BACK ISSUES - NOV & DEC 1999
December 31 - "Man- a creature made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired." Mark Twain
My son, Ed, lives in Melbourne, Australia, where the New Year arrives 19 hours before it does on the West Coast, and he promises to let me know as soon as he finds out one way or the other whether the world ends with the New Year. The big joke in Australia (where the emphasis is all on Big Party and none on Armageddon) is that their friends in New Zealand will notify them if the world is ending so they can fly to Perth (on Australia's west coast) and party for three more hours. By the time you read this, Ed may already have found out the news. If I have any distressing information to pass on to you, I will post it on this site, so you might want to check in from time to time. It will at least give you a few hours' notice.
At long last, I have been assured by the team of engineers and programmers assigned to the task that the Double-Wing, simultaneously voted by a panel of experts to be not only the Best Offense of the First 2000 Years but also the Official Offense of the New Millennium, has been certified Y2K compliant. (For quite some time, not wanting to alarm you, I kept this news from you: but I was advised that, without the services of a highly-paid team of consultants, starting on New Year's Day, the offensive linemen on all my videotapes would begin gradually and imperceptibly to widen all splits until, without realizing what had happened, coaches would suddenly notice that the guards and tackles had split out to three feet and the tight ends out to as much as four feet; in some cases, there would be no tight end at all, and the term "Wide Receiver" would begin to pop up on the sound track. The cure these consultants proposed was costly, but what could I do? I had people depending on me, so I said, "Hang the cost! Just don't let anything happen to our Double-Wing! I can't face those coaches on January 1 and tell them that they are going to have to enter a new millennium with wide line splits! and wide receivers!" The crack team of technicians put in countless hours, and thanks to their tireless, round-the-clock efforts, the problem has been averted, they assure me, and Double-Wing coaches everywhere will now be able to ring in the New Year secure in the knowledge that even if they don't have lights and water in their houses, at least their Double-Wing still works!. I'm sure you'll agree that it was worth the many thousands of dollars the consultants charged me.)
Mike Downey in the Los Angeles Times, noting the usual Rose Bowl itinerary handed to the news media ("Century City - 8:30 AM - Team Coaches meet the press"), wrote a hilarious pre-Rose Bowl piece based on an "alternative itinerary" he claimed to have been handed. Among some of the items it contained:
"Brentwood, today, 10 a.m.--A familiar-looking man, who once played football for USC, is expected to approach Heisman Trophy winner Ron Dayne of the Wisconsin Badgers and ask: 'Psst, how much do you want for that trophy?'
"Long Beach, 11 a.m.--Stanford's unpredictable marching band is booked to perform aboard the Queen Mary until approximately 11:30, when it will be asked to leave the ship, due to having performed provocative musical numbers about Queen Mary.
"Caltech, 3 p.m.--Scientists will report that they have been observing Big Ten schools, and find that there are actually 11 of them.
"Westwood, Friday, 4:30 a.m.--UCLA football players will assemble before dawn to load paint cans into vans. Team members will proceed to Rose Bowl stadium for work until sunrise, painting over wheelchair emblems and then leaving vans in best parking spaces overnight.
"Mann's Chinese Theater, Hollywood, 8:15--Stanford's players gather to watch film footage of Cal's greatest Rose Bowl moments ever, between 8:16 and 8:17.
"Hollywood Bowl, midnight--'Happy New Year!' to be yelled by all, with Stanford alumni bringing the wine and Wisconsin alumni bringing the Velveeta.
"Glendale, 11:30--Two dozen Badger fans leaving their hotel for the game will discover that a travel agent has sold them bogus tickets, dated 'Jan. 1, 3000.'
"Rose Bowl, Pasadena, 1:33--Wisconsin's Dayne scores three of Stanford's best players--trumpet, saxophone and tuba."
Bill Bowerman died last week at the age of 88. He was part of an incredible American success story. For years, he was the head track coach at the University of Oregon; Steve "Pre" Prefontaine was his best-known runner, but another runner named Phil Knight was, shall we say, his most valuable. Coach Bowerman, always looking to give his runners an edge, ruined more than one of his wife's waffle irons by pouring hot latex in them in hopes of making a new, all-surface track sole. When he finally succeeded, his "waffle sole" won acceptance among his athletes, and combining his track expertise and connections with the business acumen of Phil Knight, Coach Bowerman formed Blue Ribbon Sports in order to market the invention. Now, years later, Phil Knight is CEO of the world-wide company that grew out of Blue Ribbon Sports - Nike Incorporated - and the richest man in Oregon. Some would argue that he is the most powerful single man in sports. Coach Bowerman sold out his interest in Nike years ago and retired, a wealthy man, to his cabin up the McKenzie River from Eugene. His proudest legacy is the fact that Eugene, a small city of about 100,000 which calls itself "Tracktown," is considered by many to be one of track and field's few remaining American strongholds.
December 30 - "Use it up...wear it out...make it do - or do without." Old New England saying
Rip Engle, one of the least-sung of the great old-time coaches of the last 50 years, is high on my most-admired list, for a number of reasons. One is that, in my opinion, he was the man most responsible for starting Penn State on its climb to national prominence. No slight intended to Joe Paterno, who is also on my list. After all, when Coach Engle came to Penn State from Brown in 1950, he did persuade a former Brown quarterback, a kid from Brooklyn named Joe Paterno, to postpone his law studies and come along as an assistant. Sixteen years later, Paterno would succeed Coach Engle as Penn State head coach. Much in the way that Earl "Red" Blaik served as mentor to another young Brooklyn guy named Lombardi, it was Rip Engle on which Coach Paterno modeled much of his philosophy, his outlook on the game and his style of coaching. It was largely because Rip Engle was almost devoid of ego that Penn State's transition from Engle to Paterno was as smooth as any that ever took place in major college football. Coach Paterno did not exactly inherit a mess. After being appointed Assistant Head Coach, with the clear understanding that he would be Engle's successor, he took over a program that, while not yet a national power, had established itself firmly as the Beast of the East. Coach Engle, who never had a losing season, was a real gentleman with never a whiff of scandal associated with his program. His calm, laid-back style was the perfect counterpoint to Paterno's youthful passion and assertiveness, and his advice proved invaluable at crucial stages in young Coach Paterno's career. One particular bit of advice, which Coach Paterno must have considered later on when he would twice turn down lucrative NFL jobs, sounded to me an awful lot like Frosty Westering's "Make the Big Time Where You Are" philosophy: "This thing (coaching) is not what you are at a certain age, it is what you want to get out of it. It is also important that you understand what's going to make you happy, and I don't think money or an ego trip is going to make you happy."
Dear Hugh: I was at the Motor City Bowl in person and the biggest moment of the game went unreported by virtually every form of media. BYU was somewhere around the Marshall 20 yard line trailing 10-3 and looking to score after a long play. BYU quaterback drops back and is slammed into the turf by a Marshall blitzing linbacker and imediatly looks hurt. He jumps to his feet and starts screaming at his offensive line. How do I know he was screaming? The crowd came to its feet and went crazy!!! He went so far as to grab his right tackle, slap him several times and then yank him by the arm to get out of there. To our amazment he left the field and another player came in. The crowd was going nuts. Had he lost his mind? Needless to say BYU went down the tubes from there, and the quarterback (a senior playing in his last game) was sat down for a freshman. A short time later an All-American linebacker came off the field, had a shouting match with his coaches and then smashed and broke his helmet. I was sitting among several people from Brother Rice's (Brother Rice HS in Birmingham, Michigan) football team and no one could ever remember seeing anything like it. I taped the game and plan on using it as a how not to video. Hope all is well. Have a good New Year. Rick Desotell, Lutheran Northwest High, Rochester Hills, Michigan
According to reports in a Melbourne, Australia newspaper, sales of tickets to men's events at the 2000 Sydney Olympics are hot. But other than gymnastics, which like figure skating is in a world of its own as a sports attraction for women, sales of tickets to women's events are, er, not. As of a week ago, all 21 sessions of men's basketball were sold out; only six of the women's sessions were. All 23 baseball sessions were sold out, compared with just three in softball. In water polo, the men's-women's sellout ratio was seven to two; in team handball (a big sport in parts of Europe), it was 12 to zero. C'mon ladies - put your money where your mouth is. Meantime, if the promoters of the Olympics want to know where to find buyers for those tickets to the women's events, I would suggest that they contact Christine Brennan, sports writer for USA Today. She's the one who wrote about being offended by a "clueless" (her word) sports radio guy whose reaction to all the hoopla about the US women's World Cup soccer victory was, "What's the big deal?" He said nobody he'd been talking to had been talking about women's soccer. "Then you're talking to the wrong people," Ms. Brennan said she informed the chauvinist pig. Now, if she wouldn't mind telling the folks in Sydney where to find all the "right" people...
It seems like only yesterday that he and I were PR guys for our teams; it was 1975, and he was "advancing" his team, the Birmingham Vulcans, prior to their arrival in town to play our Portland Thunder. He had been hospitable to me on my trip to Birmingham earlier, and I enjoyed his company during his Portland stay. But after the World Football League abruptly folded shortly after, everyone scrambled for different life preservers, and that that was the last I saw of Gil LeBreton. But over the last few years I began coming across his name - and reading his work - as a sports columnist with the Fort Worth Telegram, and thanks to the Internet, we've had a reunion of sorts. He recalls those WFL days as fondly as I do; no doubt we are both suffering from the same selective amnesia - an ability to remember only the good times - that gives nostalgia such a good name.
Our legislators in Washington, D.C. have evidently decided to pass over a Roman Catholic priest in selecting a chaplain. (Incidentally, can somebody please explain why it is okay to start a session of Congress with a prayer, but not a football game or a high school graduation?) One of the reasons given for not selecting him was that a celibate clergyman might not to be able to counsel married couples. Apart from the fact that Catholic priests have been doing that very thing for, oh, several centuries; apart from the fact that it isn't necessary for a physician to have a broken leg in order to treat a fracture, or a coach to have a dysfunctional family in order to counsel a kid who lives in one; apart from the fact that if married Congressmen and their spouses don't wish to take the advice of the chaplain, they are free to go to the clergy of their choice - couldn't certain high government officials have benefitted from the counsel of a clergyman - celeibate or not - before "mistakes were made", instead of running and hiding behind "spiritual advisers" afterward?
December 29 - "There is no such thing as a man being too proud to fight." Woodrow Wilson
On sale - at a gym or health food store near you. According to the Phoenix Suns' team physician, the seizure that almost killed Tom Gugliotta was probably caused by a legal, over-the-counter "dietary supplement" that he admitted taking because of its supposed ability to help people sleep after physical exertion, and aid in muscle recovery. It was revealed by the physician that Gugliotta had taken the supplement following a game against the Portland Trail Blazers, and after his collapse on the team bus, actually stopped breathing on the way to the hospital. Fortunately, the empty container was located on the bus, and doctors were able to know how to deal with his condition. Gugliotta told the Arizona Republic that he had been taking the product at the suggestion of a friend because he had been having trouble sleeping. The product, which is not on the NBA's list of banned substances, contains a drug named furanone, whose chemical name is gamma butyrolactone, also called GBL. The stuff is marketed under such brand names as ReActive, Verve, SomatoPro, Blue Nitro, and Regenerize. They are sold in all the usual places, and on the Internet as well. The Food & Drug Adinistration, which wants the supplement banned, says that GBL and related drugs have been associated with 144 serious incidents such as Gugliotta's - many of them requiring the insertion of an airway tube - and three deaths.
Playing in the Sugar Bowl for the National Title is a coach's dream. But keeping tabs on your players in New Orleans - "the town that care forgot" - can be a coach's nightmare. The Big Easy has a whole lot of, uh, adult attractions, many of them open around the clock, few of them conducive in any way to keeping a player's mind on the game. Enforcing a curfew might seem to be a problem, but by now Virginia Tech players all have heard the story of Keith Short. Back in 1995, Short, a center for the Hokies, broke the curfew and was sent home. On the bus. "We'll fly you down on a nice charter flight," said Virginia Tech Coach Frank Beamer, but if you don't do right, we'll send you home on the bus. It took him 26 hours to get home."
A couple of weeks before Christmas, Philadelphia Flyers' coach Roger Nielson learned he had bone marrow cancer. Since then, he has been upbeat about it to the point of joking - when he first announced the doctors' diagnosis, a newspaper reporter asked him if anyone had suggested he give up coaching, he answered, "just a few fans." Neilson gives credit to his faith. "The advantage of being a Christian," he told Ed Hilt of the Atlantic City Press, "is that all your life, you can get help through prayer, reading your Bible, talking to the Lord. When it's all over, you know you have a place to go. For people who don't have that, I don't know how they do it. I'm sure it's my faith that keeps me going. Look at all the times I've been fired, other things. Everybody in every walk of life has problems. You need your faith. I just don't know how people do without it. I am absolutely convinced that this is the way it is right now.He is going to see me through it. If there is a reason why I look and sound like I am optimistic and not worried, it is because I am not."
Is it just me, or has there been a sudden rash of drug commercials, most mentioning the possibility of unpleasant side effects such as "increased bowel movements?"
Peanut allergy is frightening. Exposure to the slightest trace of peanuts or peanut oil can be fatal. As a result, food manufacturers are warning people that their products may contain peanuts. The problem is, some are going so far in their warnings as to place vague statements such as "MAY CONTAIN PEANUTS" on their products - even if the product doesn't contain peanuts. The effect of this ultra-caution is to unnecessarily put many products off-limits to people with peanut allergy. This concerns some parents of allergic kids, who find their choices of foods overly limited. "I think the labels are more of a legal thing manufacturers do to cover their butts," one mother told USA Today. Well, duh, Mom. Ever heard of lawyers?
The Surgeon General now claims that one person in five has some sort of mental disorder. But in order to back up such an outrageous claim, he had to redefine the term "mental disorder." To such disorders as severe depression and bipolar disorder have now been added such frightening maladies as narcissism (extreme self-admiration - actually, I've known some people so in love with themselves that they could stand a little institutionalizing); self doubt (ever worried about your game plan?), excessive devotion to work (might as well get out the strait jackets and round up the football coaches now), obnoxiousness (uh, oh - who are those guys in the white coats coming to get me?). Maybe think the best, though, if you're looking to show large numbers, is "social phobia." Not to deny that in some people this may limit normal life functions, but in the questionnaire that revealed the existence of this "disorder," people were asked, "do you think you're more nervous than other people when you have to speak in public or attend a large social gathering?" Anybody who's ever taught teenagers could tell you that if you asked that question in an average classroom, the answers would be about 95 per cent "yes."
December 28 - "The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer." Old U.S. Army expression
Maybe I'd better lighten up a bit on pro wrestling... Remember my writing about the Indiana University study showing that, on average, only 36 minutes of a two-hour WWF show is devoted to actual wrestling? Well, a WWF show is a full-course meal, compared with the snack that a typical NFL games provides. USA Today put the clock on an NFL game earlier this season, and found that while the "show" - the game itself - lasted three hours and seven minutes from start to finish, the actual playing time - starting the clock on the snap and ending it on the whistle - was 16 minutes! And for that, they need a two-hour pre-game show.
Turns out that the whole time the NFL has been showing us how socially responsible it is by banning the "throat slash" gesture, a video game licensed by the NFL has been showing its little users how the big guys in the pros celebrate - complete with throat slashes. I doubt that you will see the NFL recall the thousands of games already in the hands of little kids all over America. If it does, though, while the games are being reprogrammed the NFL could do football coaches everywhere - and society in general - a huge favor by also deleting all the dancing, strutting and gyrations (they call it "celebration") that accompany the slightest little feats which those players are being paid - generously - to perform. Of course, kids could still get all that unsportsmanlike garbage on any Madden video game. Talk about a conflict of interest - think you'll ever hear John Madden leading the charge for sportsmanship, as long as those foolish "celebrations" are a part of his video games?
Dear Coach, I know Coach Robinson has already related our Junior (15-16) success story to you. (City Champs). I just wanted to let you know our Senior (17-18) team also has a very successful season as well. We captured our division championship for the first time in 10 years going undefeated. We scored a record 218 points and allowed only 18. We ended up losing in the semi-finals to the eventual city champs. With only 4 starters leaving, and some talented juniors moving up I am looking forward to another successful season next year. The system is perfect for our small school, and proves you do not need huge linemen to blow people off the ball to win. Thanks so much for all of your hard work and updated material. I look forward to attending another one of your clinics in the near future. Have you given any thought to a Detroit clinic? Sincerely, Chris Marcus - South Secondary School, London, Ontario (Canada)
What do you know? NBA basketball may be a team game after all. In games in which Allen Iverson has scored 40 points or more, the Philadelphia 76ers are 1-9.
I was talking not too long ago with a local businessman, Dan Heine. Dan is president of a bank in Vancouver, Washington, and I had stopped by his office to return a couple of books he had lent me. Dan, a former athlete himself, takes quite an interest in the various ways that coaching, military leadership and business management overlap. To illustrate, he told me about something that had happened to him recently: he was being urged to undertake an expansion of the business that he didn't think his people were ready for yet. He said he had to recommend against it at this time, because in his opinion, if they went ahead with the expansion, competitors would eat them up. I thought immediately of a football coach with an inexpeienced team having to play a suicide schedule in order to try to bring in revenue, or - after reading John McCain's book - military leaders in Vietnam having to send their men into battle despite the limitations put on them by the politicians in Washington.
Hugh - I finally wrapped up the 1999 season. Inventory,ordering, player and coaching evlauations are all finished. I wanted you to know that we went 8-2 at the varsity level. We got beat by the 2nd place team in Division 2 in Ohio state playoffs, and the 8th place team that happen to knock off the #1 team in Division 2 in Ohio. After two years our players are sold on the DW. Our JV went 7-2. We are expecting a good year in 2000. After the season the administration offered me an assistant AD job. It would be more money and less pressure. After talking it over with my family, praying about it and weighing all the pro and cons I turned it down. I love coaching football, but more especially the athletes make the job fun. I feel I can make more of an inpact on the players life as a coach and not an administrator. Hugh we had 14 All league players, one player made all state and we set a record with 5 players making the all Wood county team. This is the same group of kids that went 2-8 as juniors. They stuck with me and they never gave up. I will send you our highlight video after the first of the year. We ran a lot of offense. Many thanks to you and all your positive work with the DW. Ray Pohlman, Perrysburg, Ohio
Neil Jacobson, a University of Washington psychologist, reported in a 1995 article about a study in which a number of patients suffering from depression were treated in three different ways: one group was given drugs; a second group underwent conventi0onal therapy; a third group met with therapssts, but discussed othr topics - from sports to gardening. The results were roughly the same in all groups: between 20 and 30 per cent recovered from their depression and remained well for at least 18 months.
December 27 - "I'm at the point where if we win, it's because of mature leadership; if we lose, the game has passed us by." BYU Coach LaVell Edwards, 68, preparing to play unbeaten Marshall today
When I first started coaching high school ball in the Pacific Northwest, back before steroids and creatine, a substance called DMSO, first discovered in one of the Northwest's many paper mills, was the "in" thing among athletes. It wasn't a performance enhancer, and it wasn't a pain killer, but, rubbed on sprains, strains and bruises, it was said to possess magical powers - hastening the cure of almost anything short of a compound fracture. Its chemical name was dimethyl sulfoxide, but it was far better known by the initials DMSO. At first, it wasn't commercially available, but just like steroids, everybody knew how to get some, and soon it began to be sold pretty much the way today's "dietary supplements" are - underneath the radar of the FDA. There seemed to be three main concerns: (1) you couldn't be sure you were getting the pure stuff; (2) it penetrated the skin so quickly that there was the fear that it might carry foreign substances into the body along with it; (3) it was said to produce an unpleasant taste in the mouth (some said oysters, others said worse) shortly after application. The father of a coach I knew was said to drink a juice glass of it - straight - every morning. I tried it a few times myself on various bumps and bruises, but I can't say that I noticed any magical cures. (I never did get the taste of oysters, so maybe I wasn't using the pure stuff.) We also knew that some of our kids used it on their own, but on the "aspirin" theory (never give a kid anything that goes in the body), we never administered it or recommended it. Just as well, because in the years since it first appeared, DMSO has been found to cause liver and kidney damage in some users. It's still available for use on animals, though, and recently, an assistant football coach in Kansas claimed to have witnessed his head coach rubbing DMSO on one of his athletes. I haven't read anything further, but reports indicate that DMSO is not specifically banned by the Kansas state association.The incident will probably create renewed interest in DMSO, and a long-overdue ban on its use. And, almost certainly, division on one high school football staff.
When Vikings' running back Leroy Hoard was arrested back in November after a problem arose between him and his girlfriend, police found in his possession some pills with pictures of marijuana leaves printed on them. He said they were painkillers. For his knee. The court bought it. Case dismissed.
In the adjoining states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, they take the Vikings-Packers rivalry very seriously. So last Monday night, when the Vikings played the Packers on national TV, ratings in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area were Super Bowl-sized - a 40 rating and a 62 share. In terms that most people outside the TV-advertising business will understand, that means that 40 per cent of all TV sets (on or off) in the Twin Cities area were tuned to the game; and of the sets that were turned on, 62 per cent of them were tuned in. Very big numbers. So when station KSTP in Minneapolis lost the picture for an hour Monday night, there was hell to pay. Callers to the station accused KSTP of ruining their parties. Conspiracy buffs had a great time noting the unusual timing of the failure. When the station manager tried to explain to one irate caller that the station couldn't be blamed for an act of God, the caller shouted, "I don't believe in God!" and hung up. This will really be costly to the station. Advertisers paid for commercial time on the broadcast based on a very large audience made up of the sort of people - males, mostly - that watch football games. Typically, in a case like this, TV stations give advertisers "make-goods," essentially free commercial time in similar-rated shows with similar audiences. Unfortunately, there are few shows with audiences similar to the one that got blacked out, a Vikings-Packers game on Monday night, so KSTP will probably wind up having to give away time (which it ordinarily could have sold for premium rates) in the Super Bowl and in some of the BCS games. For KSTP there is also the equally big matter of fixing the problem, which is either in the main antenna tower or the main transmission line leading from it. Should it turn out to be in the 1,400-foot tower, they are going to have trouble getting people to climb it in the dead of a Minnesota winter. (It was 2 degrees above zero when I passed through there last Wednesday.)
Regarding that Vikings-Packers game, friend and football clock-management expert Jack Reed writes, " (Randy) Moss was generally heralded as the hero of the game. He was also the goat with his punt fumble that led to a Packer touchdown, his running backwards after gaining first-down yardage thereby forcing his team to punt (which drew no comment from Al Michaels or Boomer Esiason), and his going out of bounds when his team was ahead with about 2:09 left. Moss also gratuitously stepped on the back of a defender after a tackle, although no flag was thrown. The story line on Moss should have been that he was so good he even made up for all his stupid mistakes."
The gritty, now-discontinued police show "Homicide" was set in Baltimore, mainly because it was producer Barry Levinson's hometown. But he couldn't have picked a better city - or title. In 1999, for the 10th year in a row, Baltimore had 300 murders, hitting the magic mark on December 21. Falling short of that number has become a goal of sorts for a frsutrated Baltimore Police Department, and going into the last two months, 1999 looked promising. But the murderers simply would not cooperate, with 38 killings in November and 24 in the first two weeks of December. (I've lived in Baltimore, and it always seemed to me that those beastly summers would have been a more likely time for somebody to kill somebody else. Not so, evidently.) Actually, hitting 300 this year is even worse news than it sounds, because there are fewer people around to kill: back in 1972, when Baltimore had 330 killings, its population was 905,000; in 1998, murders were down slightly to 314 - but the population was down by 260,000 people - to 645,000. By comparison, with less than two weeks remaining in 1999, Los Angeles, with more than five times Baltimore's population, had 412 homicides; Boston, with 555,000 people, had only 30 killings! Even witj a new, zero-tolerance-of-crime police chief, Balimore's future is not promising: nationally, most homicides are drug-related; Baltimore, with a population of 645,000, has an estimated 55,000 cocaine and heroin addicts - approximately one person in nine!
For two dollars, you can't even get a horse to run, half the time - In Pennsylvania, prosecutors are trying to determine why a Harrisburg police officer would have paid a 10-year-old Little League pitcher $2 to deliberately hit the opposing team's cleanup hitter. The pitcher held up his end of the deal, hitting the batter "below the belt" so hard that he had to leave the game. The managers of the two teams involved said that the accused is not related either to the pitcher or the batter.The incident came to light when the pitcher confessed to his parents.
December 25 - "God bless us - every one." Tiny Tim, in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"
Before every practice, Detroit Lions' defensive lineman James Jones hands his pager to an assistant trainer. He has to know right away if it beeps, because it could mean that his long wait is over. The wait for a kidney and pancreas donor for his wife, Son-ja, back home in Bettendorf, Iowa. A diabetic since she was 9, Sonja, 30, has been receiving dialysis three times a week since October, when both kidneys failed. She is now first on the list of recipients at the University of Wisconsin, and second on the list at the University of Iowa, and while they wait, James Jones flies home to Iowa at least every other week, leaving on Sunday night and returning on Wednesday morning, to visit his wife and their 2-year-old daughter, Morgan. Lions' coach Bobby Ross understands that even if the beep comes in the middle of a game, his outstanding defensive player is out of there. This Christmas season has been a difficult time for the Joneses. They are well aware that 80 per cent of diabetics on dialysis do not live more than five years. They are also aware of the underlying tragedy behind the donation they await - that someone else must die to make the organs available. But they have each other, and they have their faith. "Because of my religious faith," Jones told the Detroit News' columnist Bob "Wojo" Wojnowski, "I've always known what my priorities are in life. Football is a good job. I've enjoyed it. But I know family is more important. I cherish every moment I spend with them." Merry Christmas to the Jones family.
MY CHRISTMAS WISHES FOR FOOTBALL COACHES: May you have.... Parents who recognize that you are the football expert; who stand back and let you coach their kids; who know their kids' limitations and don't expect them to start unless in your opinion they are better than the other kids; who don't sit in the stands and openly criticize their kids' teammates; who don't think it's your job to get their kid an athletic scholarship; who schedule their vacations so their kids won't miss any practices; who know that your rules apply to everybody, and are not designed just to pick on their kid... A community that can recognize a year when Joe Paterno himself would have trouble getting your kids to line up straight... Opponents who are fun to play against; who love and respect the game and its rules as much as you do, and refuse to let their kids act like jerks... Students who want to be in your class and want to learn; who laugh at your jokes and turn their work in on time... Freshmen who listen carefully, hear everything you say and understand all instructions the first time... Officials who will address you and your kids respectfully; who know and respect the rulebook; who will have as little effect on the game as possible; who will let you step a yard onto the playing field without snarling at you... Newspaper reporters who always quote you accurately, and even know when not to quote you at all... A school district that provides you with a budget sufficient to run a competitive program... A superintendent who schedules teachers' workdays so that coaches don't have to miss any practices... An athletic director who can say "No" to the bigger schools that want you on their schedules; who understands deep down that all sports are not equal... Assistants who love the game as much as you do, buy completely into your philosophy, will put in the time in the off-season, and are eager to learn everything they can about what you are doing... A booster club that spends its money on the sports that earn it.... A principal who figures that when there is a teachers' position open, the applicant who is qualified to be an assistant coach deserves extra consideration; who doesn't come in to evaluate you on game day; who makes weight-training classes available to all football players first, before opening them up to the general student body; who knows that during the season you are very busy, and heads off parent complaints so that you don't have to waste your time with them; who can tell you in the morning in five minutes what took place in yesterday afternoon's two-hour-long faculty meeting... A faculty that will notify you as soon as a player starts screwing off or causing problems in class, without having to notify the administration... A basketball coach who encourages kids to play football and doesn't discourage them from lifting, or hold "open gym" every night after football practice... A baseball coach who encourages kids to play football and doesn't have them involved in tournaments that are still going on in late August... A wrestling coach who encourages kids to play football and doesn't ask your promising 215-pound sophomore guard to wrestle at 178... A class schedule that gives you and at least your top assistant the same prep period... Doctors that don't automatically tell kids with little aches and pains to stay out of football for two weeks, even when there's nothing wrong with them... Cheerleaders who occasionally turn their backs to the crowd and actually watch the game; who understand the game - and like it... A couple of transfers who play just the positions where you need help... A country that appreciates the good that football - and football coaches - can do for its young men... A chance, like the one I've had, to get to know coaches all over the country and find out what great people they are... The wisdom to stop worrying about the next job, and "Make the Big Time Where You Are"... Children of your own who love, respect and try to bring honor to their family in everything they do... A wife like mine, who understands how much football means to you... Motivated, disciplined, coachable players who love the game of football and love being around other guys who do, too - players like the ones I had this past season. Merry Christmas.
December 24 - "Luck follows right behind speed." Lou Holtz
From Coach Don Capaldo, Double-Wing coach in Keokuk, Iowa: "Not the kind of Christmas gift one would wish for anytime. Our community and especially our football program and several other sports staffs at KHS lost a great friend yesterday giving his life in the line of duty. I would ask that each of us include the victims of our tragedy in our prayers this weekend. Nate Tuck, 39, a long time volunteer in our football program died yesterday along with five others while fighting a fire in our small community yesterday. He was a very loyal, respected, hardworking and an important part of our coaching family at Keokuk.
"He died living a dream. All of his life he wanted to be a fireman. He also reveled in coaching young people. He leaves behind an adoring wife, two children and a grandchild, many friends and admirers. He will be impossible to replace. Please take the time this holiday season with your loved ones and staffs to say how much they are loved and appreciated. As one of the local pastors was quoted as saying, "It's not that God wants bad things to happen", he said, "but this world is a temporary place". Life is so fleeting that when things like this occur we often wished we would have done something.
"In Nate's case, he lived each day like this and that is what I will remember most about him. He lived is life in "service to his community". What a great legacy he has left us all. God bless you all this holiday season, Don"
Not exactly the Gift of the Magi - But at least she gave Mom the Gift of Life. Remember my story a few days ago about the four Portland-area teenagers who plotted the murder of the father of one of them? The man was brutally hacked to death by repeated blows - upwards of 70 - from both a machete and a scimitar (the old Turkish sword with the broad, curved blade). But just to show you that the Christmas spirit lives in all of us, the young woman whose father was killed told police that she originally planned to kill her mother, too - but at the last minute decided against it . She didn't want her 8-year-old brother to be left an orphan.
Hawaii's June Jones travelled an unusual road to get to be Sporting News' Coach of the Year. He attended three different colleges before finding the one that was right for him; he trailed along with his college coach as an assistant in three different professional leagues; and after two stints as a professional head coach, he turned down a four-year, $1 million contract with the Chargers to take the the head job at Hawaii for a fourth the salary. So there he is, after a near-miraculous first season in Paradise, getting his Rainbow Warriors ready to play tomorrow in the Oahu Bowl against 1999's other miracle team, Oregon State, and another former pro coach deserving of Coach of the Year honors, Dennis Erickson.
At Portland, Oregon's Grant High, Jones was the winner of the National Football Foundation's Portland area Scholar-Athlete Award, and was so highly thought-of as a quarterback prospect that the University of Oregon sent two of their stars - Dan Fouts and Bobby Moore (now Ahmad Rashad) - to work him out. "The coaches told me I'd be the next Danny Fouts," Jones told the Portland Oregonian's Dwight Jaynes. "What I didn't know until I got down there is that they told that to six other guys." After a turnover in the Oregon coaching staff brought in the option game, Jones transferred to Hawaii, where the very same thing happened. Returning to the mainland, he stayed in shape and ultimately made the connection that changed his life. Darrell "Mouse" Davis, a highly successful high school coach at Hillsboro, Oregon, was hired to run the program at Portland State, and Jones was just the QB he needed to run his unique, throw-anytime-anywhere "Run-and-Shoot" offense.
Jones and the Run-and-Shoot were a perfect match, and after a spectacular career at Portland State, he managed to put in a few years as a backup in the NFL before hooking up once again with Davis, who was now on a mission to prove the Run-and-Shoot could work in the pros. Jones followed Davis to Canada, then to the USFL, and finally to NFL stops in Detroit, Houston and Atlanta, where in 1994 Jones became head coach. After being fired by Atlanta, he was serving as quarterbacks coach with the San Diego Chargers last year, and when head coach Kevin Gilbride was fired, Jones was elevated to the head spot.
At the end of the season, though, he turned down the Chargers' offer of a four-year contract. His priorities had changed. His wife had been going through a bout with cancer, and pro football itself had changed. "Professional football has changed somewhat in the last four or five years," he told Dwight Jaynes. "The game has changed. The college game right now is kind of like pro football when I first started coaching in 1984 or 1985 in the USFL. That's why we got into coaching - to be able to work with kids, not only teach them on the field, but be able to have an impact on their whole life. In the pros, that has kind of fallen by the wayside. You can't influence those guys any more in any direction. They pretty much know more than you do."
Instead, he took the job at Hawaii, back where he and his wife were married when he was a player. There, by emphasizing hard work, discipline and togetherness, he forged a team out of a group of individuals rumored to have been torn apart by a split between islanders and mainlanders. As part of his team-building, he banned freshman hazing, and made seniors room with freshmen. He introduced the run and shoot, and as defensive coordinator brought in another Oregon native, Greg McMackin, who had been serving as Dennis Erickson's defensive coordinator with the Seattle Seahawks until they got fired.
The Rainbow Warriors have had a fantastic season. Coach Jones was Sporting News' Coach of the Year. Diane's cancer is in remission. Merry Christmas.
December 23 - "You've got to make your players know that no matter what anybody else might say, you know they are doing the best they can do." Bud Wilkinson
Today's quote seemed especially appropriate after reading of Coach Steve Spurrier's admission that he may have used the wrong approach in saying some of the derogatory things he said about his players when this season took a disappointing downturn. His admission is a courageous thing for a coach whose trademark is self-assuredness (many call it cockiness), and it will be interesting to see how his players respond.
He bought some materials from me a couple of years ago, and that was the last I heard of Coach Keith Wilkes. Until last week, that is, when I read something about the success that Carver High of Winston-Salem, North Carolina had been enjoying. Recognizing Carver as Coach Wilkes' school, I took a chance and called him to congratulate him and see how much of a part the Double-Wing has played in his success.In the course of our conversation, Coach Wilkes told me that he has mixed our Double-Wing ("We use a lot of it," he said) with his Delaware Wing-T. He's still a little reluctant, though, to expose his quarterback by having him lead on the Super-Power. Coach Wilkes, who just completed his seventh season at Carver High, finished 12-3 this past season, narrowly losing out in the state Class 3-A semi-finals to Burlington Williams. It was Carver's first loss to a 3-A school since 1997. Last year, Carver was 16-0 and won it all. In the seven years he has been at Carver, Coach Wilkes has seen 80 players go on to play Division I-A, Division I-AA or Division II college ball. One of this year's running backs, Lashun Peoples, was the MVP of last year's championships, and is being recruited by Alabama, Tennessee and "everybody in the ACC." As usual, Coach Wilkes will lose a talented crew, including Peoples, who he considers the outstanding player in the state, but that doesn't keep him from predicting that the 2000 edition of his Yellow Jackets will be tough once again. "We've been able to plug 'em in and keep rolling," he told me. No doubt Carver would be good with or without the Double-Wing. But it's sure nice to be associated with programs like this.
You have got to get a copy of this week's Sports Illustrated. It's worth it just for the "50 from 50" listing - SI's idea of the top 50 athletes of the past century (it seems so downright picky to have to remind people that the 20th century still has a year to go) from each of the 50 states. But you also have to read the story on the Atlanta Braves' John Rocker. You may have heard about it already. No doubt prompted by the churlish actions of New York Mets' fans, Mr. Rocker has a few, shall we say, "politically incorrect" things to say about New York and New Yorkers. He is pretty graphic in describing a subway ride to the ballpark - he doesn't specify whether he's talking about Yankee Stadium or Shea Stadium - as being like riding through Beirut, sitting "next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids." (While I might question his word selection on one point, as a writer I have to applaud his powers of observation and his ability to draw the picture for us.) He goes on to say a few things about all the "foreigners" in New York City, complaining that "you can walk a block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English," remarking on all the "Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything," and asking, "How the hell did they get in this country?" Oh, yes - and he also makes what will surely be considered a racist statement when he says that Latrell Sprewell got off easy after choking his coach, asking "Do you think if he was Keith Van Horn, if he was white - they'd let him back?" (Can't you just see Saint Hillary tieing into this guy in a campaign speech? Mayor Rudy Giuliani already has, along with all the lords of the national media. Bud Selig, commissioner of baseball, says that he will look into the situation and determine whether any action will be necessary.) Huh? Say, action? Bear in mind, please, Mr. Selig, that as politically correct as it may be to try to muzzle the statements of this person, as noble as you can make yourself and the rest of Organized Baseball look by condemning his statements, Mr. Rocker's First Amendment rights - the same ones that protect flag-burners - are broad. He did not incite to riot, nor did he threaten the President or joke about carrying a bomb on a plane. There are the laws of libel and slander to keep him within certain bounds. And, of course, he is at the mercy of a free market which may find his remarks repugnant and choose not to employ him as a spokesman for its products. Whatever you do, though, don't forget that he is making his statements about New York, a city so dedicated to free speech that many of its citizens defend panhandling as a constitutionally-protected form of "speech."
A few years ago the state of Oregon, responding to public pressure for higher standards in its schools, instituted something it called a "Certificate of Initial Mastery," which all of its students would be expected to earn by passing a battery of tests at the end of their sophomore year. Presumably it would be the state's way of assuring employers and taxpayers that graduates of its schools had diplomas that really meant something. The plan was for students who failed the tests to take them, and re-take them, and re-take them, etc., until they eventually passed. No sense getting into all the details, but suffice it to say that the plan ain't working. In one Portland-area high school, only 67 of 360 sophomores earned their "Certificate of Initial Mastery" (CIM) last year, and even with make-up work and re-takes, it is estimated that as many as 50 per cent will still not meet the standards before graduation. And at this particular school, as has happened in other states such as Florida, Massachusetts and Virginia that "set the bar high" and then found that students couldn't clear it, public pressure is now coming from the other direction - the tests are too hard, the tests are discriminatory, etc., says the public. So this particular school, which initially provided the higher standards that the public said it wanted, has decided to do what the public now seems to want - it is dropping the CIM requirement entirely. Meanwhile, teachers everywhere go about their jobs, unsure of which way the wind of public opinion will blow next.
Bill Lyon, sports columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, sums up the Allen Iverson-Larry Brown head-to-head that has been occupying the Philly sports scene: "The player is from that generation that interprets coaching as criticism, and the coach is from that generation that expects players to understand that he is trying to make them better." I haven't seen a clearer example, or a better explanation, of the effects of American society and the anti-authoritative, compassionate, no-man-in-the-home, touchy-feely, empowerment, "listen to the children", "every-answer-is-a-correct-one", "who-are-we-to-judge?", "let's-not-be-judgmental", direction it has taken in the last 30 years.
Just in case you thought we'd hit rock bottom: The prime sponsor of Jeff Fuller's Pontiac on next year's NASCAR circuit will be Viagra.
Rodeo is a rough sport. A real man's sport. Yes, there are rodeo events for women. There is even an "International Gay Rodeo Association." (This is no kidding - one of the events is something called "Goat Milking." I'm not even going to ask.) But I think most people would say, when you get right down to it, that it's a sport for real men. They would also say, without even a second thought, that it's a sport for white men. That's its image. So it was quite noteworthy when Fred Whitfield won the PRCA's All-Around Cowboy title at the World Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas recently. Because Fred Whitfield, a 32-year-old cowboy from Hockley, Texas, is a black man. He doesn't spend a whole lot of time thinking of himself as some sort of pioneer, and there is no resentment in his voice at whatever problems his being black may have caused him. "I'm black," he says. "I'm proud to be a black person. I don't reflect a lot on what happened or what didn't happen in the past. To fall back on what happened before - if I did, that would be a type of prejudice, and I'm not prejudiced."
December 22 - "You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well-hammered yourself." George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright
While some people are wildly celebrating the arrival of the year 2000, and others are sweating out the failure of their computer systems, banks, utilities, air traffic control, etc., Coach John Torres, whose day job is with the Los Angeles office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, will be on the front lines - literally. He and his fellow ATF agents will be on alert for a wide assortment of sickos and the creative end-of-the-millennium uses they may have planned for their firearms and explosives.
Coach Paul Maier, in Mt. Vernon, Indiana, just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, passes along the word that the Bluegrass State may already be witnessing the second coming of Tim Couch. His name is Travis Atwell, and he's from Hancock County High School in Lewisport, Kentucky. A quarterback, he threw for 2800 yards and 36 TD's; he also ran for 2300 yards and 33 TD's. As Coach Maier points out, that's 5100 yards in total offense, and 69 TD's that he had a hand in. Better make that 74 TD's. I almost forgot about defense. As a defensive back, he intercepted 11 passes and returned five for TD's.
The National Education Association's latest figures show a continued decline in the percentage of males teaching in public schools. It is now down to 26.4 per cent nationally, and ranges from a high of 39.5% in Michigan to a low of 16.4% in South Carolina. "It's interesting to note that the states with the highest salaries tend to have the highest proportion of male teachers," says NEA president Bob Chase. Hmmm.
Army's new coach, Todd Berry, fresh from an outstanding tour of duty at Division I-AA Illinois State, arrives at West Point with some grandiose ideas. "I expect in the near future we'll be 11-0," he remarked. "Anything less," he went on, "would be an injustice to this institution." Uh, Coach Berry, no harm in thinking big, but the last time Army went undefeated (and they only played nine games then) was 1949. Back then, in the days of Red Blaik, On Brave old Army Team and the Black Knights of the Hudson, Americans still shared a healthy respect for a military career, and the starting salary in the NFL was little more than that of a graduating second lieutenant. In other words, Army still had a shot at recruiting some of the best football players in the country. Oh, yes- there's also the matter of the schedule. Army's 1949 schedule read like this: Davidson... Penn State... at Michigan... at Harvard... Columbia... VMI... Fordham... at Penn... Navy. Essentially, they played only four teams even close to their caliber: Penn State, which was good, but not a national power; Michigan, which was Michigan; Penn, which in those pre-Ivy League days was a legitimate eastern power; and Navy. But with Army's current Conference-USA tie-up, you're not going to find too many Davidsons, Harvards, Columbias, VMI's or Fordhams on the schedule anytime soon.
If you or somebody you know has been saving those new quarters, you've got company. There has been a shortage of quarters this holiday season. But at least some quarters are in use, which is more than can be said for nickels, dimes and pennies, most of which rest inside piggy banks or in old ash trays on dresser tops. (I personally find that large plastic souvenir drink cups work just fine.) In the last 30 years, the US government has minted 420 billion coins, but it is estimated that only about 150 million of them are actually in circulation. The rest are at home. People just can't be bothered sorting their loose change, counting it, and taking it to the bank. Especially pennies. "Pennies," says a spokesman for Coinstar, a Bellevue, Washington company that operates 6,800 coin-counting machines, "make a one-way trip home. They go from the Mint to the federal Reserive to a local bank and then to a retailer. And then home for good."
An Indiana University study of 50 WWF shows found that only about 36 minutes out of a typical two-hour WWF show is spent wrestling. The rest of the time, the study observed, is devoted to "story lines filled with profanity, simulated sexual activity, drug use and miscellaneous sordidness." (Next project for the folks at IU: Ever check how much time in a three-hour-long NFL telecast is actually spent playing football?)
December 21 - "Judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends." Joseph Conrad, Author
You can't tell me the NFL and WWF aren't secretly holding merger talks - After thrice fining - but not suspending - Denver's Bill Romanowski - for illegal hits that could very well have ended opponents' careers (come to think of it, Kerry Collins has never been the same since a patented Romanowski hit a couple of years ago), after all the hubbub over the banning of the slashing-the-throat gesture, it will be interesting to see how the NFL handles the case of Cleveland's Orlando Brown, whose WWF audition Sunday consisted of shoving the referee to the ground.
The world could use a few more people like Jane Smith. Jane Smith, of Fayetteville, North Carolina is a 42-year-old middle school teacher; Michael Carter is a 14-year-old middle school student. Jane Smith has two good kidneys; Michael Carter needs a kidney transplant. When Jane Smith, Michael's teacher, learned that, she offered him one of hers. Amazingly, after a year of unsuccessful attempts to find a suitable donor for Michael, doctors found that Jane and Michael, the 42-year old teacher and the 14-year-old student, were a perfect match. If everything goes as planned, the transplant will take place over Christmas break. Michael's mother says, "I said to the Lord, 'Thank you for that lady, thank you for Jane Smith.' I was so grateful, but I was getting bold with the Lord. I was getting tough. I said, 'Don't you ever let her want for anything, Lord. Don't even let her want for a Kleenex. God, don't you let her tire go flat.' I mean, I was going down the list, because I couldn't ever repay her enough for what she had done." Jane Smith is white. Michael Carter is black. Merry Christmas.
A new study by Drug Strategies, a Washington, D.C. research institution, finds that only three per cent of parents of high school kids believe that their kids have drunk to excess (defined as having five or more drinks in a row) in the past month. Perhaps that explains why a full 25 per cent of parents said they would allow their kids to attend a New Year's Eve party at which they had reason to believe alcohol would be served. And you, you chumps, you coaches - you still think you can really establishand serious training rules? ...and then enforce them? ... and expect the community to support you when you do?
Pacific Lutheran's quarterback, Chad Johnson, who played so well in last Saturday's NCAA Division III championship game win over Rowan College, really couldn't miss. He is the grandson of PLU head coach Frosty Westering, and the nephew of offensive coordinator Scott Westering, and he was a PLU ball boy from the time he was little. In addition, he hails from Puyallup (pronounced Pyew-AL-up), Washington, which has produced a number of quarterbacks including Billy Joe Hobert and the Huard brothers, Damon, Brock and Luke (now at North Carolina).
The President and his Lady would have you believe that the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gays in the military isn't working. Don't you believe it. Basically, this is Our President's attempt to show gays that he never really did budge from his initial position of supporting gays in the military - but you know how those rednecks in Congress are. One of their major arguments that the policy is not working is that gays have been resigning from the military in large numbers. Charles Moskos, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University, writing in the Wall Street Journal last Thursday, offers a ready explanation for that: merely saying that you are gay - whether you are or not - is the quickest way to bail out of the military - and with an honorable discharge at that! More than half of all discharges for homosexuality occur, he points out, in the first year of enlistments. One reason for this, he argues, is that increased acceptance of homosexuality in society at large means that openly claiming to be a homosexual no longer carries the stigma it once did - at least not among whites. He observes that the stigma against homosexuality seems to be stronger in the black community. Consequently, white men are twice as likely as black men - and white women four times as likely black women - to be discharged for homosexuality. Mr. Moskos also attacks the commonly-advanced argument that allowing gays to serve with straight troops is analogous to integrating black and white troops. The appropriate analogy, he says, is not black and white - it's male and female. Just as sex between service members undermines morale, so also does invasion of sexual privacy. For that reason, the military insists that men and women live in separate quarters. "Nowhere in our society," Professor Moskos points out, "are the sexes forced to undress in front of each other. Most women - and many men - dislike being stripped of privacy before the opposite sex. Similarly, most heterosexual men and women dislike being exposed to homosexuals of their own sex. If we respect women's need for privacy from men, then we ought to respect those of heterosexuals with regard to homosexuals."
I believe this could be called paying your dues: Sugar Ray Robinson, who I remember was always introduced as "Pound-for-Pound, the Greatest Fighter in the World," had 75 professional fights before finally getting a shot at the title.
From the town of Graham, North Carolina, just outside Burlington, comes an amazing Double Wing success story. Coach Richard Lee, a native North Carolinian who has been running the Double Wing in Tennessee, happened to be back in Graham last summer visiting with Graham coach Pat Moser, who once played for Coach Lee. Coach Lee, who has been a regular at my clinics the last two years, happened to say, "Let me show you this Double-Wing," and after a long session at the chalk board, Coach Moser said to Coach Lee, "I want that!" Shortly afterward, he ordered some materials from me. To make a short story of it - Coach Moser, in only his second year as a head coach, taught the Double-Wing (including a whole lot of "Spread" formation) to a team that was 3-9 in 1998 - and took it to the Class 1-A state finals! Only a 317-yard, four-TD performance in the title game by Williamston's D'Brian Hudgins prevented the Red Devils from taking their first-ever state championship. As it was, the 40-20 championship-game defeat was Graham's first loss to a Class 1-A opponent all year. (Graham's two in-season losses were to Class 2-A Western Alamance, and eventual 3-A finalist Burlington Williams.) The Red Devils ended a long football drought in the town of Graham,winning their first conference title in 32 years, and making their first appearance in the finals since 1966. Instrumental in the enormous turnaround was 5-10, 200-pound John Carter, who threw for 1044 yards in 1998 as a quarterback, but asked to be moved to running back in the Double-Wing. This year, Carter ran for 967 yards from C-Back, and C.J. Jenkins, at A-Back, ran for 1406 yards.
According to Editor and Publisher Magazine, there are now 2,224 newspapers in the US and Canada with their own web sites, twice as many as there were just two years ago!
December 20 - "There is a term which has slipped somewhat into disuse, which I always used until the moment I retired, and that is the term 'an officer and a gentleman.' And those two imply everything that the highest sense of personal honor implies." Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. to his son, Senator John McCain
As the quote above might suggest, I am currently reading - and enjoying - "Faith of My Fathers," the autobiography of presidential candidate John McCain, partly because I want to learn more about him, and partly because I enjoy reading about the lives of military men. How many people are aware that Senator McCain's father and grandfather - both named John S. McCain - were four-star admirals?
If it's seemed to you as if college offenses have been placing more and more emphasis on the passing game, you've been very perceptive. The college game is becoming more and more like the pro version, based on NCAA final-season statistics. For the first time since the NCAA began keeping records in 1937, Division I teams in 1999 averaged fewer than 40 running plays per game (39.8 to be exact). Passes accounted for 58.2% of all plays, setting a new record. Average rushing yardage was 152.8 yards, the lowest since 1966. Average pass attempts and completions, 17 and 31 respectively, were new high marks, along with average yards passing (212.5).
A New Jersey coach wrote me to say that Pacific Lutheran was "the best coach college football team I've ever seen." Any high school coach who watched PLU's (maybe you read about them here first) unexpected hammering of Rowan (with mostly Washington kids - ahem) in Saturday's Division III title game recognized immediately how much of PLU's offense was based on the Wing-T. Reporters before and after the game made a lot of the fact that PLU was "so difficult to adjust to." (Are you listening, all you spread-em-out-and-throw college coaches out there?) Yes, they ran from multiple sets, but at least half the time they were in an unbalanced set which we would call "Tackle Over Right" or "Tackle Under Left," with a good shortside running game complemented by an effective play-action passing attack. The whole offensive sheme was an alien concept to TV color analyst Todd Christensen, whose knowledge of the game seems limited to the fleet ball that the NFL plays every Sunday. Never once did he utter the words "Wing-T." During a replay of one highly successful shortside sweep ( in our terminology , "Tackle Under Left - Rip 88-G Reach"), our expert got out the telestrator and told viewers,"Steve Spurrier's the one that made this famous." Yo, Todd- Just because it's a handoff to a guy in motion doesn't mean it's Florida's fly sweep. PLU's Wing-T sweep was "made famous" by people named Dave Nelson, Forrest Evashevski, Ara Parseghian and Tubby Raymond. PLAY DIAGRAM
In case you needed another reason to like Pacific Lutheran's brand of football - they've now gone 23 straight games without attempting a field goal.
I was talking with a coach from Texas who told me about playing one school whose players were so big that one of their kids had "WELCOME TO TEXAS" tattooed on his biceps - in large letters - and it didn't even go around his arm!
Anybody else watch the commercial that ran several times in the Southern U-Hampston game - the one that jumped back and forth between cuts of high-stepping marching bands and gyrating dance teams, and ended with the tag "TAMPAX WAS THERE"? Did anybody else think it was, uh, in questionable taste? (From a purely marketing standpoint, did the advertiser really think that the game had that large a female audience?)
Next time you're tempted to write a class off as a bunch of losers, here's something to think about - most of Beaverton, Oregon High's 26 senior football players had been together since fourth grade. As seniors, they won the Oregon Class AAAA state championship. As freshmen, they didn't win a game.
So how did you observe the First Anniversary of Our President's Impeachment? I think Pete Rose ought to be careful of the company he keeps. Or at least the people who support his cause. That's because, with the first anniversary of impeachment coming up, the Man From Hope was quoted in an interview in People Magazine as saying, with regard to Rose, that "just about everybody ought to get a second chance." Sounding as if he was actually making a thinly-disguised plea for his own redemption, Our President argued that Rose "gave a lot of joy to people, and he's paid a price -- God knows, he's paid a price." Wow. Just the guy I'd like to have as a character witness.
December 18 - "I ain't no equal opportunity employer. You've got to play your better players for more minutes than you play your weaker players. Those other kids, they've had their chance in practice." John Chaney, Temple University basketball coach
Dear Coach Wyatt, I attended your clinic in Cleveland last year and it made our conversion from the Wing-T to the Double-Wing much easier. Thank goodness we made the change. Two weeks before the start of the season my two QB's inform me that their select team hockey coach no longer wants them to play football. Since their parents pay close to $1,000 apiece for these kids to play on this travel hockey team you can guess what sport they decided that they were going to focus on. With two weeks to go before the start of the season I have to replace two outstanding QB's, two kids who were in our program since 7th grade. The only other kid who could throw the ball on my team was my kicker. Needless to say we ended running the ball 99% of the time. In 8 games we ran for 2,700 yards and scored 180 points. We also threw for 200 yards and 2 TD's - 150 of those yards came in the last game. We only lost three games, all against teams that were ranked in the top five in Western NY, and all the games were very close. In our opening game we played Salamanca who went 12-1 and lost in the state championship game. Our game was 14-14 with two min to go. We ended up losing 21-14. The difference in the game was the one and only pass we threw - it was intercepted and returned 99 yards for the winning TD. Without the Double-Wing we would have had to depend much more on our passing game, and with our kicker playing QB I doubt very much that we would have done as well. Chuck Tilley, Head Football Coach Cheektowaga Central High, Cheektowaga, New York
"I have a few things on my mind that I would like to relate to you. First, you probably noticed the SI Scorecard item on the paralyzing hockey hit. (In the incident referred to, a young man from suburban Chicago's New Trier High School, playing for his school's junior varsity club hockey team, was checked from behind and knocked headfirst into the boards, rendering him paralyzed. There are accusations that his attacker then stood over him and taunted him. An assault charge has been filed against the alleged assailant , and a civil lawsuit has been filed against him, the league, and his coach - contending that the blow was delivered after time had expired, that it was delivered with intent to injure, that it was delivered while the victim had his back turned and was leaving the ice, and - most instructive of all to anyone who coaches kids - that during the game the coach had "persistently heckled" the victim - who scored three of his team's seven goals - and had encouraged his players to go after him.) I know the young man who delivered the blow. My son played hockey with him for 2 years and the young man's father coached them both. The father is a hardworking, dedicated youth coach who taught everyone the rules of hockey and playing within the spirit as well as letter of those rules. I saw him discipline his son with bench time when his son did anything questionable on the ice - whether it drew a penalty or not. I can't be as charitable in my assessment of the club coaches involved. I've seen them teach questionable tactics and it doesn't surprise me that the civil suit focuses on the coach's behavior. 15-year-old youths don't have the experience to fully consider the consequences of their actions. As such, it is incumbent on coaches to not put them in a position that could lead to catastrophe. In short, coaching by the rules and with attention to sportsmanship is crucial. Here's another example of what can happen if one coaches below this standard.
"Second, I believe you know about the Katy High School football team that was denied a chance to play in the Texas 5A-championship game last year. A player forged his grade on a 3-week report to keep from being suspended for poor academic performance. When he played at the end of a blowout victory, he caused the team to forfeit when the forged report was discovered. (The Katy team was notified of the forfeit - and its ineligibility to play in the state title game - as it was boarding the buses to take it to Texas Stadium for the game. See my story from last December 21 in red below) Well, Katy is in the championship game this Saturday. I have a sophomore nephew who earned the right to dress for the game by being moved to the varsity practice squad after his soph team's season was over. There will probably be a capacity crowd in the Astrodome to watch this game. Good luck to the Katy Tigers!
"Finally, I enjoy reading the "News" because it says it like it is, confirming beliefs that I've long held. Keep up the good work. I look forward to your clinic in Chicagoland. Keith Babb, Chicago"
December 21, 1998 - Whenever you're inclined to feel sorry for yourself, consider this: you could be Mike Johnston, head coach at Katy, Texas (outside Houston), whose Tigers won the 1997 Texas Class 5-A Division II championship, and went 15-0 on the field in 1998 on their way to another state title. So why wouldn't you want to trade places with him? Read on.
Friday, as Coach Johnson and his players boarded the buses for their trip to Texas Stadium (home of the Cowboys) to play in Saturday's state final, they were informed that the bus trip wouldn't be necessary - they would not be defending their title the next day. Instead, they would be stripped of two wins, dropped from their number 10 spot in USA Today's national rankings, and staying home to watch the next day's championship game on TV.
It seems that Katy had unknowingly suited up an ineligble player in the previous two games, a quarter-final win over Clear Brook and a semi-final win over San Antonio MacArthur. The player in question had scarcely played, appearing in a handful of plays near the end of the 40-0 win over Clear Brook game two weeks before.
But Texas state law - the "no pass, no play" law - expressly forbids allowing an academically ineligible player to suit up, and specifies a minimum penalty of forfeiture. There is no appeal. So the governing body of Texas high school sports, the University Interscholastic League (UIL), with prior commitments to televise the championship game, contacted the authorities at San Antonio MacArthur - at 10 o'clock Friday morning - to offer them the chance to take Katy's place against Midland Lee.
MacArthur, a 14-6 loser to Katy just a week ago, had already collected and stored equipment, but nonetheless accepted the invitation, and on less than 24 hours' notice, hastily gathered the troops. There is no fairy tale ending to the story, though, because, with almost no preparation, MacArthur was pounded by Midland Lee, 54-0, in the worst beating in Texas 5-A championship game history. Lee led 33-0 at the half, and outgained MacArthur, 504-166.
Katy self-reported the violation once it was discovered. There was no choice, no option of waiting until after the game - failure to report the infraction immediately would have been a violation of state law. Now here's the part of the story that makes us all gnash our teeth: The violation occured, and Katy's season came to a crashing end, because the player in question - it is alleged - submitted a three-week progress report containing forged grades and forged teachers' signatures.
"Charles' idea of a balanced meal was a Big Mac in both hands." Pat Williams, GM of the Orlando Magic, who as Philly GM drafted Charles Barkley for the 76ers
USA Today's Christine Brennan, who can't seem to write on sports without giving it a feminist slant - the one who feels that is gender-inequitable that we say "Final Four" for the men's NCAA basketball tournament but "Women's Final Four" for the women - is really upset now. That's because FIFA (sounds like a shoe company), the ruling body of world soccer, has decided to hold the next women's World Cup in 2002, immediately following the men's tournament, instead of 2003 as originally scheduled. I must say that from the standpoint of women's soccer, this time I agree with Ms. Brennan. After all, men's soccer is a major sport in most countries of the world, and the World Cup is its major event. Women's soccer, on the other hand, is largely an American invention, and is in its infancy in countries other than the US. The women's World Cup, considered an event of little consequence anyplace else (sorry, girls), is likely to be smothered by the excitement and coverage of the much more prestigious men's event preceding it. The rescheduling creates other problems for its promoters: the scheduling of both soccer events in the same year as a Winter Olympics will put the women third in line for sponsors' money.
Hey coach, just wanted to tell you that we had a very successful year with our offense in an extremely tough conference. One of the first things I learned was how important the sweep is to the offense and the necessity of taking advantage with respect to the wingback's position on the defensive end. I was not able to coach the Buck Sweep well enough. I suspect that the fullback faking up the middle loses its effectiveness when the defense can't see him in the first place (we played ours extremely tight). I am intrigued by a power sweep (we shall see). We went almost exclusively with the "wings-on" approach which further stabilized our double-team at the point of the power play and enhanced the effect of the counter. The traditional counter (47-c) was too much of a crapshoot in our youth league where even a strong passing team will face eight men in the box if you catch my drift. There were times I swear I counted 12 guys stuffed in there somehow!!! Instead of "lead, criss-cross" we tagged our misdirection plays 66 and 77 Reverse. What a play! Even when the defense knows that it is coming it can still be extremely successful because of its tremendous power and it seems that a defender will hesitate to assert himself until he can see the ball. One thing was an enigma for us and that was the 7-man front. To my way of thinking there are four different combinations we can use and my indecision got in the kids way at times. (Ironically, for us, the use of blocking combinations instead of individual rules seemed to make us more aggressive.) The double-team became sort of an attitute for us and the kids worked hard with their partners at every practice. I remember a couple of youngsters mocking me one afternoon as they watched us practice, 'HIP TO HIP! HIP TO HIP!' (giggle, giggle) needless to say we had a lot of fun. One thing I found out, that at least at the youth level, we could maintain a very successful double-team on a man that is lined up a shade outside of the TE. With the proper rotation and the wing getting good leverage on the man we could often times place the DE in the lap of the Linebacker without allowing penetration. All in all, the kids loved the offense. It gave them a swagger and a dagger! They submerged themselves in the intricacies of the blocking schemes. They really dug at the underlying philosophy of what we were trying to accomplish which allowed them to make their own adjustments during the heated conditions of game time. We had offensive success against teams that clearly out-manned us. A telling statistic showed that against the two top teams we had about as many first downs as they had total offensive plays! We couldn't catch 'em, but we sure as heck could double team them. The future of the double-wing power offense intrigues me. What will defenses start to do as the plays become more widespread and recognizable; and conversely, which offenses will be more successful, those that counter with new plays or those who work harder at the basics? A penny for your thoughts.. Thank you coach and keep up the good work! Russell Ponce Jr., Santa Rosa Stallions, Santa Rosa, California
December 17 - "Never get too high with the highs...never get too low with the lows." Joe Paterno
"A little news you can use" was the way Coach Bruce Eien headed his note, and he got that right. "The Camp Kilpatrick Running back is the state's single season leading rusher. His coach was at your DW clinic in Glendale. I ate lunch with him and relived old memories of when we met in the play offs back in 1991....Merry Christmas to you and your wife Bruce Eien" --- I remembered meeting Coach Sidney Ware, head man at Kilpatrick, and gave him a call Thursday to congratulate him on a great season. What a story! Since 1992 Coach Ware has been coaching at Camp Kilpatrick, a correctional facility that's unique in Southern California in that it offers its kids a chance to play football. What a revolutionary concept! (Can't hide my sarcasm.) Is it just possible that kids might benefit from being in a situation where strong male role models teach them about hard work... rules... respect... responsibility... teamwork... sportmanship? Coach Ware has a unique coaching challenge, too- every year, he has to start over with a new group of kids - he said he "almost never" has players return for a second year. This past year, he told me, nobody on his offensive line had ever played football before. Nevertheless, he molded them into a strong unit, and coached the Kilpatrick Mustangs to a 9-5 record and a spot in its division championship (California does not have state championships); and one of his running backs, Jermaine Marshall, broke the all-time California high school single-season rushing record with 3,586 yards, running the Double-Wing, which Coach Ware has been using for three years. (He said he got a lot of mileage out of the Wedge, which he picked up at last spring's clinic.) Marshall's 57 TD's were just two short of the single season record set a few years back by DeShaun Foster, now playing at UCLA. The 6-foot, 215-pound Marshall had a single-game high of 454 yards, and rushed for over 200 yards in all but three games. For all those splashy stats, though, his future is not assured. His life to this point has not been smooth. He was raised by his grandmother who is now confined to a wheelchair. He never met his father. He has had his problems at the public school he originally attended and, obviously, with the law. And although he is a sure-fire Division I prospect, he may not qualify academically and may have to go the Junior College route. Nevertheless, Marshall's conduct on and off the field at Kilpatrick has raised hopes that he can continue to excel in football while, more importantly, living a good life. Coach Ware remains optimistic. Although he knows the frustrations of seeing former players get back in trouble - "it's terrible," he says - he prefers instead to talk about the successes - like the young man who served his time at Kilpatrick then returned to his regular high school, went on to junior college, and just signed with Nebraska. Jokingly, I suggested that he probably didn't get too many of his former players coming back to visit, but Coach Ware said that, to the contrary, he gets a lot of calls from former players wanting to come back and talk to the incoming kids! Thanks to people like Coach Sidney Ware for hanging in there with these kids, and thanks to Coach Bruce Eien for putting me on to this great story.
"We're about as clean as our President. I mean, he's got a little reputation to mend." Bobby Bowden, commenting on Peter Warrick's problems earlier this season.
Dave Boling, in the Tacoma News Tribune, praised Pacific Lutheran's successful football team for taking the Puget Sound area's mind off such unpleasant topics as Ken Griffey, Jr., Joey Galloway and the WTO. PLU, which plays Rowan College for the Division III National Championship in Salem, Virginia this Saturday, is always a pleasant topic for writers. Mainly, that's because of the overall atmosphere created by Coach Frosty Westering, a 72-year-old former Marine Drill Instructor. Any time you hear Coach Westering, you come away with a notepad full of useful quotes. "His every pronouncement," writes Boling, "seems appropriate for copying, enlarging, and hanging on a locker-room wall." Coach Westering takes great pride in taking good people who are not necessarily the best athletes available, and building them into a winning unit."I guess it's kind of like playing cards when you don't have all the aces and kings, but with some jacks and queens you can sometimes finesse a card here and there and still win," he says. In 28 years at PLU, he has never had a losing season. But it's not just the fact that the Lutes win. It's that they're so doggone likeable about it. Coach Westering takes great pride in the fact that TWA, which has flown the PLU team to two of this year's playoff games, actually called the NCAA and asked to fly them to the finals in Virginia. "These things go by bid," the coach told reporter Boling, "but they told the NCAA that whatever was the lowest bid, they'd knock a thousand dollars off it so they could carry the Lutes. We've kind of woven them into the family feeling we have around here." What is amazing about Coach Westering is that, with a national title just a day away, he remains true to his mission not to allow his players to get so focused on their goals that they miss the real enjoyment of striving to attain them. "It's the trip, not the destination, that's important to us, " he says. "The goal is not the end of the road. The goal is the road itself."
There's certainly nothing funny about a brutal murder, but I had to shake my head in amazement when I read how four teenagers in our area had plotted to murder the father of one of them, but one of the four had pulled out at the last minute. Not because of conscience pangs or compunctions, though. Seems it was a school night, and he had a nine o'clock curfew. Didn't want to get in trouble. Might get grounded.
Coach: I have been so busy lately that I forgot to chime in on this issue. I cancelled my subscription to Sports Illustrated the other day upon seeing everybody's favorite group of PC athletes on the cover as "Sportswomen of the Year." Do these women have jobs, or do they just pose for photos? What is the criteria for such an award? My Websters' states a sportsman is defined as, "One who abides by the rules of a contest and accepts victory or defeat graciously." How sportsmanlike was it to tear off your shirt in front of the Chinese squad who just played their hearts out for some three hours, in the scorching heat, on foreign soil. Not only that, the USA team didn't even win the game in regulation, it was actually a tie!!!! Is there a chance SI may have heard of Lance Armstrong? A stud athlete who at one time was told he might have a month to live due to a nasty bout of Testicular Cancer. This guy fought the cancer, beat it and then went on to win the most grueling road race in the world. (Tour de France). I believe he was only the second American to do it. To me that is the definition of a true sportsman.Bill Lawlor . (Let's not forget that one of our hallowed Sportswomen, goalkeeper Briana Scurry, admitted after the Glorious Win that she had intentionally cheated by illegally moving out of her goal and reducing the shooting angle of a Chinese player in order to make the save that assured the US of its win. "Everybody does it," she said, unapologetically. "It's only cheating if you get caught." )
Leaf through the hoopla in this week's Sports Illustrated about the women's soccer team and you will come to a nice, uplifting article about an assistant coach named Jerry Sandusky, who is about to coach his last game. Read the article, and you will realize that you are reading about the real Sportsman of the Year. Coach Sandusky, Penn State's defensive coordinator and the coach most responsble for earning Penn State the nickname "Linebacker U," announced before the season that he would retire at its conclusion, ending a career that has spanned four years as a player and 32 years as an assistant under Joe Paterno. Coach Sandusky, 55, joined the Lions' staff after graduation, and never left. Among the linebackers he has coached have been Kurt Allerman, Greg Buttle, Andre Collins, Shane Conlan, Gary Gray, Jack Ham, Jim Laslavic, Lance Mehl, Ed O'Neil and John Skorupan. This year's Nittany Lions' linebacking trio of Lavar Arrington, Brandon Short and Mac Morrison may be his best ever. One reason for his retirement is his realization that Coach Paterno, now 72, shows no signs of letting up any time soon. In the article Coach Sandusky voices his regret that he is going to retire without ever having been a head coach. Like most assistants, he had ambitions of becoming a head coach someday - if not at Penn State, then someplace else. He had his chances - in the mid-seventies he actually was head coach at Marshall for an hour or so before he changed his mind. He was offered the job at Temple and turned it down, and twice withdrew his name from consideration at Maryland. Ultimately, he couldn't leave Penn State - the loyalty of Paterno's assistants to their boss is legendary - and he couldn't leave The Second Mile, an organization he founded to help kids in Central Pennsylvania who appear to be headed for trouble. (Coach Sandusky and his wife, Dottie, have adopted and raised six children of their own.) The Second Mile has grown to the point where it has 20 full-time employees and hundreds of volunteers, and retirement will enable Coach Sandusky to devote himself full-time time to raising the funds necessary to keep it going (one of the ways he has funded The Second Mile has been through sales of his book, "Developing Linebackers the Penn State Way," Leisure Press, West Point, NY, 1981. Good Book- HW) "Yeah, I dreamed of becoming a head coach," Coach Sandusky told the Philadelphia Inquirer's Ray Parrillo at the time he announced that this would be his last season. "But I also dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player or professional football player. All dreams don't come true. But I did dream of putting together a program for kids, and that dream did come true."
December 16 - "Consensus is the absence of leadership." Margaret Thatcher, former English Prime Minister
"Playing football is physical. You've got to catch the pass, kick the ball and make the block. That's got to be done. Let's not worry about what kind of childhood you had." Mike Holmgren, Seattle Seahawks
The Australian Twelve Days of Christmas: "On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me... Twelve parrots prattling... Eleven numbats nagging... Ten lizards leaping... Nine wombats working... Eight possums playing... Seven koalas climbing... Six playpuses... FIVE KAN-GA-ROOS!... Four kookaburras... Three jabirus... Two pink galahs... and an emu up a gum tree!"
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What is this all about? Citing federal law that bans discrimination against the "handicapped," the Supreme Court has ruled, in effect, that Indiana's eight-semester athletic eligibility rule unlawfully discriminated against a student with a learning disability. As I understand it, the student in question was granted an extra semester as a result - and led his team to a state title.
From a reporter in Southern California: Greetings Coach Wyatt: The Markham Legacy continues as Bloomington H.S. secured its fourth consecutive CIF Championship using the DW. Bloomington has won a total of five Championships in six years. The first three under Markham, the last two under Coach Richard Smith. Also two other DW teams made it to the finals, Arrowhead Christian with their fourth consecutive title appearance fell short 14-21. Arrowhead Christian won the title in 1996,1997. The best for last---this team is playing in its 2nd consecutive championship since adopting the DW. The Malibu Kilpatrick School is a juvenile detention facility. Most of these kids have had very little structure in their lives. Learning teamwork,discipline and selflessness has given these young men positive direction. The coaching staff /counselors are to be commended for their fine effort. For the past two years many kids have declined their release date to after the season is over,which in some cases means staying an extra 3 weeks or a month. Though they have lost two years in a row in the championship,they have accomplished what many schools with larger enrollments,better facilities and booster clubs have not.
"Waaah! That's not fai-i-i-i-r! The jocks get all the breaks!" Interscholastic athletes in the Salem, Oregon school district have routinely been given waivers of PE graduation requirements. Now, not to be outdone, members of marching bands, rally (cheerleaders) squads and dance teams are also petitioning the school board for the same waivers. Don't know 'bout your school, but at most schools I know of, band members seldom stay after school and practice on their own time; they do their practicing in a class - called "Band" - and they get credit for it. They also don't sweat much.
Hugh MacDonough, a fellow Double-Winger, is the head coach at Olney High, a large Philadelphia public school. With 2,200 students and a varsity and JV team to coach, Hugh and two assistants are all there is. (The Philadelphia public schools do not permit volunteer coaches or non-teaching coaches.) Hugh told me in our conversation of a case in which the city's "zero tolerance" (of weapons) policy really nailed him. One of his players, a straight-A student and a model citizen, also makes money as a part-time barber. One morning, as he was preparing to pass through one of the school's metal detectors, he realized that he had a razor in his pocket. Extracting the "weapon," he handed it over to the security guard on duty. Nope. Sorry. A weapon is a weapon. Zero tolerance. The kid was reported and immediately expelled. His appeal of the expulsion was attended by every single one of his classroom teachers, all of whom testified on his behalf. Appeal denied.
A coach in South Carolina, commenting on the first-year success of Clemson's Tommy Bowden, writes, "All of the other coaches that we talk to can't wait to copy Coach Bowden's offense and spread it out and throw it all over the place next year. We can't wait until they do that either! I wish all teams would do that, because that means the DW will only be harder to adjust to."
You might want to steer clear of this one. A coaching friend tells me about a job opening near him. The "search" for the new coach is in the hands of a "search committee," consisting of (1) the Principal; (2) the AD; (3) two middle-school teachers; (4) two elementary school teachers; and (5) three parents, only two of whom are parents of football players. The third is the parent of a cheerleader.
Just be glad you don't coach his kid. Further blurring whatever distinction might still exist between the NBA,the WWF and Minnesota politics, retired-wrestler-turned-governor Jesse Ventura reportedly put on quite a scene at a recent Minnesota Timberwolves' game, yelling at referee Ron Olesiak in language described by security guards as "quite explicit", and charging down to courtside to demand that police arrest Olesiak. The referee had, after all, ejected T-Wolves' coach Flip Saunders from the game, so it was actually rather merciful of His Worship not to insist on Olesiak's immediate beheading.
December 15 - "Honor is like an island - rugged and without a beach. Once we have left it, we can never return." Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux, French poet
With the entire sports world breathlessly awaiting the final confirmation of what we already know - that the U.S. Women's Soccer Team will be named Sports Illustrated's "Sportsman of the Year" today - it may be useful to re-visit a couple of comments that somehow bubbled to the top back during all the hype about the "Ultimate Triumph of Title IX." Dick Morris, in the Chicago Tribune, wrote, "Do you think we're all trying a little too hard when it comes to this Women's World Cup thing? We seem to be telling ourselves that if we blow it up big enough, women's soccer eventually will become big. It will either succeed or fail based on its own merits, not because someone in a corporate boardroom is pushing it, hoping to sell more athletic shoes. That Nike has decreed it to be important doesn't mean it is. What we have here is Madison Avenue hawking a new product, which is fine, but let's accept it for what it is at the moment. It's the free sample at the grocery store. For now, it tastes great." Bruce Arena, head coach of the U.S. men's soccer team had to bite his tongue when asked for the one-millionth time what he had learned from watching the women. "You actually think we learned something from watching the U.S. women?" he asked John Powers of the Boston Globe . "We didn't learn anything. There are reporters who think Mia Hamm could play for our team. Our women couldn't beat our under-16 boys' team."
Charles Barkley is gone. Marv Albert is back. Marv Albert and the NBA. Talk about a perfect fit.
Coach Wyatt, We had 6 players make all-district. 4 offense, 2 defense. We return 10 starters on offense next year. My son, Chris was also selected to the Jackson All-Metro team as a wingback. My younger son will fill in for him next year as he moves on to college ball. My defensive coordinator is Steve Pruett, son of Marshall head coach Bob Pruett. I look forward to another great clinic in the area this year. Steve Jones, Florence, Mississippi (Coach Jones modestly neglects to point out that the Florence Eagles just finished their first winning season since 1986.)
Another argument for using our terminology. This is no kidding. It really happened. I heard it from one of the participants, who for reasons that will become clear doesn't want anyone's names used. Start with two coaches - Coach A and Coach B - who have a very close relationship. They both run the Double-Wing, and both use our play-calling system. Coach A, his season completed, was on the sidelines at Coach B's game. Early in the game, Coach B protested an official's call, a bit too vigorously as it turned out, because he wound up with two unsportsmanlike calls - and the ejection that goes along with them. Since he normally calls his offense, he had to think fast, and on his way out of the stadium, he turned to Coach A and said, "You gotta help me." So for the rest of the game, Coach A, who is quite knowledgeable about the Double-Wing and, fortunately, completely familiar with the terminology being used, was able to advise the offensive assistants in their play-calling. I won't tell you the score for fear of disclosing anyone's identity, but our guys won.
Just in case you wonder why the outcry grows for tuition vouchers, charter schools and various other devices to make it possible for people to get their kids out of public schools, there is the story of Alejandra Gonzalez-Hankins and her younger brother Dominique, students at Portland, Oregon's All Saints School. Their single mother makes a little over $20,000 a year, and even with considerable help from the school and from the Children's Scholarship Fund - set up to provide help with private-school tuition for low-income people like her - she has had to sacrifice to come up with $1,800 in tuition to send her two kids to Catholic school this year. Dominique is a kindergartner, and doesn't know any different, but to Alejandra, a third-grader, the contrast between All Saints and the public school she formerly attended is sharp- especially regarding order in the classroom. At All Saints, "We have assigned seating," she observed. (If you can imagine an elementary classroom without assigned seating.) At first, Alejandra had difficulty adjusting to the absence of socialization during class time. That's because at All Saints - if you can imagine this - talking during class is not permitted! Students are expected to concentrate on schoolwork! Wow! All Saints' principal Rose Rosinski observes that students coming into All Saints from public schools are used to "a classroom environment with more socializing." Undoubtedly there are government studies underway at this very moment to determine the damage that repressive classrooms such as All Saints' are doing to the self-esteem and creativity of "the children."
Hi Coach.....Just wanted to let you know how we ended up. We ended the season undefeated and went into the Super Bowl against a team that hadn't lost in 3 years. Remember, our boys had won 1 game out of 2 last year. The team we played, Herbert Hoover Boys Club, had outscored their opposition 186-12 in 6 games this year. We ended up losing by a 39-32 score, but it was considered a win by all of us. They could not stop our offense. We had an awesome season, and I attribute it totally to the double wing. Our coaching staff will be back next year and I will be contacting you shortly about the newest playbook. Steve Fangman - St. Charles Buccaneers 14's - St. Louis Junior Football League
You young guys out there - still want to be a college coach? Maybe you'll want to think twice after you read this.
Looking back, most people now suspect that Utah State's Dave Arslanian was gone when Utah State President George Emert witnessed a loss to New Mexico State at home in front of a disappointing crowd of under 9,000. The loss dropped the Aggies' record to 2-7, the only two wins coming over Division I-AA opponents. But Utah State rallied to win its last two games, and with Arslanian just finishing up the second year of a four-year contract, it was assumed that things were cool. Nevertheless, with his assistants already out on the road recruiting, Arslanian was fired - given an unusually quick hook at a school whose last six coaches have departed Utah State with overall losing records. But Dave Arslanian will be okay. He is a good coach who will almost certainly find more work, and he is guaranteed $180,000 for the remaining two years of his contract. His assistants, though, may not be okay. Because the head coach's firing normally means the entire staff goes, too, Arslanian's nine assistants - including his brother, Paul - are now out of work. No contract buyouts for them - working on one-year contracts as is usually the case with assistants, they aren't even sure just how much money, if any, is due them from Utah State. They are now faced with uprooting their families, finding new schools for their kids in mid-year or living apart from their families until school is out in June - that is, if they are lucky enough to find other coaching jobs. Most of them will probably be at the AFCA convention (and annual job scramble) in Anaheim next month, resumes at the ready, ears perked for the slightest rumor of an opening somewhere. Amazingly, in a profession that thrives on rumors, where coaches at schools such as Alabama and even BYU were said to be in trouble at different times last season, there were never any rumors that the axe might fall on Dave Arslanian. So as soon as the season ended, assuming their jobs were safe, Arslanian's staff began directing their efforts toward the future. They were already out contacting recruits when blindsided by the news of their boss' - and their - dismissal. "If there's any bitterness at all, that was the one thing," one assistant told Kurt Kragthorpe of the Salt Lake Tribune."We were recruiting under false pretenses. If they knew what they were going to do, why put us through the embarrassment?"
December 14 - "On the day of victory, no one is tired." Old Arab proverb
Two years ago, with just a tiny bit more defense, Beaverton, Oregon could have won the state Class AAAA championship. Instead, the Beavers lost to McNary High, of Salem, 51-48. This past Saturday, they played a whole lot of defense, shutting out another Salem school, Sprague High, 20-0 to win the state title. In registering only the third AAAA championship-game shutout since the state started playing title games back in 1971, Beaverton held Sprague's powerful wing-T to 86 total yards, and just 21 yards rushing. Beaverton defensive coordinator Bob Boyer said he had a lot of help all last week from well-meaning fans, who kept coming up to him and asking,"Have you thought about watching their guards?"
I had a call yesterday from the offensive coordinator of the Arawak Warriors. Coach Francisco Jarvis coaches the Warriors, a "combine" team, made up of boys from four different private schools on the island of St. Thomas, in the Virgin Islands. Thanks to a generous grant from VITELCO, the Virgin Islands' telephone company, tackle football has been restored to the Islands after a 13-year hiatus brought about by insurance and liability concerns (it is, after all, still America, with the same American legal system and the same American lawyers), and the Warriors have just completed their first season, an abbreviated one of just three games. All told, there are now six teams playing football in the Virgin Islands, three on St. Thomas and three on the island of St. Croix (inter-island play necessitates flying). Coach Jarvis, a native of the Islands who played college football at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, managed to keep the game alive by coaching flag football, and was part of the movement responsible for the return of tackle football. He sees the next logical step as establishment of a youth program, and is already working on that. VITELCO, of course, is to be congratulated for its public spiritedness in investing in the young men of the Virgin Islands.
Congratulations to Ron Dayne on winning the Heisman. He is truly deserving. Most people know that one of the main reasons he gave for staying another year at Wisconsin was so he could remain near his little daughter, Jada. That is admirable, and it was truly touching to watch the Heisman awards show and see how much he obviously cares about the little girl. What a wonderful Christmas gift it would be for Jada - and what a wonderful example for young men and women everywhere - if he would marry her mother.
"Coach Wyatt, I finally had a chance to write you about our season here in Hoxie. We had the first winning season in 13 years. This is our 2nd year of running the Double-Wing and we still love it. We averaged 320 yards per game, and our C-back (a junior) rushed for 1500 yards and 14 TDs on 190 carries. His name is Greg Meyer and his brother Clay, who led our JVs to a winning season also will be our QB. My staff and myself can't wait to see you again in Denver. We had great success running out of the Stack I formation. If you need anyone to speak at the Denver clinic I would be honored to share what I have learned from you and your system. Hope to see you soon and God bless you and your family this holiday season. Scott Moshier, Head Coach, Hoxie, Kansas" (As a matter of fact, Coach Moshier is one of a number of experienced Double-Wing coaches who will be talking at this year's clinics about how they use the Double-Wing in their programs.)
It was sad to see Mount Union's 54-game win streak come to an end in Saturday's Division III semi-finals, but it was exciting to see Rowan College do it. Rowan College was Glassboro (New Jersey) State, back when I worked with the Philadelphia Bell in the World Football League, and it was where we held our training camp. (What stories came out of that place!) I remember it as a nice little school in a nice little town. Then a few years back, along came a rich guy by the name of Rowan who offered to donate a little money - okay, several million dollars - to the school and voila! Would you object if we named the college after you? Going against the Rowan "Profs" will be the Pacific Lutheran "Lutes," from Tacoma, Washington, 49-28 winners over Trinity, of San Antonio, in their semi-final. I mentioned the Lutes and their charismatic coach, Frosty Westering, a couple of weeks ago. Like so many top-notch Division III programs, Pacific Lutheran always has one or two players who originally signed with Divison I programs, then decided, for one reason or another, that they'd be happier at a Division III school. In PLU's case, the best example this year is running back Anthony Hicks, from Tumwater, Washington, who was considered a prime catch by the Washington Huskies a few years ago, before transferring to Pacific Lutheran.
Talk about a wild-card team winning the Super Bowl! Manchester Central High in Manchester, New Hampshire lost twice - big - during the regular season, to Londonderry, 32-0, and Nashua, 39-6. Under New Hampshire's top-four-make-the-playoffs format, though, Manchester Central still managed to finish strong enough to qualify as the fourth-ranked team. But that meant playing all games on the road, and it also meant a rematch with Londonderry and, should it somehow win, another likely meeting with Nashua - two teams that had beaten it by a combined score of 71-6. You guessed it , though - Central defeated Londonderry, 21-14 in their semi-final game, and, with momentum going for it, shut out Nashua, 18-0 to win the state title. It could only happen in football. What a great game.
December 13 - "The right to speak must be earned by having something to say." Winston Churchill
Got a call Saturday from my old pal Joe Gardi, coach at Hofstra University. Hofstra had a great season, finishing 11-2 - one of only nine teams in Division I to win 11 games - and making it to the Division 1-AA quarterfinals. Hofstra is on Long Island, less than 20 miles from Times Square, but Joe seldom gets into New York City. Last week, though, he was there twice, first for Coach Jerry Claiborne's induction into the College Hall of Fame (Joe was an assistant to Coach Claiborne at Maryland), then for the dinner honoring Hofstra's quarterback, Giovanni Carmazzi, as the National Scholar-Athlete of the Year. "Gio," 6-3, 220, is on the pro scouts' short list of quarterbacks (remember you read it here), and with his 3.9 GPA in business administration, narrowly missed selection as a Rhodes Scholar.
In writing about Everett, Mass. High last week, I mistakenly said that it had finished unbeaten. Not so - there was a mid-season loss to Peabody on Everett's otherwise-perfect record. (According to Everett Coach John DiBiaso, his kids took "a lot of crap" from townspeople after that loss. Evidently expectations are high in Everett.) I did mention Everett running back Diamond Ferri, considered by many the top football player in the Bay State, but at the time I didn't have a lot of details. How about these? During the regular season he rushed for 1683 yards and 15 TDs, good but not incredible numbers, until you realize that Coach DiBiaso pulled him early in several runaway games. In Everett's 41-6 Super Bowl win over New Bedford, though, in front of 8.500 spectators, he was at his best, carrying 14 times for 228 yards, including TD runs of 71 and 41 yards. He had an 82-yarder called back. Oh, yes - he also returned the opening kickoff 80 yards for a TD. He has recruiting visits planned to Tennessee, Syracuse, Ohio State and Nebraska. (Massachusetts, where Thanksgiving Day rivalries preclude having state championship playoffs, instead matches up its top teams in a series of post-Thanksgiving "Super Bowl" games.)
Anybody happen to notice that Ron Dayne thanked "Coach Wyatt" for recruiting him? I'd like to be able to say, "You're welcome, Ron!" and take credit for landing a Heisman Trophy winner, but it was Coach Bernie Wyatt who lured Ron Dayne to Madison.
Speaking of Heisman Trophy winners- the pursuit of dollars, the perversion of the near-sacred and the commercialization of American high school sports all converged Saturday in something called - I am not making this up, as Dave Barry would say - the Wendy's "High School Heisman." No kidding. Actually, there are two "High School Heismans" - there's both a male and female version, so obviously it is not even limited to football. (Hey, by now we football coaches are used to being fed the gender-equity line that "all activities are equally important.") The Downtown Athletic Club, which awards the "real" Heisman every year, can thank its lucky stars for that little statue- as well as for the media hype which has turned the Heisman into football's version of the Academy Awards. Because if it were not for the Heisman, that collection of stuffed shirts would have faded into oblivion long ago; instead, it has turned football's trophy into its own cash machine, first by cutting a deal that lets people stop by their Toyota dealerships and vote for the Heisman winner while they kick the tires, then by allowing the Heisman name to be extended to an award for, say, a high school volleyall player. Look for a whole line of Heisman Trophies. All it will take is sponsors with money in their hands, and you're looking at Heisman Trophies for comedy, cooking, community service, salesmanship, scholarship, literature, snowboarding, etc., etc. I'll just bet that if you try using the name "Heisman" on your little award at school, their lawyers will be on you so fast they'll make the International Olympic Committee's lawyers look like slowpokes.
The Philadelphia Eagles' Donovan McNabb, one of the NFL's outstanding crop of rookie quarterbacks, showed in an interview with Anthony Gargano, Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer, that he also has some potential as a stand-up comedian. When asked if he had gone to coach Andy Reid to complain about his lack of playing time earlier in the season, he said, "Yeah. I went into his office, threw my hat on his desk and said, 'Now look, man, I want to play!' Then I lifted his desk, turned it over, and told him, 'You're going to play me, right?'"
He is not a show-off. For instance, he drives an American car instead of a BMW or a high-end SUV. "People say, 'He's in the NFL, his head's going to blow up. He's a young guy. He doesn't know what he has.' Man, I know what I have. It's just that I don't show people. I just take things in stride, know what I'm saying? You won't see me in flashy cars or flashy clothes. That's just me." He isn't into tattooos: "My brother got his name tattooed on his leg, and my mother went offfff. She said, 'What's wrong with you? Don't you know your damn name?'"
He's uncomfortable when he's out in public and people obviously recognize him but just stand and gawk. "When we see somebody, we wave or stop and talk. That's the way I was raised." He doesn't consider himself a celebrity - "See? I do the same things everybody else does. It's just you might see me on Sunday playing football."
On being dissed by the Heisman Committee last year, when he went from being a pre-season favorite to not even being invited to the awards ceremony ("Yeah, I'm scarred to this day"), he joked about a scenario in which he would crash this year's ceremony, snatch the Heisman, and smash it to pieces: "'And the winner is...' And they're going to see me run up from behind, grab it and spike it. Nobody's going to win it. They're going to say, 'Oh, my God, what is he doing here?' Then they'll say, 'We knew there was something wrong with him.' You know, when somebody does something bad, they always bring something like that up. They'll say, 'He walked funny. He hit that little girl with the Pac-Man lunch box in the sixth grade.'"
Just in case Michigan State wondered whether they chose the right guy to replace Nick Saban when they promoted Bobby Williams off the current staff: not a single Spartans' assistant accepted Coach Saban's offer to go with him to LSU, all of them electing instead to remain in East Lansing.
A female she may be, but a professor of religion at Princeton University nevertheless wins this month's "Set of Stones" Award. According to the Wall Street Journal, when a religion major complained about a course requirement to Professor Shaun Marmon, her response was, "This is not a democracy. You are students. We are teachers. We have doctoral degrees and have written books. You have not yet written an acceptable junior paper." She went on to say," However, this is not the Marines Corps, either. Fortunately for some of you, I might add. I understand that they do not shoot people at dawn any more. Too bad. There are some traditions worth keeping." Ever thought about coaching football, Professor Marmon?
December 11 - "Given a choice between two evils, I'll take the one I've never tried before." Old-time movie star Mae West
The Beaverton Beavers will be the sentimental favorites when they take the field in today's Oregon Class AAAA state championship game against Sprague High of Salem. That's because they have been playing on equal parts talent (which they have a lot of) and dedication to a fallen teammate. A little over a month ago their starting center, Brendan FitzPatrick, a potential all-state center who had committed to play at the University of Oregon, collapsed and died at his home. (See the story, November 5 News)
A coaching associate from Framingham, Massachusetts (who does not himself run the Double-Wing), called to straighten me out because he noticed there were no mentions on my site of Massachusetts high school teams running the Double-Wing. (I knew they were out there - my problem has been not being able to locate a site that has the Massachusetts HS scores on it.) Not that my friend felt left out; he just felt that as long as his school had to play two Double-Wing teams this year, he ought to let me know about them and assure me that the Double-Wing is alive and well in the Commonwealth. (His school lost to both teams, and he didn't care to go into the results of either game in any detail.) Coach Bill Maradei and Austin Prep, of Reading, went 11-1 - losing only to much larger Bishop Fenwick - and defeated St. Dominic Savio, of East Boston, 21-20 in their league's key matchup. Savio Prep, coached by Gavin Monagle, a former assistant to Coach Maradei, also ran the Double-Wing and wound up 8-3.
Still in Massachusetts, I spoke Thursday with Coach John DiBiaso of Everett High, whose Number One ranking in the Boston Globe's final poll makes it, unofficially at least, state champion. Everett capped off its unbeaten season with a 40-6 Super Bowl win over New Bedford in which it ran only 40 plays and didn't throw a pass. Coach DiBiaso isn't exclusively a tight-split guy, but a Double-Tight, Double-Wing series is a major part of his attack. He had a 5-3, 195-pound fullback (try cutting him at the knees) who, as you might imagine, ran a heck of a trap. He also had a blue-chip running back named Diamond Ferri whom he compares favorably with his last blue-chip running back, Omar Easy, now at Penn State. Coach DiBiaso was quick to give credit to his kids and the work they put in - all year 'round - as part of their commitment to the Everett program: "We give a lot to them," he told me, "and they have to give a lot back."
Father Jim Sinnerud, Jesuit educator/coach/friend from Creighton Prep in Omaha, writes, "That paragraph on the education writer of 'Schools Our Kids Deserve' (December 2) reminded me of a statement one of my Jesuit philosophy professors made years ago. We were talking about the classroom, I believe, and he said he didn't usually think a lot about the practice of kids breaking up into small groups for discussion. He said something like, "All they'll probably do is cross-fertilize their own ignorance." His thought struck home, since it reinforced my own experience in some school room years earlier."
North Carolina's coach Carl Torbush may be a great guy, and the players may have been very happy that he managed to avoid execution, but he had to pay a high price to keep his job for another year: neither his offensive coordinator, his quarterbacks coach or his running backs coach will be back next year, it was announced last Monday. Does anybody doubt that the firings were dictated from above, as a condition of his remaining? It's a heck of a situation for a head coach to be in, because, apart from the pain of having to let any assistants go in order to save his own butt, if he refuses to do so, he's likely to be gone himself - along with all of his assistants.
Anybody notice what happened the last couple of weeks after a certain Seattle pro football team, one that had been threatening to run away with the championship of the AFC West, met star receiver Joey Galloway's demands and tried to make him a part of the team?
Weight-cutting by wrestlers- "I don't know of any absolute fool-proof method of determining how much weight a person can lose before it can be detrimental to his health. I know there are formulas using height, bone structure, and muscle-to-fat ratio, etc. We have had doctors come in to specify a minimum, and he used a thing that looked like a machinist's feeler gauge. Kind of like the pinch an inch theory. But I feel it is simply common sense, with a tremendous amount of discipline involved. The main problem I found with the weight cutting is in the home. If the parents are involved it can work. But if the parents sit down to a big meal of fried pork chops, mashed potatoes, gravy, and all the trimmings, and expect the athlete to eat a little salad and cold chicken with an apple for dessert, it won't work. He will eat and then go make himself throw up put on a wet suit or wrap himself in trash bags, and run, and spit until he gets to the desired weight. This is what hurts the athlete and gives the sport a bad name. My son was the 158 lb. East Coast Regional National runner up while at Trenton State Collage . He went from 185 lb. When he was cutting weight we would not keep any snacks in the house, or eat any more than he could, while in front of him. (we ate out a lot) And we kept a very close eye on his health. I personally feel an athlete that cuts weight sensibly will put it back on very quickly once he quits the diet. If a football player cuts weight during wrestling season then puts weight back on while staying on a good weight-lifting program through spring and summer he will bulk up and be stronger and quicker by the fall football season. Another good side effect of this is that as the athlete gets older he knows and has the discipline to keep his weight under control. My boys are in their late 30s now and when they see that they are getting a little overweight they get back in the old habit of watching what they eat, and start working out." - Frank Simonsen, Cape May, New Jersey (Frank's son, Erick, is head wrestling coach at Wildwood, New Jersey High School - HW)
I had a chance Friday to talk with our wrestling coach, John Carver, who runs an outstanding wrestling program (and also happens to be our freshman football coach). Here is what he told me about Washington's regulations: at some point prior to the first of the year, every wrestler must have a doctor certify the weight below which he cannot legally wrestle that season. The state's form reads, "I recommend that the student designated above should not be allowed to wrestle any weight less than the indicated classification checked herewith." (why do they have to use words like "herewith"?) On the particular form which he showed me, the doctor had weighed in a young man at 131, and recommended that he not wrestle below 125. No protection here against football players losing drastic amounts of weight: realistically, a typical kid has probably already lost a bunch of weight before going into the doctor's office. Also, it is possible for a kid to return to the doctor later on to get re-examined and re-certified to go drop to a lower weight. The state of Washington tries to guard against late-season weight-cutting by stipulating that at least half of a wrestler's matches must be at the weight he intends to wrestle in his district - and if successful, state - tournament. Coach Carver stresses the importance of his wrestlers' constantly monitoring their weight so as not to get to the point where most people consider employing drastic weight-loss tactics. For example, in order to avoid forfeits and also keep wrestlers close to their optimum weight, any wrestler taking part in the weekly challenge matches must weigh in no more than one pound over the weight limit at which he is challenging. The danger area, it would seem to me, might be that time between the start of wrestling and the doctor's exam, when a highly competitive kid might see an opportunity to move into a lower classification. (I didn't think to ask Coach Carver if he ever ran across a case where a doctor weighed a kid and said he had to wrestle at a higher classification than his current weight!) HW
"Yeah, I'm tough. I have to be tough, A union leader has to be tough. I ain't never seen someone win a negotiation while bargaining on their knees." John P. Morris, Sr., recently ousted by Teamsters President James P. Hoffa as Philadelphia Teamsters leader and President of the Pennsylvania Conference of Teamsters, after a raid on his offices turned up a sizeable stash of weapons and military equipment.
December 10 - "Momentum' isn't anything but a change in mental attitude. Boys just make up their mind they're going to block better, run harder, carry out their assignments better." - Jake Gaither, all-time great coach at Florida A & M
Don't know whether you read my November 26 bit about "WWF Smackdown!", but the folks at Coca-Cola are the latest to decide they don't want to be identified with that abomination, pulling all their advertising from the show - at least until the producers of the show clean up their act. Three questions: (1) How much you wanna bet the "clean up" is barely noticeable?; (2) How soon will it be before the show returns to its previous level of repulsiveness?; (3) What was Coke doing advertising on that show to begin with? (Those people are not stupid - they knew what they were buying. It took a public outcry for them to do what they should have done in the first place.)
Just received a nice Christmas message from Coach Steve Fickert, who had a highly successful season in Finland as coach of the Seinäjoki Crocodiles. Steve has just been named head coach of the Hannover Musketeers, a young team in Germany whose potential so impressed him that he passed up offers from other European clubs.
Where is the outrage? Six firefighters in Worcester, Massachusetts killed, 17 kids left fatherless - because brave men doing their duty went into an abandoned building, set on fire by people who had no business being in there, and tried to rescue a couple of those people who had no business being in there but, as it turns out, weren't in there anyhow! Mustn't criticize the homeless, though - politicians need them, holding them up as examples of where we as a society have failed - which explains why there's nary a word of outrage from our cowardly leaders at the thoughtlessness that cost six men their lives, and 17 kids their fathers.
Coach Don Capaldo, of Keokuk, Iowa, has been named to the staff of Iowa's 28th Shrine All-Star Game, to be played this July at Iowa State's Jack Trice Stadium. Don reports that 6-5, 270-pound guard Matt McGhghy 6'5 270 and 6-3, 230-pound defensive end Drew Ramaker 6'3 231) were named First Team All-State by both the Iowa Newpaper Association and the Des Moines Register.
A coach has been so kind as to "weigh in" on the subject of wrestlers - especially those who play football - cutting weight: "Coach, I am not an expert on weight cutting by wrestlers. Our kids have their body fat tested which is supposed to tell them how much they can safely lose without hurting their bodies. As a football coach I like to see my kids out for wrestling. Helps footwork and aggressive tendencies in kids that us football coaches like. I do not like however when my kids are asked to cut weight. Right now I have several kids cutting a tremendous amount of weight. My concern is this, How am I ever going to have kids with decent body weight and strength if they are asked to cut these things all winter long? I am in a small school so our kids are asked to participate in many things, I like wrestling and the coach is a friend of mine but man it makes things tough."
In New York Tuesday night, 71-year-old retired coach Jerry Claiborne was inducted into the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame. 250 of his friends, family and former players were on hand. Coach Claiborne is certainly richly deserving of the honor. He compiled a 179-122-8 record between 1961 and 1989, in turning around three major college programs - Virginia Tech, Maryland and Kentucky. I can tell you about Maryland, because I was living there when Coach Claiborne came on the scene. Before he got there, the Terps sucked: Maryland's record was 25-66 in the nine seasons before he arrived. When he departed 10 years later to take over at his native Kentucky, Coach Claiborne left behind a record of 77-37-3. He took the Terps to seven bowl games and won three ACC titles. So when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame,
"I wish this could have happened a year earlier," his wife, Faye told the Baltimore Sun. "Jerry would have been able to enjoy it so much. He used to go to New York often for this dinner and loved it." Coach Claiborne, you see, is suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
Always considered stern, cold, gruff, demanding, Coach Claiborne worked his players and assistants hard, and stressed sound defense (wide-tackle six) and special teams to go with a conservative - some fans said dull - offense. And discipline. "If you made a mistake, he made you pay for it," recalled former assistant Jerry Eisaman.
Think his players hated him for it? Think again.
In October, 1998, Maryland honored its 1973 Peach Bowl team, the Terps' first bowl team in years, and Coach Claiborne was carried off the field by his players, including the likes of Bob Avellini, Louis Carter, and NFL Hall-of-Famer Randy White. Word had spread among the players that their coach might be in the early stages of Alzheimer's, and when he tried to speak to the players but choked up and couldn't finish, they began calling out "Coach, we love you...We love you, Coach." According to Gib Romaine, an assistant coach on the 1973 team, "It was unbelievable to see all those big, tough football players in tears and showing so much love for a coach who had been so tough on them. I mean, here was Randy White, who was supposed to be one of the meanest players ever, crying his eyes out."
Coach Claiborne said afterward, "When I looked at those boys, I couldn't help breaking down. It was an unbelievable thing to hear them telling me, 'I love you, Coach.' I'll never forget it."
His son, Jonathan, who played for him at Maryland from 1973-1975, said of his dad's induction into the Hall of Fame, "It's great to see they're recognizing someone who always worked hard, played by the rules, and touched peoples' lives with his no-nonsense discipline. He never won a national championship, but he showed three different times how he could turn a program around by instilling pride and self-respect in players who had very little of that before he got there."
Coach Claiborne, who retired in 1989 after a near-miss when the helicopter he was riding in on a recruiting trip had to make an emergency landing in a Kentucky cornfield, now lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I called his home on Wednesday, in hopes of obtaining his address so readers might send him congratulations, and wound up having a delightful conversation with Coach Claiborne himself. He thanks all well-wishers, but said he and his wife would prefer not to receive a whole lot of mail. We did have an interesting talk, however, especially on the subject of the wide-tackle six, which has always been a part of my defensive package. Coach Claiborne said he originally got it from "Coach Bryant" (yes, the Bear) for whom he played at Kentucky, and it was his base defense at all three places he coached.
In one very real sense, Coach Claiborne's work is carried on - in the person of Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer. "Frank was a defensive back for Jerry for three years at Virginia Tech," said former assistant Eisaman. "Frank Beamer is Jerry Claiborne. They have the same ethics, honesty, integrity and family values."
December 9 - "Football is the opiate of the asses" submitted by Scott Russell, Loudoun County, Virginia, in a clever play on Karl Marx ("Religion is the opiate of the masses")
Sent to me by my roving soccer reporter (since I won't cross the street to watch the sport), my son, Ed: "Real Madrid (one of the world's richest clubs) lost to Zaragoza 5-1 and fell to 17th place (out of 20) in the Spanish First Division. The wire report said that 'fans at Bernabeu Stadium threw cans, bottles and stones at the players and shouted 'Playboys!' and 'Let's set their Ferraris on fire!''"
Wells, Nevada made it to the state finals against Meadows, and despite the loss of a starting corner and a starting offensive lineman, and a quarterback hobbled by an achilles injury, played to a 6-6 halftime tie, before falling, 27-6. Congratulations on a great season to head coach Martin Linford, assistant Steve Rodriguez, and the Wells Leopards! I have conducted a camp at Wells the last two years, and I am tremendously impressed with the kids' work ethic, and with what they have accomplished.Two years ago, they managed to get lights for their field, greatly increasing their following, and this past season finished the first unbeaten regular season in school history. (Perhaps you will recall my mentioning that one of the contributors to the fund to buy lights was a local business peculiar to Nevada called "Donna's Ranch.")
The Conshohocken (Pennsylvania) Steelers, newly-crowned champions of the Delaware Valley Semi-Pro Football League, are coached by Matt Giorgio. "Every community needs a Matt Giorgio," wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer in a special story on the Steelers. "He has raised his family , and about a decade ago he had an epiphany of sorts and concluded that just because his kids were grown didn't mean his responsibilities to other kids need end. So the Steelers routinely devote themselves to summer camps and bonfire gatherings and school assemblies as active, sincere messengers of FAD, which stands for Fight Against Drugs, and was founded by the Maxwell Club (Philadelphia's leading football club, which every year gives out the Maxwell Award). One of his never-fail presentations is to stand up three of the bigger and more-followed students, give two of them large bottles of soda, and give the third a bottle which has been poured half-out and stuffed with bugs and twigs and dirt. The rest of the students urge the one to drink from the grossed-out bottle, and Matt Giorgio says that invariably as the chant grows - 'Drink! Drink! Drink!' - the bottle will be raised to trembling lips. 'We always stop them, and then point out: 'You know what's in that bottle, and the only reason you're willing to go ahead and drink it is because your friends are egging you on.' That's usually how it is with drugs.'"
The U.S. Military Academy's approach to football makes me wonder about my country's security. I say this after the firing of Coach Bob Sutton - "A class act, " in the words of a coach of my acquaintance who regularly attended his clinics - which should be considered an affront by coaches everywhere. For reasons better benefitting the athletic director than the football coach, Army hooked up with Conference USA. Great deal for the A.D. - a guaranteed schedule every year, a better chance at a bowl game. Not so great for the football coach, who found himself a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. It is scary to realize that the athletic powers at Army could so seriously have underestimated the enemy - in this case, such tough football schools as Louisville, East Carolina and Southern Mississippi, not to mention potential toughies Memphis, Tulane, Houston, Alabama-Birmingham and Cincinnati. Oh, yes - and new members TCU and South Florida are just around the bend. It brings back memories of our real-life military coming to the realization that some of the higher-ups arrogantly underestimated the fighting abilities of certain real-life enemies.
I don't know about you, but I am up to here with hearing about "the children." It seems as if everywhere we turn, a gutless, leaderless society worhips at the feet of "the children." From Hillary to George W., politicians seem unable to put two sentences together without including the phrase "the children" in there somewhere."It's for the children... We must think about the children... This could harm the children." Blah, blah, blah. In education, it's "listen to the children." Let them tell us what they want to learn. Let them tell us what their needs are. Let them teach each other. Blah, blah, blah. From the time they're able to squat in front of the TV with their bowls of froot loops while Mom and Dad sleep in, American children are turned into tiny tyrants by the forces of American advertising. Conditioned to getting whatever they want from parents eager to appease them, they learn early that they are the real decision-makers. Is it any wonder that they think they are ready to take over our government? Isn't there even one person of authority (whatever that means these days) willing to stand up and stop this pandering to "the children?" Well, as a matter of fact, there is. A certain governor of Minnesota held one of those Clinton-style "town meetings" the other day. This one was attended by teenagers - you know, the earnest types who have been told so many times by parents and teachers that they can "make a difference," that they seem to have transmuted (changed) that message into "the world is just waiting out there with bated breath to hear your plans to save it." So when an eighth-grader, a student reporter from her middle school's paper, told the governor, "Personally, I want to be involved in making decisions and give insight into teen issues such as education," this governor - Jesse Ventura by name - laughed sarcastically, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and gave the young reporter a lesson in Representative Government 101. "You want to be involved in making decisions?" he asked. "Then you need to get elected!"
A coach has written me, concerned about what he feels is the excessive amount of weight that a certain wrestler (who happens also to be a football player) is being asked to lose. He asked me what I could tell him about various state guidelines on cutting weight, and whether there is a site devoted to the issue of safe and unsafe weight-loss practices for wrestlers. I pleaded ignorance, and told him I'd ask you. Please e-mail me if you can provide information on the subject.
Coach Len Kuhn, of West Seneca West (not a redundancy) High, in West Seneca, New York, says that fortunately there is one benefit in having another team in your league playing the Double-Wing: the officials hear the same list of "things to watch for" twice as many times. In West Seneca West's league is Orchard Park High, a western New York power, whose coach, Gene Tundo, also runs the Double-Wing. Coach Kuhn says that on several occasions, when it has been necessary to call officials' attention to such illegal defensive tactics as tackling pulling offensive linemen, or cutting kick-out blockers at the knees, they have responded, "You sound just like Tundo!"
December 8 - "Set reasonable goals. Hitching your wagon to a star is a bunch of crap, because you'll never get there." Bob Devaney, Nebraska Coach before Tom Osborne, and the guy who got the Cornhusker powerhouse going
Just as an example of how cultures that seem so similar to ours can surprise you with their little differences, my son Ed writes from Australia: "Don't know if you read about Australia winning the Davis Cup (another trophy to add to the case Down Under), but the hero was Mark Philippoussis (a Greek kid from Melbourne). After the win, the team was partying in Nice, France, where the Cup final was played, and the pictures from the party were unbelievable. Philippoussis has his shirt off and he's dancing with a topless woman! And although the shot made the papers and some of the TV shows, no one considered it in bad taste or made a big deal about it."
Hugh, Just wanted to let you what we accomplished this season at Sprayberry. We finished the season 6-4 and at one point ran off six straight wins in a strong region. We qualified for the playoffs for the first time in 11 seasons, a major turn around for this community. As you know we beat North Cobb 23-0, which was a big game for us; the students that feed into Sprayberry and North Cobb come from the one middle school so they know each other very well. We had about 25 seniors including my son, but my coaching staff and I are looking forward to the 2000 season. Thanks again for the DW and looking forward to the next clinic nearest me. Coach Billy Hamilton,Sprayberry High School , Marietta, Georgia
Coaching at Army must sometimes seem like Mission: Impossible. If you don't believe me, you could ask Bob Sutton, who as recently as 1996 led the Cadets to a 10-1 season, who beat Navy six of the nine times he went up against them, and who now is out of a job, fired the day after Saturday's 19-9 loss to Navy. It was Coach Sutton's first head job, and according to him at the time he was hired, the only one he ever wanted. Only Earl "Red" Blaik lasted longer in the job. "I understand college football," he said. "I understand the coaching profession. I understand bottom-line philosophy. I was only interested in having the opportunity to finish what I started and to finish what I was promised. (He will be paid for the year remaining on his contract.) I was probably too idealistic because I felt the academy would not compromise one of its principles and one of its bedrock values." I personally regret the action, because Coach Sutton appeared to be the type of man who conducted himself well in the academy atmosphere, and his teams played hard. His wishbone offense kept the Cadets in many games they had no business being in, and consistently among the nation's top rushing teams. Whatever purposes West Point's decision to enter the tough Conference USA has served, it certainly proved disastrous to Coach Sutton's win-loss record, and so the powers at West Point have reacted by adding Bob Sutton to the long, gray line of Army Coaches to be let go. I assume that the "principle" and "bedrock value" to which Coach Sutton refers has something to do with honoring commitments. I would hate to say it, but maybe what the honchos at West Point deserve is for a hot shot to come in and lead the Cadets to another 10-1 season, then use it as leverage to get a bigger job. The honchos may deserve it, but the kids don't. They deserve another Bob Sutton. "We will seek an individual who truly values winning under the guidelines set forth by the mission of the U.S. Military Academy," Army A.D. Rick Greenspan said, in a news release. "We will search for someone possessing the ability to place intercollegiate athletics in the right context while representing the academy in an articulate and forthright fashion with a sense of creativity and imagination. We obviously also are looking for a person boasting tremendous leadership skills and a passion for recruiting the finest cadet-athletes." Hell, isn't that the guy you just let go? Time for them to get real and stop firing coaches for inability to perform the impossible. Check this out - since Coach Blaik retired in 1958, Army has had eight coaches. One - Paul Dietzel - left after three seasons for greener pastures. Another - Coach Sutton's predecessor, Jim Young - retired. The other six (including Homer Smith) were let go.
If he'd only been smoking pot... By now everybody knows that Chicago Bears' QB Jim Miller has been suspended for four games for violating the NFL's substance-abuse policy. The substance? Something called nandrolone, which, although on the NFL's banned list, was an ingredient in a perfectly-legal, over-the-counter dietary supplement Miller had been taking. I don't know about you, but I guess I'd better start checking out all those strange chemicals listed on the labels of my soft drinks and canned soups (is erythorbic acid on the NFL's list?). Anyhow, Jim Miller sits, Leon Lett plays, and LT is enshrined in Canton, but at least the radio sports-talk guys had some fun with it. Said one, "I've seen him with his shirt off, and if he's taking steroids, they're not working." Said another, "It looks to me as if his drug of choice is beer."
Columbine High won the Colorado Class AAA title Saturday, downing perennial state power Cherry Creek, of Englewood. It was very emotional, watching the Columbine players honor a teammate killed in last spring's killing rampage, and watching that teammate's parents thank the team in the locker room afterwards. But, hey - what was that I saw those Columbine kids doing in that locker room before the game - kneeling, with heads bowed?
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. After losing to Hastings in this year's state semi-finals, Mike Grant, head coach at Eden Prairie, Minnesota, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press, "With 13 returning starters, and two 100-yard rushers - we'll be back." Coach Grant is the son of former Vikings' coach Bud Grant.
A group that runs a web site called FindLaw has begun posting what it calls its "Tarnished 20" - a ranking of college football programs according the the troubles they and their athletes have gotten into. And right at the top - drum roll, please - is.....Florida-a-a-a-a State! What a double it would be for the Seminoles if they could finish at the top of the BCS poll and the Tarnished 20, too. Here is the rest of the list: 2- LSU; 3- Michigan; 4- Notre Dame; 5- Washington; 6- Missouri; 7- Kansas; 8- UCLA; 9- Arizona; 10- Central Florida; 11- Alabama; 12- Nebraska; 13- Florida; 14- Washington State; 15- Tennessee; 16- Auburn; 17- Wisconsin; 18- Arizona State; 19- Kansas State; 20-Miami (Florida)
December 7 - TODAY IS PEARL HARBOR DAY - DON'T FORGET - WE DIDN'T START IT - "The more extensive one's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be the power of what to do." Benjamin Disraeli, English Prime Minister
STATE CHAMPS!By any measure, Fitch High in Groton, Connecticut is a quality program. Coach Mike Emery's team was state Class L (Large schools) runner-up in 1997 and 1998, and this past Saturday, won it all! I received this note from one of Coach Emery's assistants: Coach Wyatt, Finally we can put to rest the quote, "The double-wing is nice offense, but can it be successful in the playoffs". We recently conclude our third consecutive undefeated regular season with the Connecticut Class L State Championship. After trouncing our semi-final opponent 61-0, our Fitch High School team beat undefeated (11-0) Farmington 50 - 7 in the Class L finals. This is our school's first football state championship since 1976. The celebration that followed on Saturday night will be forever etched in the minds of our players and coaches. Although the groundwork for this state championship been built by many players and coaches for several years, this years team, through offseason hard work and inseason concentration, was able to finish the job successfully. Some interesting facts from our season: We scored 100 touchdowns in 12 games (88 offensive). Our 3 year starter at quarterback, Raheem Carter, finished as the all-time touchdown pass leader in the Eastern Connecticut Conference with 42 Tds (We found this to be interesting to all the negative people who still think, "How could you possibly pass out of that formation?"). We averaged 58 points a game (which would have been a state-record if Bloomfield did not play on Saturday afternoons. We play on Friday nights, and Bloomfield always seemed to score 1 more touchdown than us). Our average margin of victory was 48 points. Finally, I have been with Coach Emery for 14 years (4 as a player, and 10 as an assistant), and I've never been happier for an individual. He has taught hundreds of student athletes the proper values of life. He leads by example. Coach Emery deserved this state championship. Thanks for the offense. McD And then I heard from Coach Emery, who was nice enough to send this note: Hugh, I'd like to thank you once again for introducing us to the Double Wing. Yesterday (Saturday) we completed the final step of a three year journey with a win in the Connecticut Class L State Championship. The final score was 50-7 again'st Farmington High School which entered the game 11-0 and had allowed about 8 points per game throughout the season. We won our semi-final game 61-0 again'st Pomperaug High School. Our team averaged about 59 points per game. We had one thousand yard rusher (left halfback John McCoy) and one thousand yard passer ( QB Raheem Carter). Our FB gained about 900 yards, and we had 24 people score points in a varsity game this year. We had 100 touchdowns in 12 games. I believe the number one reason we were able to "finish the job " this year was the resolve of the kids to make themselves physically better by spending long hours in the weight room. They learned in the previous two seasons, which both ended in disappointment, that if you're going to play against the elite teams in the state you cannot rely on God-given talent alone. You must put in the hard work to receive the highest awards. It is a lesson that I hope remains with them the rest of their life. The other thing that truly put us over the hump this year from a technical stand point was the addition of the " reach fly sweep" Whenever teams bunched up to stop "super power" we simply reached them and sprinted for the sideline. I spent a lot of time talking to Chuck Raykovich from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin about this play, as he had enjoyed success the year before with this play. (Rocket 38 Reach and Lazer 29 Reach, described and shown in "Dynamics IV"- HW) Judging from the scores I saw this year, it looks like they had even more success this year. Well thanks again Hugh, it's been a wonderful three years running the Double Wing. Good Luck and much success with your new team. Mike Emery, Fitch Senior High School, Groton, Connecticut (After seeing several schools make it to the finals, I do believe that this is the first state championship - at least by a large school - running our system.)
"My opinion is - in plain English - that the police should just go in and slap the crap out of them. But I guess I'm old and a little hard-core." Seattle postal worker Frank Stine, 63, commenting on last week's protests.
If you missed it, Saturday was the 100th Army-Navy game (Navy coach Charlie Weatherbie insists on calling it the "Navy-Army" game). It was the 75th game of Army-Navy (sorry, Coach) series played in Philadelphia, and as you might expect, the city still gives it the treatment it used to warrant back in the days when Army-Navy was right up there with the Rose Bowl as football's biggest game, certainly bigger than anything the NFL had to offer. It was Philadelphia's bowl game; to me, raised a Philadelphian, it will always be a very special game, and I will always be in awe of those two service academies. "It is," wrote columnist Bill Lyon, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, "the best rivalry in all of sport," and he'll get no argument from me. Notice he said "best." Not biggest or fiercest. Best. Lyon gave several illustrations why, including these: "He (Navy quarterback Brian Madden) took the final snap of the game yesterday, then took a knee. Navy was close to the Army end zone, but even in a rivalry as passionate as this, you do not machine-gun the lifeboats.. At high noon, Cadet Deborah Brown of West Point, Company G-2, in a vibrant and crystalline voice, sang the national anthem before a crowd that stood at respectful attention.. Right hands either were over hearts or engaged in taut salute. No twitching. No scratching. No conversation. No beered-up yahoos spewing profanities." (For a good read about the Army-Navy rivalry, check out A Civil War- Army vs. Navy, by John Feinstein.)
The Philadelphia sports radio guys were all over Eagles' rookie QB Donovan McNabb, because of his announced plans to visit - actually, spend the night at - the home of an enemy on the Eagles' trip to Phoenix last weekend. The "enemy" in question was Arizona Cardinal Simeon Rice, an old friend from high school days. Didn't matter. He should be staying with his teammates, they insisted. These are some of the same people who pooh-poohed when I once asked them if they didn't see anything wrong with Randall Cunningham's riding home from New York in a limo after a pre-season scrimmage with the Jets while the peons - his Eagle teammates - boarded buses. (Aw, shucks. "That's just Randall," they chuckled.) More later on McNabb, who comes across as an unusually likeable and level-headed rookie quarterback.
"Coach Wyatt, the Cornhuskers have no one to blame but themselves. Most everyone agrees with that in this state. The Huskers were sloppy with the ball all year and in that game it cost them. Saturday they were again rather sloppy however Texas couldn't take advantage. Texas also had some miscues that they didn't have in the first game. Va Tech and FSU deserve to play for the championship. I don't know if it will be much of a game but they do have unblemished records. What a match up the Huskers have in the Fiesta Bowl. Scrambling QB's like Tee Martin from Tennessee give the Huskers fits. Man I can't wait for Jan. 1. Daren Hatch, Arapahoe, Nebraska. Certainly can't call Coach Hatch a sore loser, but I'm not so sure about Nebraska Coach Frank Solich, who seems conveniently to have forgotten the late-season Colorado fiasco and the mid-season loss to Texas. "When you look at Virginia Tech," he observed, apparently having done so himself for the first time all season, "they played only one team that ended up in the top 25 at the end of the year, Boston College, and they've been in only a few weeks. You look at that and say, 'Maybe we do belong in the game.'" Lame, Coach. Lame.
Wisconsin's Ron Dayne is a lucky young man - not because he was given the talent to win a Heisman trophy, or because he has been surrounded by teammates good enough to help him win one, but because he had a man in his life when he most needed one. While spending the past few days in Ron Dayne country - South Jersey - I came across a marvelous story about him and his uncle, Rob Reid. When Ron was 15, his parents divorced and his mother began using crack. She lost her job and suffered from bouts of depression, but she had the good sense to place her two kids - Ron and his sister, Onja - with relatives. Ron was taken in by Uncle Rob Reid and his wife, Debra, who lived in Berlin, New Jersey, about midway between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. They had three kids of their own, Rob., Jr., Jaquay and Joel, but "I treated him like he was my son, and he treated me like I was his father," Rob Reid told Associated Press writer Ken Bereger. Proof of the influence Uncle Rob had on young Ron came in the form of a speech which Ron Dayne wrote two months ago, honoring Uncle Rob: "I began to think about you and the Heisman Trophy. I remember when I first came to live with you and Aunt Deb. The first thing we did was have a family meeting. All of us were sitting around the kitchen table - you, Aunt Deb, Rob. Jr., Jaquay and Joel. You announced that no one was going to get any new clothes until I had as many outfits as everyone else. Well, Joel did not care about clothes then, Jaquay wore uniforms to school, but Rob got "swole." Rob had so many clothes it was fabulous. And soon after that, I did, too. For that, Uncle Rob, you win the Heisman. I remember you traveling with me on my college visits to Wisconsin and Ohio State. We hated Ohio State, didn't we, Uncle Rob? (I don't know what that's all about - HW) That is why we beat them so badly last week. For traveling with me and helpig me make the right decision, you win the Heisman. Uncle Rob, you go see Rob play football in Virginia; you go see Jaquay run track in Virginia,but you still come out to Wisconsin to see me, too. For that, Uncle Rob, you win the Heisman. And when you do come out to Wisconsin, you slip one or two hundred dollar bills in my hand, For that, Uncle Rob, you really win the Heisman. When Rob left for college, I started to try some of our tricks, by myself, and got caught every time. We never got caught when Rob was home. Like when I squeezed out of the bathroom window one night to see a girl - when I tried go get back in at 1:00 am, you had locked that window and the rest of the windows in the house. I had to ring that doorbell and look in your face. You never said a word. You didn;t have to. For that, Uncle Rob, you win the Heisman. Uncle Rob, for never making me feel like a nephew, but always making me feel like a SON, for that, Uncle Rob, you win the Heisman."
December 6 - "Waiting for other people to produce is one of the toughest things a leader has to do." Dwight D. Eisenhower
Okay, okay, you Cornhuskers. I'll admit it - if Nebraska had handled Texas the first time the way they did Saturday, the only debate over BCS standings would be whether Virginia Tech or Florida State should be ranked number two behind the Cornhuskers.
Did what the announcers called a "shotgun" play - the one on which Alabama's Freddie Milons went 77 yards against Florida Saturday night - look a little to you like a single-wing play?
From Paul Maier, Mt. Vernon, Indiana- "Brad Hall, C back and DB, made first team in the AP, 2nd team in the HT- Herald Times (a Bloomington, IN paper that has done an all state for years). Micah Kessler, LB made 2nd team in both; Dustin Choate, G made honorable mention in the HT; Nathan Naab, K,DB,C back; made Hon. Mention as a kicker in the HT and 2nd team in the AP; Seth Rainey, A Back, our freshman, made 2nd team all State and first team HT. Not too bad for a team that has had only 6 all state players previously." Mt. Vernon set several new offensive records this season: Rushing Attempts--559; Yards gained--3233; Total Offense--3971; First Downs by rushing--125; Seth Rainey, the freshman A-Back, carried 311 times for 2095 yards and 17 TD's. As Coach Maier reminded me, Mt. Vernon rushed for 1300 yards three years ago - before converting to the Double-Wing. (When interviewed after Mt. Vernon's second-round playoff win this past season, one of Coach Maier's players told the reporter, "nobody believed we could do it except us". From there, the phrase "We Believe" caught on in the community. At a cookout held later the next week for the players, some of the seniors spoke, and one of them said, sarcastically, "It's amazing how many people believe now." Coach Maier said he used the opportunity to pull the players aside and tell them what a great lesson they had learned - how people will jump on your bandwagon when you win, but just as quickly desert you when you lose. He said he told them it would be that way throughout life and the only ones that truly count are those close to you. As Coach Maier said to me, "Amazing the things football teaches!")
ABC's Terry Bowden, at halftime of the Alabama-Florida game, observed that the team wearing the white shirts had won 16 of the last 19 Army-Navy games.
Based on the way New Jersey handles its playoffs, it sounds as if state associations are pretty much the same all over. Although a small state in area, New Jersey nevertheless is fairly neatly divided, at least in the minds of its citizens, into two parts: "North Jersey" and "South Jersey." North Jersey, far more populous, is largely influenced by New York, where many of its people work; South Jersey is mostly influenced by Philadelphia. New Jersey does not have state championships in football - there is a separate South Jersey championship. So this year, the geniuses in the state association decided to play two of the South Jersey championship games - the two largest classifications, Groups 3 and 4 - at Rutgers University - in the heart of North Jersey! It made about as much sense as holding the Chicago city championship game in Springfield, the Cleveland city championship in Columbus, or the Philadelphia city championship in Harrisburg.
The power of teamwork. Allen Iverson of the Philadelphia 76ers is an amazing athlete. In high school, he was Virginia's Player of the Year in both football and basketball. He was leading the NBA in scoring when he injured his thumb recently. So when the Sixers lost Iverson and all his offensive production, dire things were predicted for them. Instead, they are now 5-2 without him.
I assume that President Clinton is still looking for something to leave as his legacy - something good for people to remember him by. Since a Nobel Prize is probably out of the question, here, as my going-away gift, is an idea for him: the Wilmington, Delaware schools surveyed chronic truants and discovered that 75% of them did not have an alarm clock at home. Now, I'm sure that any man who can put 100,000 more police officers on our streets and 100,000 more teachers in our classrooms is smart enough to take it from there.
Seattle Super Sonics' coach Paul Westphal, observing that Phil Jackson, noted member of the counter-culture, had arrived in Seattle with his Lakers at the precise time all hell was breaking loose in the streets of the Emerald City: "I thought he might face a difficult decision - whether to come to the game or march on the administration."
December 4 - " The will to win is overrated. Everybody wants to win. The will to prepare to win is of far greater importance." Bob Knight
Shove that BCS baloney - was there a better football game this year than Marshall-Western Michigan?
LSU is going to make a third coach rich. This one, though, unlike Glen Mason and Dennis Erickson - who got raises out of Minnesota and Oregon State, respectively simply because they were rumored to be candidates for the LSU job - is actually going to coach there. It's Nick Saban, who is leaving Michigan State after doing a great job there. He is leaving MSU for what would seem to be an obvious reason - $1.25 million a year to coach in Baton Rouge. But the Los Angeles Times suggests another possible reason: Michigan. "We were never No. 1. It was always UM this or that," Saban told the news media in Louisiana. " This year," the Times wrote, " Michigan State beat Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State and finished 9-2. Yet, on the day Saban left, 9-2 Michigan accepted an invitation to the $12-million Orange Bowl. Michigan State is headed to the less prestigious Citrus Bowl. Saban could beat Michigan, but not the inferiority complex. Michigan is the national power, Michigan has the prestige, Michigan draws the television ratings--Michigan, Michigan, Michigan. Saban won't have that problem in Baton Rouge, where LSU dominates the state's attention."
4 out of my starting 5 offensive linemen, were overwhelming voted in by the other coaches. All of our opponents indicated that we had the "Best Coached Line" in the confernence. Quite and honor for my boys. B Back Paul Rosales was also voted in. Funny thing last night, Right Guard Nathan Jones practiced with the offensive coach last night (they are running an "I") and he said, "Coach JT, our splits with this "New" offense is almost 2 feet between the tackle and I. I feel almost naked without our tight splits....!" John Torres, Castaic, California
Trevor Hightree, an outstanding running back in Coach Jason Sopko's Double-Wing offense at Homer, Nebraska, was named first-team All State. Quite an honor in a state that takes the running game seriously.
Ohio State coach John Cooper, who followed up a huge contract extension with a season that most Buckeye fans would call, um, unacceptable, has evidently discovered the problem and taken steps to correct it. Same with Paul Hackett of USC, whose team at times seemed determined to see to it that Los Angeles lost not only pro football but major college football, too. The problem, it seems, was assistants. So both guys saved their own jobs by firing assistant coaches. Hey, being a college assistant coach isn't the easiest of jobs as it is - away from home recruiting, sucking up to high school all-stars, making a career out of a series of one-year contracts (while the head guy is working on a five-year deal that rolls over every year). But to be made a scapegoat for a head guy, who's paid five times what you're paid? If those individuals - assistants making a fifth of what the head coach makes - were the ones responsible for the team's success or failure, then why weren't they the ones making the big bucks?
Dear Coach: Success took 2 years but it finally paid off. We went 7-3 this year for the first ever winning season in school history (50+ years). We also qualified for the playoffs for the 1st time. We finished the season with over 3000 yards on the ground. Thanks, Coach Ward Courville, Gueydan High, Louisiana - Home of the Bears
I received this in the mail from Herb Persons, middle school coach at Kalamazoo Christian, in Kalamazoo, Michigan: One Sunday morning during service, a 2,000 member congregation was surprised to see two men enter, both covered from head to toe in black and carrying sub-machine guns. One of the men proclaimed, "Anyone willing to take a bullet for Christ remain where you are." Immediately, the choir fled, the deacons fled, and most of the congregation fled. Out of the 2,000 there only remained around 20. The man who had spoken took off his hood, looked at the preacher and said, "Okay Pastor, I got rid of all the hypocrites. Now you may begin your service. Have a nice day!" Then the two men turned and walked out.
December 3 - "If you've got a kid who isn't very good but he doesn't fumble, you're still way ahead of the kid who's good and fumbles a lot." Wayne Hardin
Driving through Maryland last night, I was reminded of when I lived there years ago, when my son was young and becoming intensely interested in sports. Talk radio was in its infancy, and located where we were, when the weather conditions were just right, he'd be able to pull in faraway stations - WBZ (Boston) and WBT (Charlotte) come to mind - and catch some really fascinating shows. If I recall correctly, there was a guy out of Charlotte (or as it Boston?) named Guy Manella, or something like that. Anyhow, there I was, driving along the John F. Kennedy Expressway, radio-surfing from Chicago stations to Toronto, to Charlotte to Boston, when I stumbled on WWVA, Wheeling, West Virginia, the radio home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. And for nearly two hours, I was treated to the Steelers-Panthers pre-game radio show and a little bit of the first half of the game. It was my first listen to Myron Cope, who I already knew of as a Pittsburgh tradition. He's written all kinds of football history books, and he's been with the Steelers forever. I think the guy is great. He comes across as just another character off the streets of Pittsburgh who happens to know and care about his football and his Steelers, whoe doesn't worry too much about saying the right things or saying them the right way - an unabashed Steelers' fan, but not one to look the other way when they are giving less than their best. Rating all the former NFL players doing "color" on TV for entertainment and enlightenment value, I would give him a 9.5 and the best of them - the best of a sorry lot - about a 4.5, on a scale of 1 to 10.
Coach - Beat Reseda 42-30 in a hard fought contest. The Castaic Cougars rushed for 357 yards with B-Back Paul Rosales rushing for 157 of those. The game was nip n' tuck for the majority of it until Reseda made the mistake of going to a 9 man front, figuring we could not pass. We scored twice on a 88 SP Half-back pass and a 2-Red. The passes put them back in a "sound" defense, whereas we continued to pound them out and literally wear them down. We ran 7 different offensive formations and even ran an East-West motion for the first time all year! Should have put it in earlier, the kids loved the east-west motion. Coach Wyatt, as you know this will be my last season, and it ended on a positive note, thanks to your and your great system. Sincerely, Coach John Torres, Castaic (California) Cougars. Valley Youth Conference Midget Division 3rd place winners!
Hugh. I thought that you would like to know that we have won the Thames Valley Conference Division 1 Jr Championship for the second consecutive year. In addition, the Division 2 Champion was also a Double Wing team. Last year we lost all of our starters except 4 on both offence and defence. To win the final we had to play the perennial powerhouse in our conference. We were able to run superpower almost at will. The Double-Wing is having a huge impact on our local football scene. Joe Robinson, South Secondary School, London, Ontario
Hello Coach, We had a great year! We are the Juneau Youth Football League Junior Division Champions! The Steelers ended the season with a 9-1 record...we scored 36 points 5 times this season. The coaches and players rally dig the system. The rest of the league is memorizing 60-70 plays. We have 10 plays that all work. We have ha d a 2-tear battle with the refs re: the wedge blocking rules. Finally they admitted they were wrong after 2 years. Better late than never. Thanks, Coach Rory Niere, Juneau, Alaska
Christine Brennan, resident feminist of USA Today's sports section, writes about being interviewedby a midwestern sports radio guy - "clueless," she called him - after the US women's soccer World Cup victory? What's the big deal? He asks her. He says nobody he's been talking to has been talking about women's soccer. "Then you're talking to the wrong people," she said she told him. What a brilliant explanation! Why don't the producers of failing TV shows try that one. Nobody says they're watching the show? Hey - you're talking to the wrong people. Nobody says they like your product? Hey - you're talking to the wrong people.
December 2 - "If you can handle their best plays, you can beat them." Eddie Robinson
Boy, even an expert tightrope walker like Our President is having trouble balancing his defense of free trade and the WTO with his desire to cuddle up to the groups whose pain he says he feels, groups made up of people with no visible means of support who happen to be in Seattle demonstrating against him because of his support of the WTO - greens, Rainforesters, animal rights activists, child labor opponents, Earth Firsters, Sierra Clubbers, Save-the-Whalers, etc., etc. The causes run the gamut from Free Tibet to Free ATMs. I mustn't forget the Anarchists. How about this for an indication of how far we have slid: "Part of what make this country great is that we can have debates like these," commented Secretary of Commerce William Daley, whose father, the late Richard J. Daley, mayor of Chicago, would have used a stronger word than "debates" to describe what has been going on in Seattle. The "debate" is taking strange forms, including "BARBIE KILLS," spray-painted on the marble facade of a downtown Seattle building. Hey, "debaters" - I live in Washington, and I didn't pay my taxes with the intention of having them go to clean up your graffiti or replace the windows you shattered. (Of course, I also didn't intend for my taxes to pay for a weenie governor who calls out the Washington National Guard - unarmed. On the other hand, if the police need a few bucks to buy more tear gas... )
The Mayor of Portland, a creature named Vera Katz who is a real beaut in several senses of the word, came out second-guessing her counterpart in Seattle on his city's preparation for handling the WTO demonstrators. Meanwhile, since Mayor Katz brought up the subject of preparation, a Portland radio station revealed that her city's Police force (motto: "We're much too busy dressing up as prostitutes and trapping Johns to find your stolen car or the guy who took it") doesn't even have gas masks.
Two of the truly great small-college programs will meet this Saturday in Collegeville, Minnesota, when Pacific Lutheran (10-1) plays St. Johns (11-0) in the NCAA Division III quarterfinals. Both programs are remarkable for the success they have enjoyed, and for the manner in which their coaches have achieved the success. St. Johns coach John Gagliardi (in Minnesota they pronounce it "Guh-LAR-dee") is the winningest active coach at any level. He is widely known - but seldom imitated - for his iconoclastic (tradition-breaking) coaching style. READ ABOUT A REMARKABLE MAN AND HIS REMARKABLE CAREER . Coach Gagliardi's opponent, Frosty Westering of Pacific Lutheran University is a rare coach himself, joining Coach Gagliardi among the college football coaches who have won at least 250 games,. including Eddie Robinson, Bear Bryant, Pop Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden and Tom Osborne. After 37 seasons, going into Saturday's game Coach Westering's overall record is 274-84-7. As an NAIA Division II member, Pacific Lutheran made 15 national playoff appearances from 1979-97. In 1998, the school's first year of NCAA Division III membership, PLU made the national playoffs. Coach Westering's approach to football and life has had a profound influence on countless players and coaches - including me. I first heard him speak at a clinic in 1976, when I was a new high school coach, Still recovering from the crash of the World Football league, I was looking at high school coaching merely as something I had to do to feed my family until I could once again hook up with the "big time." Coach Westering's message really hit home: "Make the Big Time Where You Are." It made me realize that I was cheating myself, my family and my players by worrying too uch about the next job, instead of concentrating all my efforts on the "here and now," and finding happiness right where I was, in a "Big Time" of my own making. His message has never changed, in all the years since then. In fact, it is the title of his book. READ ABOUT COACH WESTERING AND HIS DOUBLE-WIN PHILOSOPHY
An education expert named Alfie (now there's a guy I'm sure to take seriously) Kohn has written a book called "The Schools Our Children Deserve." In it he describes the kind of schools in which he contends kids learn best. He suggests parents look into their kids' classrooms and worry if: the chairs all face forward, and, even worse, if they are in rows (can you see whre this guy is headed?); if there are lists of rules "created by an adult" posted on the wall, along with consequences for rule-breaking; if the teacher's voice is the one most often heard; if the teacher mainly stands in the front of the room; if all exchanges include the teacher, and students wait to be called on; if all students are usually doing the same thing. Alfie, where've you been? This "teacher as facilitator" stuff, this garbage about kids "learning" from other kids, etc. - has all been going on since the 1970's, and the educational system we see today - and its inferior products - are largely the result. Hey, Alfie - what would your football team look like on Friday night if on Monday you had broken the players up into small groups, each at their own table, and had them explore the best ways to defend against next week's opponent, instead of just standing up in front of the room (with desks all in rows, facing front) and telling them what you've decided to do? How effective would your film (video) sessions be if everybody was talking, and yours was just one of the many voices heard? How many of your players would be headed for the post-game kegger if you didn't make your rules clear?
Coach Kent Wigle of Marshfield High in Coos Bay, Oregon, goes deep into the state AAAA playoffs most years - partly because Coos Bay is a real football town, but partly because he knows the game. Last Saturday, against Portland Central Catholic, with Central backed up against its own goal in the final seconds of the first half, Coach Wigle showed just how well he knows the game. With Central lined up to punt, Coach Wigle instructed his return man to make a fair catch if at possible. When he did just that - at the Central Catholic 35 - Coach Wigle invoked a rarely-used rule: he elected to try a free kick. Check it out - following a fair catch, the rules allow you to put the ball in play by snap or free kick (one rule that our football has in common with Australian Rules). And the ball may be kicked from the spot of the catch, rather than from seven yards back.There is no "operation" necessary - no center snap or hold, no precise timing. No rush, either - the opponents have to stand 10 yards away. So with the ball spotted on the 35 and Central Catholic's players standing helplessly 10 yards away, the Marshfield kicker stuck a 45-yard field goal. Later, down 21-17 and facing a fourth-and-28 on his own 16 with just over a minute to play, Marshfield's quarterback heaved the ball far upfield in desperation into a pack of players, where it was tipped twice before falling into the arms of a wide-open Marshfield receiver, who ran it in for the score. The miracle play enabled Marshfield to pull out the win - but it was the free-kick field goal that proved to be the final margin of victory. The Commissioner of the Portland Football Officials Association said that in his 40 years of officiating he had never seen the rule used.
December 1 - "The team that controls the ball on offense neutralizes the other team's offense." Ara Parseghian
The Pacific Northwest sure is great country, but...after 24 straight days in November without seeing the sun, yesterday was the Portland area's third consecutive sunny day. (The rain wasn't all bad - it fell as snow at higher elevations, and now that Mount Hood is visible again, it's a lot whiter than it was when we saw it last.) Oh - the rain started again last night.
If you haven't noticed, there is quite a show taking place to the north of us in Seattle, as advocates of all sorts of causes demonstrate. Many of them are union workers understandably concerned about the export of high-paying American jobs to lower-wage countries. They have been joined by other well-meaning folks concerned about "corporate globalism," but also, unfortunately, by a large, motley crew from the professional protest circuit, who variously dangle from buildings, dress up like sea turtles and butterflies, barricade streets, and smash windows at McDonald's and Nike Town, vying with one another for new and imaginative ways to draw the eyes of the TV cameras. The police of Seattle, as liberal a city as you'll find in America, would much rather have sat down and counseled the unruly visitors, but finally had to act like real big-city police, using tear gas and pepper spray in hopes of reclaiming their city from the barbarians. (Sure makes a fellow long for Mayor Daley.) It's the sixties revisited, as spoiled children of all ages (where do they get the money to fly to Seattle, anyhow?) gather to protest against such corporate giants as Nike and the "consumerism" it represents - while marching in their Nikes. They're in Seattle because something called the WTO happens to be meeting there this week - at least it would like to meet, if the demonstrators will just unchain themselves and allow its delegates into the building where the meeting is scheduled. According to the mob in the streets, the WTO is responsible for everything that anyone could possibly dislike. To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh - without even knowing a whole lot about the WTO, when you look at some of the people protesting it, you have to think that it can't be all bad.
Coach Tim Rice, of Boothbay Regional High, in Boothbay Harbor, Maine was selected Maine Class C Coach of the Year for the third straight year. Coach Jack Tourtillotte, his offensive coordinator, said Tim stood up in front of 500 people and gave much of the credit for his success to the Double-Wing. Naturally, I think that's wonderful, but Jack said he nearly had a hemorrhage when he heard Tim say it! (Actually, it's not as if Boothbay's success with the Double-Wing is a big secret in those parts anymore.)
There are still some media guys, including some working for a network desperate to build a TV audience for the upcoming Texas-Nebraska game, that continue to hint at ways that Nebraska can somehow "jump past" Virginia Tech - a team that did everything required of a national championship contender - and usurp a spot in the "national championship" game against Florida State. Nebraska is a great team. Maybe better than Virginia Tech, in fact. But Nebraska has already lost to Texas once this season. Period. And Nebraska was fortunate last Saturday that Colorado's kicker guy choked. Period. Florida State was anointed number one early in the season, and yet against common opponents (Clemson, Miami and Virginia), Virginia Tech outperformed the Seminoles. If the BCS people hope to keep foisting this "National Championship" crap off onto the American people for another year, they would be wise to forget about their earlier hopes of easing little-known Virginia Tech out of their plans. Otherwise, they may as well drop the charade and limit their selection to the SEC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10 (fat chance!), plus Florida State (without the Seminoles, the ACC gets about the same respect as the Big East or Mountain West) and Notre Dame. Actually, unless you're a media darling, even membership in a major conference is no guarantee, as Kansas State learned last year.
Coach Terry Verrelli's Wilmington Area Greyhounds (New Wilmington, Pennsylvania) completed another successful season. It was an honor meeting Coach Verrelli at last year's Cleveland clinic, because he has built a powerful program in Western Pennsylvania. Beginning in 1994, his Greyhounds won four straight district championships, and were runners-up the past two seasons. This past season was another good one, with the Greyhounds finishing 9-2 and narrowly losing the district title to Sharon, 13-6.
"The only advice I gave him was, basically, you should look at a school and one thing you should think about is: If you were to get hurt, where would you want to go to school, basketball aside?" Mike Dunleavy, coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, commenting on his son, Michael's choice of a college. (Michael, a high school blue-chipper who could have chosen any college in the country, chose Duke, where now, as a true freshman, he is the sixth man.)
November 30 - "When you go to war, you stay until you either get killed or you win." Bum Phillips
We had our awards banquet last night at Washougal High School, where I said a sorrowful good-bye to ten seniors, all of whom were indispensible. Seven of our players were voted First Team All-Southwest Washington AA League. Dan Stineback, our C-Back, who rushed for over 1,000 yards and scored 20 TD's, including 8 TD passes - and intercepted five passes - was named League Offensive Player of the Year. Guard Teddy Bakken was named to the Vancouver Columbian's "Dream Team," an all-Southwest Washington team made up of all classes.
Yesterday was the opening day of buck season in Pennsylvania, and 830,000 hunters took to the woods. 830,000! And still, deer have multiplied to the extent that in Pennsylvania alone, more than 40,000 deer will be killed this year - by automobiles!
Coach Dewey Sullivan is in the finals again. Coach Sullivan, of Dayton, Oregon is that state's winningest coach, and now his Pirates, 11-0, are getting ready to play in next week's Class 2A final against neighboring Amity. Getting there wasn't easy. On Saturday, Dayton saw Sherman County score and make a two-point conversion to tie their semi-final game at 36-36 with 1:19 remaining. Dayton had to drive 69 yards to score the winning touchdown on a 38-yard pass from Brian Cruikshank to Greg Ponder with 10 seconds left. It was Dayton's first pass of the game. "I was worried," Cruikshank told the Portland Oregonian's John Nolen afterward, "because I don't think I've completed a pass in the postseason!" Coach Sullivan, definitely a run-oriented coach who favors the belly-T out of a full house with two tight ends, got a copy of my tape a few years ago, and - this is no kidding - told me that he liked what he saw so much that if he ever ran any other offense, it would be the Double-Wing.
When Vikings' great Jim Marshall was installed Sunday into the Vikings' Ring of Honor, he gave thanks to his coach, Bud Grant. Coach Grant, who was on hand to honor Marshall, looks as if he could still step out there and coach the game. What a stud he was! A native of Superior, Wisconsin and a graduate of the University of Minnesota, he is a human answer to a trivia question, as one of the few men to have played two professional sports simultaneously (Minneapolis Lakers and Philadelphia Eagles). He also did something unimaginable in these days of million-dollar NFL salaries when he left the Eagles after two seasons and jumped to Winnipeg of the Canadian Football League. After four years as a player at Winnipeg, he took over as coach of the Blue Bombers, and during his 10 seasons there won five straight Western Conference championships, from 1958 to 1962, and won the Grey Cup in 1961. In 1967, he was named head coach of the Vikings, where his teams made success seem almost routine: until his "first retirement" following the 1983 season, the Vikings finished first or tied for first in their conference ten times. His "retirement" lasted just one season, because when things didn't go well for his successor, Les Steckel, Coach Grant was persuaded to return as Vikings' head coach for the 1985 season, following whichhe retired for good. By any standards, Coach Grant's career was distinguised, a model of coaching consistency highlighted by four Super Bowl teams. Unfortunately, none of those Super Bowl teams was victorious, leaving Coach Grant vulnerable to certain guys in the news media who thrived on negativity. That one little opening was all they needed. The Howard Cosells of this world, guys who themselves couldn't lead a team of alcoholics across the street to an open bar, loved being able to say, "He can't win the Big One."
Well coach - a pretty good end to a pretty good season - we went 3-1 in our tournament, getting beat in overtime by a team from up North (Montabello; 18-12) - they were featured in the Denver Post last weekend as an "unbeatable" pee wee team for the past umpteen seasons..it was followed up by a story a few days later about all the falsified birth certs, etc..in the Police Athletic League that they are a part of..I guess that would explain the fact that not one of their front 5 on defense was under 130lbs! asking your 62lb guard to trap is a tall order!! - We played in the "A" division, which was all the Super Bowl and Semi-Final teams from around Denver - Ended up 3rd place - Here's the best part - Our final game was against our nemesis - the team QB's by little Jack Elway - We haven't beat them in 3 years, including this year when they gave us our only regular season loss in the first game ..we hadn't completely gotten the offense down yet - anyway, my boys SPANKED them tonight, 39-7 and it could have been worse but I backed off - they just couldn't stop our Super Powers - it was a great way to end things - Scott Barnes, Parker, Colorado
November 29 - "Too many coaches worry too much about what their opponent does, and not enough about what they need to do to get their own guys better." John Wooden
Congratulations to my good buddy Joe Gardi, and his Hofstra Flying Dutchmen, 27-15 winners in Saturday's Division I-AA playoffs over Lehigh. (Regardless of who the opponent was, I'm sure Joe was pleased, for once, not to have to open the playoffs at Delaware.) Next up: Illinois State, 56-13 winner over Colgate. Other D I-AA playoff games next Saturday: North Carolina A & T vs. Youngstown State, Troy State vs. Florida A & M, and defending champ UMass vs. Georgia Southern.
Coach Matt Durgin, from Lynn, Massachusetts called to tell me he was watching the Western Pennsylvania Class AA championship game between Washington (11-1) and Waynesburg (12-0), and noticed that Coach Guy Montecalvo's Washington club was doing a great job of running our Double-Wing from a variety of sets. In the time we spoke, Coach Durgin gave me a play-by-play, describing Washington running out of Tight, Slot, Spread and Over. I told Coach Durgin that I was a little upset with him because I hadn't been able to find his scores anywhere online, while there he was having a 9-2 season at Lynn Classical High - and not even telling me about it! It was Coach Durgin's third year at Classical, and his second year running the Double-Wing. It was also his second straight winning season, the first time Lynn Classical has had back-to-back winning seasons in 19 years. Thanksgiving Day games are still very big in the Northeast, and this year's 20-0 win over city rival Lynn English made the season extra special. Matt's dad, Hal, a former coach himself, accompanied his son to last year's Providence clinic, and still helps coach the line. (He likes the Double-Wing.)
Jon Condo, who has been a super Double-Wing B-Back for the last three years for Coach Chris Davidson at Philipsburg-Osceola (Pennsylvania) High, has committed to play at Maryland.
In the most recent Hartford Courant Connecticut High School poll that I could get my hands on, two Double-Wingers were ranked: Fitch High, of Groton, still unbeaten, at number four, and Tolland High, also unbeaten, at number sixteen.
Recently, I wrote about six Portland, Oregon high school teachers who had sent a memo to their principal protesting what they viewed as their district's one-sided promotion of homosexuality through "sexual diversity" workshops and materials, without providing any argument in opposition. Predictably, those teachers have come under attack as hatemongers. According to one letter in Friday's Portland paper, "Giving any credibility or attention to the arguments of these six individuals is ultimately no more compelling than publishing the strident rantings of white supremacists who object to teaching students about slavery or the Holocaust." That's it. Try to elevate objections to your attempts to legitimize your "lifestyle" to the level of two of history's grossest human rights violations. When you can't attack your opponents' argument, attack your opponents. Call them Nazis. Evidently the same First Amendment used to protect pornographers and flag burners does not extend to people with sincere objections to controversial practices.
Austin Sendlein, a 6-4, 235-pound linebacker at Scottsdale, Arizona Chapparal High, has a special way of trying to strike fear into the opposition - he wears one all-white contact lens! Sounds as if there may be a bit more to him than Brian Bosworth-style hot-dogging, though: he is good enough to have committed last spring to Texas, where his dad, Robin, was an All-America outside linebacker before playing in the NFL with the Vikings and Dolphins.
November 27 - "Don't design your offense to attack their defense; do what you do so well that they have to get out of what they normally do in order to stop you." Dick Vermeil
We got a call from Australia yesterday from our son, Ed, and his Aussie friend, Michelle. They were not just calling to wish us a Happy Thanksiving - they also called to ask my wife how to cook a turkey! Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Australia, but they intend to treat Michelle's parents to a good old traditional Thanksgiving dinner today nonetheless. I wish them luck. Good on ya, as the Aussies would say. The metric conversions - pounds into kilograms and degrees Fahrenheit into degrees Celsius - are their problem.
While Virginia Tech was busy making clear why it deserves to be in the Sugar Bowl against Florida State, Nebraska was showing why they are Nebraska, in fending off the fury of Colorado's comeback and winning in overtime yesterday. Now, then, you option guys out there - will you admit that when you have just recovered a Colorado fumble inside field goal range, with a minute-and-a-half remaining and all that's necessary to do is run the clock down, running the option - and pitching the ball - is, um, risky? (The mishandled pitch and the resultant Nebraska turnover led to a last-second Colorado field goal attempt which, had it been good, would have cost the Cornhuskers the win, and a place in the Big 12 title game.)
Heard a talking head on the USC-Louisiana Tach game pronounce Bossier City, Louisiana "BOSS-ee-yay City" (it's BOH-zhyer City) and I began bracing myself for the bowl season and all the eastern guys who will try so hard to be proper by pronouncing Oregon "ARR-i-gahn" when the natives all say "ORY-gun". As an easterner myself, I used to go nuts in the classroom correcting kids who said "DEL-a-where" and " Ill-i-NOISE."
Anybody else feel like telling these geniuses who oversee the BCS that they need to eliminate or at least modify "margin of victory" as one of the criteria for their ratings? If it has be taken into consideration at all, why not disregard any margin of victory greater than 21 points? It is an injustice to our game and to the people who play it and coach it to reward people for running it up against vastly weaker opponents.
One of my assistants, Cole Shaffer, moved around a bit with his family before settling in the Northwest - where I had the privilege of coaching him - and he still retains an interest in the sports in such former homes as New Orleans, Billings, Montana and Albuquerque. He takes special pride in Bobby Newcombe, an Albuquerque product now starring at Nebraska, and passed this along to me: "Newcombe accomplished so much over his high school career that it's hard for him to think of something he missed out on. But there is one thing. 'A state football championship,' he says. 'I was able to be a state champion in many individual track events but never a team sport. Even after winning a national championship at Nebraska, I still have memories of not having been able to finish out high school with a championship.' Here's a guy," Cole says, "who was player of the year in New Mexico in track, football, and basketball his junior and senior seasons, a national champ at Nebraska and he still wishes he could have won a state football championship, a team championship. That's pretty cool, especially the way he refers to it as a 'team' championship. I thought you might get a kick out it." (We were just talking about Bobby Newcombe last week, when Cole, from his side of the generation gap, argued that Newcombe was probably the best football player ever to come out of New Mexico. I was ready for him there, because I grew up in Philadelphia, and until Mr. Newcombe plays a few more years, my vote has to go to Tommy McDonald, an Albuquerque native who was an NFL Hall-of-Famer with the Eagles and before that an All-America halfback at Oklahoma under Bud Wilkinson.
Okay, okay - it's only a game. But can you name me any event other than a football game that has the power to heal - or at least distract - entire communities, the way East Carolina's win over Miami took peoples' minds off the destruction of a hurricane, or the way Texas A & M's defeat of Texas helped the Aggie family momentarily to forget the tragic loss of lives in the collapse of their traditional bonfire? (One reader with all good intentions but no apparent knowledge of Aggie spirit wrote in to the Portland Oregonian Friday suggesting that in the future, Aggie students forego the bonfire and spare all those trees, or, failing that, cut the wood and donate it to poor nations whose people are forced to scrounge for firewood.)
November 26- "Maybe we have so long ridiculed authority in the family, discipline in education, and decency in conduct and law that our freedom has brought us close to chaos." Vince Lombardi
Did you watch the pro entertainment yesterday? Did you also manage to watch Mississippi State's great comeback against Ole Miss in last night's football game?
In what has been called the most unbelievable comeback in West Virginia high school football playoff history, a Double-Wing team, the number-one ranked Parkersburg Big Reds, scored three touchdowns in the final five and one-half minutes to pull out a 21-18 victory over 9th-ranked Huntington in the quarterfinals of the state Class AAA playoffs. Needless to say, they did not do it by grinding it out and controlling the ball.
Huntington's third touchdown, with 8:02 left in the game, capped a 17-play drive and gave the visiting Highlanders a seemingly insurmountable 18-0.Parkersburg managed finally to get on the scoreboard with 5:35 remaining to make it 18-7, but appeared doomed when the onside kickoff failed, and Huntington began a drive, aided by a pass interference penalty, that took it to the Parkersburg 20 before running out of steam, with 1:47 left. Four passes put Parkersburg in the end zone with 55 second remaining, and a successful two-point conversion put the Big Reds within field goal range at 18-15.
This time the Parkersburg onside kick was successful; four plays later, Parkersburg threw complete for the apparent winning touchdown with 28 seconds remaining, only to have it brought back because of an ineligble man downfield. On fourth down from the Huntington 27, the Parkersburg field goal attempt was off the mark, but Huntington was flagged for roughing the kicker, with 9 seconds showing on the clock.
Parkersburg Coach Marshall Burdette's decision to try another field goal - now from the Huntington 13 - was overruled by his players, and the resultant pass was successful for the winning score, with 2 seconds left.
Parkersburg, now 12-0, will host Musselman, winner by 29-13 winner over Morgantown, in a semifinal game this weekend.
Scottsbluff, Nebraska, had a great year runing the Double-Wing, and made it to the state Class B final game last week before being defeated by Elkhorn, 23-8. It was Scottsbluff's first time in the finals, but it was Elkhorn's second state title in the last four years. Coach Jim Sinnerud writes me from Omaha with high praise for Elkhorn, which he calls "one of the very best football programs in the state...It seems that every year they are deep in the hunt for the class B state championship. They're so regarded this year (13-0 record) that they've rated in the class A rankings as number 9!"
The U.S. Army is in hot water among certain taxpayer groups, as well it should be, for using some of the money the IRS takes from us to sponsor the weekly atrocity known as "WWF Smackdown!" (It's a pro wrestling show, if you didn't know.) Pro wrestling, of course, is a true oxymoron, about 10 per cent actual wrestling and 90 per cent freak show, a formula perfectly tuned to attract the young males among which the Army apparently hopes to find recruits. ("I cannot believe people watch dot sheet," a guy in Finland once told me.) Perhaps fishing for recruits among the followers of WWF is one reason why the military had to discharge more than 3,000 recruits last year with known psychiatric histories. (Can you imagine some of those wrestling fans with automatic weapons in their hands?) Interesting parallel: the NFL, if you care to do the math, shows plays lasting an average of about eight second or so, interspersed among "breaks" lasting an average of 60 seconds - cleverly used for instant replay, sideline interviews, John Madden's appetite, player histrionics, referees' explanations and expert analysis, not to mention network promotions (of shows not suitable for viewing by the little kids who watch NFL games) and commercial messages. It's close to the 10 percent action to 90 per cent sideshow ratio found in pro wrestling. Perhaps hoping to draw the line more clearly between it and wrestling, the NFL has sent word to its players that it will not tolerate the newest way of dissing opponents - the throat slash. Some NFL performers (I prefer to use that word) are said to be upset about the policy - because wrestling doesn't fine its guys, who routinely make worse gestures than that. "This is an entertainment business, and I know a lot of kids look up to us, but they watch wrestling, too, " said Steelers' performer Lee Flowers. "Wrestling is a multibillion-dollar business, and they're not fined." Can't argue with that kind of logic. Hey - in the immortal words of future NFL performer Peter Warrick, "It's not like I shot the President."
Coach Wyatt, Well, we finished up 7-3. I'm sorry you are out of the playoffs, but congratulations to you on a great year. Ron Myers and MVC beat us 28-3 to secure his first spot ever in the playoffs for MVC. They also run the Double-Wing and are very tough. We won our last game 48-6 against Santa Cruz and missed the playoffs by a point. Our league plays in the playoffs in the California Central Coast Section and they go on a points basis rating the teams you play as A, B, or C. Its a complicated system and since we are not in the San Jose area our league is considered a B league even though our league usually does well in the playoffs. Both MVC and San Lorenzo Valley are in the playoffs and both won first round games this past weekend. This year completed our second of running the Double-Wing exclusively and last year we were 8-2 so for the combined two years we are 15-5. That's pretty fair country football in my book!
Also our little B back Carlos Flores broke our school rushing record which has stood since the mid 70s with 1050 yards, averaging 8.1 yards per carry with 8 TDs. He's only a junior so we are looking forward to having him back next year. We led the league in offense, averaging 331 yards per game. Hugh, I hope you are planning to do a clinic in San Jose again this clinic season. I look forward to meeting you in person and talking double wing football with you. Thanks for all the support this season and taking the time to write back to me and for having such a great website! Your old shoulder blocking devotee and true believer in the DW system, Brad Elliott - Line Coach Soquel High School
If the LSU coaching job is worth big bucks to guys who won't even be coaching there, imagine what it will be worth to the guy they actually do hire! All it took for Dennis Erickson of Oregon State and Glenn Mason of Minnesota to get contract extensions - with generous raises - out of their schools was to make themselves attractive by having good years at schools not noted for being football powers, then allow rumors to circulate that LSU was interested in them.
November 25- Since 1961, the Wall Street Journal has published the following as its lead editorial on the day before Thanksgiving. It is the chronicle of events of the year 1620 as written by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of the Plymouth Colony, and was based on the account of the events of the pilgrims' departure from their adopted home in Holland and their arrival in the New World, by William Bradford, Governor of the Colony.
So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years, but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city, and therein quieted their spirits.
When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all things ready, and sch of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love.
The next day they went on board, and their friends with them, where truely doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the Key as spectators could not refrain from tears. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away, that were thus loath to depart, their Reverend Pastor, falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with his most fervent prayers unto the Lord and His blessing; and then with mutual embraces and many tears they took their leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them.
Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they now had no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succour; and for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search unknown coasts.
Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in apperance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew.
If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of the world.
On Thanksgiving Day, in the soft-and-growing-softer America of 1999, it behooves us all to give thanks to God for the sort of people - wherever they came from and whenever they arrived - whose unbelievable courage, tenacity, self-sacrifice and devotion made it possible for us to enjoy the comforts and security of life in the United States.
November 24 - "We can talk about all those guys in the halls who are very important to us, but the kid on the field is still more important." Daryl Rogers
Here's a nice letter sent to John Torres, a California youth coach, from a mother who initially opposed her son's playing football: "I also will take a moment to thank you and the other coaches. It saddens me to realize that this group will break up once again. I never thought I would say that I have throughly enjoyed a football season. But, I am saying that now. You have given so much of yourselves to these boys and taught them more than just the game of football. You have kindled a spirit with in me, and I know I can speak for other parents too, that makes me look at this sport in a new light. It has been exciting watching you work with the boys, teaching the boys, and, watching them grow with you. I know Stephen will never forget these last two seasons. He has a very high level of pride and respect for you and the other coaches - the Castaic Cougars will always be a part of him (Bill & I too). Sorry - didn't mean to make this so long, but I just wanted you to know how important you are to all of us Cougar families.... "(A mother)
Had a question regarding Coach Ralph Balducci and the supposed "large gay community" at Portland's Cleveland High School, where he coaches. The question was this: even allowing for the inflated "10 per cent" of the population that gays like to claim, how large could this "community" at one high school possibly be, anyhow? Good question. More likely, in the way that small gatherings of demonstrators tend to exaggerate their size and importance, the claimed "large community" is closer to a handful. People whose lives focus on single issues tend to suffer from a narrow perspective - what I call the Ralph Caliri effect. Ralph Caliri ran the TV station that did our games in Philly when I worked with the World Football League franchise there years ago. We were sitting in Houston killing time before a game, and to illustrate the phenomenon of narrow perspective, he told a story (that may or may not be true) about a network guy in the early days of TV who couldn't see any value in televising pro football - at least not when he was told that the NFL played on Sundays. "Sundays?" he supposedly asked. "That's when everybody plays polo!"
The Cincinnati Bengals are last in more than just the AFC Central. They're also the only NFL team - the only one of the 118 teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball, in fact - not to have their own Web site. They claim they've been busy with construction of their new stadium. Meanwhile, other teams that presumably are also rather busy with new things still manage to show up online: the new Houston NFL team, although still nameless, has URLs for eight of its proposed names, and two NHL teams which won't start play until next season - the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild - have sites up and running.
I am as appalled as anyone else by the vast number of weapons that find their way into the wrong hands. But I believe I have a decent working knowledge of the Constitution, and the Second Amendment seems fairly clear to me. There was even a time when every man in a village was required to have a firearm and to serve in the town's volunteer military force - its militia - as a condition of living there. By now everyone ought to know that guns - especially loaded guns kept where little kids can get at them - are dangerous. All too many kids are killed by guns kept at home. Even more, though, die every year from drowning. And far more are killed in automobile accidents. Those people who favor disarming all law-abiding Americans ought at least to apologize to a handful of Oregonians who are alive today thanks to their firearms. Seems a con, released from jail last week through some sort of administrative error, promptly shot two people with whom he had a dispute, killing one and wounding the other. In urgent need of a getaway vehicle, the killer tried forcing his way into a house where a 16-year-old kid was baby-sitting his 7-year-old brother. The 16-year-old grabbed the family .22 rifle and sent the killer on his way with a bullet in his chest. Still not convinced that he was in the wrong neighborhood, our killer, now bleeding from his chest wound, tried his break-in act on another house where a woman was home alone. She, too was prepared, smashing his hand with her 9 mm pistol as he reached in the door, causing him to drop his gun and sending him fleeing at gunpoint. Now I ask you - was that 7-year-old in more danger from the .22 rifle in his house, or from the murderous con breaking in the door? And is there anyone who thinks that being armed didn't have something to do with the fact that that woman is alive today?
Mere days after he was being prepared for burial, it looks as if Carl Torbush may be okay at North Carolina.. After going 7-5 in 1998, Carolina finished 4-8 in 1999, the Tar Heels' worst record in years. A 45-7 loss at Maryland followed by a defeat by Houston and a 28-3 upset by Division I-AA Furman put his job in jeopardy, and not even an upset over 11-point favorite N.C. State appeared to be enough to save his job Forget the fact that the Tar Heels lost starting QB Ronald Curry in an overtime loss to Georgia Tech; forget the fact that he had been forced to put a converted defensive back and a converted running back under center after runing out of quarterbacks. had scored only 35 points since starting quarterback Ronald Curry ruptured his Achilles' tendon in a 31-24 overtime loss at Georgia Tech. Following last Saturday's season-ending 38-0 win over Duke, after which Coach Torbush, considered very popular among his players, was carried off on their shoulders, Carolina officials apparently reconsidered their intentions of removing him.
Meantime, in nearby Raleigh, N.C. State's coach Mike O'Cain is now sweating out his job, after finishing 6-6 (he's 41-10 overall) including a late-season upset at the hands of North Carolina, and a bitter defeat to upstart rival East Carolina in the season finale. The ECU loss has to be especially painful to the Wolfpack faithful, putting the Pirates on an equal footing in in-state recruiting. (For many years, until legislators brought pressure, N.C. State resisted scheduling East Carolina.)
The Houston Cougars finished their season with three straight wins, defeating Tulane, LSU and Army, but not even a seven-win season was enough to save Coach Kim Helton's job. In making the announcement, Houston AD Chet Gladchuk said something about returning Houston's program to "national stature," which some of you may remember Houston enjoyed in the late 60's and early 70's under Bill Yeoman. Houston finished sixth in a very tough Conference USA with a 3-3, and is, technically at least, bowl-eligible.
November 23- "Don't wait until fall and say, 'I really hope we have some leaders.'" Grant Teaff, former Baylor Coach and now Executive Director of the American Football Coaches Association
Jasper Place (Edmonton, Alberta) Wins Provincial Championship! "On Saturday the Jasper Place Rebels defeated the Raymond Comets 39-37 to win the Provincial High School Tier I Championship (schools over 900). The Rebels handed the Comets their first loss in 48 games against Canadian teams. The 3-time Provincial Champions were stunned at the ability of the Rebels. The difference, no doubt the Double Wing. The game was an offensive battle throughout. Coach Wyatt, thanks for all your support. We will send more info and stats soon. Thanks, Rebels Coaching Staff" (It "took a set" for Head Coach Bryan Buchkowsky to envision how our Double-Wing would work in the Canadian game, and he and his staff are to be congratulated not only for having the necessary courage and foresight to commit to it, but also for being able to sell the offense to their kids, and then making it work. In a phone conversation Monday with Coach Buchkowsky, I learned something about the dedication of Canadian coaches: he has a seven-man staff for his senior (17-18) team, and a seven-man staff for his junior (15-16) team; in keeping with the practice at most Canadian high schools, no one is paid a stipend.)
Ralph Balducci is a good coach. But he is head coach at Cleveland High in Portland, Oregon, a tough place to coach. I first got to know Ralph back in 1979 when I was coaching a semi-pro team called the Van-Port (for Vancouver-Portland) Thunderbirds, and he was a very tough, very aggressive offensive lineman just a few years out of Oregon Tech (which has since given up football). We had some tough hombres on that club, but nobody wanted to screw around with Ralph. We have become good friends over the years, and so I have suffered along with him as Ralph, a very knowledgeable and competitive guy, has struggled with how to deal with his situation. He is appreciated by his administration for all the good things he does (for kids who desperately need those good things), but at the same time, his competitive nature can't accept that fact that it is very difficult to win with the kids Cleveland attracts. (Portland has an open-enrollment policy which basically allows eight-graders to choose the high school they will attend.) So I knew what was on his mind the other day, when he called and asked me if I'd seen the Portland Oregonian's "Living" section. In fact, I had, and I thought immediately about Ralph and what the article meant to his hopes of attracting some athletes to Cleveland. There, pictured sitting on the front steps of Cleveland High School, is a young woman, a 16-year-old junior whose attire and grooming would best be described as bizarre - from bright-red, closely-cropped hair, to all-black jump suit, to a lacy, long-sleeved undergarment which looks as if it has been assembled from castoff lingerie and covers both hands with at least a foot to spare. She looks upset, and in fact she is, because she is "openly lesbian," and she has just learned that six of Cleveland's teachers - all male, by the way - have sent a memo to the school's principal, accusing the Portland Public Schools of promoting homosexuality. The schools, they claim, have provided "diversity workshops," books and essays designed to help teachers "better understand gays and lesbians," without providing any materials suggesting that homosexuality might be wrong. Naturally, the six teachers have come under attack, with several students suggesting boycotts of their classes. "We have a large gay community here at Cleveland," the Oregonian quotes one student as saying. "If they have a problem with people being gay, then they shouldn't be teachers." Excuse me, but might schools have better things to do than create a climate in which kids are encouraged to identify themselves by the variant sex that they practice? While kids are - rightly - sent home from most schools for wearing tee-shirts advocating certain heterosexual practices, those same schools, in the name of the false god of "diversity," allow the formation of gay and lesbian clubs.
Regarding my story yesterday about Lincoln Way (Illinois) High, its "vaunted Double-Wing attack", and my speculation that it traced back to Gordie Gillespie, former coach at College of St. Francis, in Joliet, Illinois - a prince of a guy and a heck of a coach:
(1) "Hugh- I did read your news update about Lincoln Way. Their offensive coordinator used to be at Bremen High School. Bremen did get their slot offense from the College of St. Francis.Lincoln Way runs from Spread (a litlle slot) as does Naperville North (The Naperville North coach has ties to Joliet Catholic). Lincoln-Way is a school of about 4,000 students.By the way, Dan Sharp (Gordie Gillespie's Offensive coordinator at St. Francis and JC) is now the head coach at Joliet Catholic. Joliet Catholic is playing Metamora for the state championship on Saturday in class4A. From what I hear, Gordie is a part time assistant at JC now. He helped Dan during two-a-days and comes out to the games.Nonetheless, Gordie Gillespie has had a huge influence on South Suburban football. - Jon McLaughlin, Rich Central High School, Olympia Fields, Illinois"
(2) "Coach Wyatt, FYI - Metamora, who beat Rich Central (4A) and Galena, who beat North Shore Country Day School (1A) are in their division's championship game this weekend. Judging by the scores, the DW teams did quite well against these championship contenders. Metamora plays Joliet Catholic, who has had a great year. The newspapers have given a lot of credit to former coach Gordie Gillespie who has helped out in practice and in the booth during games. Corey Paus, UCLA's starting quarterback, came from Lincoln Way where his younger brother, a junior, starts at QB.Finally, the Deerfield Young Warriors had their football banquet last week and what a huge success! Out of 115 kids in the program, over 100 attended. When you throw in parents and siblings, we had close to 300 people there. I can't wait until next year. Regards, Keith Babb, Deerfield, Illinois"
Grrr. I just finished reading a feature on a Portland, Oregon HS football official - an umpire - who was quoted as saying "there's holding on every play; if it doesn't affect the play, I don't call it." What is this - more of the NFL thinking infiltrating our game? The football version of the NBA? ("If we called travelling every time there's a violation, we'd never finish the game.") The lineman's version of the "uncatchable ball?" Who is he to decide whether it affects a game? Has he suddenly become a coach, too? Or is he like an activist judge - "Yes, you broke the law, but I don't like the law, so I'm going to let you go." Or is it more of that "it doesn't rise to the level of an impeachable offense" garbage? And since when is a guy who is supposed to focus on interior line play able to look around and see whether it affects a play or not, anyhow? Aren't these the same guys who, when you or one of your kids tells them "watch out for number such-and-such - he's holding", will tell you, "I can't see everything."
Submitted by Jim Sinnerud, of Omaha, who says it has made the rounds on the MIT campus for some time: "School is composed of three factors: studies, sleep and social life. Pick two."
November 22- "If a team has never won, they've probably never been organized." Charlie McClendon, former LSU head coach
God forgive me for nearly forgetting the unforgettable. Today marks the 36th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was a sad and gruesome time, indelibly imprinted in the memories of those of us who lived through it, and none of the things that the scandalmongers have since dredged up about the late President have made those memories any less poignant. If you believe in luck, it would be easy to argue that our nation's luck began changing that day.
Bill Lawlor, Chicago youth coach, attended an Illinois playoff game this past weekend between Lincon Way and Schaumburg, attracted in some measure because of the newspapers' description of Lincoln Way's "vaunted double wing attacks." Here is Coach Lawlor's descripion of it to me - "I have seen Lincoln Way and Naperville North both win two state titles in the last four years running this set. Really, it is Spread with 3 foot line splits. Both schools have 85 man squads and great athletes and throw out of it probably 65 percent of the time and never really pull, except to trap. Much more the Run and Shoot than double wing." From his description, it sounds as if it is a version of the offense made famous in those parts by Coach Gordie Gillespie, who first ran it at a Catholic high school (I think Joliet Catholic) and then at College of St. Francis, in Joliet. It is very close to what we call "slot" formation. I had Coach Gillespie over to dinner one night when he was in Portland to do a baseball clinic (he was also St. Francis' head baseball coach) and we both found it amazing that what we were doing was so similar. But he was definitely taking "normal" splits, and his ends were in those "nasty" splits - up to five yards - with his fullback at "normal" depth. He had very good success at St. Francis, and I have been told that there are numerous schools in the Chicago area running his offense. It would seem that Lincoln Way may be one of them.
When USC beat UCLA Saturday, it was the Trojans' first win over the Bruins since 1990. The hero of this win was Chad Morton, who back in August had predicted a win for USC, and on Saturday rushed for 143 yards to make his prophecy come true. The hero of the last Trojan win was his brother, Johnnie, whose catch for a touchdown with 16 seconds left gave the Trojans as 45-41 win. Last week, the Los Angeles Times had a great article about Mr. and Mrs. Morton, the parents of the gifted brothers, whose attendance at the Trojans' practice has been a daily ritual over the years. With Chad due to graduate, USC coaches are said to be frantically trying to get the Mortons to adopt a current player so that they will continue to come to all practices and games.
As any regular reader of this page knows, I am no fan of the First Couple, but even I must question an online survey by the New York Post which asks respondents to name the Twenty-Five Most Evil People of the Millennium - the past 1,000 years. Adolf Hitler, as you might expect, is first, while Josef Stalin, normally mentioned in the same breath as Hitler, is back in fourth. I would have put him up there in second, but the Post's voters have given that spot to The Man from Hope - William Jefferson Clinton - while his lovely bride, Hillary Rodham Clinton, stands by her man (behind him, actually) in third place. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton have managed so far to pull in enough votes to take the lead over the murderous Stalin, not to mention Pol Pot, John Wayne Gacey, Ivan the Terrible, Timothy McVeigh, Jack the Ripper, Muammar Qadaffi, Ted Bundy, Mussolini and the Marquis de Sade (who gave us the word "sadistic").
Three former players are suing UMass women's basketball coach Joanie O'Brien for $45 million, for something called "abusive style." I have two questions: (1) if those players win, is any coach safe? (2) what in the world could she possibly have said or done to cause $45 million worth of damages to those tender young ladies?
"Dear Coach Wyatt, I am writing to say thank you. We took over a program in Nebraska that was really down on its luck, and the double wing proved to be an incredible equalizer for us; it allowed us to be competitive. We finished 3-5 and we were truly in every game. The school was 0-8 in 1998 and 9-22 the previous four years. Our community, our kids, our teaching staff, etc., all doubted whether we could be competitive, and playing against many C-1 teams we were competitive. We lost to C-1 Oakland (8-1) 20-0 and C-1 North Bend Central (7-2) 14-7. In all, we lost to five schools with winning records and four playoff teams. Our worst loss was 38-8 to DW team Homer. In that game we reeled off 306 yards rushing on 76 plays and ground out 19 first downs. We made mental mistakes in the Red Zone, and turned the ball over or had drive-ending penalties; otherwise, we were even in that game. Also, there was the matter of Trevor Hightree from Homer. He is incredible. By the way, we even won our Homecoming Game, beating state Class C-2 quarterfinalist Scribner-Snyder 15-14 - driving the ball eighty-plus yards in the final three minutes on one bootleg pass for 24 yards and six consecutive criss crosses. Then, we went for two at home for the win. Many of the coaches who played us said that the 1999 Lyons football team was the most physical Lyons team in recent memory. We attribute the physicalness, both offensively and defensively, to the Double Wing. We are excited about the future here. Our kids are after it in the weightroom (We use Bigger, Faster, Stronger) and they are already talking about the future. Also our undefeated seventh graders are already talking about when they are in high school, and 10 of them are even going through BFS everyday (including agilities). Thank you coach Wyatt for everything. I look forward to meeting you at one of the clinics. Remember, football 365 days a year." Yours in football, Coach Steve Cozad Lyons-Decatur Northeast High School, Lyons, Nebraska
November 20 - "The worst thing you can do is take a little of this and a little of that and try to make your offense work." Wayne Hardin, former coach at Navy and Temple. (At Navy, Coach Hardin had two Heisman Trophy winners - Roger Staubach and Joe Bellino.)
If you can't do the time...Preparing for today's big game, Florida students have bought more than 1,000 tee-shirts depicting Florida State's Peter Warrick carrying a Dillard's bag, touting him for the "Heistman" Trophy. The back of the shirt reads, "It's not like he the President." (Dillard's was the store where Mr. Warrick and a friend enjoyed, shall we say, generous discounts; "It's not like I killed the President," was Mr. Warrick's ill-advised attempt to minimize the severity of his offense.)
Coach Jon McLaughlin, of Olympia Fields, Illinois, writes to tell me that his school, Rich Central High, had 9 all-conference players this year, including four of his five offensive linemen. C-Back Guy Smith and safety Devale Stubbs were both named to the All-Area team; Smith was named honorable mention all-state and Stubbs was named All-State, marking the third straight year that Rich Central has had a player on the All-State team. (Last year's selection, blue-chip guard Aaron Hodges, passed over Ohio State, Notre Dame and Northwestern to go to Illinois, where he is now red-shirting and his older brother, Brian, starts at tight end. Based on the kind of year the Illini have been having - and the recent win over Ohio State - Aaron has to feel pretty good about his choice.)
Sorry to hear that today's game could possibly be the last for Texas Tech's Spike Dykes, a former high school coach who rose to the top of our profession. A Texas high school coach once told me that he considered Coach Spikes "the greatest man that God ever put on this earth to coach football." Today's North Carolina-Duke game could also be the last game for Carolina's Carl Torbush, a good man whose program imploded this year - only his second at UNC - when he ran out of quarterbacks. Last week's Houston-LSU game was the final game for LSU's Gerry DiNardo, a stand-up guy by all accounts who got off to a great start in Baton Rouge but couldn't stop a free fall dating back to last year. Florida's Steve Spurrier has referred to the LSU job as a "one of the best coaching jobs in America." Sorry, Steve - I don't see it. I think it's an illusion. LSU is a very tough place to coach. Tiger fans are rabid and they are demanding. The head football coaching job at LSU is as political as any position in the state - and you have to run for election every Saturday night in the fall. LSU has had seven coaches in the last 20 years. The program has certainly had its bright moments - most notably under Charlie McClendon in the 1970's, under Bill Arnsparger in the mid-80's and under Coach DiNardo himself a few years ago - but I spent a litttle time as an intern in the athletic department there, and I came away with the impression that for many Tiger fans, LSU football is frozen in time on a Saturday night in 1958, when the legendary Billy Cannon returned a punt for a TD against Ole Miss, and Paul Dietzel's Tigers went on to win the National Championship.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, college students who are being recruited by high-tech firms have taken to inspecting corporate parking lots. At night. Actually, they're not worried about whether there will be a place reserved for them near the front door; they're checking to see how full the lots are late at night, evidence of workers having to put in the legendary long hours for which those companies are becoming known.
From a former Nebraska high school coach: "A little insight into (today's) Class B State Championship in Nebraska. As you know Gary Hartman (head coach at Scottsbluff) sent some of his staff to the Denver clinic two years ago, and back when I first thought about the Double-Wing and ordered the videos Coach Hartman was very helpful with information to me. He sent tapes from his previous year, and told me about a lot of the land mines I would encounter when I employed the Double-Wing. He has always been very helpful. He also was the high school coach at Ogallala, NE when one of my assistants at Bennington played for him. He certainly deserves to be in the championship game, but I don't think he has probably told you what a big win this would be for his program and Double-Wing teams in particular. Elkhorn HS has probably been the most dominant team in Class B in Nebraska in the last 10-15 years. Coach Wortman runs a great program there, and they run a no-huddle, wishbone attack. They are always deep enough to platoon offensive lines on every series, and usually they just wear you down by the second half of the game. So, for Scottsbluff's Double-Wing to beat Elkhorn would be a tremendous feather in the cap of Double-Wingers everywhere. Elkhorn was only about 7 miles from Bennington, and we exchanged information with their defensive coordinator quite a bit. GO SCOTTSBLUFF!!!!.....Sorry to hear about your loss in the playoffs, but what a great year your team had. Wanted to update you on the fact that Umatilla ended their season with a 46-18 victory over Lake Weir. In the process they rushed an amazing 62 times for 388 yards, and passed for 18 for 406 total yards. During the last four games of the season we rushed for a total of 1600 yards. Our defense didn't allow a first down in the second half, and only gave up 4 yards rushing in the second half. This certainly gives credence to what I have always said, "this offense makes your defense more aggressive." We were terrible on defense early in the year, but it seemed to improve as the offense improved. It was a good year as we finished 4-6 and could have very easily been 6-4. This is on the heels of a 2-18 record the last two years. Stay in touch and maybe I'll see you at the Birmingham clinic this year. I really enjoyed your tape of the Camas game." Ron Timson, Umatilla, Florida
Latest college undergraduate enrollment figures show that the ratio of males to females our colleges continues to fall, and is approaching 40-60. Experts theorize that it may be because men inreasingly see college as being irrelevant in their fantasies of riches in professional athletics or pursuing the career path of that famous Harvard dropout, Bill Gates. Women, on the other hand, tend to be more rooted in reality, and pursue courses of study leading to real careers. Quite a turnabout from the generation or so ago, when men prepared to become breadwinners, and women dreamed of meeting Prince Charming.
Coach Bryan Oney in Ohio asked me if I would try to put him in touch with coaches who have running our system from Tackle Over/Tackle Under sets: <scjh_st_bo@noeca.esu.k12.Oh.us>
November 19 - "They give you a bunch of bull at clinics. They aren't doing what they say. They are selling you last year's calendar." Doug Dickey, former coach, Florida and Tennessee
Yes, you would have to say that public education, based on most measurements, sucks. But how many of its critics look at the raw material it's being given to work with? Writing in this week's Newsweek magazine, Saul Schachter, a teacher from Glen Head, New York, says, "Students should be prepared for learning every day: they should be well rested, fed and dressed properly. They should leave at home the baseball caps, the gum and the T-shirts with the obscene messages. And at the end of the year, their teachers will evaluate them. Those who are hardworking and conscientious will be invited to return. The students who are distruptive will be sent to alternative schools." Mr. Schachter has got it right: "Critics of public schools have it all backward," he writes. "We shouldn't let kids pick their schools. We should let schools pick the students."
"Coach, I've got to tell you what a blessing it was to me to find your web page last winter. Your ideas and coaching philosophies seemed very close to ours and some I stole! Please let me give you some background first before I go on about our season. Last year, 98, I helped coach a freshman team that went 8-2 and 5-0 and ended up as leaguue champions. But, I believe in always looking for ways to improve so I looked up the double wing on the net and found your web page. There are more and more teams around the North State running this offense and it seemed like a good offense. So I ordered your video and we loved it. We made the commitment to install it during the offseason and got a lot of grief because we are a Wing-T program.Apparently our head coach here at Lassen coached against Don Markham down south and hates it. And Foothill High out of Redding runs it but they haven't won the section title with it yet so there are some doubters up here. We ended up going 10-0 and repeated as league champs at the J.V. level this year. We ran a total of 12 double wing formations and 4 wing-t formations. We agreed with your thinking to show as much of your offense as possable and we did. We purposely ran as many formations as possible especially when we knew our opponants would receive film on us. Going into our big game and biggest rivalry we got a big kick seeing them still going over all our formations before the game. We beat them 40-13. Their coach, Bob Hall, is very well respected around here and has won Varsity section titles recently. We made a living off of the super power pitch and wedge plays. In fact our Varsity coaches were giving us a hard time saying that we only had 4 plays, Pitch right, Pitch left, Wedge, and Boot pass. But, really we had so much more. When teams would do everything they could to try to stop us we of course had the counters and would go to our other formations. Besides throwing for 10 td's we would go back to the wing-t. Believe when I tell you that using so many formations and being able to run both offenses we were pretty much unstoppable. We would stop ourselves with turnovers more than defenses would stop us. I have to admit though we received alot of grief over installing this offense but we believed in it and put it in this summer and stayed with it. Now the best part, The Varsity team is going into the playoffs,9-1, seeded first and have installed a couple of double wing formations to use in the playoffs. We feel vindicated. Even though I have already told you that alot of teams in our section are going to this offense they are only using usually one formation out of it. What I would call,X-SPLIT. Instead of double tight end they have the wide receiver spread out. I believe they are missing it! The key is running numerous formations and we did that. It can be done and we did it running a total of 16 for the year and would use most of them during the game. We used your tight splits and had the type of qb who loved going up through the hole and block. We loved this offense and will be running it again next year! Thanks again for your help and helpful ideas" Coach Paul Prince, J.V. Coach, Lassen High School, Susanville, California
Peter Jensen writes in the Baltimore Sun that a criminal psychiatrist in Michigan, Dr. William Cardasis, suggests a connection between tattoos and the diagnosis of anti-social personality disorder - the technical term for a sociopath -- "someone who has no regard for the rights of others, who lies, steals, is impulsive, frequently runs afoul of the law, but suffers little or no remorse." Dr. Cardasis' research found that among patients at a maximum-security forensic hospital, the likelihood of anti-social personality disorder was far greater among patients with tattoos. Of course, as writer Jensen points out, "Patients at a forensic hospital are hardly average citizens. They are usually criminal defendants whose sanity has been called into question. Typically, they have been judged not guilty by reason of insanity or incompetent to stand trial." Which means we really shouldn't have anything to fear from the kid on our team who goes out and gets a tattoo: "the presence of a tattoo on an average man's forearm doesn't necessarily mean the bearer is bad to the bone. (A good thing, too, because an estimated 1 in 10 Americans has a tattoo.)"
A tip for youth coaches: "Hugh: One of the things we came across, and I am sure other youth coaches have as well, was that we could abandon one of the wings' blocking rules. At the youth level you usually have weight limits and your backs are usually your "studs" (big powerful kids) or at least not much different in size from defensive ends. So we gave our A and C backs the option of down blocking defensive ends in their gap by themselves when we ran Super Power. This was a nice adjustment because a lot of times we had ends in the gap, so we could not double team them and sometimes they would come down hard and make it tough for the B-back to kick out or they would stay passive and plug up the hole. With us the rule, Gap, First Backer Inside worked great. They still had the option of making a "black" call when the end was head up the tight end and we could double team. I know it is not recommended for high school but worked great for us! For what it's worth, Bill Lawlor " Thanks to Coach Lawlor (whose Hanover Park Hurricanes just won the 125-pound lllinois Bill George League Super Bowl) for the tip. Wonder how many of those kids even know who Bill George is.
I may watch an hour or so of prime-time TV in the course of an average year, but I was drawn by the promos to watch Wednesday night's "Cosby" show. It opened in the living room, with a young couple complaining about the gross disparity between what basketball players make and what the couple earns as teachers ("the problem is, the two of them never learned to put the ball in the hoop," explains Cosby matter-of-factly), when the young man, musing on what it would be like to live on $100 million dollars, lapses into a reverie. In it, he is Griffin Vesey, superstar teacher at Ralph Bunche Middle School in Queens, and the feature subject of that night's "Education Tonight," which bears quite a resemblance to "Entertainment Tonight." Co-hosts Phylicia and Ahmad Rashad note that Vesey is in the final year of a $25 million contract, and speculate on whether he might declare for free agency and perhaps accept a lucrative offer to leave his inner-city position ("where he carries an entire school district on his back") for one in wealthy suburban Westchester County. Meantime, we cut away to basketball players whining about working their butts off, while teachers make all the money. Pretty clever story line.
November 18 - "He knew what perfection looked like, and what was required to approach it." David Maraniss, writing about Vince Lombardi in his biography of the coach, When Pride Still Mattered
I seized on the above quote when I came across it in David Maraniss' biography of Vince Lombardi because I believe it describes an essential quality of a great coach. I believe that coaching, like teaching, is at least as much art as it is science, and that any great artist, architect, musician, composer, conductor, writer - or coach - has an ability to envision a work in its perfect, finished form, without any guideline other than perhaps a few scratches on a sheet of paper. Just as a musician can look at sheet music and immediately know how it should sound, so must a coach be able to look at a play in a playbook and envision it being run perfectly on the field. A coach has to be able to indentify "clinkers" - just as an orchestra conductor can hear the entire orchestra play yet still identify any individual musician who's playing off key, so should a football coache be able to stand behind an offensive unit and watch the entire team perform, while being able to detect any individual who blows an assignment.
All the luck in the world to Coach Gary Hartman and his staff at Scottsbluff, Nebraska, as the Bearcats, 11-1, prepare to take their Double-Wing into the state Class B (second-largest) finals Saturday night in the University of Nebraska's Memorial Stadium against number-one ranked Elkhorn. After losing their opener 15-13, the result of five fumbles, the Bearcats have run off eleven straight wins, breaking school and individual rushing records along the way. Scottsbluff has been in the state semi-finals three of the last five years, but this is the first time in the finals. (An interesting note: with all classes playing their finals in Lincon this weekend, the state coaches are holding a clinic in conjunction with the activities; Coach Hartman is scheduled to talk about the Double-Wing at 9 AM Saturday! Even if his opponents sit in, I'm sure he's not going to give away any secrets - they'll still have to deal with why and when - and how well - his teams do the things they do.)
Coach Roger Brookes, from King William, Virginia, informs me that his Cavaliers finished the regular season 8-2 and Northern Neck Distroct Champs, ending with big wins over Northumberland, 50-6 and Rappahannock, 35-0. The first round of the playoffs was a complete runaway, with King William defeating Arcadia, 82-0. This week, the Cavaliers face 11-0 New Kent, "our nemesis" in Coach Brookes' words. Best of luck to a great coach and a great program.
People in Oregon know that beating Roseburg is never easy. Roseburg, a logging and sawmill town of about 18,000, some four hours south of Portland, is the classic American work hard-play hard blue-collar football town. Its teams, under long-time coach Thurman Bell, a former Oregon State linemen, are hard-nosed and well-drilled: they don't just stand on the lines during their pre-game exercizes; they stand with the tips of their toes against the edges of the lines. Beating the Indians in Roseburg doesn't happen very often. So it was no small feat when Lakeridge High, of Lake Oswego, the number four seed from thir league, travelled to Roseburg last Friday night and defeated the number-two ranked Indians, 15-14 to knock them out of the state playoffs. Only when Lakeridge recovered a Roseburg fumble with 52 second left was the win secured. Or so everyone thought. But after three straight take-a-knees, there were still 5.7 seconds on the clock, and Lakeridge elected to punt. The snap, though, sailed over the punter's head and the ball rolled toward the end zone. Racing into the end zone to retrieve it, the punter, wisely realizing that taking a safety meant losing the game, wildly threw a pass - which was intercepted by a Roseburg linebacker, who was downed on the Lakeridge two-yard line as the clock ran out. Victorious Lakeridge coach Mike Coulson, who suffered a heart attack prior to the 1997 season, needed some time alone in the locker room afterward to bring his racing heartbeat back to normal.
My niece, Bonnie who lives in Reading, Pennsylvania (that's pronounced "REDD-ing" for you outsiders, who may not know that's how the railroad got its name, and so persist in saying "Take a ride on the REED-ing" when you play Monopoly), happened to read my mention of Lenny Moore's being at the Penn State-Minnesota game. As a matter of civic pride, she reminded me that Moore was a native son of Reading (in fact, at one time he was nicknamed the "Reading Rocket"). Not content to stop there, though, she also noted that another Reading product, Kerry Collins (actually from suburban West Lawn, PA) was on hand at the same Penn State game. Wait. There's more - Lenny Moore, she went on to say, is the great uncle of another Reading product, Donyell Marshall (UConn, Golden State Warriors). Having watched the development and elevation of Kerry Collins to near-god status as a high-schooler, Bonnie suggests that someone with a little time and the proper research and writing skills would find a story in Collins' young career: his lionization as a high school hero, a blue-chipper developing right there in a once-proud, down-on-its-luck mill town that's seen better days; his carrying the hopes of his entire hometown on to Penn State, quarterbacking the Nittany Lions to a Rose Bowl win, an undefeated season and a near-miss run at the national championship; his leading the first-year Carolina Panthers to a incredible success for an expansion team; his career's subsequent plummeting descent, with its undertones of racist comments and alcoholic indiscretions; the questions about his future.
Converse, Texas, just outside San Antonio, is a football town. Its high school, Converse Judson, has won five state championships since 1983. By splitting its 4,300 students among two separate campuses - one for freshmen and sophomores, the other for juniors and seniors - Judson has managed to exist as one high school - and one of Texas' largest. That seems to be the way the folks in Converse prefer it, as they recently defeated a bond issue designed to build two new high schools - by a vote of 3,009 to 2,053.
From Coach Daren Hatch, in Arapahoe, Nebraska, noting my reference to Coloradans telling Cornhusker jokes: "Coach Wyatt, you might remind your Colorado buddies that the real physics lesson will take place the day after Thanksgiving in Colorado. GO HUSKERS!"
November 17 - "Great morale creates great effort, and great effort wins for you." Bud Wilkinson
Double-Wing success from the home of the Eskimos: The Jasper Place (Edmonton, Alberta) Rebels defeated the Bev Facey Falcons 42-6 in the Provincial Semi-finals Saturday. This Saturday, the Rebels will host the Provincial finals, taking on the Raymond Comets, defending Provincial Champs from Raymond, Alberta. Best of luck from your fellow fraternity members down here in the States!
Yesterday almost slipped past me without my noting the 59th anniversary of the famous "Fifth Down" game between Cornell and Dartmouth, when Cornell, unbeaten and ranked Number One in the country, managed to escape a Dartmouth upset with a last second score - a score coming only after a fifth down was awarded the Big Red through an official's error. When films subsequently confirmed the mistake, Cornell's president and its coach, Carl Snavely - in a magnificent display of sportsmanship almost incomprehensible in this day of coaches teaching holding and players pretending they have made catches - conceded the win to Dartmouth and its Coach, Earl "Red" Blaik! Read more about it.
"We ended the season 8-4. First winning season since 1985 and only the 4th 8 or more win season in school history. We averaged 30.4 points per game and 298 yards of offense a game in a strong defensive district. I hope you plan to clinic again in the area this spring! I plan to bring my entire staff." Coach Steve Jones, Florence, Mississippi
Think the girls have their problems with anorexia and bulemia, trying to cope with the hopeless task of living up to the Barbie image? Look out, guys - the Adonis Complex is upon us. Perhaps doctors (who are, after all, business people) are just scaring up another disorder (which they can cure but it's going to require a series of treatments and it's going to be expensive) or perhaps there really is something to it, but there seems to be among our young men a growing obsession with size and muscularity. Teens are observed hitting the health clubs as never before, motivated not so much by a desire to enhance athletic performance as by a need merely to get bigger. "An almost cartoon-like level of masculinity," one doctor calls it, fueled by fashion magazine ads showing shirtless, buffed guys and, at its extreme, by the tremendous interest in the grotesquery of pro wrestling. It is just a matter of time before someone appears in front of a Congressional committee to testify that the makers of G.I. Joe - who has, in fact, grown more muscular over the years - are behind a conspiracy to make our young men feel inadequate. (My own unscientific theory: it's just boys - males - rejecting years and years of futile attempts by our schools, and by society at large, to feminize them.)
Easy on those Cornhusker jokes, you Colorado guys - How many people do you get to a physics lecture? A University of Nebraska physics professor has had upwards of 77,000 people at some of his. Attempting to make physics understandable by explaining how it applies to football ("A football must spin in order to remain stable in flight"), Professor Timothy Guy taped a series of mini-lectures called "Football Physics," which have played on the scoreboard's giant screen during timeouts at Cornhuskers' home games this past season. By all accounts the lessons have been well received, perhaps because somehow, without even knowing that F=MV (Force equals Mass times Velocity), most football fans already seem to grasp the concept that a very large body moving extremely rapidly produces a great deal of force (roughly, enough to knock someone's ass off).
The great enabler? It's scary to think that if a group of young fellers at your school - some of them third-year (!) freshmen with over 300 days' absences in their still-young careers - were to take part in a near-riot at one of your football games, the Reverend Jesse Jackson himself might show up at your place, as he has done in Decatur, Illinois, leading marches to protest strong disciplinary action against those "children" by your mean ole school administration. Excuse me - but haven't people been demanding that we make our schools safer?
"Coach Wyatt, This is the best news I can possibly share with you........we made it to the playoffs!!!! We finished with a 5-5 record and third place in league. We have had a good season. This was our turnaround year. Our five losses were all by 10 points or less. We outgained everyone in our league!!!! We had a thousand yard rusher in Kenny Ramirez. The other running backs all had over two hundred yards each. We even began to throw the ball well. We will be taking on a #2 seed team that is a perennial powerhouse. Everyone except us believes this team will kill us on the field. They score a lot of points. They scored 70 in their last game of the season. We have run so many different sets and still run the same basic plays, yet teams complain about having to coach up their team with very little success on the variety of sets that we have. Everyone in the community is excited. This is only the fourth team in McFarland High School history (since 1928) to make the playoffs. This is the first team in ten years to get to the playoffs. Thanks again for all your help." Coach Jim Beltran, McFarland, California
Football makes great friends, and one it has brought into my life is Father Jim Sinnerud, at Creighton Prep in Omaha, who has been able to combine his vocation as a Jesuit priest and educator with his love of football, serving as a coach at the various Jesuit high schools at which he's taught. I find it refreshing to bounce ideas off him, and I value his viewpoint on matters pertaining to life and coaching. I told him how, a day after our season-ending loss, I looked up at the clock and noted that our game had ended exactly 24 hours earlier; how, almost magically (I said "almost," because I was, after all, talking to a man of God), I found myself suddenly emerging from the despair, the self-loathing that afflicts a coach after a big loss. I told him how I realized how foolish all that self-flagellation really was - how hypocritical it was for a coach to be telling kids that a major lesson of football is resilience - learning to "deal with it" - while not being able to deal with it himself. We agreed that if we all allowed losing to continue to eat at us, there wouldn't be anyone left to coach this game. It was during this exchange that Jim passed along some of his thoughts on the ending of a season, thoughts expressed so beautifully that I asked him if I could share them with our fellow coaches:
"During a season I loved the planning and scheming for an opponent--to the extent that was allowed me--and the improvement in technique, especially when I could see it in practice simply nullify whoever was on the other side of the line. I liked the way the team would come to take hitting and being tired and giving the great effort as routine, a part of their universe at the time.
"Yet, when the season was over I, too, felt a sense of relief. I feel the cool air and see the low sun, I think back on those dog days of August when players would probably feel sometime or other close to collapse and I picture all the drills and effort and coaching demands those players have endured. When the season finally ends, it seems time, and then two days later I feel more than ever how formative those weeks of concentration and exertion and wins, large and small, and possibly defeats have likely been in all our lives. And along with my relief comes a sense of loss: I hope I've been overall a strong positive factor in the kids' lives but I wonder and feel sad about the times I may not have been, when I may possibly have made them angry or bitter, however necessary or unavoidable those occasions may have been at the time for their growth. Or lamentable because of my mistakes.
"Yet, with the dying and quiet in autumn comes an acceptance of the matrix of human struggle, of the fight against deficiencies and sloth, together with the generous yearning to rise above where we think we are, and be better, and be better for the next time we begin it all again.
"I look forward, also, to the chance to be more gentle with those kids until we start anew, not so demanding, so uncompromising, so pointedly a decision-maker in their lives, loveable and uncertain, hopeful and disappointed as the mix in their souls is.
"Next season they'll feel themselves better and their excitement will rise with the sense of their new possibilities and responsibilities, and I'd be grateful and excited myself to have the chance to make them better than they ever thought they could be.
"There can't be many things in life more valuable, more precious than that, can there?"
November 16 - "Running for President is like coaching football - you have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important." - Eugene McCarthy, counter-culture candidate for President in 1968.
"Coach : We ended the season 9-0 the first time in Wells history. Justin Stumpf the A back was voted MVP of the league. All the rest of the backfield received first team. Stumpf ended the season with 1397 yards. Joe Dangaran the C back finished with around 800. Don Hall was also voted the defensive player of the year." Coach Martin Linford, Wells, Nevada (NOTE: Last Saturday, Wells defeated Lincoln, 37-13 in the state semi-finals, and the Leopards now play Meadows for the state title next Saturday on their own field.HW)
"Coach Wyatt, Sorry I have not kept up with weekly updates. I get so busy this time of year, and with two young boys at home the last thing they and my wife want is for me to be on the computer talking more football. Well, the Mankato Loyola football season ended last Friday, Nov. 12, in the section finals! we ended the season 6-5 and after going 0-9 last year this was a tremendous turnaround. In my seven years at Loyola I have had some very good teams, we have made the section semi-finals five out of my first six years but this year we made it to the finals. I believe not only is the Double-Wing responsible, but more so that my kids believe in the system and as you well know that is huge when it comes to their confidence levels. We rushed for over 2700 yards and passed for another 500 (actually 2 black-O became one of our most successful plays... especially on 3rd and short) Our B back, a sophomore, rushed for 1300+ yards and scored 12 TDs, A back, a senior, 800+ yards and 4 TDs, C back, a junior, 600+ yards and 7 TDs. He only carried 41 times but most were big hitters. (Mostly 47-C, 77 Power and what we called 77 Super Power) Our X end scored five TDs, mostly on 2 Black-O. Our QB had no rushing TDs but late in the season came up with some big first downs on plays that we called "follow"... 6-G follow, Rip 7-C follow etc... teams concentrated so hard on stopping our B back that we simply faked those plays and the QB kept with him lead blocking, always worth five or more yards! In closing... the system is easy to teach, the kids believe in it, and it works!! We put this in with our 6th and 7th grade teams this year and there is nothing more satisfying to a head coach than to see 12 and 13 year old guards and tackles pulling like they have done all their lives. I can't wait until they are Jrs. and Srs.!!! 'It Takes A Set'" Coach Jim Neyers, Mankata Loyola HS, Mankato, Minnesota
The Man from Hope: While waiting for our trade partner, Mexico, to release a U.S. Marine Sergeant, now held in a Mexican prison and facing up to 12 years for illegally bringing firearms into Mexico (while officially on-duty, he inadvertently got into the wrong traffic lane while on his way to the border to pick up two Marines who had been detained by the Shore Patrol in Tijuana) it is wise to consider whether we are strong enough militarily to kick Mexico's tail: The U.S. Army announced that, thanks to all the meals-on-wheels oprations it is involved in all over the world, two of its divisions are no longer rated combat-ready... Senator James Inhofe, of Oklahoma, chairman of the Readiness subcommitte, says that we are in the worst crisis of military preparedness since the 1970's... To try to motivate our troops, our armed forces are giving them smiley faces in lieu of pay: in 1988 the U.S. Army awarded an outrageously generous one medal for meritorious achievment to every four soldiers; by 1998, though, it was one for every 2.2. (The Marines have managed to hold medal inflation to one for every 16.) The Army even gives medals for "volunteer work in the community." General Colin Powell wrote in his autobiography, My American Journey, "these wholesale awards diminished the achievements of real heroes."... Meanwhile, our President, still determined to deliver the Puerto Rican vote to his beloved wife (remember the release of the terrorists?), is contemplating closing down the Navy's live-fire range on the island of Vieques, off Puerto Rico, the only place on the East Coast where the Navy and Marines can carry out combined air, sea and land operations using live ammunition... And, ever mindful of the female vote, a Pentagon commission called the Defense Advisory Commission on Women in the Services, true to its role as a Trojan Horse, has recommended that women be permitted to serve on board nuclear submarines; it doesn't seem to matter that the Chief of Naval Operations and his top officers disagree. Hey coaches - in case you never heard all those stories about "pregnant sailors" (there's a phrase that ought to be an oxymoron!) in the Gulf War - those nuclear subs go undersea for weeks at a time...
"Coach - congrats on a big season for sure. Just to let you know what happened with us- we lost in the first round 36-40 against a team that is now playing in the finals. In the three playoff games after us their opponents have scored only 15 points! We scored more than that in 1 quarter against them!! We ran Knights (Wildcat) and screwed their dline into the ground!!!! I know that a coach cannot compare scores and all that, but the kids sure do and right now they have a fire for next year. It has given them confidence that they could be a very good team next year. We lose 5 seniors, 1 on offense, and 3 on defense. We finished the year 6-3, best in 12 seasons, set 11 school records, rushed for over 3,000 yards while passing for under 300, had the leading rusher in the 11 man football (over 180 teams) leading scorer 166 points, and was 3rd in team rushing. needlesa to say, it was a good year for the Homer Knights." Coach Jason Sopko, Homer, Nebraska - Coach Sopko adds a PS: "Oh- I saw the Huskers Whoop up on Kansas State Sat. They may be back, too bad they struggled against Texas. They have a very salty defense and the crowd loves it. If you are part of the Coaches Association, you can get tickets to the game for $1, so it is a good deal. Take care and will be looking forward to attending another clinic."
Coach Sopko, in Nebraska, mentions in his letter above that his kids, who lost by 40-36 to a team now in the finals, are comparing scores. Maybe it's a fallacious pursuit, but don't minimize the importance of that thinking in building for next year. If you think it is not important for your kids to have "been there" - to have been in the playoffs and seen first-hand what it takes to win - consider this: there have been XXXII Super Bowls played so far; but only VI of them have been won by teams making their first appearance in the Big Game, and III of those appearances - Green Bay in Super Bowl I, The New York Jets in Super Bowl III and Pittsburgh in Super Bowl IX - took place in the first IX years of the game's existence. In the XXIII games since then, only San Francisco in Super Bowl XVI, Chicago in Super Bowl XX and the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXI have won it the first time out.
"Dear Coach Wyatt, As I said I would, here is an update on the Manchester Bears. They won the 1999 New Hampshire Seacoast Football League championship with a great win over Dover, 28-26, culminating a 9-0 season. Thanks" Jim Tseronis, Manchester Bears (My congratulations also to Head Coach John Trisciani, a "career" youth coach. HW)
November 15 - NFL Update: As the entire NFL was celebrating Welcome Back Leon Lett Day, the Vikings beat the Bears, 27- 24, in "a game that had everything," in the words of expert analyst Matt Millen. "Everything," that is, provided you mean that after 60 minutes of great passing, hard running, clever coaching strategy, and punishing blocking and tackling - two teams going at it, hammer and tong - the actual football is capped off by the heart-stopping thrill of watching a pudgy-faced little guy with one bar on his face mask (who couldn't play a legitimate position on the field even if the only alternative was playing a man short) kick a field goal. How about if, instead of field-goal overtime, each team just designates one guy and they have a pass, punt and kick contest ?
From Coach Bill Lawlor, in Hanover Park, Illinois: "Hugh: I am very happy to say that we are the 125 pound lllinois Bill George League Super Bowl champs....I am so happy for the kids right now. This group of kids had been to this game as 75 pounders and last year as 110 pounders semi finalists in all other years and this was their last shot. They always had a great defense but no offensive scheme and it always cost them in the big games. The first time I saw your tape I had this team in mind to run it. We actually were down for the first time in a game this year 6-0. The kids were playing in Northern Illinois Stadium under the lights and on the turf, so I think the nerves were pumping, as we turned the ball over three times in the first half. At the five minute mark of the third quarter Bryan Mead went untouched on Rip 3 trap at 2 for 56 yards. We controlled the ball in the fourth quarter and Leon Wiggins punched in a Rip 88 SP to seal the game at 14-6. There was a few tears of joy had by all players, coaches and parents. We have been going full steam since August 2 and I think I am already having football withdrawals. I will miss this group of kids! Thank you for your emails, patience and comments, they were much appreciated and I hope to see you at the next Chicago clinic."
Congratulations to Coach Frank Simonsen and the Lower Cape May Raiders, 30-6 winners over Ocean City, and undefeated Cape May County Youth Football champions.
Congratulations on a great year to Coach Chuck Raykovich of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin High, whose Cardinals went 11-0 before finally falling in the state Class 1 (Largest schools) semi-finals to eventual state champion Marshfield.
Woodberry Forest School, in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge, concluded a highly-successful 7-2 season with a 17-14 win over long-time rival Episcopal High School of Alexandria, Virginia. Congratulations to Coach Bill Davis and his Tigers.
Coach Jay Minyard, in his second year at South Albany, Oregon, managed to get his Rebels into the state 4-A (largest schools) playoffs for the second straight year, and only the third time in the school's history. Until Friday night, though, the Rebels had yet to win a playoff game, but the long wait is now over - playing on the home field of Number 7-ranked Gresham High, where crowds commonly exceed 6,000, South Albany stunned the Gophers 38-19. While holding Gresham to 39 yards rushing - Gresham did pass for 218 yards - South Albany threw only twice as Rebels Jason Schreiber and Kevin Richmond ran for 171 yards and 139 yards respectively. Next up are the Grants Pass Cavemen, 27-0 winners over Benson of Portland.
From George Contreras, at Rio Mesa High in Oxnard, California, who ended his season with a 15-12 win over playoff-bound Dos Pueblos (one of nine playoff-bound teams on Rio Mesa's 1999 schedule): "Our winning TD came in the 3rd quarter on a World Record tying (forget Canada) 99 yard Super Power."
"PARKER HAWKS 22, Highlands Ranch Warriors - 21 - Did you ever have one of those games where the Wedge wouldn't even get you a yard? Well that pretty much describes our first half as we found ourselves down 21 - 6 at halftime. I talked to the boys and told them that we were just going to keep pounding the ball and if they played 4 qtrs of hard football that the other guys would quit on them...and sure enough, by the 4th qtr their defense was just flat beat up and tired of getting hit. Overall, a great football game on both sides. So with our first year running the DW, we find ourselves SUPER BOWL BOUND BABY!!!!!! My guys get to play in a real stadium with announcers and the whole deal...a great experience for them...Hope to give you a good update this time next week!" Coach Scott Barnes, Parker, Colorado
November 14 - NFL update: Lawrence Phillips has been suspended by the 49ers for "conduct detrimental to the team." (Is there such a thing as "conduct detrimental to society?")
The 7th-ranked Mt. Baker Mountaineers proved too strong for our unranked Washougal Panthers, as they knocked our kids out of the Washington state playoffs, 32-8 in a first-round game last night. The Panthers drove 65 yards on their second possession to take an 8-0 lead, but found themselves unable to stop the powerful Mt. Baker running game, paced by Jim Schleimer's 170 yards rushing. Aided by a pair of Washougal fumbles, the Mountaineers demonstrated ball control that would make any Double-Wing team envious, putting on drives of 66 and 69 yards to take a 14-8 halftime lead.. The Mountaineers drove 63 yards to open the second half, then, aided by another Washougal fumble, managed to control the game with drive after drive, running 37 second-half plays to just 17 for Washougal. In all, Mt. Baker had 346 yards in total offense, with 278 on the ground. After the lone scoring drive, the Panthers misfired offensively, stifled by a big, strong, quick Mt. Baker defense. Nonetheless, it was a great season for the Washougal kids, who managed to end a two-season losing streak (1-8 in 1998), finishing 7-2 regular season, defeating arch-rival Camas 36-14, winning the Southwest Washington League championship with a perfect 6-0 record, and finishing the regular season with seven straight wins. And a coach couldn't have asked for a greater group of kids to do it with.
November 13- Tonight at 6 PM the Washougal Panthers take on the Mt. Baker Mountaineers in Washougal's first playoff appearance in 22 years. Who knows?
"Dear Coach Wyatt, I am writing to you to thank you. My name is Mike Silva and I am the Commissioner of Attleboro, Massachusetts Pop Warner Bombers and also the head coach of the Peewee team. During this past spring one of my coaches, Fred Pardey, came to me with your offense and toegher we put it in place throughout our organization. Previous to this, we as coaches had no system and eery year the kids would have to learn totally different offense depending on who their coach was. In the past we would be lucky to have one team with a winning record and send that team into post-season play. Well, after going to your clinic in Providence, meeting with you and your guest speakers, I decided that even if we fell on our face we were going to run this system, and that's something we never had before. I cannot believe how easy the kids in our system absorbed it and ran it from the beginning. To let you know, our children range in ages from 7-15 depending on weights and birthdates.
This is a summary of how each of our teams fared: Instructional Team #1 went 5-3; Instructional Team #2 went 7-1. Officially, both of these teams don't keep score due to the ages of the kids (7-9 years old.) Junior Peewee (9-11 years old) #1 went 4-4, winning their last 3 in a row; Junior Peewee #2 went 4-4, winning their last 3 games also. Peewee Bombers (10-12 years old) went 8-0. A perfect season for us. We won our division and conference but lost in the Super Bowl this past Sunday 21-17 to Foxboro. During the season we outscored our opponents 236 to 30. And we scored using 5 different backs. Can't wait until next year. Junior Midget Bombers (11-13 years old) went 8-0. A perfect season. They won their division but lost in the conference championship game. They also outscore their opponents 240-18. Midget Bombers (12-15 years old) went 7-1, missed out on the divisional playoff but went into the consolation round. They won their first game 31-0. They are still alive in it. They also outscored their opponents 240-8 for the regular season.
Our league consists of 36 different towns. Some have multiple teams in each level of play, so you can see that for someone to send 1 team much less 3 teams it is a testament to what your system has done for us. My coaches and I hope you will return to Providence, RI for anothr clinic and look forward to seeing you. I hope that this can become one of your success stories. Thanks again. Coach Mike Silva, Commissioner, Attleboro Pop Warner."
The weekly ABC Golden Screw award goes once again to West Coast viewers, who will be turning on - and quickly turning off - today's ABC PAC-10 Game of the Week, a struggle for "dragging rights" between USC and Washington State. Doesn't sound exciting to you? Then you probably won't be too thrilled about next week's battle for Supremacy in the Southland between USC and UCLA, either. Nevertheless, with Washington (current Rose Bowl leader)-Washington State, Oregon-Oregon State or Cal-Stanford to choose from, that's what we're getting. So, as happens so often, the entire West Coast must sit back and yawn as ABC caters to all those viewers in the LA area, who ABC evidently considers so unsophisticated that they don't know a good game from a bad one. Be thankful you live in ABC's Big Ten area, where they are more concerned with matchups than with markets.
Pay up- Latrell Sprewell needs your money: the average cost for a family of four to attend an NBA game: $260.00
Just trying to level the playing field: The superintendent of schools in Reading, Ohio has resigned under pressure after earlier suggesting, in a brainstorming session, that perhaps arming teachers would improve school security.
November 12- I'm tired of taking digs at the NFL. Instead, let Chris Mortensen have at it. In ESPN.com, he writes, "Think about this: Bobby Ross almost got fired after last year's 5-11 record with the Lions. Dick Vermeil was close to being shoved out the door with the Rams. I heard people wonder whether Jim Mora was really the right choice for the Colts. Pete Carroll in New England and Jeff Fisher in Tennessee were facing make-or-break seasons. Those coaches all have 6-2 records at this halfway point. Norv Turner's team is 5-3 at the break -- putting the Redskins on pace for a 10-win season. But he's in trouble. A week ago, people were speculating about Tony Dungy's future with the Bucs. Same with Chan Gailey and the Cowboys. People in Green Bay are calling for Ray Rhodes' head after only eight games and a .500 record."
Why, you might ask? Because, says Mortensen, "You have owners who want champions every two years, or they want new coaches." It's a function of our culture, he says: "This is the generation of instant everything. Cell phones, faxes, internet, pagers ... we usually expect results now. Patience and perseverance is no longer a virtue in society. It's almost extinct."
My son, Ed, writes from Australia regarding Veterans' Day: "Over here it's called Remembrance Day and you see poppies worn on their lapels by all sorts of people (not just veterans) including most, if not, all, TV people. I know they do the same thing in England. The poppy tradition is definitely alive in Australia."
Another Veterans' Day Report: "You know, I try not to find the worst in everything but I'm so p-----d with our local govt..The city of Denver said it wouldn't support a Veterans' Day parade during the week because of traffic, additional police etc...so they had it the Saturday prior to Veterans' Day (last Sat) - well, as you would expect there were about a hundred folks - and that DIDN'T include the mayor - he had a previously scheduled engagement. (I guess his schedule keeper didn't have Veterans' Day marked and it snuck up on him!) Anyway, contrast this to the past two years when this same city has thrown HUGE ticker tape-style parades during the middle of the week in "Remembrance" of the almighty Broncos....and guess who didn't have a scheduling conflict for either one of those parades and was smack dab in the middle of the circus??? hmmmmm...I wonder why our kids don't even know what the hell Veteran's Day is, and for that matter could care less? And why they emulate the likes of Deion Sanders rather than admiring the heroism of their own grandpas...These NFL "heroes" make me sick and the total disregard of our REAL heroes by this city makes me cry." Scott Barnes, Parker, Colorado
I couldn't help thinking about a certain individual now occupying our nation's highest office, when I read the closing lines of "In Flanders Fields" (see yesterday's NEWS) : "If ye break faith with us who die...We shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields." Are we really keeping the faith with those who died?
Lemme see if I've got this straight. Ken Griffey, Jr. and his family lived in Seattle, near where he worked; Ken Griffey, Jr. then moved his family to Florida; Now, Ken Griffey, Jr. wants to be traded - so he can be near his family!
Our Washougal Panthers had a great workout on the artificial turf yesterday. We will give them today off, then have a Saturday morning walk-through before our 6 PM game. The 6 PM kickoff is to accomodate the travel of our opponent, Mt. Baker High School from outside Bellingham, four-to-five hours to the north of us. ( The state association, which keeps all proceeds from playoff games, is rather miserly in its reimbursement of travel expenses, and most schools try to avoid staying overnight if at all possible.)
Somehow education may not be as hot an issue as you think it is, Governor Bush: A nation that talks big about education unapologetically took many of its kids out of school Wednesday - so they could see the opening of "Poke'mon: The First Movie." Not surprising, since just a few weeks ago many of those same education-minded parents were lying to their employers so they could get out of work to go re-live their "Star Wars" fantasies. I wish I could see some of the lies these advocates of excellence in our schools will contrive to excuse their spoiled little darlings' absences.
"Coach Wyatt, We ended the season with a win! We rolled up 497 total yards, 416 rushing in a 51-43 shootout with Macon High. A Back Joel Burton had 27 carries for 254 yards. B Back Brad Lees had 17 carries for 123 yards and 2 TDs. One TD came off a 62 yard Wedge! Injuries were huge for us this season. For example we played 6 different kids at C Back Friday night. QB Cord Hagedorn threw 6-8 for 76 yards and a TD. We scored 30 points in the 4th Quarter to come from behind for the win. While 2-8 isn't the way I would like my coaching career to start, that win will send us into the off-season ready to work! Thanks for all your help this season. I look forward to meeting you at a clinic this spring. Good luck with the remainder of your games." Coach Sam Knopik, Moberly, Missouri (Actually, it's pretty impressive coaching to have a bunch of kids who are 1-8 go out and play that hard and score 30 points in the fourth quarter. HW)
November 11 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 70. High School football is a "live" game while profotball is a studio game - 98 per cent of high school fans never see their team on television; 98 per cent of NFL fans have never seen any NFL game live.
Thank a veteran- Today is Veteran's Day in the U.S. Originally called Armistice Day, it celebrated the Armistice - the truce - that at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - in 1918 - brought to an end the World War - by far the most gruesome war the world had ever known.
Major John McCrae, a Canadian surgeon, had spent seventeen days treating hearing the screams and dealing with the suffering of men wounded in the bloody battle at Ypres, in Flanders, a part of Belgium, in spring of 1915. He later wrote, "I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."
The death of a close friend and former student especially affected Major McCrae. Following the burial, which Major McCrae had had to perform in the absence of a chaplain, he sat in the back of an ambulance and, gazing out at the wild poppies growing in profusion in a nearby cemetery, began composing a poem as a way of dealing with his grief, scribbling the words in a notebook as he went.
But when he was done, he discarded it, and only through the efforts of a fellow officer, who rescued it and sent it to newspapers in England, was it published.
The poem, "In Flanders Fields", is considered perhaps the greatest of all wartime poems.
The significance of the poppies is that poppy seeds can lie dormant on the ground for years, until someone digs up the ground. Only when the soil has been uprooted do they flower. Needless to say, much of the soil of northern Belgium had been uprooted by war, so that by the time Major McCrae wrote his poem; it is said that the poppies were in bloom as no one could remember ever having seen them before. (For years, in the U.S., the American Legion raised funds by selling commemorative poppies every spring. I don't know if they still do.)
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
(For what it is worth, lines three and four of the poem's final stanza ("To you from failing hands...be yours to hold it high.") have been a permanent part of the Montreal Canadiens' locker room for years, symbolizing the need for newcomers to keep alive the proud traditions of a great franchise. Sadly, that hasn't been the case lately.)
It can't be a whole lot of fun being an A.D. at playoff time: At 8:30 AM yesterday, we were bounced from our scheduled 3:30-5:30 practice time on an AstroTurf field yesterday afternoon - after being told on Monday by the neighboring school district whose field it is that the time was "firm" - by a youth soccer practice mysteriously scheduled on the field at the same time. We will, however, be able to practice on it this afternoon. Meantime, our state association, which prefers that playoff games be played on artificial surfaces and had two available AstroTurf fields in our area to choose from, finally announced officially on Wednesday that our first-round game will be played Saturday at 6 PM at Evergreen School District's McKenzie Stadium in Vancouver, Washington. We will be facing Mount Baker (8-2), a big, wing-T/full house team, which defeated Port Townsend, a Double-Wing club, 21-8, Tuesday night.
"We won our third game of the year 54-13 on Friday. We had 550 yards rushing, none passing. We had nine backs who carried the ball, with three of them over 100 yards. We scored on 7 consecutive possessions and only did not score when we knelt down on the 8th possession. In the last three games we have scored 99 points and rushed for 1215 yards. We play a 4A school (we're a 2A) this Friday to close out our season and this would be a big win for our program. Our JV's went 5-2 and sowe have more total wins in the program this year than they have had here for the last four years combined. We certainly think we have things headed in the right direction here." Ron Timson, Umatilla, Florida
Coach Keith Babb, a youth coach in the Chicago area, managed to take in a recent game of North Shore Country Day School, which just concluded a highly successful 8-2 season, and wrote me about his thoughts afterward: "I'm glad I went to the game to see another coach's approach to implementing the DW. In all, my first year experience with running and watching the DW has been terrific. The greatest advantages for running the offense include: 1) Ball control - RC received the 2nd half kickoff and held the ball for the first 10 minutes before being held 6 yards short of the end zone. 2) Easy to teach - By the end of the season, our 7th and 8th graders knew and ran effectively over 110 different plays. In reality we had 6 base running plays ( and their mirrors) and 2 base passing plays run out of 10 different formations. 3) Productive - Even when key personnel were missing due to injury or other reasons, our boys could compete. Our toughest loss would not have been a close game if we weren't running the DW. 4) Flexible - There were times this season, when I had to remind myself to keep it simple because of all of the ways the DW can attack the opposing defense. 5) The constant improvement - We played our best ball at the end of the season, winning our last 3 games. In short, thanks for your help in making your system available to our program. I can't wait until next year, when more experience should help us prepare our team better for the season. Also, thanks for answering my questions throughout the season. I look forward to seeing you again should you hold a Chicago area clinic during the off-season. Good luck in the playoffs, go Panthers! Regards, Keith"
"An Act of God": It always galls me when I see a photo on the sports page of a pro carrying a football carelessly, because I know that that photo will contradict everything that those of us who care about fundamental soundness have been trying to teach our kids. It bothers me almost as much when I see a photo of a high school kid doing the same thing. Tuesday's Portland Oregonian ran a feature story on a young athlete it calls "the best running back in the Portland Interscholastic League." Maybe so, but the story goes on to tell the sad tale of his most recent game, the biggest game of his life, in which he fumbled the first three times he carried the ball. After that, he didn't want to carry the ball any more. Finally, he did go back in, and carried 19 more times for 129 yards - while fumbled twice more. Cursed? Jinxed? Down on his luck? Hardly. Fully one-fourth of the front sports page is taken up by a color page of the same young man, showing him carrying the football in a manner I'd never seen before. It's difficult to describe: his hand seems to be under the middle of ball, about where it might be when you carry a 12-pack of cans out of a convenience store, gently cradled so that it doesn't drop to the ground. But the ball is just balanced on his open hand; none of his fingers seems to be employed in the act of grasping it. Woody Hayes had a rather salty response to those who tried to excuse a fumble as "an act of God." I side with Coach Hayes, and maintain that 95 per cent of fumbles are preventable, and that a coach owes it to his team to stress fumble prevention.
Actually, we'd settle for doors on the stalls. Barbara Streisand reportedly would not appear on stage at Madison Square Garden recently unless there were gardenias floating in the toilet bowl in her dressing room.
November 10 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 69. In pro football, you see more effective power plays in contract negotiations than you ever do on the field.
Happy 224th Birthday of the United States Marine Corps to my many Marine friends and Marines everywhere.
Coach Chris Thomas, a Pop Warner coach in Cypress, California, recently had to file a report with police. His car had been broken into, and his stereo taken. Thieves also took an athletic bag, evidently on the chance that it might contain something of interest to them. Wrong. But it did contain something of value to Coach Thomas - his football records. He said that as he described, among its contents, "One Double-Wing playbook," it was priceless to see the look on the officer's face as he said, "Say again?"
"We have developed a wonderful rivalry with Winthrop H.S and at the start of Saturday's (playoff) game fans from each team came on to the field for introductions of their teams. The amazing thing was that the lines overlapped and the fans were talking to each other, shaking hands and talking about the coming game in a way that really was quite emotional to see and to be part of. At the end of the game there was not the usual unabated cheering you see when one team beats another on the last play (as actually happened) but players from both teams hugging each other, shaking hands and talking to each other in the way people do when they have gone through something special together - it was almost spiritual. It was the damnedest thing to see and even the coaching staffs got caught in the moment." Jack Tourtilotte, Boothbay Harbor, Maine
"... we played error free football and ran a Tight 88 SP and Under Tight 99 power for TD's. During the last quarter we needed a first down fast and utilizing good patience we waited to use 47 C Criss-Cross when we needed it most. We ran it and got a first down! We won 18-14.. The opposing coach told me after the game, "We practiced all week for your 'wing T' and then you run the I formation." Little did he know that we were running the same offense as before except from a Tight Stack!" John Torres, Castaic, California
"Coach Wyatt, We served notice that Corning West H.S. does have a football team that can compete with the best in N.Y. state in Class A. We pulled ahead to a demanding 35-7 lead last Saturday 3-minutes into the 3rd quarter only to hold on to win 35-29. I learned a very valuable lesson, and that was, to bury 'em, and then be a nice guy and get your other athlete's into the ballgame. The fact of the matter is that Corning West put on an offensive display in the second quarter, good enough to get us to the Syracuse Carrier Dome this coming weekend to compete in the NYS regional quarterfinals against the #13 class A team in the state. The Double Wing is a thing of beauty when you execute like you're capable. It's now a 3 game season, with the 3rd game being the State Championship, but as for that, one game at a time. What a feeling to be able to see so much progress in such a short period of time. Good Luck to you in the playoffs. CORNING WEST 35, Owego 29 - Thanks," Coach Mike Johnston, Corning West H.S. Painted Post, New York
Two weeks ago, the Lower Cape May (New Jersey) Raiders faced the first of two back-to-back games against their biggest rivals, Middle Township. And right smack in the middle of the week's preparations, Coach Frank Simonsen, skipper of an oil-spill recovery vessel, was called out to respond to an oil spill in Delaware Bay. No matter- his kids were well-enough prepared that they beat Middle Township, 31-12. This past week, the Raiders played Middle Township again. But this time, Coach Simonsen was able to be at every practice. So what happened? hRaiders 30, Middle Township 12.
November 9 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" Number 68. When a high school player, no matter how good he is, decides that for some reason he isn't going to play, no high school coach with any stones will leave the light on for him just in case he changes his mind in mid-season. (Joey Galloway?)
Anybody alse see that courageous hook slide by the Vikings' Jeff George last night, bringing back memories of John Elway in the Super Bowl?
"Well, Coach, we came up with one of the two championships. The Senior Rebels defeated the Ross Sheppard T-Birds 30-20 in the City Final game. They will now play against the Bev Facey Falcons (Sherwood Park, Alberta) for the provincial semi-final. The Junior Rebels lost their City Final game against the Parkland Predators 22-6. Parkland was the only team the Junior Rebels lost to the entire season.We will keep you posted with provincial results." Kyle Wagner, Jasper Place High School, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
"The Double wing did its job. Our sophs beat the powerhouse John Muir (Pasadena) H.S. sophs 19-18. It was our first victory over Muir (annual League Champs) since 1992. They were so frustrated we ran super powers and criss-crosses, there were confused. We ate up the clock walked to the line and kept the ball away from there track guys. A back Ebony Henry had 9 carries for 125 yards. We won the game with 40 seconds to go, on a 99 black O , a pass from Jose Pompa to C back Paul Rodrigues. It was like they had won the Super Bowl. I am really proud of our sophs, this will be their first winning season since '92. Our future looks great, we have all our starting back field coming back (Juniors) as well as 5 starting sophs on varsity. And this soph team now is no joke. they know how to win. I love coaching this game!" Pete Smolin, Glendale, California
In Sterling, Virginia youth football, the Bears, 3-7 in the regular season, combined ball-control offense with a tough defense to defeat the Jets, 12-0 and advance to the semi-finals next Saturday.
From a coach on the East Coast - how many of you can identify with this? "We lost to a team we were better than during our homecoming. I don't know about your school but homecoming here is for everybody else in the school and at the expense of football -What really upsets me is that I have no input on the activities. The pep rally is disgustingly long, the band mothers have a big dinner to make money, the girls soccer team sells programs, the student council makes money on the dance, the king and queen court takes place during halftime. We were leading 24-16 at halftime but we really needed to make some defensive adjustments. Except three of my starters were involved in the halftime nonsense of riding around in a car and waving to the crowd. I'm not kidding - The ceremony lasted longer than 20 minutes so we had to start the second half with our three best players still involved in the ceremony. (I looked over with a dumbfounded expression as they were having roses pinned to their uniforms!) So how did the second half start? After we kicked off, the opponents scored in two plays- made the 2 pt conversion. Finally, because by this time I was irate, our three players were back and ready to go in (yeah right!). Our tailback, who just got his rose off, went into the game deep on the kick-off and quickly fumbled the ball back to our opponents. They scored in 6 plays and got the 2 pt, making it 32-24 with a 16 point swing in 1:15. We spent the rest of the second half in disarray and ended up on the short end of a 46-38 loss."
"Hugh: We returned to hard core Tight Double Wing football after playing with the stack and 5-1 and - Hanover Park Hurricanes 27 Glendale 0. 'Canes are now 12-0, including pre-season and playoffs. Ball control and great team defense held Glendale to only 18 offensive plays for the WHOLE game. We actually "opened it up" a bit, throwing 5 waggle passes with four completions to B-Back Bryan Mead. A back, Leon Wiggins picked his spots and had another 125 yard plus game on very limited carries. We installed Rip 7-C and scored with it inside the ten. Hugh, we could have made a video with our success with 3 trap at 2. Backup B-Back, Scotty Kruk (5'1" and 89 pounds of him) gives new meaning to the disappearing fullback. Next stop - Northern Illinois University and the Illinois State Bill George League Super Bowl. The kids are so jacked about playing on the astro turf! Hope to have good news for you next Saturday. Good luck in the playoffs." Bill Lawlor, Hanover Park, Illinois
The Australia Wallabies defeated France, 35-12, in the World Cup of rugby, thereby depriving the Northern Hemisphere of its first-ever world rugby title (rugby is traditionally dominated by New Zealand, South Africa and Australia). For those of you keeping tabs, it was a magnificent sports year for Australia, one in which the Aussies won the World Cup in both cricket and rugby. (True, cricket ain't too big over here, but it is huge in many lands once under English influence.) Had France been able to follow up its earlier win in the World Cup of soccer with a win in rugby, it would have represented an almost incredible pair of victories for a nation not particularly noted for its success in, er, manly sport.
November 8- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" Number 67. Pro players, according to Boomer Esaison, are too valuable to practice tackling; high school players must be even more valuable, then, because they practice tackling safely.
"We finished the regular season Friday night with a 51-6 win over Canton. 8 wins-3 loses . The BEST season since 1983 at Florence. We will be playing 8-3 Pontotoc in the Grenada Lake Bowl in Grenada, Mississippi next saturday. How 'bout them dogs!!(Miss State) 8-0. Ranked #8 in the nation. I am a proud former Bulldog player. Good luck in the remainder of your season!!!" Coach Steve Jones, Florence, Mississippi
Coach John Lambert, whom it has been my great pleasure to have as a student ("A" in my US History class), player (starting center on my football team) and assistant (right-hand man at La Center, Washington High for two years), finished a successful first year at La Center by defeating Ilwaco, 33-8. Most significantly, after finally achieving the first winning season in their history last year, the Wildcats under Coach Lambert finished 5-4 to make it two straight winning seasons. I couldn't be prouder for Coach Lambert and his kids.
"Just wanted to let you know that we won our last 3 games and have earned our second straight playoff bid. (second year of the DW, and only the third time in the schools 27 year history that the Rebels have gone to the second season). I told you earlier this year about our success with that fly motion ("Rocket" and "Lazer") . We have been using it quite a bit and it's been giving our opponents all sorts of trouble. Everybody wants to run a 7-2 down here against us, but this gets us outside easily, and it causes them to widen so the trap opens up big time. Anyways, thought you could pass that on to anyone having trouble getting outside. Good luck in the playoffs." Jay Minyard, South Albany High School, Albany, Oregon
Remember my story about the two D-I prospects who mysteriously wound up making a 1,000-mile move from their Washington High School (Mariner High, of Everett) to a San Diego High School (unnamed) after playing on the California school's team in a NIKE summer basketball league? Mariner, which was state class 4-A runner-up last year and was expected to be at least as good this year, finished 1-8, scoring 71 points and allowing 227 points against. How would you have done if someone had seduced your two franchise players?
"Hi Coach, In the tough loss Department - Winthrop scored to make the game 21-20 but failed on the two point conversion. They recovered a disputed onside kick (ball was touched by them before it went ten yards) and with no time on the clock threw a Hail Mary that was caught to win 26-21. Toughest loss in my career and our kids played their hearts out. We finished the season 8-2 and could have easily won next week's game- oh, well - it was a great high school football game." Jack Tourtillotte, Boothbay Harbor, Maine (To add to the heartbreak - just two weeks ago, Winthrop had defeated Boothbay, 44-14.)
The incomparable Lenny Moore - as some people called him even when he was still playing - was interviewed on the sidelines at the Penn State-Minnesota game Saturday. It was Homecoming in State College, but that wasn't why the former Nittany Lion (and Baltimore Colts' Hall of Famer) was there; he was there to pay a visit to his former position coach, "Tor" Toretti, who is now in a nursing home. That in itself was moving enough, but when the interviewer asked Mr. Moore where he lived now, and he replied "I live in Baltimore; there are about 20 of us who stuck around" - I almost lost it. I lived in Baltimore in the early 60's, and like everyone else was caught up in perhaps the most wonderful love affair ever between a city and its team. It made me weepy to hear Lenny Moore mention how so many of the old Colts - the Art Donovans, the Jim Parkers, the Gino Marchettis, the Ordell Braases - had "stuck around," and it made me realize once again how much I detest those damned Irsays for ripping a city's heart out. The bastards could have left Baltimore with the nickname, the colors and the horseshoes and still taken the franchise; at least Cleveland has its Browns back, but no replant called the Ravens will ever recall the glory days of the Baltimore Colts.
"Coach Wyatt; MV 6 Heritage Hills 3!!! First sectional championship in school history! We advance to the regionals next Friday. We are one of only 8 teams left playing in the state (in our class). We took our opening kickoff from our own 1 yard line and drove 99 yards in about 10 minutes and 18 plays for the score. Our defense was superb--Heritage Hills, #2 in 3A, drove inside our 10, 3 times and came up with 3 points! We went for it on 4th down 3 times and converted 2, we also ran 2 fake punts--yours, I might add, and converted both. The kids played tremendously well, I am so proud of them. Our skinny little 14 year old freshman dominated, he had around 200 yards and absolutely punished them when they tried to tackle him. It was a big win for us. Thanks for this offense!" Paul Maier, Mount Vernon, Indiana (I couldn't be prouder, because I liked Paul from the first time I met him, and I believed that I saw in him the makings of an excellent coach. Selfishly, I consider my judgment vindicated, but more than that, I am pleased to see our profession being recharged with young men like Paul Maier who will keep our game strong for years to come, and leave it better than they found it. Heritage Hills, by the way, was 11-0 going into the game against Mount Vernon (6-5), and had shut out eight of its opponents along the way. The win marks Mount Vernon's first-ever sectional championship - in fact, the first time in school history that the football team has survived long enough to play more than ten games.)
November 6 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 66. Most high school kids aren't even old enough to get into night clubs, much less night club brawls.
"Coach, we won again .We defeated the Hillcrest Knights 21-8 (In the Idaho State Playoffs) . We will not know who we play next week until Monday . Coach Kurt Young (Rigby, Idaho) " onward and upward with the double wing"
"Hi Coach, DW came through again as we finished the regular season undefeated.This week we host a Semi final game against a tough Winnacunet squad.Our starting backfield of Mike Laferriere,Sean Flanigan,Ryan Snee and QB John Trisciani have led the offense averaging better than 300 yards per game.As a testament to the DW the backs are 1st year running backs and the QB is in his first year at the position.Snee 5'9'' 190 and Trisciani 5'8'' 135 are 7th graders and will be returning along with 5'9'' 195 guard Jason "Pig Pen" Gagnon.I can't thank you enough Coach Wyatt and plan on sending you a film to check out soon." Coach John Trisciani, Manchester, New Hampshire
"Coach Wyatt, its been almost a week since our JV season ended with a 41-24 victory in our ninth game of the season. The past 12 weeks have been a whirlwind of excitement for our program. Varsity Coach Mike Johnston has been a real plus for us in deciding that this is the offensive scheme that will help our program develop. Boy, what a development our JV's finished 7-2 up from last years 6-3 record not a bad two year run for a jv program that hadn't won a game in the previous five seasons. Everyone is estatic and our program is really looking forward to the future. Coach Johnston's varsity team plays Saturday 11/6/99 for the Class A section 4 title in New York State the first time our High School has reached this level since 1984. This will be the 4th time in our schools history that they are playing for the sectional title(by the way I been in the program for all of these title games, I must be getting old but the competitor in me really still enjoys this and I still get the goose bumps thinking about this type of game.) Getting back to our JV season we scored 399 points this season and averaged nearly 420 yards per game and its all attributed to the Double Wing and all its possiblities. All our players think highly of the offense and it made us the talk of the area. If we work on off season conditioning we can expect another season like this one. Our success brings the would be football candidates out of the woodwork, this year we had 63 9th and 10th graders out for the team and with this added sucess of this season our numbers hopefully will rise again. Thanks for all your support and keep the advice coming the Double Wing is outstanding and really unstoppable..... " Lou Condon , Head Junior Varsity Coach, Corning West High School, Painted Post,NY
Maybe he used to be a football coach - Without getting into the pluses or minuses of the presidential candidacy of Senator John McCain of Arizona, I find it so very touchy-feely that someone in the news media has unearthed a dark secret abut the Senator - he has a temper! Imagine that! Perhaps he's not the sensitive, I-feel-your-pain, he-cares-about-people-like me kinda guy we expect our President to be. It probably would be better if he lied, smoked pot (withut inhaling), dodged the draft, and searched through woodpiles for snakes to make love to - just so long as he never lost his temper.
I made sure to edit this so the writer can't be identified, but Double-Wing coaches will understand: "A coach of another 9 year old team came up to say "hi," etc..he's all excited because they have actually won 2 games this year - this is 2 games in 2 years!! They are in a "lower" division - meaning they are either a start up team, or had a real bad record the previous year. He wanted to get a benchmark of his team's progress, so he asked if I would scrimmage his team Thursday night..now I wasn't real thrilled about it because everytime we do, it's almost embarrasing..and I live in the same city as the parents of the other team and they don't much like the fact that my kids just totally dominate theirs..some of 'em get downright p----d because they think I'm running it up on them....so I initially declined, saying I needed to work on preparing for the (upcoming opponent) , blah..blah..then he made some wisecrack about how I might be gettin' a little worried about our ability to beat them etc..so I finally said "all right, (name withheld), but I'll only commit to 1/2 of my practice time to the scrimmage - he then asked me if I had any scrimmage vests, and of course I did..then he says 'Now I'll need one RED one for my QB - No hitting the QB's, right?' - I just started laughing and told him that I couldn't tell a QB from an Offensive Tackle on my team so 'NO, that wasn't right!' - I then told him that I expected my QB to be the toughest guy on the field - that's the only way he'd get the respect of his team mates - and if he thought I'd help contribute to creating another prima donna QB, he was freakin' crazy - so either we play football or we don't. he decided we don't! are you ----ing me??? 9 years old and he's too valuable to hit??? Can't you picture little Ryan Leaf with his big Red Vest on saying 'can't hit me' and when time for sprints came around he would say 'sorry, might pull a muscle?'"
"Coach, the Internet has been down for a couple of days. We beat Tonopah 14-6 and clinched home field playoff for the rest of the way. We play NYTC (Nevada Youth Training Center - Humorously referred to by some as "Nevada Yacht and Tennis Club" - HW) today in the final regular season game. Justin Stumpf led the way for us with 30 carries for 187 yds. He is now third in the state in rushing this year and 2nd in scoring. That's third in the state includes all classifications." Coach Marty Linford, Wells, Nevada
November 5 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 65. High school players and cheerleaders are not prevented contractually from dating each other.
The Washougal Panthers won their seventh straight game and the Southwest Washington League Championship Thursday night, defeating the Castle Rock Rockets, 38-13, at Washougal. After falling behind 7-0 in the first three minutes of play, the Panthers evened the score on the first play of the second quarter with a 25-yard pass from Cody Morris to Danny Stineback, and went in at halftime tied, 7-7. Taking the second half kickoff, the Panthers, aided by another 25 yard pass from Morris to Stineback, drove to the Castle Rock six, where Morris threw to Josh Brock for the score. Tim Ensley's 16-yard run after a Castle Rock turnover built the Washougal lead to 19-7 after three quarters. Chris Martell's 64-yard burst off right tackle gave the Panthers a 25-7 lead early in the fourth quarter, but Castle Rock quickly answered to pull within 12 at 25-13. From there, though, it was all Washougal, as Ensley scored from 15 out on a fourth-down and long, and Martell, set up by Stineback's 37-yard run, scored from the three. The Panthers rushed for 386 yards on 64 carries, with Stineback, Martell and Ensley all rushing for over 100 yards.Stineback's 152 yards gave him 1094 yards rushing for the nine-game regular season , while Martell gained 753 and Ensley 695. Morris completed six of eight for 82 yards, and his two touchdown passes gave him 13 for the season, with just four interceptions. (Stineback has scored 20 touchdowns - 10 running, eight receiving, and two on returns.) The Panthers' defense gave up 140 yards rushing and 116 yards passing, while recovering three Castle Rock fumbles. Castle Rock, which brought a six-game win streak of its own into the game, finished the season 6-3, and will represent the league in the playoffs as its second-place team. Washougal (7-2) as league champion, will play next weekend in nearby Vancouver, Washington, against the winner of a Tuesday night qualifying-round game between Mt. Baker High, located 5 hours north of us, about 10 miles from the Canadian border, and Port Townsend High, located on the Olympic Peninsula,to the northwest of us. Port Townsend, interestingly enough, is a program that has made a dramatic turnaround in its fortunes in the last two years, thanks to - the Double-Wing! (While my sentiments are of course with Port Townsend, I would prefer not to have to play another Double-Wing team. I really think two already this year is sufficient.)
Just to put winning a football game win in perspective: Brendan FitzPatrick, an outstanding senior lineman at Beaverton, Oregon High, collapsed and died at his home Wednesday night while watching football tapes with his dad. He had been excused from practice earlier that day after complaining of chest pains, and medical examiners have attributed his death to arrhythmia, caused by a pre-existing heart condition of which the young man and his family were aware. Brendan, an all-league center in 1998, was the third FitzPatrick brother to play at Beaverton. Two older brothers went on to play major college football: Devin at the University of Oregon, and James at USC, where in 1986 he was the first-round draft choice of the San Diego Chargers and the 13th player taken overall. Brendan had already decided on Oregon. Beaverton, one of the state's top teams, is scheduled to play its final regular season game at Hillsboro tonight. I'm sure coaches everywhere join me in extending our deepest sympathies to Brendan's family. "He was the only one of my boys who knew what he wanted to do after high school, " his dad, Jim FitzPatrick told the Portland Oregonian. "He wanted to be a teacher and a coach."
The Rigby, Idaho Trojans, who finished a perfect 9-0 in their first season running the Double-Wing, play their first playoff game tonight.The last time Rigby went undefated in regular season play was in 1950.
In Canadian football, the Jasper Place High Rebels of Edmonton, Alberta, have placed both their senior (17-18) and junior (15-16) teams in Saturday's City Championship finals. The seniors advanced by defeating the McNally Tigers, 20-18, in the city semi-finals, while the juniors qualified by winning their semi-final game over the M.E.Lazerte Voyageurs, 42-7.
Mount Vernon, Indiana plays Heritage Hills in a playoff game tonight. Mt. Vernon's coach, Paul Maier, wrote me about a Heritage Hills player named John Goldsberry, who has already committed to Purdue: "He is a man among boys. I have never seen a back in high school that has such speed and strength. Here is the kind of player he is, he punts, runs down, makes the tackle, causes a fumble, then picks it up and runs it in for a TD and he made it look easy." The good news, from Mt. Vernon's perspective, is that he is rumored to be out for this game.
"All I know is what I read in the papers." That's what the late comedian Will Rogers used to say. What I read was that Indianapolis Colts' defensive end Mark Thomas had been released from an Indianapolis hospital after being knocked cold trying to make a tackle last Sunday. I read further that the injury had occured when a Dallas Cowboy's knee had hit Thomas in the helmet. Now, I didn't see the play, so can somebody please tell me what Mr. Thomas' helmet was doing down where it could be hit by somebody's knee? Perhaps it was just an accident. But perhaps it was a result of the horrendous tackling those guys demonstrate every Sunday. Maybe a pro team or two would be interested in my "Safer and Surer Tackling" video. On second thought - Nahhhh. Their guys are too valuable to practice tackling. But not too valuable, evidently, to risk losing them to the dangers of improper tackling.
November 4 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" Number 64. Pros hold out, boasting that they can live without football; high school players go on to college, jobs or the military, and write sad letters to their coaches, telling how desperately they miss football.
Amid the excitement of Oregon State's shot at its first winning record since 1967 - maybe even a bowl bid? - people have forgotten the man whose efforts helped lay the groundwork for this great turnaround. The man who recruited 17 of the players - including 10 starters - on this year's club, and also led the drive to build the Wayne Valley Football Center, a showpiece facility which brought OSU into line with the rest of the PAC-10. He's Jerry Pettibone, Beavers' coach from 1991 through 1996. Coach Pettibone, who was a successful head coach at Northern Illinois before OSU and director of recruiting at Oklahoma before that, brought the wishbone to Oregon State and made the Beavers competitive, with a rushing offense that ranked second in the nation in 1993. "I know that the wishbone was the best thing for OSU and that it would give us a chance to be competitive," he told the Portland Oregonian recently. " That's what option football does - it's an equalizer because it makes opponents defend something they normally don't." But the Beavers didn't - couldn't - pass, and ultimately, that was Coach Pettibone's downfall. Under considerable pressure to "open it up" (sound familiar to any of you Double-Wingers out there?), he gave in and installed a spread-option attack - without the skilled players to run it. Finally, on top of accusations by the liberal media that he was "forcing religion" on his young men (he is a devout Christian), back-to-back seasons of 1-10 and 2-9 (trying to run a wide-open attack with players he had recruited to run the wishbone) led to Coach Pettibone's removal. "If there was one thing I could go back and do," he told the Oregonian, "and I've thought about this often - I would have stuck with the wishbone." Now in business in Jacksonville, Oregon, Coach Pettibone's only involvement with football is on Friday nights, when he does the color on the broadcasts of South Medford High's games. South Medford's coach, Bill Singler, was an assistant to Coach Pettibone at OSU. Actually, there is another way in which he is involved in football - he is a regular at the University of Oregon games, where his daughter is a student, and where he has come to know, and has been befriended by, the Ducks' coaching staff. Sadly, he has not been to a Beavers' game since leaving Oregon State; one gathers from the Oregonian that he feels that he was wronged by Oregon State. Nevertheless, he is quick to express his support for Dennis Erickson, the engineer of this year's OSU turnaround. Coach Erickson, for his part, gives Coach Pettibone full credit for all he did to help build this year's club, and expresses the wish that he will one day soon return to OSU. Maybe along with a winning record and a bowl bid, the administration at Oregon State could add to their list of goals a reconciliation with Jerry Pettibone - a really good man who deserved better.
Even though Washington beat Stanford last Saturday, they are still taking their shots at Rick Neuheisel in Seattle. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Steve Moore wrote, "Who would you rather go to war with, Rogaine Rick or Tyrone Willingham, Stanford's upstanding leader? I get the feeling that Willingham would wrap my wounds, haul me out of my bunker, drape me over his shouldr, and dodge mines and enemy bullets on the way to safety. I get the feeling Neuheisel would hightail it out of there, setting land speed records along the way." Ouch. Actually, it's hard to say how many of us football coaches really would be capable of that sort of bravery in devotion to our comrades, so it's worth remembering the next time you look at some 75-year-old guy that it's quite possible that 50-some years ago, he did that very thing.
Coach Mike Emery's Fitch High Falcons, of Groton, Connecticut recently passed their two stiffest tests of the season. In fact, they earned grades of A+ in both of them. Unbeaten after six games and averaging over 50 points a game, Fitch two weeks ago downed previously unbeaten Waterford 70-12, rushing for 560 yards and accumulating 690 yards total offense. This past weekend it was Montville High, also unbeaten and having given up only 29 points in six games. Leading 35-30 with 10 minutes to play but Montville on the move, Fitch intercepted a Montville pass on its own 29, then proceeded to put the game away with a 71-yard scoring drive that required 16 plays and took eight minutes off the clock. Final score: Fitch 42, Montville 30. Last year, Fitch was state runner-up. This could be the Falcons' year. I know Double-Wingers everywhere send their best wishes to Coach Emery, who was a guest clinician at my Providence clinic last spring. Those who were at the clinic will remember some of the videotape he brought along - his kids can run this offense!
Brownstown, Indiana beat Triton Central, 98-27 in a first-round playoff game. (In Indiana, every team qualifies for the playoffs, and last-place teams and first place teams typically meet in the first round, leading to the possibility of runaways.) Come on. 98-0? I don't even know the guy from Brownstown, and I'm sure that technically he's a good coach, but I have a couple of questions for him: 98 points, Coach? How could you do that? To a fellow coach, who almost certainly has had his battles with parents all year? (Ever notice how the jackals circle when you're losing?) To his kids, who undoubtedly have been suffering the jeers of their slacker schoolmates while struggling through a losing season? How do you run up a score like that unless you are trying to? (Think you can't hold down the score? Remember the scene in the movie, "Glory," where our hero is disgusted when his well-trained troops must witness the looting and pillaging of a captured village by another commander's less-disciplined, out-of-control troops?)
November 3 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" Number 63. Most high school players can be counted on to return to play on the same team next year - and if they're seniors, most of them wish they could, too.
The value of a coach: Dwight Jaynes, in Tuesday's Portland Oregonian, writes, "It was a nice thing Brett Favre did for Mike Holmgren to welcome him back to Green Bay on Monday night. He showed the world what he was like before Holmgren got ahold of him. Favre, a two-time most valuable player under Holmgren, looked like a guy who was selected behind Todd Marinovich and Dan McGwire in the 1991 NFL draft - which he was, by the Atlanta Falcons." Favre of late had been quoted as saying that under Holmgren he had begun to feel confined. Years ago I heard Pepper Rogers, then coach at Georgia Tech, say that the most important thing you had to do in coaching a quarterback was keep him within his limits - confining him, so to speak - so that he wouldn't lose it for you with his attempted heroics.
The NFL and its continuing contribution to our game: We tied our final JV game last night, 18-18. Could have won it, but - shades of Leon Lett - our A-Back, in the clear at the opposing 20 on his way to a 50-yard TD, turned to his pursuers and held up both arms in the classic "look at me" pose. The officials nailed him for it and we never did score on that drive. He is a lucky young man in one respect , at least - I was up in the press box at the time. Gosh. I wonder where a kid learns a stunt like that.
Washougal's game this week with Castle Rock has been moved to Thursday night because the loser, who will finish second in the league, must quickly prepare for a first-round playoff game the following Tuesday. If that's us, it will entail a Friday breakdown of the game video and a hastily-assembled game plan - for an opponent who won't be known for sure until all Thursday night's results are in - followed by practices Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Our school district officially discourages Sunday practices, and for years I have made it a point not to ask our coaches to meet on Sundays, but in the event that we should lose on Thursday, it is unavoidable. Should we win on Thursday night, though, we get a Tuesday bye and move on to the next round of games the following weekend, so we can go about our business as usual. In either case, we will most likely be playing every game after Thursday night on artificial turf, which the state seems to prefer for playoffs. Since we are not especially big but do have fair team speed, that should not be a disadvantage to us.
Coach Gary Etcheverry, an assistant coach with the Toronto Argonauts in the Canadian Football League, is a passionate believer in the Double-Wing, and has managed to keep abreast of the offense by occasionally visiting this site. He writes, "Due to one visit I made I learned about Coach Gene Tundo, OrchardPark... snuck down one Friday eve & caught a 14-0 win (making them 7-0), then hooked-up with Gene & coaches afterward at a small local pub in shadows of former Rich Stadium (Buffalo Bills Home)... GREAT FUN!" It really is like a fraternity when Double-Wingers hook up.
From a youth coach back East who asked not to be identified, with playoffs coming up: "We had to go to Wildcat this week as our first unit QB has a hurt thumb and could not take a snap under center without a lot of pain. We had the other team on the run as they could not tell who got the ball or who was handing it off."
71% of American high school kids go to schools with populations of 1,000 or more. Researchers say that bigger schools worsen the problems of violence-prone teens. Think small schools don't have their benefits? For eight years, I taught at Ridgefield, Washington High School, where at the end of every semester, Principal Chris Thompson (a former football coach and lifelong Marine) took the time to write a personal note ("Way to get that algebra grade up!" "Let's see some improvement in that English grade!") on the report card of every one of the school's 400 students.
I didn't hear it, but Coach Scott Barnes in Denver swears he heard Boomer Esaison, in explaining why they tackle so poorly in the NFL, say,"The players have become too valuable to practice tackling." That probably also explains what passes for blocking on Monday Nitro Football.
November 2 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" Number 62. High school coaches don't try to harness athleticly-gifted quarterbacks, forcing them to stay in the pocket.
In view of the passing yesterday of the great Walter Payton, I found this note from Bill Lawlor, a youth coach in suburban Chicago, to be touching: "Hugh: Last week during a scrimmage, our A-Back was holding the ball with one hand on a sweep and I yelled at him, "Tuck it away Walter Payton!!" The coaches got a laugh when he looked at me kind of crooked and then we started to say that hey these kids were born in 1984 and 85, they never saw the Super Bowl Bears of 1985, let alone Walter Payton's bread and butter years. I don't get very upset about all that much, but today is a really dark day in Chicago. Being only 28, the whole reason I ever started playing football was because I saw Walter run in 1977. He was a great blocker, runner, cutter, receiver and he delivered punishment to the defense. He was really special. The funny thing was that he never played behind a pro bowl lineman until the mid 1980's. He never had a great QB in front of him either. Plus he was the second string punter/kicker and sometimes third string QB! I wish my players had a chance to see him play week in and out.....he will be missed." Bill Lawlor --- (What a lot of people who didn't follow Walter Payton's career may not be aware of is his legendary work ethic. It is possible that no one ever worked harder than Walter Payton to get to the top - and then stay there. How sad that, at age 45, he is gone.)
For those who thought that Jim Gray's questioning of Pete Rose was too aggressive, there is always the lovely Leslie Visser of Monday Night Football, who threw this hardball at Mike Holmgren last night, after he had returned to Green Bay with his Seahawks and defeated his former team, the green Bay Packers, 27-7: " Mike, what kind of a night was this for you?"
New Zealanders are in shock after the defeat of their team, the legendary All Blacks, by the French in the semi-finals of the World Cup of Rugby, being held in Wales. Rugby is very big in New Zealand, the one sport in which that small nation, with a population roughly the same as South Carolina, has been able to achieve international prominence. France will now play the Wallabies of Australia, winners in their semi-final game over the Springboks of South Africa.
It's called the Law of Unintended Consequences. The American Football powers in Germany, in an attempt to develop more native-German skilled players, have voted to limit the number of "outsiders" (non-Germans) allowed per team next season to two Americans and one (non-German) "European." Unless the American is a quarterback, that is, in which case the team is limited to one American but may then have two "Europeans." Seems simple enough, except that the new colossus of Europe, the European Union (EU), considers all Europeans to be equals anywhere in Europe, and could very well see this as illegal discrimination against Europeans who happen not to be German. In that case, German teams might be tempted to take advantage of the fact that citizenship in certain European countries - such as Ireland - is awarded fairly easily to Americans, often on the basis of their merely being able to trace their ancestry to that country. Scenario: American quarterback successfully applies for Irish citizenship, becomes an instant "European," and, since it is okay for German teams to discriminate against Americans but not other Europeans, finds himself in demand all over Deutschland. If you are a good football player and your name is O'Malley, Callahan, McNamara, Donovan - you might want to keep this in mind.
"Hi Coach. Just a few words of thanks for your great playbook. My football team (Southampton Stags in the UK) have just won our 1st game using your playbook. We beat the Bristol Bullets 33 - 6. I had 8 different backs carry the ball 2 A 3 B 3 C. The A backs carried 10 times for 61yards and 1 TD the B backs 18 times for 81 yrds and the C backs 18 for 186 yrds and 4 TDs. We set everything up with 88 super power and killed them off with 47 c. Thanks again I'll keep you up to date. yours in football." Coach Mick Hogan
November 1 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" Number 61. High school kids don't need a flunky on the sidelines to squeeze water out of a water bottle for them.
I am having some difficulty getting playoff scores now, but I do know that in Illinois, Rich Central, of suburban Chicago (Olympia Fields) is very much alive, after handing 9-0 Chicago Collins its first defeat, 30-8. Guy Smith, C-Back, carried 15 times for 171 yards and a TD, while B-Back Tyreece Jones had 80 yards and two TD's on 14 carries...In Indiana, Mount Vernon won in the second round of the state playoffs, defeating Gibson Southern, 42-7, and avenging an earlier-season loss to the same team...Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, remained unbeaten and advanced to the state quarter-finals with a 57-12 win over Green Bay East...I have no idea how things work in New York State, but Orchard Park, ranked number one most of the season in Western New York, lost to Lockport, 22-21, and evidently that's it - Despite finishng 8-1, Orchard Park's season is over. All I can figure is that game #9 must have been a playoff game.
One more reason to be glad that you run the Double-Wing: A local offensive coordinator of my acquaintance has two promising quarterbacks on his squad. Great kids. The kind you'd like to develop a rapport with - if only you could. Seems they both have personal quarterback coaches - one of them a former pro - who attend all the practices, and on occasion have questions about the strategy. I have been aware of such creatures in tennis, golf and gymnastics, and, to some extent, basketball. But local baseball and softball coaches tell me that many of their kids have "hitting coaches," with whom the coaches sometimes find themselves at odds. What this just goes to show you is that even if you do give in to fan pressure and "open it up," as the great unwashed in the stands would like you to do, you are not home free. All you have done is open your program to unwelcome intruders.
I told you wrong about Cricket. Seems that in "limited overs" or "50 overs" matches, the team that wins the toss bats all day. Then, the other team bats - when they next play again. Which in the case of my son and his girlfriend, going to watch her nephew play, will be a week from now!
The PAC-10 sucks? You would be justified in saying that, based on out-of-league play this year, but it sure is an interesting season. USC and defending champion UCLA near the bottom? Come on. Oregon State just one win away from its first winning season since 1967? You got to be kidding. Rick Neuheisel actually fielding a smash-mouth team at Washington? Sure. Hey - this is probably the most interesting PAC-10 season I can remember since moving to the West Coast in 1975. Stanford was trounced by Texas and lost to San Jose State - kind of an annual occurence, actually - but inside the conference has been, uh, tough, to say the least. Arizona State lost to - New Mexico State? Oregon scores on the order of 40 points a game and finds that it's not always enough to win. And what about Marques Tuiasosopo, Washington Huskies' quarterback and son of former Seahawk Manu, who Saturday against Stanford ran for 207 yards - more than the total output of all but six Top-25 teams (Penn State, Virginia Tech, Kansas State, Georgia Tech, Ohio State and Mississippi) and identical to the total team yardage of Wisconsin and its Heisman-candidate Ron Dayne? But that's not all - he completed 19 of 32 pass attempts for 302 yards, and in so doing, became the first player in college football history to run for over 200 yards and throw for over 300. This is not your typical B-S 500 yards of total offense, either, which nowadays is likely to consist of 510 yards passing and -10 yards rushing; this was an incredible athletic performance by a guy who can both drop back and run the option, remindful of Tommie Frazier or Turner Gill. No doubt some NFL team will draft him - late - and, deciding that he is "too short," or "won't stay in the pocket," will try to turn him into a strong safety.