*********** "The US basketball team is here in Melbourne to play an exhibition game against Australia prior to the Goodwill Games in Brisbane next week. The last time the US was here, the Olympic team was branded 'arrogant' and 'cocky' by the Australian press. (Australians expect their athletes to be regularly guys - which they are.) There was an incident in an exhibition game involving Vince Carter and Andrew Gaze which nearly erupted into a full-scale brawl. Needless to say, US basketball didn't make many friends. Although the team went on to win Olympic gold, most Aussies were not impressed with Carter, Gary Payton, Kevin Garnett and the rest of the team. "This time around there appears to have been a conscious effort to stock the squad with humble guys. Media sessions have been open to al media and I had the opportunity to interview Andre Miller and Shane Battier, as well as coach Flip Saunders. All three impressed me with their attitude and their willingness to embrace the Australian culture. Battier said he would like to return for a vacation after this NBA season. Shawn Marion was interviewed by Melbourne's Channel 10 and he said that the younger guys still get a kick out of traveling to events like this, while the older NBA guys are a bit jaded. Baron Davis, Wally Szczerbiak and Jermaine O'Neal put on a clinic for a group of kids, part of an effort to 'do more in the community.'
Whatever. I can't stand those guys. Scott Barnes, Rockwall, Texas (I did hear that, and it made me want to fwow up. But, hey - this is America. Rules are for the other guy, right? Police, coaches, teachers and other people in authority are supposed to be attuned to our nuances and make accomodations for them, so why not football officials? "We've found that Jason does better when we let him cheat." ) *********** Our 78'ers (I coached them the last two years as 5th/6th at St. Thomas, Grand Rapids, MI) scrimmaged Blessed Sacrament last night. Our 78'er head coach assisted me the last two years. He stuck with the offense (we've run only 8 DW plays for 4 years now, and have a cumulative record of 24-8 in a very competitive league) and broke 9 of the first 17 plays for touchdowns. My 5th/6th graders watched and can't wait to scrimmage St. Paul tonight. Keep up the good work. Jim Ens, Grand Rapids, Michigan *********** Glascock County (Black Lion team) opened its season with a 19-0 shocker over a much bigger and more athletic Stewart-Quitman. Jr B-back, Mark Walker ran 23 for 206 and 3 tds. Not bad for a 5'7", 155 lb converted guard. Wedge and 4 basic lead were the bread and butter plays. One turnover all night and it came when we tried to rush up and run the play before the defense got set. Had to travel 9-10 hours round trip; but the ride back was sweet. First shutout in 10 + years, the only other one being against a school that no longer plays football. John Bowen, Gibson, Georgia *********** As Labor Day approached, it just didn't seem like a good, old-fashioned holiday. And then it suddenly occured to me - whatever happened to the National Safety Council? Remember that joy-killing bunch of nannies? Used to be it just wasn't a holiday weekend without the National Safety Council's nagging prediction of how many Americans were going to die on the nation's highways.
My wife, a third-grade teacher in Vancouver, Washington, attended a district-wide dog-and-pony show yesterday, at which the 100 or so newly-hired elementary teachers were asked to stand up. She told me she saw one male in the entire group. *********** The American Psychological Association at its recent convention in San Francisco was informed that a little spanking won't do kids any harm. Well, duh. Not that I ever doubted it, but it's good news nevertheless. (Actually, I've been wanting for a long time to administer a good ass whuppin' to all those nanny do-goods who succeeded in convincing our lawmakers that spanking was just another form of child abuse.) Years ago, I sat in an after-school faculty meeting, trying desperately to stay awake while one of those Department of Children's Services nags lectured us on the evils of spanking. She said that you didn't have to spank kids in order to raise them properly, and using herself as an example, told us that she had never been spanked. At that, Lee Sederburg, our ag teacher, picked his head up from the table where he'd been "resting" it, and said to her, "Maybe that's your problem." *********** Not that I'd ever bet on a pro football game, but I happened to notice the over/unders on this weekend's practice games. (The over-/under is based on the book's prediction of how many points the two teams in each game will score between them; bettors are invited to bet on whether they think the combined score will be over or under that total.) In only one of the games - Denver vs. San Francisco - does the book think that two professional football teams will score as many points, in an entire game, as BYU and Tulane did last Saturday. In the first period. *********** Time to stop the pretense and admit what the tobacco settlement was really about. It was not about helping all those people made ill by smoking, or all those "children" (we heard a lot about them) who had to be protected from the snares of Big Tobacco. It was about bucks. The lawyers got rich, and the states got rich. And of the $13+ billion paid to the states so far by tobacco companies as a result of the 1998 settlement, most of it has been used for a variety of things having nothing to do with the evils of smoking or the people suffering from its effects. Exactly 7 per cent of the money has been used to pay for smoking cessation programs. *********** Don Capaldo, in Keokuk, Iowa, wrote me wanting to know where to find a speech that the great Dave Nelson of Delaware gave to his teams every year. I told him that I got it from Jim Shelton, and I remembered printing it, and that if he was willing to search for it in my archives, I would love to see it again. Don was good enough to do the searching and he found it - back in May's "News." Jim Shelton, a former guard at Delaware under Dave Nelson and now a retired US Army General, has been sharing some of his memories and observations with me, and on the theory that there's a lot we coaches can all learn from great coaches - as well as leaders in other fields - I've been passing them along to you as I get them. With so many of you guys opening up this weekend, this might be of use to some of you: "Each year at the first practice, he would give basically the same speech the first day. He would say, 'You people as a team are unique. You are not the same group that you were last year, and you won't be the same next year. Each year older people move on, and new people come in. Each team is unique--just like a human being. There will never be another 2001 team. You are it. It is what you do together that counts. You must improve each week. There can be no 'ups and downs'. Each week is a new challenge and you must improve each week. You either get better or you get worse. The good teams get better each week - even though you may lose you've got to keep striving to get better as a team every week. There is no looking back to last year, or forward to next year. This year is your campaign. Make the most of it as a team together so you have no regrets'. Coach Nelson gave this speech to each team, every year. It made sense to me."
BLACK LIONS TEAM - Coach Wyatt - please sign us up for the Black Lion award. That is a great award and it is a great way to give an award to a kid that plays the sport for the right reasons. We had a big win last weekend - we rushed for 356 yards and were 1-4 passing for 43 yds and a touchdown, we dropped two other sure touchdowns. Our opponents were not very strong but it is nice to get a victory to start the season. Our last 13 games we are 10-3 the nineteen previous we were 2-17 so we are making some progress. Thanks again, Jet Turner, Head Coach, Ware Shoals HS, Ware Shoals, South Carolina
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A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: Monday I showed you a part of the
picture, and I thought maybe showing you the rest of it
would help you identify Bob Devaney. (For the record, as
he pointed out in his book, it is De-VANN-ey, not
De-VAIN-ey.) When he took over at Nebraska in 1962, it
was one of the most downtrodden programs in the US; when
he retired 11 years later, it was one of America's major
powerhouses.
I could give you season tickets to the NFL team of your choice and you wouldn't see as much offense in an entire NFL season as BYU and Tulane showed Saturday in the first quarter. *********** Who else saw BYU against Tulane Saturday? Man, the Cougars were awesome! Imagine 655 yards total offense - at the end of the third quarter! Imagine 377 of those yards coming on the ground - at BYU! Imagine BYU with a quarterback who can drop back, roll out, and run the option! Imagine BYU scoring three rushing TDs in the first quarter. So explosive was the BYU offense, under new head coach Gary Crowton and run by QB Brandon Doman, that the Cougars, tied at 21-21 at the end of one period, scored on the first play of the second quarter to break the tie, then took a 35-21 lead less than five minutes into the period, and went in at halftime ahead 49-21. By the time Doman came out, after three quarters, BYU led, 63-35, and Doman, besides his impressive running, was 25 of 30 for 278 yards. Not that Tulane was that all that bad, either - at least on offense. QB Patrick Ramsey threw pretty well, and running back Mewedle Moore was spectacular on those occasions - not enough to suit me - when they got him the ball. *********** The annual Hood-to-Coast relay covers 195 miles - and more than 5,000 feet in altitude - from high on Mt. Hood, westward to Seaside, Oregon. It draws hundreds of participants, and took place this past weekend. Twelve-person teams run three legs each, in what has become a major late-summer event in running-crazy Oregon. Our local high school girls' track coach, Alisa Wise, a former triple jumper at BYU, took part, along with other BYU track alumni. Calling their team the "B-Y-Used-to-Bes," they finished third in their category. Alisa, the mother of four sons (she's a stud, by the way - she lets them play football), said it was a terrific rush, running along the course and hearing people yell "Go Cougars!" Her only regret, she told me, was missing the BYU-Tulane game on TV Saturday, but I was able to fill her in and assure her that things went "pretty well" (see above) for BYU. Evidently the ability to replace the legendary Coach Lavell Edwards has been a matter of great concern to Cougar faithful. I told her she could stop worrying. *********** I caught a little of the Seahawks-49ers game on Saturday night. Very little - partly because it was proball, and an exhibition (oops, sorry - "pre-season") game at that, but mainly because the screen had been downsized. No doubt because they were showing us what the future is going to look like when we are all forced into buying HDTV sets (I can't wait to see the fighting that breaks out in the streets when the proles find out about this plot), the screen was circumcized, so that one-inch black strips ran across the top and bottom. You know, like some movie promo. And the picture was sort of washed out and grainy, too, like some NFL Films production from the 1970's. I turned up the volume, fully expecting to hear the voice of John Facenda. But no - this game was live (in the sense that any NFL exhibition game can truly be called "live"). But the size and shape of the picture - what a rip off. Now, I'm sorry, but if you just go to your nearest Many-Screens-With-Lots-o'-Movies-Near-the-Mall Cinema Multiplex, you can have your choice of dozens of screens, and you can watch all the movies you want in that stupid 16 x 9 format. But I've been watching football on TV since 1950 or so, ever since we got our first Philco with its giant 12-inch screen so my brother and his buddies could drink beer and watch the Penn games, and I've been watching football on 16 mm film, and then video, nearly as long, and I have come to expect it to be delivered to me on a screen sized in a 4 x 3 ratio. (That works out, in movie talk, to 16 x 12.) Anything else is phony. Distorted. Hollywood. I am not going to adjust happily to football games in this new format, if it's ever forced on us.. And if it is, I may just go to an Army-Navy surplus store and buy a gas mask and join the anarchists out on the lines. Hey - we defeated the metric system, didn't we? *********** They have the solution; now, all they need is a problem. So the NFL officials want more money. So who doesn't? At present, senior officials make a little more than $4000 - a game. Put another way, a senior NFL official makes - every game - about what a typical high school football coach makes for coaching an entire season, plus conducting an off-season conditioning program, monitoring players' grades, listening to parents bitch, and so forth. True, the NFL official does spend his autumn weekends on the road, but otherwise he is free to pursue a real career as a salesman, a government employee, a school principal, a small business owner. If for some reason he doesn't measure up and is let go as an official, it isn't the end of the world for him, because it's not his main line of work. Now, though, for some reason (why does greed come immediately to mind?) the NFL is under pressure to pay its officials more and maybe even make their jobs full-time. Baseball and basketball officials, the football guys whine, make more money than football officials. Well, duh - they work more games. And baseball and basketball has full-time officials, we are told, so football should, too. Now think about it for a minute. Yes, baseball does have full-time umpires, but baseball plays nearly every day. The umpires are constantly on the road, with little spare time. Umpiring has to be their full-time job. What else could those guys do during the season? What else could they do in what little "off-season" they have that would allow them to be gone seven months a year umping baseball games? As a result, baseball gets a bunch of guys who may or may not be good umpires, but can't do anything else in the world besides umpire. And, relative to football, is baseball really that well officiated? Isn't baseball the sport that the umpires basically control, giving the finger to everybody else and saying, " Screw the rules - the strike zone is what I say it is?" Basketball officials are full-time, too. Is basketball so well officiated? Isn't that the sport that has rules on the books about travelling and palming that its officials refuse to call? Now, I assume that even if the NFL does go ahead and hire its officials full-time, many of the current guys will choose to stay with their real-life careers, which means the league will immediately lose some very good people. Either that or they will start bringing in new guys on a full-time basis, and until they phase out the old guys, they will have a two-caste system of full-timers and part-timers. The NFL will still have to find its officials the way it always has - from among the ranks of college officials. And college officials, just as their pro counterparts now, are part-timers, too - they officiate on weekends and work at other jobs during the week, and are likely to continue to do so. And college officials often start as high school officials, who also have to have other means of making their livings. So what happens to those guys when the NFL finally beckons? What kind of people is the NFL going to find who will be willing at the drop of a hat to leave their real jobs in mid-career to become full-time football officials? Is a business owner going to throw away everything he's worked to build when the NFL calls? Is a school administrator halfway to retirement going to throw it all overboard for a chance to become a full-time field judge? And after everyone has been hired, it is simply impossible that everyone selected will turn out to be a good official. Under the present system, the NFL continues to maintain a high quality of officiating by culling out poor performers. So under the proposed system of full-time officials, what happens to the guy who doesn't measure up, and gets let go? Is he supposed to start another career, at age 50? Some 60 per cent of people surveyed think full-time NFL officials would be a great idea. Sorry. I know enough about surveys to know how they can be skewed. I know that the results depend on who is asked and how the question is posed. Meantime, isn't there anybody out there smart enough to realize that football, with its one-game-a-week routine, is a different animal from baseball, basketball and hockey? Isn't there anybody else who thinks that under the current system football may actually be getting a classier type of person officiating than it would get if it got people who had no lives or abilities other than as officials? Now, once more -will someone please tell me what, exactly, is the problem?
I'd like to walk up to that guy and ask him just one question. I'd say, "Hey, fella - who the hell do you think you are, anyhow - a pro football player?" *********** The World Wrestling Federation has had limits placed on its ability to use the initials WWF because of conflicts with another well-known user of the initials, the World Wildlife Federation. Not that Vince McMahon and Company need to worry. As T. J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times points out, "The initials XFL are available." *********** Could Anna Kournikova get away with her act in any other sport? Could she get away with it if she were a male? She has NEVER won a professional tennis tournament. In fact, in the last year or so she has seldom even PLAYED in a professional tennis tournament. Tennis interferes with her life as a celebrity. True, she's not that bad looking, but if she weren't an athlete and a celebrity, I don't think that many guys would look at her twice in a crowded airport. What she has done is masterfully promote herself. Can you think of another sport where you can get away with that garbage and never have to back it up with performance? Golf? Boxing? Baseball? Basketball? Football? Brian Bosworth tried it and was exposed. Give Deion Sanders credit - for all his absurd, look-at-me self-promotion, he did pretty much back it up, at least at times.
*********** BLACK LIONS TEAM "Sign the Cyclones Juniors up for the BL Award. Before the Jamboree I talked to the kids about sacrifice and related the Holleder Story to them. They were very interested in why a guy would give up so much for nothing in return. They will learn what this award is all about as being a veteran myself I feel some responsibility to tell this story. Coach, thanks so much for having the "STONES" to see this idea through." Glade Hall, Edmonds, Washington "Major Holleder overflew the area (under attack) and saw a whole lot of Viet Cong and many American soldiers, most wounded, trying to make their way our of the ambush area. He landed and headed straight into the jungle, gathering a few soldiers to help him go get the wounded. A sniper's shot killed him before he could get very far. He was a risk-taker who put the common good ahead of himself, whether it was giving up a position in which he had excelled or putting himself in harm's way in an attempt to save the lives of his men. My contact with Major Holleder was very brief and occured just before he was killed, but I have never forgotten him and the sacrifice he made. On a day when acts of heroism were the rule, rather than the exception, his stood out." Michael Robert Patterson
THERE IS NO COST TO YOU, AND NO ONE WILL TRY TO SELL YOU ANYTHING!!! |
UMATILLA - UMATILLA 47, Deltona 7 - Well, we just buried the "big school" boys, 47-7, in just three quarters. We ran the opening kick-off back 80 yards for a TD,, they scored on their first trip, and then it was all Umatilla the rest of the way. I used a different QB in each of the three quarters, and we used every player on the varsity roster in these three quarters. My new running back ran the opening kick off back, and then scored three more rushing touchdowns. We had three other backs score TDs and we had two called back (but still scored on those drives), but fumbled one on the way end to the end-zone for a touchback. The GO's worked great, as did the superpowers, 6/7 G, and the 47/56 Criss-Cross. My QB in the second quarter is the quickest of the three and we also ran 38 G/Keep left for big yardage (he had one of the TD's called back). My guys were really ready to play and even though they were big up front, we just had too much speed and quickness for them. It was a great win for us and I sure hope it will jump start us toward a great year. The kids have really worked hard and it showed with their effort last night. I couldn't have been prouder of them. Thanks for all the advice. We will keep you posted. on how things are going. Ron Timson ILLINOIS ALTON - ALTON 21, Champaign Central 19 - Coach, I want to take time to thank you for your offense. Last night we beat Champaign (Central) 21-19. Our first opening victory in four years. We were 2-7 last year. We ran a roar pass up the sideline to our number one athlete to start the scoring and he made a great one handed catch over their defender. Then we ran a 47c and scored from 61 yards out. In a time of exactly 5:01 we scored three times concluding with a 72 yard run from 5x. We had trouble with the super power because it had two inches of mud on the field and we couldnt move out there. ( any suggestions for the next time) We were happy with a win because we had to hang on late. - Coach Brad Hasquin OLYMPIA FIELDS - RICH CENTRAL OLYMPIANS 49, Chicago Kelvyn Park 0 - We built a 49-0 halftime lead and played everyone else in the second half. We scored on our first two plays from scrimmage. Play one was 2 wedge for 63 yards and a TD. Play two Tight stack 99 superpower for 86 yards and a touchdown. Play four 29 go reach for 20 yards and a touchdown. We had three series where we were one play and a touchdown. All in all, in the first half we carried 12 times for 322 yards and 6 touchdowns. It rained to start with and Fabian Harper was 2-5 for 19 yards and a Touchdown in the first half. Jhared Marshall 5 carries 176 yards 3 TD 2 receptions for 19 yards and a touchdown; Andre Epps 3 -78-1; Dominique Pope 4-68-2 Touchdowns were scored on 2 wedge, Tight Stack 99 Superpower, 29 GO Reach, Spread 43 Tackle Trap, 38 Go Reach, 88 Superpower, 58 Black Throwback We pulled the horses at halftime. First half Stats - Total Offense 17 plays for 341 yards. 7 Touchdowns. Coach Jon McLaughlin COLFAX - RIDGEVIEW MUSTANGS 44 - Gridley 0. - A back Derek Norton led the charge with 142 yards on 14 carries and two TD's. B back Ryan Jones had 43 yards on 10 carries and a TD. C back Jonathan Mosley had 55 yards on 10 carries and a TD. In addition our Sophomore backfield contributed another 118 yards and three TDs. The field was very sloppy but it didnt affect us much. We lost our starting QB 4-6 weeks with a broken left clavicle. That will hurt us more on defense than offense. So that kind of put a damper on things here. Next week we play the Tri=Point Chargers. I'll let you know how we do. By the way we ran 4 plays tonight. 88/99 SP, Trap, 6G, and 47 C. No passes at all tonight. Mike Benton INDIANA - MT. VERNON - WILDCATS 32, North Posey 14 - The only reason they scored was a dropped punt on our part and an 11 yard punt on our part--Special teams! Our offensive linemen grew up last night. They closed the score to 19-14 in the 3rd quarter. We had the ball only 5 offensive plays in the 3rd quarter. Fourth quarter comes along and I was a bit upset. I told our offense we were going to run 2 plays this drive and we were going to get them right and pound the ball down their throats. After 4 88 Super Powers In a Row, and then 3 99 Super powers, we ran a Trap then 88 again. This drive went 80 yards and chewed up all but 4 minutes of the 4th quarter. It was great to see the kids respond like that. Paul Maier Next week: Mt. Carmel, Illinois, which opened Friday night with a 2-overtime win over a defending state champion. ST. LOUIS PARK - BENILDE-ST. MARGARET'S - Hi Coach, Just a note to let you know that the DW is off to a fast start at BSM. We had our jamboree this morning and frankly, in my 15 years of coaching high school football I have never had a team execute an offense as well this early in the season as my kids did today. In the first "mini" game (one half) we scored on every possession (5). In the second game we scored on four of six possessions. Our second team kids also did a great job of running the offense. But what made me smile even more was the fact that our freshmen, and JV kids dominated their scrimmages with overpowering offensive displays. You know what else? The only formation we ran was tight. We haven't even scratched the surface yet. I must have had at least a dozen people come up to me afterward wanting to know where I got this thing. One older gentleman said he had a ball watching it because he hadn't seen something like that since the days he played! Needless to say our fans, and parents, were pretty excited. The DW is alive and well in the Twin Cities! Thanks. Joe Gutilla NORTH CAROLINA AHOSKIE - HERTFORD COUNTY 41, Southern Vance 7 GRAHAM - GRAHAM 21, Williams 7 WILMINGTON - LANEY 26, East Duplin 0 OHIO LIMA - LIMA PERRY HS - Coach Wyatt, I met you in Detroit! We won our 1st game 40-12 and scored 33 points in the 4th qtr! I love seeing the backers run to the super power when we run 3 trap at 2!!!!! Please register our team! The media is buzzing about the new offense! You are the MAN! 3 Wedge TD's! Dan Kirby Lima Perry Commodores Div. 6 (small school) 38 kids out. RHODE ISLAND - YOUTH CAROLINA - Chariho Cowboys 35 - Coventry Rams 6 - Defending New England champs and National Pop Warner finalists open with big win SOUTH CAROLINA WARE SHOALS - WARE SHOALS 47, Christ Church 7 TENNESSEE - YOUTH FRANKLIN - Our AAA Franklin Cowboys started off the regular season with a win today over the Portland Panthers 35-0. Started slow but came out the second half and played a lot better. Up 14-0 at the half on a 65 yard Wedge TD and another TD on a XX47C. Scored in the second half on an 88 Power, Red-Red, and a 38G off of Wedge action. Rushed for 225 yards and was 3-4 passing for 30 yards (1TD and 2-2 point conversions). Overall a good start. Had trouble with S.P blocking. Kickout needs work. Will look at the film and fix the problem this week. Thanks for you help. Greg Stout UTAH - YOUTH TAYLORSVILLE - WARRIORS 47, Granger Lancers 6 - Hugh, Our 12 year old team had it's first game today and it went very well. We won 47-6 over the Granger Lancers at their field. This in spite of the fact that I lost two of my best linemen and a starting running back in the last couple of weeks. We discovered that two of the players didn't live in our district, so we had to send them away. They had falsified their addresses on the registration form. The other one was a stud lineman who decided to excercise his free agency and take a year off. I am a little confused! Here it is I have kids lying about their address wanting to play for me, and then one who opted for skate-boarding and hanging out over playing for me. I guess kids will be kids. Al Andrus COACHES!!!!! BEGINNING THIS COMING WEEKEND, HIGH SCHOOL AND YOUTH FOOTBALL BEGINS FOR REAL. THOSE SCORES OF DOUBLE-WING TEAMS THAT ARE REPORTED TO ME WILL BE PUBLISHED WEEKLY ON A SEPARATE "WINNERS' CIRCLE" PAGE... UNLIKE IN PAST YEARS, I WILL NOT HAVE THE TIME TO SEARCH THE INTERNET FOR SCORES NOT REPORTED TO ME... IF YOU WISH TO HAVE YOUR SCORES POSTED ON THE "WINNERS' CIRCLE" PAGE, PLEASE REMEMBER TO E-MAIL THEM TO ME. I CAN'T ALWAYS PRINT ALL THE INFORMATION YOU SUPPLY, BUT GIVEN THE LIMITS OF SPACE AND TIME, I WILL TRY TO PRINT THE BASIC INFORMATION YOU PROVIDE ME.
*********** From a youth coach back East - "I weighed all my kids yesterday, and some are over the limit. I told some parents 3 weeks ago that if their child didn't lose a few pounds he couldn't play football. I had all kinds of resistance. Well,....... last night when I told the ones who were over the limit their child couldn't play football....it was a different tune.... 'oh coach what can we do...?? We want Johnny to play ... can he not eat...will that do it..??' Youth football does have its problems...!!!! I'll keep ya posted.." *********** The guys from Oceanside and The Bronx made the pros look like pukes. Thursday night. I watched Danny Almonte, the incredible kid from the Bronx, beat Oceanside, California 1-0, in the Little League World Series to advance to advance to the US Title Game. But the win was controversial - the winning run wouldn't have scored from third if an ump had noticed that the runner had failed to tag second on his way to third, and upheld Oceanside's appeal. (Time for fulltime umps in Little League!) Afterward, the network nerds doing the interviewing tried to bait the losing pitcher and coach with leading questions. Despite the pain of losing, the pitcher was asked, was it still all worthwhile? "Of course," the kid said, treating it as if it was the dumbest-ass question he'd ever heard, which, come to think of it, it almost certainly was. And then the Oceanside coach was asked if he was bitter about the loss, considering the blown call. Nope, he said. He didn't see it. The game was over. They had a great run. They had success beyond anyone's dreams. And so on. Two days later, the kids from The Bronx lost the US championship to Apopka, Florida. It had to be bitter. But no sooner had the game ended than the kids from the losing team were standing on the first base line applauding their opponents, and as the two teams passed each other in line, every one of the Bronx kids had a handshake and an embrace for every one of his opponents. Some real lessons in class and sportsmanship, in case any of the big guys happened to be watching. *********** There is nothing like an urgent safety issue to get otherwise-unconcerned administrators off their asses. Many a coach, frustrated in his attempts to get his rock-hard practice field watered, has magically discovered this truth, after mentioning the possibility of school liability should a kid be injured, and noticing the sudden appearance of the irrigation pipes. Following the tragic events of the past month, no doubt some of you had an experience similar to that of a friend of mine: he had been trying for the past few years to get drinking water to his practice field. Until a few years ago, it was no problem - they just hooked up to a nearby well, attached a hose to a PVC pipe with holes in it, and left the water running all through practice. But then one day, one of the maintenance people told the superintendent that he didn't think the well water was safe to drink. Of course, no kid had ever become sick, but that didn't matter. The coach was told not to let the kids drink the well water. But now he was in a predicament: the well water was satisfactory for irrigating, but the nearest connection to city water was far, far away, with no way to get the water to the kids. So, the coach has had to tell the kids to bring their own water containers to practice. (This is a high school team, mind you.) He did keep the well water running during practice, and he made sure to cover his tail by telling the kids, "Go ahead and put your head under it and cool off, if you want, but don't drink it." Yeah, right. Don't inhale, either. And that's the way it's been for several years, despite the coach's constant complaints to the administration about the need to get drinking water down to his kids. But who listens to coaches? What do they know? And then, the other day, the first day of practice, who should appear but his principal. Down on the practice field. It was the first time he'd ever shown his face there. He didn't waste any time on formalities. He didn't even take the time to say "hello" to the coach, so anxious was he to announce the good news. Making it sound as if the problem had just been brought to his attention and he had jumped right on it as soon as he heard, he informed the coach that he'd arranged to purchase enough hose - maybe 200 yards worth - to get city water down to the kids. *********** "Just thought I'd let you know we open next Friday night at a school who I believe will give us a run for our money in our district. Had to laugh as about 10 inutes ago I got a call from him telling me he was sending a scout to our pre-season scrimmage. In the past this has been something that wasn't allowed ( more of a gentleman's agreement). I just find it funny that he waited until 2:45 to call me to let me know he was sending someone to see us...he knows full well and good I can't line anyone up in the next hour to go and see his pre-season scrimmage...I am now going to bury him next Friday. Don't print this one with my name in it." Consider the ways you can screw him up --- Run from Over I Right. Run from spread. Run from "Rambo." Show him every set and every motion you have. Show him no-huddle. Your kids will enjoy being in on the double-cross. Then go kick his ass.
Before leaving with the team, he told John Blanchette of the Spokane Spokesman-Review about his experiences, back in July, as a counselor at the Nike All-America Camp in Indianapolis, where the top high school prospects in American are flown in and put on display for college coaches. "It was actually weird for me," he told Blanchette, "because I was a camper there five years ago, and this gave me a chance to see how much things have changed." They've changed quite a bit, apparently. "All the kids talk about is going to the NBA," he said. "It's just kind of sick to watch those high school kids and how selfish they are." What especially bothered him, coming from the intense, team-oriented atmosphere of the Gonzaga program, was how little most of the players seemed to care about how the game should be played. "A lot of these kids are saying things like, 'Well, I'm going to go to college for a year and then go pro.' I'd overhear them and think, 'Man, you've got a lot to work on. You couldn't start at our place (Gonzaga) after three years." *********** "If you're a youth football coach or high school coach and your kids aren't getting water every 15 or 20 minutes, you should not be coaching." Jeff Fisher, Tennessee Titans' coach, in USA Today, August 8 "If you're a pro coach paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and you pay your quarterback millions of dollars a year and then provide him with a football so slippery that he loses his grip on it while trying to throw and an opponent intercepts it and runs it back for an 80-yard touchdown, yet you can somehow find the time to pass judgment on youth and high school football coaches, you should not be coaching, either. Not even youth football or high school football." Hugh Wyatt, noted NFL critic, after watching Jeff Fisher's quarterback, Steve McNair, lose his grip on the ball and "throw" the ball into the hands of the Eagles' Sean Dawkins on Thursday night. *********** Scott Barnes, of Rockwall, Texas, sent me an article from the Dallas paper calling for investigations, committees, regulations, certification of coaches, etc., etc., all designed to "make football safer." I had to laugh at one of the dumbass statements, the sort of thing we heard back when they first proposed plopping our little kids down in front of air bags: "If establishing health and safety standards for athletic practices in Texas saves only one young person, the decision will be justified." Yeah, right. Liberal nanny-types love to say that whenever they want to impose their will on the rest of us. So why is it, I wonder, that this same logic is never applied to the War on AIDS? After all, "If outlawing sex between males saves only one young person..."
*********** "Coach Wyatt, After attending the Atlanta clinic, the anticipation for the up coming season has grown every passing day. We are so excited about installing the offense. We are getting the 88/99 power and super power in this week. We have about 60-70 kids out for the 7th and 8th grade team. "If we can do a good job of coaching and then get out of the way, we should be pretty good. Our projected center is about 220 lbs and the tackles are both over 200 lbs. Even the tight ends are both over 6' and 175 lbs. We converted a guard from last years 7th grade squad to play B back. At 165 pounds he moves very fast and has picked up the kick out block very quickly. Using your system we have already gotten our kids to understand the offensive numbering in just two days. We're about a week ahead of last year. I will be disappointed if we don't have a good year. I believe the saying is " those who are given much: much is to be expected."
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A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: He took over one of the most
downtrodden programs in the US, and when he retired 11
years later, it was one of America's major powerhouses.
And to his credit, his handpicked successor stepped right
in and scarcely missed a beat in keeping the program
among college football's elite.
HERE
IN MY TOWN, CAMAS, WASHINGTON, OUR LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL'S
TEAMS ARE CALLED THE PAPERMAKERS, an unusual nickname
that acknowledges the town's long dependence on its paper
mill. But even the most loyal member of the Association
of Western Pulp and Paper Workers has to admit that the
nickname can be a bit cumbersome at times, and graphic
artists have to this point been stumped by the challenge
of depicting a... "Fightin' Papermaker?" Now, I've only
lived here 12 years, so I guess I'm still something of a
newcomer, but just in case some of the other newcomers to
town - the ones who live in those mansions overlooking
the lake - decide that "Papermakers" is just too... too
industrial for them, the alternative is right over
their heads. Literally. For several years now, a family
of ospreys - large, fish-eating birds of prey - has been
nesting atop a light pole at the high school football
stadium. When they're not hanging around their huge nest,
they're out fishing, and when they return they soar over
the field before landing on one light pole or another to
stop and fillet their catches. It's illegal to disturb
nesting ospreys, but no sooner are the young ones fully
flight-tested and ready to go, and the family off for
parts unknown, than the school maintenance people tear
down the nest, just as they've been doing every year. No
matter - ospreys are what are known as "persistent
nesters." They return in late spring to start all over
again, laboriously building a new nest, twig by twig,
branch by branch, with occasional time out to go fishing.
Now, here's one that puzzles me - "Eagles" is the most
common high school nickname in America. An osprey can
kick an eagle's ass. So is there a single high school
team in the US whose mascot is the osprey?
*********** Coach....I read that Coach Schlosser's team (Union County) beat North Decatur on Friday.....I started my teaching/coaching career at North Decatur in 1982.....it's a small world.....Kevin McCullough, Culver, Indiana (I should add that after years at LaVille High in Lakeville, Indiana, Coach McCullough has joined the staff at Culver, Indiana, which won its opener on Friday, too.)
*********** Paul Maier of Mt. Vernon, Indiana, told me about a particularly nasty scene that took place following the conclusion of one of his games last year. An assistant coach of the other team, who apparently thought that Paul, with a 28-6 lead early in the fourth quarter, had no business throwing a touchdown pass, walked past the kids shaking hands and angrily and openly challenged Paul. He finally was persuaded to leave, but not before he had managed to deprive the Mt. Vernon kids of a lot of the joy of a big win. Paul met with the kids and tried to put the ugly scene in perspective, telling them that he was sorry they'd had to hear another coach use words like %$#@&, *&^%^ and $#@%$ on the football field, when he noticed a kid with his hand raised. Paul called on him, and the kid said, "Hey coach - don't forget he called you a *&^&%$#, too." (When one of the most important lessons we teach football players is not to freelance, I would summarily fire any assistant who ever took it upon himself to freelance in that fashion, not to mention one who showed such utter disregard for something that military, business and football people know as the chain of command.) *********** My Head Coach gives me 45 minutes a day for offensive practice on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. At the varsity level, how would you break the 45 minutes down into an offensive practice plan. I would like your input on this. Thank - You. I would spend maybe 15 minutes a couple of those days with the backs and ends going over the passing game and reviewing the "ON or OFF" calls and "ME or YOU" calls, while the line does bird-dog reviews of their assignments and various pulling and blocking drills. The rest of the time, I would have the team together "thud" scrimmaging. You simply have to practice this offense as a team. I would also insist on some offensive team time Thursday even if it is just against air, and at least 20 minutes of my pre-game is team offense vs "thud." I do not waste time pre-game with drills that you had all week to work on in practice. It is nearly show time. It is time to be rehearsing your songs, not taking voice lessons. *********** I am a wishbone coach seeking to convert to a double wing .Do you have any tips ? If you are a wishbone guy, your biggest adjustment is going to be in the line play. You are going to have to cut down your splits to near-nothing, you are going to have to move your linemen back off the ball as far as legal, you are going to have to get them in stances with their weight off their front hand, so they can pull, and, of course, you are going to have to get them running. *********** "Coach Wyatt, We had our first scrimmage last Thursday (8/16) and I wasn't looking forward to it at all. We had missed 3 days of practice because of thunderstorms and excessive hot weather. I only had 6 practices and 3 of them were without pads. I only had 17 players (15 boys and 2 girls) ranging from 7 to 9. The team we scrimmaged didn't miss any practices and had 50 players broken into 2 25 man teams. We scrimmaged the #1 team that was made up of kids ages 8 and 9. Because we had such short time to practice we worked on the 88 and 99 power (not super power) and the 88 power keep. I also had ran the 3 trap at 2 for my B-back. We started out on defense and that was fine with me. Our kids were clueless and the first 4 plays they popped 3 of for TD's. Then our team settled down and started stopping them. After 10 plays they had only scored 4 times. This surprised myself and my defensive coach (who is new with Pop Warner but played 5 years as a linebacker with a semi-pro team out of Boston). Then it came our turn at offense where we would get to run 10 plays. I started with the 88 power and my A-back went too wide, and I mean way too wide. He still made about 15 yards because he was so quick. I straightened him out and told him to go off tackle and follow his blockers. We ran it again and POP he went for 30 yards and a TD. There was no one around him when he got to the end of the field. I came back with a 99 Power and my C-Back broke it loose for another TD. I then ran an 88 power keep and my QB went for around 20 yards but didn't break into the open. By this time the other coaches were having a fit, yelling and screaming at their defense. I ran a 3 trap at 2 and my B-Back broke into the open for another TD. Then things got ugly. We had ran another 99 power and my QB got smacked in the back by our center as he was flying back. He managed to get the handoff to the C-Back, and don't ask me how, but the C-back got around end for another TD. After 6 plays we had scored 4 TDs and had gained nothing less than 15 yards per play. But the other coaches started doubling on my center. We had 2 straight missed snaps because they had their 2 biggest kids (both 85 pounds) hitting my center (55 pounds) just as he snapped the ball. They were not even getting down in a 3 point stance. I had to do something and I told my A and C backs to fly straight down field. My QB hit my C-back 30 yards down field in the open but he dropped the ball. That loosened up the defense and started the screaming again. Our last play was an 88 power and again my QB got jammed and dropped the ball. My B-back picked it up and followed the pulling Guard and Tackle through the line for another TD of 50 yards. So in 10 plays we scored 5 times. We played the rest of the scrimmage on defense because the other coaches wouldn't agree to layoff our center enough so we could get the snap off. They only scored 3 more times in 12 plays. We scored 5 in 10 plays they scored 8 in 23 plays. In hind sight I now know I should have run a wedge right over the Nose Guard on GO, with the QB carrying. If I did this a few times it would discourage them some. We also moved our big tackle over to center. This should stop anybody else from doing this to us. I could really see the frustration of the other coaches. They could not figure out what we were doing and couldn't stop us. My team exceeded all my expectation by 1000% in the scrimmage and the kids were very happy. They were yelling "5 TD's - we only scored 3 TD all last season." They were shut out 5 out of the 8 games last year and were being beat by 40 plus points per game. This scrimmage sold the offense to all the players and my other coaches. We start our season on Sept 9 against a team out of Boston. It should be fun! Thanks for everything and letting me learn about you offense, it is going to make a difference this year with my mitey-mites. Steve Weick, Head Coach, Mite-Mites, Salem Pop Warner, Salem, Massachusetts Most definitely, you all want to be as big as possible at center. (See page 4 of the playbook) If you are not, that is exactly what you can expect to see. That is something I learned a long time ago, about 1983 when I was running the Delaware Wing-T and I had a very good 180-pound center and somebody put a 280-pound nose guard on him. Our center kept getting driven back and we couldn't get our pulling linemen past him. (Another reason, also, why we want our linemen as deep as the rules allow.) *********** "Hello Coach..... We were very successful against a much larger West Chicago team today with a very convincing 13-0 victory. B-Back Nick Pantaleo got in from 12 yards out on 88 SuperPower. That was after a 63 yard drive. B-Back Terry Howell pounded in a 2-wedge from 4 yards out after a nice 8 minute drive also... 28 G-O reach and 47C kept them off balance at times and were responsible for long gains from Jeff Ball and Adam Young also. Overall it was very a very convincing victory. Many of our back-ups got carries running 2-wedge....some lineman as well. We're gonna have a very upbeat practice this week, polishing up on several areas. Next week we meet a tough Bartlett team in our annual Border Battle. Take care, thanks for your time again." John Urbaniak, Hanover Park, Illinois
***********" I showed my staff your tackling video. I did not know how one assistant would take it as he is an experienced coach. They all jumped on board and loved it. What made it even better is my new principal was down on the field when we were teaching the beginning steps to the kids at our camp and he loved it. (We cannot have helmets or shoulder pads on in camp.) So once again I owe you. We tried today to move on to putting a pad between the players and they reverted back to their old way so, we went back to square one. The kids are beginning to come around to the new offense also so that helps. There was some misinformation going around town when I first got here. The kids now see everything we can do." Arnold Wardwell, Umatilla, Oregon *********** UNSOLICITED AND (TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE) UNPAID TESTIMONIALS: Coach, Saw the question about playbook software. I use B.W. Software's Playmaker Pro/. I have a Mac but it also has an IBM version. It is very complete. Also will animate plays so your X & O's move. He developed it when a friend from the University of Michigan staff talked to him about their need for playbook software. Cost is $150-$175 range I believe. I would give it high marks for usefulness and a low learning curve. Dennis Metzger, Connersville, Indiana Coach- Hope you're having fun in the Chicago area. In response to the reader who was looking for a reccomendation of "playbook software", i do have a good one. PlaymakerPro 4.0, distributed by BW software of Ann Arbor, Michigan (Go Blue !!). Hope this helps- Brian Rochon, Livonia, Michigan *********** "I think it's great how you honor the memory of Lou Boudreau. When he went up to the broadcast booth he was still a coach. I can still hear him saying "for all you little leaguers out there" I learned more about baseball as a kid listening to him on the radio than I did from any other source and I did have some good Coaches. His passion for the game was unequaled and we all lost someone special with his passing." Doug Gibson, Naperville, Illinois *********** I'm teaching the tackling method as described in your video. However, the traditional contact point has been belt buckle with wrap around the legs. As other team coaches watch us practice they assume we are tackling too high. Unfortunately I'm not able to give a good answer. What are the basic premises behind the higher (numbers to numbers) tackling? Sorry if you've answered this question too many times. I don't give the time of day to people who doubt that this - or something very close to it - is the way to teach tackling. I believe that I have answered the question satisfactorily in the video, which those other coaches evidently need to watch. Even if it weren't effective, and very hard-hitting, and designed to put a runner on his back, the safety issue alone and the reinforcement message of "eyes to the sky" would be enough to justify teaching tackling this way. *********** In a political cartoon by Rick McKee, of the Augusta, Georgia, Chronicle, a mother asks her little son, "How was the first day of school?" The kid answers, "Well, first we got checked for guns, then we got checked for lice, then we had a moment of silence before the school police officer came around with the drug-sniffing dog. Right after my locker was searched, I was sent to the principal's office for a dress-code violation. Then we had Sex-Ed and they gave away free condoms until we had to evacuate because of a phony Internet bomb scare... classes were cancelled anyway, and we all got counseling where I learned I can do anything if I just believe in myself." *********** Naperville Central High, in Naperville, Illinois, is taking bold steps to deal with the near-nudity that is invading our schools, and passing rules banning spaghetti straps, one-shoulder shirts, halter tops, short shorts and exposed backs in classes and at school events. The principal sent out letters to all parents plenty early, in hopes of influencing back-to-school shopping decisions. It is not a trifling issue, a matter comparable to Mohawk haircuts, or earrings, or dyed hair, Carleton Kendrick, a Boston family therapist told the Chicago Tribune. "We're not talking about prudishness here," he said. "Trying to get boys' attention is normal, but this is more of a frontal sexual assault. The schools have become a kind of MTV fashion runway." The truly interesting - and alarming - part of this bare-it-all phenomenon is that I suspect it is at least partly motivated by the very people who should be standing guard against it - moms. I believe that in much the same way many dads relive their youth through their little-league sons, many moms are tarting-up their daughters, in the process of reliving their own teenage years vicariously. Where are the men? Mostly absent. In our ever-more-feminized society, which does everything it can to neuter its males, mothers more often than not have the final say on such matters - even when there is a dad present. A recent incident in the world of advertising would seem to confirm this. You know how it goes - you're half-watching TV, and before you realize what you just saw, you're watching something, wondering if you really saw what you think you saw. So it was, when my wife called me a week or so ago, telling me, "I can't believe J.C. Penney would run an ad like the one I think I just saw." In the commercial she described, a teenage girl is checking herself out, admiring the little bit of bare midriff showing between her jeans and her top, when her mother looks in on her. "You're not going to school looking like that!" she declares..... then proceeds to pull the little tart's jeans even lower! And then they hug. You know how it goes - "we're more like sisters than mother and daughter." It's so cute. Great. Just what a teenage girl needs - a 40-year-old married (or divorced) big sister, trying to relive her own teenage fantasies by pulling little sis' jeans down lower. A few days later, I heard that Penney's had pulled the ad, in response to a flood (it should have been hundreds of thousands) of complaints. Now where in the name of James Cash Penney, small-town dry-goods store owner from Kemmerer, Wyoming, did a once straight-shooting American company get the idea that it was cool to encourage mothers to pimp for their teenage daughters? *********** In a Harris Poll of 1,000 Americans commissioned by US News and World Report, fewer than half could name a living public figure they considered a hero. One in six could name no hero at all, not even someone such as Michael Jordan, who, while a fantastic athlete, hasn't really had to exhibit the true heroic qualities of performing under great danger and stress, making a great personal sacrifice, and doing so largely for the sake of others. Sorry - by my definition, athletes, entertainers and politicians are not heroes. Heroes would be the likes of Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Don Holleder, who laid it all on the line for others. We don't have heroes, because we have no need of them. As a people we are spoiled, soft and complacent. We have no serious enemy, and if one should come along, we have professionals hired to do our fighting for us. The heroism of the Civil Rights fight is long over. Yes, there are strides still to be made educationally, but what was once a noble fight now gives the appearance all too often of a lot of old-fashioned pushing and shoving to get in line for special favors. We have few pressing economic problems. If we don't have it, we can buy it. Our kids have new cars and DVD players and pagers and cell phones, and their own TVs and phones in their bedrooms. We are so far removed from the fear of our Depression-era grandparents that they wouldn't have food to put on the table, that we are free to send our "children" off to college not to prepare for jobs, but to become professional idlers, "activists" for a variety of "causes." Our most richly-rewarded citizens are those who provide us with entertainment. And if things ever do get tough, why, the Government will bail us out. That's what Government is for. Otherwise, though, we don't need help. We are self-sufficient. We don't even need God. *********** "When I went out for freshman football at Latrobe (Pennsylvania) High the coach sent me home saying they didn't have a uniform small enough to fit me. I ran cross country, played basketball, and ran track, but I always was disappointed to not have the opportunity to ride the bench for the football team. Come to think of it, I guess there wasn't much need for a slow 120 pound player." Tom Hinger, Auburndale, Florida. (In the belief that every willing and able kid should have the experience of being a part of a high school football team, I think that one of the biggest challenges a high school football coach faces is finding a way for a 120-pound kid with heart to contribute to the team. In Tom Hinger's case, he later won the Silver Star in Vietnam. I think he probably had heart.) *********** How do you suggest we execute our QB / C exchange? It is entirely up to you. However you do it, though - and you might check out how I teach it (Center-QB Exchange) - I think it is beneficial not to receive the ball turned sideways, because then the QB will be holding the fat of the ball, and that can lead to bad handoffs with too much of his hand on it. It can be hard for him to remove his hand after the ball carrier has clamped down over it. I like him to be holding no more than the back half of the ball when he hands off. The turn-the-ball-and-give the-QB-the-fat-part snap is probably best for passing teams, but if you are primarily a running team, at some point your QB is going to have to get his hand back toward the point so he can cleanly insert the ball and cleanly remove his hand. *********** So one more popular recording "artist" has blown the National Anthem. What do you expect, when you select people more for their celebrity value than for their appropriateness or their ability to sing it? This time it was Macy Gray, booed for forgetting the words before the Hall of Fame game in Canton. Hey - I'll bet the Ohio State band wouldn't have screwed it up. Or the Canton McKinley High School Band. Or your local middle school band. And if the NFL's show-biz types still insist on getting somebody from the World of Entertainment, why don't they just let the singer do what they all do at halftime anyhow, and lip-synch?
*********** You'll probably see J.P. Shelly, of Antioch, Tennessee's Ezell-Harding Christian School in Sports Illustrated's Faces in the Crowd next week. The kid threw for a state-record 10 touchdown passes last Friday night in a 76-21 win over Loretto High. SI likes to feature that kind of freak show. The kid played the entire game. True, six of his TD passes came in the first half as his team built a 49-14 halftime lead, but let's be fair - four more came in the second half, when his team never had less than a 35-point lead. And in a marvelous demonstration of Christian compassion, the10th and final TD pass came with just over three minutes to play. I couldn't find out whether his coach went for two afterwards, or whether he tried an onside kick in order to go for an eleventh. ''That wasn't something we were proud of,'' the coach, Scott Smith, told the Nashville Tennessean. (Huh? It wasn't? So then tell me, Coach - why did you do it?) "I've been in that situation on the losing end," he said. "I wanted to give J.P. a chance at something like that because J.P. deserves it." (Oh. I see.) ''I know he didn't do it to embarrass anyone or pad stats," the quarterback told the Tennessean, after a night spent embarrassing the opponents and padding his stats. (Do you suppose the kid really believes that?) "He told me there probably wouldn't be another chance to accomplish something like that. Even though it might look bad I'm glad he gave me the opportunity.'' Wow. Some "accomplishment." Some "opportunity." I'm sorry. A coach with STONES tells his kid, "Sure we can get the record against this team; we could get any record we wanted against this team. But what does a record like that mean, anyhow? Nobody can ever look at it without knowing it was padded. Besides, we have to think about those guys on the other side of the field, too." (Not to mention the backup QB, who probably went to all the summer workouts because his coach told him that's what he'd have to do if he expected to play. Wonder what that kid thinks now.)
THERE IS NO COST TO YOU, AND NO ONE WILL TRY TO SELL YOU ANYTHING!!! |
A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: Leon Hart was a college All-American
and an All-Pro. He is a member of the College Football
Hall of Fame but, for some reason, not the Pro Football
Hall of Fame.
GOOD LUCK TO MY GUYS AT
RICH CENTRAL, WHO OPEN TONIGHT AGAINST CHICAGO
KELVYN PARK---
*********** Next time you think things couldn't possibly be any worse, think again. You could be Randy Edsall, head coach at the University of Connecticut. UConn will open at Virginia Tech a week from Saturday, without a single quarterback who has taken so much as one snap in a college football game. In a classic, "this is a helluva time to find this out" scenario, Edsall learned on Monday that Ryan Tracey, a senior and the Huskies' only experienced returning quarterback, had decided that his knee, surgically repaired after being injured last season against South Florida, isn't ready to go. Two other experienced returning quarterbacks had already left the program during the summer, one an early graduate who didn't choose to use his final year of eligibility, the other a transfer. In the eight games he played before being injured last year, Tracey, a JC transfer from Citrus, California, completed 159 of 292 for 1984 yards and 15 touchdowns, with four games of 300 yards or more. Tracey's decision to drop out of school is a huge blow to UConn in its struggles as a relatively new I-A school. The Huskies will face the Hokies with a redshirt freshman under center, backed up by two true freshmen.
*********** coach, wellington fl dolphins 2001 are back. we had our first game, sat. aug. 18. dolphins 36 - cardinals 0. we play in the 10/11 year old division of the local rec league (palm beach county fl - YES THAT PALM BEACH COUNTY - you can tell by my typing skills). our league enforces a must play rule and turns no child away. we draft players in a tightly controlled environment designed to balance the talent in the league. (translation, politically correct). each coach is allowed three freezes and must freeze his own kid. (translation, opportunity to stack team). we drafted last years qb, my son switched from b to c back and we developed our a back from a 2000 late round pick that we froze this year. our b back is a converted offensive guard. because of our rec league status, we do have our share of kids that most coaches would try to hide. a lot of first time players, slow kids, young kids to heavy to play in the lower division - you know the type. which brings me to my point, WITH YOUR OFFENSE I DON'T HAVE TO HIDE PLAYERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! every position on the offense has a specific responsibility on each play. it is crucial that each child be schooled individually and constantly. most parents love it. junior, who is used to being put out at split end and forgotten about. or, thrown on the weak side of the offensive line and only hearing his name in anger when "daddy ball" qb gets sacked, is important in your offense. believe it or not, i've been criticized for not watching the defense during games. parent says i'm spending too much time with my o line doing chalk talk during the game. kids get attention. and, oh, by the way, our defense only gave up 2 touchdowns all of last year. (great job randy. no more first downs please). we moved a kid from dt to te. his dad went off on me for hiding his kid. after going up 30 to 0 before half-time saturday i put the kid back on defense as part of my mercy rule shuffling of players. at the end of the game the kid comes up to me and unsolicited says, "coach, i'd rather play offense". and, you guessed it, $#@%&*# dad wasn't even at the game. thanks again, for sharing this inclusive, multicultural and politically correct offense with a right winger like me. Jack Brown, Lake Worth, Florida p.s. all you democrats, its true, i was on jeb and catherine's conspiracy team. we've also got something up our sleeve for El Ren`o if she runs for governor. (Believe me, I'm all for inclusiveness and multiculturalism if we're talking about finding the best people to do the job on a football team, but I never thought I'd see the day that anyone would thank me for doing anything politically correct. I don't know how to take it. HW) *********** "I am going to show my kids your Washougal highlight film this Friday night before our scrimmage on Saturday. Not only did your team execute the DW very well, they showed an intensity that we are lacking right now. I think they will be able to gain some insight by seeing a successful team at work." Good point. You are right about the intensity of those kids at Washougal. Those kids had a lot of heart and went after it at full speed and stayed with it until the play was over. We showed the tape to our kids at Rich Central in Illinois, who are much bigger and faster and more talented overall than the Washougal kids, and I think it opened their eyes to the way the offense can be played. Our offensive performance seemed to kick up a notch immediately. I thought the RC kids, despite our share of the usual early-season mistakes, were borderline awesome at times in our scrimmage last Friday night. *********** Last Wednesday a Chicago-area youth coach paid us a visit at Rich Central High, and we introduced him to some of our kids and asked them if they'd be good enough to stick around after practice and demonstrate a few things for him. They were more than happy to oblige anyhow, but especially so when they discovered he was ex-Chicago Bull Stacey King. Stacey, retired after an NBA career in which he won three World Championship rings, is the head coach of the Rockford Lightning of the CBA, but now that his sons have reached that age, he has also begun throwing himself into youth football coaching in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. He stayed around for a couple of hours after our practice, trading NBA and coaching insights (and MJ anecdotes) with RC head coach Jon McLaughlin and me in exchange for Double-Wing tips. Stacey has a good handle on coaching, and I can see him as a successful NBA coach some day. For sure, I'll be following the Rockford Lightning this winter. One little thing worth mentioning regarding MJ - Stacey said the man is tough, tough, tough. Said he's seen him play while hurt and sick, and never seen him take it easy. Said that he elevates the play of an entire team because when the greatest player in the game is hurt and still going full blast - who are you to slack off? Stacey also had a rather firm prediction regarding the possibility of Michael's return - but I ain't sayin'.
*********** Hey Coach- Great news. I have been hired as an assistant coach for a small private school by the name of Campbell Hall, in Studio City. Yesterday was my first day. I am specifically working with the JV defense but of course helping anywhere I can. Honestly I don't know what my defensive duties will be but I will gladly take on any responsibility given to me. The JV team is quite small, both in size and numbers. I think there are only 3 returnees and not too many kids that have ever played contact ball before. The previous season the JV went undefeated. Anyway I have adjusted my work schedule so that I can make the 3:00 practices and I still will coach my youth team this season. My girl is "comfortable" with it, being paid for coaching helps I would imagine...smile. I am very much excited, they don't run the DW however. I let em know my youth team does and they sure could use the advantages your offense provides. But I made a point of asking if we are required to run the same system as the Varsity and it isn't "required", but the HC would appreciate it. Bill Shine, Van Nuys, California Congratulations! By all means, run what the head coach wants you to run and don't give the Double-Wing another thought. It will always be there for you, but first you have a job to do here. Be the best assistant you can be, and if you ever go for another job, your head coach's recommendation will mean a whole lot more to you than any fun you may derive from doing your thing instead of his. There are a lot of different ways to work your way into HS coaching and you are finding one of them. But the important thing is, you're in. And now that you're in, stay in by impressing the boss with what you're willing and able to do. *********** "After the first week of practice we can run 88/99 SP, 2-wedge, thunder throwback, and 47C. We'll have the remaining plays (red red, 58 black O 38 reach, and 3 trap @ 2) in this week with plenty of time to rep them ahead of our first scrimmage next week. I'm very pleased with the way our kids are working." Keith Babb, Deerfield Young Warriors, Northbrook, Illinois *********** Hello Coach - Did you visit the Cantigny ground when you were here??? I highly recommend it, i've been taking my whole family there for years. The grounds are amazing and what a beautiful golf course too...Did you know that the movie about women's baseball during the war with Tom Hanks was filmed there??? Rgds, John Urbaniak, Hanover Park, Illinois (I told my friends in the Black Lions that Cantigny is a magnificent place, and - grounds, golf course, McCormick mansion and, of course, First Division Museum - well worth a visit. HW)
When you realize how many people in the general population die of heat-related illness every year, there is no reason for panic. I think that the biggest problem is that now-feminized America sees its opening and is going to go after big, bad football. This isn't 1905, when football was a brutal sport, and, as Allison Danzig wrote, in The History of American Football,"Strategy played very little part in the outcome of games. Brute force, physical condition and endurance were the main factors." Even though football then was played in a relative handful of colleges and high schools, and nowhere near in the numbers it is today, the 1905 season produced 18 deaths and, in the words of the Chicago Tribune, "159 more or less serious injuries." In mid-season, President Theodore Roosevelt summoned representatives of Yale, Harvard and Princeton - then among the most influential football-playing schools - to the White House to tell them they needed to remove the game's unsafe features, such as the flying wedge and the "guards back" plays. "Brutality and foul play, " he said, "should receive the same summary punishment given to a man who cheats at cards." (Unfortunately, based on surveys showing that today's students see nothing wrong with cheating in school, the President's cheating-at-cards analogy would be lost on most Americans.) It took schools such as Columbia dropping football entirely, Northwestern suspending play for a year, California and Stanford dropping football in favor of rugby, to convince other colleges that football, in the words of the President of the University of California, "must be entirely made over or go." The result was a meeting on December 9, 1905, attended by representatives of 13 eastern colleges to determine whether to abolish football entirely or remake it. From that meeting came the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, given the assignment of overseeing all sports, but especially football. Five years later, it was renamed the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Working in conjunction with the already-established football rules committee headed by Walter Camp, the new organization helped to pass rules making the game safer. In one sense, I don't think our sport is in danger. With the equipment, rules, coaching awareness and conditioning know-how that we have today, we have been able to make an inherently violent, physically-demanding game nearly as safe as it can possibly be. Of course there is always room for improvement, and we should all strive for a goal, however unreachable, of total safety. In another sense, though, I think football is in very grave danger. Football survived in 1905 because people believed it was worth saving, but it had strong supporters - men weren't afraid to be men in 1905 - and its detractors weren't nearly so numerous or strong - women didn't even have the vote yet, and plaintiff's lawyers hadn't discovered contingency fees and punitive damages. Contrast that with the America of today, in which so many "men" have made babies and then abandoned them to the exclusive care of women; so much of our educational system is female-dominated; and so many of our men, testosterone-free, are struggling to get in touch with their feelings. Manly values themselves are under attack. The anti-football cult runs rampant in our schools and throughout suburbia, and there are few people eloquent or strong enough to defend our sport. Jesse Jackson is not a stupid man. Do you think he would have chosen an attack on a major college football program as his means of public redemption if he didn't know which way the wind is blowing? A female jury is certain to crucify Northwestern. Don't count on Congress, either, if this whole safety-in-football issue should get that far. Congress knows the power of the sympathy vote. Pompous fools for the most part, they have already shown by their willingness to let our military deteriorate that they lack spine. They would much rather the military provide equal opportunity for women than do what the Constitution requires - "provide for the common defense." One major reason for that is that we have finally reached the point where there is a minority of service veterans in Congress. Most representatives haven't experienced the military, don't understand it, and are easily influenced against it. With the exception of Congressmen Steve Largent and J. C. Watts, you could say the same thing about football. ************ A young woman checked into a Portland-area hospital Sunday, needing treatment for "complications from childbirth." Uh - someone at the hospital thought to ask - are we missing something? Shouldn't there, like, be a child somewhere? Turns out "Mom" had stashed the newborn in a dumpster. *********** Yee-haw! Football officially gets under way this weekend. Real football. Not the stupid NFL field-goal kicking contests. High school games on Friday nights. College games on Saturday, Actually, New Mexico State at Louisville starts it off on Thursday night. And get this opening-Saturday schedule on the tube: TCU at Nebraska (What a way for a new coach to break in at TCU) Virginia at Wisconsin (Tough opener for the Cavaliers and their new coach) Tulane at BYU (Think the new Cougars' coach will come out in a wishbone?) North Carolina at Oklahoma (Couldn't the Tarheels find anyone easier?) SUNDAY Georgia Tech at Syracuse (If it is true that Orange Coach Pasqualoni is getting heat, this is a rough way to open) Fresno State at Colorado (Fresno State has visions of big things, but Colorado is on the way back.) *********** Sounds like something an educator would write... I saw a TV piece about the shark attacks off Florida's east coast, and some wordsmith had posted signs on lifeguard stands warning beachgoers about "Dangerous Marine Life." Do they have something against saying "LOOK OUT FOR SHARKS?" *********** Coach I thought I would tell you we got our first win Friday at Union County. We defeated North Decatur 36-18 on Friday. We had a rough start defensively gave up 18 points in the first half. Super Power was good. 6-G and our option off it were great. We were very well balanced we threw for a 107 and rushed for a 164. It was a great start the team was a wide open offense last year and I was told this offense would not work here. Mike Schlosser, Union County High School, Liberty, Indiana ************ Just listen to the list of long-time college coaches who will no longer be coaching this fall:
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Feller was asked by one of the young players he was instructing if it was true that he'd once pitched an opening-day no-hitter. He said, yes, he had, indeed. But he added, "I can slso remember when I had a 10-run lead on Boston and I got beat. And Bob Lemon (another of the Indians' hall-of-fame pitchers) had an 11-run lead the next day, and he got beat." MORAL: Even the best of them have bad days. Whenever anyone talks about the Greatest Generation - Bob Feller belongs there. Legend has it that immediately upon hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Navy. The story sounds about right - he did, in fact, enlist on December 8, 1941, He missed the entire 1942, 1943 and 1944 seasons, and part of 1945. In the three seasons prior to enlisting, he had won 24, 27 and 25 games. In his first two full years back after the War, he won 26 and 20. Along with the great sacrifices made by Americans during World War II, I think it is safe to say that one of Bob Feller's personal sacrifices was some 80 wins that would have gone on his all-time record. *********** "Well, we just finished our first scrimmage with the double wing. It worked great! We still have some work to do however, it is the best system I have seen in ten years of coaching. All of the local 4A high schools are talking about the new offense that Mike Dison of Archbishop Curley and Rick Vain of Parkville Rec. are running. I have had 4 different high school coaches call me and ask where my next scrimmage will be. Remember, I am coaching 13/14 yr. olds 160 LB limit. Everyone wants to see the offense that has no splits. I had a coach tell me today that he had never seen an offense that ran so well without splits on the line. I looked at him and said" different but it works!" He said " No one will believe this offense works until they see it." Thank you so much for changing my mind on an offense I still can't believes works." Rick Vain, Parkville, Maryland *********** CELEBRITY SIGHTING - As I got ready to step into the elevator at the place where I'm staying, Mike Golic of ESPN got off. (I think he recognized me but was too polite to say anything.) *********** From the filthy, muddy, rat-and-lice-infested trenches of World War I France, to the murderous beaches of Normandy on D-Day and the bitter cold of the Battle of the Bulge, from the steaming jungles, rice paddies and rubber plantations of Vietnam to the burning sand of Desert Storm, the men of the First Division - The Big Red One - have seen their share of hell on earth. It is only fitting that they should be honored in one of the most beautiful and peaceful places on God's earth. It is called Cantigny, and it is in Wheaton, Illinois, about 30 miles west of downtown Chicago. Cantigny (in French, it's CAN-tee-NEE, but it's been Americanized to sound like can-TEEN-ee, like the solder's personal water supply) was once the private estate of Colonel Robert McCormick, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, and when he died in 1955 he left his home and estate to the people of Illinois as a park and preserve, along with sufficient funds to keep it looking beautiful (in case you're up there listening, Colonel, your money is being well-spent). It was named for one of the most significant yet least-known battles in American history, the Battle of Cantigny, in which the Colonel himself participated. His wife did, too - she was a Red Cross nurse who happened to be working in the hospital to which Colonel McCormick was brought, suffering from the combined effects of influenza and poison gas. What made Cantigny so significant was that it was the first offensive action by American troops in World War I. Much is made in high school history books, with their all-too-brief accounts of World War I, of the great lift given to the Allies by the arrival of the Americans - but not so fast... The British and French had been fighting for nearly three years, and had paid an enormous price in lives by the time America's First Expeditionary Division arrived. To the battle-weary Europeans, who had known war since 1915, the Americans arriving in 1917 looked like innocent little boys, and the American commander, General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, came under great pressure simply to use American boys to mix in with French and English units, filling in the depleted ranks of the Allied forces. Pershing held fast, resisting any suggestion of breaking up his forces and placing them under British or French command, but ihe knew that would almost certainly happen unless the young, inexperienced Yanks could prove themselves in battle. So the place chosen for the Americans to get bloodied was a German-held town called Cantigny. Briefly, after three days of bloody fighting, most of it without food because enemy fire had blown up their supplies, the Yanks of the 28th Infantry Regiment managed to drive the Germans out of Cantigny. The Germans would never regain the town. Strategically, the battle was of little significance. But its impact on the War and on our participation in it was enormous. Cantigny was that first win that every new coach needs to prove to everyone that he is on the right track. It was that opening-game victory that every team needs if it has any hope of winning them all. And that is how the American command approached it. The troops trained extensively, learning the ins and outs of trench warfare from French veterans. A nearby town resembling Cantigny was chosen as the site of military exercizes, and American troops practiced attacking it. Nothing was left to chance - there was too much at stake. And when victory came, the men of the 28th Infantry, known ever after as the Black Lions of Cantigny, earned themselves what should be a major place in American history. They had defeated the Germans! The mighty German army had appeared unstoppable in its sweep scross Europe, but the Black Lions' had delivered them a defeat. The victory at Cantigny gave hope that perhaps the Germans could still be stopped. The result was a much-needed lift in the morale of the Allied Forces. But another, perhaps equally important, result of the Black Lions' victorious effort was the preservation of our precious and long-held belief that Americans must not be sent to fight under a foreign commander. Cantigny settled the issue: American troops could - and would - be commanded by American leaders. Said General George C. Marshall, who later as Chief of Staff would oversee the American effort in World War II, "This was our first offensive, ordered primarily for its effect on the morale of the English and French armies. For the First Division to lose its first objective was unthinkable." The Black Lions didn't let us down. *********** My Search for Street and Smith's College Football, by Hugh Wyatt. Copyright 2001 - All Rights Reserved (To be sung to the tune of the old-time Italian hit, "Eh, Campari" - if any of you rememer that) I've searched in drug stores, I've searched in book stores, I've searched in airports, I've search at newsstands. I just cannot find it, Oh no, no, no no I cannot find a Street and Smith A College Football Street and Smith I am so sick of NFL I want a College Magazine A College Football magazine Dippity-dippity-Dah! I'm tellin' ya guys, this is serious. The "Sports" section of magazine racks these days is more likely to have such gems as "RAW" and "WF" as it is to have a football magazine. And when you do find one, it is always PRO football. Damn! Don't the papers already have enough of that crap? What is this, Europe, where they don't even know we play college football? Is the college football fan really held in such low esteem - is there such a huge population of teenage fliers - that airport newsstands can actually justify not carrying Street and Smith's College Football, while finding room on their racks for such biggies as "YM," "Teen Vogue," "Blender," "Jive." "Vibe," "Teen," "Bop," "MH-18," "All About You?" *********** While awaiting my flight out of Minneapolis-St. Paul on Sunday, I was typing away on my computer when a Northwest Airlines maintenance guy looked over and said, "Is that one of those new Titaniums?" He was referring to my powerbook. I said, yes, and from there, he proceeded to tell me that he was a Mac guy, too, and that he had a G-3 powerbook whose screen was going bad. He'd have to replace it, he said. No big deal, though - he did all his own repair work. Huh? I asked. Oh yeah, he told me. And yet just four years ago, he didn't have any use for computers - "I thought they were a government plot." Now, he said, he has built a complete, computerized audio studio, "as good as the one Prince (another Minneapolis guy) has, and a whole lot less expensive", and he does all his own work, building and repairing the equipment. His secret to learning the workings of computers? Every month 3M (headquartered in St. Paul), has a surplus equipment auction. Minimum bid $20. He said he has picked up dozens and dozens of old and not-so-old computers this way, and, using them, has taught himself computer repair. He said what you do is just open 'em up, and go at it. "You can't be afraid of messin' up," he said. "If you do, you just throw that one away and start over."
************ The next time you or any of your staff or players are tempted to go charging after the officials at game's end to tell them what a crappy job they did, how they ripped you off, how much they suck, etc. etc. - you had better think twice. Apart from the horrible example of conduct you will be displaying, there is something else you might want to remember - at least those of you who play by National Federation rules. The Illinois Association officials who worked our scrimmage at Rich Central High last Friday night explained it all to us very carefully: Here's how it works: the officials take charge of the contest starting 30 minutes before the game, and they continue to be in charge until they leave the field. Got that? Not until the game is over, but until they leave the field. In case you don't understand what that means, it means that any time you abuse officials, you can be ejected - even though the game is over! No, you won't miss any of the game just completed, but you will miss the next game. *********** Hi coach: We just finished our football camp here at Chiloquin and I give it two thumbs up! We had 49 kids turn out (5 seniors, 11 juniors, 12 sophomores, 15 freshman and a hand full of jr. high kids). Although we will be a very young team, the kids picked up your system quite easily. I am such a visual learner, so the videos are a great help. The philosophy of your blocking and tackling makes so much sense it was hard to believe how easy the kids and assistants pick up on it. When I first introduced the blocking philosophy I could see my assistants look at each other in puzzlement. After about 2 minutes into the 1st drill they were sold! This offense didn't take much selling to the kids or the coaches. As for the tackling video, it's simple awesome. We have done what you suggested and form tackled without any pads on. You could see the most unathletic kid find his comfort zone within a few minutes of the drill. Coach I just wanted to thank you for sharing your system. I believe it will fit into our scheme of things quite nicely. I will keep you posted on our improvement and I will be asking questions if that's all right with you. Our league jamboree is on the 30th, I can't wait to introduce the double wing to our league! Gratefully , Norm Barney - Chiloquin Panthers, Chiloquin, Oregon *********** You may remember how Coach Jim Hanley at Cypress Christian in Houston wrote to tell of one of their senior caltains learning that he had cancer, and of my asking you if you could say a prayer for the young man. Jim wrote me after their scrimmage Friday: "Just to update, we took our charter bus (on the way to a scrimmage) to Brian's house before leaving Friday morning. All 60 of us unloaded and went and prayed with Brian and gave him his game jersey. He was very uplifted. He is home now and undergoes chemo for 4 hours a day (4 days on, two days off). He is in good spirits but unfortunately the doctors are still not very hopeful. Thanks for all your good thoughts." *********** "I'm at Truman High in Independence, MO. President Bush is speaking here on Tuesday so I might get out of some inservice meetings to see that! At practice the other day two choppers were flying over the practice field and I was yelling at it, pretending it was our upcoming opponents scouting us. Little did I know it was more likely the Secret Service. " Sam Knopik, Independence, Missouri *********** One of the season's earliest HS scores, from Indiana where they do start early: Mount Vernon 32, Tell City 6, as Coach Paul Maier's Mt. Vernon Wildcats get off to a running start.
*********** "Coach Wyatt, Just a quick note to tell you that our youth team(9,10,and light 11 year olds) had our first serious scrimmage today vs. a neighboring town. Our boys scored nine touchdowns running 88/99 power, 88 power keep and tight 2 wedge. We scored four touchdowns of 35 yards on the 2 wedge! A great offense and the kids love it because the lineman are pulling and really feeling involved. We intend to install 47-c, 6g/7g, and 5 lead at least. Also some short passes. Coach DeCaprio from Notre Dame of West Haven (Double-Wing school) lives in town and has helped with some coaching points. His kid plays for the other youth team in town. I think he likes to watch us better, though! Thanks for your help, will continue to send progress reports. Roy Lamberton - Head Coach Guilford Youth White, Guilford, Connecticut *********** (From a coach back East) "I'm in a new conference and I think a lot of the other coaches think the way to stop the Double-Wing is putting 9 guys in the box. I say go ahead. Another coach from a well respected high school who wins a lot said the key to stopping the double wing is to stop the center. Ha ha." There is no key that I've seen except to have the horses and coach 'em well. And hope that you're playing a poorly-coached Double-Wing team that makes a lot of mistakes. *********** I'm not coming right out and saying that there are parts of Chicago you wouldn't want to visit on a bet, but consider: Last month, a four-year-old playing outside his family's home was shot and killed by a bullet intended for a gang member; last week a 13-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy were shot and wounded in separate stray-bullet incidents; and Wednesday a 10-year-old boy was struck and killed as he stepped out his front door by gunshots aimed at two men by a 19-year-old who thought they had cheated him in a dice game. Kiss your kids and thank the Good Lord you don't have to raise them in a place like that.
THERE IS NO COST TO YOU, AND NO ONE WILL TRY TO SELL YOU ANYTHING!!! |
He added: "Every college football player in those days wanted to play in the Rose Bowl. It was considered the bowl of bowls then, and it was a tremendous thrill just to walk on the field and warm up--let alone play in the game.'' The Bulldogs finished 11-1 and was named national champion. And to top it all off, Frank Sinkwich, the former tailback who had made the move to fullback, was so effective at his new position that he won the Heisman Trophy. His career was interrupted by nearly three years in the Army Air Corps, and when he returned to Georgia, he had to make the transition from single-wing tailback to T-formation quarterback. He did so successfully, and led his team to two bowl games, setting conference single-game records for passing (323 yards, an unheard-of figure at the time) and total offense (384 yards). In his last college game, he played 60 minutes in Georgia's winning Sugar Bowl effort.
*********** We tuned up for Friday night's intra-squad scrimmage at Rich Central High (Olympia Fields, Illinois) with a spirited goal-line offensive scrimmage Tuesday. I was very impressed with the job the kids did. In 11 sets of possessions from the 10, the offense scored on eight. We fumbled once, got set back once by a holding penalty, and actually failed just once to move the ball 10 yards in four downs. Super-powers and traps are looking good as do 6-G and the lead criss-crosses. The 29 and 39 G-O Reach plays have looked quite good. Our two QB's are throwing well and we have kids who can catch. It's true, the execution has a ways to go before it matches that of my last team at Washougal, Washington, but it is improving daily, and I have no doubt that it will get there. The offensive staff - Dave Connell, offensive line, Art Schuldt, ends, and head coach Jon McLaughlin, backs - is doing an excellent job with the fine points. There is talent to work with here. There is excellent speed and depth at A and C backs, although we could stand to be deeper at B-Back. The line is huge and mobile, and now the lineman understand their jobs to the point where they are asking intelligent questions. We are two-deep at QB, and while Rich Page, the junior, may have a slightly stronger arm, Fabian Harper, the senior, throws well enough, and is more advanced in terms of execution and knowledge of the system. Although just 5-7, he is quick and smart, and very tough. We ran a West Point drill on Wednesday, and Fabian jumped in on the defensive line across from one of our 250-pound defensive linemen. You should have heard the team erupt when Fabian stood the blocker up and stuffed the runner. (What do you suppose that sort of thing does in terms of enhancing a team's respect for its quarterback?)
Speaking of toughness, we had a defensive scrimmage on Wednesday, and as I began setting up the scout team on offense, I turned my back to the huddle and held up a card with a play diagrammed on it and asked who we had at every position. I wondered if we'd have a tailback - I mean, I've been places where nobody wants to be the opponent with the target on his chest. But when I pointed to the little circle on the card, I heard a voice say, "That's me." I turned around and saw Victor Boles standing there. Now, I knew that Victor was a good athlete. He can run and catch. He is not too tall and not exactly robust, but he is very smart and doesn't make many mistakes. And he is fast. He is a serious track man. I just automatically assumed that heavy contact probably wasn't his game. Wrong. He ran every play from tailback, inside and outside. He made some nice runs and took some hellacious licks, and by the end of the session had convinced this coach that he has heart, and he belongs in our offensive picture. He gives us, along with 6-2, 190 pound Jhared Marshall, as good a pair of C-backs as I've worked with. RC's competition will be fierce, and there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, but this group of kids has the potential to be pretty good. *********** I was eating dinner at a bar the other evening, and to give you an idea of just how lame this place was, "Millionaire" was on TV. I'd never watched the stupid show, and it pissed me off to think that, in a day and age in which substitute teachers earn in the neighborhood of $100 a day, a contestant picked up a quick $300 in the course of a couple of minutes by answering these questions correctly: (1) "To triple a number, you must multiply it by what?" (2) "If one is riding the rails, one is travelling by what?" *********** My children, Andrew, James, Margaret, my father-in-law Harold Reksten and I had the opportunity to attend an Antique Military Air Show last Saturday at Manassas Airport. This gentleman was a guest of honor that day and we met him casually strolling the grounds. He wore his CMH around his neck for the ceremony. Wesley L. Fox. Captain, U.S. Marine Corps, Company A, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, 3d Marine Division. Place and date: Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam, 22 February 1969. Entered service at: Leesburg, Va. Born: 30 September 1931, Herndon, Va. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as commanding officer of Company A, in action against the enemy in the northern A Shau Valley. Capt. (then 1st Lt.) Fox's company came under intense fire from a large well concealed enemy force. Capt. Fox maneuvered to a position from which he could assess the situation and confer with his platoon leaders. As they departed to execute the plan he had devised, the enemy attacked and Capt. Fox was wounded along with all of the other members of the command group, except the executive officer. Capt. Fox continued to direct the activity of his company. Advancing through heavy enemy fire, he personally neutralized 1 enemy position and calmly ordered an assault against the hostile emplacements. He then moved through the hazardous area coordinating aircraft support with the activities of his men. When his executive officer was mortally wounded, Capt. Fox reorganized the company and directed the fire of his men as they hurled grenades against the enemy and drove the hostile forces into retreat. Wounded again in the final assault, Capt. Fox refused medical attention, established a defensive posture, and supervised the preparation of casualties for medical evacuation. His indomitable courage, inspiring initiative, and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of grave personal danger inspired his marines to such aggressive action that they overcame all enemy resistance and destroyed a large bunker complex. Capt. Fox's heroic actions reflect great credit upon himself and the Marine Corps, and uphold the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. Mere moments before meeting him, Andrew asked me if I had ever met a receipient of the medal. How about that? Scott Russell, Sterling, Virginia *********** The Washington Prep Football Report is a great resource for anyone trying to follow HS football in the Evergreen State. A weekly newsletter containing stats, standings and items of interest, it is e-mailed to you every Monday throughout the season, and for $25 it is a good deal. If you want to get on the mailing list, simply mail the check, payable to Dave Tuengel, for $25.00 to: Dave Tuengel - Prep FB Report - P.O. Box 563 - Oakville, WA. 98568 *********** My car wouldn't start on Wednesday, which made me late to 7 AM practice, but also meant that I couldn't get to Lou Boudreau's viewing in nearby Frankfort, Illinois that afternoon. He meant a lot to me as a kid growing up in Philadelphia, because both of our baseball teams, the Phillies and the A's, sucked during the 1940's, while the Indians, which Boudreau managed, were very good, and so became my favorite team. I read Bob Feller's "Strikeout Story,"and idolized him, and because I wanted to play shortstop someday, I thought Lou Boudreau was the greatest. But I didn't realize at the time just how great he really was. In high school, in Harvey, Illinois, he was the star of a state championship basketball team. At the University of Illinois, he captained the basketball team as well as being a baseball star. In 1941, at the age of 23, he was the American League's All-Star shortstop. A year later, at the age of 24, he was manager of the Indians. As player-manager of the Indians in 1948, he had a season no one is likely ever to duplicate: he batted .355 and was named Amercian League MVP, and the Indians won the pennant and the World Series. He was the manager of the first American League's first black baseball, Larry Doby, when he broke into the majors in 1947, shortly after Jackie Robinson. After his career as a manager ended in Kansas City in 1957, he took to the broadcasting booth for the Chicago Cubs. He returned to the dugout to manage the Cubs for one season, in 1960, but that was all he took, and he returned to broadcasting, where he won the hearts of Chicagoans who never knew what a great player he was. A great Boudreau-as-manager story that came out after his death, which took place ironically in the hospital next door to Rich Central High School in Olympia Fields, concerned a clever way he managed to catch curfew-breakers without losing any sleep himself. Just before going to bed, he would give the night-shift elevator operator a brand-new baseball, and tell him, "Here - get all the autographs you can!" The next day, he would check the names on the baseball. "He was the greatest shortstop I ever saw," said all-time great Bob Feller. "He was afraid of nobody. He was a great manager, teammate and friend. Just a great man." One other person besides me who missed the services: Lou Boudreau's ne'er-do-well son-in-law, former major league pitcher Denny McClain, now serving time in a federal pen in Pennsylvania. *********** From our Melbourne, Australia offices (my son, Ed): "Great series on the ABC here about Australian music...in the late 50's, Qantas air hostesses used to bring back stacks of 45's from the US and bands here copied their style before the records were actually released in Australia. Fascinating." *********** The Chicago Bears cut defensive tackle Mike Wells the other day. The story is that there were some salary issues involved, but there is something else going on here that is worth noting by high school coaches. I heard him interviewed on a sports-talk show Wednesday, and he said he has been having problems with an arthritic shooulder. He had surgery on it during the off-season, but it is still bothering him. It won't get better, the doctors told him; it will continue to bother him until he has the shoulder replaced. But this is what is scary. The doctors said that the arthritic condition was caused by weight training - by lifting what they termed "too much weight for his body." He said that he now would have to agree. He is 30 years old, and he has been powerlifting since he was 16 years old, and has benched as much as 570 pounds. This issue will bear watching. I mean, how strong does a guy need to be? Here we are, telling kids that there are no limits, and they should keep setting their goals higher, and outworking their opponents, blah, blah, blah - but what are the risks of their developing arthritic conditions that can adversely affect their lives after sports? *********** When State College, Pennsylvania played The Bronx, New York in a Little League regional championship on TV Tuesday night, there was a kid named Suhey in the Penn State lineup. Now, that young man, I reckon, comes by his athletic ability honestly - undoubtedly, his grandpa was the late Steve Suhey. Here's what I wrote about him, about a year ago: Steve Suhey was 19 when he arrived at Penn State in the fall of 1941, but with World War II going on, he left State College following his sophomore year to serve in the Pacific, and didn't return for another three years. Back at Penn State, he had two years of eligibility left, and in 1947, was captain of Coach Bob Higgins' unbeaten Nittany Lions' team. He was an All-American guard in 1947, and years later, in 1985, he would be named to the National Football Foundation College Hall of Fame. After Penn State, he played a couple of years with the Steelers while earning his degree in the off-season, then spent a couple more years as a high school coach in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania before returning to State College and entering a career in sales. He married Virginia Higgins, his coach's daughter, and the Suheys had seven children. Steve Suhey died on January 8, 1977 - his 55th birthday - but he left quite a legacy. In 1976, the football season preceding his death, he had the rare opportunity of seeing three of his sons - Larry, Paul and Matt - play on the same Penn State team. Larry is now a sales representative in State College. Paul is an orthopedic surgeon in Jacksonville, Florida. And Matt is an investment banker in the Chicago area. He is also the executor of the late Walter Payton's estate. You may or may not remember Matt, but for eight seasons with the Chicago Bears, he was the fullback in front of Walter Payton. The guy who did the blocking. "He (Payton) was the toughest person I've ever known," Matt Suhey told USA Today. "People talk about this great back or that one. I don't care. I know they're not like Walter." Suhey stayed close to Payton throughout his final battle, and said that the trust that they developed on the playing field is the reason why Payton chose him to administer his estate. "We trusted each other when we played," he said. "We had to, because we depended on each other. I think he trusted I would try to do the right thing for his family." (PS- Look for more Suheys playing football - Matt Suhey's son plays youth football in the Chicago area. On a Double-Wing team.) *********** Coach, I was wondering if you could recommend a particular brand of playbook software to me as we are looking to purchase a software package but a lot of the software I have seen is not what it's cracked up to be & you never know what you have bought until you download it & by then it can be too late. Coach, I am not exactly sure what you mean by playbook software, because a lot of stuff is sold precisely for that purpose, but I don't use it. For drawing my playbook - and doing the diagrams you see on this site - I use either Microsoft Works, a fairly old and simple program which offers word processing, data base, spread sheet and drawing programs all in one (I use the drawing program) or AppleWorks. I have been switching over to Appleworks, which as you might imagine is just for Macs, and its drawing program is quite good, too. That's how I do every page in my playbook. Hope that helps! *********** My town, Camas, Washington, is infested with skateboarders. And now, thanks to a national organization that shows them how, they are lobbying the town government for a skateboard park of their very own, to the point of what sounds suspiciously like extortion - "If we don't have a place of our own to skateboard, we'll just have to run over pedestrians on the sidewalks and disfigure public railings, walls, etc." Or else they appeal to our sense of fair play -"you provide fields for all the other sports, but there's no place for skateboarding." Apart from the fact that there's also no place for motocross, the kids really do seem to be a surly, anti-social lot, whose attitude is "gimme - or else." (But before I'm accused of stereotyping, and told about "all the good kids" who skateboard. notice I said "seem to be.") Now, I've been in the south suburbs of Chicago for nearly two weeks, and something seemed strange. Something was missing. Yesterday I realized what it was when I saw my first two skateboarders. *********** I have been running the "Toss" for a few years and this year I purchased your Dynamics video and playbook for some additional reference material. Your play calling drove me nuts for the first week or so but once I figured it out, I started to come around. But what really sold me was last night's practice. One of my coaches calls Tight Rip 77 Power on accident. This play has not been installed yet. Our players told the coach we don't have that play....Well I walked over and asked them to think about what was called and tell me what to do. Well every player actually had an idea of what to do based on Running 88/99 power. My QB just didn't know his footwork.
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A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: Don't let the number fool you.
Charley Trippi was a running back - one of the most
exciting the game has ever seen - both in college and in
the pros.
*********** "Been on vacation and getting the boys ready for school. Registered my oldest son Brock (age 11) for football yesterday. The local Optimist Club runs the pre-junior high football scene here in Baytown. We arrived at the signing site about five minutes prior to the start of things and found a looooong line of people snaking out of the club's building, down the drive, down to and along the street. After standing in the boiling mid-day Texas sun for about 45 minutes, a dark cloud rolled over and blotted out the offending star. Soon after, a heavy rain poured down upon our heads. We were diverted to a dank and sweltering metal storage building to finish out our wait. Nearly two hours after our arrival Brock was signed, sealed and delivered. During the entire ordeal I did not see a single person leave the line." Whit Snyder, Baytown, Texas *********** NOW gals and assorted other "gender-equity" nuts love to rail against football. It's the most expensive sport a college provides, and, they never stop telling us, it's the reason why schools don't provide more athletic scholarships for women. See, if they didn't provide all those scholarships for football players, more women would have the chance to have their college education paid for. Or so the argument goes. Forget about all the schools whose football revenues are milked to provide funds for women's sports, which other than basketball at Tennessee and Connecticut and possibly one or two other places don't come close to paying their way. The solution, we are told, is to cut expenditures on football. Now, there was an old Greek, a guy named Aesop, who wrote a story about the goose that laid the golden egg. Unwilling to settle for one golden egg a day, the farmer who owned the goose grew impatient, and cut the goos open to get to the eggs. And geese don't do any better with their bellies cut open than we do. Take the University of Vermont. Please. Vermont has certainly cut its football expenditures. Flagship university of the most politically correct state in the US, The University of Vermont hasn't played football in years, making Vermont the only state in the nation to deny its males the opportunity to play football in at least one of its state colleges. Now that , based on the NOW gals' reasoning, ought to leave a lot of money for women's sports! But whaddaya know? Vermont's athletic program is losing money anyhow! So it plans to cut its athletic budget by some 7 per cent. But a cut of that size is almost certainly going to result in the elimination of some sports. Not that it pains me to have to tell the gender-equity folks this, but Title IX works both ways, so for every men's sport they eliminate, a women's sport will have to go, to. As the NOW gals have been so fond of saying whenever a men's wrestling, or swimming, or baseball program has been dropped in order to even out the number of scholarships a school offers, "It's all about fairness." *********** I wanted to let you know that we had a team camp last week and the Dbl Wing was running wild. We scrimmaged five of the perennial sectional champs and beat all of them. 6G was incredible. The super powers need some work, becuase our A and C backs were taking the ball outside instead of following the pulling lineman. We also had success passing the ball. Tight 2 Black-O was open all night long. The Stack I was great. Defenses didn't know what to do, neither did the coaches. The other coaches did complain about us running the 2 wedge. One coach said and I quote" That's not a real football play". That was after we got 10-15 yards on it. You should have seen it. We are doing the Safer and Surer tackling techniques and it is working wonders. We have a very inexperienced JV and they tackled very well in camp last week. We didn't go full speed as you suggest. We just used shields and it is going great. Bryan Evers, Troy Catholic Central High, Troy, New York (If that's what they think of the wedge, then you know two things: (1) they're afraid of it; and (2) if it's not a real football play, for real coaches, then you'll never have to worry about them running it against you.) *********** *********** Listen to this, from a coaching friend in the West: "I had one of my best running backs sign up and his dad wants him to play on the "B" team (for players whose skill and experience aren't as deep), so that he can carry the ball more and be the super star. I spread the ball around too much in the double wing for him. The boy wants to play on my team, and had lots of fun last year as we won our division." Whenever I hear one of these"my boy's not getting the ball enough," I want to tell those parents to take their son and take a hike. But I also want to tell them a story told me by Mike Emery, head coach at Fitch High in Groton, Connecticut, two-time defending state champion (and Double-Wing coach). He was getting that complaint from his three runners, all of them talented. He told them, "You guys are all averaging about 15 carries a game. If you want, we'll got to the I-formation. One of you will get a lot more carries. But the others won't play. So you decide and let me know. " It was unanimous. Double-Wing it is. *********** "No work for me today, as it is Victory Day, a state holiday in Rhode Island. Of course it used to be called VJ Day, but that was deemed too insensitive to our Japanese friends, so now it's Victory Day. I have an intern, a college student, who wanted to known what the "J" in VJ Day stands for (I spotted him the "V"). It sure is discouraging to realize that things I took for granted as common knowledge are becoming less and less commonly known. I guess I understand how my parents felt when I was younger." Alan Goodwin, Warwick, Rhode Island *********** At the dedication of Illinois' stadium on Oct. 18, 1924, Red Grange scored five touchdowns against Michigan, and later threw for a sixth , in one of the greatest individual feats in football history. If not the greatest player ever, or the most exciting, the late Grange is possibly the most important. Before Grange's arrival, pro football was a poor relation to the college game. It was his signing with the Chicago Bears, and the Bears' barnstorming tour of both coasts, that helped get pro football onto America's sports pages. While in New York to play the Giants, he was taken out to Yankee Stadium and introduced to Babe Ruth. Ruth, who found ti easier to call everybody "Kid," than to remember their names, offered some advice to Grange, who was well on his way to becomign wealthy: "Don't pay no attention to what they write about you Kid, good or bad, and don't pick up no checks." *********** And your equipment manager wondered why the players wanted to borrow his drill... a couple of former Philadelphia Eagles' "cheerleaders" (has anyone alive ever seen pro cheerleaders actually lead a cheer?) are suing 23 NFL teams that they claim peeped at them through holes in their dressing room wall while they changed clothes. The 23 teams are those that visited Veterans' Stadium from 1986 through last season, when evidently it was common knowledge throughout the NFL that all it took was a little basic carpentry to pentrate the wall separating the visiting team's locker room from the "cheerleaders'" dressing room. Naturally it mystifies me that this remained a secret so long, which certainly would seem to qualify most members of those teams for top government security clearance, and I do find it somewhat ironic that women who seem to take great delight in public displays of exhibitionism, who are just minutes away from movin' it and shakin' it in front of 60,000 people and a TV audience besides, are shocked - shocked! - to learn that men want to see more. Or is this whole thing just a stunt leading up to a Black and Decker commercial- Official Cordless Drill of the National Football League? *********** The Wallabies - Australia's national rugby team - defeated the New Zealand All Blacks Saturday in Dunedin, New Zealand, a place where they'd never won. The All-Blacks had lost only two previous international matches ("Tests") in Dunedin Stadium - "the House of Pain" - since 1930. Reading Michael Crutcher's lead-up story, the pre-game atmosphere in Dunedin, New Zealand sounds a little like Madison, Wisconsin or Knoxville, Tennessee on game Saturdays: DUNEDIN, NZ - The university town of about 120,000 people is unlike most other major rugby venues. It has very few tall buildings and just one major street lined with shops and businesses. Almost every shop window in George St is draped in black, some with mannequins wearing All Black jerseys and others with streamers and balloons. One shop even has a sign inviting customers to come in and meet a celebrity All Black supporter. The "supporter" is a life-sized cardboard cutout of English comedian Rowan Atkinson, kitted out in an All Black jersey, beanie and flag. You can buy virtually any piece of All Black supporter gear, and you can even pick up an accompanying music soundtrack. One record shop is advertising "Jonah - The Music that Moves the Man (Volume 2)". (Jonah Lomu, a definite NFL caliber runner, is the All Blacks' biggest star - HW) Buy this compact disc and you can listen to more of the favourite songs of All Black winger Jonah Lomu, from artists including George Benson, Barry White and The Commodores. Tomorrow's Test is simply referred to as "the game" by the passionate locals, who will turn out in force at the daunting House of Pain. Fans usually walk from the city centre to the ground, and the city council will mark that tradition tomorrow with a parade. The All Blacks have rewarded Dunedin's support with one of the best Test records in international rugby. New Zealand has lost just two of its 29 Tests in Dunedin - both to the British and Irish Lions in 1930 and 1971. They fully expect another win tomorrow but the Wallabies don't appear fazed despite a 12-0 losing record in the southern city. *********** A Chicago radio station (sports talk format - doesn't it figure?) has been running a commercial for something called the Liposuction and Cosmetic Surgery Institute. On it, a woman tells her boyfriend/hubby that if he thinks his "beer gut and so-called love handles" are attractive to women, he's got another think coming. She makes her pitch for liposuction - for men, yet! - then closes by telling all of us out in radioland, "Hey! Women have been doing it for years! Now it's your turn!" *********** "Hi Hugh, Hope your Chicagoland trip is going well. Our Pop Warner program started practices on August 6. It's been hot as Hades out here in Sudbury, but we've had a very productive 3 nights of practice. We have completely toned down any conditioning this week as the thermometer has hit the high 90's every night with high humidity. One positive is that it's given us more time to teach, and is in the same spirit as the volunteer fireman's story you had on the website.. "just get me to the fire, I'll figure out a way to get the water on it." "We've touched BRIEFLY on things like blocking techniques, preferring to concentrate on teaching the play calling System, with some time spent on stance, pulling, etc. (just as in the "Installing the System" tape). We have 21 13-14 year olds on this Pop Warner team and with the exception of two, this is their first time running the DW. 3 kids have never played before, so EVERYTHING is new for them. We practice from 6-8pm Mon.-Thurs. during the "pre"-season, and as of tonight (Wednesday) we can run Tight 88/99 Power, Tight Rip/Liz 88/99 Power, Tight Rip 3 Trap at 2, Tight Liz 2 Trap at 3. I know you've said that players pick this stuff up quickly, but I had no idea how quick it would be! "The kids are a good group, very attentive and hard working.. That's 98% of the battle and has made it an enjoyable "break in" period. I don't want to get too excited about the way things are going (coaches creed : if things are going well, something's bound to screw it up, right?), but couldn't happier with the last 3 days. Thank you for your tapes and the words of advice, they've really helped." Lou Orlando, Sudbury, Massachusetts
THERE IS NO COST TO YOU, AND NO ONE WILL TRY TO SELL YOU ANYTHING!!! |
He finally got his kids to do it (not always an easy feat, as any defensive backs' coach will tell you) but noticed that they had begun to add the call, "Water." He started to lecture them about screwng around, it's time to get serious, etc., and one of the kids said, "Coach - after we holler "Ice" and the man intercepts, it's like water, flowing down the field."
*********** This year's Football Mother of the Year Award may very well go to Dottlyn Carruthers, mother of LSU quarterback Rohan Davey. Anyone who saw Davey lead the Tigers to some-from-behind wins over Tennessee in the regular season and Georgia Tech in the Peach Bowl knows that he is one exciting football player. And to think he almost didn't play high school football. He finally was allowed to play when he was a sophomore. "My mama didn't let me play," he told USA Today. "She was scared I'd get hurt. Now if I get hurt, she calls me a baby. She wants me to play through it." *********** They used to say "Those who can't do- teach; those who can't teach- teach teachers."There is a lot of truth to the latter portion of the statement, and not long ago I proposed some sort of teacher training that would allow college graduates without formal teacher training to more quickly earn their teaching certification. This past week, I read in one of the Chicago papers about a local school being set up at which college graduates could earn teacher certification by working under the supervision of a mentor. Sounds good to me, of course, because it may make it possible for people with extensive significance in other fields to get into teaching quicker. But it could spell death to the "schools of education" (now there's an oxymoron for you) that have long had a monopoly on teacher training in every state. I say good riddance. I was 38 when I got my teaching credentials, and I couldn't believe the Mickey-Mouse classes I had to take in the two "schools of education" I was required to attend, not to mention the subsequent "in-service" courses provided over the years by some of their "experts.". A spokesman for one of those schools, attempting to justify the monopoly, argued that those who enter teaching without the "benefit" of traditional education-school teacher training tend to drop out of teaching at a higher rate. I wonder if it has occured to him that those are often people who possess other marketable skills, and once they find out about all the B.S. teachers have to go through these days - including in-service classes - and how niggardly the starting pay is, they bail. *********** Boy do you get a lot of flack from coaches about this system when you coaching at the little league level and you invite a father to help!!! I got one guy who thinks it absurd you hike the ball this way, point first. He says it will NEVER work !! Give me some ammo as to why you do it that way. NAME WITHHELD That is a mistake you make when you invite people in whose loyalty is to something else and not to you. In the vernacular, screw him. You understand that I don't tell people they ought to do it this way. I'm just illustrating how I do it and teach it. Tell your kibbitzer that the guy who knows more about my particular system than anybody I know chooses to do it this way, but he of course has no control over fathers who know better. After all, maybe he has coached 30 years, and worked with the Wing-T since 1983, too. I wouldn't dignify him by answering him, but between you and me, two reasons are (1) the QB can take the ball one-handed which gives him a lot of confidence in his ability to handle it two-handed; and (2) he receivesthe ball the way we want him to hold it when it's handed off. The twist-the-ball exchange is great if you are a passing team, but it puts the hand on the fat of the ball, rather than the back end, which can lead to bad handoffs. *********** Coach Rich Vain, from Parkville, Maryland writes: "I now watch all plays from the middle linebacker position. If the QB stays low you really cannot see were the ball is. The pulling lineman also help to block your view." Rich has made a very important observation regarding this system. I think it is absolutely essential for the QB to hide the football, and having him stay low is a very good way of making sure he does. *********** When running 88 power from slot formation, is the man over our slot the man we are kicking out? there are times that there is a man over a slot and a man on our XE. what do we do in that situation? John Abreu, Hawaii We double the man on the slot. Of course, if we were to see a front like you describe, we would be able to reach those people (38 g-o-reach) and in no time at all we would have our guards outside and up on their corner. *********** My daughter Vicky, wrote that she and my son-in-law, Ken, just returned from playing golf at a place in western Nebraska called Sand Hills. She went on, "The course is in the middle of nowhere, north of North Platte, with waving grass and sunflowers. (Think Little House on the Prairie) A caddy I talked to lives in the closest town, about 15 miles away, where his sophomore class has 21 kids in it, and it's a big class. They play 8-man football, and he said of the 26 boys in grades 9-12, 25 played football! That's Nebraska for you." *********** From a youth coach in the Midwest who must go unnamed: "Talking to a Travel Coach yesterday at my son's High School practice, I commented how (our high school's) coaches teach tackling much the same way you do. He said that was not the way he would teach it. He further stated you have to drive the shoulder pads into the ball carriers thighs with the head turned to the side. All I could think of what a jerk this guy is. Told him he was lucky no player of his has suffered a serious injury." *********** BLACK LION TEAM: I wanted to make sure you have Umatilla down for the Black Lions Award. I will be the point of contact since I am retired AF and my defensive coordinator is a former Green Beret. We have an offensive tackle that wants to go to West Point and visited there this past summer, and they are very interested in him. They want more films of his first couple of games this fall, but they told him they would consider him a walk-on candidate based on what they have already seen. Ron Timson, Head Coach, Umatilla High School, Umatilla, Florida *********** "Hey I'm a 16 year old Quarterback. I've been out of the game for 2 years and now I'm going back to my old high school to play. The coaches are expecting me to be really good so I am wondering if you can give me some good ideas on some drills that I can use. I'm prepared to put in 200 % of my effort into this. Thanks a lot. Jason" Dear Jason- The best people to talk to are your coaches. Especially if you've been out of the game for two years, it is going to be important to impress on them how serious you are. You need to realize that since you haven't been around, like coaches everywhere they have been making plans way in advance, and their plans do not include you. So if you hope to be part of the plans, you've got some impressing to do. Start by asking them what they suggest. (And, I might add, ask your English teacher about something called a salutation.)
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*********** I was reading an article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press about a young guy who produces a TV show in the Twin Cities. He talked about his college days and how, after a couple of years of the usual "beer and chasing girls," he decided he would get a degree in communications. "I think I decided to go that way," he said, "because if you watch college football games, every other guyu seems to be a communications major. So I figured, 'How hard could that be?'" *********** Uh-oh. How'd you like to be a football coach and have one of your kids die out there? Not a pleasant thought. And then, to top it all off, the Reverend Jesse Jackson shows up at the funeral as a "spokesman for the family." Uh-oh. *********** A Chicago sports talk show was asking its listeners to propose faces for a Mount Rushmore of Chicago sports figures. Jordan and Payton were locks. Butkus and Ditka seemed to be headed for spots three and four. It is a doggone shame so few people nowadays realize the impact George Halas had on the game of pro football and on the city of Chicago, because he certainly belongs on there. Ditka has been made famous by the SNL skits, but his accomplishments pale alongside a man who truly was indispensible to the growth of the NFL. It is reasonable to say that it wouldn't be where it is today without George Halas. *********** I think I have found a new, potentially lucrative profession. Michael Simons, a sports psychologist, has come up with a simple, five-part test to determine whether a parent is overly pushy. Parents are asked which of the following statements they agree with: (1) Before every game, I make my child review strategies with me; (2) It's okay to give my child advice during competition; (3) I always let my child know if I feel he or she has choked away a game or match; (4) If I spend a lot of money on equipment, I expect my child to play the sport for a long time; (5) I do whatever it takes to get my kid on the top teams. Simons says that if you strongly agree with any one of those statements, you are borderline pushy; two or more and you have crossed over the line. Now, here's where my new profession comes in: Maurice Elias, writing in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, suggests that when a kid doesn't seem to be doing as well as a parent thinks he should, the parent ought to be able to go to "an experienced and trusted coach," for an evaluation of the kid's skills. I think I'll hang out my shingle - It will read Coach Hugh Wyatt, CTE (stands for Certified Talent Evaluator - something I made up. Initials after a name always sound prestigious and imposing). You youth coaches out there had better be on guard. You are going to love me. Just wait until the first dad comes to you saying, "Well, we took Jason to Coach Wyatt, and he says Jason should be starting at quarterback on your team. In fact, Coach Wyatt says Jason could start at quarterback for any youth team in the country.." Heh, heh. Sorry, fellas. I know it looks like I'm selling out. But I know who's paying me. *********** Maybe you've been getting these damn things, too. I've been getting these e-mails that say "Hi. I send you this file because I ask your advice." It is always from somebody different, always from somebody I've never heard of. I get at least one every day. So to whoever (or whatever) has been sending them... "Hi. I think you try to F--- up my computer, so I not open the file and I not can give you advice."
*********** Hugh, I laughed pretty hard when you said you saw a gal that was saggin at the airport. I taught a year in the prison system and if you sagged that meant you were available if you know what I mean. Also if you wore a belt that was way too big and hung down to your knees that meant that one size fits all, once again if you know what I mean. Of course these dumbasses that wear their clothes that way don't know that - or maybe they do."Mike Foristiere, Boise, Idaho *********** Steve Young and a former 49ers teammate want to buy a pro football team. Good for them. Show us your $400 million and get in line. It is nice that he has a big name and probably has access to that kind of money, but... He has a lot of competition. An NFL franchise is the ultimate Rolex. After all the BMWs and trophy homes and trophy wives, a rich man is still left thinking, "there has to be something more... This can't be all there is." That's where an NFL franchise comes in. It stamps him as being not just rich, but as a member of a truly select group of rich people. I recall the time years ago, when a friend and former boss was working as business manager of the Dolphins, and he had me fly down and interview for a job. I met with the Joe Robbie, the man who brought pro football to Miami, in honor of which accomplishment they named a stadium for him for a year or so, until Pro Player or some such offered them money to name it after them. How quickly they forget. After the interview, Mr. Robbie invited us to join him for drinks at the Palm Bay Club, which I guess was a pretty exclusive place. On the way there, he was pulled over for speeding, but that's another story. Anyhow, once inside, as we threaded our way through the crowd of people standing around the bar, he turned to us and pointed out a young man and said, "See that guy? He's from the wealthiest family in Pittsburgh. He'd give anything to own a pro football team." Sure enough, as we walked by, the young guy said, "Hey, Joe. I'm going to have a pro football team someday, too." Mr. Robbie said, low enough that the guy may not have heard him, "Eat your heart out." *********** For the most part, people have been discreet in the things they've said in the aftermath of the recent football-training deaths. But I did read some comments by a relative of one of the young men who died, and they had the unfortunate sound of words provided by a lawyer getting ready to sue. "Athletic personnel are pushing humans beyond what humans are capable of," the relative said. "Coaches tweak and torque the athlete to see how far he can be pushed." Now, with all due respect to this person, who I know must be suffering unimaginable pain, I must beg to differ. Yes, coaches do push some humans (athletes), but it is not to see how far they can be pushed. It is because most athletes are capable of much more than they believe they are, and they often need "pushing" to get past self-imposed limits. None of us can say with certainty what humans are capable of or what their limits are. The great ones have taught us that. I think of how stagnant track and field was when I was in high school. We wondered then whether we would ever see a seven-foot high jump; the 16-foot pole vault (okay, okay - it's an equipment thing); the 60-foot shot put; the 10-flat 100 meters (or, if you will, the nine-flat 100 yards); the four-minute mile. People would pack places such as Madison Square Garden in hopes of seeing a 15-foot pole vault or a four-minute mile. There was a relative handful of 50-foot shotputters. Jesse Owens' long-jump record had already lasted 20 years. But in my lifetime, I've seen all those supposed limits surpassed. Those performances did not come about because of coaches pushing humans beyond what they were capable of. They were achieved by humans pushing themselves, in the belief that their human bodies were capable of more.
*********** Kevin Donlan died last Wednesday at the age of 79. He was a high school basketball coach in Illinois and a member of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame, but the culmination of his athletic career was his 15 years as a Big Ten basketball official. His favorite story, his son Kevin recalled, concerned the late Al McGuire. "My dad had called a foul," the son told the Chicago Sun-Times, "and he was administering the free throw when he looked up to see Al McGuire standing next to him on the floor. McGuire said, 'That was a lousy call.' My dad said, 'You can't be here!' McGuire said, 'yeah, but it was a lousy call.' My dad told him, 'I'm going to give you a technical foul for each step it takes you to get back to the bench.' So McGuire looks up, points to a couple of his players and they carry him off. Then he says to Dad, 'Now what are you going to do?' My dad said, 'You win.'" *********** An Oregon guy who was being sought by police in the kidnaping of his two daughters was caught when he was arrested in Montana. For speeding. Man, we are talking stupid. Either that, or he is laying the groundwork for a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea on the kidnaping charges. Do you realize what you have to do to get arrested for speeding in Montana? Not so long ago, I went through Montana border-to-border, 600-some miles from Idaho to North Dakota, at 90+ miles per hour, legal all the way. *********** Coach, This past weekend I attended the annual Vermont vs. New Hampshire Shrine Football game held at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. The game pits the best graduated H.S. seniors form VT against the Best seniors from NH. Traditionally this has been a rather lopsided affair over the past 48 years with NH being the dominant team (I think it has to do with NH having 2 times the population of VT, but anyway) As I began watching the NH team it quickly became apparent that they were running the double wing in the game. I thought my god, this coach has stones, here he is in the showcase all star game between the two states and he is running the double W. I have to admit I was excited. At any rate what the NH team did was nothing short of impressive as they soundly beat the VT team by a score of 21-0, all the points of which were scored in the first half. At the half, NH held a 236 -22 advantage in total yards gained. NH ran the powers and then the FB trap and dive and then the counters for impressive gains and dominated the time of possession . But remember this is a showcase game so NH also threw the ball and threw it well. It looked mostly like just basic red-red and blue- blue plays but by then the VT team was trying so hard to stop the run that they appeared off guard when the ball went to the air and gave up sizable chunks of yardage via the air. The NH coach was Jim Fitzgerald of Laconia H.S. in Laconia NH and apparently this was his last game after a long and successful career there he is retiring. An impressive way to go out and a gutsy guy no doubt. While I am a former VT H.S. head coach and a current youth double wing coach in VT, I was rooting for VT, but I was excited to see the double wing in action at the H.S. level . My two sons were with me and the oldest (13, a double wing QB) kept calling out the plays as NH would run them( 88, 99 power, 3 trap 2, 47 C , 38 G-O etc)! Maybe more VT schools will consider the double wing after seeing what it can do. Keep up the great work - Neil Martel, Montpelier, Vermont (Jim Fitzgerald is - was, now that he is retired - a Double-Wing guy, who attended a clinic I put on outside Portland, Maine a couple of years ago. He did a great job at Laconia, including a state championship running the Double Wing.
THERE IS NO COST TO YOU, AND NO ONE WILL TRY TO SELL YOU ANYTHING!!! |
A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: The player on the right, Andy
Robustelli, is a Hall-of-Famer. The one on the left
probably should be, but his time hasn't arrived yet.
Maybe it never will, unfortunately, because when he died
last week, his death notice didn't rate more than a
sentence or two in most newspapers I saw.
Two weeks ago, caddy Miles Byrne cost Woosnam the final-round lead - and possibly first prize - in the British Open when he failed to count the number of clubs in Woosie's bag, and Woosie had to take a two-stroke penalty for carrying one club too many. Curtis Strange, commenting on TV, predicted that Byrne would be gone before the round was over. But no -Woosie was understanding. He did give the guy a chewing, but he didn't fire him. He kept him, and soldiered on. Saturday, though, was another story. As Woosnam waited to tee off in the final round of the Scandinavian Masters, Byrne was nowhere to be found. Woosnam had to break into his locker to get his shoes (Byrne had the key) and press the local caddiemaster into caddying for him. Byrne, it turns out, overslept. Miles Byrne is history. Strike two and yer out. Tell that one to your kids. *********** We have been hit with yet another tragic football death, a third in less than a month and, like the others, a death unrelated to the "physical violence" for which football takes so many hits. This time, it was Northwestern safety Rashidi Wheeler, who died of an asthma attack. It seems that he had had many asthma attacks while at Northwestern, most of them seemingly worse than the one that caused his death.
*********** I heard from a coach who is heading into his first season at a school that has been down - really down. As you might imagine, the program was badly in need of what we call "structure," and he is quite capable of providing it. But in attempting to do so, he has just hit wall number one. Things were fine all preseason until he began to tighten the screws and make demands on his players - things that you and I consider normal, like attending workouts and staying out of academic trouble - and they began to wander off. And now his numbers are way down. I reminded him of Valley Forge - how Washington and his men endured a harsh winter in the Pennsylvania countryside while the British were partying it up in Philly with the local ladies. How he didn't really find out what he had until Spring came. His numbers were down, too, after a winter of cold and hunger and discouragement. But the men who stuck it out - the men who stayed - were men he knew would be with him for the duration of the war, through thick and thin. So I told him, above all, that it was important not to panic. Or, at least, not to show signs of panic. A lot of people, I told him, will be looking at him for signs as to whether things are good or bad. They think things might be bad, but they don't really know, so they will make their decision based on what they see their leader doing. (How do you think the passengers on a plane would react if the captain came on over the PA and said, "Ohmigod! This is awful! We've lost an engine and we're all gonna die." Hey - if we've lost all our engines, I still expect him to sound like Chuck Yeager.) ********** Went to a Tiger (Baseball) game today verse Oakland athletics. Took my wife (Kim) my four year old son (Josh) and my three year old daughter (Kennedy) Yes she's named after John and Robert. Any way went because it was supposed to be Hot Wheel car give-away day. My son is mad for the little cars so we purchased tickets months ago and made a big deal of marking off the days of the calender, teaching him patience, numbers and dates etc...We get there and they hand us a couple of hats. "What's this," we say. "Oh the date was changed to Sept 16th.
*********** Joe Paterno will be 75 at the end of this football season, but he says he is giving no thought to retirment. In fact, he told a reporter from the Harrisburg Patriot-News, one who has been critical of Joe Pa on occasion, "the only retirement I'm looking forward to is yours - and I can't wait." *********** Keep your eye on Antwan Randle El. It may not be that easy, because he plays for Indiana, which has not been one of the Big Ten's higher-profile programs. He's been a very exciting quarterback for the last three years but now, as he heads into his senior year he is going to be used at other positions. As an incentive for him to return, rather than turn pro after his junior year, Indiana coach Cam Cameron has agreed to let Randle El play other positions, including wide receiver, the better to let him display his talents for NFL scouts. Trouble is, he may be making his move precisely as the Daunte Culpeppers and Donovan McNabbs and Michael Vicks begin to break the stand-in-the-pocket QB stereotype. *********** You think you have problems getting the maintenance people to water your field during the summer? The Illinois football team has had to abandon its plans to hold pre-season camp at Rantoul, Illinois, about 15 miles up the road from the University. A dose of fungicide applied in July has killed the grass on the Rantoul practice fields. *********** Guys write me asking about teaching new plays. I tell them first get the plays in, and teach the player their assignments, and worry about the techniques later. I have seen some coaches get awfully hung up on driving sleds, spending the better part of an offensive practice on blocking techniques, when their kids didn't even know who they were supposed to block. I think the importance of stressing assignments first and techniques later was best expressed at one of my clinics by Jeff Murdock, line coach at Ware Shoals, South Carolina. " I'm a volunteer fireman. If I don't know how to get there, I ain't going to put it out. But if I can get there, I can figure out a way to get water on it." *********** Hey- if you don't ask, the answer's always no, right? Bryan Cox was out of work. Then Andy Katzenmoyer got hurt, and the Patriots decided to sign Cox. A chance to stay in the NFL, right? Hell, why not go for it all - now he wants number 51, which at the present time belongs to Mike Vrabel. "I need to get in that number," Cox said. "We'll just have to wait until some people get cut." *********** I read it but I still have trouble believing it... A new California law supposedly enables people who wear glasses, use a hearing aid or take medication for high blood pressure to be considered legally disabled. You Californians - can that be?
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A
LOOK AT OUR LEGACY: In 1975
Willie
Wood became the first
African-American in the modern era (since at least the
early 1920's) to become head coach of a professional
football team, when the Philadelphia Bell of the World
Football League fired its head coach during training camp
and named Willie Wood to replace him.