Jun06

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

JUNE 2006

Surprise! A Poll Reveals Americans Don't Care About Soccer! (See"NEWS") Test Your Coaching IQ! (See"NEWS")

"Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." (Proverbs, Chapter 8, Verses 10-11)

My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me

June 30, 2006 - "The higher the monkey climbs, the more he shows his ass." Thomas J. Watson, Jr., former President of IBM

*********** ESPNU (if you get it) is going to celebrate July 4 with "USA/Armed Forces Cram Session," its form of tribute to the service academies.

12-3 a.m. - San Diego State vs. Air Force football, originally played Sept. 10, 2005

3-5 a.m. - Air Force vs. Army lacrosse, Apr. 1, 2006

5-8 a.m. - Army vs. Navy sprint football, Nov. 4, 2005

8-11 a.m. - Army vs. Massachusetts football, Nov. 12, 2005

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. - Army vs. Navy lacrosse, Apr. 15, 2006

1-3 p.m. - Army vs. Navy women's basketball, Feb. 4, 2006

3-5 p.m. - Navy vs. Colorado State football, Dec. 22, 2005

5-7 p.m. - 2006 USMA Brigade Boxing Open, Feb. 28, 2006

7-9 p.m. - USA vs. Italy, World Cup Soccer, June 17, 2006 (Hey - how the hell did this get in here?)

9-11:59 p.m. - Army vs. Air Force, football, Nov. 5, 2005

Yikes. I assume that all these times are Eastern, so I think I'll probably be recording the sprint football, which will be starting at 2 AM on the Left Coast. If you've never seen college football played by guys whose weight is limited to 175, watch this one - you won't believe how fast it is and how hard they hit. And for what it's worth, Army's sprint team still runs the wishbone, dating all the way back to 1984 when coach Jim Young installed it and the Cadets, under senior QB Nate Sassaman, went 8-3-1, tieing Tennessee at Knoxville, and beating Michigan State in the Cherry Bowl.

*********** Coach: Just got finished reading your article on the US getting beat by Ghana. You don't know this, but my mom is from Ghana. AND you are correct..when Ghanaian kids come here..they want to play FOOTBALL..american..football. Granted my dad was from North Carolina so I may have had some influence by watching the University of Michigan every weekend (still do to this day). Speaking only for myself, I tried soccer in grade school..and hated it...always wanted to play football and finally got a chance to in high school although briefly!!! My uncle used to play for a very good Ghana club team (Hearts of Oak) and was very good. Even though I had that in my "blood" so to speak... AMERICAN FOOTBALL IS KING!!

Have a good season. St, Martin Torrence, Philadelphia (The proof of what Coach Torrence says is the number of kids with African surnames, undoubtedly first- or second-generation Americans, now playing real (American) football. HW)

*********** My wife and I spent the weekend on the beautiful Oregon Coast, at a place called Rockaway Beach, where one of my former players, Cole Shaffer, married Brenda Lanman. It was a true "beach wedding" - the bridesmaids, otherwise dressed conventionally, walked in barefooted; the groom, dressed in a suit, wore flip-flops. The couple stood on a small platform perched on the sand, with the Pacific right behind them.

Cole was a special kid. His folks moved into LaCenter the summer before his senior year, and he got into the swing of things by playing football. When he proved he could play center, that enabled us to move our former center, a 285-pounder, to tackle. And in the last two weeks of our season, he earned the distinction of being the first center in the Wildcat system. He was the first center to tell me "Coach, I like this better" (than smashing himself in the gonads every play).

A year after graduation, Cole helped me as a volunteer assistant at Washougal, Washington (between him and the head freshman coach, at least I had two assistants I could trust), but after finding he really had an aptitude for sales, he put off college and started in sales with NAPA, winding up Denver.

Now, at the ripe old age of 26, he has bought the NAPA store in Boulder, Colorado, a rather sizable undertaking. I know he'll be successful. It's there's anybody who'll do whatever it takes to be successful, it's a guy who's played center.

Brenda, a marketing executive in Denver, is an Iowa farm girl, and a graduate of Buena Vista College in Storm Lake. Iowans were well represented at the wedding. I hope they didn't hear "beach wedding" and come out expecting to go swimming. The North Pacific is a toasty 50 degrees - and treacherous.

The reception was held inside a large tent pitched on the beach, and I had a chance to meet a lot of people from the NAPA organization (Cole's dad, Brad, is a regional sales manager). I came away really impressed by their camaraderie - they really care about each other and about what they do. I thought immediately of military guys who'd all served together at one time or another, and now enjoy reunions like these. And I came away impressed by the role their wives played in their lives. I don't know enough to be able to say whether NAPA is a successful company, but based on what I know about successful teams, I'm going to bet they kick ass.
*********** A Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 adults found that just 6% are following the tournament very closely. Another 15 per cent said they are following it "somewhat closely."

That leaves more than three-fourths of Americans (78%) who are not following the action very closely or not following it at all.

In fact, nearly half of all those surveyed - 47 per cent - said they were "not at all" interested.

*********** Most of us have had managers like this... while visiting us recently in Washington, Mathias Bonner, a coach in Germany, received a call from someone in his organization, wanting to know where the kicking tee was.

*********** I enjoyed Coach Muckian's comments on the Tennessee v. Miami '86 Sugar Bowl. I remember it well. Tell him another good UT tape is the Tennessee v. Notre Dame game in 1979 when Majors' squad crushed a Dan Devine coached team including TE Mark Bavaro. That was the game where most fair-weather Vol fans were relieved that Coach Majors had finally eliminated the last vestiges of the Bill Battle era.

Regards, Keith Babb, Northbrook, Illinois

*********** Coach, What a gutty performance by OSU. I was pulling hard for them, although it was hard to root against those young, North Carolina kids. It was a great series, and nice to see a team from an area that can't play baseball in Jan and February at all levels win it all. It brought great memories about watching games at Rosenblatt Stadium and what a great job the entire city of Omaha does in putting on this event. I hope they never move it from there because it really is like a "field of dreams" and is a great experience for all these young men.

Again, congrats to the Beavers. Ron Timson, Umatilla, Florida (Formerly of Omaha) The whole college world series thing has been VERY BIG out here, and Omaha is a VERY SPECIAL place to Beaver fans. It was all very exciting and fun to be a part of. They really seem to be good kids playing for a good coach. His younger brother, by the way, is a HS coach outside Portland.)

*********** Coach, This month I have replaced my 2nd hip. While on the mend, I have gotten to love the cartoon series KING OF THE HILL. What a take on the meaning, perceived or real, on the role of football in middle America, as well as the mores of middle America in conflict with a changing world.

I can't believe this gem was created by the pair who gave us Beavis and Butthead. I've just given a small sample of what I've discovered on the mend.

Coach Kaz (Mark Kaczmarek) Davenport, Iowa

1. HANK: Bobby, I never thought I'd need to tell you this, but I would be a bad parent if I didn't. Soccer was invented by European ladies to keep them busy while their husbands did the cooking.

BOBBY: Why do you have to hate what you don't understand?

HANK: I don't hate you, Bobby.

BOBBY: I meant soccer.

HANK: Oh. Oh, yeah, I hate soccer. Yes.

2. PEGGY: At Tom Landry Middle School, we would never think of extending special privileges to the athletes.

MARLON: Peggy, this isn't Middle School. This is real life. We've got college football coaches at our games, and they aren't coming to watch David draw a triangle.

MIRIAM: Don't worry, Peggy. David Kalaiki-Alii is unteachable anyway.

PEGGY: Unteachable?

MARLON: I spent six weeks in Health trying to get him to brush up and down. He's like a wall.

3. BOOSTER: She flunked David and put him on three weeks' academic probation. You know what happens in those three weeks? San Marcos. Belton. McMaynerbury. McMaynerbury, Hank!

4. TUG: And another fumble from senior Charlie Maiken, who was named Arlen's scholar/athlete of the year! He's all yours, Princeton!

5. HANK: Years from now, no one will remember what a hexagon is. But you win State, and that goes up on the water tower.

6. DAVID: I've been thinking about this "No pass, no play" stuff, and I've decided that if I don't pass, then I should no play.

PEGGY: You mean it?

DAVID: I probably should have something to fall back on. I mean, the odds of me not making pro are what, 50-50?

7. HANK: The problem here is with your wife. You should probably be talking to her. Yep, I guess that's the plan. Go talk to your wife.

ENRIQUE: No. I can't talk to her -- I am a man. Besides, my wife is not as easy to talk to as you are, Hank.

HANK: What about someone else? Someone who knows you personally, like a priest or a soccer coach?

ENRIQUE: Impossible! I am a Mexican-American, and in my community it would be a disgrace to speak of my marriage problems.

HANK: Mexicans don't talk about their feelings? That's great! So why'd you give that up?

8. HANK: Bobby looks pretty good in that uniform.

BILL: Yep.

DALE: Yep.

BOOMHAUER: M-hm.

HANK: Think the Cougars have a chance this year?

BILL: No.

DALE: Nope.

BOOMHAUER: Nuh-uh.

9. HANK: Settle down, Bobby. That's the kind of attitude that drove Mark Gastineau into boxing.

10. COACH SAUERS: Okay, Louisa May, go play your lawn fairy ball. Just leave your penis in the bucket

11. SOCCER MOM # 1: I know it's bigger than the other SUVs, but it makes me feel safe. I mean, if I have an accident in that thing, I'm going to live.

SOCCER MOM # 2: Well, for me, it's all about convenience. Mine's got everything from headlight wipers to heated seats.

PEGGY: Oh, yes, that is a must, isn't it? My butt is always either warmed by my car seat or covered by my sweater. I have to keep it at optimum temperature or I could die from mild discomfort. And you know what else would make me die? If by mistake I paid so much attention to my child's game that I maybe raised my voice. Oh, I would just die! Or if I got stuck with a bunch of losers who could not recognize a dead-on Fat Albert impression, well, I would just die a thousand deaths. You know what? I have got a football game to watch.

12. Hank: An all Texas Super Bowl... His will be done.

13. BOBBY: Come on, y'all, we were all Cougars once. We're getting our butts kicked over there. I for one have had enough of this dang lawyer-ball. Haven't you?

14. BOBBY: I'd rather be on a losing football team than a winning soccer team any day.

*********** Don't know the origin of this next one except it was sent me by Mark Kaczmarek, of Davenport, Iowa, who has had a lot of time on his hands...

THE DANGER OF SOCCER

As I strolled by a local park the other evening, I watched a group of young boys trying to keep a large ball in the air using only their feet. I asked one of the adult supervisors what was going on, and he informed me that they were having "soccer practice". Observing this exercise a while longer, something jogged my memory. I said to myself , "Soccer practice, my ass. They're learning how to goose step." Did Adolf and Uncle Joe have their young socialists playing real football? Hell no!! They were teaching them how to crush freedom in Eastern Europe under the guise of soccer… Wake up America!!! First, they take away real football in Ann Arbor or Tuscaloosa and make you play games without using your hands. Next, they'll come to confiscate your guns. And before you know it, there's no more free press, religion or speech and you're being marched off to the nearest feminist sports collective to get estrogen shots. Remember, it starts with soccer.

*********** Hey &endash; check this out. My youth wrestling Coach was just hired as the Head Wrestling Coach for the new high school here in Rockwall (argh! We're now a 2 high school town!). That was great news for him, and it really gives credibility to our youth program..he's a terrific young Coach, and was my son Hunter's 5th grade teach. A really good guy. The bad news is that left me with a huge hole to fill. As you can imagine, wrestling Coaches aren't exactly "easy" to come by &endash; much less one that will work for virtually nothing, and has the character traits that I think are so important.

But I guess I'm living right &endash; I recently helped coordinate a first here in Texas &endash; it was a Ken Chertow wrestling camp, held in Dallas. Chertow is an old PA boy, and runs some of the premier wrestling camps in the country. www.kenchertow.com - Anyway, I worked with Ken to get a Dallas-based camp that just ended last week. (side note..we had about 175 wrestlers attend the camp, so he will be back!)

During that camp, I met one of the clinicians who is a recent Penn State grad/wrestler. It turns out he got married right after graduation this year, and moved down here so he could pursue a graduate degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. Where did he move? Royse City &endash; in Rockwall County, about 10 minutes from my house!!! So I have him and his new bride over to the house last Sunday night, along with the 2 high school Coaches and their families for a little BBQ around the pool thing. Well, to make a short story long, the Rockwall Youth Wrestling club now has a new Head Coach &endash; Coach Jeremy Hart! This all came together so great!!! It's really amazing.

Just thought I'd share that story with you &endash; I'm so excited about this young man working with our kids! His last job was as a youth pastor! Now THAT'S they kind of guy I want running a youth program!

Take care Coach -- Scott Barnes, Rockwall, Texas (In a state that for some reason has never done a whole lot in wrestling, Coach Barnes has been building up quite a wrestling program in the Rockwall area. Between traveling to Oklahoma every weekend to wrestle, and getting a coach from Pennsylvania, those Rockwall kids could be kicking some serious butt in Texas wrestling one of these days. HW

*********** Dear Coach Wyatt: I read with great interest your comments on Oregon's "unusual" uniforms, that although you are not sold on them from a style standpoint, you believe that they are a valuable recruiting aid, bringing attention to the school and subsequently bringing in more quality athletes.

I have no doubt that this is true, and in my opinion this is indicative of a general decline is societal values. Or at the very least reflects on the fact that the true "Student Athlete" may be a vanishing species at the Division I level.

Am I mistaken, or was there once a time when a college could lure recruits with the promise of a great education to compliment the football experience? Or a beautiful campus, with a great faculty and great facilities. A high graduation rate of the school's athletes. Alumni who are captains of industry, doctors, engineers, teachers. Surely this approach cannot be the soul province of the Service Academies and a couple of exceptional Division I schools!

Admittedly I know little of the academic reputation of Oregon, nor any of its alumni, but surely the university must offer something other than "Buck Rogers" uniforms as enticements to prospective athletes, and surely the chance to wear them cannot be the deciding factor for the recruits that do sign with that school!

Just my two cents worth, Coach.

Respectfully, Mark Rice, Beaver, Pennsylvania

I would say that we are in general agreement about the way things should be. Unfortunately, lots of kids other than football players choose their colleges for reasons other than academic, including which is the best party school.

I do think that in the best of all possible worlds, college football teams would be made up of real students, but based on what we know about practices going back as far as the 1920's, this has seldom been the case. In an America united in a way that few other nations are, our loyalty to our colleges is our form of tribalism, and we simply want to prove ourselves superior by beating the people in the next state - or town or county - over.

It bothers me that colleges are so hypocritical as to profess on the one hand to be great research institutions while on the other hand admitting football players who have no business being in any self-respecting college, and for the most part have no interest in doing anything remotely academic. I nearly wretch when I watch the made-for-TV PSA's that colleges run in every football broadcast, showing scientists in white smocks gazing at nuclear accelerators - at Florida State University (to name only one).

And then, of course, there is the NCAA, running its own PSA's featuring former "student-athletes" who are now doctors and veterinarians and jazz musicians, the idea being that the NCAA is about developing the whole person, blah, blah, blah. You may have noticed that we haven't seen any Division IA football or basketball players yet.

But given all that, I still love to watch college football. That is my vice. Hell, people know that pro wrestling is a sham and they still love it. People know that Barry Bonds is an artifice (a Rasmussen Reports survey shows that sixty-six percent of baseball fans believe that he used illegal steroids to achieve his records, while just 18 per cent think steroids were not involved) and yet they still cheer for him; they know that the NFL is shot through with thugs, and yet it is our most popular spectator sport by far.

And given that the reality of college football is that if you don't recruit them, somebody else will, and they'll likely bring 'em to your place and whup you, I understand the need to recruit. I'm not wild about Oregon's uniforms, but I admire their "business plan" which entails using their uniforms to position themselves in high school players' minds as a "happenin' place."

Oregon is okay as most universities go, but no football players is going to go there to "get a great education" any more than he is going to choose Alabama or Arizona or Arkansas (nothing against them - simply going in alphabetical order) for the same reason.

The only way that young football players would select their colleges on the basis of their academic strength and selectivity (and attractiveness to top students) would be if we were to eliminate athletic scholarships.

If that were the case, the top ten D-IA football teams would probably be (in no particular order):

Duke, Northwestern, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Army, Navy, Air Force, Tulane and Rice.

I only listed nine. Perhaps Notre Dame would slip in there, perhaps Cal or Michigan or a few other highly-selective state universities, but I can't help thinking that if there were no longer any football scholarships for anybody (fat chance), Harvard and Yale might even get back in the mix.

Back to your original premise, though, while it would be ideal if kids were to choose their colleges for reasons other than their football uniforms, Oregon knows its market. And when every single major college tarts itself up in one way or another to appeal to the kind of "low-achieving students" that so many top recruits represent, attention-getting uniforms can help a school stand out from the pack.

*********** Hee, hee - My grandson, Wyatt Love, lives in Durham, North Carolina, home of Duke University. His mom and dad are both Duke grads, so naturally, he is a Duke fan. Despite Duke's success on the basketball floor, though, it is not always easy to be a Duke fan when you are surrounded by Tar Heels. And so it was that when his baseball team had its end-of-season picnic recently, he took advantage of the opportunity to rankle his teammates, all of them Tar Heel fans, by wearing something we gave him for Christmas - an orange-and-black OREGON STATE BEAVERS tee-shirt.

*********** Dipping back into my files from several years back, I came across this -

Just finished talking to my high school coach, Ed Lawless, back in Pennsylvania. He is a single wing guy, and he agrees with me that the offense is made to order for the so-called "slash" player - imagine Kordell Stewart as a single wing tailback! In fact, a lot of what Kansas State does with Michael Bishop out of their "shotgun" sure looks like single wing stuff to me. Some of the guys I've seen just this year - Akili Smith at Oregon, Ortege Jenkins at Arizona, Corby Jones at Missouri - convince me that it's just a matter of time before somebody brings back the single wing. (Whether they'll have the guts to call it by that name is another matter! )

Ed played his college ball in the late '40s, at Penn, then a single-wing power whose center was Hall of Famer Chuck Bednarik. Penn's George Munger was one of the East's top coaches, and year in and year out, his Quakers held their own against the nation's best, but when Penn's administration decided to join the no-scholarship Ivy League, while still honoring its long-term scheduling commitments against the likes of Notre Dame, Penn State, Virginia Tech and California, Coach Munger said no thanks - and retired.

His successor, Steve Sebo, was a good football man, but he should have listened to George Munger: his teams would lose more than 20 games in a row before Penn's schedule finally came down to the level of its talent. Coach Munger, incidentally, made do with a staff of only three assistants, one of whom was his long-time line coach, Rae Crowther . In coaching the offensive line, Coach Crowther (rhymes, by the way, with "brother) was considered a master technician who had few equals. So into the techniques of blocking was coach Crowther that he invented and patented the blocking sled that still bears his name, and eventually got out of coaching to devote full time to the sled business. Ed speaks with reverence of Coach Crowther, and like me, can't stand watching a lot of today's offensive line play. He says, "if Rae Crowther saw some of the 'blocking' that goes on today, he'd throw up!"

*********** Let's see if you have the Coaching IQ to apply this business analogy to your approach to offense...

William R. Johnson became CEO of Heinz in 1998. When he was also named Chairman of the Board in 2000, the company was selling more than 100 different products, from chicken to toiletries. But in those two years, Heinz's share of the ketchup market had slipped 10 per cent, to around 50 per cent. (Ketchup, condiments and sauces account for 41 per cent of all Heinz's business.)

At that point, Mr. Johnson decided that the company was trying to do too much - in the words of The Wall Street Journal's Janet Adamy, it was "spread too thin" - and it was time to start bailing out of businesses that weren't central to its main mission, and concentrating instead on its core areas: ketchup, condiments and sauces, frozen meals, snacks and baby foods.

Said Mr. Johnson, "You cannot be great at everything."

*********** "In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." Theodore Roosevelt 1907 (2006 CLINICS)

CLINICS START AT 9 AM SHARP AND GO UNTIL 4 PM WITH A 1-HOUR BREAK FOR LUNCH

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

HOLIDAY INN, 432 Pennsylvania Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000

APRIL 29
PROVIDENCE

COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470

MAY 6
DENVER

WESTMINSTER HS - Westminster, CO (For more details call Coach Kevin Uhlig - 303-870-8582)

MAY 13
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS - LATHROP, CA.

JUNE 10
PACIFIC NORTHWEST

PHOENIX INN & SUITES - 12712 SE 2ND Circle, Vancouver WA - 360-891-9777

Attendees will receive a complimentary DVD breaking down, play-by-play, the Full-House Belly-T offense of the powerful 1953-1954 Army teams, coached by Earl "Red" Blaik, with Vince Lombardi as his offensive assistant. On the video you will see action clips of Army greats, including the immortal Don Holleder, whose memory is honored by the Black Lion Award. This DVD is not for sale. It is provided by the Board of the Black Lion Award in the interests of furthering football and the Black Lion Award itself.

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

Hey 30-Year-Olds! Forget MySpace and Check Out Immokalee HS! (See"NEWS") My Suggestions For Making Soccer More Appealing to Americans! (See"NEWS")

"Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." (Proverbs, Chapter 8, Verses 10-11)

My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me

June 27, 2006 - "Failures want pleasing methods. Successes want pleasing results." Earl Nightingale

*********** In the event that USA Soccer (or whatever Big Futbol is called) might now be taking stock of where it stands with the American populace at large, after their hopes and dreams of World Cup (Presented by adidas) domination have gone down the gurgler, I offer my suggestions, free of charge, on how they might get soccer to appeal to us Ugly Americans. You may ask what I am doing, trying to help the caretakers of the weenie game, but you will soon see...

Memo

To: USA Soccer or Soccer USA (or whatever name you're going by)

From: Hugh Wyatt, a Football (real football - we're in American if you hadn't noticed) Coach

Subject: Getting Real Americans to Care About Soccer

1. I know some of you would probably prefer not to be American, but for the sake of your precious sport, get rid of all the cutesy attempts to emulate Europeans. No more silly pretentiousness like calling teams "FC Whatever." In America, "F" stands for Football (American) or the F-Word. Not Futbol. And "Real Salt Lake?" How in hell are you going to get anybody except the people who are already bladderheads to understand what that means? Same thing for "pitch". It's a field. Look - we've been playing baseball for well over 100 years,and we know what a pitch is."Match?" We're not playing tennis or some board game. "Nil?" Why do the foo-foo soccer types keep trying to foist that one on us. If you insist on positioning your game as something foreign, keep it up. But just remember this - "NOTHING" works just fine for us in all our real sports and we don't need any help keeping score. And - so help me God - "changing room." Changing room? I honestly heard a reporter who had to be an American evidently trying to impress everyone in the room with his knowledge of soccer lingo by asking US coach Bruce Arena what he told his players in the "changing room."

2. Get yourself a scoreboard clock with a stop-start button and somebody to work it. In America, we can find clock operators for high school JV games. Middle school games, even. And stop the frigging clock when play is stopped for an injury, and then, when play resumes - I know this is going to take some getting used to - restart it. And then you won't have to have this idiotic phenomenon called injury time or extra time or whatever the hell it's called. And as long as you're at it, change your clocks from showing time elapsed to time remaining. It's much more dramatic to see how little time is left.

3. Do something about all those ties. Play overtime if you have to. Oops. Bad suggestion. If a game has just ended tied 1-1, it could take another hour just for another shot on goal, not to mention a score. Never mind. If you're playing in front of American fans, they've already suffered enough.

4. Introduce another ball. This way, there would be a lot more action, sometimes at opposite ends of the field at the same time. And then, the soccer weenies could slap bumper stickers on their BMWs saying "IT TAKES TWO BALLS TO PLAY SOCCER."

5. Eliminate the goalies. You might increase scoring, although it wouldn't have made a difference for the US team, which went through two entire World Cup games (matches to you faux Europeans out there) with one shot on goal. But it would get rid of those hideous jerseys that make goalies look like the jokers in a deck of cards.

6. (This is my personal favorite) Permit players to pick up the ball and carry it into the opponent's goal, but permit the opponents to try to prevent him from doing so by grabbing him with their hands and throwing him to the ground, at which point he would have to... I don't know. I haven't figured all that out yet. The rules, obviously, are going to take some work, but I think this idea has real promise...

*********** Coach: I just read that we busted a plot to bomb the Sears tower that involved 5 American citizens all from Liberty City in Miami-Dade County. For those of us who have seen "The Year of the Bull" is it any surprise? Gabe McCown, Piedmont, Oklahoma

(I keep reading about this as a case of "homegrown" terrorism, but you could find some people who would argue that parts of Miami don't really have all that much in common with the rest of the US. HW)

*********** Coach Wyatt, Thank you for this. (My indictment of soccer parents. HW) Funny, truthful and perceptive. A masterful summation. (I'm saving this diatribe, by the way.) Dave Potter, Durham, North Carolina

*********** My wife and I attended a memorial service Friday for one of those giants who leave the world a better place when they go.

Dr. Emil Brooking was 91. He was born in Indiana and graduated from high school in Idaho and from medical school at Northwestern University. He served his residency in Seattle, and while in the Northwest met the woman who would be his wife of 42 years. He served in the Army medical corps in World War II, and after returning from overseas, he settled in Camas, Washington, then a small paper mill town, and practiced general medicine here for 43 years.

His service was held in the town library's meeting room, but it wasn't big enough. The place was jammed. In all those years as a small-town doctor, you touch a lot of lives, especially when you're the kind of man Dr. Brooking was. Several of the people in attendance, no longer youngsters themselves, confessed that he had delivered them.

My wife and I scarcely knew the man, and yet we knew him well. Let me explain. Since 1987, we have lived in the house he built back in 1950, on what they once called "Pill Hill," because this is where the town's doctors all lived.

You don't have to spend a lot of time here to appreciate the sort of person who would have the vision to build a house like this, or the love of nature to have planted around the property the enormous variety of trees and bushes that he did.

But all my wife and I really needed to know about Dr. and Mrs. Brooking we discovered one day when my wife was raking leaves by our garage and uncovered a portion of its foundation previously hidden. There, embedded in the concrete, were the handprints of Dr. and Mrs. Brooking ("Daddy" and "Mommy") and those of six of their children (they would have two more). And the pawprints of their dog, Rocky. The date was inscribed - 1954. That little expression of a family's love and unity is one of the most moving things I've ever seen.

When Dr. and Mrs. Brooking moved from here, it was to a house on the Columbia River, surrounded by the nature that they both loved so well. Four years ago, rather than sell to a developer (with 900 feet of riverfront, it was easily worth millions), they donated their property to a nature conservancy for the public's enjoyment.

What an awesome family they raised. At the service, four of Dr. Brooking's daughters sang a beautiful Catholic hymn in Latin. And then, one of them said that wherever they went in their car, they would sing, with Daddy providing harmony, and at the end of the service, Mrs. Brooking and their eight grown children stood up front and asked us all to join in singing, "You Are My Sunshine."

*********** Coach - I don't mind Phil Knight using Oregon as his personnel guinea Pig, God Knows He donated enough cash to them, But Does He have to use the Football team as his personal Bill Board with those Half-Ass ,Half-Baked Uniforms , Coach Len Casanova must be rolling in his grave !! Go try this crap on the softball team, baseball team, hoops or track, I don't Give A F**K, but don't make the Flag-Ship Team the laughing stock and make a mockery out of the game of Football.

Coach - Just Got the 1986 Sugar Bowl Tenn Vs. Miami through the Vol Mall, You have to get This ! ( This was the Game the Vols were Big Under dogs, and Johnny Majors and the Vols whipped Miami Asses ) WOW !! Not only is Keith Jackson in a Class by himself, but again this game proves why Frank Broyles may have been the Best Color Analyst in the History of Television Sports, Not Only Does Broyles describe in Distinct detail what you Just saw and WHY, He keys you in and gives you a heads Up and What You Will see !! Great Stuff !!!

Coach - the local all sport Radio station in Boston Runs a Comical Taped Call in Line at the end of there Drive -Time show, People leave Wise -Ass comments usually about the Local Happenings, Some Guys said about the World Cup - I'm paraphrasing - " This is just Great ! Brazil won a again in the World Cup Now we will have F**kin Traffic Jams in Everett and Somerville for Hours " !! LOL !! LOL !!!

See ya next week coach - John Muckian Lynn, MA (While I am not wild about Oregon's fashions, I am all for it because it gives them a leg up in recruiting and it is not cheating. It is not easy going up against USC and UCLA when you don't live within an hour and a half of a major airport, and Eugene, Oregon, while nice enough, is best known as a hotbed of campus activism of every liberal cause imaginable. And very white. So like those uniforms or not, they get Oregon national attention. I think that there may be kids with no particular affiliation with Oregon who are at first attracted to it by the uniforms, and I doubt that any are repelled by them. When you are an Oregon, attempting to keep up with the Michigans and Miamis and USCs, you need every edge you can get.

As for changing styles, I see lots of other schools playing fast and loose with their traditional uniforms, all in the interest of - what? - and I disapprove of that even more than I disapprove of Oregon's yearly switches. It seems that as long as the redesign copies the Denver Broncos' style it;s okay.

The Ducks' big rivals, Oregon State, see, to do something different every year, and I can't figure out why. (Hell, half the time I can't figure out what.) In fact, with the exception of USC, UCLA and Arizona State, every single Pac-10 school has fiddled with its uniforms, including Stanford, which even introduced a new (non-school) color - black - to the basic cardinal-and-white scheme it had employed going back to the 1950s.

Don't be too hard on the Ducks. Wayne Hardin at Navy typically would have a totally different shirt when the Mids played Army, and any time Notre Dame wants to get its players and fans juiced up, all it has to do is pull the old warm-up-in-navy-blue-and-come-out-in-kelly-green trick.

The wonder is how the big schools that take the big money from Nike manage to hold off the queer-eye-for-the-straight-guy design types on Beaverton who would just love to do makeovers on the likes of Michigan and Penn State.

It disgusts me to see large numbers of foreigners dancing in our streets and waving "their" flag because "their" country won a f--king soccer game.

If I were in charge of the Immigration service, we would stop every f--king adult soccer game we see - just blow a whistle and walk out on the field and ask for papers, and anybody who didn't have them would go right to the head of the list to have his ass shipped back home to wherever.

In one fell swoop, this would attack two threats to American culture - illegal immigration and soccer. Its code name would be Operation Futbol. HW)

*********** Maybe you could give me some advice on this one. I have devised a sports product (or teaching aid) that I would like to market. I would imagine I should get it patented first and then start either a) making it myself or having it mass produced. How should I proceed with this?

I wouldn't know how to tell you to proceed with your "sports product," other than to say that you probably should contact an attorney with experience in patents and intellectual property. From what I have heard, if somebody with muscle wants to steal your idea, they are usually astute enough to copy it without technically violating your patent/copyright, and deep enough in the pockets to grind you down legally anyway.

It seems to me the approach in marketing it is either to go whole-hog and dominate the market so that it's not attractive to competitors to jump in, or else to operate under the radar and build slowly.

In the first case, that would entail pretty much involving somebody big to handle production/marketing of your idea, but while great volume is possible, you will be amazed at how much they will take and how little they will give you. And, they may not do a good job of either production or marketing. And companies have been known to buy an idea and just sit on it, just to keep it from coming onto the market and giving them competition.

In the latter case, you control everything, contracting out the manufacture and marketing it yourself. The marketing may be a hassle since you already have a job, but you can go on the Internet and you can get out to clinics and conventions and trade shows. Your scope is limited, but you control all decisions - and, I might add, a far greater share of revenues.

*********** An Internet howler...

NEW LAW COMING FROM CONGRESS --

AMERICANS WITH NO ABILITIES ACT (AWNAA)

WASHINGTON, DC - Congress is considering sweeping legislation which provides new benefits for many Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA) is being hailed as major legislation by advocates for the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.

"Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California). "We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they do a better job, or have some idea of what they are doing."

The President pointed to the success of the US Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Approximately 74 percent of postal employees lack job skills, making this agency the single largest US employer of Persons of Inability.

Private sector industries with good records of non-discrimination against the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home-improvement "warehouse" stores (65%). The DMV also has a great record of hiring Persons of Inability (63%).

Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million "middle manager" positions will be created, with important sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.

Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees.

The legislation also provides for substantial tax breaks to corporations which maintain a significant level of Persons of Inability in middle positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.

Finally, the AWNA ACT contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Nonabled, such as discriminatory interview questions such as "Do you have any goals for the future?" or "Do you have any skill, talent or experience which relates to this job?"

"As a Nonabled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan due to her lack of notable job skills. "This new law should really help people like me." With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Said Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), "It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her adequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation."

So this is the October Surprise the Democrats have been sitting on. Scary, because there's a whole lot of People With Inability out there. I'm sure that even as we speak the Demos have college kids serving their summer internships filling in their mail-in ballots for them.

*********** There is rape, and there is "rape."

According to the Associated Press, a woman who claims she was raped by a fellow Coast Guard Academy cadet last summer testified at a court-martial last week that she remembers almost nothing of that night because she drank about two bottles of wine and blacked out.

The woman, who is now an officer, testified that it was not until the next morning that she learned that she and her "on-again, off-again" boyfriend had had sex. (The accused rapist, by the way, is named in the AP story, but the accuser, in tribute to the kind of double standard that threatens every heterosexual male, is not.)

The woman said (the accused) told her that the condom had broken and recommended she seek emergency contraception, but she did not know whether to believe him. Weeks later, she got a positive result on a home pregnancy test.

"I thought that I had been date-raped," she said under questioning by a military prosecutor.

It appears that the woman had an abortion, but the judge refused to allow any medical records into evidence, saying that it would prejudice the jury. Jurors were told only that the woman did not carry the child to term.

Now, keeping in mind that this woman's word alone could send a man to prison for most of his adult life, read these next two sentences very carefully...
The woman acknowledged that the night after the alleged "rape" occurred, she and the alleged "rapist" attended a concert with friends, then spent the night together in a hotel.

She said they remained in contact last fall at the Coast Guard Academy, and months after the alleged "rape," had sex again.

*********** ADULT STUDENTS PLAYED FOOTBALL, SOCCER, read the headline in the Naples (Florida) News.

FOOTBALL! That's always sure to get people's attention, as in FOOTBALL PLAYERS ARRESTED, CHARGED AFTER (Fill in the blank)

See, if you can just get FOOTBALL into your headline, people will read it.

It seems that the high school in immokalee, Florida, 'way back up in the woods among the Everglades (to paraphrase Chuck Berry), has had a few "student-athletes" playing on its teams who were a little, uh, old. One was 30. Another was 23. Since the news first broke, several more overage "student-athletes" have been exposed.

Along the way, immokalee High's soccer team won a couple of district championships and its football team won a state title and a district title.

In addition to their advanced ages, these are foreign kids, Haitians mostly, and at least some of them have been discovered to have "multiple" birth certificates.

Oh, dear - dare I say it? - there is the distinct possibility that the illegal student-athletes are illegals, period. Not that that would matter, given that school administrators throughout America routinely and openly defy the law of our land by refusing to check on their students' legality. In their behalf, it could be that they're way too busy applying for grants to get still more government money - from the same government whose laws they flout. (Schools to US taxpayers: pass the money, suckers.)

But the football team really does seem to have been shafted here. These kids were soccer players. (Coming from a third-world country like Haiti, what the hell else would they play?)

But one of them, of legal age if not residence, was imported onto the football team as - what else? - a keeker. He helped the team win the state title in 2004 with a 43-yard field goal. (By the way, I am an old dinosaur who refuses to have a kicker who isn't also a football player.)

And when he got hurt two-thirds of the way through the season last year, what else could the coach do but important another keeker, this one the 30-year-old, who had played on the school soccer team for three years. Three years!)

(NOTE TO SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS EVERYWHERE: This is what happens when you don't check their records carefully. MySpace.com is under attack right now by parents of young girls being hit on by older guys - and meanwhile, in classrooms all over America, those same young girls could be sitting next to 30-year-olds.)

It's not as if they really needed the new kicker. True, in the two games in which he "played," he kicked 12 extra points and a field goal, but immokalee won 48-10 and 51-0.

And the coach, as a "thank-you", let him kick a few in post-season.

The school has been fined $1,000 for each ineligible player, and the two sports involved have been hit with sanctions - the soccer team has been placed on two-year's probation, the football team one. And the soccer coach (did I mention that he was also the principal? And that after a sheriff's deputy told him - back in October - that he had information that there was a 23-year-old playing on his soccer team he claims it took him seven months to verify the the information was correct?) has been "reprimanded." His punishment - get this - is that he can't be the soccer coach there - ever again - and he won;t receive a raise in pay. This year.

Yet the headlines read, ADULT STUDENTS PLAYED FOOTBALL, SOCCER.

If you want to check out the immokalee story as it continues to unfold... http://www.naplesnews.com/news/prepzone/ihs/

*********** Meantime, all hell is about to break loose in the Sunshine State, as a result of the immokalee fiasco. Seems as if lots of schools are out of compliance with the rules as they pertain to "international students."

As reported in the Naples News...

"I'm flabbergasted at the depth of this problem," Hester (Sonny Hester, FHSAA associate commissioner).said. "We have an entire county (Collier) that hasn't been compliant. We have forms just focusing on this aspect of students but it caught me by surprise at the number of schools that are obviously not following the rules."

The rule Hester is referring to is Policy 17.B.1 in the FHSAA Handbook, which states that international students must present an F1 Visa and schools must fill out the EL4 forms before they can participate in athletics. Hester was on the board of directors that adopted this rule in 2000.

Hester said athletes like Immokalee's Moise Saintil are considered international students. The Haitian native kicked the Indians to the 2004 Class 2A Championship over Madison County with a 43-yard field goal. Saintil celebrated with the Haitian flag doubling as a cape. Now because of a lack of an EL4 form, he may cost Immokalee its title.

Hester said Immokalee High has never filed an EL4 form.

"He's from Haiti and the last time I checked that's a foreign country," Hester said. "If you are not an American citizen you are considered an international student. So yes, Immokalee would have to forfeit their state championship."

Here is what the FHSAA (Florida's governing body) handbook has to say regarding international students who are not foreign exchange students:

-- The international student must possess an F-1 visa issued by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. An international student visiting the country on a B-2 tourist visa is not eligible to participate in interscholastic athletic competition.

-- The member school shall report to the FHSAA Office on a form provided by the Association each international student declared eligible to represent the school in interscholastic athletic competition by its principal before such participation can occur.

-- The international student must not reside in the U.S. with any other individual(s) from his/her home country with whom he/she has not lived continuously for the previous 365 consecutive days.

-- Pursuant to Federal law, an international student attending a public school is eligible to remain in the U.S. for a maximum of one year and must reimburse the public school for the cost of his/her U.S. education.

Grrr.

Two years ago, I received an inquiry from an Australian teenager who had played "gridiron" there and wanted to come to the US to play a year of high school football as an exchange student. I tried to do everything the right way, everything above board, and you wouldn't believe the red tape I ran into in Oregon, Washington and a few other states. Essentially, the kid would have to have been accepted by a recognized exchange program, which would have meant that he'd have had to pay some $20,000 to this glorified travel agent. Oh, and he'd have had to pay his host school for the cost of educating him. And then, he'd have to be assigned randomly to any school, which could conceivably mean that they wouldn't even offer football. Finally, he gave up in despair.

Meantime, illegal immigrants all over Oregon and Washington are getting their educations free of charge, and some of them are playing high school sports. If you call soccer a sport.

I told a friend of mine who is an AD at a high school elsewhere in Washington about my Australian experience and he said, "Why didn't you just tell his parents to have him sneak in from Mexico?"

He was half-joking (I think), but the fact is that if the kid had come here illegally, no one would have questioned him and he'd have been able to play. Provided he spoke Spanish and played soccer.

*********** What do you think about the NCAA looking into expanding the (already bloated) men's basketball tournament? (No doubt the women will expect the same.) Matt Bastardi, Montgomery, New Jersey (The NCAA may look into it, but only because the basketball coaches voted in favor of going from the present 65-team format to 128. I have never met a basketball coach at any level who didn't want to expand playoffs. That way, you can finish seventh in a ten-team league and still get a contract reworked because we "made the playoffs."

Just another offspring of the "trophies for everybody" mentality that results in CEOs of money-losing companies still getting bonuses and pay raises.

Check basketball coaches' current contracts and you will almost certainly see sizable bonuses in there for "qualifying for the NCAA Tournament." They probably call for more money as the team advances. 128 spots mean twice as many coaches getting bonuses and padding their resumes. What coach wouldn't be for that?

The football version of this is the bowl bonus, written into every coach's contract. HW)

(2006 CLINICS)
CLINICS START AT 9 AM SHARP AND GO UNTIL 4 PM WITH A 1-HOUR BREAK FOR LUNCH

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

HOLIDAY INN, 432 Pennsylvania Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000

APRIL 29
PROVIDENCE

COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470

MAY 6
DENVER

WESTMINSTER HS - Westminster, CO (For more details call Coach Kevin Uhlig - 303-870-8582)

MAY 13
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS - LATHROP, CA.

JUNE 10
PACIFIC NORTHWEST

PHOENIX INN & SUITES - 12712 SE 2ND Circle, Vancouver WA - 360-891-9777

Attendees will receive a complimentary DVD breaking down, play-by-play, the Full-House Belly-T offense of the powerful 1953-1954 Army teams, coached by Earl "Red" Blaik, with Vince Lombardi as his offensive assistant. On the video you will see action clips of Army greats, including the immortal Don Holleder, whose memory is honored by the Black Lion Award. This DVD is not for sale. It is provided by the Board of the Black Lion Award in the interests of furthering football and the Black Lion Award itself.

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

True, We Lost to Ghana - But, Hey - At Least We Scored a Goal! (See"NEWS") Ooo-Whee - Check Out the Ducks' New Uniforms! (See"NEWS")

"Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." (Proverbs, Chapter 8, Verses 10-11)

My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me

June 23, 2006 - "If you wait till you see the whites of their eyes, you will never know what hit you." Franklin D. Roosevelt

IF YOU'VE BEEN FOLLOWING THE COLLEGE WORLD SERIES, YOU'LL KNOW WHAT I MEAN - GO BEAVS!

*********** I could hardly sleep. I woke up this morning to watch the match between the American side and Ghana while I sipped my espresso demitasse. When the Yanks fell behind I jumped in my Saab to get some Kumquats at the organic food market, hoping some red-cabbage tea might settle my humors.

I am so proud of these boys - they aren't wusses who have to wear pads head to toe so they don't get hurt playing!

Christopher Anderson, Queen Anne, Washington

I wouldn't know, but the experts seem to think that coach Bruce Arena cost us the World Cup (Presented by adidas, of course).

Hmmm. Was he the reason why the American team kicked just one ball into the goal in three games? Was he the reason why the US team had played two entire games before today without taking so much as one frigging shot on goal?

On the other hand, he sure did whine afterwards, lamenting, "Maybe if we'd got a break or two..."

He's probably been too busy wiping his players' noses to have heard an old football (American football) expression about making your own breaks.

If it wasn't the officials - "I am disappointed in the judgment of the referee," he said after the game - it was the draw, the grouping that put the USA in with Italy, the Czech Republic and surprisingly strong Ghana. "I think in another group, we'd have a better chance to advance," he said.

*********** As long as we're passing around blame for the US' quick exit from the World Cup (presented by adidas), I'd like to nominate US soccer parents.

I'd like to assemble them somewhere and, before breaking out the Chardonnay and passing around the trays of cheese, I'd like to say a few words...

You've had first shot at all our kids, from the time they were three or four, since soccer was the only game they could play. You bought them little uniforms with little satin shorts and you made sure everybody got a trophy just for showing up.

As you got them involved in more and more leagues, you made soccer the focus of the entire family's life, and you boasted when they were selected to play on an "elite travel team." From that point, it was a different tournament every weekend for their teams, named "FC-Something or Other," like a little bunch of faux Europeans.

You decided early on that their futures were going to be in soccer, and you preferred to shelter them from the pain and testosterone of football, so at a very young age, they dropped out of all the other sports.

You raised funds and brought over Brits to coach your little tykes. You pressured the local politicians to build more soccer fields, and grudgingly allowed the less well-funded and less politically-connected youth football programs to play on those fields - when you weren't using them. You whined to the local newspapers when you considered their coverage of youth soccer to be less than that of other sports, and you bitched to the high school AD until he let you use the football stadium for your games - and then maybe a hundred or so of you showed up. When a club soccer tournament conflicted with a school game, though, your kids' first obligation was to their club.

You made yourselves obnoxious in your pursuit of your little boys' careers, and after all that...

Our best just got their asses kicked by Ghana, a country with fewer people than California, and a standard of living lower than Mexico's.

I somehow doubt that as kids those Ghanaians were driven by mommy and daddy to a different tournament every weekend from the time they were four. In fact, I suspect that if they'd grown up in America, those Ghanaian kids would probably have chosen to play football. (Emphasis on "chosen.")

So I say this to you, soccer mommies and daddies of America... you've failed miserably. The whole world saw that today.

Now go to time out.

*********** There is a huge game-rigging scandal developing in Italian soccer, and although not much has been written about it, the World Cup referees are kept sequestered under tight security, for fear someone will get to them.

Truthfully, if you told me that every game played so far has been rigged, I'd believe you, because there is so much back-and-forth, so much keep-away going on that at times it appears that teams are trying not to score.

But that's just me, the Ugly American who simply doesn't understand the Beautiful Game.

*********** I know NBA games aren't rigged. If they were, Dallas would have won game six and they'd have gone on to play another game in front of anothr full house and another large TV audience. Of course, if the NBA were rigged, we wouldn't even have seen Dallas and Miami in "The Finals" (as the league likes to call the series) in the first place. We'd never see anybody but the Knicks and Lakers, with an occasional appearance by the Bulls.

*********** The USA soccer team managed exactly ZERO shots at the opponents' goal in two entire games. Wow. Be still, my beating heart. They can talk all they like about soccer's great potential as a spectator sport, and they can do their level best in trying to force it down our throats ("eat your vegetables - they're good for you!"), but I have to laugh when I think about American sports fans being very unhappy with a pro basketball score of 70-68.

*********** White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen publicly apologized ("If anyone was offended") for calling Chicago reporter Jay Mariotti a fag. (Mariotti is one of the new breed of reporters that goes on ESPN and tries to outshout other reporters, while Guillen is a career baseball guy, a group of people not overly tolerant of guys who switch-hit in the sexual sense.)

We should go after the insurgents in Iraq the way we go after "homophobes." Apology be damned, Commissioner Bud Selig, on whose watch Barry Bonds and other have trashed the traditions of the game, was on this one like a bolt of lightning - Guillen has not only been fined, he will have to undergo sensitivity training. My God - have they no compassion?

Lord, I would love to see a baseball guy sitting in a sensitivity training session. I'd sure love to hear what one of the crusty old-timers - Casey Stengel, Leo Durocher, Danny Murtaugh, Sparky Anderson - would have said. (I'm guessing something along the lines of "What the f--k is this all about, anyhow?")

Come to think of it, I wonder if ESPN can get a camera crew into Guillen's session. What an idea for a comedy show. (No charge for the idea, guys.)

Frankly, since gays (using a word they stole from us) seem so anxious to share with us the good news of their being homosexual, shouting it from the rooftops, marching in "Gay Pride" parades and freely using the word "queer" in describing themselves, I don't know why they're all pushed out of shape about the word "fag."

Makes me wonder if Guillen would be facing sensitivity training if he'd simply used George Halas' favorite term of derogation - (written phonetically in Chicagoese) "cacksucker."

*********** Memo to the Pittsburgh police... Brace yourselves. Santonio Holmes is coming to town. While you were busy writing tickets for Ben Roethlisberger, you may have missed the news that Holmes, the Steelers' first draft choice, has been arrested twice since draft day, most recently for (allegedly) assaulting a woman in Columbus.

*********** Hey Coach. My name is Gary Morabito. I am heading into my second season as HC for a Pee Wee (10-12) program in Calgary, Alberta. I have experimented with a DW setup in our offense. After reviewing the wealth of information and success in your resources I have one question. How would you translate the system you use to the 12 man system we use. I noticed you had a client in Edmonton so I am very interested on how to do this. Gary Morabito, Calgary, Alberta

Most successful Canadian Double-Wing coaches that I have seen play 11 man football with the Double-wing formation, the same as US coaches, while using the 12th man as a wild card in one of four ways:

a. As a fifth back, usually as a tailback, so that you have an I-formation with a wingback on each side;

b. As an extra fullback, doubling the kick-out power on power plays;

c. As an extra lineman, giving you an unbalanced line to one side or another.

d. As a wide flanker to one side or the other, which gives you the dual threat of a conventional 11-man Double-wing plus the ability to go one-on-one against a DB should they try doing that with your flanker. Provided that you have a good wide receiver and a QB who can get the ball to him reliably, the wider Canadian field makes this a very promising approach.

As it is, there is a great deal of flexibility to our system, and when you add in the Canadian motion rules, the misdirection is pretty impressive!

*********** Hi Coach- I'm still a regular reader of your column after all these years. I continue look to forward to, and enjoy your essays and comments with great anticipation.

Tuesday's "News" struck a special chord with me. Your comments about how, "…sometimes, in the heat of battle, a football coach needs someone he trusts to whisper … in his ear." brought a happy smile to this old, wrinkled face.

Over the weekend, I said a last goodbye to an old friend and coaching mentor who passed away. This gentleman had been my first head coach when I began coaching in the Youth Leagues in our area. He had always been an outstanding coach - popular with players, parents and opponents. I don't believe he ever had less than a winning season. He ran the Power-I, and no one knew it better than he. He ran 3-4 plays out of the formation and had 2-3 play-action passes. He always claimed he couldn't remember any more plays than that during the heat of a game.

Later, when I had gone on to one of my first JV head coaching jobs, I asked him to come out of retirement and join me to serve as my assistant. After much cajoling, he finally agreed, and we had great times together once again.

This brings me to the point of my message. While in the last 2 minutes of the first half of a game against one of our most formidable opponents, and while ahead by 2 points - I, being quite full of myself, made a couple of questionable offensive play calls, which could have easily resulted in turnovers on our part.

It was then, that my old friend walked up to me along the sidelines, and while flashing his famously big smile just inches from my face, whispered so only I could hear, "Chuckie, what the f**k is wrong with you? Let the clock run out and let's get the f**k off the field!"

There was certainly more than one life-skill that I learned in that moment.

Thanks, Coach for helping me to remember a truly golden moment not only in my coaching career, but also in my life. I'm still smiling even as I write this.

Chuck Ciehomski, Buffalo, New York

*********** A Rhode Island state trooper named Christopher Zarrella admitted in court that the reason why a perp had a badly swollen face was that he'd punched him in the face three times.

Now why would he want to do that? I mean, innocent until proven guilty, right?

Just because the guy had been in the police station to be questioned about stabbing an 84-year old woman when he stole a police officer's revolver and shot him to death, then leaped out a window and escaped, and Trooper Zarrella, answering the police call for assistance, saw the guy running down the street, gave chase and tackle him, and then the guy started swinging.

Personally, I would have disciplined Trooper Zarrella for not killing the guy when he had a chance.

Now, the guy's lawyer is going the insanity route.

*********** Hello Coach. Big hello to Connie too. Hope you both are well. Enjoying all of God's blessings. Just came back from Miami. Took Alan down there for the UM camp. Funny when I saw him in the group he looked like the QB cause he was the only white kid. After the kids threw with him a little bit they were calling him "Peyton".They all wanted to be in his group - it was proud to see. He enjoyed it tremendously. The speed and athleticism at the camp was unbelievable. We enjoyed it. It was well worth the trip down there. Coach Coker was there all the time having a good time with the kids. Signed Alan's knee brace. All the groups were run by the actual UM coaches. (Except the little ones.) Coach Randy Shannon is great - I can see why he is the hottest assistant out there. Great teacher. I was sorry that Alan was not in the linebacker group. Picked up some good things myself. I will tell you this though - the thing that was evident is the way the kids go hard. Every drill, Every competition. Hard. 100% all the time. For a coach that was great to see. The aggressiveness and competition going on all of the time is a big part, I think why black players exceed at such a rapid pace. I mean these kids go all out, all the time. It was a very interesting analytical experience to watch them. The parents encourage it, too. Regards,Armando Castro, Roanoke, Virginia

*********** While Penn State honors its tradition of unchanging uniforms, Oregon unashamedly boasts of a tradition of uniform change.

(For those who didn't know, Nike founder and head Phil Knight is a super loyal Oregon alum.)

After working with Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti and a committee of current and former players for the past two years, Nike rolled out its latest redesign of the Oregon uniforms.

There's not a whole lot of cosmetic change, with the exception of a little bit of black and a lot more branding - you will be able to see "DUCKS" or "OREGON" somewhere on a player's uniform no matter what position he may be photographed in.

And for those pear-shaped 300-pounders, the numbers are tapered at the bottom, to give the impression that the shoulders are wider and the waist narrower.

But the biggest change is non-cosmetic - the new uniforms are said to be 28 per cent lighter - and 34 per-cent lighter when wet - than last year's.

It's all about recruiting. And whatever you and I might think about it, if anybody knows what appeals to young males, it's Nike.

"I think it's a good marketing tool," said tight end Dante Rosario, one of the players who worked on the uniforms, "Recruits see how this program treats its players, how they market them, how they show them off to the public. It's exciting to them. There aren't a lot of teams that market players the way Oregon does."

Said Oregon AD Bill Moos "We're a happenin' place, and young people like that."

Oregon plans to wear all-white helmets on special occasions, but the green helmet will be the mainstay. Get this - the green paint is made of glass beads, and costs $2400 a gallon.

*********** This might fall under the theory of natural selection...

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal this week, more and more young men are being caught after committing crimes and being unable to outrun police.

Their problem? They be saggin', and their pants tend to fall around their ankles at the worst possible time. For them.

*********** Amid all the talk about women "taking back the night," etc., my wife and I look at one of the latest Ford commercial s every time it runs and just shake our heads.

Maybe you've seen it - the good-looking, good-car-driving young woman, just brimming with I-can-do-anything confidence, sees a guy she likes, driving a Ford, of course.

She pulls into the drive-though window of what I guess is a dry cleaners', and he pulls in right behind her.

She doesn't know a damn thing about this guy, but she says to the person in the window, "I'd like to pay for a couple of his shirts. And give him my card."

Wow. He looks hot and he drives a nice car, so what the hell? - and totally out of character for the bright young woman she is supposed to be, she invites this total stranger into her life.

How does she know he isn't a serial rapist?

*********** Coach, Can you explain why on earth kids playing defensive end are still being taught to "box" and place their shoulders perpendicular to the LOS instead of remaining with shoulders parallel to LOS. The kicker is they are told to defend to the sideline with their back to it! I thought this stuff went away along time ago. Mike Studer, Kittitas, Washington

Coach, It is a real throwback to the days when offensive formations all tight and all backs were in the backfield, and the defense's basic premise was to contain the sweep and keep everything inside the ends. A really fast back who could break outside the tight;y-packed offensive and defensive formations was a real threat, so defenses would commit their ends to doing nothing but come across the line and "turn the play in."

But as you noted, when he boxes, with his butt turned to the sideline, that's about all he can do.

To a Double-Wing coach, a boxing DE is like Christmas coming early.

*********** Have you ever been thrown out of a game? I didn't think so.

Can anyone remember ever seeing a major college football coach ejected from a game? How about from a really big game?

I sure can't think of one.

My point is that for all the violence of our game, there is a certain level of professionalism in the conduct of football coaches, in their relationship with officials, that is missing in baseball, where even college coaches, just like their major league counterparts, make jackasses of themselves.

Monday, Miami's baseball coach was thrown out by the umpire - thrown out of a F--KING COLLEGE WORLD SERIES GAME - for protesting a call (I think it was a third strike). The ump had clearly warned him not to take another step forward to pursue his case, but the guy did, and he was run off.

But, since it was baseball, none of the announcers made that big deal of it, and the next day he was back in the dugout.

*********** Coach, Hope your summer is going well. It's quite hot in Illinois, so the tomatoes are growing like crazy.

Regarding the portion of the survey you discussed:

Playing More Important Than Winning. As a counterpoint to the winning obsession, 72% of both males and females say they would rather play on a team with a losing record than sit on the bench for a winning team (Q18) and more than one-fourth of the males (28%) -- as opposed to only 13% of the females -- say that winning is essential for them to enjoy the sports experience (Q19).

Despite what the survey says, and while I understand and agree with the idea, I really doubt that most of those kids realize what they are saying. Yes, they would rather play than sit the bench. But, would they really have more fun playing on an 0-9 team that gets its brains smashed in every week? Or, worse yet, would they have preferred to play for the Elmwood teams of the late-70's that held the Illinois record for consecutive losses at 36? I would argue that any of those kids would have much preferred being on our playoff teams the last three years, even if it meant less or no significant playing time. Maybe I'm wrong, but our kids sure do seem to enjoy themselves a lot more when they win than when they lose.

Todd Hollis, Elmwood/Brimfield Coop, Elmwood, Illinois

You make a good point.

I did a lot of sitting in college. We had some pretty good teams, but I didn't like the sitting. Like most guys who have ever played the game, I thought I deserved more playing time, and I often thought that it would be more fun starting for some of the people we played.

But I never gave any thought to the possibility of starting for a team that was really bad. I don't think that would have been very enjoyable.

After I became a coach, I once took over at a school that had recently ended a losing streak that had lasted more than five years. Two entire classes had gone all the way through and never won a game. I doubt that they had a lot of fun.

I think that losing in football is a lot more frustrating and a lot less fun than it would be in most other sports, where you might lose on the scoreboard but you don't get physically beaten up.

And, too, I think a loss hurts more in football because you only play games once a week, unlike sports where you have another game coming right up and you can't dwell too long on a loss.

In fairness, this survey could be skewed by the fact that it doesn't indicate what sports the respondents represent, but I do think that there might be something in there for football coaches who dress 60 kids but never get more than 20 of them into the game.

*********** It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, "When you strike at a king, you must kill him."

Mr. Emerson, a great poet and philosopher, never knew Mike Tyson, but if he had, he'd have said, "If you take a swing at Mike Tyson, you'd better knock him out."

He didn't know Dan Rather, either, but if he did, he'd have said, "If you say damaging things about the President of the United States, they'd better be true."

Poor Dan. He took a swing the President of the United States, and he missed.

And now, after 44 years at CBS, Ole Dan is hangin' em up.

Back in 2004, Dan ran with a story about President George W. Bush's military record. Ran with it even in when key documents supposedly making his point proved to be forgeries, and sloppy ones at that. Didn't matter. He was Dan Rather, he was bigger than America itself, and he knew what was best for America.

CBS, amazingly, stuck by the lying turd, or at least claimed to be standing by him, but not too long after that the network moved him from anchoring the news to sitting behind a desk at "60 Minutes," giving him less and less air time until finally, this week, tossing him over the side, saying it "couldn't reach a deal" to renew his contract.

Unfair, wrote a media critic for New Yorker magazine. This is not the way you treat someone like Dan Rather. "You never expect someone who's been the face of the network for so long to just be given an office which is essentially a closet ... and then not to be given air time and then to have it leaked to the press that he's being booted. It's jarring."

That's the Mainstream Media for you. They'll still defend one of their own - as long as his target was a conservative.

What's scary is that Rather could have pulled that crap on somebody like you and me, as he'd done many times in the past, and he'd still have his job. And we'd be ruined.

This last time, fortunately, he picked the wrong target.

Tough sh--, Dan.

*********** Howdy Coach, hope all is going well with you and Connie. It has been some time since I last E-mailed you and I have a lot of news for you.

First, I had my third shoulder surgery (which explains the delay since the last E-mail) and 8 weeks ago and I am just now getting ready to start therapy next week. This surgery was the "mother of all shoulder surgeries" - at least for me. They cut me open pretty good, cut down the bones, moved some ligaments around, and viola - I'm told I'll be good as new. That and a hell of a lot of Oxy-Contin helped out....mmmm mmm, Oxy-Contin, my new drug of choice. If I was not a cop, and maybe a biker or something, Oxy-Contin would be right up there for me.

I have spending almost all of my time getting ready for my Sergeant's exam next Saturday, but I have always found some free time to read the "News Page" I missed out on a lot of good discussions - the running up the score thing a few weeks back hit home to me. I try to make it to all of "my kids" play their high school games, (even more so now that I am the H/C) and one incident stands out still to this day. I went to one of the local schools we feed, and they were playing the other local school (They are 1 mile apart, down the same street) and I still get angry about this. School A is up, 48-0, 4th quarter, with over 100 kids on the sideline. School B, with only 40 kids, puts in the ALL of the kids who did not play at the start of the 4th, and I am pretty sure they all knew the outcome was sealed. Well, I guess School A's coach still had some doubt, he left in the starters until 1:40 to go, in the game and put in some of the kids after they scored to go up 54-0. No crap! In Illinois, it is a running clock after your up so much, yet this "guy" had no clue. I was pissed, I went to go see my kids, many of whom were second teamers, and they never got in. I can not imagine how the parents of some of the kids felt. A lot of hard feelings and grudges were created over this one incident that still exist four years later.

Other things have been going on with me as well. I became a full fledged Athletic Board Member at Queen of Martyrs. I ran for our Conference Coordinator position and won, so I now have triple duty during football. I have the coaching duties, the Athletic Board meeting once a month, and I have Conference meetings once a month as well. All of this and I still do not have a kid in the school - yet. I'm just sick of all the BS that goes on, and I hope that I can get people to worry about the kids - instead of their own agendas. I also was named Coach of the Year at the annual awards banquet, which I have to tell you was an awesome feeling. After the year we had, and I personally had, with all the attacks on me - it was a very nice award. The letters the kids wrote about me were great, a lot of them understood ALL of the lessons we were trying to teach them. Honestly Hugh, that means a hell of a lot more to me than the record. While I would like to be a champio nship Coach one day, my feeling is if it never happens, it never happens. I am more proud in the direction these kids are headed. I have 4 that might do real well in High School ball, and 16 that will do real well in High School. So I'll take the 20 for 20 in the life lessons department with a 2-7 record any day. If anything, my kids will now how to handle defeat, and how to win graciously.

Finally, Melody is leaving her teaching position and has been accepted into a prestigious program between Harvard and Chicago Public Schools. CPS calls it the New Leaders for Excellence Program, and it will train her to be a principal in one years time. She already has a Masters, but it gives her an Administration Masters, on their dime, and in one years time. She is going to Philly on June 26th for 5 weeks of classes at Penn. Then she will work side by side with a principal near the University of Chicago this upcoming year. The following year she will get her own school, either as a principal or as a vice principal. She is excited - but she already can not stand the fact that she will be away for 5 weeks from the kids. She has plans to come home for the 4th of July and I am in the works for the three of us going to Philly for a weekend.

So a few questions for you. Do you know of anything that I could do with the kids during the day, in or around Philly? And the most important question - what is the name of the best Cheese Steak joint? I know you had a picture of one, with a cop car in front of it, in an old News Page, but I do not remember the name. I do recall saying that it would have to be a great place to eat - cops are never wrong about food, just look at the size of us! LOL.

Well Hugh, I hope all is well, and I apologize for this being so long, but hope you had the time to read it. I'll be talking to you...

My best, Bill Murphy, Chicago

Congratulations to you on being named Coach of the Year. I really admire the way you hung in there against the idiot detractors, but the part I liked best was the letters from the kids.

Mel may enjoy a Philly summer, but don't say I didn't warn you about the humidity. It is a bear.

Downtown Philly is not easy to get around in, trafficwise, because it is a very old city and the streets were laid out long before the invention of the automobile, but it is easy to find your way around.

It was laid out on a grid by a very far-sighted person named William Penn, its founder. North-south streets are numbered, starting at the Delaware riverfront with "Front" Street and proceeding westward. There is no 14th street - the main North-South drag runs between 13th and 15th and it's called Broad Street. Penn is at about 33rd Street, just across the Schuylkill (SKOO-kl) River, which like the Delaware runs generally north-south. The other side of the river (Penn's side) is where "West Philly" starts.

"Center City" as Philadelphians say, is divided north and south by Market Street. North Philly is north of Market Street and South Philly is South. (There is no East Philly.)

At the very heart of the city, at the place where Broad and Market would intersect, stands City Hall, once the city's tallest building, topped by a statue of William Penn. At one time, city law forbade any building taller than City Hall, but since the law has been repealed, City Hall has been dwarfed by much bigger buildings. The last time any Philadelphia team won a championship, William Penn wore a Flyers' jersey.

Technically, Broad and Market don't intersect, because of City Hall, so traffic goes around it in a counterclockwise direction, like a giant traffic circle. So that means if you are on Market Street heading west, you will have to go halfway around city hall to resume your trip. And if you were headed west on Market and wanted to go south on Broad Street, you would have to go three-quarters of the way around City Hall.

I know your kids are young, but they might not get many chances to see the Liberty Bell. It's around 5th and Chestnut. (Chestnut is a block south of Market.) There are lots of old historic sights nearby, but the kids might be a little young yet.

The zoo is nice, but Chicago has a great one, too.

The art museum is neat, too. It might be worth it just to stand at the top of the front steps, where "Rocky" did. It's about five minutes' drive from City Hall, but too far for little kids to walk.

The Franklin Institute, a couple of blocks from the art museum, is a science museum with a lot of hands-on activities that kids like.

Off East River Drive, which starts near the art museum and runs for several miles along the Schuylkill River, there are several places to park and walk with the kids and watch the rowers out on the river.

Two of the very best places for cheese steaks are Geno's and Pat's, in South Philly. They are right across the street from each other at 9th and Passyunk. Passyunk is many, many blocks south of City Hall. Geno's is the one you saw in the photo, and your English will probably be good enough for them to understand you. (Bear in mind that you wouldn't be the first person to think that a Philly accent is weird, man - almost like Cockney English. Don't laugh at the way true Philadelphians pronounce "oh.")

If you are at 9th and Passyunk, you aren't far from where the Phillies play. (Not that a South Side guy would be interested in the National League).

Definitely go on a weekend. You will have the city to yourself.

That's because everybody who possibly can gets out of town and heads "down the Shore" as they say there - to someplace on the Jersey Shore. It's a tradition that started long before the invention of air conditioning, when the summer heat in Philadelphia's rowhouses (that's what we lived in, long before they became fashionable in other cities as "townhouses") was unbearable. Every Philadelphian has his favorite place to go "down the Shore," and usually it's the same place his neighbors like to go to, too, so you basically wind up spending the weekend at "the Shore" with the same people you see all week "back in the City."

*********** Coach, You and Casey Stengel are of course right on. I was at a clinic where Bud Wilkinson gave the same speech. He said he never coached his team to score touchdowns or talked to his team about winning. What he coached on offense was making first downs. And what he coached on defense was stopping the other team from making first downs. He said that if he were successful at doing those two things, the touchdowns and winning would take care of themselves. Its the little things that is the difference. Attention to the smallest detail, drilling the same thing over and over again until the important things become second nature for the player, in my opinion that is what separates the winners and losers.

The old line coach, Brad Elliott, Soquel, California

*********** Hello Coach, long time no irritate- Did'ja catch any of the NHL playoffs on OLN before the show went to NBC?

Call it "Anatomy of a Commercial Run".

First run: A Fairy flies around town and flings fairy dust on a coupla' items and turns them into suitable fairy fare - a building gets the workover, a train gets turned into a very large toy train.

Then she sees a Chrysler driving down the road and she attempts to change it into something more appropriate to Fairy Culture - *Flash!* Nothing happens. *Flash!* Nothing happens the second time. Third time, the fairy dust splashes back onto the fairy, who gets splatted back into a wall where she slides down butt first to the sidewalk.

A rough looking guy walking a big dog says: "Silly Little Fairy!"

The fairy splashes the dude with fairy dust and he gets turned into Hans LePouf walking a bunch of rat dogs.

Second run: All the same until it gets to the tough guy walking the dog. Now, half of the commercials show the original, half show an edited version. The line "Silly Little Fairy!" has been cut out.

"...And now for the NHL on NBC!!!..."

Can you guess which version made it to the Big Show? Do I even have to tell you?

Charlie Wilson, Seminole, Florida

*********** I notice you have information on your web site that everyone does not have access to. I am trying to soak up everything you have (especially the free info). Do you have other pages on your site that I can have access to such as (-----)

I do have other pages but yes, they are limited to my use when they can help me answer specific questions coach/clients may have

*********** Penn State's very first football fantasy camp was held last week, providing fans the chance to spend four days living like real Penn State football players. Gosh. If I were running the camp, as a surprise bonus, at the end of every session unwashed jocks used by real Penn State players in real football games would be auctioned off to the campers.

Imagine the fun at a (you fill in the knucklehead school name) fantasy camp - at night, after the counselors have all gone to sleep, the campers can sneak out their windows and drive their Escalades to a local night club where they can get drunk and start fights and then, when the police arrive, resist arrest.)

*********** Forty or so demonstrators, mostly female, entered the Fangji Cat Meatball restaurant in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, carrying banners reading "cats and dogs are friends of human beings," and demanded that the owner free any live cats on the premises.

The owner, anticipating the invasion, had already herded 'em up and moved 'em out, so all the demonstrators found was a skinned cat in the cooler.

Many Chinese eat dogs and cats, especially in the winter because, it is said, they believe dogs and cats are "good warming foods," but the protest organizer said that particular restaurant had been chosen because it killed cats in the street.

Another protestor, who served as Miss Shenzhen 2005, called on others to "stop eating cats and dogs and become civilized."

China has a relatively new but growing animal rights movement as more Chinese begin to have pets, something which not so long ago was derided by China's hard-core Communist leaders as "bourgeois."

(2006 CLINICS)
CLINICS START AT 9 AM SHARP AND GO UNTIL 4 PM WITH A 1-HOUR BREAK FOR LUNCH

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

HOLIDAY INN, 432 Pennsylvania Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000

APRIL 29
PROVIDENCE

COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470

MAY 6
DENVER

WESTMINSTER HS - Westminster, CO (For more details call Coach Kevin Uhlig - 303-870-8582)

MAY 13
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS - LATHROP, CA.

JUNE 10
PACIFIC NORTHWEST

PHOENIX INN & SUITES - 12712 SE 2ND Circle, Vancouver WA - 360-891-9777

Attendees will receive a complimentary DVD breaking down, play-by-play, the Full-House Belly-T offense of the powerful 1953-1954 Army teams, coached by Earl "Red" Blaik, with Vince Lombardi as his offensive assistant. On the video you will see action clips of Army greats, including the immortal Don Holleder, whose memory is honored by the Black Lion Award. This DVD is not for sale. It is provided by the Board of the Black Lion Award in the interests of furthering football and the Black Lion Award itself.

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

Phil Mickelson Should Have Listened to Casey Stengel! (See"NEWS") The Pres. of the U of North Dakota Has the NCAA In His Sights! (See"NEWS")

"Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." (Proverbs, Chapter 8, Verses 10-11)

My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me

June 20, 2006 - "Once the self-righteous come to believe in the absolute correctness - political or otherwise - of their point of view, they proceed with a zeal that leaves no room for reasonable doubt, thoughtful consideration, or fairness." Charles E. Kupchella, President, University of North Dakota (Commenting on the NCAA's politically-correct ruling against UND's nickname and logo)

*********** I hope you were watching the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals (won by Carolina) - especially the post-game. It is a hockey tradition for the two teams to have a skate-by - an exchange of handshakes between the players of both teams. The skate-by is not the perfunctory "nice game...nice game... nice game... etc., etc. etc." nonsense that high schoolers go through after every football game; in hockey, it takes place only at the end of a playoff series. And it is sincere. It has to impress you, because these same guys who only moments earlier were going at each other hammer-and-tong are exchanging good wishes and showing real regard for each other. Why? Why do they do it? They do it because they are professionals - in the best sense of the word - and because as professionals they respect their profession and its traditions.

On the negative side, I should mention that the skate-around with the Cup - as each member of the winning squad skates around the ice holding the Cup aloft - was a sorry-ass version of what it used to be, as TV cameras and cables and media types crowd the ice and limit the space available for actual skating to something about the size of your driveway. I'm sure there were other old-timers like me yelling "Hey! A**hole! Get the f--k off the ice!"

*********** Hello: The last own goal I remember - actually the only own goal I remember - was in the seventh game of the 1986 Stanley Cup semi-final series between the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers. With the game tied at 2-2 about 6 minutes into the third period, Steve Smith of the Oilers tried a pass across his own crease. The puck banked off the goalie's skate and into the net. The Flames hung on for the last 14 minutes to win the game 3-2 and the series 4-3.

To their credit, none of the Oilers blamed Smith publicly for the loss, and when they regained the cup the next year (having won it the previous two years) Wayne Gretzky gave it to him to carry around the ice.

I wish you hadn't mentioned the Stanley Cup final as it has made me want to watch the next game, which I just can't do down here, down under. Oh well, there's always the World Cup live on SBS.

Cheers, Jim Foster, Australia (To think that the World Cup is just a week old, and there have already been at least two "own goals," one of them the USA's only score so far. When you consider the much faster pace of hockey and the far greater number of shots on goal, it really is amazing how seldom it happens, isn't it? HW)

*********** I couldn't watch Phil Mickelson Sunday without thinking about Casey Stengel.

There was Mickelson, needing a par on the 18th hole of the final round to win the US Open. A bogey (one over par) would put him in a playoff. But he wound up getting a double bogey (two over par) and lost the event by a stroke.

See, instead of playing conservatively, he went for the spectacular win. Instead of taking out an iron and driving safely (although a bit shorter) into the fairway, he took out his driver and smashed it. Trouble is, he'd been missing the fairway all afternoon, and this time was no exception. This time he really missed, and by the time he got up and down, he's lost two strokes - and the US Open title.

"More games are lost than won," said Stengel once. The longtime manager of the Yankees and then the Mets had a way of saying things that on first hearing might sound nonsensical, but upon closer inspection were actually very profound.

I've said that same thing at my clinics about football: if we would spend less time on heroics and more time doing the things we have to do to avoid losing, the winning would take care of itself.

But sometimes, in the heat of battle, a football coach needs someone he trusts to whisper that very thing in his ear.

Here's my suggestion to pro golfers. They all have one or more personal pros now, coaches who work on every aspect of their game. In practice, that is.

Once they go out on the course, though. they are on their own. Oh, sure, they can ask their caddies how far it is to the hole, and how the greens seem to be breaking and all that, but when a guy needs a wiser head to say, "Are you sure you want to do this? Really sure?" there is no one there with the authority and credibility to do so.

I would think that after this one, Mickelson might want to put his personal pro on a weight-training regimen, so that he can start carrying his bag and be right there when someone needs to say, "Uh, Phil..."

************ Bring 'em out, Bring 'em out... Welcome to the NBA Finals, presumably the NBA at its best. And welcome to the pre-game introductions of the Miami Heat, a new low in the ever-more-disgusting overlap of sports and entertainment that is the NBA.

*********** The CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition is a project of the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics, and it has just released the findings of what is believed to be the most comprehensive measure of the attitudes and behaviors of high school athletes.

According to the Institute's president, Michael Josephson, "The values of millions of youngsters are directly and dramatically influenced by the values conveyed in high school sports. This survey reveals that coaches and parents simply aren't doing enough to assure that the experience is a positive one. Too many youngsters are confused about the meaning of fair play and sportsmanship and they have no concept of honorable competition. As a result they engage in illegal conduct and employ doubtful gamesmanship techniques to gain a competitive advantage. It appears that today's playing fields are the breeding grounds for the next generation of corporate pirates and political scoundrels."

Among the key findings:

Coaches Don't Always Set a Good Example. While nearly 90% of high school athletes report that most of their coaches set a good example of ethics and sportsmanship (Q2), it's not clear they know what a good example is. Large portions of these same athletes endorse questionable actions of coaches including: 1) arguing with an official intending to intimidate or influence future calls (51% of males, 30% females) (Q43); 2) instructing players how to illegally hold and push opponents without getting caught (45% of males, 22% females) (Q32); 3) using a stolen playbook of another team (42% of males, 24% females) (Q48); 4) saying nothing when official declares the wrong score in favor of the coach's team (a mathematical rather than a judgment error) (40% of males, 21% females) (Q47); 5) instructing a player to fake an injury to get a needed extra time out (39% of males, 22% females) (Q31); 6) ordering a pitcher to throw at an opposing hitter in retaliation after a key player was hit by a pitch (30% of males, 8% females) (Q29); 7) swearing at an official to get thrown out of a game in order to get team worked up (38% of males, 12% females) (Q49); and 8) using profanity and insults to motivate players (37% of males, 15% females) (Q50).

Many High School Athletes Break Rules and Engage in Unsporting Conduct. Judging by the conduct and attitudes of young athletes, it appears that many coaches place winning above the concept of honorable competition and sportsmanship by teaching or condoning illegal or unsporting conduct. Thus, high percentages think it is proper to: 1) deliberately inflict pain in football to intimidate an opponent (58% of males, 24% females) (Q30); 2) trash talk a defender after every score (47% of males, 19% females) (Q34); 3) soak a football field to slow down an opponent (27% of males, 12% females) (Q40); 4) build up a foul line in baseball to keep bunts fair (28% of males, 21% females) (Q35); 5) throw at a batter who homered last time up (30% of males, 16% females) (Q33); and 6) illegally alter a hockey stick (25% of males, 14% females)(Q37).

Cynical Attitudes About Success. Nearly half of the male athletes reveal cynical attitudes about the prevalence, necessity and legitimacy of cheating in the real world. Thus, high percentages agree with the following statements: 1) "in sports, people who break the rules are more likely to succeed" (30% of males, 15% females) (Q10); 2) "in the real world, successful people do what they have to do to win even if others consider it cheating" (56% of males, 45% females) (Q5); 3) "a person has to lie or cheat sometimes in order to succeed" (43% of males, 27% females) (Q6); 4) "it isn't cheating if everyone is doing it" (19% of males, 9% females) (Q11); and 5) "if you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough" (12% of males, 5% females) (Q12).

Winning More Important Than Sportsmanship. 1) More than one in three males (37%) -- versus only 15% of the females -- agree that "when all is said and done, it's more important to win than be considered a good sport" (Q14). 2) While 94% of the females agree that "playing the game fairly and honorably is more important than winning," 20% of the males disagree (Q4). 3) While 87% of females believe that a high school coach "should be more concerned with character building and teaching positive life skills than winning," more than one in four males (27%) disagree (Q8). 4) 31% of males and 25% females believe their coach is more concerned with winning than in building character and life skills (Q7).

Correcting Referee Errors. 1) 22% of athletes say it's improper if, on the winning point of the game, a volleyball player says nothing after the referee misses the touch before the ball goes out (48% think this is acceptable, 30% were unsure) (Q42). 2) 24% believe it's improper if a referee calls a ball out in tennis, but the player definitely saw it hit the line, says nothing and takes the point (46% say this is acceptable, 30% were unsure.) (Q44).

Fooling the Referee 1) About half the athletes (52%) think it is improper in basketball if one player is fouled and a different player, the team's best free-throw shooter, goes to the line undetected by the referee (21% found it acceptable, and 27% were unsure) (Q39). 2) 49% say it's improper if a player in soccer, during a penalty kick, hoping the referee will not call it, deliberately violates the rules by moving forward three steps past the line before kicking the ball (22% found it acceptable and 30% were unsure) (Q41) . 3) 41% say it's improper for a soccer player to deliberately fake a foul hoping the best player on the other team will be red carded and removed from the game. 31% found it acceptable; 28% were unsure (Q45).

Putting Sports Above All. Only half of all athletes (52%) think it is improper to hold an academically successful student back a grade so he will be older and bigger when he plays high school football; 25% say they are unsure (Q53).

Performance Enhancing Drugs. 1) 12% of the males and 3% of females used performance enhancing drugs in the past year (Q27). 2) 78% of the males and 91% of females agree that "no athlete should use performance enhancing drugs because it is unhealthy" (Q15). 3) 78% of males and 87% of females agree that "no athlete should use performance enhancing drugs because it is cheating" (Q16).

Playing More Important Than Winning. As a counterpoint to the winning obsession, 72% of both males and females say they would rather play on a team with a losing record than sit on the bench for a winning team (Q18) and more than one-fourth of the males (28%) -- as opposed to only 13% of the females -- say that winning is essential for them to enjoy the sports experience (Q19).

Cheating and Theft. In the past year: 1) 68% of both males and females admitted cheating on a test in school (Q20), 2) 26% of the males and 19% females said they stole something from a store (Q21), and 3) 43% of the males and 31% females said they cheated or bent the rules to win (Q26).

Hazing and Bullying. 1) 31% of males and 17% of females report that degrading hazing or initiation rituals are common at their school (Q17). 2) 69% of the males and 50% of the females admit that they bullied, teased or taunted someone in the past year (Q22). 3) 55% of the males and 29% of the females said they used racial slurs or insults (Q23).

The survey form and a complete set of data generated by the survey is available at www.charactercounts.org

*********** Not that the NCAA, with Miles Brand at its head, needed another a**hole, but Charles Kupchella, the President of the University of North Dakota has really torn it a new one.

Using uncommon common sense and a sarcasm remarkable in the discourse of a college president, Dr. Kupchella has written a letter informing the NCAA that the University will see it in court, contesting the NCAA ruling that UND's nickname - "Fighting Sioux" - and Indian-head logo must go.

After reading Dr. Kupchella's letter, you're left wondering if the NCAA has a leg to stand on.

Here is a brief excerpt...

We are concerned that even if we were to cave in and change our name, you might subsequently hold us hostage until the great State of North Dakota changes all of its state highway signs which now depict a silhouette of an Indian. You might, some say, insist that the Indian logos on the doors of all of our (marked) Highway Patrol cars be removed.

How far does the NCAA think its jurisdiction goes? Does it extend into history? Do you really expect us to airbrush all of the references to Sioux off the jerseys of our many national championship teams &endash; on the many photographs and championship banners lining the walls of our sports venues?

And get this: even if we were to stop using the nickname we have used with pride for nearly eighty years, and decided to forgo any nickname &endash; since they may all be at some future risk &endash; and simply be known as the University of North Dakota and used the University's seal or even the State Seal, we would still apparently be in violation of your policy. "Dakota" is what some of the Sioux actually call themselves.   Our University Seal and the State Seal have images of American Indians on them.

Imagine a scenario in which we bow to the NCAA and remove every vestige of our connection to our traditional nickname, and we earn the right to host one of the exempted schools, say Florida State, in a championship game.   Your policy would allow Florida State to come into town with its logo and nickname proudly displayed, led by someone who paints himself up like an Indian "on the warpath" and carries a flaming spear. He could ride into our stadium on a horse and lead FSU fans in a tomahawk chop and an Indian chant. This, while our fans, then the obvious victims of an unfair and irrational policy, seethe in rightful anger.

Dr. Kupchella's entire letter: http://www.universityrelations.und.edu/logoappeal/openletter_6-07-06.html#maincontent

*********** Yes, Ben Roethlisberger was stupid.

But I have seen him ripped lately, as if, with all the thugs in the NFL, he's a bad actor. What - he's worse than this Chris Henry guy from Cincinnati, who's been arrested four times in the last seven months, on charges ranging from drunken driving to drug possession to a concealed weapons violation to furnishing booze to teenage girls?

So he wasn't wearing a helmet. Irresponsible, yes. Stupid, yes. Against the law? Unquestionably, in most states.

But as a former motorcyclist myself (although, unlike Ben Roethlisberger, the possessor of a valid motorcycle operator's license) I have some problems with helmet laws. I have heard the reasoning behind them - mainly, that when a motorcyclist gets hurt, his medical care often winds up costing the taxpayers money

Hmmmm.

So how come, considering that we all know what spreads AIDS, and how much AIDS costs the American taxpayer, there isn't a "helmet" law for homosexuals?

************ Before we laugh at what fools English soccer hooligans are, it should be noted that the 62-year-old woman whose car Ben Roethlisberger crashed into (she will be cited for failing to yield to oncoming traffic because she made a left turn into his path) has received threatening phone calls since the accident, according to Pittsburgh's Police Chief.

*********** (For this one, I find myself forced to dredge up the "C-word.")

"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country ... I don't see why people care about patriotism." Natalie Maines, Dixie Chicks

*********** After taking a look at the Pac-10's opening weekend games, it's hard to fault the league for scheduling down. Oh, sure, Arizona State is opening home against Northern Arizona, and the Oregon State Beavers are hosting Eastern Washington, but that's all the D-IAA opponents.

Washington opens with San Jose State at home, but the state of UW football being what it is, the Spartans are no walkover.

Oregon and Stanford open up against each other.

And the remaining five teams are opening against surprisingly strong opponents: Arizona hosts BYU, Cal is at Tennessee, USC is at Arkansas, UCLA hosts UTAH, and Washington State is (gulp) at Auburn. I simply don't know how the Cal and WSU staffs are going to be able to acclimate their teams to the heat and humidity they will face in Knoxville and Auburn.

*********** The next time somebody starts telling you that soccer is the world's most popular sport, as if that means there is something wrong with us because we don't like it - ask them what else those people in soccer countries would have if they didn't have soccer. If your critics know anything at all about world cultures, they will be forced to admit that in most of the places where soccer is king, there really isn't much else to get excited about.

Yes, the English have cricket and rugby. And some Northern European countries have ice hockey. And basketball has a small but devoted following in some places. Australia has Aussie Rules, rugby (union and league) and cricket, and Canada to a great extent tends to parallel the US in its sports likes and dislikes, but just like the US, neither Australia or Canada is a soccer power.

But don't let anyone kid you - without soccer, our plate is quite full. No place else in the world comes close to our Big Five of football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR and hockey.

I asked a German friend of mine not so long ago what his country's second most popular sport was, and I found it interesting that he had to hesitate for what seemed like a minute or so before finally guessing that it might be - American football! That wasn't to suggest that American football was remotely close to challenging soccer - it was more by way of saying that after soccer, there really wasn't much else.

Things may be different in today's Russia from what I remember, but in the old Soviet Union, after soccer and ice hockey, the next most popular sport seemed to be getting in a line - any line - on the chance they might be selling vodka.

*********** I look at the way time is kept in soccer - ass-backwards if you're an American - and I can't help wondering if the people who tried shoving the metric system down our throats some 20 years ago don't have something to do with soccer now.

*********** I did watch the USA-Italy soccer "match" Saturday - how can I mock it if I don't watch it? - but with so little action on the field I had nothing better to do than watch the clock. I just happened to notice that 14:53 (or was it 15:53?) had elapsed before the first real, honest-to-God shot on goal - and that was a penalty shot.

*********** If you wanted to see something that illustrated the contrast between Futbol and Football, all you had to do was watch the Italian and American teams walk onto the field Saturday.

First of all - walk? American football players don't ever walk onto the field.

Second, as much as we might want to promote youth football, American football players are normally in such an sense of excitement before a game that they would not likely walk onto the field hand-in-hand with little kids in football uniforms.

And finally, although most of us coaches do our best to foster good sportsmanship and all that, I think it would be beyond our powers to expect our players to march peacefully onto the field side-by-side with their opponents.

*********** Last week's Sports Illustrated devoted the better part of its article about the Stanley Cup Finals to bashing the NHL's low TV ratings, and the size of the markets represented by the two finalists (Edmonton and Raleigh-Durham).

But get S-I on the WNBA or MLS (that would be Major League Soccer, an oxymoron if ever there was one), and Political Correctness kicks in. They get covered straight-up, as if they are true major league sports.

The fact is that in the WNBA crowds of fewer than 5,000 are becoming more and more common, while many MLS (the "M" stands, remember, for "Major") games - played outdoors - draw fewer than 10,000 people.

The average MLS crowd - remember, their games are played outdoors - is about 16,000, slightly less than that of the NHL. The entire MLS draws fewer than 3,000,000 fans to all its games; any four of the top 15 NHL teams, which charge major-league prices for tickets, would top that. And considering that the NHL averages well in excess of 90 per cent of capacity overall, it is safe to say that many of its teams would draw far more were they not limited by the size of their (indoor) facilities.

Oh - and all this is after the NHL missed the entire 2004-2005 season. If the MLS were to disappear, who would know?

And while SI was ripping the NHL's small markets - one of the WNBA teams plays its home games in an Indian casino in the woods of southeast Connecticut.

*********** Forget going to Lourdes for miracle cures.

The Italian soccer team's trainer can make the lame walk again. Time and again, I saw him take players who had been wheeled, writhing in pain, off the field on gurneys and get them rehabbed and back into the game - all in a matter of minutes.

My wife injured her ankle a week or so ago, and it's been slow to heal. Next time, I'm sending her to Italy.

*********** Talk about media spin... If you didn't watch the USA-Italy game, and then (for some unexplained reason) you actually read the euphoric newspaper accounts of our holding the Italians to a 1-1 tie, you still probably had a hard time discovering that the lone US goal was an "own goal," kicked in by mistake by an Italian.

************ I love to watch Tri-Nations (Australia-New Zealand-South Africa) Rugby matches, and I really enjoy watching the pre-game rituals. The New Zealand All-Blacks always perform their Haka, a war dance passed down by the Maori, the aboriginal settlers of NZ; not to be outdone, the South African Springboks come out accompanied by some rather fearsome-looking spear- and shield-carrying warriors straight out of "Shaka Zulu"; the Aussies - the Wallabies - prefer to stand and watch all these goings-on with a look of bemused detachment - no worries, mate - eager to give it a go.

And then, the teams assemble in neat lines for their respective national anthems.

And as the TV camera scans the line of players, they stand respectfully at attention - and sing. All of them. At least, their lips move.

Undoubtedly, as is the case with the NFL, they have been given instructions to do so, but regardless, it looks right. It looks as if the players are proud of their country and proud to represent it.

That's the way the Italians looked Saturday, before their game - uh, match - with the US World Cup soccer team.

And then it was the Americans' turn, and - uh, oh - I counted at least four of them who stood there mute, lips unmoving. As did the head coach, Bruce Arena.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I refrained from calling them unpatriotic, figuring there were several other plausible explanations:

1. USA soccer (or whoever runs things) requested that at least four of them refrain from singing so as not to offend lefties in blue states who love soccer but hate America.

2. They didn't know the words

3. They didn't know the words in English

4. They were caught completely off-guard by the stirring, up-tempo orchestral version of the Star Spangled Banner, expecting it to be sung very slowly, as usual, by (a) a Grammy-award winning female recording star; (b) a contestant on American Idol; or (c) a high school girl

*********** For sure, the Canadians in Edmonton knew our national anthem - and damned if they didn't join in with the guy commissioned to sing it before Saturday night's game, sounding more patriotic about our own song than most American crowds.

And then came one of the best things I've ever seen before a sporting event: The guy started to sing "O, Canada" but then, after the first stanza, stopped singing it himself and simply held the microphone high, inviting the huge crowd to finish singing it for him. They did.

(2006 CLINICS)
CLINICS START AT 9 AM SHARP AND GO UNTIL 4 PM WITH A 1-HOUR BREAK FOR LUNCH

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

HOLIDAY INN, 432 Pennsylvania Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000

APRIL 29
PROVIDENCE

COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470

MAY 6
DENVER

WESTMINSTER HS - Westminster, CO (For more details call Coach Kevin Uhlig - 303-870-8582)

MAY 13
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS - LATHROP, CA.

JUNE 10
PACIFIC NORTHWEST

PHOENIX INN & SUITES - 12712 SE 2ND Circle, Vancouver WA - 360-891-9777

Attendees will receive a complimentary DVD breaking down, play-by-play, the Full-House Belly-T offense of the powerful 1953-1954 Army teams, coached by Earl "Red" Blaik, with Vince Lombardi as his offensive assistant. On the video you will see action clips of Army greats, including the immortal Don Holleder, whose memory is honored by the Black Lion Award. This DVD is not for sale. It is provided by the Board of the Black Lion Award in the interests of furthering football and the Black Lion Award itself.

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

North Carolina "Solves" Its Problems - By Firing Principals! (See"NEWS") A Successful D-III Head Coach Quits to Become a D-IA Assistant! (See"NEWS")

"Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." (Proverbs, Chapter 8, Verses 10-11)

My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me

June 16, 2006 - "Fifty percent of the doctors in this country graduated in the bottom half of their classes. ." Al McGuire

*********** Who would have thought that Geno's, one of the best places to get hoagies - great Italian cold-cut sandwiches - and what are now world-famous Philadelphia cheesesteaks would one day become Ground Zero in our fight to preserve the supremacy of our English language? Who would ever have thought that a place started by an Italian immigrant, located at the south end of Philadelphia's 9th Street Italian Market, a several-blocks-long bazaar that seems much more like Italy than South Philly, would be where English speakers finally took a stand against other, larger American businesses that force customers to choose whether they wish to transact business in English? God Bless Geno's and its owner, Joseph Vento, a son of Italian immigrants who is 100 per cent American, a man who insists that his customers place their orders in English! Little signs posted around the place inform potential customers, "This Is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING `SPEAK ENGLISH."

"They don't know how lucky they are," said Vento. "All we're asking them to do is learn the English language. We're out to help these people, but they've got to help themselves, too."

And shame on archrival Pat's, just across the street, for opportunistically advertising that it will still continue to take orders in other languages.

*********** The Stanley Cup Playoffs never fail to produce exciting games, and Edmonton's overtime win over Carolina Wednesday night was once of the best ever.

Watching it made me think about the speed and energy of ice hockey contrasted with the listlessness that makes soccer look like hack-sack with goals.

And it made me think about the contrast between the Oilers' exciting shorthanded overtime goal and soccer's bizarre "own goals." (For those of you who are not hockey fans, a shorthanded goal is a rare achievement, indeed. It comes about when someone from a team has been penalized and sent to the penalty box and now that team's main goal, as it must play a man short, is simply to somehow "kill the penalty" - prevent the other team from scoring until their own man comes out of the penalty box and they are once again at full strength. In this case, with the Oilers down a man, one of their players stole the puck and suddenly broke free, shooting it over the goalie's left shoulder and into the upper corner of the net.

Come to think of it, for all the shots on goal and all the frenetic activity around the net - when was the last time you heard of an "own goal" in ice hockey?

*********** I know split backs is what made the outside veer quick hitting, but don't wishbone teams run outside veer with their FB?

Coach- The outside veer, one of the best plays in football, has never been a major part of the Wishbone attack. Veer, yes. Wishbone, no. It isn't just the depth of the wishbone fullback, though - it is the angle of his dive.

Wishbone fullbacks (generally "heels at four") and our fullbacks, too, from their spot back of the QB, would hit the off-tackle hole at such an angle that would run almost directly into the DE, the man the QB is reading.

(At left, the dive back, from his veer position behind the right guard, hits just off the double-team block of the tight end. The play hits so quickly that unless the DE is closing down hard, he will be lucky to get a hand on the dive back as he runs by. But as you can see, the fullback's path (the dotted line) takes him on a flatter angle, directly into the DE.)

At work here is the same principle of having a larger target if you attempt a field goal from straight-on as opposed to attempting it from an angle.

*********** Anybody who has ever been a high school teacher will probably agree with me that - other than the quality of the students themselves - the most important factor in the success of the school is the principal.

But what if the school is deemed, for whatever reason, to be unsuccessful? Is that the principal's fault?

In North Carolina, evidently, it is.

Under a restructuring plan proposed by the Governor, dozens of North Carolina high school principals are set to take the fall for "underachieving schools." They could wind up losing their jobs

Last August the state Board of Education to send "turnaround teams" to 44 "underachieving" schools - schools with a 60 per cent failure rate on end-of-grade testing - to monitor them and report back. The reports are in, and guess what? The failing schools had significant "leadership, instructional and organizational challenges."

Well, duh.

But anyhow, the designated school districts are faced with either firing or retraining their principals. (Q: How do you retrain a principal?)

Everybody knows how well that works in baseball. If a finishes in last place, fire the manager.

Now everyone knows that there are bad principals. But there are two real problems in focusing the blame on them:

First of all, unlike the business model that all this is supposed to be following, principals can't fire poor-performing teachers. Because of tenure policy, they are stuck with them all, good and bad. (Wonder what Bill Belichick would do if he couldn't fire an assistant coach who couldn't teach.)

And second, I am willing to bet that these so-called "underachieving" schools are densely-populated by a lot of dysfunctional kids from dysfunctional homes. In the business model, if you don't get the kind of raw materials you need to make a quality product, you go to the purchasing department and clean house, and then you find another supplier. In education, you take what comes off the bus every morning and do your best.

*********** Jay Locey, coach for the last eight years at Linfield College, long one of the most successful small-college programs in the US, has resigned his position to become an assistant on Mike Riley's staff at Oregon State.

Linfield, in McMinnville, Oregon, just concluded its 50th consecutive winning season, a national record.

Hmmm. He could probably have stayed at Linfield forever if he'd wanted. So why would he leave?

It could be money, but my guess is that either something was going on behind the scenes at Linfield - maybe some administrator suggesting a de-emphasis in football, which I rather doubt - or he has hopes of someday going after a D-IA head job, and he knows that even a highly successful D-III head coach has no shot at a bigger job.

*********** Hey, coach Larry Hanson here. In response to this question (Come to think of it... is there any international sports contest you can think of where a loss would send the US into mourning, the way a soccer loss affects most other countries?)

I have to say no. For one thing, international sports seem to be kind of a ho-hum thing for Americans, who have way too many other entertainment options. Now, in a third-world country, any time they get a chance on the international thing, it is a big deal. Americans don't define themselves, as a whole, by their athletic successes, in my opinion.

Here's my problem with soccer. It's not the game itself. There are plenty of other sports I also ignore. The problem I have with soccer is it is the only sport where its supporters GET REALLY MAD AND TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE WRONG when you say you aren't a fan. Maybe I shouldn't be so close-minded, huh?

Larry Hanson, Mukwonago, Wisconsin (And perhaps it has been a matter of our being (1) prosperous and (2) safe from invaders that while other nations were starving to death or being bombed to smithereens (or both) that we had the luxury of developing such a wide variety of sports. Before we even begin to think about soccer, we have football, basketball, baseball, hockey, automobile racing in all forms.

Interestingly, though, there was a time when we did care - when a loss by our basketball players to a Godless, communistic Soviet Union hurt a little. But not that much, because (1) we still had baseball and football, and (2) if we ever sent our pros over, we'd kill 'em.

And the damage to our basketball reputation was easily fixed - all we had to do was stop sending over our college kids, and instead send our Dream Team. Now that our pros aren't good enough?

Baseball? Americans' Barry Bonds-induced indifference to the sport took all the pain out of our showing in the World Baseball Classic. Football? Even if the Steelers were to lose to Chad in a World Cup of American Football, we'd still have Texas Hold 'em. HW

*********** I think the worst thing you can say about soccer in the US is that the same people who want dodgeball banned from our schools think that soccer is a great sport for boys to play.

*********** Meantime, our World Cup soccer team coach, Bruce Arena, who may or may not be a good coach but has at least been astute enough to have been able to hang onto his job for what seems forever, was accepting the blame for the 3-0 US loss to the Czech Republic. Well, sort of.

In what the kind of unforgivable finger-pointing that you seldom see in real American sports, he lashed out after the game at one player named Landon Donovan ("he showed no aggressiveness") and then reamed a guy named DeMarcus (DeMarcus? What's a black kid doing playing soccer?) Beasley ("We got nothing out of Beasley," the coach said).

And then he took a shot at goalie Kasey Keller, who apparently had on one occasions kicked the ball downfield where nobody was, a play which resulted in a Czech goal. "Kasey puts it up the field where we have nobody. The ball comes back at us.. (I have mercifully omitted some soccer-talk).. and Koller's in front of the ball to knock it in. I'm very disappointed. I can't explain why these things happen."

Now, Keller is a grown man, 34 years old and a veteran of two of the top leagues in the world, the English Premier League and the German Bundesliga. He has worked with some of the top coaches in the world, and he is quite capable of dealing (sarcastically, in this case) with this coach's childish rants:

"It's not that I just rolled the ball out in front of the goal and let him volley it in."

*********** Ted Nugent, The Motor City Madman, is a noted hunter and gun-rights advocate. Listen to him on the subject of deer:

"They're only interested in three things: the best place to eat, having sex, and how quickly they can run away. Much like the French."

*********** Soccer people are aghast that we barbarians don't appreciate their beautiful game, and they never fail to try to dismiss us with two main arguments:

(1) The America-is-bad, United Nations-is-good, One World approach: "The rest of the world loves it, so there must be something wrong with you," an elitist argument that fits in nicely with an awful lot of the leftist outlook. Actually, our disdain for soccer isn't the only area where we've been right and the rest of the world has been wrong. We must have been doing something right, because an awful lot of the soccer-playing world, including the United Nations, is totally f--ked up and sponges off us. Our being such a soft touch is definitely one thing that is wrong with us, but at least it is fixable - simply cut off the flow of money to them. Their being addicted to soccer is, I think, unfixable. Pity.

(2) "You just don't understand it." Excuse me - don't understand it? What's to understand? Except possibly for tag, is there a simpler game? Isn't that why 3- and 4-year olds, who don't yet have the fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination or mental capacity to play any other sport we offer, start out with soccer? (Understand? Based on the simpletons I see sitting in lawn chairs adoring looking on as their little kids' play soccer, they appear to "understand" soccer, but I doubt that many of them have even heard of a hit-and-run, a zone blitz, a penalty killer or a pick and roll. Bottom line: we "get" soccer, and we simply don't like it.

*********** A friend from England pointed out a few gaps in my knowledge of soccer, for which I don't apologize. But he did, rightfully, take some exception to something I said that could have been construed as insulting the English, whose incredible bravery in World War II, resisting the Nazis before we came to their assistance, is an historic example of free people standing up to the threat of a tyrant. I am of British (English and Scots-Irish stock meself, and proud of it, and hope that I cleared that up with him. But then I got on to deal with soccer. Here's essentially what I wrote him...

With all due respect, you don't understand what a pain in the ass soccer people in the United States can be. From the time little American kids - boys and girls - get out of diapers, Mommy and Daddy have them playing soccer, partly because it is so f--king simple to play, partly because they can keep a worshipful eye on their little darlings at all times, and partly because they all hope that the little dears won't later take up a manly, potentially dangerous game like American football.

They are well-connected and they have money, and they are politically powerful, so they are able to tyrannize school boards and city parks commissions so that they can monopolize all the playing fields to the exclusion of American youth football teams.

It is a rare community that doesn't feel pressured to provide more soccer fields (at taxpayer expense).

And they affect soccer mannerisms, saying "nil" for zero, calling a game a "match," and calling a field a "pitch" - sorry, we already fought a war to prove we are not English.

Enough American men have died helping solve world squabbles and enough American taxes have been squandered by third-world countries for there to be any strength in an argument that implies that because the "Rest of the World" likes something, there must be something wrong with us.

We have paid a steep price to be different, and that is how we like it.

Unless you have spent any time around American soccer people, you can have no idea how much they are detested by those involved in other sports, especially (American) football.

If in my writing I have displayed any ignorance of the game itself or any particular "match", I can assure you that it resulted either from my dislike of the game or my total lack of interest in it.

On the subject of American soccer, I invite you to come visit me some time and see for yourself. Come anytime. It is always going on.

Perhaps we can even take in a "pro" soccer game (sorry - "match") along with maybe 5,000 other fans - most of them non-English-speaking.

*********** The taxpayers, who pay their hard-earned money to the United States Government under penalty of the law, didn't need another lesson in how incompetent our government is capable of being, but here comes the news that FEMA has been bilked for over $1 billion in fraudulent Katrina claims.

A billion dollars! Gone!

Actually, it's 1.4 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, that could have been used to buy 7,000,000 football helmets at $200 apiece, or install 2,800 artificial-turf football fields at $500,000 each, or pay $5,000 stipends to 280,000 coaches.

The money is gone and will never be recovered, and the scammers will almost certainly never be caught. And this is the same US Government, remember, that assures us that under a proposed guest-worker program, anyone overstaying his visa will be promptly rounded up and deported.

*********** Enjoyed reading your news as usual especially your George Halas remembrance. One of my favorite football stories about George Halas goes like this:

The first time the Green Bay Packers played the Chicago Bears after Vince Lombardi became the head coach of the Packers, George Halas was the head coach of the Bears. Vince and George knew each other very well. Just before kickoff, Vince was in the locker room with his Packers giving them their last minute instructions, when the locker room boy heard a loud knocking on the locker room door. He went to answer it and found George Halas standing there. George instructed him to get Vince. So the locker room boy went over to Vince and said, "Excuse me Coach Lombardi, but Mr. Halas is at the door and wants a word with you." So Coach Lombardi walks over to the door and opens it and says, "Hello George, what can I do for you?" And George Halas says to Vince in his gruffest voice, "Vince I just wanted to let you know, we are going to kick your ass!"

I love that story and I can still see George Halas coaching the Bears when he was an old man but still with a burning desire to win and very animated on the sidelines!

Brad Elliott, The old line coach, Soquel, California (George Halas was brilliant, but he was above all tough and hard-nosed. And despite the "Papa Bear" nickname that he acquired over the years, even in his old age he was as crude and vulgar as they got.

As Jeff Davis notes in his excellent book, "Papa Bear," Halas' favorite insult was - using Davis' phonetic spelling, reflective of Halas' hard Chicago accent - "cacksucker."HW)

*********** Coach, just a curious question about your clinic story. How is the DW run in the CFL? Craig Cieslik, San Diego

Coach- In the 12-man Canadian game, there are numerous good ways to employ the 12th man in our Double-Wing, such as making him a deep tailback, or making him an extra lineman on one side or the other, but most Canadian teams have run it as an 11-man Double-Wing, exactly as we run it, with the 12th man deployed as a flanker to one side or the other (with their much-wider field, there is plenty of room to flank him to either side).

The assumption, very reasonable, I think is that if the flanker is any good, he can't possibly be covered consistently man-for-man, which means that the defense will either have to take their chances, or commit two men to coverage. In the latter case, that means that the 11-man Double-Wing offense will be going against 10 defenders.

In effect, you have two offenses - the basic Double-Wing, and a passing game whose main focus is that flanker. And the beauty of it all is that you can work on them independently of one another. HW

*********** Christopher Anderson, of Palo Alto, California, told me about reading Stephen Ambrose's great World War II book "Band of Brothers," and coming across the story of an Italian (okay, "Italo-American") guy from Philly recalling the moment when he learned that his brother had been killed in combat.

"You can't imagine the anger I felt," he said. "I swore that when I got to Normandy, there ain't no German going to be alive. I was like a maniac. When they sent me into France, they turned a killer loose, a wild man."
And today? With the kind of weenies our educators would like our kids to be? "That is absolutely not okay."

*********** One of my grandsons is 10 years old and a pretty good athlete. But he's been playing baseball damn near every day since early spring, and when for some reason he had a day off Thursday, he came home excited. Instead of having to practice baseball, he told his mother (my daughter), "WE CAN PLAY TODAY!"

(2006 CLINICS)
CLINICS START AT 9 AM SHARP AND GO UNTIL 4 PM WITH A 1-HOUR BREAK FOR LUNCH

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

HOLIDAY INN, 432 Pennsylvania Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000

APRIL 29
PROVIDENCE

COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470

MAY 6
DENVER

WESTMINSTER HS - Westminster, CO (For more details call Coach Kevin Uhlig - 303-870-8582)

MAY 13
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS - LATHROP, CA.

JUNE 10
PACIFIC NORTHWEST

PHOENIX INN & SUITES - 12712 SE 2ND Circle, Vancouver WA - 360-891-9777

Attendees will receive a complimentary DVD breaking down, play-by-play, the Full-House Belly-T offense of the powerful 1953-1954 Army teams, coached by Earl "Red" Blaik, with Vince Lombardi as his offensive assistant. On the video you will see action clips of Army greats, including the immortal Don Holleder, whose memory is honored by the Black Lion Award. This DVD is not for sale. It is provided by the Board of the Black Lion Award in the interests of furthering football and the Black Lion Award itself.

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 Canadian Double-Wing Coach Rides 11 Hours on a Motorcycle to Attend Saturday's Clinic (See"NEWS") Not Everybody Thinks it's Cool That We Smoked Al-Zarqawi! (See"NEWS")

"Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." (Proverbs, Chapter 8, Verses 10-11)

My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me

June 13, 2006 - "If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking." General William Tecumseh Sherman

*********** Saturday's Pacific Northwest Clinic seemed like Old Home Week - there were old friends Mike Foristiere of Boise, Idaho and Rob Casteel, of Beaverton, Oregon. There was my former head coach at Madison High Tracy Jackson, now heading into his second year at Hood River, Oregon. There were Gabe McCown of Piedmont, Oklahoma and Tim Jurgens, of Newport, Washington, who my wife and I enjoyed having with us for the weekend.

And there was Gary Etcheverry, Mister Hard-Core Double-Winger himself. Gary has coached the Double-Wing in Germany, and I know that some of you have heard me say at my clinics that he has run the Double-Wing in the pros. That's right, all you a**holes who love to say that the Double-Wing won't work at a big school - Gary Etcheverry has actually run the Double-Wing in the Canadian Football League, when his head coach at the Toronto Argonauts gave him the go-ahead.

Gary has been an assistant in the CFL at B.C., Toronto and Montreal, and he has been the head man at Toronto.

He now lives in Point Roberts, Washington, just south of Vancouver, B.C., and he just got back from working as a guest coach at Winnipeg (CFL staffs are rather small in comparison with NFL staffs, and they typically bring in guest coaches to assist them in pre-season camp). To get to Saturday's clinic, he rode his motorcycle down in the AM and back in the evening - 5-1.2 hours each way.

Gary could be working in the CFL this year, but he is determined to prove that the Double-Wing can be a real force in 12-man Canadian Football, and to that end he has taken a job as offensive coordinator of the South Fraser Rams, a junior football team in the greater Vancouver, B.C. area.

Since Canada does not enjoy school-sponsored sports to the extent that we do, club teams exits in all sports, and at the junior level (ages 18-19-20) they are most comparable to our junior colleges. In hockey, Junior A teams are considered the prime feeders of the NHL. In football, Junior teams feed Canadian - and in some cases, US - universities, as well as the CFL, which is required to have a certain number of Canadians on its rosters, and therefore depends on Junior football to develop players.

(Left: After the Pacific Northwest Clinic: L to R- Mike Foristiere, Boise, Idaho; Tim Jurgens, Newport, Washington; Coach Wyatt; Gary Etcheverry, Vancouver, B.C.; Gabe McCown, Piedmont, Oklahoma

*********** Ohmigod. After Gary Etcheverry rode his motorcycle down to my clinic and back - five and a half hours each way - now I hear the horrible news about Ben Roethlisberger.

Prayers for his full recovery.

Not saying that Americans can be gruesome or anything, but how much do you think his wrecked sickle will bring on eBay?

*********** Asked on a lefty Web site whether they welcomed the news of Al-Zarqawi's death, many America-haters had a difficult time saying, "Yes."

Here are some of their comments...

Yes, but disgusted that we used an airstrike to kill one man.

Yes. Glad that he's out of action, but not glad about his death.

No. We knew where he was, we should have taken him into custody and hauled him before the court. We used to be a nation based on LAW, now we are the wild west and killing for expediency rather than worrying about the mess of prosecution...

If he really is dead, yes. But I am not ready to believe the story.

we had the ability to take him alive and should have done so. We could've learned a lot more that way, as long as we didn't torture him because that would be wrong too.

Yes, but still have questions about the official story.

Yes, but it won't make any difference

Glad he's gone, but a trial would have been a lot more effective.

Not crying any tears for him, but just like when they killed Pablo Escobar, will it change anything?

Makes No Difference. If Bush thinks this will help his approval rating, it won't with me. Too much has happened. Even if they suddenly killed bin Laden it would make no difference. Bush has proven over & over again that he's a fascist. It's too late for him.

Of course the mouth-breathing, blood-thirsty right wingers will consider this as a springboard to a midterm victory, and we will see this coverage trotted out daily, with generous doses of "Hooray for our side"

Yes but I don't feel any safer and whatever happened to Bin 'forgotten' and bringing him in dead or alive.

Yes.... but it's not that straightforward... Well.. almost. I do wish they had captured him, instead of killed, because it's too easy to make him a martyr by killing him. I'd rather see him brought to justice in a less spectacular fashion. Showing photos of his dead body today, as with the bodies of Saddam's sons, makes me cringe because it's so much like what the insurgents have been doing to us... and the world has recoiled in horror because of it. If the choice of having him loose instead of killed, I'd choose killed... but I fear that his death like this will only fuel the hatred of us more and the insurgency against our troops. In a country, like the US, that does not deal in martyrdom, it's easy to believe that having him dead will somehow improve things, but in the radical fundamentalist circles over in the Middle East, death is an honor and a reason for them to fight harder in his memory.

No would be my answer since morbidity is not my game. I never even knew the guy.

No. I don't condone killing, period. This was done in my name, with my money, which makes me complicit in something I find morally repugnant.

No. (Death is not punishment.) You have to actually be ALIVE to appreciate the fact that you're being punished. Once you're dead, you no longer care... you're dead!

I am never happy when somebody dies. I don't care HOW "evil", or bad, or what a criminal, this guy was. I'm not going to cheer his death, when what we should have done, was get him ALIVE and put him on trial.

Glad??? HELL NO!!! Bushler &Co. royally f*cked up again, just for good PR. We should have CAPTURED him to get INFORMATION then publicly TRIED him for all of his crimes so the VICTIMS could have a chance to face him and scream bloody murder at him. Also, how many children were killed by the two 500 lb. bombs? More 'collateral damage' just so Bushler could get a bump in the polls?

No. Murder is never the answer to any problem. I'm a Buddhist.

Yes, but I don't think it will make any difference as far as stopping the violence.

If I have to pick, I'll say yes. He's a terrorist. But as I said on another thread, there will only be more Al-Zarqawis. If Bush didn't foolishly invade Iraq, it might be more meaningful.

*********** If Kevin Aviance hadn't been attacked by a pack of thugs, evidently because he is, uh, "sexually different," I'd probably never have heard of him, much less known that he is "one of New York's most influential transvestite, drag, and transgendered performers."

The attack (which I certainly do not in any way condone), left Aviance with a fractured jaw, but according to his agent...

"Aviance's jaw is wired shut, but he hopes to perform in the city's Gay Pride parade at the end of the month."

I am NOT touching that one. All I did was furnish the set-up.

*********** As long as we are talking about "defending marriage" by making homosexual "marriages" illegal, why not really defend the principle of marriage by making it a crime to produce children out of wedlock?

************* Something happened over the weekend that was just so-o-o-o-o-o-o Portland...

A young woman was playing soccer Saturday. Very Portland.

She is a graphic design student. Very Portland.

While she was playing soccer, her laptop and a hard drive were stolen from her car after its back window was smashed. Also, sadly, very Portland.

Anyhow, when I heard her interviewed on the radio, I could tell she was pissed. I could just feel the rage:

"This," she said, very Portland in her fury, "is absolutely not okay!"

*********** Call it "The Teens Strike Back."

Last year, a Welsh security company introduced a product called The Mosquito, marketed as a "Yob Buster," a way to repel gangs of teenagers who loiter in front of places of business, without affecting the older customers annoyed by the "yobs."

Its principle was that it created a high-pitched noise quite disturbing to the teenagers but undetectable by most older folks, affected as they are by something hearing experts refer to as presbycusis, or aging ear.

It worked. The hooligans scattered.

Now, though, the tables have been turned. The adults' weapon has been turned against them. It seems that the very principle that keeps the adult ear from hearing that annoying noise has resulted in a cell phone ring tone that adults can't hear, making it possible for kids to receive rings notifying them that they have received a text message.

"When I heard about it I didn't believe it at first,"a New York teacher told the New York Times "But one of the kids gave me a copy, and I sent it to a colleague. She played it for her first graders. All of them could hear it, and neither she nor I could."

The Welsh company hasn't made any money off the idea because the original "stealth" ring tone, distributed on the Internet, was pirated from them. "Our high-frequency buzzer was copied. It is not exactly what we developed, but it's a pretty good imitation," Simon Morris, marketing director for Compound Security, told The Times. "You've got to give the kids credit for ingenuity."

Since then, Mr. Morris said his company has received so much attention that he and his partner, Howard Stapleton, the inventor, decided to start selling a ring tone of their own, called Mosquitotone, and advertised as "the authentic Mosquito ring tone."

Teachers beware.

*********** For more than ten years now, a friend of mine who has been a very successful youth coach has endured the frustration of watching his kids go on to the local high school - and lose. He has refrained from bad-mouthing the high school program, but he has from time time suggested to the high school coach that he might try running the Double-Wing, which his kids have run so successfully as youth footballers. He has offered to help install the offense and help out at games, but on every occasion he has been given the brushoff. You know how it goes - He's just a youth coach. What does he know?

Finally, sometime this past winter, he went to the head coach and let him have it - told him exactly what he thought of his coaching and his resistance to learning something that might give his kids a chance to win.

And since then, he's been ripped on a local forum. Here is one example:

I have been here for a long time. Show me one HS program that the rec (youth) programs dictate what happens at the HS level. you will not find one. That is the problem (---------) does not understand his position in all this. He does nothing but hurt the program. so what the coaches do not like his offense, get over it. contrary to what he believes he is not a football god. I challenge people to get there facts inorder before they pop off with totally inacurate statements. How can a guy make judgements when he himself only saw one game last season. fact! ask him. If he really wants this program to get better he will stop trying to impair its growth. I also ask you remember this, who does this hurt the most? the kids!!! I am sorry but it is easy to stand a distance away and and guess what is going on. There are things going on within that program that has never happened before and the kids have responded to all of it. If you believe what (---------) tells you then I feel sorry for you. He makes the job of the coaches that much more difficult. that is what is wrong!!"

My personal feeling is that there is a lot of resentment there, because he is successful and they are not. And somehow, that's supposed to be his fault.

What - has he been standing on the sidelines and tripping their runners as they went by? Has he been giving their game plans to the other teams?

So it's about the kids, is it? Glad they agree on that. So maybe they can explain how come those same kids that have won - year in and year out - with his program can't win with theirs?

They also ought to get over the idea that it's all about his offense. That's a part of it, but it's also his overall program that puts them to shame.

Considering how poor that high school program has been over the years, if they are at the point where they have to resort to this sort of attack garbage, I wouldn't dignify it with a response.

Frankly, I think most people are intelligent enough to consider the source.

Oh, and by the way - while I don't know of any place where the youth program "dictates" what the high school does, I do know of many successful high school programs that have been smart enough to see what their youth teams have been successful doing, and learn from them.

Take Bellevue, Washington for example. Bellevue's youth program certainly doesn't "dictate what happens at the HS level," but Butch Goncharoff, the head coach at Bellevue was promoted to his current job from a position as youth coach in the Bellevue system. As Bellevue's high school coach, he has been, oh, pretty successful - Bellevue has won 4 of the last 5 state high school class 3A championships, and came to national attention by ending DeLaSalle's 151-game win streak. (As coach of the Bellevue juniors, Goncharoff's teams went 104-4-1, winning seven league titles. Oh - and at the high school, he is a so-called "part-timer" - he is NOT A CLASSROOM TEACHER.)

********* Coach: Had a good flight home with the exception of a minor holdup in PDX. Thanks again for letting me stay with you guys, I was looking back at my notes and this was a very good trip! I found it funny that as I read "news" this morning the first thing on there was about the lefties soon coming attack on us for killing that Zarqawi guy...how right you were! I just heard on the radio where the AP has found a "witness" that claims that American soldiers jumped on his chest till blood came out of his mouth to make sure he died. They have no real evidence of this (as usual), but they are running with it full steam ahead. (personally I'm just upset I didn't' get to kick the guy a few times myself!) I guess the lefties would have been fine capturing him alive, giving him a sensitivity training course, and of course an interview to see what we did to make him "feel" he needed to attack us.....Our media really is the terrorist greatest weapon. Gabe McCown, Piedmont, OK-USA (PS- Aren't these lefties amazing? If the Bush administration were to announce it had discovered the cancer cure, the lefties would be asking what too them so long? And what about AIDS? HW)

*********** Coaching this past year at a "racially diverse" school, I found myself from time to time dealing with the use of the so-called N-word. On several occasions I had to tell young women using the word in "greeting" my players as they took the field for practice that if I heard them say it again I would have to ban them from the field.

And then I would get together with my players and tell them about all the subtle indignities that black people once had to endure, well into the 20th Century. Many of those indignities, I told them, resulted from such seemingly simple little matters as calling black people by their first names only and never according them courtesy titles such as "Mr." or "Mrs." And then, I told them, there was the so-called "N-Word," by the use of which a black man or woman, no matter how well educated, no matter how great his or her achievements, could be dismissed in an instant as something less than human. I told them that in my opinion, use of that term among each other, however benign its intent, was squandering everything that their forebears had fought to achieve for them.

And while those kids tossed it around as if it were nothing, back in New York a white man could go to jail for 25 years for saying it.

Seems the white man attacked a black man with a baseball bat. The black man was walking with two friends in a predominantly-white neighborhood at three in the morning. Certainly not to excuse the bashing, because nobody has the right to smash someone with a baseball bat, but the victim did testify in the trial that he and the two friends, also black, had set out that night to steal a car, and that he was carrying a bag of tools when he was attacked.

The case actually seemed to be as much about what the defendant said as what he did. Because of the prosecution's assertion that his use of the "N-word" proved he he attacked the victim because of his race, the defendant was charged with hate crimes.

And now, he faces a maximum sentence of 25 years.

His lawyer argued during the trial that his client meant the word not as a slur but as a mild form of address commonly used today among young people of various races.

The district attorney, on the other hand, said the verdict sent a clear message: "the 'n' word has no place in our society and should be banished from our vocabulary."

He'll get no argument from me. Kill the word.

Now go tell that to da rapperz.

*********** This week's screwed-up school - In Amherst, Massachusetts (home of UMass), the word "freshman" is no longer used. The term was deemed sexist because, since it contains the word "man" it implies that all 9th graders are male. The term "9th graders" has been used as the official term in all communications since 2005, and no doubt local feminists and girlymen and school administrators feel good about what they've done, but as usual, they haven't fooled the kids. Few female 9th graders said that they felt oppressed by being called freshmen, and in a satirical letter written to the administration a student claimed that while they were at it, they should also drop the term "high school", since it is insensitive to short people, and it demeans other students by suggesting that they are always high.

*********** The USA soccer team ("the finest team that the United States has ever assembled") lost to the Czech Republic Monday, 3-0. I suppose somewhere people are in mourning, but I am not one of them, and I have to admit that life around here seems to be going on as usual.

Based on all the 1-0 games (if you're scoring at home, that would be "one-nil") we've had so far, 3-0 is a real ass-whipping.

One of the games (sorry - "matches" was a thrilling nil-nil, and the English thumped Paraguay 1-0, on an "own-goal." A Paraguayan (?) kicked the ball in his own goal! Sheesh. It's amazing to me how many big soccer game seem to be decided by "own goals."

Not in real football. Oh, once every 50 years or so, some American gets disoriented and runs the wrong way, but one of his teammates always manages to tackle him before he scores for the opposition.

I'm sorry for Kasey Keller, the USA goalie, who is a native Northwesterner and a friend of my son, but otherwise - ho hum. If I was supposed to care, they would have played a sport I cared about.

I have to confess that I really want to say to all those soccer parents who might be reading this (perhaps there are one or two): so this is what you get for all those years of foregoing all the real American sports in order to let junior concentrate on soccer year-round, sacrificing your family life so that your little darling could advance through all those piddly-ass "elite traveling teams" while you and your coaches gave the finger to youth football.

The Germans have a word for what I feel - schadenfreude (SHOD-in-froy-duh): essentially, a deliciously wicked sort of satisfaction you get from somebody else's misfortune.

(Come to think of it... is there any international sports contest you can think of where a loss would send the US into mourning, the way a soccer loss affects most other countries?)

*********** The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF), has one track through the Columbia River Gorge, between Vancouver, Washington and points east. It is a busy road, the BNSF's main line between the Pacific Northwest and points east, and it is an engineering marvel. The railroad is unbelievably busy in this stretch, and ideally it would have two tracks, but traveling at water level along the river gorge, where sheer walls on one side and water on the other sometimes make it necessary for the railroad to tunnel through solid rock, there are few places where this is possible.

But last I heard, railroads make their money hauling things, and so the BNSF has decided to build a long siding at Lyle, Washington, where slower trains can pull off and allow faster trains to proceed.

As luck would have it, the Columbia River Gorge, combining as it does a strong river current and extremely strong winds, also happens to be one of the world's great windsurfing locations, and a group of windsurfers has been fighting the railroad's attempt to use its own property to do a better job of what its customers expect it to do.

These people, who drive up in their VW vans and expect free access to the river, don't seem to want to believe that the railroad owns this property and has the right to build this siding, because it interferes with their access to prime windsurfing waters, and it will eliminate some of their (free) parking.

And they are fighting the railroad with the usual wetlands arguments, not to mention the unsightliness of all those rail cars with graffiti on them, stopped there on the siding waiting to proceed.

One fool, a member of an organization called Columbia Riverkeeper, said, indignantly, "The railroad has always had an attitude of 'It's our property.'"

Imagine.

*********** Coach As you may remember, my brother and I are both former Marines. I thought it was time to weigh in on the Haditha mess. We went camping this past weekend and after reading Time magazines last couple issues I noticed some interesting things in the article, I asked my brother to read the article and he came to the same conclusions as me, without any prodding. The first thing I noticed that didn't make sense is this. The article says that it took 12 Marines 5 hours to kill 24 Iraqi people. The first 5 killed were maybe insurgents, but definitely adults, and killed in the first few seconds. Many others of the 19 remaining were women and children. So it took 12 Marines 5 hours to kill 19 women and children. That makes no sense at all, especially if the Marines were in a rage after their friend was killed. One Marine in a rage can kill 19 women and children in a lot less time than 5 hours let alone 12 Marines. Let these kids alone, they are doing the best they can in a bad situation.

If these Marines did kill all these "innocent" people, they probably had no choice. The other people in the village had plenty of time to go in and take any weapons that were found near the bodies. Let's give our Marines the benefit of a doubt - let's assume they are innocent instead of condemning them from afar. Our journalists reporting on this should be ashamed of themselves.

Semper Fi
Dave Kemmick, Mountville, Pa

*********** Well Coach it finally happened to me. this season will be my second running your system and I just lost a two way starter because his Dad feels another team/league will get him ready for High School Football because the high school he is going to doesn't run the double wing. I told the Dad I was disappointed to hear this and I wished him the best of Luck. I guess taking the team to it best season in 3 years, the most points scored in a season wasn't enough for this dad. How naive I was thinking that my parents were smarter and they saw "the whole picture". I can't say I was waiting for this to happen but I am not surprised.

Kevin Rivas, Head Coach Montebello Indians Jr. Midgets, Montebello, California (Sick fathers. You are better off without them. Coach the kids who want to be there, and screw people like that. That high school coach is really going to enjoy that father. HW)

(2006 CLINICS)
CLINICS START AT 9 AM SHARP AND GO UNTIL 4 PM WITH A 1-HOUR BREAK FOR LUNCH

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

HOLIDAY INN, 432 Pennsylvania Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000

APRIL 29
PROVIDENCE

COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470

MAY 6
DENVER

WESTMINSTER HS - Westminster, CO (For more details call Coach Kevin Uhlig - 303-870-8582)

MAY 13
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS - LATHROP, CA.

JUNE 10
PACIFIC NORTHWEST

PHOENIX INN & SUITES - 12712 SE 2ND Circle, Vancouver WA - 360-891-9777

Attendees will receive a complimentary DVD breaking down, play-by-play, the Full-House Belly-T offense of the powerful 1953-1954 Army teams, coached by Earl "Red" Blaik, with Vince Lombardi as his offensive assistant. On the video you will see action clips of Army greats, including the immortal Don Holleder, whose memory is honored by the Black Lion Award. This DVD is not for sale. It is provided by the Board of the Black Lion Award in the interests of furthering football and the Black Lion Award itself.

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

Soon The NFL Will Blame Its Poor Tackling on Youth Coaches (See"NEWS") Oregon Recruits Now Charged With Sex Abuse Say - "WE SORRY!" (See"NEWS")

"Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." (Proverbs, Chapter 8, Verses 10-11)

My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me

June 9, 2006 - "One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives." Mark Twain

*********** Before you start celebrating the death of al-Zarqawi, that a**hole in Iraq, get ready for the lefties and their presumption that if Americans did something right, something must be wrong...

How, for example, did we happen to know where he was?
Did we listen in surreptitiously on someone's private phone calls?

Did we pay someone a bribe?

Did we (gasp!) engage in torture?

*********** The NBA will not be truly major league until it realizes that a championship game is a LEAGUE game, and not just another home game for the home team to hold its usual regular-season introductions in which (a) the announcer thinks that he is the show; (b) the visitors are introduced as if they have leprosy, and (c) the home players are welcomed as if they were gods on loan from Mount Olympus.

*********** Tennessee QB Jim Bob Cooter - I am not making this up - was suspended from by Coach Philip Fullmer after being arrested by campus police on a drunken-driving charge. Not stereotyping or anything, but with a name like Jim Bob Cooter, I rather doubt he'd been sipping Chardonnay.

*********** Two California high school football stars must have thought they wuz in the 'hood instead of a coed dorm, and as a result their recruiting trip to the University of Oregon last January was capped off by their being charged with burglary and first-degree sex abuse.

(It wasn't a total loss for the Ducks, though, as they subsequently signed one of the young men. The other signed with Nebraska.)

According to police reports, the two men met a couple of female students in the hall of the dorm where the players were staying, and asked the women if they might "hang out" in the women's room. For some unknown reason - perhaps merely not wanting to seem unfriendly - the women invited the young men in, but thought to leave their door open.

Evidently the recruits had more than just hanging out in mind, starting with the suggestion that one of the young women take her pants off, then moving on to closing the door and turning out the lights and making various unwanted moves.

When the women finally managed to escape, one of them informed the recruits' host, a current Oregon footballer whose room was down the hall, that his guests had taken the "hanging out" a bit far. He then spoke with the recruits and advised them to apologize.

Later that night, the women found a note on their door:

WE SORRY. RECRUITS.

If they'd left out that first period, I would certainly agree. They sorry recruits. Definitely sorry.

And they probably gonna be sorry college students, too, but that didn't seem to stand in the way of the Oregon - or Nebraska - staffs.

Meantime - whose stupid idea was it to have coed dorms?

*********** While doing a little research, I came across an interview of George Halas by Frank DeFord in a December, 1977 Sports Illustrated.

Halas, if not the founder of the NFL then, as longtime owner and coach of the Bears at least a cornerstone of the league, was 82 years at the time old, but football hadn't lost any of its thrill.

"Look," he told DeFord, "You can have a session with your girl friend. What's that last you? Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Or you can go out and get stiff with the boys. A few hours, right? But to win a game in the National Football League! That lasts a whole week!"

*********** David Thomas of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, wondered how the young lady who just won the National Spelling Bee would have done if she'd been handed "Mike Krzyzweski, Brett Favre, Jhonny Peralta, Antawn Jamison and Dwyane Wade." Or, I might add, Andruw Jones.

*********** Writes Dan Pompei in The Sporting News,

There is nothing as disgusting on a football field as nonchalant tackling. If football games were cups of soup, sloppy tackle attempts would be hairs. And sometimes there are enough to braid.

We've all seen the quivering cornerback. The linebacker who tackles as if his hands were stuck in his pockets. The head-down safety who flies past his target.

And we've cringed at the results of their handiwork: big plays, touchdowns and defeats.

Anyone disagree? We've all seen how crummy NFL players tackle (no sense even bringing up blocking), and we've all "cringed" (Dan Pompei's word), not at the poor tackling or its often poor results, but at the announcers who gush ("GREAT TACKLE!") whenever one of these human dive bombers, hands in his pockets, happens to bring down his man.

Most NFL coaches are undoubtedly very good at what they do, but one of the things that they evidently don't do is teach tackling, but wait - this just in - IT'S NOT THEIR FAULT!

"More and more players," Pompei writes, "are coming out of college with poor tackling skills." See, it's all the fault of the college coaches -

The college coaches, for their part, say that it's not their fault, either. Golly, they're limited to just 20 hours of week of practices and meetings with their players, so they simply don't have the time to teach proper tackling. (To all you youth coaches who get to work with your kids three nights a week, two hours a night, and still manage to cram some tackling instruction in there - I am not making this up.)

Besides, claims Pompei, with all the grass basketball being played in college, tackling simply isn't as important in college these days. Writes Pompei, "Defense in college has become more about trying to chase down butterflies than about trying to stonewall rhinos."

So what's next?

Get ready to hear college coaches starting to say IT''S NOT OUR FAULT - "More and more players are coming out of high school with poor tackling skills."

And once that starts to happen... brace yourselves, middle school and youth coaches. Poor tackling in the NFL is your fault.

The NFL has tried everything else to soup up the game's offense, from bringing in the hash marks to the five-yard chuck rule to allowing intentional grounding, and nothing's working. Personally, I've thought for a long time that they ought to de-emphasize the field goal. Anything to get offenses to stop thinking in terms of settling for the sure three points.

If not, then simply prohibit the use of hands to make tackles.

That idea is not so farfetched. My highly-paid spies, embedded in the upper echelons of the NFL, tell me that the players making what you think are poor tackles have actually been taught to do that, and announcers instructed to praise their efforts, as part of an NFL pilot program to improve offensive performance, which may go league-wide in 2007.

After that, the plan is to provide free instructional videotapes of the Hands-Free Tackling (HFT - already patented) technique to all of America's high school, middle school and youth coaches.

*********** Hope you're someplace you like while you're reading this. And I hope that when you're done, you're free to go anyplace you please and do whatever you wish.

That's not the case with some Marines and a Navy medical corpsman awaiting trial at Camp Pendleton, California on murder charges resulting from the so-called Haditha Massacre.

They are said to be held in solitary confinement, allowed outside their cells for one short period a day, and then only while shackled at the hands, ankles and waist.

Remember them the next time you hear some bleeding heart telling you that even a guy caught red-handed in the commission of a crime is "presumed innocent until proven guilty."

Such is our military justice system - and such is our society's compassion for the worst manner of civilian criminals - that we shed tears when dogs bark in the faces of murderous turds who only hours before could have been plotting to blow up up school buses, but say nothing about the unbelievably callous treatment of young men who mere months ago were putting their lives on the line in service of their country.

Shame on their Commander-in-Chief.

*********** By the time you read this, Tyrone Lewis will be getting ready for graduation. It's Friday night, and he's scheduled to be one of the speakers.

Now if they'll only let him attend...

Lewis, 18, is a student at Truman High in Bristol, Pennsylvania, but local police are concerned that after his sister testified as a witness in a murder trial he might be the target for retaliation by a gang from Trenton, New Jersey - just across the Delaware River. They've been trying to find other ways for him to "attend" his high school graduation, including the suggestion that he address his classmates by video from a secure location.

Writes Armando Castro, a former Miami police officer who now lives in Roanoke, Virginia, "Political correctness and NO BALLS left in our country. If I'm the police chief I deploy S.W.A.T. and officers, and let this kid have his graduation. Plus I will put out word to the Crips: COME GET YOU SOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are in trouble, coach. I feel it with every instinct in my body."

I'm with Coach Castro! This would go on my fliers, which I'd tack to every telephone pole in Trenton:

Bring it on, fella.

And before you do, make sure to say good-bye to all your Jersey homies.

*********** I have been devouring your Dynamics of the Double Wing video and playbook. Just ordered installing the double wing and look forward to getting it. Do you have any resources on tryouts? I will be the head coach of a 12 year old team and 40 to 50 kids will come out and be split into an A and B team. I will be doing the evaluations and then take the A team. I want to make the evaluations fairly quickly, because I want as much time as possible to install and practice the new offense, as well as defense, etc.

As for tryouts, looking at youngsters who haven't played before - since you can't measure heart in tryouts, I would look for athletic ability - coordination, quickness, speed, coordination - and athletic intelligence (how well do they understand - and carry out - your instructions?).

My reasoning is that even if they've never hit before, if kids have those qualities I can teach them to hit, but if they don't have them, even if they want to hit it won't do them much good .

*********** Internet humor, spawned by Brokeback Mountain...

Some retired deputy sheriffs went to a retreat in the woods. To save money, they agreed to sleep two to a room.

The problem was the one of them snored so badly no one wanted to sleep in his room. Deciding it wasn't fair to make one of them stay with him the whole time, they voted to take turns.

The first deputy to share the room with him came to breakfast the next morning with his hair a mess and his eyes bloodshot. The others said, "Man, what happened to you?" and he said, "he snored so loud, I just sat up and watched him all night."

The next night it was a different deputy's turn. In the morning, same thing - messy hair, bloodshot eyes. The others asked, "Man, what happened to you? You look awful!"

And he said, "Man, that guy really snores. I sat up and watched him all night."

The third night it was the turn of a big ex-football player; a real man's man.

The next morning he came to breakfast looking great. "Good morning," he said.

The others couldn't believe what they saw! "Man," they asked, "What happened?"

"Well," he said, "When we got ready for bed, I went over and tucked him in and kissed him good night - and he sat up all night up and watched me."

*********** I've never been to the Casa D'Ice Restaurant in North Versailles, Pennsylvania, but based on their message board/sign, I think I'd find the atmosphere to be colorful, to say the least. (Apologies to those who don't care for the barnyard vulgarity.)

The owner embraces traditional values, and in true Western Pennsylvania in-your-face style, he is not in the slightest hesitant to use his message board to let you know what his opinions are, on matters local and global.

Unlike most American businesses today, who stumble all over themselves trying not to offend, and providing benefits for "domestic partners," for fear of losing the homosexual trade, he doesn't seem at all worried about how expressing his views will affect his business. If people don't like his opinions, that would seem to be their problem.

Typical of his political positions are the messages above, three of just many you can find at http://www.casadice.com/signs/index.htm

*********** Listen to Joe Theismann on Joey Harrington: "There's two guys in this league that it's very difficult to have evaluated them in their previous environment. David Carr is one, Joey Harrington is another. Joey in Detroit . . . he was always without something. There was no stability around him. There wasn't stability in the running game. There wasn't stability in the passing game. There wasn't stability in the coaching staff. I don't know how much stability there is in the organization. It's almost like the guy existed and worked through a constant state of chaos."

Almost?

*********** Hi coach-For the last 6 or 7 years we have not had one really tough kid that other kids would feed off. In the past we would get 3 or 4 hard nosed kids but they have seemed to vanished. We have tried all the deals in practice but to no avail. It might be our water?Please advise. We need to get back to physical toughness.

I think that part of the problem is that many of today's boys, especially those from affluent backgrounds, have been neutered by overindulgent parents and today's oh-so-soft education system. Some of them are only out there only because someone in the family wants them to play football.

But many of them, although they don't come to you already "tough," are quite capable of turning into football players.

Unlike earlier times, though, you have to show them how.

Despite the best efforts of modern educators - and mass media - to feminize our culture, there are still plenty of young men who resist their efforts and want to be real men, and our society's survival depends on having enough real men to show them what it takes. In the increasing absence of real men in their homes, that means we depend on coaches.

What some see as "toughness" in young kids may be nothing more than the confidence that comes with experience - confidence that they can handle contact without being hurt.

I think that the solution lies in making sure that kids are properly conditioned, so that they don't feel sorry for themselves, then prepared for contact - taught how to fall and get up, and taught properly how to block, how to play off blockers. You have to be careful here, because you don't want to set up drills that will drive kids off. None of this "let's see who wants to hit!" crap.

You want to start out slowly and only pick up the tempo when it is obvious that they know what you expect and can perform up to your expectations.

And finally, you want to add a little peer pressure. Most kids basically want to "measure up," so if you put them in situations where either (1) teammates are depending on them to do their jobs (such as a relay), or (2) they are performing in front of others (various forms of individual competition, properly set up to avoid mismatches), you will find at least some of them coming through.

*********** So Barbaro, the Kentucky Derby winner, a heavy favorite in the Preakness, suffers a career-ending injury - and now, out of nowhere, come calls for a hard look at the entire concept of the Triple Crown.

the Triple Crown, we are suddenly being told, is simply too hard on those colts. Forget the thousands of three-year-olds that have managed to run all three races and go on to successful careers on the track and at stud. In fact, in years of watching Triple Crown races, I can't remember an injury comparable to Barbaro's.

How much you wanna bet that somewhere behind the sudden interest in horses' health, there's TV money? Maybe the TV guys would like to spread the races out a little more. The easiest thing is to say that it's in the interest of the animals' safety.

Shoot, the way horse racing is hurting these days, for the right money they'd hold the Triple Crown the first three Monday nights in January.



2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 4-1-06 (2006 CLINICS)
CLINICS START AT 9 AM SHARP AND GO UNTIL 4 PM WITH A 1-HOUR BREAK FOR LUNCH

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

HOLIDAY INN, 432 Pennsylvania Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000

APRIL 29
PROVIDENCE

COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470

MAY 6
DENVER

WESTMINSTER HS - Westminster, CO (For more details call Coach Kevin Uhlig - 303-870-8582)

MAY 13
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS - LATHROP, CA.

JUNE 10
PACIFIC NORTHWEST

PHOENIX INN & SUITES - 12712 SE 2ND Circle, Vancouver WA - 360-891-9777

NEXT CLINIC - PACIFIC NORTHWEST - THIS SATURDAY, JUNE 10 - VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON

Attendees will receive a complimentary DVD breaking down, play-by-play, the Full-House Belly-T offense of the powerful 1953-1954 Army teams, coached by Earl "Red" Blaik, with Vince Lombardi as his offensive assistant. On the video you will see action clips of Army greats, including the immortal Don Holleder, whose memory is honored by the Black Lion Award. This DVD is not for sale. It is provided by the Board of the Black Lion Award in the interests of furthering football and the Black Lion Award itself.

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

Instead of Blowing Money on Teenagers, Spend it on GI's! (See"NEWS") Old Dominion Announces It Will Play Football! (See"NEWS")

"Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." (Proverbs, Chapter 8, Verses 10-11)

My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me

June 6, 2006 - "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."P. J. O'Rourke

*********** My God. I almost missed commemorating D-Day. With all the nonsense about 6-6-6, I nearly forgot June 6, 1944, one of the most illustrious days in American history, and surely one the history's greatest concentrations - in one place, on one day - of human bravery.

*********** USA Today last week ran a story about the way text messaging is destroying teenagers' ability to, like, speak.

Even less than the news that the time they used to spend on the phone yakking is now being spent text-messaging or browsing MySpace. And the money being spent on indulging those idle pastimes - one parent, completely unashamed, admitted spending $300 a month.

On Monday, a reader from Warner Robins, Georgia wrote in to suggest that instead of pissing away that kind of money on their spoiled brats, parents ought to summon the courage to tell their kids that they can do without a lot of their luxuries so that other people might benefit.

He suggests that they ought to spend their kids' phone allowance on phone cards for American troops in Iraq.

Excellent idea!

As a matter of fact, if anyone is interested in doing that, you can send phone cards to John Simar, in the Middle East. I can assure you that John will see to it that the phone cards get into the hands of men in Iraq who will appreciate them. John, a former Army player and coach, was athletic director at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and volunteered to serve in Iraq. He says that our troops in Iraq don't need a whole lot, but one thing they really appreciate is phone cards.

You can send them to:

MAJ John Simar

HHC, 1st PERSCOM (FWD)

OIF/OEF 05-07

APO AE 09366

*********** I just ordered a few of your videos -- you should get the check tomorrow.   Next year will be my first year as a head coach (------- High School). We are in a very tough league, and we consistently go 2-8 every year. Our previous coach ran the spread offense, but we had no running game, went 3 and out almost every series, lost our QB and the entire offense, and averaged 4 interceptions a game.

I learned the Delaware Wing-T from a high school in California and was planning and preparing to put that in for next year. I am impressed with your Double-Wing and would like to know how it compares to the Delaware Wing-T in the following areas:

• Angle blocking (we have small linemen)
• Misdirection (we need every advantage we can get)

• Attacking all areas of the field

• Spreading the defense

• Passing game

You may be too busy to answer these questions -- which I understand. I will try to get to your Chicago clinic in the winter of 2007.

The offenses are very similar. My Double-Wing is descended directly from my Delaware Wing-T, and I still think of myself as a Delaware Wing-T coach.

Like the Delaware Wing-T, my system is based on: Power, Misdirection, Trapping, Play-Action

The major differences, I believe, are in our lack of splits and the closeness of our fullback to the line of scrimmage. As a result, I believe that there is greater deception, and that things hit faster.

But I know that there is greater power than I experienced with the Delaware Wing-T. By tightening things up, I believe that we have altered the offense from one based on finesse to one based on power.

Our signature plays are the wedge and the power off-tackle. Everything else comes from them and what defenses do to try to stop them.

We do a lot of angle and double-team blocking, and we have begun to cut low (legally) a fair amount.

We can spread the field, if that is desirable, in the same way that the Delaware Wing-T does, although part of our philosophy is to force the defense to compress, so that we have all the rest of the field to attack with sweeps and passes.

Our passing, as you would expect with a running-based offense, is mostly restricted to play-action. Time is the enemy of us all, and just as a pure passing team doesn't have time for a sophisticated running game, we don't have the time to develop much of a drop-back passing game.

It is a matter of giving up something to get something, and for my purposes, it is a favorable swap.

*********** Apparently it's not uncommon for a person, now 30-something, to visit The Wall, or a traveling replica, looking for the name of a father killed in Vietnam, only to find that, um, Dad's name's not up there.

Hmmm - seems that when these folks were younger and they'd ask where Dad was, Mom would tell them he was killed in Vietnam.

But uh-oh. The Wall don't lie. Considering the size of the task - engraving more than 58,000 names on the polished granite - it is amazingly accurate.

Ooo-whee. As the Vancouver Columbian notes, when Mom says "he was," and the Wall says "No, he wasn't," and the kids confront Mom, she could find herself with an "unexpected case of STD - 'Splainin' to do."

(One can't help suspecting that Mom perhaps was covering up a little affair she had back in the 60's or 70's.)

*********** Coach Wyatt, We're fighting against people who'd just as soon blow up their own children and yet we sentence a soldier to 90-days for letting his dog bark at the enemy? Dave Potter, Durham, North Carolina

FORT MEADE, Md.(AP) A military jury that found an Army dog handler guilty of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault for his actions at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison sentenced him to 90 days' hard labor.

Army Sgt. Santos A. Cardona became the 11th soldier convicted of crimes stemming from the abuse of inmates at the prison in late 2003 and early 2004.

Santos was convicted of allowing his dog to bark within inches of the face of a kneeling detainee at the request of another soldier who wasn't an interrogator. The jury acquitted him other serious charges, including unlawfully having his dog bite a detainee and conspiring with another dog handler to frighten prisoners as a game.

Prosecutor Maj. Matthew Miller said prisoner abuse hurts the war on terrorism by damaging America's image. He recommended Santos be sentenced to 12 months confinement and be given a bad conduct discharge.

Right on, Coach Potter. Our soldiers - and even an occasional news reporter - are being attacked by a**holes who have no regard for human life, and yet we continue treating our soldiers as if they are big city policemen sent into high-crime urban areas. Instead of letting fighting men fight, and treating the enemy like the enemy, we worry about "damaging our image," or of taking it easy on them so they'll take it easy on us. Or conferring on them the rights of American citizens. What's next? Putting soldiers on paid administrative leave every time they off an insurgent? Civilian review boards? Oops. I forgot. We already have them - they're called Congressmen.

For me, Brigadier General Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF, said it all, in Harper's Magazine, April 2006 issue...

"In the military, we look to destroy threats, not apprehend them for processing through a system that presumes them innocent until proven guilty. And I should add that if you try ti imprint soldiers with the restraint that a police force needs, then you disadvantage them against the ruthless adversaries that real war involves."



*********** My name is ---- ------ and I am playing what could be described as semipro Football in Germany. I have a question that you surely can answer, but it is not related to the DW.

We run the I- Formation as I-Normal, I-Big and also Pro and Wishbone.

Coaching in Germany isn't nearly as advanced as in America and the system was installed because it looked good in the NFL. We do have some decent coaches now, but line work is still up to us.

In our playbook, the line is simply neglected, only movement of backs is there.

Maybe I should start by describing our offensive team. We have three pretty good inside liner and two rookies at tackle that need a lot of work (which they get). Our TE is decent, but not much of a blocker. Our fullback is very, very good and we have a wide diversity of backs to chose from, including the fastest guy in the league.

Because of the lack of anything better, we just use basic blocking rules, having a head-up guy as first target, a backside guy as second, a LB as third etc. You probably now that stuff.

Our Dives are great, but we get killed on Sweeps and Off-Tackle plays.

Whenever I see your diagrams, I am amazed that you chalk down each path for every liner and each assignment. We are currently trying to implement more traps and pulls, but the problem we have is the diversity of defenses we face. They never line up in the same gaps and I have seen numerous TNT or 4-3 formations.

I also know you are against line-audibles.

So my question is: Do you have all possible defensive formations on paper and practice against them, or do you try to teach your linemen to chose their own targets?

We are able to do the things we do because we are different from most of today's so-called "cutting edge" offenses in that we employ what are called blocking rules.

Every line position on every play has a blocking rule - a position rule - which the lineman playing that position must learns. That rule that will apply to any defense he may see. We don't expect him to learn defenses. We only want him to concern himself with what he sees in his own little world - his area of the line. (This is one of the reasons we insist on a stance which enables him to keep his eyes up.)

Sometimes the rule is as a simple as telling our center "Man ON, Man AWAY" - which means that if there is a man on him (a nose man) he blocks that man, but if there is not, he blocks the first man away.

Memorizing the position rules is not as difficult as you think, because there aren't that many. We don't require a lineman to memorize his assignment for every one of ours play, against four or five different defensive fronts.

Instead, we employ a very limited number of "master" blocking rules which contain all the linemen's (including the ends') position rules. If we are running a bare-bones version of the offense, we may employ as few as three or four master blocking rules; if we are running an expanded version, we may employ as many as ten. But that is it.

The player learns his position rule for each master rule and now he is able to run different plays that may employ a variety of backfield formations and motions and fakes, but as far as his assignment is concerned are all the same.

So if a lineman can understand what he does on each of our master blocking rules, it is not at all difficult for him to learn new plays, because for him, they are not "new." They are same-old, same-old.

As an example, we can a counter play with at least ten different kinds of backfield action, and from God knows how many different formations and motions, but if our linemen know their "Counter" master rule, it is all the same thing to them.

Hope that helps.

*********** An old joke goes like this: Q. What are a redneck's last words? A. Hey, y'all - watch this!!!

A Portland DJ gives our Darwin Awards to people like that, whose idiocy, especially in stunts that lead to their death, confirms the whole idea of natural selection.

This week there were two winners - the couple in Florida who apparently decided to inhale helium, and crawled inside a large, helium-filled balloon to do it.

But close behind - if only he had lost his life in the process he might have won - was the former Florida State football player arrested for breaking into a former teammate's apartment and robbing it.

He became a "person of interest" when police investigators searching the apartment found a Nike football glove with the guy's number from this past season printed on it. Number 1.

*********** Speaking of Florida State... Bobby Bowden sho' nuff seems like a swell fella, but somebody on his staff sure has a master's touch when it comes to recruiting sociopaths.

Consider linebacker A. J. Nicholson.

Nicholson has been linked to a break-in of a former teammate's apartment.

The newspaper story said that "the charges are the latest in a string of brushes with the law."

Haw- "brushes with the law"

You may recall that he was accused of sexual assault in Miami before the Orange Bowl and sent home. He has not yet been charged.

But not to worry. Nothing ever happens to those guys even when they are guilty.

In January of 2005 he was arrested by Tallahassee police for DUI, and in June he was arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest. In the latter case, police had to use a Tazer to subdue him.

Last August, both cases were settled when he accepted a plea agreement, including a fine, community service, and six months' probation. Hmmm - just in time for football. As a result, he started all 12 2005 games, leading the Seminoles in tackling for the second straight season.

But don't worry about Florida State's reputation. Next year, Nicholson will play in the NFL, where he will fit right in.



*********** Courtesy of the Internet...

The Pentagon has announced the formation of a new all-volunteer elite fighting unit called the United States Redneck Special Forces (USRSF).

These boys - from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia - will be dropped into Iraq, after first being given the following information about terrorists:

1. The season opens today.
2. There is no limit.

3. They taste just like chicken.

4. They don't like beer, pickups, country music or Jesus.

5. If it weren't for them, gas would be $1.29 a gallon
6. They are directly responsible for the death of Dale Earnhardt.

The Pentagon expects the problem in Iraq to be over before the race on Sunday.

*********** Canadian officials nailed a bunch of would-be terrorists who they said planned to blow up various government targets. They said the group had acquired three tons of ammonium nitrate - about three times what was needed to blow up the federal office building in Oklahoma City.

(Ohmigod - you don't suppose Canadian security forces actually invaded those peoples' privacy and listened in on their telephone conversations, do you? )

The "alleged" terrorists were described as "Canadian residents," but they had names like - gee, why am I not surprised? - Ahmad, Shareef, Abdul, Fahim, Jahmaal, Asin, Abdelhaleen, Zakaria, Asad, Saad, Qayyum?

When are these fools going to get serious about what they're doing and start changing their names to Joseph? or Michael? or Jason?

*********** Uh-oh.

A California jury just awarded $61 million to two FedEx Ground drivers of Lebanese descent who said a manager continuously harassed them with "racial slurs", saying they were called "terrorists," among other things.

The claimed harassment allegedly took place in 1999 and 2000.

A FedEx Ground says the award was excessive (really?) and the company will appeal.

Of course, it's excessive. But come on - let it go.

It could have been a lot worse. They could have brought AK-47s to work and killed everyone in the place.

*********** So. We fight to give the Iraqis democracy, and this is what we get...

The Prime Minister recently claimed said that violence against Iraqi civilians had become a "daily phenomenon" by many American troops, who "do not respect the Iraqi people."

"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion," he said, ignoring the fact that if the streets of Baghdad were strewn with Humvee-crushed Iraqis, American television audiences would know about it before he did.

"This," he said, "is completely unacceptable."

Unacceptable, huh? He accuses us of running over people, and all he can say is that it's "unacceptable?" Sounds like Mr. Farquhar, the mealy-mouthed Vice Principal.

So. We not only gave them American-style democracy - we also gave them American-style politicians. The Iraqis will live to regret it.

*********** Our two guards for our varsity high school football team weigh 155 pounds (they are strong -- good wrestlers, but small) -- can we move the ball in a power mode with that small of linemen? Our tackles (190, 250) and tight ends (180, 170) have a little more size. From your experience, can you run the double wing without beef?

I really appreciate your website and all the questions you answer and address (some with great humor) -- what a great service to coaches and educators!

One other quick question: do you use a hitting sled to drill blocking? If so what size sled?

I won't kid you by saying that it doesn't help to have big linemen, but my experience is that quickness, athletic ability, toughness and intelligence are far more important than beef.

I once thought that my guards had to be big, but over the last couple of years we have found that small guards could get the job done with the addition of the "knee drive" technique, as my college coaches called it.

We don't use sleds all that much, which is not in any way saying that they are not useful. Mostly for me a sled's usefulness is providing more resistance in helping reinforce a basic principle of our blocking, which is the "12-Step Cure" - always insisting on taking 12 steps after contact is made.

*********** I've been following the Stanley Cup Playoffs, eh. Last week, for some reason I kept the TV tuned to OLN, the cable channel that covers hockey, and I stumbled on "The Tournament" a hilarious spoof on youth hockey parents in Canada. It calls itself a "mockumentary", and it's a great sendup of numerous reality shows we've seen, and offers a side-splitting look at the people and events surrounding a hockey father's obsession with getting his kid (now 10 years old) to the NHL.

*********** Old Dominion University is going to play football again, for the first time since 1940. Beginning with the 2009 season, ODU will play Division I-AA ball.

ODU, located in Norfolk, is in the heart of Tidewater Virginia, one of the best recruiting areas per capita in the US.

The plan is to play at a refurbished Foreman Field, in Norfolk. Foreman Field, which seats 20,000, was built in 1934 and can stand refurbishing.

ODU will hire an assistant athletic director for football this fall and a head coach sometime during the 2007-08 school year. Six full-time and one part-time assistant coaches are budgeted. The first group of recruits, mostly freshmen and junior college students, will enroll in fall 2008

University President Roseann Runte said, "I am very pleased that we are moving ahead with a football program and we are doing it without making any compromises. Academic quality, other sports and Title IX will not be compromised.

No, I should say not. Title IX will not be compromised.

To comply with Title IX requirements, Old Dominion will be adding women's crew in 2007-08, women's softball in 2010-11 and women's volleyball in 2014-15.

*********** If Navy finishes the season bowl-eligible, the Middies will automatically earn a berth in Charlotte's Meinecke Car Care Bowl. This is a big coup for the folks in Charlotte, because based on their last several bowl appearances, Navy "travels well" (brings a lot of fans to town with it).

Should the Middies fall short, their spot will go to the Big East number three team.

*********** If they do, they should change the name to the Anticlimax Bowl...

Alamo Bowl officials are taking a look at moving the date of their 2007 game from late December to January 7, after all the BCS games have been played.

*********** Unlike the BIG Division I-A schools, most of which which like to emulate the pros and play "pre-season"-type openers against weaker teams, Mid-America Conference schools don't have that luxury. They need money themselves, and so, where possible, they schedule "up," against BCS schools that can offer them large guarantees.

Six of them - Bowling Green, Michigan, Kent State, Miami, Northern Illinois and Western Michigan - open against Big Ten teams.

Central Michigan opens with Boston College and Toledo with Iowa State.

Four of the MAC's schools will not be playing up, but that's because they're playing league games: Ball State opens against Eastern Michigan and Buffalo opens against Temple.

Otherwise, though, only Ohio is going for the "W" instead of the bucks, opening with Tennessee-Martin.

*********** After Congress finishes with Big Oil, it might want to take a look at Big Education. College tuition, both public and private, has been increasing a more than three times the rate of inflation, fueled to a great extent by the fact that no matter how much the colleges keep charging, the American taxpayer stands by and guarantees student loans.

Meantime, the President of Portland State University, a good enough school but scarcely a world-class research institution, just received a $51,000 raise, retroactive to January 1. He had been scraping by on $170,000 a year.

I'll bet we could find a college president in Mexico who'd do the job for a lot less than that.

*********** The World Cup gets under way this week. Expect a lot of action.

Not on the field, though. (This is, after all, soccer.)

The real action could take place off the field.

Consider:

Iran is playing and their crazy-ass president may accompany the team, so that ought to be good for a few laughs.

England is in the tournament, and any time their team is playing, English soccer rowdies will be somewhere nearby, drunken and unruly.

And then there is the possibility to real ugliness. Europeans like to lecture us about what they see as our social shortcomings, but they have a lot to learn from us in the area of racial tolerance:

Back in March, a Nigerian playing in the German city of Halle was spit on and taunted by racial insults and monkey noises. He responded by doing what we little kids used to do back during World War II - making a Hitler mustache with two fingers under his nose, and holding his arm up in a "Heil Hitler!" salute. (It is illegal to do so in today's Germany, but the player was excused since he was taunting the spectators, and not glorifying Nazism.

An Ivory Coast native who plays for an Italian team in Milan was the target of racial insults from fans in Messina.

In April, a black American playing for a Belgian team Belgium, waved dismissively at fans who were making ape-like chants at him, but then, as he was throwing a ball inbounds, a fan of the opposing team reached over a barrier and punched him in the face.

It is not unusual for racist banners to be hung in some stadiums, and some fans think it is clever to throw bananas at block players.

Cute.



2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 4-1-06 (2006 CLINICS)
CLINICS START AT 9 AM SHARP AND GO UNTIL 4 PM WITH A 1-HOUR BREAK FOR LUNCH

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

HOLIDAY INN, 432 Pennsylvania Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000

APRIL 29
PROVIDENCE

COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470

MAY 6
DENVER

WESTMINSTER HS - Westminster, CO (For more details call Coach Kevin Uhlig - 303-870-8582)

MAY 13
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS - LATHROP, CA.

JUNE 10
PACIFIC NORTHWEST

PHOENIX INN & SUITES - 12712 SE 2ND Circle, Vancouver WA - 360-891-9777

Attendees will receive a complimentary DVD breaking down, play-by-play, the Full-House Belly-T offense of the powerful 1953-1954 Army teams, coached by Earl "Red" Blaik, with Vince Lombardi as his offensive assistant. On the video you will see action clips of Army greats, including the immortal Don Holleder, whose memory is honored by the Black Lion Award. This DVD is not for sale. It is provided by the Board of the Black Lion Award in the interests of furthering football and the Black Lion Award itself.

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

Scripture Provides a Watchword for Coaches and Teachers! (See"NEWS") Maybe Canada Will Have Me - After Ricky Williams, of Course! (See"NEWS")

My Offensive System My Materials for Sale My Clinics Me

June 2, 2006 - "The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." Stephen Wright

*********** My friend Armando Castro, in Roanoke, Virginia, brought to my attention a passage from scripture that I plan to adopt as my watchword. It puts in proper perspective the value of a teacher or a coach...

"Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." (Proverbs, Chapter 8, Verses 10-11)

*********** Regarding my suggestions for dealing with coaches who like to run up the score, Steve Tobey, of Malden, Massachusetts, writes,

Coach, I like your idea.

It's interesting reading some of the bulletin boards about this. Some people are looking at this rule (and what they feel is "whining" about running up the score) as another sign of how soft and politically correct this country has become. If you don't like getting beaten by a lopsided score, they say, work harder, learn to stop them. If you aren't prepared to compete or if you quit, you deserve to be humiliated, or so they say.

I've also talked to people on the other side of the spectrum who feel that there's no excuse for running up the score, even if it means punting on first down or taking a knee starting at a ridiculously early point in the game.

I'm not sure I'm in complete agreement with either extreme side of the debate. I think there are two separate elements to this issue that some people can't seem to separate. One is the effort of the athletes playing the game. The other is the play calling and other coaching decisions.

Respect for the opponent involves two things. One is playing as hard as you can all the time and playing to win. The other is not doing anything to humiliate or embarrass him. I don't think those two things have to be mutually exclusive.

I think, when all is said and done, that the game is bigger than any of its participants, and when the day is over, the game should remain as it was before the day began, unsullied by any of the actions of its participants.

Golf is a good model of what I mean.

As most of us know, the reason for outlandish scores is not great coaching, but extreme disparities in talent. We don't see those conditions at the NFL level, so we rarely see blowouts in the NFL; and at the college level we see them mainly when a Division I-AA team pimps its players for the big bucks offered by a major school. If mismatches occur at the major college level, it is almost certainly due to a recruiting disparity - either one of the teams didn't recruit good enough athletes or - in the case of a Vanderbilt, a Rice or a Duke - its academic standards prevented it from doing so.

In high school, however, no matter how good the coaches may be, the players are the kids who get off the bus in the morning. And since the players are the kids who live within the boundaries of their school district, they reflect the affluence and the aspirations of their district, which can vary greatly from those of neighboring districts. To use Portland, Oregon as an example, in three of its ten high schools more than 60 per cent of the students receive free or reduced-price lunch; in three of them, under sixteen per cent do. Guess which ones dominate sports (other than basketball)?

This sort of situation is duplicated in cities all over the country, and is made even worse in places where inner-city schools play in combined leagues with more affluent suburban schools.

These disparities are fixed and no amount of coaching can make them go away, and they are aggravated by the fact that kids at the so-called "have-not" schools understand full well the unevenness of the competitive situation they face, and many of them, deciding not even to deal with what they see as the hopelessness of competing with the "haves," don't even bother to turn out.

So outrageous scores are bound to happen, and coaches have an obligation to realize those scores often result mostly from geography, and not as a result of their brilliance.

Like it or not, parallels are often drawn between football and warfare.

The actions of some unethical coaches in doing unconscionable things to run up the score are the football equivalent of allowing their troops to loot and pillage once the battle has been won and the opponent defeated.

There is a scene in the movie "Glory" in which a young officer watches another group of soldiers plundering and pillaging a town they've just captured, but refuses to let his men do the same.

The object of war is to win. But in our civilized society, it is not to take unfair advantage of a vanquished opponent. It is not acceptable practice to murder unarmed opponents.

In war, there is no time limit, no score kept. We know that the opponent has been vanquished because either all his troops are killed, or he surrenders.

In football, there is no killing, and there is no surrender. But there comes a point where any coach knows his opponent is vanquished, and at that point he does what he can - within the bounds of reasonableness - not to take unfair advantage of his opponent's condition.

I would never advocate doing silly things like taking a knee on every play, starting in the third quarter, or punting on second down. That makes just as much a farce of the game - and is just as insulting to the losing team - as keeping the starters in the game well into the fourth quarter, or onside kicks when you're 50 points in front.

It really isn't that difficult. When you reach a certain point - maybe a 35-point lead? - get those starters out of there and play your backups. Do not hold them back. They have worked for this chance and they deserve to play the football they've been taught. If they continue to build the score, so be it. Provided that you do nothing out of the ordinary - triple reverses, etc. - you have done your part.

The amazing thing to me is how many guys will have 60-some kids in uniform on Friday night, yet keep their starters in well into the fourth quarter of a runaway game. That is as much an insult to their own backups as it is to their opponents.

I was on the bad end of some big scores this past season, but never did it appear to me that the opponents were running up the score. We simply couldn't stop them until they began to substitute, and to their credit they were quick to recognize this and begin to substitute by halftime. It undoubtedly was a welcome opportunity for many of their backups to see action on a Friday night.

*********** Let the last word on Barry Bonds' fraudulent records belong to Babe Ruth's only living teammate. He's Billy Werber, he's 98 years old, and he lives in Charlotte. He told Bud Geracie of the San Jose Mercury-News, "The record is meaningless because Bonds has been an obvious user of steroids. In our day, nobody used anything but a bat. In 4,000 more at-bats, Bonds ought to have picked up a dozen more home runs, don't you think? He's a horse's ass, and you can quote me on that."

*********** Regarding those Marines who may or may not be guilty of what they're accused of but have already been convicted by a liberal press and opportunistic politicians...

Where is the culpability in all this of our Commander-in-Chief, who sent the finest fighting men on earth into a situation where they are exposed to all manner of outrageous and unexpected attacks, and limited their ability to respond with all kinds of restraints?

Suppose I were knowingly to schedule a game with a team known for its dirty play, and scheduling it at their place, in front of hostile, abusive fans known to throw things from the stands. Suppose I were to warn my players of all this, and tell them numerous times that they were not to retaliate, no matter what the provocation.

And then, suppose that in the game several of my players were to be laid out, victimized by blatant cheap shots.

Now, suppose my players, being human caring very deeply about their buddies, finally have all they can take, and begin to respond in kind, giving as well as they've been getting.

Am I off the hook because I told them not to fight back?

Oh, sure - I can shake my head in disbelief, and I can tell everyone who will listen that they were warned not to do those things, and I deplore their actions, but when it's all said and done, I'm the one who put them in that spot.

*********** During the Twenties, when Prohibition outlawed the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol, people who wanted to go out and have a drink might be lucky enough to know of a speakeasy, an illegal, undercover night club or bar where alcohol was served.

Today, speakeasies are a distant memory. With the exception of a few dry counties here and there, it isn't difficult to buy a drink legally anywhere in the US.

But in Seattle, nearly six-months after the state of Washington passed the nation's toughest smoking ban, "smoke-easies" are beginning to appear, taverns where patrons can still have a smoke while they have a drink.

Because of the secrecy required to circumvent a law which says that smoking may not take place in any public establishment or within 25 feet of it, locations of speakeasies are spread by word of mouth, and patrons are sworn to secrecy.

In somewhat the same way that "blind pigs" - after-hours joints - operate in Detroit, serving liquor illegally after closing time, Seattle's smoke-easies operate later in the evening, when mostly regulars remain, or after closing.

For the most part, they tend to be neighborhood joints, where customers can be trusted because they are known to management and to each other.

One person responding to a story about the smoke-easies in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote, "As a 50 year old local native, all I can say is that it breaks my heart to see what my home has deteriorated into. I fear someday I will have to go to Alaska where other former Seattleites have relocated, basically because that's one of the places that's still a man's world.

"I'd get a good laugh if someone marched into the Elbow Room in Dutch Harbor and tried to make the fishermen put their smokes out. You'd be crab bait in the blink of an eye.

"Granted, not much of a place to live, but at least the all-important soccer mommies don't have sway of every little thing their hearts desire because their men around them have freely given up their scrotums to 'em."

As another writer put it, the smoking ban illustrates the essential conflict going on in America - Free Will vs. Free Willy

*********** Interesting sidescript on why one might want to be ready to arm: I was chatting with a prof who was a native of Canada. He noted that he planned to retire to Canada and noted a few things in its favor:

Canadian immigration brings in wealthy, well educated white collars - without millions of illegals (not sure how they work that). He said, "I see the potential for some major social conflict here in the US."

Canadian immigration seems to enforce assimilation much better than the USA. "I had a Chinese friend from Canada come down here and he said it was the first time he noticed he wasn't white." Presumably they don't have multiculturalists up there, and enough people hate the closest thing - the separatists.

Christopher Anderson, Palo Alto, California

Very interesting. Canadians have long been tormented by the notion that they had no culture of their own, distinct from that of the giant to the south, the USA, whose cultural influences they were subjected to whether they liked it or not.

But now, the ultimate irony is that with the changes in our culture threatened by nearly unrestricted immigration, those of us who want to live someplace with a culture like the America we once knew and loved may have to move to Canada.

Unfortunately, in view of Canada's apparent selectivity, that may take us a while, but if you're a socially maladjusted running back who throws women down stairs (Lawrence Phillips) or likes to smoke weed and fathers numerous illegitimate children which he refuses to support (Ricky Williams), you can jump to the front of the line, ahead of us "wealthy, educated white collars."

*********** Coach, hope the clinic season is treating you well. I'm certainly sorry I can't make the --------- clinic, but I will be purchasing this year's virtual clinic when it comes out.

I wanted to see what you think of a growing concern I am having as a small school coach. As you know we have been successful (25-6 in 3 years with 2 league champ. and one sectional champ.) Usually this gets you a more participation in general as well as in the weightroom. Ours has declined every year I have coached. I think kids like me - I know that I am tough and there are times they don't, but I think they generally know I care for them (and although they may not like me a lot when they play for me, I have had a lot of positive feedback from the kids after they are out of the program.)

Personally, I think our problem is laziness and not wanting to work hard. I expect kids to either play a sport or lift in the offseason. I want them 3 times a week if they aren't playing a sport, but the minimum is 2.   We generally have decent participation in the summer because of the impending season (we really have nearly perfect participation in the summer - because those who rarely show - are not considered for starting positions - so this is not much of a problem).

For the most part kids play a sport or lift. But there are always kids who do not. I guess what it comes down to is because of our size and the number of kids required by the state for a team - we depend on these kids. I hate that.

Bottom line - I've got 8-9 guys who are great (and I know I should feel lucky at that), but I might have to play kids that I have no respect for just to field a team. Furthermore, as I said our numbers have steadily declined.   My first year we had about 25 kids, my second 23, last year 22, this year we have 22 signed up, but I anticipate 21-20 kids.

Our JV''s have it worse. In a sense - it may be because I have made football more demanding. I am okay with that - as I don't want lazy kids around. BUT again - those kids have us somewhat hostage - because of the numbers thing.   I am like you - I could care less about numbers - yet - because of how low our numbers are - I find myself overly concerned about them. The kids that are not playing - are not kids we'd necessarily want (although some are physically talented).

But our numbers are beginning to dip dangerously low for the survival of the program. I know this is an increasing problem all over America - but what can a coach do???

Coach, I am a firm believer that in the same way that people have distinct personalities that we simply can't change, communities have personalities - cultures, actually - that are also beyond anyone's ability to change.

So while you can mention some communities that have produced a turnaround, it has more than likely happened not because of any great cultural change in the people who have been living there for years, but because the community has received an infusion of new people. It has happened in the town where I live. When my wife and I moved here nearly 17 years ago, winning football seasons were distant memories. Kids expected to lose, and the community didn't really care.

But in the last 10 years, the population has more than doubled, with most of the newcomers affluent families with high expectations for their kids. That is another coach's headache, of course, but it has meant great facilities (two FieldTurf fields in a one-high-school town) and good support for coaches, and people who expect their kids to succeed. The result has been winning teams in football and practically every sport.

I know plenty of coaches who have run up against a brick wall in one community, then moved on and established themselves as consistent winners someplace else. And I also know plenty of guys who have been winners someplace, then moved on to places where other people before them had failed and they failed, too.

This sort of phenomenon can vary from town to town - I have seen adjacent towns with totally different approaches to high school sports, and I am convinced it is deeper-seated than simply the coaches or the school administrators.

In other words, all the motivational tactics in the world may prove useless if there is something in the local culture that resists doing what is necessary to be successful.

In short - as much as you may like things in general where you are right now, you may have to decide between accepting things as they are, or moving on.

Fortunately, it seems to me that your accomplishments have been such that you will have that option. HW

*********** I just finished reading "Coach Royal," a book based on interviews of famed Texas coach Darrell Royal by University of Texas historian and archivist John Wheat. Darrell Royal was coach of three national champions - 1963, 1969 and 1970 - and twice was named Coach of the Year - 1961 and 1963. The book is a good read because Coach Royal is a very interesting man with a wry sense of humor and a folksy way of saying some very profound things.

At one point I really had to laugh, thinking about those of you who might entertain any hopes at all of ever getting the "air it out" types off your case...

"Most of the years we were any good, we had a good running attack. But we weren't throwing the ball and they kept asking, 'when are you going to throw the ball?' We were leading the nation in scoring one year, and still I would be asked, 'When are you going to start throwing the ball?' I thought the object was to score, and we were leading the nation in scoring. Still they would ask, 'What about your passing attack?'"

(Just to give you an idea of how long this "throw the ball" b-s has been tormenting coaches, bear in mind that Coach Royal last coached in 1976.)

*********** I grit my teeth with anger at member of the House of Representatives, who decry the Justice Department raid that turned up $90,000 in a Louisiana congressman's freezer ("cold cash"), the remainder of a $100,000 bribe he'd already been caught taking on videotape.

Our Congressmen really do think that they're above the law. They really do see themselves as Super Citizens, and with all the goodies available to them, it is understandable that they have come to believe that..

They are the beneficiaries of an array of perks that most of us can only dream of: taxpayers provide them with an allowance so they can afford homes around Washington, D.C.; offices back in the home district, to "serve" constituents (but also promote re-election); transportation back and forth to the home district, plus - talk about a perk! - reserved parking spaces near the terminal at National Airport; free mailing privileges; large office staffs; generous salaries (which they manage to boost from time to time at will); lavish pensions (in which they are vested after a minimum of service); a free health-care system unrivaled by anything available to any normal American citizen. And, of course, the ability to sell their vote to the highest bidder, either through campaign donations (which assure that the lawmaker will be re-elected and able to do the donor even more favors in return for even more donations, etc.), all-expense-paid trips, bogus "speaker's fees," or, as in the case of the Louisiana lawmaker, out-and-out bribes.

And then there is the financial advice they must receive. It must be very, very good financial advice, because thanks to it, even though our lawmakers aren't that highly paid, they all manage to leave office a good deal wealthier than when they first arrived in Washington.

I could go on.

Now, though, our congressmen are going so far as to twist a constitutional provision designed to prevent the President from stifling their right to debate into a right to do whatever they please - including hiding evidence of a bribe (and someday, perhaps, a body?) - in their offices, free from search, even with a search warrant duly issued by a federal judge, as was the case in the discovery of the cash.

This idea that we might one day have such a Ruling Class, with privileges unavailable to ordinary citizens, was unthinkable to the Founding Fathers.

In the Federalist Papers, a series of articles attempting to sell the as-yet unratified Constitution to the American people, this very subject was dealt with in The Federalist #57...

I will add, as a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America -- a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.

If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty

Sadly, we are well past the point where our representatives are unrestrained "from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves." We have grown to tolerate numerous "laws not obligatory on the legislature as well as on the people," and have moved on to where we are "prepared to tolerate anything but liberty."

There is only one way to rid ourselves of this royalty - TERM LIMITS.

*********** King Solomon has nothing on the NCAA, which in its wisdom agreed last week to let little Catawba College keep its nickname. Sort of.

Catawba, whose teams have long been known as the Indians, convinced the NCAA that it had the approval of the Catawba tribe, whereupon the NCAA said the nickname could stand. Sort of.

Hereafter, the august ruling body of college sports decreed, the college's teams could be called the Catawba Indians. Not Indians.

Catawba Indians.

In other words, they will be the Catawba Catawba Indians.

*********** Hugh, I just wanted to comment on your Memorial Day news page. All of the poems and writings were excellent. The great thing was the boys and I were watching the CBS news when they did a special on the Flanders Fields grave site in Belgium. My boys asked about it and I brought up the poem on your web page among others and then we talked about sacrifice. It was a very good history lesson for them and my self. Saw the news and the moving wall on Tuesday's news. I guess there are people in Portland who understand the honor of sacrifice. Take care, Mike Foristiere, Boise, Idaho

*********** Hi, I just read your news and thought I should e-mail you… Completely independently of reading your news I have also recently read the book 'Starship troopers'. I got talking with some friends and it was suggested I read it… If you haven't read it, I recommend that you do…

If you do read it I suggest that if you (if you've seen it) completely ignore the film… The neo-nazi overtones of the film are NOT in the book! The book is nothing like the film (apparently the guy who directed the film didn't finish the book, it depressed him apparently).

The culture described in the book is one where you earn the right to vote by undergoing 'arduous' service in the military… The theory being that if the right to vote is just handed out, the value is lost; where as if you have to earn that right you take responsibility for it.

Also, the men and women in the book are treated 'equally' but they seem to be focused into jobs that they are proven to be better at…

For example women are better suited to withstanding high G-forces while piloting aircraft, so the pilots are women… (I'm sure I remember reading a scientific article about this while I was at university… I'm an engineering grad J)

Also, I thought you'd appreciate this cartoon strip…http://www.comics.com/comics/pearls/archive/pearls-20060528.html

I read this strip every morning… This guy is normally very funny, but sometimes he does some very moving and poignant work.

Thanks, Ben Armstrong, Head Coach, University of Reading Knights, Reading, UK

I shake my head at the do-gooders who keep wringing their hands and bemoaning our poor voter turnouts. They have tried everything, including, out here in the Pacific Northwest, elections by mail. Just sit on your lazy ass and mail in your ballot. Or, if that's too much trouble, just hand it over to the friendly politician and he'll take care of everything for you.

What a bunch of bullsh--.

If it were up to me, I'd make it harder to vote, not easier.

Who wants our fates being being decided by dolts who can't even be bothered with putting something in the mail? Could this be how we get Bill Clintons?

In addition to arduous military service, an idea I like, I can think of a few other qualifications I'd require for voting.

Our Founding Fathers, knowing full well that it is all over for democracy once those voters who take outnumber those who give, originally stipulated property ownership as a requirement. Still make sense to me.

I don't happen to think that in a country which provides every person with access to a free education

And, of course, it was understood that every able-bodied man in a community be prepared to serve in the "militia" - the local defense organization similar to today's volunteer fire departments. There was no right to "opt in" or "opt out" of service. Defending the community was simply a part of every man's responsibility. Being "prepared" meant owning a gun (hence the 2nd amendment to our Constitution).

When I am King, I reserve the right to waive certain other qualifications for voting if a person has played football. AMERICAN football. HW

*********** If you believe that we should build a wall (or two) on our southern border, you can send a message - and a brick, to help build the wall - to a congressman by going to www.send-a-brick.com

2006 DOUBLE-WING CLINIC SCHEDULE - AS OF 4-1-06 (2006 CLINICS)

CLINICS START AT 9 AM SHARP AND GO UNTIL 4 PM WITH A 1-HOUR BREAK FOR LUNCH

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

HOLIDAY INN, 432 Pennsylvania Ave, Fort Washington, PA. - 215-643-3000

APRIL 29
PROVIDENCE

COMFORT INN AIRPORT - 1940 POST RD, WARWICK RI - 401-732-0470

MAY 6
DENVER

WESTMINSTER HS - Westminster, CO (For more details call Coach Kevin Uhlig - 303-870-8582)

MAY 13
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS - LATHROP, CA.

JUNE 10
PACIFIC NORTHWEST

PHOENIX INN & SUITES - 12712 SE 2ND Circle, Vancouver WA - 360-891-9777

NEXT CLINIC - PACIFIC NORTHWEST - SATURDAY, JUNE 10 - PHOENIX INN - VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON

Attendees will receive a complimentary DVD breaking down, play-by-play, the Full-House Belly-T offense of the powerful 1953-1954 Army teams, coached by Earl "Red" Blaik, with Vince Lombardi as his offensive assistant. On the video you will see action clips of Army greats, including the immortal Don Holleder, whose memory is honored by the Black Lion Award. This DVD is not for sale. It is provided by the Board of the Black Lion Award in the interests of furthering football and the Black Lion Award itself.

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