest among sports fans in Portland, Oregon. What about 12:07 AM Eastern Time? Not likely to have had a whole lot of fans - even diehards - in front of the tube at the finish. Damn shame. Rutgers' regional semi-final on Saturday night started at midnight Eastern and ended after midnight Pacific.

Not a bad school year for Wisconsin: Rose Bowl champs, a Heisman Trophy winner, and a spot in the Final Four. But to give the controversial Bob Brodhead, my late friend and one-time boss, his due, while he was AD at LSU the Tigers had a year - let's say around 1986 - in which the football team made it to a bowl game under Bill Arnsparger, the basketball team made it to the Final Four under Dale Brown, and the baseball team made it to the College World Series under Skip Bertman. And I'm rather sure either the men's or women's track team - or maybe both - finished in the top 10 in the NCAA meet.

How Would You Like to be a Billionaire - Officer?, The Dallas police report of its arrest of Star's goalie Ed Belfour indicates that once he was subdued and placed in the police vehicle, he began to develop a severe case of jail-aversion, offering his captors $100,000 to forget the whole thing, and - when they refused his offer - steadily upping the ante until finally topping out at $1 billion.

March 27- "The core of success is discipline. Your family or football won't be successful without discipline." Grant Teaff, former Baylor Head Coach, now Executive Director of the American Football Coaches Association

Thanks to host coach Ray Pohlman, at Perrysburg (Ohio) High School, Saturday's clinic went off beautifully, with an afternoon session in which I was able to use 22 of the Perrysburg Yellow Jackets' players to demonstrate innovations.

Coach Wyatt: We are happy to say that our 2 tight end, double wing offense helped us go 14-0 this year and win the State Championship. Since we put in the double wing in in 1994, we have been in the playoffs every year. Before the double wing was put in we averaged 5.0 wins per year. After the double wing was put in in 1994 we have averaged 10.33 wins per year. We have purchased and benefited from viewing all of your videos. Parkersburg Football Staff, Parkersburg, West Virginia (Coach Marshall Burdette and his staff run a big-time program: check out the Parkersburg Big Reds' great web site)

The parents of JonBenet Ramsey have recently a published book in which, among other things, they ask readers to call a special phone number if they have any information about their little girl's murder. Lord only knows how many books have been printed, but if you bought one and you happen to know who the real murderer is, don't bother calling. It's a wrong number.

The news in California papers is that the basketball coach at a prominent high school has resigned. Or been fired. Depends on who you listen to. He says he was fired, the principal says he resigned. He also says the principal "doesn't know anything about basketball." But what it comes down to is he was one of these round-ball Joes who seemed to think he owned kids year-round, and tried discouraging them from playing football, claiming it would "hurt their development" as basketball players. (Wouldn't want them to be all-around athletes now, would we? Allen Iverson was Virginia High School Player of the Year in both football and basketball - any fool can see how playing high school football interfered with his development as a basketball player.) This coach, though, insists that commitment to one sport is the only way to go. For him, that is. "Ask any coach in Southern California," he told a newspaper, "and they'll tell you that in order to win and compete, you need everyone to be dedicated." Except he seems to measure dedication by a kid's willingness not to play any other sport but his. He sounds as if he thinks that the taxpayers are funding facilities and programs for his personal glorification. He also seems to be a poor listener, admitting now that his first day on the job, his AD specifically told him not to tell any football players that playing football would hamper their performance as basketball players. Evidently, he went ahead and tried, anyhow. Unfortunately for him, though, he picked the wrong place to take on the football program: the school's football team has won consecutive CIF championships (in California, which does not have statewide champions, a CIF title, something like a regional championship, is the ultimate goal). Anyone know of a school looking for a basketball coach who went 41-40 over four years, bad-mouths his former employers in the newspaper - and won't work with the football coach?

A coach at one of my clinics mentioned that his predecessor 's downfall began one day when his players didn't want to practice, but that mean ole coach made 'em practice anyhow. So they fixed him! They all went home and told their parents that the coaches had cussed at 'em. And the parents created such a stir that the school board called a special meeting for the whole community just so the parents could stand up and rag on the coaches. Sound farfetched? Remember all that bogus bumper sticker we used to see, back when the child abuse witch hunts started? "The Children Don't Lie," it read. It was as if angelic little children in their sinless state couldn't possibly make up stories about grandpa feeling them up. Now, we know better, but for some people, many of them teachers, it is too late. There now seems to be a national get-the-teacher-in-trouble trend, based on the "childen don't lie" fallacy, that is making life miserable for people who work with kids, and changing the way they teach. Left unchecked, it seems certain to spread to the playing field and the gymnasium. The president of the Maryland State Teachers Association told USA Today that where just a few years ago his office might have received a couple of calls a week from teachers claiming to be falsely accused by a student, it now averages one or two such calls a day. Recently, seven Maryland sixth-graders accused a PE teacher of fondling girls in the locker room; a Florida high school students accused his teacher of molesting him on a field trip; a Chicago nine-year-old paid other students to accuse a teacher of sexual abuse. In all three cases, it was determined that the charges were made up by the students as retaliation for being disciplined or flunked. A fifth-grade teacher in Abington, Pennsylvania was forced to take early retirement in 1998 after a student claimed that he had raped her in a classroom in 1985, when she was 10. The case against him was eventually dropped when his accuser began giving conflicting reports and failed a polygraph test, but not before the teacher had been arrested, charged and suspended - without pay. The entire time, he said, he was presumed guilty; the police kept telling him that "it would be okay if I confessed." He never did return to the teaching job he'd held for 25 years. "Your reputation is all you have as a teacher," he said. "It would have been too hard to go back and face people who still might be suspicious. Or talk to the administrators who assumed I was guilty and suspended me."

"In evaluating personnel, I've always believed that the first thing was consistency, the second thing was the RBI - the guy that can make the big play and win the game for you - and the third thing was the guy that makes the major error. You can't play him." Joe Paterno

March 24- "The bullet that will kill me is not yet cast." Napoleon Bonaparte

Deepest thanks to Coach Ross Renfrow, of North Johnston High School, for helping make last weekend's North Carolina clinic such a success, and special thanks to his wife, Amy for all her help.

After years as a head coach, Richard Lee is going to try being an offensive coordinator this year, at Page High School in Franklin, Tennessee. He was unable to attend the Birmingham clinic as he had originally planned, but he managed to work in a stop at last week's North Carolina clinic with a visit to his grandkids in Burlington, NC. Coach Lee is a rare one. He knows his football, and he knows and likes his Double-Wing, but if he didn't know anything about either, he could still stand up in front of a room and hold a group of people spellbound. He is entertaining, which shouldn't be all that surprising when you learn that he took several years off from coaching back in the early seventies to tour with Elvis, singing with a group called "The Stamps". "You gonna listen to me?" he asked the coaches. "I'm a guy who once turned down a chance to date Naomi Judd." The coaches listened, of course, because not only is Coach Lee entertaining, but his football credentials are solid. A graduate of Elon College where he played for Red Wilson, Coach Lee has been a head coach at several high schools in North Carolina and Tennessee, and served as a graduate assistant under Lou Holtz at North Carolina State. Coach Lee is a firm believer in the Double-Wing. He says he's tried them all, and listing the offenses he's run, and what he felt were their main assets: I- Power stuff; Split Veer option - aggressive; Multiple - keep 'em thinking; Option - where's the ball?; Double-Wing - all of the above! Coach Lee believes in the Double-Wing so strongly that he explained it to Coach Pat Mosier in his hometown of Graham, NC and gave Coach Mosier my address to get the materials, and Coach Mosier, running mostly from "spread" formation, took Graham to the state finals in his first year running it. Coach Lee shared some of his thoughts on...

Assistants: "The number one thing is loyalty. There's no second."

Game discipline: "I tell my people, 'Keep your mouth shut. You ain't worth 15 yards.'"

The difference between a teacher and a coach: "A teacher explains. A coach shows."

Punctuality: "We start at 3 o'clock. Sharp. Know why? The biggest problem we got is discipline. We're raising a bunch of people with no discipline."

The pancake drill: "That's a miracle."

Prejudice: "Know how I got over prejudice? Twelve years old, I'm in the tobacco field, pullin' tobacco. We're hot and sweaty and the sled comes around with ice water on it. The white guys got to drink first, then the black guys. Then it was my turn, as a kid. I said to myself, 'Do I want to drink from the same jar as a black person?' It took me about a second to say, 'YOU BET I DO!' When you're hungry - when you want something bad enough - prejudice is gone!"

Coach Lee got a few laughs describing a version of the bird-dog drill called the "air condition" drill, so-called because he reviews line assignments in a cool, air-conditioned room, sitting his linemen in chairs, then arranging several empty chairs in front of them to represent defenders, and requiring m to point to their assignment. He also said that he found it helps the effectiveness of the Wedge if he stresses "fast feet," and has his men concentrate on taking lots of short, quick steps.

He told of a great fund raiser which he calls "Momma's Night Out" - For $10 apiece, he gets mothers out of the house on Monday nights - and teaches them football. He said he instructs them that when they go home and their husband says, "Honey, get me a beer," they are to ask him a football question (such as "what do you do when the safety rolls up on the playside?") and tell him, "I'll get you a beer if you can answer it"

Coach Lee has come up with a great way to eliminate grade and discipline problems in the classroom - and get on the good side of the faculty - by posting a large grid on a wall in the faculty room listing all his players with a square next to their name for every period of the day. If a player is having problems - or causing them - Coach lee asks only that a teacher write his or her name in the appropriate block, and the coaches will take it from there. Every week, Coach Lee takes a picture of the list. One unintended side benefit: it is very hard for a teacher to defend giving a student a failing grade if he never wrote anything on the board.

Coach Lee can be hard-nosed about some things. ("There's only two things I'll get rid of a player for," he says. "If you lie to me or steal, you're gone.") But in dealing with kids, he believes in tempering the hard-nosed rules with a common-sense approach. ("Sometimes, the best way to keep a kid from lying is not to ask him the question.") Much of his thinking in dealing with kids comes from the realization that he's seen a lot and done a lot in his travels, yet after all he went through, the Lord was there for him. "He forgave me," Coach Lee said. "If you've done worse than me - you a bad boy!"

Greetings Coach Wyatt: As Cheyney's Sports Editor from 1977-79, I had the pleasure and privilege of covering John Chaney's Division II Cheyney State Wolves. My friends and I would bet by what quarter the dapper coach Chaney would be out of his suit jacket & tie. Coach Chaney coached basketball & life to his players. Many of his players and I attended the same classes. They were not "Prima Donnas" or "invisible students". From what I can remember most were pretty "cool guys" that loved the game. John's players knew their responsibility as students/athletes. What he did at Temple & Cheyney is create winning teams and good citizens. Many don't know that coach Chaney was named Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year and has taught in Argentina and Mexico. John Chaney's players graduated on time,with or without basketball. He was also one to share his knowledge of the game with Cheyney's women's coach Viv Stringer. This was a time (the 70's) of infancy for women's sports. The women's team zoomed to the top of the heap and lost to Immaculata for Div II championship also in 1978. Coach Stringer has gone on to produce nationally ranked teams at Iowa & Rutgers. Both of these coaches are great individuals in their own right. They both run tough, no-nonsense programs. They are true examples of what coaches young and old should follow. It's been over 20 years since I sat in Cheyney's Cope Hall Gym to see our Wolves. No antics, gyrations and lip service. Heck I remember a game Cheyney won by 15 points,but coach was not happy,why?? sloppy execution. LP Warner-Sports Ed// Cheyney St. Univ 1977-79

(Coach Warner added, in a subsequent letter) : Here is another F.Y.I. guess who was the football coach during most of the 70's at Cheyney?. Coach Billy Joe of Florida A & M - that barely missed Div 1AA finals in a loss to Youngstown State in 1999. Coach Joe was former president of the AFCA. Last.....the Big 33 (Pennsylavnia's annual midsummer all-star game) of 1972 or 1973 featured two great running backs, Abel Joe and Tony Dorsett, Sr. One that unfortunately crashed & burned, the other in Canton ,Ohio. Abel Joe was a bruising 230 lb 4.5 forty running back and big brother Billy was the Head Coach. LP Warner-Sports Ed// Cheyney St. Univ 1977-79

(Before departing the NCAA tournament, Coach Chaney had a few comments about the "troubled" J.R. Rider. Yeah, troubled - makes it sound as if being a jerk is some newly-discovered disability. Why doesn't anybody have the guts to say "troublesome"? Coach Chaney said that Rider "plays with his a-- and not his head. He'll die one day with just his a-- and not his head. I'm happy to see Rider let go. They should have let him go a long time ago.")

Tell me Louisiana ain' a different world altogether. I spent one of the most enjoyable summers of my life in 1986 as an intern in the athletic department at LSU, working under my old WFL boss Bob Brodhead, who was by then LSU's AD. Louisiana's people are warm and friendly, and they do like their football. And their food. And an occasional adult beverage. So I guess it shouldn't surprise me that when they play all the high school football championships in the New Orleans Super Dome, the vendors still sell beer, same as always!

It's a fact: when you cross-pollinate greedy professional sports owners and the ambitious, jock-sniffing politicians, then stir in a bunch of sycophantic (suck-up) sportswiters, anything is possible. Even the destruction of a sports palace designed to last for the next millennium. The man who designed and built the Seattle Kingdome says it's a solid building, good for at least another thousand years. Neverthess, it's coming down on Sunday. Unless you live in a cave (one without TV reception), you are certain to see some of its demolition on TV (or on the web), because this is considered to be a demolition project without precedent. It is also a crying shame. In a climate such as Seattle's, it was nice to know that with an indoor stadium, you didn't have to drive two or three hours to sit in the cold and wind and rain to watch a football game. It was also nice to be able to make plans to watch a baseball game and never have to worry about a rainout, always a springtime possibility in the Pacific Northwest. And it was great to be able to host at least one major sports event. Let's face it - your team has to win if your city is going to host a World Series, a Stanley Cup Final (it also helps to have a hockey team) or an NBA Final Series. And somehow, I don't see fun-loving Super Bowl fans getting excited about Seattle in January. That leaves the Final Four. And, in fact, Seattle has been a regular stop on the Final Four tour. That's because, if you hadn't noticed, demand for Final Four tickets is so great, and the NCAA so willing to cooperate by taking peoples' money in exhange for tickets, that all Final Fours are now held in domed stadiums. But the city started to get excited about the Mariners, back when the M's still had Randy Johnson and Junior Griffey. It was learned, though, that Junior didn't like the Kingdome. HEY! YOU HEARD THE MAN! BUILD HIM A NEW STADIUM! At least, that's what the politicians wanted to do, but unfortunately, they first had to appear to be responsive to the public by submitting the proposal to the voters of King County (Seattle). Pffft. They voters, resoundingly, said n-o-o-o-o. But the governor saw a chance to be known as the Man Who Saved Baseball in the Pacific Northwest, and the sports media types pushed themselves away from their free pressbox lunches long enough to write a series of reports telling us why the Kingdome was unsuitable for professional sports. So, screw the taxpayers and their stupid elections. A baseball field was built, anyhow. And instead of being named something appropriate, like Screwed-Over Washington Taxpayers Stadium, thanks to a sizeable payment from an insurance company, it was named Safeco Field. (Washington taxpayers are still waiting for the Mariners' owners, for whom they built that nifty stadium, to pass along the payment from Safeco. I'm sure it's just slipped somebody's mind up in accounting.) But wait - we're not through. Because now the owner of the Seahawks, an out-of-towner, is jealous. He's going to move his team (where? Oakland?) if he doesn't get a new stadium - luxury boxes 'n' everything. Finally, to the rescue comes homeboy Paul Allen, a Seattleite, the owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, and the wealthiest owner in professional sports. He'll save our Seahawks! Well, actually, he won't exactly save the Seahawks. He'll buy them. Which, if you've been paying attention to the appreciation in value of NFL franchises, would seem to be a fairly safe investment. If you have the money. And Paul Allen does. Just one problem, though. Mr. Allen puts out the word that he'll only invest - in a guaranteed loss-proof venture - if the taxpayers will build him a stadium. (With luxury boxes, of course.) This is a guy who could give a $250 Christmas present to every man, woman and child in Seattle and never miss the money! Instead, that's what he wants them to pay him - to save the Seahawks! See, rather than actually buy the team - and have to spend several million dollars of his own money building his own stadium - or just being a modern-day Andrew Carnegie and donating the Seahawks and a new stadium to the people of his beloved city, he only takes an option to buy the team, on the condition that a stadium deal is passed by the voters. But just to be on the safe side, he spends millions on slick mailers and TV ads selling the public on what a great deal they're getting. Realizing that there could be a perception among the voting public that this stadium might just be a scheme to make a rich guy even richer (where would anybody get that idea?), the mailers showed a glorious, state-of-the-art stadium, with people sitting in stands, basking in the sunshine (!) watching- soccer! Right. Soccer. We've already got the pro football vote. But let's not forget all the soccer folks. Well, the voters narrowly decided to build Mr. Allen his stadium, so now, where once the Kingdome proudly stood, there will be two stadia, worth a combined $430 million (don't bet that that's what it will top out at) across the street from each other, in a place where you couldn't find a parking space when there was just one stadium there. And the Kingdome's coming down.

March 23- "If you are going to play against a veer or wishbone team somewhere in your schedule, start working on it in your early practices. Work on it five minutes a day. You cannot teach this three days before you play one of these teams." Charlie McClendon, longtime coach at LSU

Before last Saturday's clinic in North Carolina, the last time I'd seen Coach Charlie Jones was at my Birmingham clinic two years ago, when he was coaching at Montgomery (Alabama) Catholic High School. In the meantime, he'd since moved north, to central Virginia, where he is now head coach at Louisa County High. I recall his calling me after taking the Louisa County job, wanting to know if I thought the Double-Wing would work at a big school (Louisa has 1,300 kids, considerably more than Montgomery Catholic). I knew Coach Jones, and I knew the Double-Wing, and I assured him that he would do fine. Of course, that was easy for me to say, because I was not the one stepping into the Louisa situation, where in the two years previous, they'd gone 1-19, with the one win coming over a school playing football for the first time. But I was right - Coach Jones managed to go 4-6 in his first year there. And he did it running the basic Double-Wing, with only an occasional adjustment here and there. "It's a great offense for struggling programs," he told the clinic, "because you can control the ball." One adjustment he finds himself making frequently is running the Super Power with an "O" block, keeping his backside tackle home. He also showed his favorite pass play, a one-receiver pattern off what we would call 58-Black Throwback, with his C-Back running straight upfield. His reasoning behind the one-man pattern, which makes a lot of sense to me, is that when you send out three or four men in a pattern, the scattering of the receivers serves as a pass key to the deep secondary people, while one lone receiver frequently goes unnoticed, or is mistaken for a downfield blocker. Coach Jones, who brought assistants Jeff Alston and Mike Dougherty to the clinic, stressed the importance of teaching what you know and believe in, saying, "I think the most overrated statement in football is 'you got to see what your talent is, and then you adjust.' I'm a history teacher," he told the coaches at the clinic. "If a had a class full of good math students, I wouldn't be expected to teach them math."

The winningest high school wrestler in New Jersey history won his third state championship a little over a week ago, less than three weeks after being arrested and charged with being a minor in possession of alcohol as well as providing alcohol to another minor - a younger teammate - in what he freely admitted was a hazing incident. The 18-year-old senior was charged with forcing a 14-year-old freshman to "rip curl" five beers within 20 minutes. (He told police a "rip curl" was drinking a can of beer that has been opened with a knife, requiring it to be consumed quickly.) When police arrived on the scene, outside a tavern, just after 11:30 PM, they found the freshman getting sick in the woods nearby; recognizing the senior's truck in the tavern's parking lot, they searched it and found inside a 30-pack of beer with several cans missing. The freshman, in his statement to police, claimed he was told to drink the beer or the older wrestler would "kick his ass." The senior pretty much substantiated the freshman's account, admitting that he had forced him to drink the beer because he was a "freshman wrestler." No action was taken by the school to curtail the senior's participation in a sport. How much you wanna bet the school was afraid to do anything because of community pressure ("it would be such a shame to ruin such a great career, and besides, this is America where you're innocent until proven guilty") and the fear of a lawsuit by the senior's parents ("it didn't happen on school property; and besides it didn't happen during the school day, so it's none of the school's business")? And people wonder why hazing persists.

While in Baltimore a while back, I noticed a story about four hoodlums accused of killing a Baltimore policeman. Actually the officer, 35-year-old Sgt. Bruce Prothero, was off-duty at the time, when the four in question held up the Pikesville, Maryland jewelry store where he was working as a security guard and shot him. Sergeant Prothero left a wife and five children - a set of twins and set of triplets. He was working a second job so his wife could stay home and take care of their kids. Now, wouldn't it be nice if the people who protect us were paid as much as the people who amuse us, so they wouldn't have to take second jobs? (As a starting point, $60,000 comes quickly to mind, about what members of the USA women's soccer team make - so that they don't have to hold second jobs.)

For those who didn't know - Coach Don Markham, the Godfather of the Double-Wing, has left Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, California after one very successful (8-3) season and has taken on the job of head coach at Rialto, California, in the San Bernardino-Riverside area east of Los Angeles. Rialto, playing in the state's largest classification and one of its toughest conferences, has been a perennial doormat. But with 4,800 students and the Touch of the Master's Hand, I'm betting that Rialto will be a force very soon.

I happened to be talking yesterday with a youth coach from Jupiter, Florida. You may recall reading about Jupiter - it's the town where the youth sports people, sick of obnoxious parents, decided to bring them in line. Now, before a child can participate in one of Jupiter's sports programs, his parents must be "certified." They must undergo a sort of education in proper behavior, and they must sign a paper in which they agree to comport themselves as adults. Jupiter got a lot of publicity out of this, and has been held up as a model for communities everywhere. But just in case your community has any plans along those lines, it is important to know what a job you've got in front of you - shortly after all the news stories appeared all over the US, a couple that had been instrumental in putting the Jupiter Plan into effect got into a heated argument at a game. They had to go back for "recertification."

Liberty Tax Services ran a promotion in which it offered $1 million to anyone able to pick every winner of every NCAA men's tournament game. It had about 300 entries. They have all been eliminated.

March 22- "A team that defeats a far inferior team has accomplished nothing." Rip Engle

Paul Prudhomme is one of the best-known chefs in America. He is a frequent guest on TV cooking shows, and his restaurant - K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen - is a favorite in New Orleans, a city known for great restaurants and great food. He is given credit for having almost single-handedly spread the good news of Louisiana cuisine (call it Cajun if you wish) out to the rest of the country. Taking advantage of the fact that a fish called redfish was in plentiful supply in the nearby Gulf, he popularized a dish called blackened redfish -so popularized it that the fish - once scorned as a trash fish - actually became scarce. From his cookbooks and TV shows grew a multimillion dollar business which sells spices in all 50 states and 37 different countries. What's this got to do with coaching? A lot, actually. Because many of the things that made Paul Prudhomme successful in his business are indispensible to success in coaching as well. Paul Prudhomme is successful today because he believed in himself, he had a plan, he was willing to work long hours, and he learned from failure - he must have, because before becoming the fantastic success that he is today, he failed at three different restaurants. But he refused to believe he was a loser. He never stopped believing in himself... and he never quit.

When Head Coach Jet Turner arrived in Ware Shoals, South Carolina two years ago, the school had a 19-game losing streak going. Ware Shoals was once a prosperous textile mill town, and mill money paid for great school facilities. But when the mill closed in 1988, a lot of the town's vitality - and the school's financial support - went with it, and facilities had become run down. A big factor in his taking the job at Ware Shoals was the arrival of a new superintendent who was committed to winning. The first thing Coach Turner set out to do was to "get the type of kids we wanted." His reasoning: "If I'm going to lose, I'm going to lose with the kind of kids I want to be around." His first year, he had a few decent players, but they were all seniors. There were no juniors in the program. Last year, his second year there, expecting to do nothing, he found my web site on the Internet and attended last year's Durham clinic. Playing entirely with inexperienced underclassman, the team far exceeded his expectations. Where the 1998 team had scored only 48 points all season, the 1999 team scored 44 points in one game. What Coach Turner likes about the Double-Wing, he said, is its uniqueness, and its potential for big plays. What his kids like, though, is that, "for the first time in years, they're having success." He said he learned a number of things as he went along. Regarding play calling: "We're going to control the clock and make you beat us. If you can't stop 88 or 99, that's all we're going to run." Regarding simplifying things: "We tried to put in too much too soon - we need to fine tune." Regarding utilization of practice time: "We need more team time in practice." With nearly everyone returning from last year's varsity, and a JV team that wen 8-1, Coach Turner is optimistic about 2000. And now that he sees things beginning to turn, Coach Turner reflected on the importance of a loyal staff: "when you know you're facing tough times, a lot of times all you have is your coaches."

Coach Turner was talking about people like his offensive line coach, Jeff Murdock. Coach Murdock showed the clinic his Lineman Rating System, which incorporates a player's effort in weight training, knowledge of assignments, attendance at "Breakfast Club," effort in practice, and performance in the classroom in arriving at an overall rating, ranging from "very average" to "great". He explained the "Breakfast Club", which he runs for his offensive linemen every Tuesday during the off-season: he picks the kids up before school, buys them a breakfast of biscuits (this is, after all, the South) and orange juice, then goes over the blocking rules with them. He is a bear on assignments, pointing out that "football is not the only thing they care about - you've got to pound it into them." In fact, he freely admitted that this past year, his first at Ware Shoals and his first teaching the Double-Wing, "I sacrificed techniques for assignments." Using a great analogy, he said that as a volunteer fireman, if he can at least get to the fire, even if he doesn't know exactly what to do when he gets there he can manage to find a way to get some water on it. "But if I don't know how to get there, I ain't gonna put it out!"

Just another "student athlete" bringing credit and distinction to his college. After all the crap that went on this past season in an effort to keep Erick Barkley eligible long enough for St. Johns to win the Big East basketball tournament, he is evidently going to give up all pretense of amateurism and make himself eligible for the NBA draft.

You don't suppose it could have anything to do with the exposure a school gets from a football team playing for the national championship, do you? Applications for admission to Virginia Tech are up 12 per cent over last year, to a record-high 18,300.

For those of you who love wrestling and don't have to work for a living... I'm informed by Coach Pete Porcelli, from Albany, NY, that ESPN2 will air its taped coverage of this past weekend's NCAA wrestling championships on Thursday. At 1 PM Eastern Time. That's 10 AM Pacific.

On a flight from Raleigh-Durham to Minneapolis last weekend, the flight attendant seemed unusually friendly. I don't know about you, but I travel a lot, and an awful lot of flight attendants act like surly waiters and waitresses who would just as soon you spend your money someplace else so they can have an empty plane all to themselves. At the end of the flight, they stand around BS-ing with each other up at the front of the plane, tossing off an occasional perfunctory "thank you" as you file out. (Now, I suspect that if I were walking out of a furniture store after just having left several hundred dollars inside, somebody from that company would be doing something to let me know they'd like me to come back and spend some more money with them sometime.) Anyhow, I mentioned this to this particular flight attendant, and asked if perhaps she was maladjusted - if something had gone wrong in her life to cause her to be so pleasant. She said she is always that way, because she loves her job. She said she'd worked as a financial analyst before coming to work for the airline, in the process going from working 80-hour weeks to working 80-hour months. "Maybe," she suggested, trying to account for her coworkers' indifferent attitude, "they never had a real job first."

More from P. J. O'Rourke: "Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

March 21- "We have a philosophy at Dartmouth that we want everything to look as confusing and as complicated as possible to our opponents. But on the other hand, we want to keep things simple for our own team." Bob Blackman (see below)

Bob Blackman, the man who woke up the Ivy League, died last Friday in a California hospital. He was 81. I hope his death - and life - do not go unnoticed, because he was truly one of football's great innovators. In a coaching career that started when his playing days at USC were ended abruptly by a case of polio that left him with a lifelong limp, Coach Blackman introduced or popularized elements of the game that now are considered staples - the 4-4 defense, for example - along with others that even now are considered radical. Think the Titans' cross-country lateral on a kickoff return against the Bills was shocking? Any time you faced a Bob Blackman-coached team, you had to be prepared for that one. Crippled as a freshman at USC, Coach Blackman became an assistant coach while still an undergraduate. He coached a Navy team during World War II, then after a short career as a high school coach, took Pasadena City College to the Junior Rose Bowl, the country's top junior college post-season game. From there, Coach Blackman took over at Denver University, and after going 0-7 his first year, won the conference championship in his second season. In 1955 he moved to Dartmouth, which had briefly achieved football fame in the late 1930's under Red Blaik, but hadn't had a winning season since 1949. The fraternity- house atmosphere he encountered was not unlike what Coach Blaik recalled stepping into 20 years before, and Coach Blackman set oout immediately to change things. Taking advantage of Dartmouth's far-flung alumni, noted for having an almost Marine-like devotion to their school, he set up an nationwide alumni recruiting network, and brought in students from all over the country to show them the beautiful Dartmouth campus and sell them on his vision. Many of them bought it. (I know this, because I was one of those students. I visited Dartmouth in 1956, when they were just getting it cranked up, and I still harbor some regret that I chose Yale over Dartmouth.) On the field, Bob Blackman was a true contrarian. His teams did everything different - everything. They were the first team I'd ever seen kick off from a hash mark. Three "kickers" converged on the ball from three different angles, so that the threat of an onside kick was constant. The Big Green played a stack 4-4 defense, the first time any of us had seen that. It was different and most coaches were unprepared for a defense that they'd never seen before. His offense was multiple, featuring his famous "V-formation." (Picture a split-back veer with a blocking back lined up in front of one of the dive backs.)

I still have our Dartmouth scouting report from when I was in college, and I marvel at how this guy operated "outside the box." Not knowing then that I would someday be a coach myself, I didn't fully appreciate what I was witnessing. I just knew that his teams were good, and they had lots of ways of beating you. He was not above throwing a tackle eligible at you, and when Dartmouth ran an option, they ran an option - they were still making pitches 20 yards downfield. Once, in 1965, to try to deal with Charlie Gogolak of Princeton, the first of the really good soccer-style kickers, Coach Blackman came up with a scheme that has since been outlawed: a reserve defensive back, wearing lightweight cross-country shoes, stood deep in the secondary, and with a running start, leaped onto the backs of two Dartmouth linemen (whose backs were specially padded for the purpose), then sprang into the air to block the kick. Unfortunately, the one time it was tried, someone else from Dartmouth was offside! The point was, of course, that Coach Blackman was willing to try anything - even at the risk of looking foolish - to beat you. And it worked. After going 3-6 in 1955, his first year at Dartmouth, Coach Blackman had 12 straight winning seasons, including seven Ivy League championships and two undefeated, untied teams. Before the split of the nation's colleges into Division I-A and I-AA, Dartmouth regularly finished among the nation's top ten in rushing. He truly forced the rest of the Ivy League to come up to his level. And he did it playing a majority of the games on the road: because of Dartmouth's small stadium and remote location in Hanover, New Hampshire, certain games such as Yale and Harvard were always played away, not only for the better gate (the Dartmouth game could always be counted on to put 50,000 in the Yale Bowl - meaning we Yalies could make a little money selling our 50-yard line tickets to rich alumni. Is there a statute of limitations? Will this stunning revelation get Yale in trouble with the NCAA?) but also for the convenience of Dartmouth's own alumni, many of who found it easier to get to Cambridge or New Haven than to Hanover. He could have stayed at Dartmouth for life, but in one of those career decisions so many of us make, in 1970 Coach Blackman decided to go for a bigger challenge, and moved to Illinois. While there, he served a year as president of the American Football Coaches Association, but he also learned what an awful lot of good men before him had - it's hard to win when you're fighting it out with a bunch of tough opponents just to finish third behind Ohio State and Michigan in your conference. By 1977, he was back in the Ivy League, this time at Cornell, Dartmouth's archrival. He went 1-8 his first year there, and never won a championship. He didn't have the horses. Neither did his predecessor, who had gone 3-15 in the two seasons before Coach Blackman arrived. Guy named George Seifert, who a few years later would show what he could do when he did have the horses. After 34 years as a head coach, 22 of them in the Ivy League, Coach Blackman hung it up after the 1982 season. In his final game as a coach, Cornell shocked league-leader Penn, 23-0. His players carried him off the field one last time.

Coach Eddie Cahoon, head coach at Mattamuskeet, North Carolina, is wondering what he's supposed to do at a coaches meeting. That's because for years, he has been the entire staff at Mattamuskeet, and coaches' meetings were "me at home with the VCR." But this year, he's going to have three assistants, and needless to say, he is excited. He'll still have to drive the team bus to away games, and his wife, Patricia, will still sit up front so he has someone to talk to on those long rides home, but he's making great progress. He has worked for every bit of it. I have mentioned Coach Cahoon before. In return for being given a middle school program, he agreed to coach it - and the high school team, too; in return for a BFS weight program in the curriculum, he agreed to give up his prep period to teach it; every evening in the summer, he keeps the weight progran going by driving a school van around the far-flung district, first to pick the kids up, then to deliver them home afterward. He spoke at this past weekend's South Atlantic Clinic in North Carolina, and showed a tape he'd gotten from East Carolina University demonstrating their Crowther sled progression. It really ties in nicely with our philosophy of blocking, which emphasizes the use of an "ice pick in the chest" blocking surface. Coach Cahoon said he had a few QB problems this past season, which he was able to solve by running quite a bit of Wildcat - which he calls "Laker" for Mattamuskeet's nickname. In fact, he combined it with the "5-1" or "Rambo" look which I showed in "Dynamics IV." Although it probably would not be considered appropriate in some educational circles, he said his two "tailbacks" - one white and one black - solved the center's questions about who to snap the ball to by calling out, "white boy" or "black boy". He felt that only because they were running the Double-Wing were his kids able to be competitive - by the end of last season, he was playing a 130-pounder at one tackle! Something I learned from Coach Cahoon was the importance of not taking it for granted that QB's understand the instructions on where to step. My playbook talks in clock terms, but Coach Cahoon, a shop teacher, found he had to took a large piece of playwood and paint the numbers of the clock dial on it, because kids don't necessarily know how to tell time - "they all wear digital, guys."

I am reading a book by P. J. O'Rourke called "A Parliament of Whores." If you hadn't guessed, it's about the United States government, and it is a hilarious look at it through the eyes of a very sharp and witty writer. I especially liked one part where he talks about the old garbage we always hear about how watching Congress in session is like "being present at the making of history." That's true, he says - in the same sense that going around to the rear end of an animal is like "being present at the making of earth."

Duke's Shane Battier is, by every account I can come up with, the epitome of the student-athlete that the NCAA likes to crow about, mostly as a cover for the disgustingly large percentage of Division I basketball players who are merely mercenaries. Battier is, of course, a great basketball player. He is a good team man, announcing before this year's NCAA tournament that because of the distraction caused last year by the question of whether or not Elton Brand, and others would turn pro prematurely, he would be returning next year for his seunior season. He is a good student, majoring in religion at a school that actually requires its basketball players to go to classes - study, even. And he is an acknowledged team leader. Coach Mike Krzyzewski has seen to that. Battier is one of the three team captains, along with Chris Carawell and Nate James. "Leadership is never singular," Coach K explained to the Durham Herald-Sun's Al Featherston. "In a good organization, it's always plural." Trouble is, Carawell and James are quiet types, given more to leadership by example. That left the vocal side of the job to Battier. "I think, early on, I didn't do a very good job of leading, because I probably yelled too much," he said. Which is where Coach K came in, striving, like any good coach, for ways to develop his men as leaders. "What coach told me," Battier said, " was, 'You have to vary your methods. Although it's good to get after someone by yelling, if you yell too much it gets to the point where they shut you out. Any credibility you have as a leader is done.'" And the lesson has stuck. "Ever since he told me that, I've been more careful about picking and choosing my spots, " Battier said. "When to yell, and when to pick someone up and hug them."

Talk about devotion! Rick Reilly writes in the latest issue of Sport Illustrated that today, as he does on the 21st of every month, "the best man I know" will write a letter - "a love letter to his best girl." In it, he'll write how much he loves her and misses her, and how much he looks forward to seeing her again. And then he'll put it in an envelope and place it on her pillow, atop the stack of 179 other such letters which he's written since his wife passed away, 15 years ago today. Such is the devotion of John Wooden, maybe the best coach - and if not, maybe the best man - a sport has ever known, to his wife, Nellie. Nellie was his only girl, and they were married for 53 years. No doubt Mrs. Wooden suffered the same agonies as every coach's wife, and now her husband repays her loyalty and devotion by honoring her memory in a way that is near-reverential. Coach Wooden is now nearing 90, but still as sharp as ever. I heard him interviewed on a Birmingham radio station last week and listened, rapt, as he talked about the state of today's game (he thinks the best basketball right now is being played by the women, because they play below the rim, they play team basketball, and they generally refrain from showboat antics). But, he told Rick Reilly, "I'm not afraid to die. Death is my only chance to be with her again."

March 20- "Discipline yourself - and others won't need to." John Wooden

What a great Double-Wing clinic in North Carolina this past weekend! Four great guest speakers! More tomorrow!

In the last four years, Major League Soccer (MLS) has seen a decline in average attendance at its games, from 17,406 in 1996 to 14,619 in 1997 to 14,312 in 1998 to 14,282 in 1999. Its hardcore fans seem mostly to live in certain places in the United States, and seem mostly to hail from places where soccer (sorry, futbol) is a big spectator sport. Aside from those pockets of concentrated ethnic populations, there is almost no interest in the rest of the country. The great wave of spectator interest that we've been told for years would result from all these little kids playing soccer - and parents watching them - just has not materialized.

Meanwhile, more than 90,000 tickets were sold to all sessions of this past weekend's NCAA wrestling tournament at Kiel Arena in St. Louis. Without knowing how many individual spectators bought those tickets, it is safe to say from the 90,000 tickets sold that wrestling - real wrestling that is, and not the farcical crap we're served up on weeknights - still has quite a following in many parts of the country. But for those of you who didn't have the time or money to get to St. Louis, if you expect to see anything on TV, you'd better be prepared to stay up late. Real late. ESPN2 plans to show motor sports and women's basketball on Monday night prime time, followed - late - by some coverage of collegiate wrestling. ESPN2 claims it has nothing against wrestling - it's just that there are only so many hours in the day, and it's all a matter of giving the public what it's interested in. Right. That's why it's planning to give us an MSL Game of the Week every Saturday.

After 20 years, a pro football official makes $82,270, for working four exhibition games and 15 regular-season games. If he is selected to work playoffs, he earns even more. It is a pretty nice gig, actually, when you consider that he basically works two days a week (Saturdays are for pre-game meetings) and the job lasts for less than six months. As you might expect, there is no shortage of guys who'd like the job. Nevertheless, the current NFL officials - all of whom have other jobs - are planning to unionize, and have been having talks with the NFL Players Association about possibly joining forces. Gene Klein, former owner of the Chargers, whose book I just finished reading for the second time, told of the time George Halas, "Papa Bear," attended one of his last owner's meetings. The subject under discsussion was, as it had gotten to be so often, the demands of the players' union. Mr. Halas had founded and built the Bears - and the NFL - and had seen them both through some awfully hard times. But he had persevered to see them both become multimillion-dollar businesses, and with all the wealth being spread around, he couldn't quite grasp the need for a union - agents, either, for that matter. At this particular meeting, Mr. Halas, nearing the end of his long life and by now confined to a wheel chair, said something, but said it so so faintly that no one could hear him. Frustrated because no one had heard him, he said it again. But again, no one heard. It was obviously quite an effort for him to talk, so someone knelt down next to him, the better to hear. This time, though, Mr. Halas gave it everything he had, and all over the room people heard him say, "F--- THE UNION!"

Last week, Indiana University's Coach Bob Knight found himself defending his coaching methods. This time, it was against charges by a former player that Coach Knight choked him during a practice three years ago. Needless to say, the player is no longer a part of the Indiana basketball program. Granting right away that the charge, if true, is indefensible, one has to wonder if we might be dealing with another case of recovered memory, that stunt used by psychologists that supposedly "helps" middle-aged people "remember" that they were abused when they were toddlers. From what I have heard and read, the circumstances of the player's departure sound somewhat strange. Apparently, Coach Knight left it up to a vote of his returning players whether to keep this individual. I find it interesting that Coach Knight would be interested in doing anything that democratic, but he must have had a pretty good idea what the other players thought of this guy, commonly desceribed as an "underachiever," because the vote went 8-0 against him. (I didn't read who counted the ballots.) At the NCAA regionals in Buffalo this past week, Coach Knight said, "I'll bet since I've been in coaching I've done about 1,000 things to motivate kids or teams, and a lot of them I wouldn't want to talk about at a church social or a PTA meeting or a garden party." That's the whole problem right there, of course: Coach Knight - and others of us who coach a variety of sports at all levels - repeatedly find their conduct all too often being judged by the standards of the church social, or the PTA or the garden party. Or the peewee soccer team, where all the players call the coach "Randy." And some of the things we do might shock people who look at them out of context. But as Coach Knight went on to point out, "we're not teaching kids to play canasta. (A card game that was wildly popular in the 1950's.) This is a game where kids get bloody noses, they get broken legs, they get hurt if they dive on the floor, and they're playing like hell (oops!) to win." What most coaches would say, and what Coach Knight himself went on to say was, don't just listen to the disaffected kid. Talk to all the kids we've coached. Then start to judge us. "If my kids left and weren't successful," Coach Knight says, "if they were on the bread line or selling drugs or in jail for one thing or another, then I would have a lot of questions about what my methods were leading to. But when I have kids come back and talk about their experience here, what it's meant to them, and I see what they're doing, then I'm just not sure what there is that I'm supposed to apologize for."

Did I mention that I like Coach John Chaney, of Temple? Coach Chaney says he isn't sure, either, what Bob Knight has to apologize for. Jokingly calling himself the "Black Knight," Coach Chaney said that the problem is not Coach Knight. The problem (something many coaches are only too aware of) is that most Americans nowadays are too willing to accept bad behavior, but Coach Knight will not. "I think a coach who will not buy bad behavior is a damn good coach, and he's rare," Coach Chaney said. "Bob Knight is rare. I am rare. I am another Bob Knight." As an illustration of bad behavior, he specifically mentioned Michigan's "Fab Five," the team that did more than any other to introduce hip-hop basketball, with its skirt-length shorts and macho taunting, to the general public. Temple lost to that team in 1993. "My worst loss," Coach Chaney called it. "I didn't like that team. I didn't like their gyrations, guys standing over other players and shaking their crotches in their faces." The more he says, the more I like and admire the guy, and so, although I like ex-Dukie Tommy Amaker at Seton Hall. I hated to see Temple lose yesterday. You'd better get all you can of Coach Chaney while he lasts, because he's 68, and although I'd love to see him coach another 10 years, you never know how much more of him we'll be blessed with.

March 17-"Baloney is flattery so thick that it cannot be true, and blarney is flattery so thin that we like it." Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

If you follow tennis, you know that Lindsay Davenport won the Australian Open, one of Tennis' four Grand Slam events. She is obviously one of the world's best women's players, and she has made a little noise lately about the fact that the women's prize money is less than the men's - in the same tournaments. At first, she seemed to be a bit daft, based on one argument I read, which was simply that the men in tennis tournaments had to work harder: they play best-of-five, while women play best-of-three, and as a result men's events last 50% to 67% longer. Seemed reasonable to me, until I read a counter-argument, which went like this: since when do people pay for quantity, rather than quality, in sporting events? By that logic, this argument went, the slowest marathon runner should earn the highest purse; the artful boxer, whose fights all go 10 rounds to a decision should earn more than the knockout artist, whose fights rarely go the distance; the pitcher who struggles for every win should be paid more than the one who strikes out the side, inning after inning. Point made. Maybe we ought to just see who brings in the money. Unfortunately, such figures are hard to come by; most tickets are sold for an entire tournament, making it nearly impossible to determine who, specifically, attracts the spectators. It would be an interesting study. It is, after all, quite possible that the women outdraw the men.

I spoke recently with a friend who coaches at a small college, one with almost hopelessly high academic standards that make it very difficult for him to compete with the teams in his league. He takes his lumps, but he loves his job and loves the young men that he works with, and says the only tough part of his job is "ten Saturday afternoons in the fall."

"Do you have to coach your All-Americans? You bet you do! They'll take things for granted like all of us do, and you've got to keep them from making mistakes because their errors are more glaring." Woody Hayes

Tom Hensch, a youth coach in Staten Island, New York, noting an NFL team's hiring of someone with a reputation as a "players' coach": "Of course the players are going to love the fact that they're getting a so called 'players coach' . That's like asking a 10 yr old if he wants to stay up late on a school night . He thinks he can handle it but the parent knows better - or should anyway."

Joe Montana and his wife have put their home up for sale. The asking price is well up in the millions. Reportedly, painted on the ceiling of one of its rooms is The Creation of Adam, a portion of Michelangelo's famous painting on the fresh plaster of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, in the Vatican in Rome. It is, unfortunately, only a copy of Michelangelo's work. The original is not for sale - not even to an all-time NFL All-Star. Not yet.

March 16-"That man may last, but never lives, who much receives, but nothing gives." Thomas Gibbons

I was speaking recently with an athletic director, who told me the good news first: his school's basketball team made it to the state tournament. And then he told me the bad news: the band had to go along to provide encouragement - at a cost of $8500. Paid for by the athletic department. Which gets most of its revenue from - you guessed it, football. Eight thousand, five-hundred dollars! That's a bit more than most schools budget every year for football equipment! I couldn't help wondering - with all that money those bands are always raising so they can buy new uniforms or take trips to the Rose Bowl, or to Europe, or - watch out for this one next year - the Inauguration, maybe one of them has some spare change it could lend its football team to buy equipment.

It is Final Four time. My top four picks to win it: Duke, Stanford, Michigan State, UConn. Dark Horse: Temple. Really dark horse: UNLV.

In a nation in which an estimated 25 per cent of all kids are overweight and, according to the Surgeon General, 60 per cent of kids do absolutely nothing in the way of physical activity, school districts are responding by - cutting physical activity. An ABC News report cited Grand Rapids, Michigan as an example of such a district: where not so very long ago every Grand Rapids elementary school had a resident PE teacher, they are now served by a system of roving PE teachers in which a teacher visits each school one day a week. In California, regular classroom teachers are expected to provide their students with a grand total of 1-3/4 hours of PE weekly (wonder how they manage to do this, given the fact that so few of them have any knowledge of or interest in PE). Meantime, school reform has brought with it pressure on elementary teachers to prepare kids for tests, and PE is seen by some "educators" as a waste of valuable test-preparation time. Keep an eye on their latest target: it is estimated that 40 per cent of the school districts in the US are considering eliminating recess.

Closer to home, something you PE teachers will understand: in the absence of Vancouver, Washington's long-departed district PE specialists, my wife, an elementary school teacher, has taught PE to the third-graders at her school for several years now. She enjoys it and takes it seriously, so when her principal asked her what would be a good time to observe her teaching, she suggested one of her PE classes for a change. "Oh, No!" the principal said. "I want to see instruction!"

Frank Simonsen, a Double-Wing coach in Cape May, New Jersey, attended the recent MegaClinic in Atlantic City, and reported back to me: "A coach from somewhere in NY was screwing up the speaker. He kept asking, how this scheme of defense could stop this O that some team near him was running - with a D-W backfield, always having someone in motion, foot to foot line, etc. - that is just killing people by these ridiculous scores. Of course the speaker didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about, and kept on trying to get his point across to the rest of us, as to how they use this D against this O, and that O etc. and how they get into coverages, etc. But this guy kept saying that he came hoping to learn something that will help him stop this damn O. After the session I found this guy and asked him why he didn't run this O if it was so good. His answer was, "I don't go for these gimmick offenses."

Uh-oh. Ricky Williams has publicly criticized the Saints' offensive linemen. Bad move, Ricky. Bad move.

March 15- "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." Winston Churchill

TWO MORE CLINIC LOCATIONS ARE NOW FIRM: THE DENVER CLINIC ON APRIL 29 WILL BE HELD AT PONDEROSA HIGH SCHOOL, 7007 E. BAYOU GULCH ROAD IN PARKER, COLORADO; THE PROVIDENCE CLINIC ON MAY 13 WILL BE HELD AT THE COMFORT INN, 1940 POST ROAD IN WARWICK, RHODE ISLAND (NEAR THE PROVIDENCE AIRPORT)

Another guest speaker at my Birmingham clinic this past Saturday was Coach Jerry Stearns, who last winter, after 28 years as head coach at Woodlawn High School in Birmingham had begun to feel the stress of coaching. He'd had some great teams at Woodlawn, and turned out some great players: ten of them went on to careers in the NFL, and two of them - running back Tony Nathan and defensive end Tim Harris - made All-Pro. I saw the talent he had in 1998. His line averaged 275 and his wingbacks ran 4.45 and 4.55. His B-Back ran a 4.6 and his QB ran a 4.61. They really made that Double-Wing hum. Unfortunately, though, the times have been changing, and Woodlawn wasn't necessarily changing for the better. Even so, when his son, who played on national championship teams at North Alabama and was now teaching in Alabaster, about 20 miles south of Birmingham, told him about a job opening at nearby Kingwood Christian School, Coach Stearns scarcely gave it a minute's thought. How could he? Kingwood was tiny, with limited resources and a football team that was only three years removed from playing eight-man football, and had won only two games in the last two years. Yet something propelled him to call the principal at Kingwood. And they offered him the head coaching position. And friends and professional acquaintances he spoke to advised him against taking it. "You're an idiot for even considering this," everyone told him. Well, almost everyone. Not his wife, though. She liked the idea of living nearer their son and having her husband coach nearby. Finally, after agonizing over the decision, and at some financial sacrifice, Coach Stearns took the job last winter, and at the first spring practice, began to realize what he was up against. "I looked at them and said to myself, 'they don't know how to block, they don't know how to tackle, and they're not strong.'" Of the 28 players he had, six were foreign exchange students. One, a French boy, knew only two words of English: "Hello" and "Bye" Jerry's description of getting down on the ground and demonstrating for him reminded me of some of my sessions in Finland. But he knew what he was going to do on offense, he told the coaches. "I put in the Double-Wing," he told them," and they thought I was the craziest person they'd ever met, because they'd been throwing the football on every down." But the kids took to the offense. Coach Stearns runs it straight out of the book. "You look at Hugh's tape and Hugh's playpook," he told the clinic, "and you see my version." And Kingwood managed to win five games in 1999. Coach Stearns is a great believer in comin' atcha. Like me, he says, "If you can't stop it, you'd better tie it on, because I'm going to run it at you all night long." His kids do have one favorite play. "Oh yes," he said, "my kids love the wedge. If I would let them, my linemen would run the wedge every play." Coach Stearns has been working hard to help his kids get stronger. The school agreed to invest in a new weight facility, and in the off-season, his players come in and lift four days a week, Monday through Thursday, Anyone missing a day has to come in on Friday and make it up. But such is the motivation of his kids now that many of the ones who lifted all four days come in on Friday, anyhow. And the weight program is already beginning to pay dividends. One of his players, a 137-pounder, recently benched 240 pounds and won the state championship in his weight division. Coach Stearns hastens to point out that the Double-Wing is not a cure-all. "You're wrong if you perceive that it's a no-athlete offense," he told the coaches at the clinic. "You still have to block. You still have to have strength. It's not a magic bullet. You have to coach just as hard." I mentioned earlier that almost everyone thought Jerry was crazy to consider moving to Kingwood. His wife didn't. And there was someone else. A devout man, Coach Stearns is sure that it was the Lord's plan for him to be at Kingwood. So there he is, working harder, teaching more classes, making less money. And loving it. "The most stress I have now is deciding in the morning what clothes to wear, " he says. "It's rejuvenated me."

In writing yesterday about Coach Steve Jones, of Florence, Mississippi, I was guilty of a couple of serious omissions. All last season, I would look forward to Saturday mornings, and an e-mail from Coach Jones telling me how his Eagles had done. On eight occasions, it was to pass along the happy news of a Florence win. But not once did he mention the heroics of a certain Chris Jones, his older son. Chris, at C-Back, led the Eagles in receiving and ran a killer counter (I have seen tape). For those of you who have seen my 1999 Highlights, he reminds me of my #11, Danny Stineback. Chris, who has been named as an alternate to play in this summer's Alabama-Mississippi All-Star game in Mobile, has signed to play ball at Delta State next fall. He's busy this spring running five events in track and playing #4 on the school golf team. He also was a 3-year starter on Florence's soccer team, which gets me to my second omission. In the last three years, Coach Jones has coached Florence to two state soccer championships and one second-place finish! He is the first to admit he is no soccer genius, but he has relied on the expertise of a professor at a nearby college, a native of Iran - and on his football players! Since school soccer is played in the winter in Mississippi (select soccer, of course, is played year-round) Coach Jones has been able to construct a defense made up entirely of defensive backs and linebackers from his football team - he says that opposing "soccer player" types don't particularly care for the physical play of his defenders!

Responding to my note yesterday about Birmingham and the Iron Bowl, Coach Charlie Jones, obviously a "Bama fan, writes from Mineral, Virginia: "Hugh, it insults me when people rank rivalries and they put ND and USC, Michigan-Ohio State in front of Bama-Auburn. I promise there is no way any place lives a rivalry like that year around. The thought of losing to the Aubs makes me physically ill. I rarely enjoy the game."

In 1983, there were slightly more men than women - 3.9 million to 3.8 million - in America's colleges. By 1993, there were 600,000 more women than men - 4.7 million to 4.1 million - and by 2003, it is projected by the National Center for Education Statistics that the number of men will be unchanged from 1993, but the number of women will increase to 5.2 million. That means that when this year's high school freshmen enroll in college, there will be 25% more women than men on college campuses.

Former NBA player (Trail Blazers, Lakers) Mychal Thompson is now a highly witty and entertaining radio talk show host in Portland. He was talking not long ago about watching the NBA All-Star game with his three young sons, aged 11, 9, and 8, and being disgusted and outraged by the network promos that ran throughout the game. "Promos" are a sort of commercial - they're those ads the networks run to promote their own shows. Problem is, they run them in the middle of the otherwise wholesome sports shows - when you'd ordinarily figure it's safe for your little kids to watch - to try to get you to preview the sleaze they're going to be showing later in the evening (when the kids are supposedly not watching). See, they may have piously agreed not to show the sleaze until later in the evening, but they never agreed not to advertise it during family time. It's a little like the "ladies of the evening" who sit in the front windows along certain streets in cities such as Amsterdam and Hamburg, showing a little yet showing everything. Just get ready to cover your kids' eyes and ears, whenever the networks run their promos in the middle of Sunday afternoon sports events. Mychal Thompson said he was particularly disturbed by one promo that referred not-so-subtly to a "threesome" among its characters - so disturbed, he said, that "I'd write my Congressman - if I had one." (He's a native of the Bahamas.)

March 14- "There are lots of things I'd love to do. What bothers me is doing without the Saturday afternoons on the field." Bo Schembechler

CLINIC NOTES: I can't speak for the other coaches in attendance, but for me, the best part of last weekend's Birmingham clinic was the guest speakers. First to speak was Coach Steve Jones, from Florence, Mississippi, about 15 miles south of Jackson. At dinner Friday night, Coach Jones told me how he was raised around football. His daddy coached at every level of Mississippi football from junior high on up, and was an assistant at Mississippi State during Coach Jones' high school years. His dad still runs a Gulf Coast Coaches' clinic every year. Coach Jones himself is a Mississippi State Bulldog, not only playing football there but also running track well enough to qualify for the Olympic trials in the 200 meters. Before taking the Florence job in 1995, Coach Jones had coached in Texas and Louisiana as well as Mississippi, but it is possible that not even that background prepared him for what awaited him at Florence. Since 1949, Florence had had 20 seasons in which it won 2 games or less. Florence hadn't had a winning season since 1986, and in the two years prior to his arrival, Florence hadn't even won a game. It gets worse: in the year before he got there, Florence managed to score just three points the entire season - and it took a state record-setting 56-yard field goal to get those three! It took Coach Jones four years of steady progress to get to the 5-win level, and then last season, after attending last year's Birmingham clinic and determining to run the Double-Wing, Coach Jones led the Florence Eagles to an 8-4 season and a second-place finish in their district. Coach Jones decided that the best use of staff was for him to coach the offensive line, and he said the most amazing to him about switching to the Double-Wing (he been mostly a split-back veer man) was that now, "our offensive linemen love practice!". He loses a few very good kids (including his own son) from a team that rushed for nearly 2400 yards and threw for another 1180 (he thinks that the Double-Wing and its tight splits has really helped his passing game), but with nine starters returning on offense and six on defense, he's really looking forward to next season. Coach Jones understands the importance of repetition in being successful with the Double-Wing: In practice, he says, "we're not going to go on to the next play until we can run it to the point where I feel we can run it in a game and gain five yards even if they know it's coming." Tomorrow: Coach Jerry Stearns

I always enjoy my visits to Birmingham, but it is a pity what's happened to football there. Poor Birmingham, home of storied Legion Field, across the front of whose upper deck ran a proud (and possibly true at one time) boast: "Welcome to Birmingham, Football Capital of the South." In the eyes of many southerners, as proud as they are of their football, that was the equivalent of saying "Football Capital of the entire Free World." For years, Legion Field was the site of the annual Iron Bowl game between Alabama and Auburn, one of the most bitter and intense rivalries in any sport, anywhere. Back in the brief life span of the World Football League, I happened to be in Birmingham the week leading up to the Alabama-Auburn game, and the city seethed with anticipation. Night club bands alternated playing Alabama's fight song and Auburn's "War Eagle," and revellers took turns jumping up and yelling for their school. In Alabama, you can't sit on the fence where Alabama and Auburn are concerned: at some point, in most cases when you are very young,"you got to declare." And on Saturday afternoon, just when it seemed as if people couldn't possibly get more pumped than they already were, 70,000 of those maniacs would cram into Legion Field to watch the real mayhem of the Iron Bowl. I've been down on the field at Legion Field, and I've heard the terrifying, rumbling sound made by a less-than-capacity crowd of 30,000 people stomping their feet on the floor of that all-steel stadium. I can only imagine what the stomping and yelling of 70,000 crazed Alabama and Auburn partisans sounded like. Unfortunately, I'm never going to find out, and neither is anyone else who hasn't heard it, because they don't play the Iron Bowl there any more, and aren't likely to any time soon. Auburn was first to pull out, claiming that playing in Birmingham had become something of a home game for Bama, since Alabama coach Bear Bryant always managed to play at least one other game in Birmingham every year as well. Auburn's move meant that thereafter, the game was played in Birmingham only every other year, when it was Alabama's turn to host it. But after enlarging on-campus Bryant-Denny Stadium's capacity to more than Legion Field's, Alabama, too, decided to discontinue playing games in Birmingham - including the Iron Bowl. Failing in attempts over the years to secure an NFL franchise, Birmingham settled for short flings with startup leagues such as the WFL and the USFL, and the Canadian Football League's brief flirtation with US markets, but the college football scene had become nearly empty. The city fathers were left with one major college football game left to be played in Legion Field - the SEC championship game that came about when the conference expanded to 12 teams and split into two divisions. Alas, that game, too has now left Birmingham - for Atlanta's Georgia Dome - leaving Legion field with only the home games of the UAB Blazers, a good enough football team but still quite a cut below Alabama or Auburn in terms of fan interest. So now the Birmingham Sports Authority has had to resort to bottom fishing. It's going after soccer, hoping perhaps to establish Birmingham as a major soccer venue, with Legion Field - LEGION FIELD , FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE! - as its centerpiece. I don't know who I feel worse for in this scenario: the people of Birmingham, who deserve better after all they've done for the sport of football - or those of us who love football, if it ever loses its hold on Birmingham.

According to an article in the Birmingham News by Mike Bolton, Alabama ranks fifth in the nation in consumption of Spam. (On the remote chance that you might be interested in who outranks it, Bolton states that it is Hawaii, Alaska, Arkansas and Texas. Writing in the outdoor section, he tells of a 185-mile trip in a 14-foot aluminim boat down the Cahaba and Alabama Rivers - 185 miles, as he desccribed it, with "nary a Kentucky Fried Chicken or Milo's" along the way (you real southerners will have to help me out on the Milo's). His solution? Spam. His partner's concern? What if the Feds found "extremely high levels of gelatinous mass from all this Spam?" What if it could be traced back to them? "I mean, I'd hate to end up in Greenpeace prison or something." Not to worry. Everything went fine, thanks to Spam. Bolton once used a brick of Spam to grease - and unstick - a stuck stearing cable on his boat. Spam has quite a following among outdoorsmen, but noting that Hormel produces 435 cans every minute, "it's obvious," he writes, "that fishermen and hunters aren't eating all that. We're a nation of liars. Nobody voted for Clinton and nobody watched the Dukes of Hazzard, yet Clinton is President, and the Dukes of Hazzard was the top-ranked televison show two years running. The United States is full of closet Spam eaters." The drywall compartment of Bolton's boat contains a first-aid kit, a roll of toilet paper, a hammer, an adjustable wrench, a box of crackers, ana a couple of cans of Spam. "With it," he writes, "I can repair a nuclear reactor, grease it, and then feed everybody who works there. Go try that with a bagel."

That organization of nuts that calls itself PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and doesn't want you to eat meat or make things out of leather, has really outdone itself this time. It is trying to counter the dairy farmers' "Got Milk?" campaign (in which people are shown with milk mustaches) with one of its own, whose tag line is, "Got Beer?" It is aimed at college kids, and is timed nicely to coincide with Spring Break. Now, apart from the questionable judgment involved in encouraging college students to drink beer (not that they need encouragement), not to mention doing so by implying that it's good for them, on the order of milk, there is the reasoning behind it. If you call it reasoning. Dairy farmers, you see, are cruel to cows and calves. That's what PETA would have us believe. I suppose those idiots at PETA, who have probably never even seen a dairy operation, think that if everyone in the United States decides not to drink milk, dairy cattle will be turned out to pasture, allowed to roam the countryside in a state of unmilked bliss. I have lived on a dairy farm. I can tell you what is going to happen to those cows if it's no longer profitable for dairymen to milk them, and I don't think that PETA is going to like it.

Maybe you can help me. With all those professional athletes racking up hours and hours of community service as "punishment", why are our roadsides so filthy?

March 13- "Not all coaches win with talent. But no coach wins without it." John Wooden (who over a 12-year period won 10 NCAA tournments coaching UCLA.)

Can't tell the players without a blotter - er, program. Dallas police last week had to use Mace to pry Ed Belfour, Dallas Stars' goalie, off a security guard whom he had in a strangle hold.Another pro athlete acting like a jerk. This is news? You want to know the problem with these jerks? Start with the fact that most of them are jerks to begin with. Then toss in so much money that they can get just about anything - and anybody - they want and do just about anything they want with them, and you wind up, when they run afoul of the law, with the "Do You Know Who I Am?" effect. It really does come as a complete shock to them when somebody occasionally tries to hold them to the same standards as the rest of us. The pro commissioners are fond of excusing their players' misbehavior by saying it's merely reflective of society as a whole. Apart from the fact that that argument is sheer crap, maybe we shouldn't be comparing them with society as a whole, anyhow. Maybe we should compare them with other young millionaires, because if all those hundreds of Microsoft millionaires in Seattle had the morals and self-restraint of pro athletes, it would be like Dodge City up there. Or Sodom on the Sound.

With TV ratings down 14 per cent on one network and 18 per cent on the other two, and the highly-hyped Dennis Rodman return now a flop, what's a pro basketball league to do? Beaten up in the ratings race by pro wrestlers and assorted other vulgarities such as people either wanting to be a millionaire or wanting to marry one, the NBA has decided to drop any pretense of professionalism and join the carnival. Step right up, folks! Starting soon, the barkers - sorry, coaches - will be miked, so you can actually hear them coaching! Talk about inside! Listen carefully during timeouts and you might even hear players arguing over who gets to take the last shot. Maybe even an F-word or two! Coaches won't stoop that low? Like they haven't stooped low enough already, making millions by pretending to coach those idiots. Besides, it'll cost 'em $100,000 if they don't go along. And that's not all, folks! Wait'll ya see what else we got! Cameras! In the locker rooms! You might even get to see players naked - just like real sports writers do! Wait! That ain't all! Wait'll you see what's next - "How Would you Like to Honeymoon With a Multimillionaire (a basketball player)? At midcourt. During a Timeout - To Be Selected at Random."

Are you ready for some football? Boomer Esiason is gone, sacked by Monday Night Football, and now the ABC network is said to be considering boosting the show's sagging ratings by replacing him with either snarly Bill Parsells or Mr. Nice-But-Bland, Steve Young. Neither is known particularly for an ability to entertain large numbers of people with clever observations. Apparently, though - lovers of goofy hats and shrill, airhead questions can relax - the lovely Leslie Visser is safe and will be back for another season on the sidelines. I wonder if it has occured to anyone that part of the show's ratings nosedive may have been caused by ABC's replacing Lynn Swann - who did a pretty good job if you've got to have such a thing as a sideline reporter - with her. To me, it says that somebody in control doesn't respect the people who love the game. Anybody who thinks that men respect her knowledge of the game is nuts. And anybody who really thinks that women decide they're going to sit through three hours of Monday Night Football because Leslie Visser is reporting from the sideline is certifiable. And if they're thinking about trying to lure the young kids, somehow I think somebodymore along the lines of a WWF star would be a more logical choice. Hey! Jesse Ventura! Great idea! The Guv is a man's man who appeals to women and kids, he speaks his mind and says outrageous things, and he knows a little football - he's been a volunteer assistant at a Twin Cities high school. Looking for ratings? How about this? A wrestle-off. Jesse vs. Leslie. Best of Three Falls. Winner gets the job.

I have long been a fan of William Raspberry, editorial columnist for the Washington Post. Since the 1960's, in fact, when I lived in Maryland and read the Post daily, and his was the only black face on its editorial pages. He wears glasses now, and what hair he still has is mostly gray, but he still writes with the same fire in his belly that inspired his columns in the days of the Civil Rights Movement. I have always admired the fact that nothing seemed to scare him - nobody was beyond his criticism. If they deserved it, they got it. Even so, I was a but surprised to see him take on Washington's newest celebrity so early in his stay. He mentioned a recent Post article about Michael Jordan, newly-hired Head of all the Wizards, which described Mr. Jordan, out on the basketball floor, teaching a young player, Laron Profit, how to, well - cheat. "If you're subtle, you can get away with it," His Airness tells Profit. A letter to the editor arrived shortly afterward, decrying Mr. Jordan's teaching what seems more and more to be the major lesson young people are learning from sports - it's all right to break the rules as long as you don't get caught. "Are these the examples we want to hold up to our youth?" asks the writer. Mr. Raspberry took it from there: if deliberately violating rules is acceptable at the pro level, then why would we not expect it to be so at the college level, and then at the high school and youth levels? "What," he asked, "are the implications of adults teaching children how to cheat and get away with it?" Here's the problem he poses for those of us who continue to promote sports because they help prepare youngsters for life: "can we countenance, even teach, cheating in sports and not expect the lessons to carry over?" He's not talking about merely stretching the rules - finding out, for example, how much contact the referees will allow in a basketball game. He's talking about cheating: "the deliberate violation of rules for personal advantage while trying to avoid detection." (You all know some coach somewhere - maybe there's one on your staff - who thinks he's so clever because he can teach kids how to hold and never get caught.) Ask any accountant what would happen to him if he advised a client to lie to the IRS; "how much more ethical," Mr. Raspberry asks, "is it for coaches, especially adult coaches of children, to counsel their charges in the techniques of holding, hooking, flooping and otherwise attempting to deceive those whose job it is to enforce the rules?" The question Mr. Raspberry poses for coaches everywhere - especially those who work with young people - is one that we all must be able answer correctly, or we can't possibly justify what we do as educational: "Does it matter if your kids lose because you're the only coach in the league who doesn't teach cheating?"

Auburn basketball player Chris Porter has been ruled ineligible by the NCAA for admittedly taking $2,500 from an agent while still eligible. He is just the latest of many to fall for the lure of easy money while living the near-penurious life of a college athlete. So here's what it's all come to: just to be on the safe side, LSU basketball coach John Brady had two undercover police officers keeping tabs on his players at this past weekend's SEC tournament in Atlanta. What's next? My guess is sting operations, with teams hiring undercover cops to pose as sports agents, and offer money - to opponents' stars.

March 10- "I don't build character.  I eliminate the people who don't have it."  Vince Lombardi

Anybody else hear Senator John McCain snap at Maria Shriver on Tuesday night? In her best Leslie Visser impersonation, she went up to Senator McCain, fresh off a stack of disastrous primary losses, and chirped, "Senator McCain, how do you feel?" Although his answer was one unbefitting a presidential candidate, it was nevertheless one that I'd love to hear from a football coach one of these days. He snapped, "Will you please get out of here?" I was reminded of the ditz who went up to Tom Coughlin after his Boston College team had upset number-one ranked Notre Dame. "What does this mean?" she asked. "What does it mean?" he asked her back, incredulous at the question. "It means we just beat the number-one team in the country!" Duh.

Q. When is a three-letter word a four-letter word? A. When you are a high school coach, and the three letters are A-A-U. The AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) was once a powerful force in sports, back in the days when there was actually such a thing as amateur sport outside our schools. Back when people who participated in the Olympics were merely the best amateurs we could come up with, and the idea of making a full-time living training to perform in an athletic competition that took place once every four years for a week or so would have been considered ludicrous. But we let it worry us that the communist countries ran their sports the way they ran their societies, and as a result, while Americans had refrigerators and cars and televisions, the East Germans, thanks to full-time "jobs" for their athletes and great advances in the field of sports pharmacology, had some kick-ass athletes. Many of their women for some reason seemed to have booming bass voices. So every four years, they'd wax us in the Olympics, then go back behind the Iron Curtain and train some more. The ones who did really well against us would get special rewards: refrigerators, cars and televisions. We all KNEW it was unfair, but the stupid International Olympic Committee would always look the other way, like the referee in a pro wrestling match. So, because we simply could NOT allow this to continue, the American people were conned into going along with subsidizing our olympic athletes. Setting up an Olympic Trainign Center in Colorado Springs. Paying athletes just to train. Like race horses. And that was the end of amateur sport in America. Now, the Iron Curtain may be gone, East Germany may no longer be on the map, Communism may be a shadow of its former self. And the women of what was once East Germany are once again operating on the hormones that God gave them. But we're stuck with an "olympic development" system that the Commies themselves would have admired. Meanwhile, the AAU, cut out of its place at the big-time sports table, has had to turn its interest to sports at the grassroots level. Let's let the AAU itself explain what has been going on lately: "In 1996, the AAU joined forces with Walt Disney World. Later that year, the AAU relocated its national headquarters to Orlando, Florida. More than 40 AAU national events will be conducted at the new Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex. Disney's Wide World of Sports will feature a double-deck 7,500 -seat baseball stadium and baseball quadraplex, a fieldhouse that accommodates up to six hardwood courts, a softball quadraplex, two youth baseball fields, a tennis complex, a track and field complex four multi-purpose performance fields sized for international soccer and sand volleyball courts." Now, you don't even have to be a skeptic like me to be able to answer, "what's in this for Walt Disney World?" It's really really simple. VISITORS. Guys - that's the reason Walt Disney World is in existence! To get people to Orlando so they can take their money. Duh. And the AAU is going to deliver them - little boys and girls on "elite" soccer, volleyball, softball and basketball teams, lured to Orlando by "invitations," to play in "national tournaments," blah, blah, blah. Do you see where this is headed, coach? What does your program have to offer that can compare with a "Trip to Walt Disney World to Play in the National Girls' 16-and-under Volleyball Championship?" High school basketball coaches are already aware of the way the AAU's tentacles are reaching into the high school game. How can you convince your star forward to play on your summer league team, when he's been offered a chance to play on the Illinois Junior AAU All-Stars? Recruiting of kids from one high school to enroll at another to create "Super Teams" can often be traced back to coaches of summer AAU teams. At least one AAU coach has been caught making illegal payments to a high school athlete, presumably with the intention of steering the athlete toward a particular college. (Hmmm. Wonder what's in it for the coach.) I'm sure there is at least one high school coach reading this who has run into interference from a player's out-of-season (or weekend) coach. More and more of these guys are starting to sound very much like agents. I have dealt with agents, and with some exceptions, I can say that it is not a lot of fun. What's the answer? First of all, it's highly unlikely that any law restricting what players can do outside school will hold up. So, like it or not, we are going to have to admit that the days of restricting a sport to its season, at lest for the superstars, are probably dead and gone. We can't bring them back. And - a lot of you aren't going to like this - one way to combat the intrusion of AAU programs and the allure of trips to Walt Disney World would be greater out-of-season involvement by high school coaches. This would mean, in some cases, that state high school associations would have to relax their restrictions and take the handcuffs off high school coaches, allowing them to coach their own kids out of season. It should be obvious that somebody's going to do it, anyhow. Certainly, coaches are going to have to have the stones - and the backing - to defend school programs and present kids who display greater loyalty to club teams than to their school teams with a hard choice. Schools might even consider deemphasizing their programs to the point where teenage superstars wouldn't be caught dead on one of their teams, but at least schools will be able to go back to justifying their programs on the basis of the values they teach. Perhaps another approach is for schools to provide special recognition - "Super Letters" - for kids who play more than one sport. It's unfortunate, but the professionalization of our Olympic program, which forced the AAU to find another turf to play on, has had a ripple effect that many of us have felt already, and even more of us are going to be feeling in the future.

They're not all jerks. CBS "60 Minutes" last Sunday night had a segment about the Atlanta Hawks' Dikembe Mutombo, on a visit to his home city of Kinshasa, Congo, where he has undertaken an enormous project to improve the sorry state of the country's medicine. Mutombo, whose father, a school superintendent, never made more than $37 a month, has pledged at least $3 million to improve medical care in a country where the hospitals frequently run out of medicine. His own mother died just over a year ago, despite the fact that she lived near a hospital and her son had the means to pay for her care  - civil war prevented her from even getting to the hospital. The irony is that Mutombo, who played college basketball at Georgetown, originally planned to attend school in the United States to become a doctor, the better to help his people. Now, paid more than $11 million a year to play basketball, he has perhaps found an even better way to help his countrymen.

I feel safer already. The elementary school outside Flint, Michigan where the six-year-old kid shot to death a six-year-old classmate with a stolen gun he found at home plans to expel him - for 90 days.

March 9- "The kids don't think about football as much as you do. Don't kid yourself. They don't think about it off the field." Doug Dickey

Ar the age of 71, Al McGuire is calling it quits as a TV sports analyst. I will miss him greatly, but then, I already had begun to. His better days were behind him, anyhow, because he belongs to an earlier, better time in sports, and his intermittent appearances on national TV over the last few years reminded me of how much I missed him. And Billy Packer. And Dick Enberg. Together. Doing college basketball. I think they were the best threesome TV ever put together - better, even, than Don Meredith, Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford. Remember, they were big in the days before cable gave us fourteen games a night from conferences you never heard of, back when the three TV networks commanded America's attention, and you looked forward to the big basketball game of the week. (Plus, of course, if you lived from Maryland to South Carolina, the Pilot Life ACC Game of the Week.) And every winter Saturday afternoon you could count on reuniting with Billy, the basketball purist, Al, the cynical New York Irishman with a quip for any occasion, and Dick, the consummate pro. Al was among the first of the marquee coaches to move into broadcasting, doing so after coaching Marquette to national prominence and an NCAA title, and he earned even greater fame and distinction as an analyst than as a coach. He paved the way for dozens of coaches who followed him (and found themselves unable to carry his jock, as the old expression goes). His many colorful expressions (among them, "aircraft carrier" for a dominant big man, "cupcakes" for soft opponents, "French pastry" for excessively flashy moves) became part of the vocabulary of basketball courts all over America. I have a hard time thinking of Al McGuire, a man's man, getting old. So does he. "I don't remember getting old," he said on announcing his retirement. "How did it happen?" I do remember a few funny things about him as a coach. I remember that long before Harleys were the "in" ride for corporate America, Al used to like to relax by getting on his Harley (made in Milwaukee) and tooling around the Wisconsin countryside. I remember that his son, Allie, started at guard for him at Marquette, and when somebody complained about nepotism, Al was unapologetic. We're talking flesh-and-blood, he said, and for somebody to beat him out, "It's gonna have to be a clean knockout." Finally, I remember the scene following a Marquette win on national TV when the guy from Chevrolet or wherever presented the check for the "Scholarship Awarded to Marquette University in Your Name" to a Marquette player. Al looked on beaming and, always the smartass, reminded the player, "Remember, that's just a scholarship, Jerome. You don't get to keep the money."

"You all talk about this character building and all this business of being good teachers. That's fine. But if you don't win, you'll be looking for another job. Those mommies and daddies will get mad at you. Nobody is going to believe their sons aren't winners." Vince Gibson, former coach at Kansas State

Remember that LA Times series I told you about? The one about youth sports in Southern California? How about this: according to the Times, there are dozens of youth soccer clubs in Southern California with annual budgets of over $250,000. One, the West Coast Futbol Club (what's the matter guys? Afraid if you spell it the American way you might have to associate with the riffraff that play American football?), takes in over $600,000 a year. That's more, the Times points out, than the budgets of UCLA's men's and women's programs combined. It spends over $250,000 on coaches! Every club wants a "Brit" as a coach. It is a matter of prestige. The Mission Viejo Soccer Club hired one for $90,000 a year. To keep their jobs, the coaches begin scouring the recreational leagues, the "everyone plays" 7- and 8-year-old games, trying to identify and sign up prospects for their clubs. Charging entrance fees of $500 a team, one "Futbol" club takes in $200,000 at its annual Labor Day tournament. Another, in San Diego, which attracts more than 460 teams and takes in over $600,000 from two tournaments it runs, claims to bring $10.5 million into the local economy - as much, the Times notes, as an NCAA regional basketball tournament!

For every male driver in his teens in Milwaukee who is driving legally, there are three whose licenses are suspended or revoked! And it's almost as bad for teenage girls: for every legal female teenage driver, there are two with suspended or revoked licenses.

Coach, I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know I'm alive and well and to comment on your Snoose story. The story reminded me of an incident I had while I was on active duty. I was part of the Rapid Deployment Force as a young Lieutenant in the Navy. I was part of the Navy's Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare group and we were practicing amphibious landings with the Marines on Red Beach at Camp Pendleton in California. Our group had landed and set up our operation and had been on the beach for about a week. We were playing wargames and hadn't had a whole lot of sleep for the last five or six days. Any way we were in a tent at about 0300 in the morning waiting for an attack by the opposing force. One of the Chiefs had the sound powered phones on and quite a few of our folks chewed and were spitting in coffee cups which were on the table in front of the Chief. The Chief was half asleep and leaning back in his folding chair reached for his coffee cup. Well, he got one of the makeshift spitoon 'coffee cups ' Needless to say he got quite a shock when he took a big swig of "coffee". We all roared when he came off that chair spitting and coughing and swearing at all who were dipping. Just wanted to let you know I'm still alive and I read your website every morning first thing when I get to work. Brad Elliott, Line Coach (No 'pitty patty, pushy pushy' blocking) Soquel, California P.S. I sure hope you can get a clinic planned for Northern California or Reno.

March 8- "You don't beat people by imagining what they are going to do. You have to prepare for the specifics of what they are going to do and what they have done" Eddie Robinson

Those of you who have seen "Dynamics II" will understand this note from Coach Cole Shaffer, a former player of mine at La Center, Washington who assisted me last year at Washougal, Washington: "Here's one for you. Driving home from school I see these yellow signs all over La Center urging people to vote against the upcoming school maintenence levy. Upon further inspection these aren't your typical anti-levy signs. The signs read "If Your Child Has Ever Been Mistreated by Administrators or Teachers VOTE NO - Send Them A Message" They're being put up by this guy who's been bent for a year after his son got suspended from school for some disciplinary reason. This same brat amazingly got stuck with a pencil by another kid. The other kid didn't get suspended and this guy has gone nuts ever since. I was so shocked at the sign that I had tell you."

While I could scarcely be called a proponent of "gay marriage", I do find it interesting that laws designed to prevent such a thing from occuring are typically given noble-sounding titles such as "Defense of Marriage Act," or "Sanctity of Marriage Act". Interesting, because a couple of weeks ago, roughly two-thirds of the women in the United States sat and watched a TV show which assaulted the sanctity of marriage by offering up a gaggle of willing young women as potential brides to a guy none of them had ever met before - all because they were told he was a "multimillionaire." Wonder where the "Defenders" of marriage were then?

Can't smoke where you work? The answer may be as simple as the one found years ago by men who worked in the woods and in sawmills, where the fire danger was just too great to permit smoking: Snuff. Snoose, as the oldtimers call it in the Northwest. Chew. Dip. Smokeless tobacco. Although it has come to be associated with certain blue-collar workers and teenage boys of the "cowboy" bent, a survey shows that now, nearly half the users of such brands as Copenhagen, Skoal, Kodiak, Happy Days have some college education. Whatever the occupation, though, the problem with indoor use remains the same: what to do with the spit, which users would normally rather not swallow. According to a quick survey of young executives - and medical students - by the Wall Street Journal, one solution to the "spit" problem consists of holding a large soft-drink cup and pretending to be sipping through the straw, while actually expectorating down it. Some inventive dippers have admitted to lining shirt pockets, or running rubber tubing down through a shirt to a receptacle under the desktop. After being required by the law in many places to eliminate smoking in the workplace, employers, especially in the high-tech area,, are often reluctant to crack down on employees who dip. Good workers, it seems are hard to come by - and keep. (Just make sure you don't leave that coffee cup someplace where somebody can knock it over.)

Any teacher who has had tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the invisible federal shield that protects certain disruptive students had to enjoy watching CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday night. The invisible shield covers students with "disabilities," protecting them from the kind of discipline normally called for when normal students misbehave. There is sometimes a question as to the authenticity of certain "disabilities" - sometimes the only evidence of a kid's "disability" is the fact that he is nasty, uncooperative, and threatening, if not dangerous, to others. Following all the tsk, tsk we heard from politicians after the Columbine murders, politicians and educators around the country made a lot of noise about making their schools safer. But what most people don't know is that if a "disabled" kid tells a classmate he's going to kill her, there's not a lot that schools can do. He is protected by federal law because his outrageous behavior is proof that he is "handicapped". So in Gulf Shores, Alabama, when one particular "disabled" student, a 16-year old boy said to have ADHD, threatened other students and teachers, addressed the principal in the foulest of language and, after attempting to cause a school bus wreck, attacked the aide specially assigned to accompany him on the bus, the local District Attorney had had enough. Maybe school officials were handcuffed in trying to deal with the wee lad, since "handicapped" kids can not be disciplined in the same way as other kids, but the DA was not an educator. He made it his mission to have this young disruptor expelled - not just from Gulf Shores schools, but from every school in the State of Alabama! And he succeeded. Horrors! Cried the advocates for the disabled. What about his right to a "Free and Appropriate Education?" Said the District Attorney, what about the rights of the other kids in his school - and his teachers? Representatives of school boards all over the United States are now lobbying Congress for some way of dealing with these out-of-control monsters who infect classrooms and terrorize other students, while depriving them of an education.

Coach Bill Alexander of Georgia Tech had a reputation as one hard hombre. In one of the many stories told about him, one of his players had a tooth knocked out, but he begged Coach Alexander to let him stay in the game. The coach remembered something he had read in a medical dictionary, and packed the exposed nerve with chewing gum. And for the rest of the game, while the injured player played on, Coach Alexander kept a ready supply of additional packing handy - by ordering his substitutes to keep chewing sticks of Juicy Fruit!

March 7- "The eternal verities will always prevail. Such things as truth, honesty, character and loyalty will never change." Dean Elizabeth Hamilton, Miami (Ohio) University - ("I have tried to live my whole life by those words," wrote the great Paul Brown, a Miami grad, "and it has made me a happy man.")

"After he became head coach, George wanted to assemble the best team possible. And before long, he began dropping a veteran player here or there. What bewildered us was how he knew who was slipping. The custom then was for one old pro to help another old pro and we thought we were doing a good job of covering up for the fellows who were losing that extra step because of age. We also couldn't figure out how George could spot the let-downs from the sidelines, which is the worst place to watch a ball game. The mystery was solved one day when he took us to the auditorium at Atwater Kent. We were puzzled when the lights went out and movies flashed on the screen. We were enlightened when we saw the movie was a film of the last game. I may be wrong, but I believe that George Halas was the first one to start using movies to critique his own team."Carl Brumbaugh, old-time Bears' QB, interviewed in 1969 by Bob Curran, in "Pro Football's Rag Days," Bonanza Books

Still want to be a school administrator? At Sam Barlow High, an 1800-student school in the blue-collar Portland suburb of Gresham, Oregon, a 17-year-old junior who claims to be gay is contesting the school's dress code. Told on numerous occasions to remove badges such as the one that said "Because I'm Gay, That's Why," and tee-shirts saying "Sorry Girls, I'm Gay," he decided to push it to the limit last month, showing up at school in a black velvet dress and two-inch heels. He also wore makeup, including lipstick. And he used the girls' bathroom. The next week, he showed up in a flowered skirt and a silk blouse (I can't believe I'm writing this). He was sent home - school policy prohibits any attire with a sexual connotation. But this isn't over. Don't you see? He has rights. They were violated. (You know what the First Amendment says about cross-dressing!) He has been joined in his cause by various gay and lesbian organizations - of which Portland has no shortage - and, needless to say, the usual free-speechies. And, if we can get the ACLU off the team-prayer case for a little while, I'm sure they'll join in his support as well. His mother says she is proud of him, "for standing up for his rights." He just says dressing like a woman makes him "feel pretty."

"The single greatest crisis in America is fatherlessness." So said Bill McCartney, founder of Promise Keepers. Winner of this week's Bill McCartney Award, NBA category, is Bonzi Wells, of the Portland Trail Blazers. Unmarried father of two children - two years old and five months old - by two different women, both of whom live with the children in Muncie, Indiana, Wells says he has no plans to marry. "I'm pretty good friends with my babies' mothers. They understand I have a lot going on. I want to make them happy and make sure my kids don't go without anything. It's going to be fine."

THE NATIONAL SINGLE-WING SYMPOSIUM will be held again this summer, July 13-15 (Thursday-Friday-Saturday) at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri (suburban Kansas City). I understand that lodging is available on-campus. For more information, contact Dan Johnson at 316-684-8851

Never assume you'll be on top forever. Who could possibly have been more influential on the world sports scene than Nike? Just three weeks ago, though, Nike stock hit a 52-week low. Nike's sales are off. Reebok and Adidas are hurting, too. Kids are simply not buying their stuff. Well, then, if not Nike, Reebok or Adidas, who is selling the gear to America's spoiled little youngsters? Listen to the Wall Street Journal, describing what happens when you bet the farm on the fickle fashion tastes of teenagers: "With kids more interested in shoes worn on MTV than those worn in the NBA, and many youngsters preferring the X Games to the World Series, industry giants focusing on traditional sports are slumping. The industry, once dominated by Nike, Inc. and its stable of basketball-shooting, football-tossing, baseball-smashing superstars, is being taken over by dozens of smaller companies endorsed by skateboarders, stunt bike riders, and even rock stars. "

You will still be able to buy a "pint" in an English pub, but that's about it for those people used to buying things by the pint, pound or foot. As the price of its membership in the European Union, England is now officially metric. Having lived for months at a time in Europe, I can tell you that it is not the most onerous of burdens to have to convert to measuring trips in kilometers, temperatures in degrees Celsius, liquids in litres - but it is a pain in the ass for those of us not used to it. English shoppers are not going be happy. Neither are English shopkeepers, who can be fined up to $8,000 for using words such as "pound" or "foot" while making a sale. The effort to promote metric in the US has already been beaten back once, but like a bad penny, it will return, you can be sure. I assume that if the metric system is ever forced on us, we will still be allowed to measure home runs in feet and football stats in yards. And somehow, I can't picture the Federal Metric Patrol battering its way into the press box at Texas Stadium and arresting John Madden for failure to give players' heights in centimeters and weights in kilograms, or tell us how fast a guy is in the...wait a minute while I convert yards into meters - 36.4.

March 6- "I think that all that pre-game speech stuff lasts about five minutes into a game, and then it just comes down to which team is better prepared." Dirk Koetter, Boise State coach

A professional arbitrator has cut in half the 28-game suspension originally handed out to John Rocker by baseball commissioner Bud Selig. He didn't say why, but I'm guessing he figured that since Rocker has already had to undergo compulsory diversity training, that is punishment enough.

Boise State head coach Dirk Koetter, quoted above, has an interesting approach to pre-game talks. He doesn't give them. Well, most of the time he doesn't. He gives the talk before the first game of the year and the last, but in between, his assistants take turns. "It's hard for the same guy to get up there and give the team the old Knute Rockne speech 12 times in a row," he reasons. He assigns the games to the assistants, and "if they won their game last year, then they do the same game (this year)," Koetter explained. "If they lose, they're out."

A woman in our area is accused of stealing $34,000 from a local Little League organization. Of course, it is a sorry development, but one that seems to repeat itself around here every year or so. The accounting safeguards of the Little League organizations seem to be a story in themselves, but the local TV stations seem to take greater pleasure in reporting such theft from the perspective of "the heartbroken children." Although theft of any kind is deplorable, and it is sad to learn that a person put in a position of trust has betrayed that trust, I have to admit that I felt a little relieved to hear that most of the money stolen had been earmarked for trophies. Trophies! Unless the federal government feels their pain and steps in, the kids may have to do without trophies! Somehow, I believe they will survive. But one local TV station's headline was a bit alarming - Little League officials feared kids might be "discouraged" by the news of the missing funds. Discouraged? I thought. Could it be possible that a case of embezzlement would affect their desire to play baseball? I waited for the story, and on came an interview with a local volunteer coach. There was a danger this might discourage the kids, he told the interviewer - they might not want to go out and sell any more candy.

Educators and demographers agree: American education is facing a teacher crisis. As current teachers retire, there simply are not going to be enough new teachers to replace them. In school district after school district, the crisis has already begun, as schools find themselves faced with a substitute shortage. So, faced with a need for teachers, what does the overpaid genius who is our US Education Secretary propose? Why, pay the teachers more, of course. Hey - good idea. No argument from me there. But it wouldn't be a raise in pay, exactly. What he proposes is more money for more hours. Somehow, he thinks it's going to be possible make an increasingly-unattractive profession appealing to young people by offering them year-round work. Maybe he's right, but as a longtime teacher myself, I have never forgotten what those oldtimers told me when I first got in: "the three best things about teaching are June, July and August."

Coach, I e-mailed you before. I won three successive JV championships with the Double-Wing. In every season I was undermanned. This last year I missed a fourth successive championship by four points in the last game of the season. We ended the season in second place with an 8-2 record. My record for the past four years is 9-1, 7-1-2, 7-3, 8-2. My last year was probably the best coaching job I have done. We lost the whole right side of the formation and the starting Qb by beginning of league. I did not have a true QB so I insituted the direct snap to the QB-FB (Wildcat). It stood us in good stead until the last game. Unfortunately, this game was for the championship. Coach Carlos Magallanes, LaPuente High School, La Puente,Calif

Only 15% of college faculty members surveyed by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago declared that they are "very satisfied" with the preparation of students entering college today.

March 3- "In working with young people over the years, I have come to the conclusion that the most important thing to do is to explain things properly." Len Dawson, Kansas City Chiefs' Super-Bowl winning QB

"The I formation was devised at the Virginia Military Institute in 1949. At that time we began experimenting with the formation in hopes of developing a good power off-tackle sequence to use against our opponents. With the off-tackle series as the basis of our attack that year, VMI tied with Jim Tatum's Maryland team for the Southern Conference championship. This was before the division and formation of the new Atlantic Coast Conference. Realizing then that the I formation had almost limitless possibilities, we added an outside series, then the powerful inside series, and finally the passing attack. In 1951, Frank Leahy of Notre Dame called me at VMI and asked if he could borrow our game films and notes on the I formation to use that year as a surprise weapon. We even staged a spring game and filmed it for him so thatall of the blocking assignments and backfield maneuvering would be clear. NOtre Dame's success with the I formation that year was given nationwide publicity and, of course, they were immediately credited with the development of the offense. In fact, to this day I am often asked at coaching clinics if the formation we use is the same one that was "invented" at Notre Dame." Tom Nugent, writing in 1962 in "Championship Football by 12 Great Coaches", Prentice-Hall. (Coach Nugent, a very colorful and inventive coach, was head coach at Maryland at the time. He was a Yankee - a New Englander - and he and crusty old Frank Howard, legendary coach at Clemson, shared a sincere dislike for one another. Once, while preparing to play Maryland, Coach Howard mocked Coach Nugent's fondness for trick plays, reverses and laterals, using the expression "high school offense," to which Coach Nugent replied, when informed of the slighting remark, "Well, when you're getting ready to play a high school team..."

Whew! Talk about close calls! If you hadn't already heard, you can breathe easier - there will be an Arena Football season after all!

Orlando Brown of the Cleveland Browns, who shoved an official in anger after being hit in they eye by a carelessly-thrown penalty flag, has had his suspension lifted. He will not miss a game next season, which means that he served a two-game suspension for his offense. Actually, in view of the elaborate defense he threw up - it seems he panicked at the thought of possibly being blinded, losing his eyesight like a relative who had lost his to glaucoma - two games seemed excessive. I mean, for days afterward, we saw the poor guy lying in a hospital bed, told that he was in danger of going blind because of that nasty official's carelessness. And why do they even have to have those flags, anyhow? Perhaps some good will come out of this. Maybe they can replace the lead shot used to weigh down the penalty flags with little rubber balls. And perhaps a guy so preoccupied with thoughts of losing his eyesight will get the equipment man to outfit him with an eyeshield.

Remember Todd Marinovich, prepared almost at conception, it seemed, for athletic greatness? Remember wondering what the kid did for a life? Remember the problems he ran into, once he discovered that there was such a thing as a life, and he was free to make some choices? What do you think of the idea of tens of thousands of kids in Southern California being "developed" along those lines? How about speed coaches for 8-year-olds? Sports psychologists for 12-year-olds? Youth soccer teams paying their coaches $90,000 a year? Read about what happens when you combine too much money and disgusting parental ambitions with the growing American cult of child worship - all this and more in an incredible three-part series beginning in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times on the frightening extent to which parents invest in their kids' sports development. My thanks to the readers who put me onto it. WARNING: You may not want to read it, because if what is happening in Southern California should spread nationwide - as most trends do - it will make you think twice about a future in coaching. If the series is still up, you'll find it at http://www.latimes.com/news/state/reports/youth/lat_youth000227.htm (If it has been removed, please inform me and I will do my best to paraphrase.)

Coach T. J. Mills, who won 148 games and lost only 27 in his 17 years at Sealy, Texas, has been named to head one of the nation's most illustrious football programs, taking over at Odessa Permian High. At Sealy, Coach Mills' Tigers won four straight state 3-A titles (1994-1997).

Compliments of Coach Scott Russell in Northern Virginia: Only in America ...... can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance ....... are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink ....... do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front ....... do people order double cheese burgers, large fries - and a diet coke ....... do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters ....... do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage ....... do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place ....... do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight ....... do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures'....... do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

March 2- "Work smarter than you work harder." Johnny Majors

Coach Keith Babb, from Chicago, knew the answer to the question: What Gilbert and Sullivan operetta was based on a story about a young man who, now that he is 21 rejoices because he is freed from a bondage contract. Not so fast, his masters tell him. Since he was born on Leap Year Day, he's "only five - and a little bit over?" Answer: "The Pirates of Penzance" (Penzance is the southwesternmost town in England, near the tip of land known as Land's End.)

Next time you start telling your players that it's important that they do things right the first time, better stop and ask yourself - is it, really? In one 18-month period, a guy hit a van... an apartment house... and a bunch of trees. With his garbage truck. Finally, he rolled it and totalled it, at a cost to the taxpayers of Tacoma, Washington of over $100,000. Finally, he was demoted. Not fired. But now the Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that he is entitled to his driving job back - after retraining, of course - with $105,000 in back pay and legal fees. Demoted to a $13 an hour job from the $18 an hour he earned as a garbage-truck stunt driver, he sued, and the judges, who evidently either don't pay taxes or don't care about how they are spent, ruled that he shouldn't have been demoted - without first being offered retraining. Next question - who hired this guy in the first place? Maybe we can at least fire him.

In the town I live in, new employees at the paper mill used to be required to "ride the mill ditch," the two-mile-long canal that carries water rather rapidly downhill from a nearby lake to the mill in the heart of town. It actually looks as if it could have been fun - except for the half-mile or so during which the ride plunges into blackness, as the "ditch" burrows underground, passing beneath streets, schools, and athletic fields. But everybody who worked at the mill went through it. It was a rite of initiation. Businesses have had initiations, unions and fraternal organizations have had them, and so have sports teams.

Wherever I've coached, it's been a tradition for the freshmen to carry the dummies out to the practice field, and bring them back in after practice. But that's as much initiation as I've ever permitted. Fortunately, I have never inherited from my predecessors any of the extreme form of initiation known as hazing, nor have I allowed any to start. One time, several years ago, I came upon some seniors trying to throw a fully-clothed freshman under the showers, and they saw a side of me they didn't particularly want to see again. I've always been a believer in requiring young guys to show respect to the older players, while making sure the older players proved themselves worthy of that respect. But a player shouldn't have to have his head shaved or his body painted, nor should he have to do foul and disgusting things in order to play football. I figure as a coach it's my job, not some teenager's, to determine what's required to play football, and if a kid is willing to step forward and do all the things I require, that's enough.

We're not talking about singing little songs, or carrying the dummies out onto the field.. We are not talking about seniors having certain privileges. We are talking about practices that seem to become more gruesome while an increasingly tender society loses its tolerance for even the most innocent of initiation rites.

There's enough hazing going on to fill a book. In fact, Hank Nuwer, who calls himself a hazing expert, has written a book soon to come out entitled, "High School Hazing: When Rites Become Wrongs." He says a major part of the problem is lack of knowledge by students and their parents. To that, I would add coaches.

If the downright ugliness and disrespect involved in hazing aren't enough to get a coach to put an end to it, perhaps the issue of liability is. Coaches need to be aware of the trap they are stepping into when they ignore hazing. They simply realize that they have a legal responsibility to do everything reasonable within their power to prevent acts by their players against teammates which can be injurious or degrading - or seen that way by a jury. Playing dumb and looking the other way won't excuse you. Passing it off as "something that's always been done around here" doesn't get it. A plaintiff's attorney will have a field day when he asks you if it's true that you really said, "They're just being kids."

Nuwer gives several reasons why hazing is so deeply rooted in our culture. Obviously, there is the influence of the pros. Then, too, there is a basic human need to be part a group, and a consequent willingness to do whatever it takes to belong. Anybody who works with teenagers or has one in the home will understand. Finally, says Nuwer, hazing in one form or another as the price of membership in a group is deeply rooted in our culture. "It has been practiced," he says, "since the Middle Ages."

Hazing normally takes the form of a seemingly harmless initiation ritual, and incidents resulting in extreme humiliation, injury - even death - are the rare exceptions. But, Nuwer said, parents, students - and again I would add coaches - need to know that the dangerous forms of hazing gets their start someplace, and that's where it must be headed off. Nevertheless, he notes, few high schools, beyond noting in their student handbooks that hazing is forbidden, do more than pay lip service to its elimination.

Hazing won't go away by itself. The most important thing in ending it, says Nuwer, is that athletes must have the courage to blow the whistle - to step forward and report hazing when it occurs. Undoubtedly, their reluctance to do so is the major reason why it continues. Further, coaches need to establish firm anti-hazing policies and make them quite clear to their athletes - and then enforce those policies. And finally, coaches need to help develop in their kids the strength and courage to say - beforehand - "I'm not going to subject myself to this."

I personally think that girls wrestling against boys is an abomination. Nevertheless, in today's America, there is a growing number of people who think that if a girl wants to do something, we shouldn't stop her. (You go, girl!) In the Philadelphia area, a woman has been raising a huge ruckus, first suing to get her daughter onto the mat in an all-boys' youth program, and then, having succeeded in her initial quest, threatening to raise an even larger ruckus because several of the boys in the program refused to wrestle her daughter. Now, Mom is demanding that any boy who won't wrestle her daughter be expelled from the league. Will somebody please tell that woman, that young lady, and everybody like them that this is life, and one of the lessons we all need to learn - even her daughter - is that in life we can't have everything we want? (How much you wanna bet that if she were the mother of one of those boys, she would be on the other side of the battle, suing to keep girls out?)

"I let my coaches have a free hand, but it didn't work. The year we signed Whizzer White, our coach was John Blood. I still believe that John Blood would have been a tremendous coach, if he would have just paid attention. We once played a game in Los Angeles, and John missed the train home. John was known to enjoy a good time, of course, so we didn't see him for a whole week. On Sunday he stopped off in Chicago to see his old team, the Green Bay Packers, play the Bears. The newspaper guys asked him, "How come you're not with your team?" And John said, "Oh, we're not playing this week."Well, no sooner did he get those words out of his mouth than the guy on the loudspeaker announced a score - Philadelphia 14, Pittsburgh 7. You couldn't depend on John a whole lot." Art Rooney, founder and late owner of the Steelers, as told to Myron Cope, in his "The Game That Was," 1970, World Publishing

March 1- "It is our duty to defend the qualities that have made our nation superior." Frank Leahy or Notre Dame (Can you imagine how today's multiculturists would react if they heard someone call our nation "superior?")

John Carver, my favorite wrestling coach, had a kid come up to him a couple of weeks ago trying to get out of practice. "I haven't had my medication," the kid said, "and you may not like me." John's reply was, "I haven't had my medication, either. And if you don't practice, you won't like me."

Somehow I don't think Guglielmo Marconi had this in mind when he invented radio. Gaydar ("gay radar") will soon be with us - some of us, anyhow - allowing the owner of one of the pocket size devices to send out a mating call via radio signal to owners of similar devices within 40 feet of him/her. (It can be set to transmit signals to men or women.) It will sell for $29, mostly in stores and bars in places with high concentrations of gays, such as New York, San Francisco, Provincetown (Mass.) and Key West. Aside from the question of why would you need a gay detector in a gay bar in San Francisco, it sounds to me like one more issue for school personnel to have to deal with.

 "Coach Wyatt, I want to take the time to thank you for putting us on track. I have updated you previously on making it to the New York State Quarterfinals for the first time in school history, but now have some more good news. Several of my players were named to the all-league team, with my B-back, Mike Lisi, being named player of the year in the Southern Tier, and making 3rd team All New York state. I have had several coaches contact me after the season and ask to sit down and talk with them about the offense, but I play them during the regular season, what are they nuts? Another compliment to the offense this season is that after we played 4 of the teams during the regular season, I went to scout them against other opponents and they were trying to implement the Double Wing into their offensive scheme and having pretty good success with it, imagine if they had any idea how to really run the offense...Hope to see you soon at the clinic, haven't decided which one I will attend this year, but will be bringing several staff members this year." Mike Johnston, Elmira, New York

Woodberry Forest School, in Central Virginia, is a Double-Wing school, and the Woodberry Tigers and Coach Bill Davis have done well with it, losing only three games in the last two years. Woodberry Forest also happens to be the alma mater of one of my sons-in-law, and while visiting him and my daughter a few weeks ago, I found myself thumbing through last summer's issue of Woodberry's alumni magazine. There, I came across a few comments by the Headmaster, Dennis M. Campbell, that made me realize, in contrast with this proud old private school and its dedication to developing southern gentlemen, how far off course public education has gone. "We are," wrote Headmaster Campbell, "a school that specifically addresses moral formation. It is interesting that in the aftermath of Littleton, many commentators have called for moral formation in schools, but every such proposal brings forth a barrage of argument and dispute. What is to be taught? How is it to be taught? What values are to be espoused? Why are certain values chosen? Thankfully, at Woodberry we do not fight about these things. Faculty, alumni, board, parents, students are in agreement about our established values. We are clear in our honor system that the entire community is held to a high standard that prohibits lying, cheating, and stealing. Moreover, we do not excuse ourselves from responsibility. I am deeply troubled by the tendency on our society to fudge wrongdoing by blaming other people - parents, the community, teachers, and any number of other culprits. We expect persons to take responsibility for their moral lives, and we teach the students that they must do so."

Sent to me by my spy in Australia, just to illustrate once again the subtle differences in cur sultures: Here's one from the New Zealand Super Twelve Rugby telecast...a guy from South Africa club The Sharks scores a try (touchdown) against the Wellington Hurricanes...the announcer says "He scores...and shakes his fist at the home fans, saying, 'up yours, Wellington!'... and that's from a guy named All-Cock." (His name was Alcock). Unbelievable. The stuff these guys say I can't believe sometimes.

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