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FEBRUARY 2006

The U of Washington Students' Words Were "Misrepresented" (See"NEWS") Did The Vols' Basketball Coach Act Like an A**hole Parent? (See"NEWS") My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me     February 28, 2006 - "People don't care if there is turbulence, they still expect the pilot to land the plane." Mike Shanahan   *********** Coach Wyatt, Just wanted to let you know that reading the obit about Coach Putman brought back memories for me. In 1953, when I was 9 yeas old, my dad took me to a football game at Ft Ord. My dad had told me that the Ft. Ord football team had scrimmaged the 49ers that year and done quite well against them and that they were very good. I don't remember who the Ft Ord team played, but I vividly remember that Ollie Matson showed one of his patented long weaving runs during the game that had the crowd on its feet cheering and talking long after he was tackled. I think the run covered some 60 yards with several cutbacks, making tacklers miss him.   Thanks for bringing back the memory! Best regards, Brad Elliott, The Old Line Coach, Soquel, California   *********** Hugh, Just read the recent "News Page".   You had a comment from Keith Babb about a kid from Prospect High School, the "flipping the finger" kid.   I can tell you this, Keith Babb is dead-on when he said that Prospect wins with kids smaller, and slower than the giant kids in Class 7 Ball.   My point, Prospect's H/C, Brent Pearlman, WOW what a great leader. I went to a clinic four weeks ago and he was one of the speakers. He talked about team building, and they really do some impressive stuff at Prospect. I'll tell you more when you get here but I'd like to share the one thing that really stuck out with our staff.   After every practice the Prospect team forms a line, and ALL the coaches form a line. No kid leaves without shaking each coaches hand and looking him in the eye. NO EXCEPTIONS.   A simple little thing, but according to Coach Pearlman, it has had a profound effect on the kids.   Coach Pearlman said this came about after he chewed out a kid during practice, and really rode him hard. After practice, with things being what they are, he did not have the chance to tell the kid that he'll be okay, and that he needed him for the team. Coach Pearlman said it ate him up all night, that he could not sleep thinking that he did not have a chance to pick the kid up. The next day he started the new policy.   So all of our staff agreed that we will start this policy next year. Again, it is a simple thing, but an effective thing too.   Best, Bill Murphy, Chicago (That's a great thing. For sure, the worst thing you can do is send a kid home after he's been "aggressively coached," without first letting him know that you care about him. I also like the idea of having the kids make eye contact. It is amazing how difficult this is for some kids nowadays. I think it has something to do with an absence of real men in their lives. Maybe the Army recruiting ad is on to something - the one in which a proud father says to his soldier son that he's noticed two changes that have come about in the short time the young man has been in the Army: "You just did something you've never done before - you shook my hand and you looked me in the eye - at the same time." HW)   *********** Coach, Sorry it's been so long.  Your news section is excellent as always.  I couldn't help but chime in when I read your account of the Pappy Boyington situation.  As a career soldier myself it really hit home.  Anyway, after reading your article I penned a little letter to the President of UW indicating my disappointment with the remarks made during the senate vote.  The following is the response that I received.   Keep up the outstanding work.    Respectfully, GT Page, Salt Lake City, Utah   -----------   President Emmert asked me to respond on his behalf to your message about the Associated Students of the University of Washington (ASUW) Senate debate regarding a memorial to honor Col. Boyington.     The ASUW Senate, an arm of student government on campus, is a forum in which students discuss a wide range of issues, including the proposal for the memorial. After considerable debate, the resolution failed by a tiebreaker vote. As ASUW Senate Chair Alex Kim describes in the message below, students thought long and hard about their decision and cast their votes for a variety of reasons. Some of the reasons that have been publicized are addressed in Mr. Kim's report.     According to Mr. Kim and our student body president Lee Dunbar, who co-sponsored the resolution, many students felt that we should honor all veterans appropriately rather than single out one, even though Col. Boyington was a Medal of Honor recipient. I am also attaching a message from Mr. Dunbar, with some of his thoughts on the matter. A new resolution has been introduced and is working its way through the Student Senate for the University to establish a memorial to all of its Medal of Honor recipients. Student Senators are expected to vote on this resolution in the coming weeks.     It should also be noted that thanks to the work of Dean Emeritus Brewster Denny and the contributions of many UW alumni, several years ago the University erected a fitting memorial to UW students, faculty and staff who lost their lives in World War II. We also have memorials on campus for students who gave their lives serving their country in World War I and students who fought in the Spanish Civil War.     Different versions of what transpired during the debate have circulated through the electronic media. I hope you will take a moment to read Mr. Kim's account andMr. Dunbar's comments. I also hope that regardless of one's point of view on this issue, the exercise of democracy that occurred at the Senate meeting can be seen as a meaningful learning opportunity for the students engaged in the debate.     Sincerely,   Eric S. Godfrey Acting Vice President for Student Affairs   -----------   It has recently come to our attention that the actions of the ASUW Student Senate have been greatly misrepresented to the student body and the general public.  As such I wanted to clarify what actually occurred.   The Student Senate exists to create official student opinion by bringing together student representatives from all across campus.  The resolution concerning Colonel Boyington (available online at http://senate.asuw.org/legislation/12/R/R-12-18.html) cited the Colonel's exemplary service record, including the fact that he was awarded the Medal of Honor for service in World War II.  The resolution called for the creation of a memorial in his honor. Passage of the resolution would not have necessarily resulted in the creation such a memorial, but would have recommended it to the University of Washington.   The debate within the Senate was fair, balanced, and respectful. Senators representing a diverse array of viewpoints spoke on the resolution, raising numerous points as to the merits and demerits of the resolution.     1.)     The ASUW Student Senate declined to support the construction of a memorial for an individual. This in no way indicates a lack of respect for the individual or the cause, merely that the Senate did not support the construction of a memorial.  The Senate weighed factors such as financial viability, the logistics of implementation, which historical points are relevant, and the difficulty in assessing which veterans should be memorialized over others. Questions regarding these factors were not addressed in the legislation itself and thus became points of debate during the meeting.     2.)     Senators speak on behalf of the opinions of their constituents. This legislation has been posted publicly for nearly a month and senators have used that time to discuss the issues with their constituents.  There is no way to distill a central argument of the Senate for or against any piece of legislation the Senate discusses. While the vote itself is a yes or no decision, the reasons senators choose to vote in a particular manner vary widely.  Therefore, it is inappropriate to represent a decision by the Senate as resulting from any single statement or point-of-view.     3.)     No senator speaking in opposition to the resolution suggested that deaths in war are the equivalent of murder.  One senator, in making a motion to remove references to the number of Japanese planes shot down, suggested the focus of the resolution should be on the man's service to his country. The sponsor of the amendment suggested that death in war was sometimes a "necessary evil" and that the focus of the honor should not be on the necessary evil, but rather on the service.  That motion passed overwhelmingly.  A further amendment to remove the text of the inscription of the Medal of Honor from the legislation subsequently failed overwhelmingly.     4.)     No senator stated that we should not pass the resolution on the grounds that Colonel Boyington was a "white male." One senator stated that we have many monuments and memorials to white males, but did not suggest this was a reason to not support the resolution.   Throughout the debate in the Student Senate, the tone was very respectful.   If you have any additional questions, please contact: ASUW President Lee Dunbar (asuwpres@u.washington.edu), Student Senate Chair Alex Kim (asuwssch@u.washington.edu), Student Senate Vice-Chair Erin Shields (asuwssvc@u.washington.edu) or Director of Operations Karl Smith (asuwbdop@u.washington.edu)     Alex Kim Student Senate Chair Associated Students of the University of Washington 206.543.1780 (office) 206.669.9562 (mobile) http://senate.asuw.org/     -----------   I want to take this opportunity to share some thoughts that I hope will provide further insight into the situation, which I fear has been misrepresented to the public.   First, I want you to know that I personally have great respect for combat veterans and the sacrifices that they have made for all of us. It is for this reason that I co-sponsored the proposal to create a memorial and that I am continuing to work on a second resolution.   Ironically, the principal reason the first bill did not pass is that many of us, including myself, came to realize that it would be inadequate to memorialize only one of the UW's five Medal of Honor recipients. A new resolution that is inclusive of all of these heroes is being drafted right now and should be introduced shortly. I am confident that this new resolution will pass.     As for comments by a few students that have been taken as disrespectful, I want to assure you that all of us have learned a great deal from this incident.  One of the senators I work with most closely, in particular, has told me how remorseful she is for any insult felt from her choice of words. The University of Washington is a large campus with many students and there are bound to be disagreements and opposing views among us. Regardless of my personal feelings, I feel it's crucial to allow, indeed defend, free expression of ideas and beliefs--a right that Pappy Boyington fought to protect.     This experience has been an educable moment for all of us, to say the least. One of the things I have been particularly appreciative of throughout this episode is the understanding and support given by the Board of Regents and the UW administration.  Whatever their personal concerns, they have recognized that my fellow students and I are learning Some very important lessons from this incident that we will carry with us throughout our lives.       Sincerely,   Lee Dunbar, President, ASUW   Office of the President,   University of Washington   Room 301, Gerberding Hall Box 351230   Seattle, WA 98195   Phone: (206) 543-5010 Fax:   206) 616-1784   The lessons you'd hope they have learned are (1) actions have consequences; (2) the "free" in "free speech" does not refer to its cost; you are free to say anything you wish, but you may have to pay a price for your words; (3) someone should have come out and repudiated those remarks immediately.   Unfortunately, the lesson they seem to have learned from this "educable moment" is to blame the messenger, whoever it was, who went public with the hateful words of a couple of cocky student leaders.   Notice how the word "misrepresent" appears in the letters of both student leaders? Squirm and spin, squirm and spin. They'll make great politicians. HW   FLASH- THANKS TO ALL WHO E-MAILED THESE MEALY-MOUTHED PUKES--- READ THIS:   http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002833469_boyington28m.html   *********** Perhaps the worst part of the gone-and-forgotten Winter Olympics was pointed out by a Minneapolis sportswriter - spoiled American professional athletes. American competitors simply didn't seem to care whether they won or lost. "It's just a race," said a spoiled female snowboarder, after blowing a monster lead while hot-dogging. "I had an awesome Olympics," said the guy whose cult Nike ads urge us to join, overlooking the fact that for all the money sponsors pay him, and all the hype associated with him, he didn't win a f--king medal. And then our hockey players lay an egg and whine about their wives having to make their own travel arrangements. Imagine!   To a certain extent, the American sports public has become inured to the attitude of pro athletes, who don't exactly get beaten-up by a regular season loss, because they know there's another game tomorrow. But when everything's on the line, they don't accept kindly an athlete who blows a big lead and says, "it's just a game." And a losing quarterback who spent the better part of Super Bowl week hitting all the parties and then joked afterwards about what an "awesome" time he had would probably not be welcome back in his team's home city.   And to the professional athletes' credit, when it really does matter, we see them at their best, fighting, and competing - and taking it hard when they lose.   To me, the thing that saved the Olympics was the way little Finland and Sweden - two countries whose people aren't exactly wild about each other - scrapped to get to the finals in ice hockey, and the way the Swedes - all professionals with a regular season to get back to - celebrated as if they really had won something big. As if they really had won something for their country. "It doesn't get any better than this," said one of them. And not a single Finn said, "It's just a game."   *********** A feature article in Sunday's Knoxville News Sentinel about Tennessee's men's basketball coach, Bruce Pearl casually mentioned down in the middle of the story that he was thrown out of his son's high school basketball game last week. No further details were provided, and I don't recall reading anything about it at the time. But the SEC takes fan misconduct at its games very seriously, so much so that it doesn't even allow basketball fans on the court after games, so if this is really true, Daddy Pearl was the ultimate ugly father, in which case he should have been suspended for at least a game for providing the worst possible example for a**hole parents everywhere. (Wonder if he had his orange suspenders on when they gave him the heave-ho.)   FOLLOW-UP: According to an AP story, Pearl was watching his son Steven and his West High team play against Campbell County. Pearl said he "commented" that an official, Shane Mynatt, should change ends with another official.   "And he looked at me," Pearl told the News Sentinel, "and he put the whistle in his mouth like I was coaching and he was going to give me a technical."   "I said, 'What, are you going to throw me out?' And he ran over to security. Before anything could happen, I just left the gym and went to the concession stand."   Former Tennessee and New York Jets quarterback Pat Ryan had been sitting next to Pearl during the game and said Pearl was singled out because he is Tennessee's basketball coach.   "He didn't curse him," Ryan said. "The guy had missed a bunch of calls, and we were just giving him a little business, and the guy couldn't handle it very well."   "Commented," huh? "Commented" loud enough for him to hear, evidently, which in a high school gym sounds like more than muttering to the guy next to him.   "Commenting?" Or "Giving him a little business?" Hmmm.   Nice to hear "he didn't curse him," but is the official wrong because he "couldn't handle it," or should the father in the stands, especially if he is a prominent public figure and a role model himself, have kept his mouth shut?   Coach Pearl is doing a great job in his first year at Tennessee, and I hope he has continued success, and never has to deal with yahoos in the stands.   Anyhow, Coach Pearl missed a good game. Son Steven scored 28 points as West won in overtime, 72-63.     2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 1-12-06 (2006 CLINICS) PLEASE NOTE THAT THE RALEIGH-DURHAM/PHILADELPHIA/PROVIDENCE CLINIC DATES HAVE CHANGED CLINIC LOCATION FEB 25 ATLANTA HOLIDAY INN AIRPORT NORTH - 1380 Virginia Ave - 404-762-8411 MARCH 11 LOS ANGELES HOLIDAY INN-MEDIA CENTER -150 E. Angeleno, Burbank - 818-841-4770 MARCH 18 CHICAGO ST. XAVIER UNIVERSITY - 3700 West 103rd St., Chicago APRIL 1 RALEIGH-DURHAM MILLENNIUM HOTEL - 2800 Campus Walk Ave - Durham - 919-383-8575 APRIL 15 PHILADELPHIA HOLIDAY INN, 432 Washington Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000 APRIL 29 PROVIDENCE COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470 TBA DENVER TBA MAY 13 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA LATHROP, CA.   *********** At the NFL combine testing, one of the ways athletes are compared is the bench press. But it's not just the old how-much-can-you-bench measure of strength. The scouts want to see a little stamina, so the athletes are asked to press 225 pounds as many times as possible. For those of us who know what a big deal it is for a high school kid the first time he benches 200 pounds, it is absolutely awesome to learn that at the combine, Ohio State defensive end tied the record by benching 225 pounds 45 times. The record was originally set in 2000 by one Leif Larsen of UTEP. *********** "The (wishbone) option with the load block on the EOL (end of the line) defender was the best goal line play in the history of college football." Homer Smith   *********** The giant National Education Association (NEA), the nation's largest teachers' union, has long been a wolf in sheep's clothing, a powerful labor union disguised as a group of "educational professionals." While professing to be "all about the kids,"the NEA has proven to be as ruthless as any industrial or trade union in forcing teachers to join against their will and using the dues of those reluctant members to bolster its power in Washington and in state capitals.   The NEA has become the single largest contributor to the Democratic Party.   Now, it appears, the fleece is coming off.   With the announcement last week that it has decided to let its local chapters join the AFL-CIO, the NEA is dropping any pretense of being an association of professionals, and appearing to be gearing up for some hardball tactics.   *********** A spot on the NFL's Competition Committee, the one that basically decides in rules changes, is much sought-after. Yet Mike Holmgren just resigned from his spot on the committee.   One of the other members said it had nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with his post-Super Bowl remarks to a Seattle crowd about not realizing before the game that the Seahawks were not only going to have to face the Steelers, but "the guys in stripes," too.   And you know what? I believe that. Don't you?   Of course, I still believe Janet Jackson's striptease act was a Wardrobe Malfunction.   *********** From Bill "The Sports Guy" Simmons, on espn.com...   We may never see another great sports movie again.   Maybe every idea has been done. Maybe Hollywood has given up. Maybe we're just plain tired of watching them. But I can't remember the last time a sports movie enthralled me. Just in the past few years, I definitely enjoyed "Love & Basketball", "Friday Night Lights" and "The Rookie", all of them warranted a DVD purchase. Still, none of them resonated. I remember seeing "Field of Dreams" in college ... when that baby ended, my friend Jen and I remained in our seats for a good five minutes afterward. Neither of us could move. We were blown away. Will a sports movie make me feel that way again? You got me.   These days, it's more important for a sports movie to be marketable than great. Just look at "Glory Road", which tackles one of the most important moments in sports history: Don Haskins' turning around Texas Western's hoops team by recruiting black players, then battling racism at every turn to eventually win the 1966 title with five black starters against an all-white Kentucky team. Call it Black Hoosiers. How can that miss? Impossible, right?   Not when Hollywood is involved. Apparently the phrase "based on a true story" means "We bought the rights to a true story so we could perform more surgery than the guys in 'Nip/Tuck'." I don't have a problem with this idea. After all, "Hoosiers" was inspired by Milan High's underdog run, "Rocky" by Chuck Wepner's. But that's the thing, they were inspired by those events. "Glory Road" pretends to tell Texas Western's story, even using real names and games, only it embellishes almost everything. Like Haskins' winning a title in his first season, when it actually took five. Or Haskins' making a dramatic statement by starting five blacks against Kentucky, when he'd actually been doing that all season. Why not go all the way and turn the backup center into, say, a secret member of the KKK?   I know they were relying on the "Remember the Titans" playbook here: a dash of racism, a little R&B music, some feel-good moments, sports scenes that feel like MTV videos, a tough-but-lovable coach, a poignant ending. But why would you want to fictionalize a watershed sporting event? Imagine a Jackie Robinson movie in which Jackie joins the Dodgers in 1955 and wins the World Series over the Yankees with an inside-the-park homer in the seventh game. Would that be remotely acceptable? So why did the makers of "Glory Road" think they could do what they did? Worse, after they made all that stuff up, how could they run the "Here's what happened to each guy" closing montage as if they'd just wrapped up a true story? Why not tell us "Don Haskins continued to coach Texas Western until 1995, when he was mauled to death by a cougar while trying to save a family trapped in a burning car"?     FRIDAY - ATLANTA CLINIC WRAP-UP ----   NEXT CLINIC - LA/SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - SAT MARCH 11 - HOLIDAY INN-MEDIA CENTER -150 E. Angeleno, Burbank - 818-841-4770 Osama shows that he will stop at nothing in his plot to weaken America... BECOME A BLACK LION TEAM GIVE THE BLACK LION AWARD TO ONE OF YOUR PLAYERS! Army's Will Sullivan wore his Black Lion patch (awarded to all winners) in the Army-Navy game (FOR MORE INFO) The Black Lion certificate is awarded to all winners

Ken Keuffel, a True Giant of the Game, Passes Away. (See"NEWS") Are QB Camps Really "Recruiting Central?" (See"NEWS") My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me     February 24, 2006 - "The cowards stayed home and the weak died along the way." Kit Carson.   *********** With the passing of Ken Keuffel, we have lost a major link to our football heritage. Coach Keuffel, for more than 20 years the head football coach at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and for another 6 years the head coach at Wabash College, died last Sunday in Princeton, N.J. at the age of 82.   As coach, clinician and author, Coach Keuffel was a leading bearer of the Single-Wing torch long after the offense had all but disappeared from the game, writing two books on the offense, "Simplified Single Wing Football," published in 1964, and "Winning Single Wing Football", published in 2004, that are must-reading for anyone interested in running the offense or just learning more about its inner workings.   Coach Keuffel played at Princeton University for Coach Charlie Caldwell, who like most college coaches at the time ran one form or another of the Single-Wing. (The Single-Wing was last used in the National Football League by Coach Jock Sutherland of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1947, and last used at the major college level - by Princeton - in 1967.)   Although the Single-Wing has disappeared from the colleges, it did hang on at widely -scattered high schools, and thanks largely to the Internet, it has made something of a comeback in high school and youth football. (Evidences of it can also be seen in today's "modern" shotgun offenses.   Coach Keuffel felt its near-extinction provided him with several advantages. "One of the big ones," he told the New York Times in 1973, "is that rival teams find it difficult to prepare for us. They aren't familiar with the single wing."   A native of Montclair, N.J., he started his college career in 1943 as a Princeton fullback, then left for service in the Army Air Corps. Returning to Princeton after the war, he was a single-wing quarterback (blocking back) and place-kicker.   In 1947, his 29-yard field goal with a minute to play gave Princeton a shocking 17-14 upset victory against Pennsylvania, then ranked third in the nation, and Philadelphia mounted police had to be called on to prevent a near riot that atrted whenwhen Princeton fans among the 72,000 spectators tried to tear down the goal posts, and angry Penn fans opposed them. (My high school coach, Ed Lawless, played quarterback on that Penn team.)   Following graduaton with a degree in English, he coached the Penn freshmen under another legendary Single-Wing coach, George Munger, while earning a doctorate in English literature from Pennsylvania.   In 1954 he became a teacher and an assistant coach at Lawrenceville, and became the head coach at Lawrenceville in 1956. Following the 1960 season, he left to become head coach at Wabash, , but in 1967 he returned to Lawrenceville, where he coached until his first retirement in 1982.   Coach Keuffel was coaxed back into coaching a few years later, and stayed on through 2000, when he finally retired at age 76. And always, although he made many alterations along the way, he coached the unbalanced single-wing of Princeton and Penn.   Coach Keuffel was generous with his help and advice. He was a highly refined, a gentleman of the old school who saw himself as a teacher first and a coach second.   His ability to write served him well when it came time to publish his books. I once kidded him about devoting an entire chapter in his first book to the subject of stopping the Single-Wing. "Why?" I asked him.   "I wanted to sell more books!" he told me, laughing.   He was very proud of the fact that in most years at Lawrenceville, a prestigious all-boys prep school, roughly half of its enrollment of 600 were playing either varsity, junior varsity or club football.   *********** Hi Hugh, I thought you might be interested to know that Ken Keuffel passed away on Sunday. I know he was an outstanding coach and early in my coaching career (shortly after out I got out of college) I had the pleasure of interacting with him. I had become a head coach at a small catholic high school here in Trenton after one year as an assistant when we had to play a game against a vastly superior Trenton Central. We got out clocks cleaned pretty bad. The "High" had some extraordinary talent and even resorted to using trick plays in the 4th quarter. The following Tuesday at the TD Club, Coach Keuffel approached me to let me know he thought I was doing a good job and that the game was part of a young coach's learning experience. I was flabbergasted that he would even take the time to speak to me much less offer encouragement about what was most certainly one of the most embarrassing moments of my coaching career. Heck, as I recall, he was even asking me for advice (he had to play the same team the following week) on what I thought of the opponents defense! Regards, Matt Bastardi, Montgomery, New Jersey - ps his single wing Lawrenceville Prep would beat the High the following week! ;-) That's very sad. Ken Keuffel was a giant, a man who gave even more to the game than he got from it. He was an English teacher at least as much as a football coach (he had his doctorate in English), which undoubtedly explains his ability to communicate and to write his books as clearly as he did. Most importantly, though, as you had the good fortune to experience, he was a really good man of genuine character, a throwback to the post-World-War-II days when men were men, who blessed us with his presence on the field in these days of permissiveness and selfishness and moral relativity. HW   *********** Coach, I just read your news today and the story about the kid that "gives the finger" to the anti-recruiter at his school made me laugh right out loud. It struck me so funny because just prior to reading it, I was thinking, "What would I have done in high school if someone like that were to come into my school?" and what that kid does is pretty much along the same lines as what I was thinking. Thats so great, I still have a smile on my face thinking about it. That kid deserves some kind of scholarship or something! I wonder if he plays football.   FYI, I spoke with Chris Diuguid (our DC here at BHS) and he is coming to the clinic but, in typical Chris fashion, forgot to send you his registration and money. See you on Friday!   Donnie Hayes, Belleview, Florida (From what I am told - see the next letter - that HS has a pretty good football team, so it's quite possible he's a football player. If he isn't, and I were the football coach, I'd letter him! HW)   *********** Coach Wyatt: I haven't written in a while but I do read the 'News' regularly. On the item you mentioned about the Prospect High School student who non-verbally expressed his opinion of the anti military recruiters, you'll be glad to know that PHS has won the class 7A state football championship in 3 of the last 4 years. They also have a good chance of repeating this year. The coach there has done a magnificent job of building a program that is the envy of every public school in the state. The remarkable thing is that he does it with kids that could be considered undersized and slow. They do it with remarkable teamwork, a solid defense, and a ground attack that sets up the play-action pass. But most importantly, these kids work hard. I find this remarkable given the relatively affluent suburb that produces these kids. I don't know this, but I wouldn't be surprized if that unnamed kid played football. Regards, Keith Babb, Northbrook, Illinois   *********** HI Coach Wyatt, My name is Charlie Martin and I coached in California for 7 years( your double wing) I have since moved to the Big Island of Hawaii. The head coach has been around for a long time. He has coached at the University of Michigan - offensive line - and Michigan State for many years. Last year I was assistant offensive coordinator and we ran the I and spread formations. As an assistant I did what the head coach wanted and ran his offense. I had talked to him about the double wing and he seemed a little interested last season. Today he told me I will be the offensive coordinator . Coach, I am so excited because he is allowing me to run the double wing and I am in charge of the offense. I will need your help this coming season and you have always answered my e-mails and I really appreciate that. I have Dynamics of the Double Wing, Troubleshooting, and Installing the System. In the past I have taught your system to 8,9 and 10 year olds and the refs are amazed at how fast we get in and out of the huddle and how well these kids know what to do. It's because of your play calling system. I have been sucessfull in the past having had great seasons and expect to continue to have success in Honokaa , Hawaii . thank you very much coach for your system and continued suppport. Charlie Martin , Honokaa, Hawaii   *********** After I referred to one private QB camp, where numerous Portland-area high school quarterbacks come together for instruction in the off-season, it was brought to my attention by a coach or two in Washington that these places could very well become the equivalent for quarterbacks of AAU basketball - that is, they can serve as Recruiting Central, meat markets if you will, in matching ambitious kids and even more ambitious dads with coaches of other high schools who, they may be led to believe, will help them develop better, showcase them better.   Out-and-out recruiting, of course, is prohibited in most states. Typically, when there are complaints about recruiting, they originate with the school that's lost a kid to another school, and the state association investigates in order to protect its members. And so it is in Oregon, where private high schools are members of the state association, and are forbidden to recruit athletes from public high schools. (I am told that what happens before the kids enter high school is another story.)   But there is such a thing as cross-border recruiting, which can be something of a problem in our part of Washington, where a short commute separates public school athletes in Washington from private schools in Washington.   The case which prompted coaches to contact me was that of a promising young quarterback at a small Washington high school, who had been receiving instruction from an outside coaching "academy." His high school coach, realizing the kid's abilities, had already revised his offense to make better use of the kid's talents, when - boom - a couple of weeks ago, right in the middle of the school year, the kid transferred to a private school in Portland. The family didn't even have to move - just get the kid a ride across the bridge to Portland every day.   And because this is a transfer between an Oregon school and a Washington school, neither state association considers itself involved.   Now, it is almost impossible to prove that anything untoward took place, and it is quite possible that everything took place on the up-and-up, but you can't blame a few high school coaches for suspecting that the kid's participation in the private quarterback school facilitated the events that led to his transfer.   *********** Coach, Just a comment on your news. When I was a young coach, I went to a clinic where I had the privilege of hearing Duffy Daugherty give a speech. I will never forget one of the jokes he told. This is apropros to those coches who are getting pressure to run a more passing oriented offense:   Duffy told this joke concerning the idea of listening to everyone in town and not following your own ideas:   Once there was a little old man, a little boy, and their donkey on a walk to a far away town. On the walk they came to a town and the man and the little boy were walking alongside the donkey. All of the townspeople came out and were deriding the stupidity of the old man, by saying, "Look at that stupid old man and little boy walking alongside that perfectly good donkey. The old man should ride that donkey and then he wouldn't be so tired." So when the old man and little boy came to the edge of town, the old man got on the back of the donkey and rode to the next town. In the next town all the townspeople came out and said, "Look at that selfish old man. He is riding that donkey and making that poor little boy walk alongside." So when the man and the donkey came to the edge of that town, he got down and put the little boy up on the donkey. When they came to the next town, all the townspeople came out and ridiculed the old man again by saying, "Look at that stupid old man, he is walking alongside that perfectly good donkey with the little boy riding. That donkey could carry the both of them and then that old man wouldn't be so tired." So when the old man and the donkey came to the edge of the town, he swung up on the donkey's back and now the old man and the little boy were both riding the donkey. They came to a rikkety bridge, and as they crossed it the bridge gave way, and the man, the little boy, and the donkey plunged into the river below. The man was able to pull the little boy to the shore and safety, but the donkey drowned.   Coaching Moral: If you listen to everybody in town, YOU WILL LOSE YOUR ASS!!!!   Brad Elliott, The Old Line Coach, Soquel, California (We are all indebted to Coach Elliott for reminding us of the great wit of old Duffy. HW)   *********** Dear Coach Wyatt, This is John Grimsley in South Carolina. I wanted to just give you a update on things in the Low Country. I enjoy the Practice Without Pads tape, it is another great tool I'm sure I'm going to use. Good luck in Georgia at the Atlanta Clinic this weekend. I would love to be there but I'll be in Greenville South Carolina at the State Wrestling Championships. I'm the assistant wrestling coach, we have three boys, our 135, 140, and 189 who have earned the right to wrestle at State. The head wrestling coach is our defensive coach and will be speaking at a Football clinic in Columbia, thus I going to drive the boys up in a rent-a-car and get a room Friday to Saturday. It should be fun, the boys are all juniors (two play football) and hard working kids. Yes, your's and others comments are spot on about the Aussies and Kiwi's. Having lived in Australia and known many New Zealanders I can only agree. I own countless Aussie movies because I love their sense of humor, shoot I own the Best of the Footy Show DVD's. Your Boy Ed may have told you about these shows or you many have seen them when you were over in Oz. I have both the AFL and NRL Best of, it is riot. Wish the NFL or some other major sports league in the states had a show like that. I showed one of them to my seniors in class two days before graduation, the South Carolina kids were rolling out of their seats. Keep up the good work of telling American coaches about our cousins south of the pacific. Last thing to bring up. Being that I've read alot about your days in Finland I've been going to the following website, http://www.filmifriikki.fi/~asDTx0000001/?Y999=MAI Here I have order a bunch of films about the Winter War and 2nd Winter War (WWII). Framsta Linjen Etulinjan Edessa (Beyound Enemy Lines) from 2004 is about Swedish Finn's in the war, is both in Finnish and Swedish, it begins with a student interviewing an old man (the hero of the movie) and then is told in flash back about the young Swedish Finn serving in the WWII. Talvisota-This is the Epic of Finnish War Films, I think you have written about it on your website. Tuntematon Sotilas-wow, what a wonderful film from the 1950's. I know this has turned into the longest email of your President's Day. Just had lots to update you on. Thanks for all the kind words and support over the years. I remember ordering you first tape and playbook back in the spring of 1998 before I went to Australia. I've seen to many Double Wing teams do good over the years ever to lose faith in the system even if I've never had the chance to coach in a DW system. Have a wonderful holiday, and travel safe this week. Yours, John Grimsley, Timberland High School, St. Stephen, South Carolina (The Finnish movies are well-known, if arcane. "Tuntematon Sotilas" ("The Unknown Soldier") is a Finnish classic. The book by the same name on which it is based, by Vaino Linna, was recommended to me by nearly every Finn I ever met as something I just had to read if I were to truly understand the Finnish people and the Finnish character. A couple of well-quoted phrases from the book: "I'm a Finn, I eat metal and I sh-- chain" and "One Finn is equal to twenty Russians. But what do you do when the twenty-first comes along ?" Incidentally, the URL of the Web site - filmifriikki - is "Finnglish" - a typical Finnish solution to the problem of having to adapt English words to Finnish. Since Finnish nouns must always end in a vowel, "-i" is added to the English word "film" to make it "Finnish", as in "filmi." (The letter "f" is very uncommon in Finnish, and mostly appears in a "Finnglish" word such as "filmi.") In many cases, it won't do to spell the Finnglish word exactly as we do, because in Finnish the certain combinations of letters don't make the same sound as it does in English. So "friikki" in Finnish is really the phonetic spelling of the English "freak" - with an "i" added at the end, of course. Hence - "Film Freak" 2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 1-12-06 (2006 CLINICS) PLEASE NOTE THAT THE RALEIGH-DURHAM/PHILADELPHIA/PROVIDENCE CLINIC DATES HAVE CHANGED CLINIC LOCATION FEB 25 ATLANTA HOLIDAY INN AIRPORT NORTH - 1380 Virginia Ave - 404-762-8411 MARCH 11 LOS ANGELES HOLIDAY INN-MEDIA CENTER -150 E. Angeleno, Burbank - 818-841-4770 MARCH 18 CHICAGO ST. XAVIER UNIVERSITY - 3700 West 103rd St., Chicago APRIL 1 RALEIGH-DURHAM MILLENNIUM HOTEL - 2800 Campus Walk Ave - Durham - 919-383-8575 APRIL 15 PHILADELPHIA HOLIDAY INN, 432 Washington Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000 APRIL 29 PROVIDENCE COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470 TBA DENVER TBA MAY 13 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA LATHROP, CA.   *********** How's this for screwed up priorities? West Coast Eagles (Australian Football League) captain Ben Cousins was pulled up at a "booze bus" (remember we went through the one in Geelong where the police breath test you?) and instead of going through it, parked his car and ran! Needless to say he's been cited and the sh*t has hit the fan. And rugby player Wendell Sailor (big Wallaby winger, bald headed Black dude) got drunk and got into a scuffle in a Cape Town bar for the second year in a row. He's been suspended for 2 games and might be done as a Wallaby. Unreal. Ed Wyatt, Melbourne, Australia   *********** Without going into the plusses or minuses of the port deal, although I don't think it would result in a whole lot of changes, it simply doesn't look good. I just can't believe that the President, who has refused to deal with other pressing issues such as our open borders, where he would have had overwhelming support in his fight against his opponents, would push this thing, which is now being used to slam him politically by friend as well as foe.   But I also l would like to see some consistency on the part of those who say on the one hand that we shouldn't profile at the airports (I think we should) but now call for us to exclude an entire nation based on profiling (I also think we should, but I am consistent).   Perhaps Mr. Bush is shrewdly maneuvering his opponents - the ones who say that we aren't really engaged in a war on terrorism - into admitting that we do, indeed, need to unite against the common enemy. Even if that means profiling at airport security. Perhaps. Perhaps he is that clever. But I doubt it.   *********** Not that it matters to him, but there are times when Bobby Knight makes it very hard to like him. He can be unbelievably churlish when he has no reason to be, even downright cruel at times, but given all that , there are still plenty of things that I admire about the guy.   And then there is ESPN. Originally, it was a wonderful thing to have a TV channel devoted entirely to sports, but as the years went on, the emphasis became more "E" and less "S". I absolutely deplore what they are doing to our understanding of sports with their phony "based on a true story" stories.   But when ESPN brings us "Knight School" - its version of a reality show in which Coach Knight holds a "tryout" whose aim is to winnow some 30 Texas Tech students down to one guy who will make his team - I am glued to my set.   "Hats off!" he tells the guys right off the bat. Hats come off. "Earrings off!" he tells them, and the jewelry vanishes. I love it.   In case there's someone in the bunch who thinks he's going to make the cut on flash and flair, Coach Knight quicjly sets out to disabuse him of any fancy ideas, telling the group, "We're looking for the guy who best fits into the way we play."   It reminded me of Stacey King, former Chicago Bull who coached a youth (Double-Wing) team in the Chicago suburbs, and in the winter tried his hand at coaching minor league basketball, in the CBA. He told me that every guy on his team wanted to be the one to light it up, while he spent most of his breath trying to tell them that if their goal was to make it to the NBA, they would have to get those ideas out of their heads - that the NBA already had guys who could light it up, and when they looked to pull up a guy from the CBA, it was a guy who could fit into what they were already doing.   Another couple of quotes from Coach Knight:   "Guys who play hard make their teammates better."   "If your mother comes in here, who you gong to listen to - your mother, or me? (Hint: Say, "You, coach!")   "There's a big difference between hearing and listening."   *********** A couple of the members of the medal -winning teams in womens' ice hockey had their little kids with them on the award stands.   Cute.   But if this is the start of a trend, where does it stop?   Boyfriends? Husbands? Same-sex partners? Mario, the guy she spent last night with?   Actually, at the rate some of these people have are becoming career Olympians, chugging from the open faucet of government subsidies and sponsors' support, we are beginning to see 40-year-old competitors, like a woman on the Canadian ice hockey team.   Look for Grandmas and grandkids on the stands at Vancouver in 2010.   *********** The people at Anheuser-Busch are among the best in the marketing business, so they must know what they're doing when they run a rap-theme Bud commercial in the middle of Olympic figure skating.   *********** You can't say our Olympic "athletes" haven't accurately reflected the true condition of American "sport," in which athletes are treated like Lady Astor's pet horse, and act accordingly: Bode Miller takes self-promotion to an art form but fails to back it up with performance; Michelle Kwan is allowed to bypass the usual qualifying procedure (no doubt because NBC ws depending on her to boost their ratings) and then has to beg off; a snowboarder blows an enormous lead by starting her touchdown dance short of the goal line, and wipes out; the much-hyped Apolo Anton Ohno flames out, while two other speed skaters engage in a pissing contest; and the best of all, after our hockey team plays flat (in the words of at least one of its members) and is eliminated, one of them, Mike Modano - like all the rest of them a millionaire NHL player in his other life - blames USA Hockey, because it didn't make travel arrangements for the players' wives, instead forcing those poor players (all of them have agents, of course) to have to make their own travel arrangements for their own families.   It doesn't take a genius to look at our youth sports and our young athletes' parents to see where this all starts.   *********** Coach Wyatt, Knowing how much you are of a fan the game, I thought I would share this with you. Plus, sharing it, helps me deal a little bit. I was fortunate enough to play for Coach Putman from 1985 &endash; 1988. I don't think I could say much more about the outstanding man Coach Putman was. But, there are a couple of things not mentioned in his obituary. He essentially is referred to the master of the Wing &endash; T here in Arizona. He is certainly where I learned to love that style of play that has led me to the DW. Also, a little research on the internet would reveal his position coach for the Giants was Vince Lombardi and among others, his teammates included; Night Train Lane, Ted Marchibroda and Pat Summerall.   Incidentally, I was fortunate enough to pick up one of his trading cards a couple of years ago. It's framed on my "football wall". Thought you might want to put this in your football history section at the beginning of the news to use. Thanks for having a venue for me to share how much I miss my coach. I'm sure the funeral this weekend will be quite an event. Mike Waters, Head Coach, La Joya High School, Avondale, Arizona The following appeared in The Arizona Republic on 2/23/2006. Coach Earl R. Putman, of Phoenix Arizona, passed away February 19, 2006. Born Earl Robert Putman in Cincinnati, Ohio, he coached for 30 years and was head football coach at Moon Valley High School for 25 years. Coach Putman was a championship winning athlete, a championship winning coach, and gentle giant of a man in stature, character, and accomplishments. Coach Putman's believed 'people are basically good' and his goal as a coach was 'to make young men better.' Winning was a bonus but character building, helping young men find themselves through football, was his reason for coaching. Selected as one of the Top 25 Football Coaches of the 21st Century by the Arizona Republic in December 1999, he was called 'a revered coach.' He had 167 wins at Moon Valley and his 1982 Rockets 14-0 season culminated in the AAA Arizona State Championship. He was named High School Coach of the Year in 1982 and 1986 and Skyline Division Coach of the Year in 1974, 1975, and 1988. He was head coach for the All-Star Game in 1981 and was honored by having the1985-86 All Star game dedicated to him. Moon Valley won the Skyline League Championships in 1981, 1982, and 1986, was AAA Arizona State Runner-up in 1986, and won the Fiesta Region Championship in 1989. He was inducted into the Arizona High School Coaches Hall of Fame in 1985 and the National High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1997. He received the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame Outstanding Coaches Award in 1987 and the Arizona Coaches Association Distinguished Service Award in 1993. Other awards included the Arizona Republic All-Arizona Special Merit/Retiree Award 1989-90 and the Arizona Republic's Outstanding Coach, Men's Sports, for 1983. Coach Putman was President of the Arizona Coaches Association in 1970-73 and remained active in that organization, the National Football Foundation, and the Arizona Coaches Hall of Fame for the remainder of his life. A 1950 graduate of Hughes High School, Cincinnati Ohio, he was a star tackle on the football team, co-captain of the track team, and state champion in the shot put and discus, setting new state records in both events. Coach Putman was recruited by both Woody Hayes and the legendary Bear Bryant but elected to come to Arizona State on a track scholarship. He set the 1951 Border Conference Record in shot put and discus. He played football at Arizona State in the fall of 1951 and a Los Angeles Examiner article described him as 'light footed as a gazelle on the grid.' Coach Putman graduated from Arizona State in 1957 with a BS degree and in 1964 from Northern Arizona University with a Masters degree. He was drafted in 1952 and served in the Army during the Korean War. In 1953, he was the All-Service champion in shot put and discus. And with Coach Putman and other future NFL players, the Fort Ord Warriors football team won the All-Service championship the same year. Honorably discharged from the Army in 1954 he was a 5th round draft choice for the New York Giants. Teammates there included Frank Gifford, Kyle Rote, Tom Landry (player coach), and Vince Lombardi (position coach). Following a year in the Canadian League with the Hamilton Tiger Cats, he joined the Chicago Cardinals in 1957. The Earl Putman football trading card lists him as a center for the Chicago Cardinals and 'the biggest man in pro ball.' His 6 foot, 6 inch frame at 308 pounds, size 16 EEEE shoes, size 52 jersey, 44 pants, and size 8 headgear (created by splitting 2 normal helmets and splicing them together) made him the biggest man in the NFL in 1957. Coach Ray Richards, Chicago Cardinals, said of his new center, 'amazing mobility...actually quick.' After retirement Coach Putman continued his service to young people as a mainstay in the free physicals for teen athletes program that screens young men and women who participate in school sports (Team Osteopathic Physicals for Students). Many young lives have been saved by this program which is provided free by the Steingaard Group and others and with the assistance of more than 300 volunteers. He is survived by his beloved wife of 53 years, Vivian D. Putman, four children, Denise Major and husband Art of Denver, Colorado, William Putman and wife Kathy of Phoenix, Arizona, Dale Putman and wife Denise of Peoria, Arizona, Kathleen Weitz and husband Michael of Old Greenwich, Connecticut, ten grandchildren, Jason, James, Lisa, Eric, Scott, Devon, Dana, Daryl, Drew, Jacqueline, and two great-grandchildren, Ashley, Tyler, and an extended loving family. Earl was lovingly known as 'Pop' to his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and will be greatly missed by all who knew him whether as Coach or Pop. Also surviving are a sister, Peggy Dooley of Fort Gratiot, Michigan, and two brothers, Frank Nelson of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Harry Putman of Phoenix, Arizona. His parents Frank and Blanche Putman preceded him in death. Visitation will be held in Phoenix Friday, February 24th, at Menke Funeral Home, 12420 N. 103rd Ave, Sun City, 85351, 4:00-7:00 PM. Funeral service will be Saturday, February 25th at 10:00 AM, Lakeview United Methodist Church, 10298 W. Thunderbird Blvd., Sun City. The family would like to thank Hospice of the Valley for their care and encourage donations to Hospice of the Valley, 1515 East Osborn, Suite 230, Phoenix, AZ 85014 or flowers may be sent to Menke Funeral Home.   Most impressive to me is that Coach Putman played on that Fort Ord team. Back during the the time of the Korean War, with future Hall of Famer Ollie Mattson running the ball, Ford Ord was one of the toughest teams in the country, beating college teams, service teams, and minor-league professional teams with equal ease. Osama shows that he will stop at nothing in his plot to weaken America... BECOME A BLACK LION TEAM GIVE THE BLACK LION AWARD TO ONE OF YOUR PLAYERS! Army's Will Sullivan wore his Black Lion patch (awarded to all winners) in the Army-Navy game (FOR MORE INFO) The Black Lion certificate is awarded to all winners

Oy Vay - Another Person to Please - Now it's the Guy Who Rates QBs! (See"NEWS") Coach Gaither vs. Coach Robinson! (See"NEWS") My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me     February 21, 2006 - "The more extensive one's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be the power of what to do." Benjamin Disraeli       2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 1-12-06 (2006 CLINICS) PLEASE NOTE THAT THE RALEIGH-DURHAM/PHILADELPHIA/PROVIDENCE CLINIC DATES HAVE CHANGED CLINIC LOCATION FEB 25 ATLANTA HOLIDAY INN AIRPORT NORTH - 1380 Virginia Ave - 404-762-8411 MARCH 11 LOS ANGELES HOLIDAY INN-MEDIA CENTER -150 E. Angeleno, Burbank - 818-841-4770 MARCH 18 CHICAGO ST. XAVIER UNIVERSITY - 3700 West 103rd St., Chicago APRIL 1 RALEIGH-DURHAM MILLENNIUM HOTEL - 2800 Campus Walk Ave - Durham - 919-383-8575 APRIL 15 PHILADELPHIA HOLIDAY INN, 432 Washington Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000 APRIL 29 PROVIDENCE COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470 TBA DENVER TBA MAY 13 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA LATHROP, CA.   *********** Coach Wyatt - Great Stuff on Coach Gaither, I am curious, considering Him and Coach Eddie Robinson, are Two Giants and Legends in College Football Coaching,they are with out a Doubt the Two most Revered Coaching Figures in Black College Football, Did they ever match up against each other ? I have not found anything on this matter. There were contemporaries of each other, and coached the bulk of there careers in the same time frame you would think they squared off. also I think the Orange Blossom Classic was once the Prominent and Major Bowl Game for the Historical Black Colleges that had National title implications they must have met in that ?  If you Know of any back ground info I would Love to hear it !!   (Expletive deleted) !! For a Philly Guy, You Got the Boston  Linguistics NAILED !!!!   WOW !!!     see ya next week coach - John Muckian    Lynn ,MA   Coaches Gaither and Robinson are probably the best known of all the men who coached at historically-black colleges. They were great coaches, of course, and richly deserving of any recognition they receive, but there were plenty more.   Of course, since there is so little respect for history in general, and so little knowledge of the history of football, it is understandable that the black men who coached in a parallel universe and received little national notice would not be very well known to most football fans.   But there are others who as coaches rank right up with or just a step below Coaches Gaither and Robinson, among them Earl Banks at Morgan State, John Merritt at Jackson State and Tennessee State, Billy Nicks at Morris Brown and Prairie View (yes, Prairie View!), Herman Riddick at North Carolina Central, Archie Cooley at Mississippi Valley State, Skip McCain at Maryland State/Maryland Eastern Shore, Willie Jeffries at South Carolina State, Alexander Durley of Texas Southern, Cleve Abbott of Tuskegee, Dwight Reed of Lincoln, Zip Gayles at Langston, Louis Crews of Alabama A & M, Ace Mumford of Southern, and Marino Casem at Alcorn State and Southern.   A book on the subject that I highly recommend is "Black College Football," by Michael Hurd, published in 1993 with a grant from State Farm Insurance.   Coaches Robinson and Gaither met in 1955 in the Orange Blossom Classic, a game that Coach Gaither started and billed as the black college football championship. In many ways, Coach Robinson saw it as the game that established Grambling as a black college power. FAMU was clearly the big dog at the time, and on his arrival in Miami to play the game, Coach Robinson learned that FAMU's Sports Information Director had been fired for asking, "What's wrong with Coach Gaither?" for having invited what the SID saw as an unworthy bunch of unknowns from the sticks of Louisiana. The game drew 45,000 people, and Grambling won, 28-21   I could find only one other reference to a meeting between Coach Robinson and Coach Gaither - in the Whitney Young Classic in Yankee Stadium in 1981 - and I have yet to find out the result.   The first Whitney Young Classic was played in New York in 1968, with the proceeds benefiting the Urban League.   As Coach Robinson told it, in his autobiography, "Never Before, Never Again," with Richard Lapchick, he, Coach Gaither and Coach Banks of Morgan State were at Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr's funeral in Atlanta when the idea of such a game first came up. Recalled Coach Rob, "Earl knew it would be a big success and grabbed it when Jake didn't bite. So we agreed and played Morgan State in the first classic in New York."   The game was an enormous success, drawing more than 60,000 people to Yankee Stadium. Morgan surprised everyone and beat Grambling, 9-7.   Sometime in the off-season, Coach Robinson got wind of a secret arrangement between Morgan State and FAMU to meet in the 1969 game, and he went into action.   When mentioned over the phone what he'd heard to his friend, Howard Cosell, then perhaps the most influential person in America's sports media, Cosell asked, "What the hell do they mean that Grambling not going to play in this?"   After learning that the president of the Urban League was close by, Cosell asked Coach Robinson to put him on the phone.   Howard Cosell could strike fear in the hearts of the strongest of men.   "When he got back from the telephone," Coach Robinson recalled, "Grambling was back in the game, and we've been in the game ever since."   An interesting side note: In 1976, when the Urban League pulled out, Coach Robinson once again called on Howard Cosell and Cosell said, "George might help. I'll call George now."   He meant George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees. Steinbrenner insisted that Coach Robinson meet with him immediately, and agreed to guarantee the financial success of the Whitney Young Classic.   Wrote Coach Robinson, "George Steinbrenner is a great American who cares about this country. He has a huge heart and a great deal of compassion for his fellow man. Doris (Mrs. Robinson) and I are lucky that he is our friend."   PS- I have a good ear for accents, and I've been around a lot of New Englanders. During summers in HS I worked at a camp in Centah Hahbah New Hampshah, (Center Harbor, New Hampshire) and I learned to drink bee-ah (beer) at The Wee-ahs (The Wiers, a popular summer resort on Lake Winnipesaukee).   Plus, I went to college in Connecticut, had a roommate from Keene, NH, a backfield coach from Everett, Mass (Art Raimo) and I spent a lot of time in Northampton, Mass when I was courting my wife. My wife and I both love New England and miss it terribly.   *********** You are right about your observations of the Winter Olympics. Oh - and you can add the Tommy Hilfiger outfits, the bopping of the heads like they are listening to rap music, and the walk - because I'm sure all those guys live in Compton (L.A.) or Liberty City (Miami).   It is really disheartening what is happening with our young people. It seems like hating America has become the norm. Well, I said it before and I'll say it again - Cuba is still taking in any American who wants to immigrate there. I'll translate for them.   Regards, Armando Castro, Roanoke, Virginia.   *********** Sent to me by alert reader John Torres, of Castaic California, who claims that he just stumbled across it on eBay (I believe him)...   Jack's Shirts used in the filming of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN   Item Value: Priceless!   The two shirts that Jack's mother gave to Ennis for him to remember Jack by. This is more than just a costume; this prop is an integral part of the story.   These are the men's shirts, originally selected by BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN costume designer Marit Allen and director Ang Lee, that have become iconic pieces of film history in the most Academy Award-nominated film of the year. The 2 (two) shirts are worn early in the film by Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), in the portion of the story set in 1963, and then are seen again as the epic love story nears closure many years later. Everyone who has watched this movie -- the biggest hit among this year's Best Picture Oscar nominees -- knows the emotional significance and impact of these shirts in this unforgettable film. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is nominated for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director   I think they would look great on me at a clinic.   *********** The Portland public schools are about as pathetic as a school system can get. They shortchange their kids by cramming them into huge classes, and they rigged their budget by cutting the school year to the point where it is some two weeks shorter than the requirement in most states. They grudgingly provide competitive sports, but only because they have to in order to keep every parent who can afford to from moving to the suburbs (even so, this year's enrollment was down 10 per cent from last year's). They are oh, so politically correct, and totally into diversity - at one of our games in 2004, the girl who sang the National Anthem was wearing a tee-shirt that said, "Gay? Okay By Me!" - and they get violently ill at the mere mention of military recruiters, not so much because they practice war, which is bad enough, but because they discriminate against gays, which in Portland is a mortal sin. (Atheists please excuse the religious reference.) Although like most big-city public school systems they remain firmly attached to the federal teat, it was only under severe pressure that they finally acknowledged their obligation to the American taxpayer and relented from their opposition to allowing recruiters in their schools.   The real irony to me is that those districts most adamantly opposed to the presence of recruiters in their schools are those in big cities, where the factory jobs are all but gone, and there is little in the way of gainful employment for recent high school graduates who don't go on to college.   So the recruiters are in, but not very evident. No more so than the "counter-recruiters," who invade schools try to dissuade students from listening to the recruiters' pitches.   (It is not widely known, but anti-war activists have the right to do so as a result of a 1984 federal court ruling that gives opponents of the military equal access to students. I am guessing that the "federal court" in question is the infamous Ninth Circuit Court, which dispenses its quirky wisdom in the western states.)   The Chicago Tribune recently published a report by Aamer Madhani and Colleen Mastony on the counter-recruiting efforts of an anti-war activist named Elizabeth Frank.   According to the article, once a month Frank sets up a table in a school's hallway offering anti-military pamphlets. The table is decorated with a bright pink (wonder why she chose that color) sign reading: 'Do You Know Enough to Enlist?'"   Counter-recruiters say that they have visited some 25 Chicago-area schools in their effort to convince students "that life in the armed forces isn't what recruiters make it out to be."   Without pausing to ask these "counter-recruiters" how they might know what life in the armed forces is like, I must press on.   "We haven't had many problems," said Ms. Frank, "but we've gotten a few snide comments from staff."   And then there is this one kid...   "Each time I come to Prospect (High)," she told the Tribune reporters, "there is one kid who walks by and flips me off. He never says anything, just walks by and gives me the finger."   *********** Sorry, Canadians. I was puling for the Finnish ice hockey team. Big time. You can't spend seven football seasons (the summer, when it's warm enough to play football) in Finland, as I did, without loving the country and the people.   Those names are tough, and I laugh at the way American hockey announcers choose to anglicize their pronunciation of Finnish names. I often think about the uproar this would cause if they were from almost any other country, but the Finns are not a quarrelsome people, and they don't make a big deal of it.   For the record, just to name two stars of Saturday's games who are also NHL regulars...   Teemu Selänne is not TEA-moo suh-LAHN-nee, but TAY-moo SAY-lan-neh (the ä is like the ä in "cat", and the emphasis is ALWAYS on the first syllable of any word)   Antero Niittymäki is not an-TARE-o NIT-ee-mah-kee, but AHN-ter-o NEAT-ew-mackey (good luck pronouncing the Finnish "y", which is only something like "ew"; and be sure to pronounce both "i's" and both "t's" - it is a very subtle thing, but Finns can do it.)   Anyhow, way to go, Finland. Or, if you will, "Hyvää Suomi!" (approximately, "HOO-va SUE-oh-me!" - the HOO is the closest I can come in English, and the ää is like the "a" in "cat.")   *********** The operations of many of our major ports are about to be acquired by the United Arab Emirates; our borders continue to be sieves; nearly 2,000 people are killed by a mudslide in the Philippines; and Muslims continue to riot.   Yet with all that's going on in the world, the Dick Cheney story monopolized the attention of the nation's news media for the better part of a week.   Wonder what kind of thinking passes for editorial judgment this days?   Consider...   The Winter Olympics, like them or not, are taking place... the NBA All-Star game was played over the weekend... The Daytona 500 was run on Sunday.   So what was the headline story in Monday's USA Today? Why, Barry Bonds' breathtaking announcement that this will be his last year.   *********** Hugh, I read your news regarding the UW "student senate's" decision regarding the Pappy Boyington memorial, and in particular the infuriating and pathetic statements of those two obviously brainwashed, ungrateful, selfish little hacks that disguise themselves as "students." I'm so sick and tired of these kinds of little brats who run their mouths about things they have NO CLUE about, and that have NO idea of the meaning of words like sacrifice, commitment, and dedication. One word they should know the meaning of is HYPOCRITE. More than likely Rich White Men gave them the opportunity to get an education at UW. Pappy Boyington may have been a character, but he had more character in his pinky finger than those two girls have combined!   I've about had it with the bleeding heart liberals in this society that will stop at nothing to discredit, slander, and disrespect this country, its history, and ANY American of historical significance and get away with it under the guise of being "educated" in the ways of political correctness. It is what it is no matter how you say it, and the PC people have taken it one step further...they 've become HYPOCRITES, and they are quickly deteriorating the foundations of our American heritage and our culture. This country was built on blood, sweat, and tears. But I'm afraid we're ending up with crap, piss, and fears.   Talk to you soon, Joe Gutilla, Columbus, Ohio (Those girls are products of our bankrupt public educational system, one that uses taxpayer dollars to fund the kind of anti-American teaching they are now regurgitating in their comments, and of an economic system so rich - thanks to its being endowed by a lot of rich white males - that they are years removed from the economic hardship of the Depression and wartime sacrifices of World War II that gave us men - yes, men! - like Pappy Boyington. From a football coach's point of view, the scariest thing of all is that people like that are becoming principals. HW)   *********** Dear Coach Wyatt; I hope things are going well for you and Connie. I just got back from the Dallas Double Wing Symposium. We had a great time. Just some warning; you might find yourself tranquilized and stuffed in my overnight bag next year, because we REALLY want you to be there. How can we have a DWing clinic without one of the most important innovators of the offense in attendance?   I'm actually writing about your article on Pappy Boyington. I heard about this the other day from Matt Finlon, one of my best friends and a former Marine major who works for Boeing and lives in Seattle. He happens to be an alumni of UW, so he was nearly incandescent when he posted a message about this into the forum.   Because I am the type of person I am, I decided to go directly to the source. I called the UW alumni association and registered my displeasure. I also pointed out that I grew up in Washington, always dreamed of attending the UW, and will be leaving the military with $36,000 in GI Bill monies that will be applied to my Master's degree. I HAD intended to realize my dream and get that Master's from UW.   The alumni association put me in contact with a student senate representative named Jason. This was after desperately trying to convince me that Jill and Ashley had been "misquoted." Being of honest mien, I stated that was a likely possibility, knowing the modern media, and asked if I could please obtain a copy of the ratified minutes.   Jason seemed a nice kid. He, too, did some desperate damage control. However, I was most impressed that he stayed on the phone with me and talked me directly to the web page that contained the ratified minutes of the meeting where the girls shot off their fool mouths.   As I'm sure you're aware, at a meeting of any organization that uses Robert's Rules of Order, the meeting minutes from the prior meeting are voted on to make sure that what is recorded is what was ACTUALLY SAID. Well, I can tell you point blank that there was no misquoting. Both of the little media-whores said precisely what the blogs quoted. Word for word. To the flippin' comma.   I expressed my displeasure to Jason and he asked me to please send him an email that he would read aloud at the next meeting. (I have to be honest, Jason really seemed like a fine young man. I don't think he shared the same rabid idiocy of Jill and Ashley.) I haven't finished the email yet, but I did manage to do a couple of additional things…   First I called my great uncle, a doctor in Spokane, WA, who attended the UW. After a three-minute conversation with me and the perusal of the damning minutes he decided to pull his $25,000 annual donation to the alumni association. Then I called his ex-wife, a former judge in Spokane. Aunt Janice was even madder, because she's still close to my grandmother, who as you might recall was married to Richard Alan "Bud" Kundert, a jumpmaster-qualified CW05 who served three combat tours in Viet Nam and Korea and was wounded on each tour. Tuesday was the anniversary of his death. Aunt Janice exploded and used language I haven't heard from her in 31 years. She actually started to dial the phone to call the alumni association and pull HER donations before I was even able to hang up. Two of their three kids went to UW as well, and both contribute to the alumni association. Stay tuned for further developments along that front!   So, from two phone calls and roughly eight minutes of conversation, Jilly-pooh and Ashley-bear's loud mouths have cost the University of Washington approximately $53,000 in annual contributions. In other words, since the tuition for the UW is about $22,000/year, I managed to make up for the tuition those two spoiled little brats paid this year with just two phone calls. I suppose we could also add in the $36,000 I'll be spending at another college to get that Master's, too, bringing the grand total of lost monies to the University to about $89,000.   Not bad for one day's work.   Very Respectfully to you and Connie.   Derek Wade, Petaluma, California (This gross disrespect of the men who gave some of the best years of their lives - if not their lives - for their country could have happened at almost any college in the country, with the likely exception of BYU and some smaller religious-affiliated colleges, such as Hillsdale. It will continue and only get worse until we can somehow end the current system of tenure and purge the faculties of the America-haters who populate them and influence their impressionable students. HW)   *********** I heard a local DJ ask a local guy who rides bulls on the PBR circuit if bull riders wear cups. His response? "No. But we wear neoprene shorts that snug us up real tight."   *********** I notice that while Americans call it "Snowboardcross," several competitors from other nations call it "Boarder Cross."   I have an idea why we don't.   I am going to refrain from being a wise-ass and joking that Mexico had a team all ready to enter until it found out there was an "a" in "Boarder." Osama shows that he will stop at nothing in his plot to weaken America... BECOME A BLACK LION TEAM GIVE THE BLACK LION AWARD TO ONE OF YOUR PLAYERS! Army's Will Sullivan wore his Black Lion patch (awarded to all winners) in the Army-Navy game (FOR MORE INFO) The Black Lion certificate is awarded to all winners

More on Aussies! (See"NEWS") Not a Good Week in Washington! (See"NEWS") My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me     February 17, 2006 - "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up." G. K. Chesterton   *********** Best question ever in a White House news conference:   A reporter identified only as "Connie", asked about the recent hunting accident - you did hear that Vice-President CHeney shot some guy, didn't you? - "Would this have been more serious if the man had died?"   *********** By now, it's pretty obvious that NBC stepped on its male member when it invested as heavily as it did in the Winter Opympics. I think that the low ratings of these winter Olympics (they were killed on Wednesday night by American Idol) can be attributed to at least things: (1) there is only so much figure skating that American women can take; (2) Most men do not care to watch other men wearing sequins; (3) curling is fun enough to do, I suppose, like bowling, but just like bowling but there's not a lot of interest in watching it; (4) there are way too many events whose object- or whose way of keeping score - is unknown to most people, who aren't going to take the time to figure them out; (5) the X-Games may have fooled NBC into thinking that its core of passionate fans is larger than it really is, because the mass audience that a major TV network needs is a lot older and seems to look on skateboarders on snow the same way it does on the library steps.   *********** Notice where that snowstorm hit last weekend? Notice how many of the states it hit were blue states? Every single one of them! I'm telling you, Bush knew! And now, after those poor devils not only had to shovel their way out from under two feet or more of snow, Bush and his oil-baron buddies are going to pile on, by jacking up the price of their heating oil.   *********** Coach, I enjoyed the discussion about the Aussies in today's news section. The way the Aussie attitude was described is spot on.   The New Zealanders were not quite as outgoing as the Aussies, but they're very similar to the Aussies. I was quite familiar with the term "poofter" and also the infamous, "wooley woofta" term. I think a lot of it has to do with their approach to life in general....they take the things that should be taken seriously, but don't let themselves get too worked up over things that you shouldn't get worked up about. Work is a good example. The Kiwis work very hard when there's work to be done, and have a very team-oriented approach....everyone rolls their sleeves up so to speak. But when Friday afternoon rolls around, the managers at the company I worked at opened up the beer and wine fridges for "5 o'clock swill", which usually started earlier than 5PM....that was usually followed by fish and chips at the beach with their families. Like the Aussies, the Kiwis don't take themselves too seriously, and they always make sure to "take the piss out" of anybody who is getting too full of themselves. They refuse to be rushed as well. I'm not sure if the Polynesian population adds more of a religious component to the equation, but my observations were that the Kiwis were going hugely overboard to make ammends for injustices of early explorers on the Maori. They were giving back huge amounts of land and also money when I left the country...so the politically correct in NZ made sure that the population feels an appropriate amount of remorse for the mistakes of their early ancestors. The Kiwis were too polite to raise too much of a stink about it, even in friendly conversation, but you got the impression that they weren't overly crazy about it either. Our neighbor made a comment that stuck with me, "Australia got the prisoners from the jails in England, the US got the religious fanatics, and NZ was settled primarily by servents, butlers and such, from England." An over simplificaiton for sure, but there may be shreds of truth in it. Lastly, I love the Outback Steakhouse commercial where the guy says that he's "semi-veg", that seems to capture a bit of the Aussie and Kiwi spirit for me anyways....they don't take themselves too seriously. Thanks, Rick Davis, Duxbury, Massachusetts     2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 2-17-06 (2006 CLINICS) PLEASE NOTE THAT THE RALEIGH-DURHAM/PHILADELPHIA/PROVIDENCE CLINIC DATES HAVE CHANGED CLINIC LOCATION FEB 25 ATLANTA HOLIDAY INN AIRPORT NORTH - 1380 Virginia Ave - 404-762-8411 MARCH 11 LOS ANGELES HOLIDAY INN-MEDIA CENTER -150 E. Angeleno, Burbank - 818-841-4770 MARCH 18 CHICAGO ST. XAVIER UNIVERSITY - 3700 West 103rd St., Chicago APRIL 8 RALEIGH-DURHAM MILLENNIUM HOTEL - 2800 Campus Walk Ave - Durham, NC - 919-383-8575 APRIL 15 PHILADELPHIA HOLIDAY INN, 432 Washington Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000 APRIL 29 PROVIDENCE COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470 TBA DENVER TBA MAY 13 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA HOLIDAY INN EXPESS, LATHROP, CA. A GREAT POEM FOR COACHES AND DADS... "My Boy" by an anonymous poet A careful man I want to be; A little fellow follows me. I do not dare to go astray, For fear he'll go the selfsame way. I cannot once escape his eyes; Whate'er he sees me do, he tries. He thinks that I am good and fine, Believes in every word of mine. The bad in me he must not see, This little chap who follows me. I must remember as I go, Thru summer's sun and winter's snow, I'm building for the years to be, That little chap who follows me.    *********** The following story and the highly descriptive photo were sent to me by an Army friend...   The Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant in the picture is Michael Burghard, part of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Team that is supporting 2nd Brigade 28th Infantry Division (Pennsylvania Army National Guard). I heard the below story first hand last Saturday during a video teleconference between his Brigade Commander and the 28th Infantry Division Commander. ?I thought that others should hear it as well, as I think it demonstrates the true spirit of most of our troops on the ground (from my experience).?   Leading the fight is Gunnery Sgt Michael Burghardt, known as "Iron Mike" or just "Gunny". He is on his third tour in Iraq. He had become a legend in the bomb disposal world after winning the Bronze Star for disabling 64 IEDs and destroying 1,548 pieces of ordnance during his second tour. Then, on September 19, he got blown up. He had arrived at a chaotic scene after a bomb had killed four US soldiers. He chose not to wear the bulky bomb protection suit. "You can't react to any sniper fire and you get tunnel-vision," he explains. So, protected by just a helmet and standard-issue flak jacket, he began what bomb disposal officers term "the longest walk", stepping gingerly into a 5ft deep and 8ft wide crater. The earth shifted slightly and he saw a Senao base station with a wire leading from it. He cut the wire and used his 7in knife to probe the ground. "I found a piece of red detonating cord between my legs," he says. "That's when I knew I was screwed."   Realizing he had been sucked into a trap, Sgt Burghardt, 35, yelled at everyone to stay back. At that moment, an insurgent, probably watching through binoculars, pressed a button on his mobile phone to detonate the secondary device below the sergeant's feet. "A chill went up the back of my neck and then the bomb exploded," he recalls. "As I was in the air I remember thinking, 'I don't believe they got me.' I was just ticked off they were able to do it. Then I was lying on the road, not able to feel anything from the waist down."   His colleagues cut off his trousers to see how badly he was hurt. None could believe his legs were still there. "My dad's aVietnam vet who's paralyzed from the waist down," says Sgt Burghardt. "I was lying there thinking I didn't want to be in a wheelchair next to my dad and for him to see me like that. They started to cut away my pants and I felt a real sharp pain and blood trickling down. Then I wiggled my toes and I thought, 'Good, I'm in business.' "As a stretcher was brought over, adrenaline and anger kicked in. "I decided to walk to the helicopter. I wasn't going to let my team-mates see me being carried away on a stretcher." He stood and gave the insurgents who had blown him up a one-fingered salute. "I flipped them one. It was like, 'OK, I lost that round but I'll be back next week'."   Copies of a photograph depicting his defiance, taken by Jeff Bundy for the Omaha World-Herald, adorn the walls of homes across America and that of Col John Gronski, the brigade commander in Ramadi, who has hailed the image as an exemplar of the warrior spirit. Sgt Burghardt's injuries - burns and wounds to his legs and buttocks - kept him off duty for nearly a month and could have earned him a ticket home. But, like his father - who was awarded a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action in Vietnam - he stayed in Ramadi to engage in the battle against insurgents who are forever coming up with more ingenious ways of killing Americans.   *********** Greetings Hugh, Just a quick note to let you know that of all things the DW does for players, coaches and the game of football in general, it may also be a life saving strategy! Today is the 3 month anniversary of my heart attack and I'm doing well and the DW has had a great deal to do with my recovery. I'm working out almost daily, but I was struggling, spending an hour on the treadmill, looking at the blank walls of my cardiac rehab. center. I decided to bring in the old playbook and even though I've damn near worn it out, it continues to provoke thoughts about how to be a better coach and where I'll go next with the DW when I return to coaching. How much do I owe you for the therapy?   I look forward to seeing you in N. Ca. in May.   Best of health to you.... Mike Norlock, Atascadero, California    *********** Whew! Not a good week to be a Washingtonian. First came the news that Muslim prisoners in the state pen were suing the state over the lack of meat in their diets. Actually, they are offered the same meat that the other inmates are offered, but evidently their meat must come from animals that have been "humanely slaughtered." I am not kidding. The article I read said that the properly killing an animal means petting it (and probably whispering sweet nothings in its ear), then slitting its throat. Humanely, of course.   The state and its nutritionists maintain that a "lacto-ovo-vegetarian" diet is quite satisfactory, nutritionally, but the suit persists.   I suppose roadkill is out of the question.   *********** Then there were accusations of cheating by a Seattle high school girls' basketball team ranked in USA Today's Top 25 poll, and Number One inWashington. Chief Sealth High School is now 23-0. The defending state class 3A champion, Chief Sealth has trounced everyone it has played, winning games by an average margin of 38 points. It has won by scores of 83-7, 77-16 and 74-14.   Great coaching? Maybe. Good players? Certainly.   The problem is, a front-page story in the Seattle Times revealed, the players don't live anywhere near Chief Sealth, an inner-city Seattle school. Some of them live and commute from - despite chicanery that has allowed them to pose as actually living in the district - places as far away as Renton, Bellevue and Everett, the latter about 20 miles away.   It is hard to read the story without disgust at the story the girls' parents - usually single mothers - tell. Disgust at a coach who repeatedly - the mothers all described virtually the same scenario to reporters - told girls and their parents that they would start, and he would get them into college. Disgust at the way this guy lined up bogus addresses in the Chief Sealth district from which the girls could register.   And disgust at parents who are willing to pimp their daughters in hopes of getting them that universally-sought-after college scholarship.   But then I thought, how fair is it to blame these parents? They are obviously no people of means. They don't have the money to do what the suburban parents do, sending their kids to private schools, sending them to camps, hiring personal trainers and paying $1000 or more every summer so they can play on travel teams.   Is it any worse for them to send their kids to some school far from home than it is for rich parents to send their little darlings away to live at Karolyi's gymnastic academy or Bolletieri's tennis school?   It's a corrupt system, fueled by college scholarships, and exploited by the likes of this coach.   Like the good-looking young slickster who prays on lonely older women, he saw his chances and he took 'em.   But he'll get his. Why, his league is going to investigate.   Wait - isn't that what the Seattle Times just got finished doing?   *********** And finally there was the University of Washington student senate voting to reject a memorial for UW alumnus Gregory "Pappy" Boyington of "Black Sheep Squadron" fame, expressing concerns that a military hero who shot down enemy planes was not the right kind of person to represent the school.   According to minutes of the student government's meeting last week, "senator" Jill Edwards, said she "didn't believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce."   Chimed in another senator, Ashley Miller, "many monuments at UW already commemorate rich white men."   Since I wasn't close enough to give those two spoiled little princesses the spanking that their parents never gave them, I can only offer a little rebuttal to each.   First, to the lovely Ms. Edwards - i rather doubt that the University of Washington "produced" Pappy Boyington, who shot down 22 enemy planes, spent 20 months in a Japanese prisoner of war camp and was awarded the Navy Cross and the Medal of Honor - posthumously, it was thought, until he was released at the end of the war. It just happens to be the University's - and the nation's - good fortune that men like him (and undoubtedly thousands of others) attended the UW and then served their country with distinction in a war that could have gone either way. Not that Ms. Edwards would ever have been taught that, by leftist teachers who instead of teaching our nation's history and heritage instead offered up a thin gruel of "social studies" and multiculturalism.   As for little Ashley, it goes without saying that Washington itself is named for a rich white guy. Fair or not, rich white guys accomplished a lof of things in this country and through their generosity made a lot of things possible for the rest of us. (Fairness requires me to disclose that I am not a rich white guy. I would gladly be one, even if it meant being hated by the likes of Ashey Miller, but alas, I am not now nor am I likely ever to be. True, I am guilty of the sin of being a white man, but I have never been rich, nor, to the best of my knowledge, has any other member of my family.)   But as I understand it, Pappy Boyington (so-named because he was 10 years older than most of the men he flew with) was not wealthy, and he was only part white. He was, however, all man.   "His mother lived in Tacoma and worked as a switchboard operator to put him through college," his son Gregory Boyington Jr. said. "My dad parked cars in some garage, " and in summers while attending the UW he worked in an Idaho gold mine to pay his way through school.   And he was reputed to be part Sioux, which is believable from a look at his photograph.   He was a noted rounder, who openly admitted toward the end that he'd allowed drinking to ruin his life.   In 1958, Boyington wrote a book a best-selling book,, "Baa Baa, Black Sheep." In 1976, he sold rights to Universal, which for two seasons aired a TV series of the same name.   Boyington died January 11, 1988, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.   In reaction to the despicable action by the University of Washington student senate, one blogger wondered, "have our Washington youth revised history so much as this? To compare Boyington &endash; or for that matter any of our WW2 vets &endash; to murderers? What are these kids being taught today? They don't deserve those 20 months Pappy spent being tortured and beaten in a Japanese prison camp ... they don't deserve any of what our grandfathers and grandmothers sacrificed to free Europe and the Pacific." Amen   *********** Coach Wyatt, A question for you regarding the rules.  When lining up on the line of scrimmage, do my tight ends have to line up straight ahead (face up) or can I angle them on the LOS, with the Left End pointed at 2 o'clock and my right end pointed at 10 o'clock?   Hi Coach- Nice try.   Rule 2 Section 30 Article 9 -   A lineman is any A (Offensive) player who is facing his opponent's goal line with the line of his shoulders approximately parallel thereto and with his head or foot breaking an imaginary plane drawn parallel to the waist of the snapper when the ball is snapped.     Osama shows that he will stop at nothing in his plot to weaken America... BECOME A BLACK LION TEAM GIVE THE BLACK LION AWARD TO ONE OF YOUR PLAYERS! Army's Will Sullivan wore his Black Lion patch (awarded to all winners) in the Army-Navy game (FOR MORE INFO) The Black Lion certificate is awarded to all winners

Watch Out, Parents, If Our Women's Hockey Team Wins Gold! (See"NEWS") "Vermont Frost Heaves" - Did They Have to Bring That Up? (See"NEWS") My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me     February 14, 2006 - "I want to find the man who has no price tag on him." Jake Gaither   I was doing a little research on the Split-T recently, and I got digging into a book which Bert Ford, of Los Angeles, had been nice enough to give me - a book written by Jake Gaither. It occurred to me that it wouldn't hurt to update and then rerun the article I'd written on him back in June, 2003, when I was in the practice of writing a little about some great man from football history and daring readers to identify him. Alonzo "Jake" Gaither survived a near-fatal bout with brain cancer in 1942, at the age of 39. Three years later, he became the head coach at Florida A & M, and he stayed there until be retired 25 years later. In those 25 years at FAMU he won seven national black college titles. A noted drillmaster, Coach Gaither had such depth that he rotated three interchangeable teams, which he called "Blood, Sweat and Tears." He said he wanted his players to be "A-gile, MO-bile and HOS-tile." At the time of his retirement at the end of the 1969 season, his record of 203-26-4 gave him the highest winning percentage (.844) among all college coaches with 200 or more wins or 13 or more years' coaching. (At the time of his 200th win, it put him in the select company of Amos Alonzo Stagg, Glenn "Pop" Warner and Jess Neely as the only men to do so.) He was born in Memphis, the son of a minister. As a boy he worked as a ditch-digger, a bellhop, a shoe shine boy and a coal miner. He graduated from Knoxville College, where he met his wife. His entire coaching career was spent at FAMU, a historically black school, at a time when segregation in the large state schools meant the black schools had the pick of the great black talent the South had to offer. It ended just as northern schools began recruiting those kids, and just before southern schools would begin to do the same. Including his first team, which went 9-1, 14 of Coach Gaither's teams lost one game or less. Only three of his teams lost more than two games. No less an authority than Woody Hayes called him an offensive genius. Georgia Tech's Bobby Dodd called his "Split-Line-T" (employing even wider splits than the conventional split-T) "one of the finest offensive ideas to come along in years." With his offense - and players such as Bob Hayes, Hewritt Dixon, Willie Gallimore and Ken Riley - he ran up a record of 62-5, and averaged 41.7 points per game over a seven-year period. He coached 36 All-Americas, and 42 of his players went on to play in the NFL. The great Bear Bryant didn't think it would work in the big-time, and he told Coach Gaither so. There has been a quote used in referring to Coach Bryant to the effect that "he could take yours and beat his, and take his and beat yours," but it appears that it was actually used by Coach Gaither in wrapping up his "discussion" with Coach Bryant. A trifle agitated, he told the Bear, "I'll tell you what - I'll take my players and beat yours with it, and I'll take your players and beat mine with it." He never did get a chance to play "Coach Bryant's", but in 1969, just before he retired, he did have the satisfaction of defeating the University of Tampa, 34-28, in the South's first interracial college football game. In 1975, Jake Gaither received the "Triple Crown" of coaching awards - the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award (given annually by the American Football Coaches' Association "to an individual whose service has been outstanding in the best interests of the advancement of football"), The Walter Camp Award (awarded by the Walter Camp Foundation) and induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. An award given annually in his name is considered to be the Heisman trophy for players from historically black colleges. Interestingly, two recipients of this award - Jerry Rice and Richard Dent - have gone on to be named Super Bowl MVP's. Only two Heisman winners - Roger Staubach and Jim Plunkett - have been similarly honored. During the civil rights tensions of the 1960's, he was castigated by some because he chose to remain aloof from the fray and do what he did best - coach young men. Years later, he received a commendation from the Governor of Florida as someone who "broke through racial barriers before it was fashionable." Coach Gaither died in 1996 at the age of 90, but before his death, he told his biographer, George Curry, "I run into so many people who have no deep sense of morals - people who got a price tag on them, who'd sell their soul. I want to find the man who has no price tag on him. I'm not for sale." In 2000, Jake Gaither was listed among the 50 Most Important Floridians of the 20th Century. Biography (with apologies to Eddie Robinson): "Jake Gaither: America's Most-Famous Black Coach" by George E. Curry (Dodd Mead, 1977) Correctly identifying Jake Gaither back in June, 2003 - Joe Daniels- Sacramento... Scott Russell- Potomac Falls, Virginia... Steve Staker- Fredericksburg, Iowa... Kevin McCullough- Culver, Indiana... Adam Wesoloski- Pulaski, Wisconsin... Ronald Singer- Toronto... Mike Framke- Green Bay, Wisconsin... Joe Gutilla- Minneapolis... Dave Potter- Durham, North Carolina... John Muckian- Lynn, Massachusetts... John Reardon- Peru, Illinois... Bert Ford- Los Angeles (" I went out of my way to find his book and won't tell you how much I paid for it. I'm just sorry I never had the chance to meet Coach Gaither, or even better to have played for him if even for a short period.")... David Crump- Owensboro, Kentucky... John Zeller- Sears, Michigan... *********** At the 1970 Coach of the Year Clinic in San Francisco, Jake Gaither, recently retired as head coach at Florida A & M, gave his last major coaching clinic talk, and he concluded with these words that Americans could stand to hear again. And again. I want to say something now. I have said it once or twice, but I'll say it again. I am sick and tired of hearing the term, "Black and white." I wish we could forget the term. As I look out in this room, unless I see an Indian, there is not a true-blooded American from the standpoint of descent. Where are you from? Ireland? England? Sweden? I came from Africa, they tell me. I'm not homesick! Wouldn't I be crazy to go over to Africa and ask those folks where I can find the Gaithers, my great-great grand uncle? They would think I was crazy. I can go to Statesville, North Carolina and find some Gaithers. I am an American. I want you to think in terms of Americans. Black, white, blue or yellow, we are all immigrants. You came from England, you came from France, you came from Sweden. I came from Africa, they say, but we are in America now. Everything I have, everything I hope to be, my loyalty, my love, my devotion, is to this country. I don't owe Africa anything. And I want to do this- salvage the good in your people. Salvage the good in my people. Take the bad in your people and try to make them good. Let me take the bad in my people and try to make them good. Let us put our shoulders to the wheel as Americans. That's the way God intended we should live. My friends, I'll be on the sidelines watching the coaches. I'll be athletic director, but I won't be actively coaching. I am going to turn it over to you, You do the job. You have this raw material, this new breed, to deal with, I hope before I die, I can see black, white, blue and yellow - American citizens - with our shoulders to the wheel, trying to make this democracy a better place to live. (It was reported that Coach Gaither received a standing ovation from the coaches in attendance, and more than 200 of them lined up to shake his hand.) *********** From the things I've read about Coach Jake Gaither, he was a man of great wisdom, and I'd love to learn more about him. I would certainly like to find out more about his overcoming brain cancer - I came across just only brief mention of that - and also about what I have been told was the influence he had on Bobby Bowden, when Coach Bowden first arrived in Tallahassee.   *********** Impressions from the Pro Bowl... Comes the Revolution, if I happen to be able to bribe my way into power, (1) there will be term limits - one term only per politician; (2) we will have a flat tax; (3) I will order the rounding up anybody who has ever selected a female entertainer or high school student to sing our national anthem to be lined up against the wall to face the firing squad. Whoever engaged that "JoJo" to sing it at the Pro Bowl will be the first to go.   Also - they couldn't blame all those turnovers (10 between the two teams) on slippery footballs, and they certainly couldn't blame all those false starts on crowd noise.   *********** Consider using this in your faculty room sometime...   The opinion of Woody (Hayes) amongst the OSU faculty was mixed.  Some were behind him, believing he was a great leader and was as intelligent as any scholar, but some thought his team that gave OSU an image of a football school diminished the academic image of the institution and that Woody himself was a disgrace because of his volatile behavior.  One time while Woody was in the faculty club lounge, a professor decided to rip into Woody and let him know exactly how he felt.  The professor hurled insult after insult at Woody, but Woody just sat listening calmly.  Woody waited until he was done, and then he pointed his finger at the professor and said, "Okay, now you listen to me.  What you say about me and about football may or may not be true.  But I can tell you one thing that is very certainly true.  (pause)  Just remember one thing.  I can do your job, but you can't do mine!" (http://www.bucknuts.com/osuhistory/coachhayes.htm)   *********** When I heard that Apollo Anton Ohno, a fellow Washingtonian, had wiped out and blown his chances for an Olympic gold, I sobbed uncontrollably, and only snapped out of it when my wife brought me some milk and cookies and told me we'd taken a gold in the luge.   *********** Remember all the excitement when our women's soccer team won the Olympics or the World Cup, or some damn thing, when the real truth was that we were pretty much the only nation on earth taking women's soccer seriously? (How else can you explain that our toughest competition has often been Iceland?)   Get ready again for the media to go ga-ga over a new set of darlings, this time our women's ice hockey team. Nothing against women's ice hockey, you understand, but with Canada winning its first two games, by scores of 16-0 (over Italy) and 12-0 (over Russia), and the USA winning its first two games by a combined 11-0 (5-0 over Germany and 6-0 over Switzerland), it looks as if we've got another sport in which the rest of the world is, oh, about 20 years behind North America. Of the eight teams in the games, three of them - Germany, Italy and Switzerland - have yet to score, and Russia has scored only one goal, while being outscored, 1-15.   If the US women should beat Canada, the excitement it is going to generate here will prove costly to parents of all the little girls who will be pressuring Mom and Dad for equipment and skating lessons, which soon enough can spiral upward to personal trainers and sports psychologists and hockey camps and memberships on elite travel teams.   *********** Hi Coach, That was a fantastic piece of writing on the sad state of NFL linemen, and comparing them to the consumer food market was right on. I would like to know if I may copy/paste your reply into a local sports forum I frequent?   In the same vein of "what has happened to football?", I made the following reply to a Forum post referencing that if Pittsburgh loses their OC to Oakland there might not be any more gadget plays like the reverse pass in the Super Bowl:   "It's funny you mention the Steeler's fondness of gadget plays. I was rereading Practical Football (by Fritz Crisler & Tad Wieman, published in 1934) last night and came across this (pg. 134):    TYPES OF RUNNING PLAYS:  For purpose of classification, running plays may be divided as follows:    1. Direct plays    a. Straight bucks    b. Slants    c. Cut-backs    d. In & out plays    e. Sweeps    2. Delayed plays    a. Split bucks    b. Spinners    c. Reverses    d. False Reverses    e. Double Reverses    f. Lateral passes    g. Shovel passes    h. Special trick plays    Amazing how Spinners, Reverses, False & Double Reverses, Lateral & Shovel passes were NOT considered trick plays. This is what 21st century football, from the execution of a well crafted play standpoint, has de-evolved into.    Also, if the name Fritz Crisler doesn't ring a bell, it should. He is given credit for inventing the platoon system in football. But, he is also the coach that introduced the Wing helmet to Michigan. When he came to Michigan from Princeton in 1938, he found a program lacking in identity & spirit, so he "borrowed" the Wing helmet his Princeton teams wore (and still do). Some say he did it to help distinguish his receivers from defensive backs, but the 1st story sounds better. So, when you see that famous design, its really the Princeton, not the Michigan, Winged helmet." Todd Bross, Sharon, Pennsylvania   You certainly may use that material. Please be so good as to attribute it to me and include my Web address.   Absolutely right that no less a football man than Fritz Crisler did not consider a reverse to be a trick play.   I happen to have the Crisler-Weiman book, too. I think the photos of the Princeton guys in their tiger-striped shirts and the "wings" (which were really just the leather strips that joined the main panels) on the helmets are hilarious.   The very first helmet I ever had looked like that.   On Michigan, it looks good. On Princeton, now that they've returned to that model, I think it looks dorky. As Michigan phased in plastic helmets, back in the early 1950s, in the interest of uniformity it painted them to duplicate the "wings and stripes" pattern of the leather helmets. The Wolverines haven't changed that design for 60 years or so. Princeton's helmets, possibly because they allowed their coaches to redesign them as they see fit have run the gamut, only recently arriving at the retro look of wings. (Disclaimer - although I have the greatest of admiration for its single-wing tradition of long ago, as an Old Eli I harbor no particular affection for Princeton.) HW   2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 1-12-06 (2006 CLINICS) PLEASE NOTE CHANGES IN THE RALEIGH-DURHAM, PHILADELPHIA AND PROVIDENCE DATES! CLINIC LOCATION FEB 25 ATLANTA HOLIDAY INN AIRPORT NORTH - 1380 Virginia Ave - 404-762-8411 MARCH 11 LOS ANGELES HOLIDAY INN-MEDIA CENTER -150 E. Angeleno, Burbank - 818-841-4770 MARCH 18 CHICAGO ST. XAVIER UNIVERSITY - 3700 West 103rd St., Chicago APRIL 8 RALEIGH-DURHAM MILLENNIUM HOTEL - 2800 Campus Walk Ave - Durham - 919-383-8575 APRIL 15 PHILADELPHIA TBA APRIL 22 PROVIDENCE COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470 MAY 6 DENVER TBA MAY 13 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA LATHROP, CA. In the works: Buffalo/Western New York... Denver... Detroit... Twin Cities... Pacific Northwest     *********** Yes, youth football has its Snoop Doggs, but it also has its Jason Clarkes. Coach Clarke is one of us - in fact, he spoke at last year's Philadelphia clinic - and he recently received a great honor from the Annapolis (Maryland) Touchdown Club. Coach Clarke is an excellent coach, in that he has a burning desire to win and his teams are very well-drilled, but he also stresses sportsmanship and winning the right way. He treats his players as if they were his own sons, and their parents (many of them single moms) know their boys are in good hands when they are with him.   Clarke honored by Touchdown Club - Chesapeake grad coached youth team to three county championships   By Brian Burden For the Maryland Gazette   In just a few short years, former West Pasadena Charger product and Chesapeake High School graduate Jason Clarke has established himself as the epitome of what a youth league coach should be.   On Feb. 16, Clarke, a coach with the Millersville Wolverines Youth Athletic Association, will be recognized for his efforts both on and off the gridiron by the Touchdown Club of Annapolis. He is this year's recipient of the Vince DePasquale Award, given annually to a coach for dedication and exemplary service to the Anne Arundel Youth Football Association.   Clarke's teams have certainly gotten the job done. With a squad he's taken from 75 through 130 pounds, Clarke has won three straight county championships, five consecutive conference championships and four divisional championships. His teams have gone a combined 63-15 over this seven-year span, including 55-4 over the past five seasons.   "He has led those boys since they were 6 and, throughout this time, he has been a great mentor who has provided the type of leadership you want the kids to have," said Raymond Connor, Commissioner of the MWYAA.   Clarke played wingback and quarterback in Chesapeake's Wing-T offense before graduating in 1988. After a couple of years in college, he joined the Coast Guard, serving for 10 years. He is currently employed by the Department of Treasury, with the IRS, yet he still makes the time to coach Millersville's 130 pounders, serve as the organization's president and participate on AAYFA's council.   "I first came on board when Ed and Mike Clay founded the Millersville organization, and it has been a privilege to see it go from an experiment to where it is now," Clarke said.   People around the county and state have lauded the discipline and organization Clarke instills. Sixteen of 22 players from Clarke's 2004 team made their school's honor roll, while 13 of 25 did so this past year.   "With Jason, you are talking about someone who does all the right things for his organization," said AAYFA Commissioner Rick Peacock. "Jason monitors kids academically and makes sure that they are shadowing potential high schools. He is cut from the same cloth as past award winners."   This is not the first time Clarke has been recognized for his efforts. In 2003, he was the recipient of the Baltimore Touchdown Club's Youth Coach-of-the-Year Award. While he felt honored then as well, he does understand that this upcoming award recognizes more than just his accomplishments on the field.   "I have put in a lot of time into the teams, the organization and the county. I have gone to and spoken at clinics around the region and worked as hard as I can to bring football to the forefront of the county," Clarke said.   As with any coach who devotes so much time to a sport, Clarke's greatest sacrifices involve his family, where he says his wife is basically a "widow" during the season.   "My wife and family support me through everything," Clarke said. "I have three sons and I am all their's until next season comes around."   The ultimate reward for Clarke comes not in the form of awards and wins, but rather in the development of his players.   "I want my boys to be able to look back and say that 'Coach J. taught me this,' " Clarke said. "You are teaching kids with no idea of the ins and outs of football. Now, they are coming to me and talking about what plays should be open and what should work there."   Despite several overtures from high schools, Clarke will continue to focus his coaching efforts at the youth level. This coming season, he will help out with the 75 pounders.   "Initially, I thought there was no way I could be a mentor," Clarke said. "Then I realized, these kids live to be with you and their parents put their trust in you to have their kids spend hours upon hours under your tutelage. It's very humbling."   *********** Coach, I work for Caterpillar and a few times a year I travel to Caterpillar business meetings in Chicago. Every time I do, the gents from Australia tell us ( after a few adult bevs ) we are not really free here. They say the citizens of Australia have more rights than we do here.   As an example, they say in Australia, people are more cordial because not to be still runs the risk of a "bloke knocking your head off" without the worry of being sued.   They laugh at our political correctness. What is your son's take?    Dennis Cook, Roanoke, Virginia   Coach,   I know that he will tell you that Australians are far more willing to speak out on almost any issue.   They have great senses of humor. That seems to be imbedded in their culture. Hillary Clinton wouldn't have a chance there - not because she's a woman, but because they don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.    They don't like people who take themselves too seriously, and they love taking someone down off his high horse - "taking the piss out of him."  In Australia, telling people that you don't think what say about you is very funny is just inviting more.    I could give you many examples of Australians' very matter-of-factly saying (or printing) things that would greatly offend easily-offended Americans on the grounds that they were racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.  They don't think that smoking is a sin and don't want to hear your thoughts on the evils of second-hand smoke.  They don't mind being seen taking a drink. They joke openly about sexual matters, including homosexuality, which they tolerate to a far greater degree than we do (although they may openly call a gay a "poofter.")   I don't it's so much the presence or absence of lawyers as it is first of all a relative absence of identity politics. Australia is becoming a bit "diverse," but it still remains a country with a rather homogeneous, Anglo-Saxon culture. Even its newer immigrants are mostly European, which means Australia is still very much white.   And second of all an absence of fiery religious types. Australians are very much like Europeans in their lack of  any religious fervor. They look at their TVs and shake their heads in wonder at American athletes' giving credit to God for something as trivial (in God's overall scheme of things) as scoring a touchdown. They call those guys "God-botherers."   From my son - You've hit the nail pretty much on the head.  The lawyers thing is definitely part of it &endash; there just isn't that instant "I'll sue you" mentality we see in the US, although that's changing.   The other thing is the "no worries" and "she'll be right" mentality.  The faith in things working out for the best - and if they don't - well, "bugger it."  Things that Americans might get all worked up about often don't mean a thing here.  Take the current NHL/Gretzky betting scandal.  The US media &endash; rightly so &endash; is treating it very seriously and intimating that it could severely damage the league (which it could).  As you know, Aussies bet on anything and everything &endash; and this story won't mean much over here.  I'm pretty sure that most Aussie footy and rugby players have bet on their own sport.     You're also right about the drinking - you've seen the post-match celebrations where everyone's drinking VB.  It happens at awards ceremonies too - in fact, the occasional recipient will often take the stage a little tipsy.  The Brownlow Medal (AFL MVP) winner two years ago, Chris Judd, was well on his way to getting hammered, when he realized he might win it. So he started chugging water.  He was definitely a little toasted when he took the stage.   I also mentioned the Sunday afternoon/night thing to you - it's a big social time in Australia.  Have a lazy evening at the pub or see a band or have a dinner/drink.  My experiences in the US were that Sunday night was time for "winding down/preparing for Monday's work."   And the homogenous culture point is also spot on - would love to spend more time in Auckland (New Zealand) to compare.  My guess is the Polynesians bring more religion to the party...   *********** Hey coach, just wanted to let you know that the Double Wing lives (and thrives) at Discovery Middle School in Vancouver! We incorporated the offense this year and other teams had no clue what to do! They started holding, blitzing everybody, all kinds of stuff but we had an answer for it all. We ran the superpower, power, and criss crosses until the cows came home and than threw it over the top to wide open guys. I had 2 fullbacks that alternated (because of the equal participation rule) and a decent line that dominated on the wedge. Without that rule it would have been triple ugly for our opponents! We only really needed about 4 plays to do the trick but it was fun to throw in the option as well. Ken Smith, Vancouver, Washington *********** I almost laughed when I heard the name of a Vermont team in the newly-reconstituted American Basketball Association - the Vermont Frost Heaves.   Almost.   It took me back to 1956, when I was a senior in high school and I went on an official recruiting visit to Dartmouth College.   Dartmouth is in Hanover, New Hampshire, which is way the hell up in the sticks northwest of Boston. Back then, in the days before the Interstate Highway System, it was really remote.   But Dartmouth was attractive to a lot of us Philly guys, probably because it was the only Ivy school putting on the press. Dartmouth's coach, Bob Blackman, was going into his second year on the job, and he brought a new, West-Coast approach to recruiting - and football in general - in the otherwise-staid Ivy League.   A number of us, one of whom was a guy named Jake Crouthamel, who would go to Dartmouth and excel as a player, then return as a coach and eventually wind up as AD at Syracuse, were hosted at a couple of events by well-to-do Dartmouth alums in the Philly area. And when it came time for the visit, we were driven up by our team doctor, Dr. Wolfe, who was also the dad of John Wolfe, who'd graduated a couple of years ahead of us and now attended Dartmouth.   There were four or five of us, I think, including my teammate Jackie Turner and me, in Dr. Wolfe's station wagon.   We drove through New York and then through Connecticut on the Merritt and Wilbur Cross Parkways, which at the time were considered to be Super Highways, but with curves so tight they now could barely be negotiated in a Ford Expedition, then through Worcester (WUSS-tah, to the natives) and Leominster (LEM-in-stah), Massachusetts, and on to points north, along narrow, winding roads that began to sprout signs that read, "FROST HEAVES."   We checked into our rooms - my roommate was a kid from New London, Connecticut named George Woodworth, who would go on to be a pretty good player at Dartmouth - and then met with the coaches. They were very cordial to all of us, but they seemed especially interested in a big kid from Greenfield, Massachusetts named Tom Budrewicz (Bud-RAY-vich) who was there with his dad. They were all over Mr. Budrewicz. (The kid wound up going to Brown, where he had a very good career, and wound up being drafted by the Chicago Bears and playing a couple of game with the AFL New York Titans.)   Saturday night, we attended the basketball game. Penn was in town, and even though Dartmouth was hosting us, Jackie and I rooted for the Quakers. I'm sure Penn won - they were pretty good even then, and Dartmouth sucked in basketball. But then the game ended, and from that point, we were on our own, and we hooked up with John Wolfe, Dr. Wolfe's son. John was in a fraternity and seemed to know his way around.   We went to John's fraternity, and headed for the basement. Whaddaya know - they had a keg of beer started. (Dartmouth, it should be noted, had a long, well-deserved reputation for prodigious drinking. Now, its students probably hole up in the library on Saturday nights and work on their term papers.) Someone handed us cups, and we were on our way. Wow! This was the big time. No sneaking around with phony ID, trying ti find a place that yould sell us a six-pack, then sitting in a car someplace and drinking, like back home.   I vaguely remember drinking some beer and talking with some Dartmouth football players and drinking some more beer and singing some songs and drinking some more beer and...   And the next thing I knew I was on my way back to my room, staggering down the middle of a street as the snow swirled around me and whoever was guiding me and supporting me.   And then, somehow, I got up the next morning - Sunday morning - for the long drive back to Philly. According to Jackie, I had been the hit of the frat party the night before, as partiers took turns pouring beer on me while I lay passed out on a table.   We didn't get too far on our drive before we encountered frost heaves. Think of a road turned into a roller coaster by the ground under it freezing and thawing, freezing and thawing - heaving, if you will - until the road surface was like a series of "rollers" on the ocean.   They hadn't bothered us on the way up, but now - how can I describe the effect of sitting, deeply hung over, in the back seat of an old station wagon as it rocked and rolled, up and down, over a seemingly unending series of frost heaves? Only once in my life since - when I went deep-sea fishing off Ocean City, Maryland after a night of carousing - have I experienced anything like it.   I know that we had to stop at least four times before we even hit the New Hampshire-Massachusetts line so that I could get out and, uh, "get sick." I guess I embarrassed myself, but I was feeling way too bad to worry about that.   And now, years later, they have to go and remind me of my dissolute past by actually naming a team the Frost Heaves (motto: ("We're gonna be the bump in their road.").   I think that if I were ever to go watch them play (not likely, since they play most of their games in tiny Barre, Vermont), I would make sure I had nothing stronger to drink at dinner than a Diet Dr. Pepper.   Osama shows that he will stop at nothing in his plot to weaken America... BECOME A BLACK LION TEAM GIVE THE BLACK LION AWARD TO ONE OF YOUR PLAYERS! Army's Will Sullivan wore his Black Lion patch (awarded to all winners) in the Army-Navy game (FOR MORE INFO) The Black Lion certificate is awarded to all winners

A Marine's True Story of Hanging in There Against All Odds! (See"NEWS") The Cartoon That Ignited the Midwest! (See"NEWS") My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me     February 10, 2006 - "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." William Butler Yeats   *********** Overlooking the appropriateness of today's quote to the way the "best" Americans stand idly by, doing nothing, while our fate rests in the hands of the passionate, intense, "worst"...   It is also highly recognizable to any football coach who has ever come under attack by a handful of disaffected community members, "full of passionate intensity," who simply outshout the "best" people. What happens, normally, is that the hundreds of parents who know and appreciate all the good things you've done for their kids sit back and allow the jackals to go on the attack. And "the best" - spineless school administrators and school board members - although fully aware of all the good you've done, "lack all conviction," and so, rather than stand up to your detractors, instead will hand your head to them on a silver platter..   BILL DABNEY, MARINE Bill Dabney, Vietnam, 1968 Bill Dabney, 2005 *********** When my wife called a college classmate, Virginia Dabney, recently to chat, I asked her to make sure, when she was done talking, to put Virginia's husband, Bill, on the phone. I'd first met Bill a few years ago when Bill and Virginia hosted my wife and me at their beautiful spread, "Michie's Tavern," in the foothills outside Lexington, Virginia, and I had a few things I had to ask him.   I may have mentioned him on here in the past. Bill, like me, started out at Yale, but unlike me, he didn't go the whole Ivy League route. He was a few years ahead of me, and he bailed on the Ivy League after freshman year, and enlisted in the Marine Corps. As a private.   After three years, during which he'd made it to the rank of sergeant, his enlistment was coming to an end, and he started thinking long-term.   He started thinking about a career in the Marines. But not as an enlisted man - as an officer.   That decision in itself ought to tell you plenty about Bill Dabney: at a time when college men feared the draft, here was a guy who'd already put his time in, as a grunt, and now, with tuition money guaranteed by the GI Bill, he was free to go to the college of his choice, and prepare for the career of his choice.   His choice was a career in the Marines, and his choice of a college a military college.   "I was so impressed by the dedication and competence of the officers I'd seen," he told me, "and I thought, 'this would be a great way to spend a career.'"   He told me he did a lot of research on the best way to pursue that goal, asking Marine officers what advice they'd give a man in his position who wanted to become an officer.   "To a man," he told me, "they said, 'Go to VMI.'"   VMI - Virginia Military Institute, tucked away in the Shenandoah Valley, has a rich military tradition,dating from its founding in 1839. When the "War Between the States" - the Civil War - broke out, VMI students and graduates, loyal to their home state, fought for the Confederacy. A VMI professor of physics, Thomas Jonathan Jackson, distinguished himself in battle as General Stonewall Jackson. One of the most famous moments in VMI history was the Battle of new Market, in which VMI cadets turned back Union forces and halted their advance up the Shenandoah Valley. Those young men paid the price - ten of them were killed and 47 were wounded. Months later, VMI itself would pay the price, when Union soldiers shelled and burned its buildings. Following the Civil War, VMI reopened, and since then has remained true to its mission "to produce educated, honorable men...ready as citizen-soldiers to defend their country in time of national peril." Nearly 300 VMI graduates have become generals or admirals in our armed forces; more than 300 of them have given their lives in World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam. The most distinguished VMI graduate was General George C Marshall, a great man of war and a great man of peace. As Chief of Staff during World War II he directed the American war effort and as Secretary of State following the war, he authored the Marshall Plan for rebuilding war-torn Europe.   It cost Bill next to nothing to attend VMI. He explained:   "The G.I. Bill paid $990 toward tuition - $110 month for nine months. If you lived in Virginia, which I did, VMI cost $1000. So at the start of every year, I faithfully walked down to the office and handed them a $10 bill."   After graduation, and a commission as a Marine second lieutenant, Bill embarked on a long, impressive career, retiring as a Colonel.   Last April, my wife happened to be glancing through her alumni magazine, and she said, "there's something in here about Ginger (Virginia's nickname in her college days) and Bill," and handed me the magazine. I read the small note, and said "Holy sh--! It says here that Bill Dabney won the Navy Cross!"   I had to explain to my wife that the Navy Cross - along with its Army counterpart, the Distinguished Service Cross - is second only to the Medal of Honor as an award for military valor and service.   And then, after doing a little digging, I began to find out a lot of things I'd never known about Bill Dabney.   It turns out that Bill was at Khe Sanh. That doesn't mean much now, but back in the late 1960's, when a nation's attention was focused on Viet Nam, the news about Marines at Khe Sanh, was frightening. They were surrounded, cut off from any aid or assistance, their position seemingly hopeless.   Bill was right there, during the 77-day Siege of Khe Sanh. On Hill 881S, to be precise.   For 77 days, From January 21, 1968 until April 8, US Marines, including Captain Bill Dabney and his company, were surrounded and constantly bombarded by a superior force of North Vietnamese. Their only means of supply - their only contact with the outside world - was by heroic helicopter pilots, risking their own lives to fly in under heavy enemy fire.   Death was everywhere and came at any time. Medical evacuation for anything other than the most serious of injury was out of the question. The only way out, the gallows humor had it, was to get "flown out or blown out."   From an official account: "During the entire period, Colonel (then Captain) Dabney's force stubbornly defended Hill 881S, a regimental outpost vital to the defense of the Khe Sanh Combat Base. Following his bold spoiling attack on 20 January 1968, shattering a much larger North Vietnamese Army (NVA) force deploying to attack Hill 881S, Colonel Dabney's force was surrounded and cut off from all outside ground supply for the entire 77 day Siege of Khe Sanh." As the senior officer, command of Hill 881S and the Marines on it fell to Dabney. Initially it made for crowded conditions with approximately 400 Marines and corpsmen. In addition to India and Mike companies, there were two 81 mm mortars, two 106 mm recoilless rifles and three 105 mm howitzers from Charlie Btry, 1st Bn, 13th Marines. At times, casualties reduced that number to about 250 Marines and corpsmen. Capt Dabney remained with his men through it all, always observing and counting ways to kill his enemies. "Enemy snipers, machine guns, artillery, and 120-millimeter mortars responded to any daylight movement on his position. In spite of deep entrenchments, his total casualties during the siege were close to 100 percent. Helicopters were his only source of resupply, and each such mission brought down a cauldron of fire on his landing zones. On numerous occasions Colonel Dabney raced into the landing zone under heavy hostile fire to direct debarkation of personnel and to carry wounded Marines to evacuation helicopters. The extreme difficulty of resupply resulted in conditions of hardship and deprivation seldom experienced by American forces."   Finally, on April 8, US forces broke through to end the siege.   That was 1968. In April, 2005 - 37 years later - after someone finally found some missing paperwork, Bill Dabney received the Navy Cross.   Bill, like all true combat veterans, deflects any attempts at congratulations or praise. True to his chosen profession, he immediately changes the discussion to the men he lost at Khe Sanh.   I've provided a link to a page on my site (http://www.coachwyatt.com/billdabney.htm) on which appears his Navy Cross Citation, as well as a detailed description of the siege itself, and Bill's speech on accepting the Navy Cross. Bill is a very colorful, well-spoken man, and I believe you will enjoy reading his recollections and benefit from some of his insights on leadership. I've also included a site on which Bill and the men who served with him have posted observations about the terrifying time they spent together. http://www.hmm-364.org/warriors.html   I'll tell you one thing - back when I was coaching a group of young men who were headed inevitably for a winless season, I wish I'd known about the ordeal Bill and his young men went through years ago. It certainly puts any "suffering" you go through during a football season into proper perspective, and it demonstrates that in life, real winning is persisting and surviving in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds - something that can't be done without teamwork.   There is one further thing worth mentioning about Bill. Virginia's father was also a VMI graduate and also a Marine. A Marine general. A Marine icon. Perhaps the most famous of all Marines. It took a hell of a man even to ask for the hand of Virginia Puller, the daughter of General Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller", and a hell of a man to meet with his approval. Bill was that man.   Undoubtedly, Chesty Puller would have been very proud to see his son-in-law receive the Navy Cross.   What follows are two of many great stories to be found at http://www.hmm-364.org/warriors.html -----   I think there might be a football coaching lesson in the first one...   By no stretch of the imagination did the 26th Marines have a monopoly on good snipers.  The NVA marksmen, armed with rifles and scopes which were comparable to those of their American counterparts, lurked around the edges of the perimeters -- especially the hill outposts -- and waited for a target.  Although none of this deadly business could be categorized as humorous, there was one sniper incident on Hill 881S which could not help but evoke a chuckle.   The men of Company I had been cursed with the presence of a particularly accurate sniper who was located in the bush to the south of their perimeter.  The rifleman scored frequently and had wounded 10 Marines in the period of about a week, all of whom were evacuated.  In addition to being a hazard, the sniper was also a general nuisance.  A man moving from one place to another within the perimeter was always hurried on his way by slugs which kicked up dirt at his heels or buzzed past his head like hornets.  Thus, the Marines were constantly waiting for the culprit to expose himself and one day a glint off the telescopic sight proved to be his undoing.  The Marines marked his position and, on Captain Dabney's [CO, I/26] order, lugged a 106 mm recoilless rifle from the northern side of the hill, sighted in, and blew the sniper away -- tree and all.   The victory was short lived because his successor proved equally as effective.  More Marines were hit.  The second rifleman lasted about as long as the first before he suffered the same fate at the hands of the 106 mm gunners.   His replacement, however, was a complete wash-out.  Expending between 20 and 30 rounds a day, the misfit flailed away for a week without hitting anyone.  In the process, he too gave himself away.   After the Marines had manhandled the 106 into position for the third time, and were sighting in, one private, after deep thought, approached the company commander with a proposition: "Skipper, if we get him, they'll just replace him with someone who might be able to shoot.  He hasn't hit anyone so why not leave him there until he does?"  It was so ordered.   Nothing but a good laugh in the second one...   There were moments of humor.  A Marine manning an observation post had a spent rifle round ricochet up from the ground and hit the bottom button of his fly.  The button happened to be resting against the head of his penis.  The button absorbed the impact and there was no penetrating wound, but within an hour of his being hit, his penis had swelled to the size of a salami and his testicles to the size of tennis balls, both turning a deep purple.  A radio conference with a physician down at Khe Sanh established that his wound was not life-threatening and therefore did not justify an emergency medical evacuation with the consequent risk to the helicopter.  The physician stated that he could do little more than ease the pain, which the corpsmen on the hill could do as well, or amputate, which the Marine would probably not want, and he said that the swelling would eventually subside.  For the next several days until we landed a helicopter for a more serious casualty and could get him out, the Marine wandered the trenches disconsolately in helmet, flack jacket and boots, walking like a drunken cowboy to avoid any contact with his injured parts.  The jokes of his comrades - about his future prowess, his potential attractiveness on R & R, the fashion statement he was making - were hilarious, albeit unprintable.     2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 1-12-06 (2006 CLINICS) CLINIC LOCATION FEB 25 ATLANTA HOLIDAY INN AIRPORT NORTH - 1380 Virginia Ave - 404-762-8411 MARCH 11 LOS ANGELES HOLIDAY INN-MEDIA CENTER -150 E. Angeleno, Burbank - 818-841-4770 MARCH 18 CHICAGO ST. XAVIER UNIVERSITY - 3700 West 103rd St., Chicago APRIL 1 RALEIGH-DURHAM TBA APRIL 8 PHILADELPHIA TBA APRIL 15 PROVIDENCE COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470 MAY 6 DENVER TBA MAY 13 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA LATHROP, CA. In the works: Buffalo/Western New York... Denver... Detroit... Northern California... Twin Cities... Pacific Northwest   *********** "I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism; and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master." - Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children   *********** Coach, This is outstanding. From a Blogger named "Iowahawk" too. Any Cheese Head would really appreciate it. Coach Kaz (Mark Kaczmarek) Davenport, Iowa (Agreed - it is outstanding, so I am printing it, with a link to Iowahawk's site. HW)   Seething Midwest Explodes Over Lombardi Cartoons   Green Bay, WI - Like a pot of bratwurst left unattended at a Lambeau Field pregame party, simmering tensions in the strife-torn Midwest boiled over once again today as rioting mobs of green-and-gold clad youth and plump farm wives rampaged through Wisconsin Denny's and IHOPs, burning Texas toast and demanding apologies and extra half-and-half.   The spark igniting the latest tailgate hibachi of unrest: a Texas newsletter's publication of caricatures of legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. (An offending cartoon is shown at left) Protestors demonstrated against the images throughout the Badger State yesterday, with violent egging and cow-tipping incidents reported in Oconomowac, Pewaukee, Sheboygan, Ozaukee, Antigo, Oshkosh, Waubeno, Wauwautosa, Waunewoc, Wyocena, Waubeka, and Washawonamowackapeepee.   Some of the most dramatic skirmishes were centered around Kenosha, where a mob of masked snowmobilers invaded the Texas Roadhouse on I-94, briefly holding the margarita machine hostage. They were later seen storming the beverage department at Woodman's, where they purchased several cases of Point and a pack of Merit menthols, and later at the Brat Stop classic rock/sausage outlet, where they were reported angrily "boogie-ing out" on air guitar to featured entertainment Molly Hatchett.   But by far the fiercest demonstration took place in Green Bay's Lambeau Shrine parking lot where throngs of Packer faithful burned Texas flags and effigies of Roger Staubach as Lutheran pastors led them in chants of "Those who defame the Vince suck" and "Favre is Great." Many of the frenzied demonstrators were seen ritualistically beating themselves with mozzarella sticks.   The crowd eventually dispersed, lured away by local supper clubs and the nickel slots of nearby Oneida Bingo Casino, but Pastor Doug Schmidtke of Fond Du Lac's Grand Lutheran Temple threatened continued community unrest "until the infidels of Texas deliver an apology. And the head of Tom Landry in a paper bag."   While the curd-strewn streets of Green Bay remain calm for the moment, a startled Texas government official -- speaking on terms of anonymity -- said that they would work with other developed states to find a solution to tensions "before the situation erupts into a full-fledged clash of civilizations."   Eye of a Storm   Over the past five years, the volatile Midwest has produced violent rage like the knockwurst output at Milwaukee's venerable Usinger's -- sudden, repeated, and in long unbroken strings. One of the principle catalysts was the rise the Uff Da insurgency, led by the enigmatic Pastor Duane Gunderson, who seek a unified Lutheran caliphate stretching from the Great Plains to Lake Huron, and the banning of non-Big 10/Pac 10 apostates from the Rose Bowl. Gunderson remains in hiding, but his influence was seen last year in the widely publicized Lutefisk desecration riots that rocked the Heartland amid the pancake breakfast holidays.   Still, outside of the Dells and a handful of violent outposts near its western Mississippi River border, Wisconsin remained a relatively calm exception to the Midwestern maelstrom surrounding it -- a fact that experts attribute to subtle differences in culture and religion.   "Unlike the ultra-extreme, radical Lutheran sectarians of Iowa and Minnesota, most ethnic Wisconsinites belong to the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod," said Joseph Killian, a Midwestern Studies professor at Emory University in Atlanta. "And if you add in three Super Bowl titles, easier access to beer, and walleye fishing, and you're going to have a much calmer and more stable culture."   All that would change in November with the publication of four cartoons in a Texas office newsletter -- cartoons that today have brought this once happily beer-goggled society to the precipice of all-out culture war.   Casus Belli   A thousand miles south of Wisconsin's sprawling Holstein pastures, Josh Davidson peers between the drawn drapes of his Plano, Texas apartment, looking for signs of suspicious green-clad strangers. It is his third day at the address, but he is already scanning the classified ads for his next residence. For this 37-year old, staying ahead of Packer radicals has become a full time job.   In November, Davidson -- a self-described diehard Dallas Cowboys fan -- made a fateful decision that would alter his life and whose reverberations are currently shaking the foundations of two societies.   "The Appleby's in Frisco has two big screens, and I liked going there Sunday for the Cowboy games," Davidson explained. "But one weekend there was this annoying bunch of Wisconsin immigrant idiots with foam rubber cheese wedge hats, screaming for the Packers on the other screen."   In response, Davidson drew four provocative cartoons of revered Packer coach Vince Lombardi, and distributed Xeroxed copies to his co-workers at VHT Technologies in Plano. What he didn't know is that one of co-workers was an alumnus of Marquette, and the cartoons would soon be circulated throughout the Packer world.   The response would be immediate and visceral.   "While Wisconsin culture is tolerant compared to, say, Iowa, what many outsiders don't understand is that its ultimate taboo is graven images of Lombardi," said Nigel Rhys-Jones of Harvard's Institute of Primitive Anthropology. "The only Lombardi iconography allowed is allegorical, in throw blankets or needlepoint appliques, and must be purchase at craft fairs from chubby Lutheran women in windbreakers. For a Cowboy fan to make cartoons of the Vince is... let's just say the ultimate sacrilege."   Aftermath   The appearance of the cartoons in Wisconsin media sparked a angry reaction in the Packer street, a reaction that some say radical Lutheran clerics were more than happy to foment and nurture with every Packerless playoff game.   After the NFC Championship game in January, WTMJ radio in Milwaukee broadcast a newly surfaced audiotape of Duane Gunderson on the Wayne Larrivee Packer Report, in which he urged Packer faithful to "rise up against the mockers of the one and true coach."   "Those who sow the curds of blasphemy will reap the cheddar wheel of destruction," he added cryptically.   In response to growing pressure and threats of Wisconsin boycotts, VHT Technologies dismissed Davidson on January 21, issuing a fulsome personal apology from CEO George Uhl asking Wisconsinites "to consider VHT the next time you are choosing a supplier of multiphase diodes," and "please don't kill me."   Despite the olive branch, the Packer community finally exploded into the streets Sunday, as already frayed emotions were further enflamed by the awarding of the Vince Lombardi trophy to the Super Bowl's victorious Pittsburgh Steelers.   Numerous requests to Texas Governor Rick Perry to execute or extradite Davidson to Wisconsin have thus far gone unheeded, but it is unclear whether the Governor can withstand the growing political pressure for a cathartic public beheading. With nearly one million ethnic immigrant Midwesterners now living in Texas, experts say Perry risks alienating an important voter bloc. More troubling, some analyst believe that south Texas is currently infiltrated by a sleeper cell of tens of thousands of elderly Midwestern snowbirds, each of whom is armed with a Winnebago capable of smashing into a fast food restaurant.   Picking up the Pieces   As the world awaits the next move in this complicated polka of realpolitik, tensions throughout the Midwest remain as high as the cholesterol. However, yesterday saw one hopeful sign of a thaw: a consortium of civic, religious and Packer club leaders announced an emergency summit at the Fudgienuckles bar in Glenbuelah next week to start a dialogue with their non-Midwestern counterparts. At the top of the agenda: working with non-Midwestern leaders to create regional peace and security by passing international anti-Packer blasphemy laws.   Small steps to be sure, but observers say these safety measures will help quell the roiling unrest before it spreads to the dimwitted ultra-militant Yoopers of Michigan's notorious Ishpeming Triangle.   While politicians and community leaders from Austin to Rhinelander work to sort out the issues, Josh Davidson says he will try to get on with his life, "maybe in Brazil or Nepal." Still, he says, he can't help puzzling over how he came to his current circumstances.   "Yeah, I guess maybe I was trying to push a couple of Packer hot buttons," he now admits. "I never though it would mean taping a mirror to a pole to check under my car for bombs every morning."   Does he have any regrets? Davis ponders a moment.   "No, not really," he says. "I'm just glad I didn't hand out those cartoons of Mike Ditka." http://iowahawk.typepad.com/ *********** Thanks to my impeccable sources, I had the Dennis-Erickson-going-to-Idaho story before any of the Northwest mainstream media although in their behalf it should be noted that they were probably too busy going through their desks looking to discard any cartoons depicting Muhammad to be bothered with a local sports story.   Idaho's first three games this fall: (1) Michigan State, coached by former Idaho coach John L. Smith; (2) Washington State, once coached by Erickson; (3) Oregon State, once coached by Erickson   *********** Greg Koenig saw this illustration in an e-mail he received, from a well-known monthly coaches' magazine, and took the time to write this rather tactful and non-accusatory letter:   Dear Sir,   I received your email this afternoon advertising the video 9 STEPS TO BUILDING A WINNING FOOTBALL PROGRAM. While I am sure the video is very well done and filled with lots of useful information, I am concerned with the photo on the cover. It clearly shows a football player hitting a tackling dummy in an unsafe position. The player has lowered his head, which puts the spinal column in great danger of injury. It is the responsibility of all adults who teach the great game of football to accept the responsibility for teaching safe and sound fundamentals. I am sure your company had no intention of promoting such an unsafe image. I just wanted to bring it to your attention.   Sincerely,   Coach Greg Koenig, Colby High School, Colby, Kansas (He has yet to hear from the folks who sent it out. HW)   *********** Coach I must respectfully disagree with your take on the Seattle holding call. You know it was holding, I know it was holding, but in today's NFL just what is holding? I played offensive line through college and have coached it and I swear I don't know! I see guys with their arms outstretched at a 90 degree angle from their bodies impeding defenders. I see both hands all the way around on the BACK of defenders shirts. Just what is their criteria. If I could have used these techniques I might not have embarrassed my self so often when I had to pass block! I just would have conjured up all those form tackling drills I did in high school. On a positive note I believe I actually witnessed Pittsburgh run a trap! Not a tight-end in motion wham play, the play side guard blocked down and the backside guy pulled and kicked out. I was just about at my limit of zone stretch plays when that happened. By the way coach, are you aware that Jerome Bettis is from Detroit?   Coach, as a personal aside I grew up in the wishbone. To my high school coach the bone was not an offense it was a way of life. He used to take at least one week off from school every year to attend Alabama's spring practice with Bear Bryant. I learned from him fierce, aggressive, DRIVE blocking. He was a firm believer that every aspect of the game should begin with an aggressive HIT! Blocking certainly not excluded. When I got to college they had just gone through a coaching change, The guy who recruited me was gone a new guy stepping in. He installed a multiple offense but he was pass happy. Talking about being miscast. Here I was a wishbone guard center type being thrown into a mostly passing offense. I don't think we had 1 pass that wasn't off of wishbone action in high school and now I was having to (gasp) give ground off the snap. This was 1979 and I believe there had recently been a rules change for pass blocking. We had to use our "rails" and keep them within the framework of our body and try to control the defender. Needless to say I struggled mightily. Finally I got it, sort of. I never really liked it though. I had enough trouble getting used to a 3 point stance as we always used a four pointer. Anyway what this stream of consciousness is leading me to is the state of blocking being taught now. I don't know what this crap is but it sure ain't blocking. Titty blocking is what I used to be accused of when I did the stuff they teach now. I don't get it. It seems that almost every change in our game is removing aggressive contact. That don't bode well for the future. I admit I still watch the NFL. I can't help myself. By the way your pancake drill is in my opinion the finest drill I've ever implemented to teach kids how to finish a block. The kids love it also. BOOM they yell when contact is made. I didn't coach this year but the kids I had last year begged their new coach to put it in. He called me and I explained it to him. "What is this Coach Wyatt drill he asked me, and wtf is Coach Wyatt" I'm just building your legacy a bit here in the Peoples Republic. Dan Lane Canton, Massachusetts Coach, in his book, "Anatomy of a Game," which essentially deals with the way the game has been changes over the years by rules, author Dave Nelson, a long-time coach at Delaware and a long-time member of the NCAA Rules Committee, makes frequent mention of the way the advocates of passing gradually got control of the Rules Committee and got their way with the rules. I suspect that a lot of that was driven by wanting to emulate the pros.   *********** Two guys from Connecticut. My son Ed, who was born in New Haven, had a chance recently to interview former Rangers' and Mets' manager Bobby Valentine, a native of Stamford, Connecticut, when Valentine's Japanese team was in Australia for a series of exhibition games.   *********** Wrote a Seahawks fan (but not a whiner) "I was a bit irked by the holding call, because I thought I saw Pittsburgh not get called for the same thing earlier."   No doubt you did.   It sure was a lot easier to spot holding before they were allowed to open the hands and extend the arms.   But then, since that makes it tougher to protect the passer (especially when we're already telling the world by our formation - and our stance - that we're going to pass) it would mean running the ball more, wouldn't it?   *********** The enemy is not refs - it's grass basketball. But it seems that everywhere people want to make their own rules. ADs want to secretly poach coaches from other schools, and fire their own coaches. People want to beat the rap on speeding and DUI charges. People want free cable and rationalize its theft, trade copyrighted music, skirt conventional decorum and dress code, and then blame the Man when things don't shake out.   And then they want to get pissed because a zebra gave their team the shaft. Christopher Anderson, Palo Alto, California   Right on all counts. It is ironic that in a nation full of cheaters and scammers so many people affect such righteous indignation when they believe they've been cheated by officials!   *********** My son, Ed writes, "My 3 favorite lines from the Super Bowl diary of Bill "The Sports Guy" Simmons, who writes a very funny and very cynical column on ESPN.com..."   1 - The dumbest sign of the night so far:   ABSOLUTE   BETTIS   CHAMPIONSHIP   I want you to think about this very carefully: Is there anyone in your life who would take the time to make a sign like that, then carry it into the Super Bowl with them? If the answer is "yes," then you have some soul searching to do, my friend.   2 - As Pittsburgh runs out the clock, Michaels tells us that Big Ben "got a lot of advice this week from Dan Marino ... One of the things Marino told him, 'Soak in every second.'" Wait, getting Super Bowl advice from DAN MARINO? Isn't that like getting sex tips from A.C. Green?   3 - Madden on Hasselbeck and Big Ben (I'm tired of typing Roethlisberger): "I've never seen a quarterback at the Super Bowl as cool as these guys." (Whoa! Who's more upset right now, Joe Montana or Tom Brady? And where does that rank among the most ridiculous sentences ever said? Top 10? Top 20? Even Paul Maguire was shocked by that one.)   *********** If there is a better athlete in American than Jordan Kent, tell me who he is. Jordan, the son of Oregon basketball coach Ernie Kent, is at Oregon on a basketball/track scholarship, but he played football in high school, and he persuaded his dad to let him play football this past fall. At 6-5, 210, he worked his way into the scheme as a wide receiver. Staying with the team through the Ducks' Holiday Bowl appearance, he turned out late for basketball, but fit into the rotation almost immediately. And then there is track, where he is among the best in the Pac 10 in the sprints. He has run the 100 meters in 10.41 and the 200 in 20.82. And he has long-jumped 7.56 meters (whatever the hell that is).   *********** NIck Daschel, and old friend who writes a sports column for the Vancouver Columbian, wrote a particularly interesting one on Thursday about a couple of local guys, former college and pro offensive linemen, and what they'd had to go through to get their weight down to something more healthy than the weight they'd had to play at.   If you've ever had to lose weight, you can imagine how hard it has to be for a man who's weighed over 300, eating whatever he liked as often as he liked as much as he liked, to try to get his weight down under 240 or so.   But those former offensive linemen who don't lose weight face the prospect of dying at a much younger age than other men.   It suddenly occurred to me that the NFL's wide-open game had been created at the expense of the health of its offensive linemen, and I felt compelled to write Nick...   Your column today introduced a topic which the NFL simply must address. While animal-rights groups boycott restaurants that serve fois gras, produced by force-feeding geese, the NFL encourages healthy young men to jeopardize their futures by force-feeding themselves.   The engorging of already-big men until they approach near-morbid obesity is a great example of the Law of Unintended Consequences; in my opinion it is a direct result of a concerted plan on the part of the NFL to provide more "excitement" - i.e., more offense - by skewing the game toward "grass basketball," with its emphasis on passing.   As the NFL has done so, emphasizing the pass and de-emphasizing the run, the role of the offensive lineman has become highly specialized. Most of the time he pass blocks, but even when a running play is called, he "zone" blocks, using tactics that require size more than anything else.   Strength is useful and agility is helpful, but essentially, he must be big - the bigger he is, the more of them there is for a defender to have to get past. The unfortunate analogy is to the modern-day turkey. In order to give the consumer what he wants, which is white meat, today's turkeys are so large of breast that they can barely stand up, much less fly.   What passes for "blocking" now is grab-and-pull. It is sanctioned holding, winked at in the same way the NBA winks at travelling or palming. It pretty much has to be that way if today's pass-happy coaches are going to release five receivers on every play.   If today's offensive linemen were to have to block the way they had to before the mid-1980's, with fists clenched and hands against the chest, it would be so much harder to protect the passer that teams would have to diversity their attack (i.e., run the ball in more inventive ways) in order to keep defenses guessing. This would mean that offensive linemen would have to be more versatile, which would mean fewer immobile 300-pounders.   And fewer 300-pounders, in my judgment, would mean fewer young men facing any early death. The wonder, to me, is that with so many grossly overweight men playing professional football, more of them don't die in the heat of summer workouts.   With all the money involved, it seems to me just a matter of time until a lawyer somewhere connects these dots and depicts offensive linemen as the sacrificial lambs (another unfortunate analogy) in the NFL's obsession with providing a wide-open game.   <----------- A Seahawks' fan swears he shot this at the Super Bowl (okay, okay - actually, it was sent to me by Mark Rice, of Beaver, Pennsylvania)    *********** Frank De Ford, in si.com, started in writing about Wilt Chamberlain's 100-pooint game, and finished by getting in a few licks on the dolt of a coach who let a high school girl score 113 (her opponents, once aware of what was taking place, merely stayed out of the way and offered no resistance)...    The renewed memory of Chamberlain's Everest even caused some mischief, because a girls high school coach in New York City left his star in for the whole game against a team he was beating 44-6 in the first quarter, and she went on to score 113 points to set a new national girls record. I won't mention her name. It is not her fault her jackass of a coach kept her on the court, but she doesn't deserve the record. I will mention her coach's name, so we can all boo him. It is Ed Grezinsky. He is a bully and should not be allowed to coach anymore.   *********** At least he didn't make up some BS about going there for the academics...   Wide receiver Terrence McCoy of Midland (Texas) Lee High signed with Texas A & M last Wednesday, and told the Midland Reporter-Telegram why he did"   "They take care of you down there," he said. "I know from my brother (A&M redshirt freshman quarterback Jamie McCoy) they keep your pockets full, give you plenty of money, keep feeding you meals. Besides that all the help they give you with football. They keep you on your grades with private tutoring. Just good all-around."       Osama shows that he will stop at nothing in his plot to weaken America... BECOME A BLACK LION TEAM GIVE THE BLACK LION AWARD TO ONE OF YOUR PLAYERS! Army's Will Sullivan wore his Black Lion patch (awarded to all winners) in the Army-Navy game (FOR MORE INFO) The Black Lion certificate is awarded to all winners

Get Over it, Seahawks Fans! (See"NEWS") Where's Mike? (See"NEWS") My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me     February 7, 2006 - "I only had a high school education, and believe me, I had to cheat to get that." Sparky Anderson     2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 1-12-06 (2006 CLINICS) CLINIC LOCATION FEB 25 ATLANTA HOLIDAY INN AIRPORT NORTH - 1380 Virginia Ave - 404-762-8411 MARCH 11 LOS ANGELES HOLIDAY INN-MEDIA CENTER -150 E. Angeleno, Burbank - 818-841-4770 MARCH 18 CHICAGO ST. XAVIER UNIVERSITY - 3700 West 103rd St., Chicago APRIL 1 RALEIGH-DURHAM TBA APRIL 8 PHILADELPHIA TBA APRIL 15 PROVIDENCE COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470 MAY 6 DENVER TBA MAY 13 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA LATHROP, CA. In the works: Buffalo/Western New York... Denver... Detroit... Northern California... Twin Cities... Pacific Northwest     *********** Hugh, I'm sure you saw (and cringed at) the mangling of the National Anthem at yesterday's Super Bowl. It was the latest catastrophe in the NFL's attempt at "entertainment" and poor judgement. Call me old fashioned but THAT song was NOT meant to be sung like some old gospel spiritual, and if you ARE selected to sing it, make sure you know the damn lyrics!! I was waiting for Stevie Wonder and Mick Jagger to jump in to give their R&B and rock renditions. We had a bunch of friends over and all of us about puked up our snacks up when Aaron Neville completely missed an entire verse of the song!! On top of the that his singing SUCKS!!   Ok, so the NFL was trying to support New Orleans and the Gulf coast hurricane victims, but they SHOULD have invited and paid out all that money to all the Louisiana and Mississippi collegiate marching bands to perform the anthem instead of giving the dough to all those has beens.   And as far as the game goes. I about choked on my cheez-its when Pittsburgh threw the interception on the goal line. And, someone ought to send Mike Holmgren a book about clock management. Finally, all the sports radio guys today were talking about how the Steelers were able to win even though Ben Roethlisberger did not have his usual good game. Maybe his game had something to do with the Steelers getting away from what got them there...running the ball. And Seattle had things going their way early because of a nice game plan (which included a heavy dose of running and play-action pass). But they also got away from it...and it killed them.   I can't wait to hear your take on all of yesterday's "festivities."   Joe Gutilla, Columbus, Ohio   Here goes...   *********** It was not, to be sure, a Super Bowl for the ages. Other than wondering whether Ben Roethlisberger's passes would go to a receiver, or Jerramy Stevens would catch a pass, or whether the Seahawks actually did have a hurry-up offense, there wasn't a whole lot of suspense.   The best pass of the game was thrown by a wide receiver, the worst pass of the game was something so bad you rarely see its like even on a high school field, and in the closing seconds of each half the Seahawks looked as if Mike Holmgren had already gone into the locker room without leaving anyone in charge..   What's truly sad is that there are millions of people whose only exposure to the game of football is their once-a-year look at the Super Bowl.   Too many bowl games, you say?   There were at least 20 of them better than this most-hyped of games.   *********** "Where's Mike?"   That's what Bill Cowher asked as he stood out in the middle of the field after the game, appearing to be looking for Mike Holmgren.   Good question, Bill.   So, where was Mike?   Did the NFL perhaps decide to dispense with the post-game handshake - passing up a chance to show the world a little sportsmanship - and forget to tell Coach Cowher?   Or did Coach Holmgren perhaps storm off in a hissy fit?   The plot thickens. He didn't appear on the hour-long ABC postgame show (brought to you by Cadillac, by the way). And he didn't make an appearance on ABC's little brother, ESPN, either, for nearly two hours after the game ended.   But he was at the rally in Seattle on Monday, bitching to all who would listen about the officials.   *********** I am so proud of my grandson, Connor Love. He is eight years old, and thanks more to video games than to his grandfather (he lives in North Carolina), he's becoming quite a football fan. To give you an illustration of his level of expertise, my daughter called me Monday, knowing I'd laugh when I heard that after listening to a couple of examples of John Madden's blather, Connor turned and looked at the adults in the room and said, "this man says the most obvious things, and acts like he's telling me something."   *********** Overall, the Super Bowl commercials were a bit tame and bland, but I've heard at least one young mother express relief that for the first time in years, she didn't have to worry about what her kids saw.   The Michelob Ultra Amber commercial would have been the best of them all - I thought - if only it had wrapped up about 10 seconds sooner.   Maybe you remember . It was a coed touch football game.   "Throw it to me," the fetching babe says. "I'm gonna be wi-i-i-i-ide open!" And she reaches across the line and tousles the defender's hair.   At the snap, she swings though the backfield to the other side, catches a pass, and - gets nailed. Flying through the air, the defender - the guy she taunted - drills her. He smacks her to the ground.   Ha,ha, ha, ha. I loved it.   Yes, I know - violence against women and all that. But I'm betting that she made a lot of noise before the game about how tough she was. And then she started in woofin'.   Ha,ha.ha.ha. You talk smack, woman, you askin' for it.   The guy didn't really need to taunt back, but what the hell - she started it - so as she lies on the ground he looks down, and pointing at her, he says "You were wide open - and now you are closed!"   Now that, I thought, was a great commercial. You're playing with the boys now, sweetie. Welcome to a man's game.   But, no-o-o-o-o-o. We couldn't stop there. What would the feminists say? (I can tell you: "that's condoning violence against women.")   Expect a boycott of Anheuser-Busch products.   And besides, this is the twenty-first Century, and women rule - you go girl! - and we can't end the commercial there. Nope. Men are always doofuses, and women always get the last word in.   So after a brief explanation of what makes Michelob Ultra Amber so special, we come back to a scene in a tavern.   The guy who did the tackling is sitting on a bar stool, when out of nowhere comes the babe he hit, and she knocks him off the stool.   "Late Hit!" says the guy on the next stool, as the women win again.   Ha, ha.   *********** The real winner of the Super Bowl - in the Great Northwest at least - is George W. Bush.   The chronic whiners out here have taken a temporary break from their constant hammering of the President, in order to direct their bile at NFL officiating.   It took a Super Bowl appearance by the Seahawks to bring it about, but I am in awe of the seamless transition these people have made, from "Bush stole the election" to "the officials robbed us." Even Mike Holmgren, in his best Al Gore impersonation, came out and told a crowd that he didn't know the Seahawks would have to play the Steelers and "the guys in the striped shirts," too.   Next, I suppose, will come hints of a conspiracy to shaft all the Little People in the Pacific Northwest (meshing perfectly with the "East Coast Paranoia" that always seems to lurk just below the surface).   It will go something like this... The officials jammed the radio communication between Holmgren and Hasselbeck at the end of both halves... the officials sprayed Pam on Jerramy Stevens' gloves so he'd miss three key passes... officials ordered the stadium management to turn on the fans - on one side of the building only - to blow the Seahawks' field goal attempts wide... one of them tripped Michael Boulware, the one Seahawk with any chance to stop Willie Parker on his way to a 75-yard touchdown... they all yelled "RUN" when Antwaan Randl El started to his right on his TD pass to Hines Ward (the officials were also the reason why the Seahawks were in a coverage requiring a cornerback to stay with Ward clear over to the opposite corner, with no help over there)... And the referee baited Matt Hasselbeck into throwing an interception, standing behind him as he looked for an open man and shouting, "Look! Over there on the left! He's open! Throw it! Now!")   Setting aside for a moment the Seahawks' poor play - which was more than enough to cost them a game against any good NFL team - there do seem to be four "bad calls" worth discussing...   The offensive pass interference call against a Seahawks' receiver that nullified a Seattle touchdown. The replays clearly showed the receiver sticking out his arm and contacting the defender before making his break to catch the ball. Everybody saw it. The announcers, trying to make the NFL even more like the NBA, suggested that it was a ticky-tacky call, but if they were to read the rule they'd see that it says something about interfering with an opponent's ability to move toward the pass. When the receiver pushed his hand, arm extended, against the defender, that is exactly what he was doing. It doesn't say anything about how hard he has to push on the opponent. Officiating is tough enough without asking officials to judge how hard the push was. Unless the NFL want to go down the slippery slope of allowing degrees of contact that has made the NBA the joke that it is, it will stick to the strict enforcement of the rules as written, along the lines of the old Navy definition of rape: "penetration, however slight..."   Roethlisberger's is-he-in-or-isn't-he touchdown. Tough call. Even after watching replay after replay (isn't Tivo great?) I was equally prepared for the referee to come back from under the hood and say that the ball hadn't penetrated the plane of the goal line, or to say that the call on the field had been upheld. It was that close. Still is. Perhaps a team of former General Motors (or Ford) engineers - I understand there are a few thousand of them in the Detroit area looking for work these days - would have been able to decide for sure, but that would probably have meant making the broadcast go overlong, which would have meant cutting into "Grey's Anatomy" (coming up next, in case you weren't listening).   The Seattle pass down to the one that was called back because Locklear was holding. Blowhard Madden said he didn't see any holding, but I sure as hell did. Of course, you have to realize he's been a pimp for the pro game for so long; his standards have been dumbed down by years and years of being a part of a culture in which coaches teach holding and only chokeholds go penalized. One problem with that, of course, is the problem that besets baseball and basketball, where instead of enforcing the rules absolutely, they are enforced according to the whims of the individual official. Unless holding is holding is holding, the call will be subject to the judgment of each individual official. Another problem is that when the ignorant masses who only watch Super Bowls hear that sort of thing, they actually begin to believe that holding isn't really holding, just as they've been convinced that oral sex isn't really sex.   Finally, there was Hasselbeck's "illegal block below the waist" when actually he was attempting to make a diving block-tackle. Bad call.   *********** As long as we're dealing with bitching about officiating, Roethlisberger was blocked in the back on the interception return.   *********** Predictably, with some of the officiating we've seen in the playoffs, there comes the cry for the NFL to have "full-time officials," like all the other sports.   The cry is ill-considered.   The implication is that somehow, if officiating were to be made a full-time job, the NFL would be able to pay its officials more, and they would devote more time to their officiating, and therefore the League would get better officials than it has now.   (1) "All the other sports" (baseball, basketball, hockey) play on a near-daily basis, making it impossible for their officials to hold other jobs. What on God's earth would full-time football officials do all week? There's only so much video a guy can look at.   (2) I don't see "all the other sports" as models for the NFL to aspire to. I can't speak for hockey, but I'm not aware of a great deal of satisfaction among baseball and football people with their officiating.   (3) I happen to think that the NFL, by hiring mostly college graduates who are successful in other fields, gets a higher quality of individual that it would get if it were to somehow make officiating a full-time job; I think it is safe to say that if the NFL were to attempt to change over now to full-time officials, a great many of their current officials would choose not to give up their other careers, and their departure would leave the NFL with having to immediately promote a large number of less-experienced men;   (4) Because football officiating is a part-time job, the NFL can be quite harsh about getting rid of guys who are out of shape and guys who are underperforming. If it were to become a full-time job, there would sure as hell be an NFL Officials' Union, and every time the NFL tried to get rid of a guy who wasn't getting the job done, the NFLOU would raise hell.   (5) Today's NFL officials are the best we're going to get. They have spent years and years, starting in high school and moving up through small colleges and larger colleges, working to get better, meticulously studying the rules and working to stay in the best shape possible. If they were to be paid more, they wouldn't automatically become any better, nor would the higher pay being offered by the NFL lure bright young guys into the game at the entry level.   The problem is that the NFL has made officials' jobs almost unbelievably difficult.   Mostly in an effort to juice up the offense, the League has passed a number of additional rules (the "five yard chuck" comes to mind), whose effect has been to dump increased enforcement responsibility on the officials.   Then, there are more cameras at each game and far more instant replay machines - not to mention personal video recorders - which place officials' every call under the most careful of scrutiny.   And finally there is instant replay, and the League's ambivalence toward it. The owners and coaches haven't even been able to agree on whether to use it at all, for pete's sake, much less on how to make the best use of it.   *********** Man- bringing out all those former Super Bowl MVP's was one of the greatest things they've ever done.   Lynn Swann came out and the crowd of mostly Steelers fans went nuts. A tough act to follow. But Franco Harris came out and managed to top even Swann's act, pulling out a Terrible Towel and waving it to the crowd.   It gave me a chill, taking me back to a time when players really did love the game, their team, and their city.   *********** Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw and Jake Scott were the only three missing from the parade of MVPs. Bradshaw evidently decided just stay home; Scott is vacationing in Australia; but Joe Montana, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, stayed away because he tried - and failed - to shake down the NFL.   The deal the NFL offered the former Super Bowl MVPs was quite generous: two first-class airplane tickets, a hotel room, a Cadillac for the weekend, two tickets to the game, two tickets to the Friday night commissioner's party, two tickets to a Saturday night party and two tickets to a Sunday tailgate party. They were given $1,000 for "incidental expenses" while in Detroit, plus opportunities for paid appearances arranged by the NFL.   Not a bad weekend from my point of view. Chump change, from the Great Montana's.   "Sources close to the league" said Montana asked for a guarantee of at least $100,000 for appearances if he came here, and the league said no.   Wouldn't you love to hear what some of those guys who built the League - those NFL old-timers with their chintzy little pensions - would have to say about Joe Montana?   *********** When I was in high school, I was an okay passer. But I was a lot better in practice than I was in games. At first, I thought maybe it was nerves. But then I started realizing it was the ball.   All week long, we practiced with some old, beat-up balls, and then every Friday, just before the game, my coach would toss the game ball to me. A brand-new Wilson "Duke", official ball at the time of the NFL.   And I'll be damned if I could throw the thing. It was just too slick.   By the end of next week's practices, it would be scuffed and throwable, but then by next week's game, I'd get a brand-new ball to try throwing.   The NFL did the same thing to Ben Roethlisberger and Matt Hasselbeck on Sunday.   As one more example of the way the NFL puts marketing ahead of the game itself, the League put a new ball into the game every single play of the first half!   Cool. Now they can hand them out to big sponsors.   And tell them, "This is the ball that Jerremy Stevens dropped, because it was so slick."   *********** A lot was made about how Mike Holmgren's wife, a nurse, had gone and planned a trip to Africa with their daughter, a physician, as part of a Northwest Medical Teams mission to the Congo.   Great stuff and all that, but jeez - they knew back when they made these plans that the Seahawks could be in the Super Bowl.   So there he was on the sidelines, and his wife was in the Congo.   I mean, I know it's their business and all that, but come on - this is a huge moment in a coach's life. There's only one Super Bowl every year, and there are planes leaving for Africa every day.   *********** You can buy an iPod that will hold 10,000 songs. TEN THOUSAND F--KING SONGS!   So out of all those songs, why do they have to keep picking the same one - our National Anthem - to make their political statements? Why also do they feel they have to choose a celebrity to sing it, as if we proles are actually going to look at each other and say, "Wow, Zeke. This here must really be a big game. Look who they got singing the National Anthem?"   I heard some media type actually say that the lameass Aaron Neville/Aretha Franklin/Gospel Choir version before the Super Bowl was great, second only to Whitney Houston's version a few years back. Hmmm. Funny he should bring that up. I didn't like Whitney Houston's either.   A friend of a friend who is operatic-trained informs me that the Star Spangled Banner is considered by real singers to very difficult to sing correctly, even for a person with a great voice, and the reason why so many of these "artists" get out there and make two notes out one, or three notes out of two, apart from wanting to put their own stamp on our song, is that they are "cheating" - they simply don't have the voice to hit and sustain a high note.   To be honest with you, I have yet to hear the singer who can match the rendition of the Star Spangled Banner played by any good high school band.   Aaron Neville? Did hearing our national anthem sung in castrato soprano stir up any patriotism in you?   *********** Speaking of patriotism - I just loved Mr. Super Patriot Roger Clemens, pushing the upcoming Baseball Classic or whatever the hell it's called, saying, "I'll be there for my country..."   This from a guy won't even be there for his f--king home town.   *********** They devoted hours of pre-game time to all sorts of entertainment crap, and then when it came time to introduce the players - the people that the game is all about - they wound up rushing through a set of cheesy player introduction graphics right while a play was being run!   *********** My son, Ed, who hosted the Super Bowl broadcast in Australia, said that the thing that interested Aussies the most was the fact that Kelly Herndon seemed to run out of gas before he could score. Not that they disrespect American football, but they are used to rugby and Australian Rules, both games which require different - if not more - conditioning than football.   *********** I predict that if the NFL doesn't get a handle on its self-introductions, in which some of these jackasses think it's way cool to say that they are from "East Bank Elementary School," or "Monroe High School," they are headed for trouble.   Apart from the fact that it is a slap in the face to certain colleges, those introductions are supposed to be for the benefit of the fans, and not a play toy for some overgrown children.   It is only going to take one cleverly designed double entendre (anyone remember the Sam Houston Institute of Technology joke?) or, even worse from the standpoint of the League and its networks, a cleverly disguised commercial plug, to cause the League to crack down.   Then, of course, there will be complaints from the NFLPA about censorship. About taking the fun out of the game.   To which I'd respond - censorship? Go buy your own network and you can say anything you want.   Taking the fun out of it? Make me laugh. It is a job and you are being paid - well - to do it. Be glad that a lot of what you do is fun. Millions of people paid far less than you don't have a single bit of fun in an entire week on the job. It is not about you having fun - it is about you making it fun for those people.   *********** Noted New Mexico cattle rancher and radio personality Don Imus takes exception of the reference of the lovebirds as "cowboys". "They're sheep herders, not cowboys!", is the constant refrain after any mention of the movie. Mark Kaczmarek, Davenport, Iowa   *********** As my wife and I went out to walk our dog on Super Bowl Sunday morning, I looked across a large grass playing field to the high school football stadium, where with the exception of five Friday nights in the fall, they play soccer almost 24/7. But this time, something looked strange. "Look at those kids," I said to my wife. "Do you notice anything different?"   She admitted that something did look different, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.   "They're moving too fast to be playing soccer!" I said, excitedly.   Sure enough, as we got closer to the stadium, we saw a dozen or so kids playing football.   *********** Internet Humor   As President Bush gets off the helicopter in front of the White House, he is carrying a baby pig under each arm.   The squared away Marine guard snaps to attention, salutes, and says: "Nice pigs, sir."   The President replies: "These are not pigs, these are authentic Texas Razorback Hogs. I got one for Senator Ted Kennedy, and I got one for Senator John Kerry."   The squared away Marine again snaps to attention, salutes, and says, "Nice trade, sir."   *********** Coach Wyatt: I couldn't resist chiming in about the Lonesome Polecat after it was mentioned in Friday's News.   A coaching colleague of mine introduced me to Tiger Ellison's RUN AND SHOOT FOOTBALL: THE NOW ATTACK while I was still in college. He also had used it against my high school team when I played against his squad. From him and reading Ellison's book, I came to realize the nuisance potential of the POLECAT. If you can force an opponent to spend time working on defending the POLECAT, that's time he takes away from preparing for the stuff you will use most of the time.   One more than one occasion I have seen the POLECAT get yards when nothing else worked.   In the mid-90s, I was playing for John Carroll University in a game against Hiram College when the Terriers rolled out the "kitty" just before halftime.   In the halftime locker room, our defensive coaches proceeded to rant and rave about how "that high school sh*t ain't gonna work on us."   Then, our coaches spent 3/4 of the halftime working on stopping the thing. I just laughed and wanted to go over to the Hiram coaches and tell them, "Hey, the Polecat worked. We spent our whole halftime on the thing."   Several seasons ago, I was forced into the playcalling role when my head coach came down with food poisoning the day of a game. We got our butts kicked, badly, however, at least with the POLECAT we could move the football.   Dan Polcyn, Gallipolis, Ohio (I'm going to be spending a little time on Lonesome Polecat at this year's clinics! HW)   *********** Coach Wyatt, I plan on attending your Atlanta clinic again this year. We have had another outstanding season going undefeated in our county for the second straight year. Our "B" team squad has won 23 straight games. We averaged 26 points a game this season, which is down from last years total of 33 points a game. We play 8 minute 1Ú4 ers, so we may only get 5 or 6 possessions a game. I didn't have anyone doing stats so I'm not sure how many yards we got for the season. Our defense this past year was better so our point differential was about the same. We only gave up one td in the second half all year. See you in Feb. Coach Dan E. King Riverside Middle School, Evans, Georgia   *********** A football giant has passed away. John Vaught, the man who built Mississippi football, at Ole Miss and in the state's high schools as well, died last Friday night in Oxford, Mississippi at the age of 96 - Read more about him in my archives (1-18-2002)   *********** I think it was Rush Limbaugh whom I heard ask about the Islamic demonstrators in the Middle East and elsewhere, "where did they get all those Danish flags?" I know what he means.   Would you be able to get a Danish flag right now, if you needed one for a spontaneous demonstration?   I live in a decent-sized metro area, and I know of one very good flag company in Portland that could probably have me a Danish flag in a day or two. But how long do you suppose it would it take me to get a couple hundred? Yet there those fools were on TV, waving and burning Danish flags. (You don't suppose this whole thing has been planned for a while, do you?)   It pains and angers me to see people anywhere demonstrating against Denmark. Denmark, for God's sake, a peaceful nation with about as many people as the state of Washington. Denmark, a friend of the United States, a beautiful country with wonderful people, is one of the nices places I've ever visited. The Islamists are calling for a boycott of Danish products. In retaliation, I'm going to be stocking up on Danish ham and Carlsberg Beer.   *********** Like Rumors? Dennis Erickson headed for the University of Idaho!!!!! Osama shows that he will stop at nothing in his plot to weaken America... BECOME A BLACK LION TEAM GIVE THE BLACK LION AWARD TO ONE OF YOUR PLAYERS! Army's Will Sullivan wore his Black Lion patch (awarded to all winners) in the Army-Navy game (FOR MORE INFO) The Black Lion certificate is awarded to all winners

An Official Shares His Twisted Interpretation of the Holding Rule! (See"NEWS") The Small-Town Oregon Kid on the Steelers' Roster (See"NEWS") My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me     February 3, 2006 - "People get on me sometimes because we don't have dancing girls or mascots at our games. My response is, we don't need those types of things. Good, entertaining football is what people come to see." Dan Rooney, owner, Pittsburgh Steelers   *********** I trust that you all know that my "memoirs" on Tuesday were a spoof, poking fun at the writer who went on Oprah promoting his memoirs, which he represented as all true. When he was later confronted with the fact that they were more than slightly embellished, he admitted as much, but said, "the characters were all real."   *********** Good Morning Hugh, Read the comments on the young coach moving to Maine, concerned that he might not find the same spirit and quality of football that he was accustomed to in western PA. Fall in Maine is football and I think he will be surprised at the quality of the game and the spirit with which the schools embrace the sport.   Small class c schools may not have the big bands etc, but Friday night is football night in the fall and it is not unusual for 1000 to 1500 fans to be at the games -- not bad for high schools with populations of less than 500 students and towns with populations of 5000 or less. Most class c schools are around the 300 mark in student population.   Large high school football, Class A for our state, is every bit as big and glorious as anywhere in the country. It's not hard to find a Friday night game that has everything a fanatic fan might want to see.   For the SeaHawks (Boothbay Region H.S) football is king in the fall. We have a high school population of 300 and an entire school population k-12 of 700 students but we had over 100 boys in the program. We have a 6th grade team. 7th-8 th grade team, freshman team, JV team, and a varsity team, all running the DW.   Tell the young man to come and say hello and not to worry he will find plenty of football.   Jack Tourtillotte, Boothbay Harbor, Maine (I think the recent Sports Illustrated article on the suicides of several former football players at Winthrop, Maine, while dealing with a tragic subject, did illustrate the passion that surrounds football in Maine. HW)   *********** Coach -- glad to see you are starting to dry out. I have been enjoying reading your 'news' section and enjoyed what you wrote about Maine High School Football. I do hear about more and more schools starting youth programs and look forward to seeing their program get better over the years. Its hard to believe that we are going into our 8th year as a varsity football team.   I was curious if you knew what part of Maine that youth coach was moving into. If he is planning on moving around the Portland area, I would love to speak with him about my middle school program -- we are in need of a quality head coach.   Feel Free to forward this on to him.   Enjoy the sun & the game on Sunday. Its a little different around here without our Patriots involved. Although I may watch the pregame on ABC with Belichick part of it.   Dave Kilborn, Head Football Coach, Gorham High School, Gorham, Maine   *********** Tell the kids it's okay to watch the commercials. No more having to explain to your 10-year-old son (or daughter) what "erectile dysfunction" means.   According to Advertising Age Magazine, The NFL plans to distance itself from erectile-dysfunction drug ads, as a result of "growing concerns about increasingly risqué creativity in the category."   Just goes to show, though, that the greedy NFL didn't have the good judgment or good taste to say no to those people in the first place, and only did so after the public howled ("growing concerns"). Meantime, though, hundreds of thousands of parents had to deal with the discomfort of having to explain to their 10-year-old son (or daughter) what "erectile dysfunction" is.   And this in a society which in other areas makes it a cardinal sin to make even one person "uncomfortable." *********** Hugh, My wife Cindy is a Pittsburgher, so I thought you might enjoy an anecdote.   I had an experience much like that of the kid in Beaver Falls. I'm a loyal Jayhawker, but I did a fellowship in the Econ Dept at Pitt in the early '90s (that's where I met the Mrs.). KU and Pitt met in the second round of the NCAA BB tournament in '91, so I went to watch it with my Pitt buddies at a bar just off campus. I was wearing, as I always did for games, my KU gear &endash; hat jersey, etc. There was some rumbling when I walked in, but it was mostly pretty good natured. Things got uglier as KU built a lead and as the game was winding down, stuff started to fly &endash; mostly napkins & food, but enough backwash from "dead soldiers" to make it clear that people weren't kidding. (BTW - KU 77; Pitt 66) I was little afraid to run the gauntlet to the door alone, so I had to sit and listen to my friends debate the relative importance of their new buddy and their sports loyalties. They ultimately decided that my life was worth more than a game that involved a round ball, but it was a close-run thing. I may owe my life to the twin facts that (1) Pittsburgh is such a football town that they can't waste too much effort on hoops and (2) grad students have their primary loyalty to their undergraduate institutions. Perhaps I was a bit foolhardy back then, but it was pretty damn fun being the only person in the bar cheering for certain plays.   One for the Thumb!   Steve Ellis, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma   *********** Doris Burke of ESPN at the Duke -BC game - said she spoke with an NBA GM who said that J.J. Redick would do well in the pros because he has "the heart of a thief."   Maybe he meant "the guts of a thief."   I always thought that if a guy had heart, he wouldn't be a f--king thief!     2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 1-12-06 (2006 CLINICS) CLINIC LOCATION FEB 25 ATLANTA HOLIDAY INN AIRPORT NORTH - 1380 Virginia Ave - 404-762-8411 MARCH 11 LOS ANGELES HOLIDAY INN-MEDIA CENTER -150 E. Angeleno, Burbank - 818-841-4770 MARCH 18 CHICAGO ST. XAVIER UNIVERSITY - 3700 West 103rd St., Chicago APRIL 1 RALEIGH-DURHAM TBA APRIL 8 PHILADELPHIA TBA APRIL 15 PROVIDENCE COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470 MAY 6 DENVER TBA MAY 13 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA LATHROP, CA. In the works: Buffalo/Western New York... Denver... Detroit... Northern California... Twin Cities... Pacific Northwest     *********** From a fellow Double-Winger...   In NYCU today you brought up the issue of holding....   On a message board I posted this.... Open Hand Blocking ("New-School" blocking)   Rule 9-2-1-(c): An offensive player (except the runner) shall not... use his hands, arms or legs to hook, lock, clamp, grasp, encircle or hold in an effort to restrain an opponent.   Not to bring up a bad discussion, but in Zone blocking as I understand it (punch and grab the breastplate) isn't this in DIRECT violation of this rule? That is either hooking, locking, clamping, GRASPING, encirlcling, or HOLDING to restrain an opponent the way I see it.   Why do officials have the ability to CHANGE the rules to the game as they see fit? Not trying to start an argument, just looking for an honest answer. I could teach my kids to grab jerseys all day with the best of them, BUT it is in violation of the rules of the game. If it is a penalty why not call it?   The response I got in return was this.....   Holding requires two pieces. The first is the grasp, the second is the impeding of progress (restrain in your citation). The first part, the grasp, is very definable. The offensive player has grabbed a defensive player through a hook, lock, clamp, etc. The second part is the impeding of progress, which becomes a judgement call on the part of the official. And the judgement is,"Has the player gained any unfair advantage through his action during the plan and did it impact the outcome?" If the answer to that question is no, then we play on.   This is my thought process on holding flags:   1. Is there a grasp, hook, or some other restraint-type grip being used?   2. If so, was the player's path altered by that move?   3. Did it occur at the point of attack and give the offense an unfair advantage?   If so, then the flag comes out. On #2, if I have two lineman locked up, but the defensive lineman is not trying to get by the offensive lineman, then there is no altering of path or restraining. He isn't being kept from going anywhere. No restraint=no foul. #1 and #2 are both based on the rule. #3 is a matter of philosophy. As an official, I don't want to inject myself into a game unless I have to. If I have a hold by #1 and #2, but not #3, I have a talk with the offender and let him know that I saw it and that if it occurs with the ball close to his area, then he will be flagged.   The funny thing is that kids don't magically start holding during a game. If they do it once, they will do it again. At that point, you pop them.   (Amazing. I didn't know officials were that bright. I had no idea that they could actually get inside the mind of a defender and know what his intentions were, what his path was, what his next step was going to be - (the one he would have taken, that is, if he weren't prevented from taking it because he's being "grasped.")   (From the same official) What I can tell is where he is trying to go. Holding is actually a foul of the feet. If the upper body goes one way and the feet go the other, the lineman is trying to gain seperation and get around the blocker and is being kept from doing so. If he gets taken down, the upper body bends first and then the legs follow. When someone is truly being impeded, it looks very awkward. When football players aren't being impeded, they move relatively smoothly and their upper and lower bodies move together in a unified fashion.   I don't care where they want to go, I care where they are trying to go and being kept from doing so. The goal of every defensive football player is to get to the ball. They have to try to get there before it becomes a foul.   This guy is full of sh--. Feet, my ass. Instead of looking at feet, he should be looking at the guy's f--king hands!   So if two guys are tit-to-tit, because one of them is grabbing the other - isn't he restraining his opponent? Can that official tell if the guy wants to spin off, but can't - because he's being "restrained"???   "Restrain," huh? Uh-oh. Now he's on my turf, because I do understand the meaning of words.   Restrain: "1. To hold back from action; keep in check; suppress; curb; 2. to keep under control; 3. to deprive of physical liberty; 4. to limit; restrict   Hmmm. Sounds to me like what's taking place when an offensive linemen grabs another guy's breastplate and holds on...   And I'll be damned - it doesn't say anything about where the guy is going. Very simply, if he is being held, he is being restrained.   When a police officer grabs a guy at a crime scene - even when nobody can tell where the guy is headed - he is "restraining" the guy!   So I would ask, what part of "restrain" doesn't this guy understand?   I can't believe the way these guys are spinning things in order to justify not doing their jobs!   First, he doesn't understand rules. Now, he doesn't understand the meaning of a word.   Evidently to this official, and no doubt many others, a defensive lineman has to be running around a blocker before holding can occur. What if he can't, BECAUSE HE IS BEING F--KING HELD?   And what about the defensive lineman who is taught to make contact and then shed the blocker and hold his ground? Stay right there? How the hell can he shed a guy who is hanging onto him like a leach? What if the defender CAN"T DO Anything BECAUSE HE IS BEING F--KING HELD???   That is "restraint."   His response:   If he isn't trying to go anywhere (perform an action), there isn't anything that is being suppressed, curbed, kept in check, under control, or deprived. They are just dancing. He has to try to get away, whether that is going around, through or the opposite direction.   But, a**hole, how do you know he is (or isn't) "trying", if HE IS BEING RESTRAINED???   I have yet to see a mismatch that was so lopsided that a player was immobilized and couldn't move at all. I have see a player that didn't know what to do, which can be common with inexperience. They get latched and stop. Had they tried to swim the block, or rip or dip the shoulder, they would have gotten the flag. They didn't know what to do. It wasn't a lack of ability, just knowledge.   On the pass blocking, where this is a bigger issue, if they engage, a rip, turn, or shoulder dip to get around the block is going to give you that seperation. Like the coach above says, they are only going to grab until the DL tries to get away. The key is teaching them to separate so they have to release or risk the flag.   I see. It's the job of the defender to catch the holder.   It truly does sound as if he is determined to prove that up is down and down is up. If this guy were a principal and you caught a kid smoking out in the parking lot, he'd say, "Yeah- but did you actually see him take the cigarette to his lips and inhale and draw the smoke into his lungs and then remove the cigarette from his mouth and then exhale? Because if all you saw was a burning cigarette in his hand, even if nobody else was nearby, I'm afraid I don't have enough to go on..."   Sheesh. A jury full of guys like him would have let Charles Manson off.   This guy is so eager to get around the simple truth - that holding is holding - that he sounds like the people in the White House who told Clinton, "Why don't you just try telling the people that you didn't think a BJ was sex?"   Where this guy really gets hung by his own undies is that he is looking for a mugging, when the rule says he has to penalize the mere effort to restrain - what is illegal is (use of) "hands, arms or legs to hook, lock, clamp, grasp, encircle or hold in an effort to restrain an opponent."   No question, guys - they're trying to turn us all into passing clones...   ************* Regarding this: A referee told us this year flat out that grabbing of the jersey inside the plane of the shoulders is not holding, and they will not call it unless the jersey stretches or they see a 2-point takedown.   Hugh, This is also what we hear out here at the clinics and from the officials. But my bitch is that the Jack-asses will only apply this to the pass blocking. I guarantee every time you do this on a running play (especially on the perimeter) they will call holding. We just can not get a fair consistent call form the officials.   It's like the "Stalling" call in wrestling. If you are going to make the call then it should be constant, and not just make the call out of the blue at a critical point in the match.   We will play 2 games and not get a single call. The next week, get another team of officials and get 3 or 4 calls against us in 1 game.   Lets face it the pros and big collage coaches have the influence on the game. Someone must come up with a way to let us get some voice into this. Is there a person or establishment where a couple of thousand of us could just smoother with letter etc?   However it may take a change back as the game is starting to shift back to more running.   Frank Simonsen, Cape May, New Jersey   (I think, based on the feedback we are getting from officials regarding holding - they are simply NOT going to call it unless it passes for a mugging - the only way to preserve the game as it was intended to be is to require offensive linemen to wear thumbless boxing gloves. I am not kidding. HW)    *********** Coach, I have been enjoying reading your discussions about the illegal grabbing and holding tactics employed by todays unathletic behemoth offensive lineman at all levels of football.  This is why, in my opinion, the pros cannot run very effectively anymore.  I was taught shoulder blocking all my life through high school and college and never taught that other ugly technique.  To me shoulder blocking and the techniques that are required to do it are like mathematics very beautiful, elegant, and pleasing to the mind and body.  The illegal grabbing and holding usurps the rules of football and to me is very unnatural.    One of my teaching techniques when I was coaching involved showing my lineman the design of the shoulder pads and how extra construction was used in the design of the pad to protect the shoulders and that extra plastic could be used to make good blocking surfaces.  If I had employed the grabbing and holding techniques of todays linemen my high school and college line coaches would have told me to remove my shoulder pads as I wasn't using them anyway and they were just getting in the way of what I was doing!!!!!!   Just some random thoughts, but I sure don't like to watch poor line techniques and the missed blocks I see on the TV.   The old line coach, Brad Elliott, Soquel, California You are so right. Have you seen the size of the shoulder pads that today's pro offensive linemen wear, since they don't use their shoulder pads any more? It's why so many of them look pear-shaped. As a result, NFL offensive line play is looking more and more like sumo wrestling   *********** I hear it all the time - "it's a youth offense..."   Meantime, with their high-powered "pro" offenses, this past season NFL teams scored an average of slightly more than 2 TD's a game running and passing (.84 running, 1.26 passing= 2.1 total)   Get this: 11 professional football teams - more than a third of the teams in the NFL - scored ten TDs or less rushing. IN 16 GAMES!   In an entire season, Arizona "rushed" for only TWO touchdowns. Cleveland "rushed" for FOUR, Buffalo FIVE and Baltimore SIX.   Only three teams in the entire F--king NFL - Seattle, San Diego and Denver - had more TDs rushing than field goals!   And they still get away with calling it "football!"   (I think it's directly related to the fact that pros don't know how to block any more. See above discussion.)   *********** Coach do you think the Lonesome Polecat formation has any viability on the H.S. level? Just to screw with an opponent.   Yes I do.   In desperation, I practiced it myself toward the end of this past season. We had a package ready to go in case we ran out of kids to run the Double-Wing. My assistants were pushing me to go with it, and I was wavering, but then our QB went down two days before our last game, and I had to go with a freshman. Not that the freshman wasn't a talented QB, but he was also a key receiver in our Polecat package and we had no replacement for him there.   I do think that with a little bit of work every day, you could shake things up with it.   I plan to talk about it a little at my clinics this year.   *********** What are your thoughts about using this (the Double-Wing) in conjunction with a 4-6 play core utilizing the Texas Tech style spread? (No I'm not clinically insane!!!!)   I don't think you're insane, although since you're a football coach, others may disagree. But I do think that even if you have the people and the know-how to run what Texas Tech runs, you will need to devote all the practice time you have to it, in order to be as good at it as you can be. Seems to me that's the approach that Texas Tech takes, or else when they got down close to the goal line, we'd be seeing their Double-Wing unit trot out onto the field. Similarly, I believe that if you're going to be serious about getting all that you can get out of a system such as the Double-Wing, you're going to need to devote the vast majority of your practice minutes to it. You can certainly run some other things, but you don't want to make the mistake of thinking that the Double-Wing is simple, or maintenance-free, to the point where you can neglect it and go on to other things. Coaching the Double-Wing takes a lot of repetition and attention to fine detail. You have to be picky and willing to stay on top of it, and unwillingness or inability to do that has caused more than one coach to give up on the Double-Wing.   *********** Sorry, you Virginians out there... I'll be the first to admit that George W. Bush will never win any oratory contests, but your governor is a stiff... I'm a Republican, but I'm pretty disgusted with both parties, and it is disappointing to think that a governor with no record at all - a guy who's been in office for less than three weeks - is the best the Democrats could muster for their "response." Actually, my guess is that everybody else who might have been called on to do it was more interested instead in being seen on national TV scoffing at the President as he spoke.   *********** Ahem. Bet you didn't know that one of the best players - if not the best player - in the Super Bowl is a small-town Oregon kid.   It's Troy Palomalu, and he comes from little Winston, Oregon, just outside the slightly larger southern Oregon town of Roseburg, in the heart of timber country. He played his high school ball at Douglas High, whose enrollment can't be more than 500 kids for four grades.   The area is not exactly what you'd call "diverse"- probably 99 per cent white - so a kid of Samoan extraction coming from Winston takes a little explanation.   The short story is that his folks, afraid of gang influences in the LA area, where they lived, sent him at the age of eight to live with his uncle and aunt in small-town Oregon. There, under the influence of those two strong parent-figures, he grew into a good young man, and an athlete good enough to be recruited to play football at USC. And the rest is history.   His uncle and aunt plan to be at the Super Bowl. Needless to say, they are very proud of him as a football player, but in an interview, his uncle seemed proudest of all when he described Troy as "a very humble man."   *********** Hey Coach, I don't claim to be Nostradamus but I'll take credit for this bold prediction. As soon as I heard they were making a movie about two gay cowboys I said to myself "self, there's not an Oscar nomination category safe from this flick." Miracle of all miracles I was correct. Do you think a movie about two hetero cowboys would get as much artistic acclaim? Neither do I ! Believe me I'd rather get a sharp stick in the eye than watch a bunch of Hollywood moonbats give each other awards but it is fascinating to watch them follow their obvious template. My kids can even see it now. They are 17 and 15 and they can see it coming in every movie. Who will the villain be? Easy, rogue military or government agents, greedy unscrupulus environment destroying businessmen, religious leaders (only christians of course), fathers, or basically any white male authority figures. It's to the point that I am almost amazed when I see a picture that doesn't fit the mold. (Saving Private Ryan, Appolo 13) Here's a question I ask people. Can you overlook your dislike for certain lefty actors and still enjoy the movie? Its getting harder and harder and for me and there are a few that have made their movies non-starters. Alec Baldwin, George Clooney, Susan Sarandon, Barbara Streisand for starters. If they're in it I ain't watchin! They even took a great book,The Sum of all Fears by Tom Clancy and destroyed it. A completely plausible story until the Hollywood crunchies got a hold of it. They turned the Islamofascist Arab terrorists into East European Nazis. Post 9/11 too! Can't offend anyone with a little truth now can we? Dan Lane Canton, Ma Dan Lane, Canton, Massachusetts (The whole use of popular media to manipulate public opinion into accepting its twisted outlook is astonishing to me. If it isn't pushing acceptance of the openly gay lifestyle, it's busy persuading us that everyone in our prisons was unjustly convicted. Anyone who disagrees with the gay or feminist or antiwar or environmentalist agenda is a cretin. Drug use is fine and so is sexual promiscuity. Neither of them has any adverse consequences. And, of course, if we ever see such a thing as normal hetero marriage, the husband is either very, very sensitive, to the point of being semi-feminine, or a complete and utter doofus. If men aren't either slavishly dominated by women, they are misogynistic wife-beaters or beer-guzzling slackers. Impressionable young men are shown that women are nothing more than objects of secual desire, and acquisition of material things is all that a man should aspire to - if you ain't rich, you ain't sh--. Real masculinity is seen as a sort of social deformity. To think that in World War II, the creative talent of Hollywood was harnessed to persuade the American people that our cause was worth fighting for. Now, the entertainment indsutry seems dedicated to turning our culture upside-down. Instead of Gary Cooper in "High Noon," we get two smooth-faced "cowboys" making love in a pup tent. If I were President, I would work out a deal with Osama bin Laden - the entertainment business has 90 days HW)   *********** I saw something today that I thought I'd never see. I saw Pat Robertson go all mealy-mouth. On national TV.   Asked by Robin Roberts what he thought of "Brokeback Mountain," the Reverend Robertson - the same man who didn't hesitate to suggest we should take out the dictator of Venezuela or that the people of Dover, Pennsylvania shouldn't look to God for help after they turned their back on Him - wussed out, saying, "I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on it."   *********** Don't know a lot about the recruiting on the West Coast, except that USC's reputed signing success seems to have the Northwest Schools in full Red Alert mode. Oregon and Oregon State each signed seven JC transfers, as did Washington. The Huskies have always taken a bit of haughty pride in the fact that they build their own program - they'd only had 25 JC transfers total since 1995, and the most they'd ever signed in one year prior to this was four - so this year's numbers are something of a revelation. Washington State, which usually signs its share of JC guys, actually had the fewest of any of the Northwest schools, with six.   *********** You never know where you're going to find something interesting, or something you can relate to your life.   Not so long ago, I ws reading a copy of "TAPS," a magazine put out four times a year which contains obituaries of West Point graduates. They're not all men who have died recently; in many cases, they died years ago, and the obituaries often are written anonymously, signed only, "A Classmate."   Don't knock reading obituaries. What are they, really, but biographies, and men's lives fascinate me.   I was reading about one man, Jim Gantsoudes, Class of '64. He grew up in Danville, Virginia, where his father owned a couple of restaurants, and from the age of nine he was working in a restaurant, helping out the family.   Just before he passed away, he shared some thoughts with a classmate. "West Point is a place where you have to learn how the system works," he said, "and you have to learn how to flow with the system. I watched classmates fight the system. I chose rather to flow with the system. So I did well."   Indeed he did. In an institution whose major aim is leadership, he ranked fifth in leadership in his class of 565.   He played 150-pound football (what is now called Sprint Football) and graduated with honors.   After West Point, he served in Vietnam and received the Bronze Star.   Following service, he earned an MBA at Harvard, then worked on Wall Street, rising to the position of managing director with the firm of Morgan Stanley.   When the classmate visited him, as he lay terminally ill, the man who started out working in his father's restaurant in Danville, Virginia, owned a Redding, Connecticut estate with the works - "ponds, pastures, stables, and forested land."   The classmate said he shared with him the secret of his success:   "My ability to listen convinced people that I liked them. My work ethic set the example. So people liked me and worked hard for me. It's that simple."   He went on.   "Be honest and fair. It pays off in the long run. Eventually, people realize that you can be trusted and your word is your bond. They learn that you will choose the harder right over the easier wrong, Eventually, you will develop a reputation that is impeccable."   (Key words in the West Point Cadet's Prayer are "...help us to do the harder right, rather than the easier wrong...")   *********** A high school star from New Jersey claimed that he was induced by recruiting guru Tom Lemming, who works for the Army-All Star game, to say during the telecast of the game that he was still considering Notre Dame, even though he wasn't. The accusation, which Lemming has denied, seems plausible enough, since the All-Star game was tlevised by NBC, the Official Notre Dame Network, and anything that promotes Notre Dame football is good for NBC's ratings. But as I said, Lemming denied doing it.   The kid also claimed that Lemming tried to influence his choice of college. This charge, Lemming doesn't exactly deny.   Here's why - the kid had outstanding grades. He said he wanted to be a doctor. He said he wanted to go to the best school possible.   Lemming admits he said something like, "With grades like yours, and wanting to go to the best school possible, and be a doctor, why aren't you going Duke or Stanford - instead of Florida State?"   *********** I was watching a show about the second Super Bowl, and one of the things that struck me was that there was none of that infantile Gatorade-on-the-coach nonsense. Oh, no. Not with Vince Lombardi. Jerry Kramer, All-Pro guard who later wrote a couple of books about life with the Lombardi Packers, both during and years after their glory days, said that he felt, since they all knew this might be Lombardi's last game as their coach, that he should do something for his coach. So he lifted him onto his shoulders and carried him. Recalled great packer linebacker Dave Robinson, years later, "I felt a great disappoiontment that I didn't have him on my shoulders."   Osama shows that he will stop at nothing in his plot to weaken America... BECOME A BLACK LION TEAM GIVE THE BLACK LION AWARD TO ONE OF YOUR PLAYERS! Army's Will Sullivan wore his Black Lion patch (awarded to all winners) in the Army-Navy game (FOR MORE INFO) The Black Lion certificate is awarded to all winners