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BACK ISSUES - SEPT & OCT 1999

October 30 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" -Number 60. High schools don't force you to buy tickets to meaningless exhibitions in order get tickets to the games you want to see.

The Washougal Panthers needed a goal-line stand in the last minute of play to hold off a fired-up Ridgefield squad for a 14-7 win Friday night in a battle of Double-Wing teams. A 38-yard pass set the Spudders up with a first-and-goal on the Washougal five, followed by third-and-goal from the one. But a fourth-down plunge left Ridgefield a foot short of the goal line, and the Panthers were able to run out the clock for the win. The first half looked as if it would be all Washougal, as the Panthers ran off 38 plays to Ridgefield's 12, and put on two long scoring drives to take a 14-0 lead. On the night Washougal held Ridgefield to 60 yards rushing and 79 yards passing, but two long passes twice put Ridgefield in scoring position, and the Spudders were able to punch one second-half score, and come within inches of another. It was the sixth straight win for Washougal, now 6-2 (5-0 in Southwest Washington League play) and sets up a head-to-head fight for the league championship next Thursday night against Castle Rock, also unbeaten in league play after Friday night's 28-21 win over White Salmon.

I can't say I'm up on my cricket, but it's very big in Australia, where my son, Ed, and his friend, Michelle, plan on going to watch her 15-year-old nephew play. His match starts at 8:30 in the morning, and since they want to see him bat, they'll have to arrive early in case his team wins the toss (that's how they decide who bats first). But it's an "Over 50" or "50 Overs" match (or something like that), and since an "Over" is six pitches (or "bowls"), that means that each side bats for 50 Overs (300 pitches). So, if I understand things correctly, Ed and Michelle could arrive at 8:30 only to learn that they face several hours' wait until the young man bats.

"Dear Coach: Just a note to let you know that we have installed your system and have been running the double wing for two seasons. Three years ago we were 2-7. Last season we finished 4-5 (1st season with double wing). We are currently 5-3 with one game to go. We currently lead the district in rushing by over 400 yards. We will just miss the playoffs this year. Much of our success has been because of the double wing. Our fullback leads the district in rushing. It is nice having a 205 lb. fella that can run. The trap has been one of our most productive plays. Just thought you'd like to know." Will Azinger- Defensive Coordinator- Logan-Magnolia HS - Logan, Iowa

The Wisconsin Badgers have a decent shot at a return trip to the Rose Bowl this year, but not everyone in Dairyland is jumping for joy at the prospect. That's because last year's Rose Bowl trip cost the University of Wisconsin $2.1 million, twice what it spent on its trip to play in the '94 Rose Bowl. According to the findings of an audit released last week, the university picked up the tab for baby sitters for coaches' children, paid the travel expenses of spouses and guests of dozens of school officials, and - just to be on the safe side - took along three "Bucky Badger" mascots. (I personally think two would have given them sufficient depth.) Of the 832 people shown in state records to have received free trips, just six people - a priest and five others - reimbursed the university. It is estimated that the athletic department lost $286,700 on last year's Rose Bowl trip. (Editorials on the subject seem to imply that the money, football's hard-earned gain, might better be spent elsewhere - non-revenue sports, maybe? Unfortunately, no audit can calculate the goodwill or other benefits deriving from a trip to the Rose Bowl.)

October 29 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 59. At high school games, no one does sideline interviews that continue right through the play, as if nothing is going on out on the field.

Only a fool would turn down good publicity, and so it is nice to see the story that Micah Rice of the Vancouver (Washington) Columbian did last night on Washougal running back Danny Stineback, one of several talented backs we are blessed with. Dan has rushed 93 times for 816 yards and eight TD's. He has caught seven passes for six TD's, and picked up two TD's on returns. He is a home run hitter. Oh, yes - he is also our starting free safety. STORY

igures released by the NCAA at mid-season show that this year there will fewer running attempts per game (under 40 per team) than at any time since 1937, when the NCAA began keeping such records; the average of 152.3 yards per game will, if it holds up for the season, continue a four-year downward trend, and be the lowest average in 33 years; both passing attempts (30.5) and completions (16.5) per game will set new records; passing yardage (211.4) per game will continue a four-year upward swing, and also set a new record. Not to worry, guys. Don't discard your running game just yet. Because with everybody else playing grass basketball, you freaks who continue to run the ball will find yourselves doing so more effectively than ever. With defenses gearing up to shut down the passing game, those opposing defensive linemen who spend all their time sharpening their pass-rushing skills will have one week to learn how to deal with your down blocks, traps and double-teams. And just imagine a Deion Sanders, for all his skills as a pass defender, having to stand just outside your wingback, taking on your fullback one play, your guards the next. As Ara Parseghian said when he went to the Wing-T - and won a National Title with it in 1973 - "There is an advantage in being different, in being unique, in creating problems for your opponent when he is preparing for you."

Coach Tom Bauer, of Mondovi, Wisconsin, has taken an early lead in this week's Tough Loss of the Week contest. Playing in a Tuesday night first-round playoff game, Mondovi, ranked #7 in the most recent state-wide poll, dropped a 23-22 squeaker to Cumberland. Tuesday night's Double-Wing winners in the Badger State include Chippewa Falls, 50-16 over D.C. Everest in Division 1 (Largest); Cadott, 49-14 over Bloomer in Division 4 ; Peshtigo, 20-14 over Southern Door (that's a county, not a company) also in Division 4; and Birchwood-Weyerhaeuser, 28-12 over Elmwood in Division 6.

In the quarter-finals of the Alberta provincial playoffs, the Jasper Place High Junior Rebels (ages 15-16) defeated the Victoria Redmen, 50-0. Remember, this is the Double-Wing being played under Canadian Football rules, with three downs to make ten yards, 12 men on a team, multiple men allowed in motion (in any direction) at the snap.

Coach Paul Maier, of Mt. Vernon, Indiana, faces his old high school, North Posey High, in playoff action Saturday. Mt. Vernon lost earlier in the season to North Posey, but I tried to encourage Paul by telling him of a situation I found myself in back in the 80's. There was a three-year span there when we had a 5-team league, and our AD's decided that rather than try to play each other once and have to find five non-league games, they could save themselves a lot of phoning by playing each other twice and then having to find only one non-league game. Almost invariably, except in cases where there was a gross disparity in talent, the teams would split the two games. It seemed very difficult to get your kids up for a team they'd already beaten a few weeks ago, while on the other hand, it was no chore at all getting them ready to avenge an earlier defeat.

October 28 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 58. High school does not - yet - have the "Big One" -a Super Bowl, or any other way of determining a so-called "ultimate" champion that leaves everyone else to be considered somehow a loser.

Yesterday was our first honest-to-God Pacific Northwest rainy-day practice, and we made the most of it - lots of relay races (including "drag races" where one player lies on the ground and hangs onto the belt of his partner, who "drags" him through the mud). It was co-o-o-o-ld. One of our seniors wore a plaid woolen Pendleton (they have a mill on our town) shirt; another wore a wet suit under his uniform. It was windy, too: we stood and watched our dummies being blown the length of our field.

Numerous coaches have asked me how I got involved in coaching in Europe (I coached in Finland for seven seasons). I tell them that I got lucky. An old friend named Clarence Thomas, with whom I'd played semi-pro ball in Maryland, was coaching at Pomona-Pitzer in California, and he'd somehow gotten involved in coaching in Finland and asked me if I was interested. From that point on, there were a lot of phone calls at strange hours (you have to get used to that when you're dealing with a 10-hour time difference) but eventually we worked things out. And as I got to know the lay of the land and the way things are done there, it turned out to be a wonderful experience for my wife and me. Anyhow, a team in Europe is looking for a head coach, and I have offered to help them find one. I have offered to help because their situation is unique: they have been running the Double-Wing for three years now and are so sold on the offense that they insist that any coach they hire be just as sold on the it, and, just as important, knowledgeable enough about it to take them beyond where they already are (which is not bad, I might add). I will not deal in particulars other than to say that this is a good club, playing in a league whose football is roughly comparable to low-level Division III. They want an experienced coach, with special emphasis on coaching the Double-Wing. The time commitment required is from late February/early March until early or late September (depending on playoffs). The club provides two round-trips, housing and meals, transportation, and a salary, which they prefer to negotiate. There is the possibility of your being able to hire a paid assistant as well. Any coach interested in pursuing this opening needs to call me soon - weekday mornings or weekend afternoons (Pacific Time) are best - at 360-834-3868 and we will go from there. I am not being paid for this, and I will have nothing to do with the hiring other than to pass along the names and vital information of applicants; any contact beyond that point will come from the team. But if I am asked for a recommendation or an assessment of a person's knowledge of and ability to teach the offense, I will give it to them to the best of my ability. (Language, by the way, is not a problem, and ought not to deter you. It is rare to find a young European who doesn't speak some English, and since English is the language in which most of the literature of our game is written, most Europeans who play American football are rather proficient in English.)

I know how much a football coach uses the school copy machine. I also know that on occasion a football coach, like workers everywhere, may copy something clever or humorous for distribution among co-workers. Sometimes it may even be something in questionable taste or worse. That's where you want to be very careful. We've all heard horror stories about people who've made copies of something they wouldn't want to be associated with - and left the original on the glass. But it can be even worse. Yes, modern copy machines copy digitally, and yes, they have hard drives, but no, they don't store documents that heve been copied - although they could. But keep in mind the experience of a guy who, like Homer Simpson, worked at a nuclear plant in Illinois. The Wall Street Journal tells how he and a co-worker came upon a top-secret copy of an exam that all employees were required to take to earn a promotion. Trying to make copies, our guy put his original on the glass and hit the "Start" button - and nothing came out. Noticing that the "2-Sided Copying" feature was turned on, he pressed "Stop" and re-started the process. What he didn't know was that when he had originally pressed the "Start" button, the machine had actually copied the exam as "Side One" onto several sheets of paper, which it was now storing in its bowels, waiting for "Side Two" instructions. Someone in authority discovered the copies in the machine, fingerprints and evidence furnished by his accomplice led investigators to the guilty party, and he was banned from working in the nuclear industry for five years.

What did you watch the last night - the World Series, or the Bradley-Gore "debate?"

The bizarre, tragic death of golfer Payne Stewart reminds us all how fragile life is, and, with modern sports so dependent on air travel, how vulnerable teams can be. Things were a lot different in the days when baseball teams travelled by train, and major league baseball did't get any farther south or west than St. Louis. Jet transportation has made modern sport what it is, but it has an unmentionable downside. Pro leagues don't care to talk about such things, but they all have restocking plans in place should the unthinkable ever occur and a team be lost. A few newspapers used the occasion of Mr. Stewart's death to recount the disasters that have struck college teams, and a recent nationally-televised Thursday night game at Marshall University commemorated the 1970 West Virginia plane crash that all but wiped out Marshall's football program. Strangely, amid all the recollections of sports tragedies over the years, one that bears an especially eerie resemblance to the Payne Stewart incident seems to have gone unmentioned. Following the 1979 season, Charlie McClendon, longtime coach at LSU, "retired" (you know how things go in the coaching business) and was replaced by Bo Rein, former Ohio State wide receiver who had succeeded Lou Holtz at North Carolina State. Coach Rein, just 30 at the time of his hiring by N.C. State, was the youngest head coach of a major college team, and after starting out 3-7-1 he led North Carolina State to 7-4, 9-3 and 7-4 seasons, and the 1979 ACC title. Just 28 days after his announcement as the Tigers' new head man, Coach Rein was flying in a small private jet when it inexplicably veered off course and flew out over the Atlantic Ocean in the dark of night until it ran out of fuel and took him to his death. He was 34 years old.

October 27 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 57. In high school ball, there is enough difference in offensive systems that you could actually tell the teams in a game apart if they exchanged uniforms at halftime.

Coaching great Homer Smith will be available on his Chat Room every Tuesday night from 9:00-9:30 Eastern Time. Go to the NEW website <http://www.homersmithfootball.com> and click on "chat." Coach Smith asks that topics be technical football issues, as opposed to "who do you think will win the game this weekend?"

Keith Babb, youth coach in Deerfield, Illinois, passed along to me the news that Guy Smith and Tyreece Jones of Rich Central High were mentioned in the Chicago Tribune's "Athletes of the Week" column for their efforts against Tinley Park Friday night. Guy ran for 185 yards (and 3 TD's) on 10 carries, and Tyreece ran for 183 yards on 11 carries as the Olympians defeated Tinley Park, 50-0, to qualify for a spot in the state playoffs for the first time since 1992. Nice of Double-Winger Coach Babb to recognize the achievements of fellow Double-Wingers!

Speaking of Rich Central, RC is one of four Illinois Double-Wing teams in attendance at last winter's Double-Wing clinics that will be playing in the first round of the state playoffs this weekend. In Class 1-A, NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY (8-1) plays Palmyra (6-3); in Class 4-A, RICH CENTRAL (6-3) plays Chicago Collins (9-0); and in Class 5-A, KANKAKEE (8-1) plays Lansing Thornton Fractional South (6-3), and OTTAWA TOWNSHIP (6-3) plays Rock Island (8-1). Best of luck to them from Double-Wingers everywhere.

A group calling itself the Halloween Association proposes addressing the twin issues of safety for trick-or-treaters and post-Halloween absenteeism among adult workers by scheduling Halloween to fall on a Saturday every year. Uh-oh. Forgot about the witches. Another group, calling itself Witches, Wiccans and Pagans, is indignant at the very suggestion of rescheduling their high holy day. "Why don't you think next about changing Christmas to the last Saturday in December?" one of their members asked the Wall Street Journal. (Actually, that may not be so far-fetched, when you consider how our schools have basically de-sanctified Christmas. In fact, the very name of the holiday seems to have become an unmentionable: most of the school districts in the Portland area use the cowardly but more politically-correct "Winter Holiday." Wouldn't want to offend the Wiccans.)

I received an e-mail yesterday from Curt Kral, who started out by asking me if I remembered him, after 25 years. Remember? How could I forget the first (maybe only?) player from Slippery Rock to make it to the pros? In 1974, Curt was a 6-2, 225-pound rookie linebacker (that was pretty good size in those days) with the Philadelphia Bell of the World Football League. I was the Bell's Player Personnel Director. Perhaps it was because our linebacker coach, former NFL great Bob Pellegrini, was, like Curt, a western Pennsylvanian, raised not far from Slippery Rock, but he quickly recognized Curt's potential, and Curt beat out a number of veterans with NFL credentials to earn a spot on the club. To me, the most exciting thing about the World Football League was watching the development of players like Curt Kral, kept out of the NFL then by the numbers game - there were fewer NFL teams, with smaller rosters than now. They were good, solid football players, regardless of how the sports writers - many of them in the pockets of the NFL - often demeaned them.

Sounds as if the birth of a baby to his girlfriend has turned Portland Trail Blazers' Jermaine O'Neal into a real family man, even if he has evidently drawn the line at marrying the child's mother. So devoted has he suddenly become that he's already missed eight days and three exhibition games just so he could spend time with his newly-created "family" (the definition of which keeps changing all the time). You know what a sacrifice he's making for his family, because this is a guy who whined about a lack of playing time last year. And although you would think that nothing would surprise an NBA coach, Blazers' coach Mike Dunleavy was surprised to learn that the newest father on his squad had decided to skip his team's exhibition in Albuquerque Monday night in order to remain behind in Portland and hold a press conference (dutifully attended by the local news media) to introduce his new daughter to a breathlessly awaiting public.

October 26 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 56. High School players aren't allowed to wear jewelry during games.

Portland Trail Blazer Jermaine O'Neal just turned 21 last week, and he's got a lot of catching up to do, but he began to establish himself as an NBA veteran when his "fiance" (Dr. Laura Schlesinger would be all over that - "Have you set a date? Do you have a ring?) gave birth last weekend to the latest out-of-wedlock NBA child.

Coach Charlie Jones, from Louisa, Virginia, wrote to add that his opponents on Friday night had 15 penalties, eight of them for defensive holding. Said that because the grabbers were a little slow in getting to his kids, they wound up committing their fouls out in the open, where the officials could see them. Now, you know and I know - when something occurs with that sort of frequency, it isn't being done spontaneously. It is being taught. An opposing coach is willing to make a mockery of the game in order to gain an unfair advantage over you. It's in keeping with the 90's morality - it's only wrong if you get caught. "The Coach shall master the contest rules and shall teach them to his or her team members. The coach shall not seek an advantage by circumvention of the spirit or letter of the rules." Coaches Code of Ethics - National Federation of Interscholastic Coaches Association. Is there something in there that is especially difficult for some coaches to understand?

Jack Tourtillotte, in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, noticed Bill Davis' comment about going for it on fourth down, and says his kids did the same thing three times last Friday night - and went three-for-three. Of course, as Jack points out, it is politically safe to do so in his town: Dan Kayler, a lobsterman and restaurant owner who serves as the color analyst on the local cable system's telecasts of the Seahawks' games, absolutely hates punting. "Oughta make puntin' illegal," he once told me. "If the kids knew you weren't gonna punt, they'd try harder!" (For those of you who have never met the friendly folks in the beautiful state of Maine, that last word, spelled phonetically, would be "hahduh.")

Is it really football they're playing? 24 NFL teams took the field Sunday, to play - what? Only one of them - the undefeated St. Louis Rams - rushed for more than 200 yards (211 to be exact). Nine of the 24 teams "rushed" (if you can call it that) for under 100 yards. In three of the games - Cincinnati-Indianapolis, Dallas-Washington and Carolina-Detroit - the two teams combined didn't rush for over 200 yards. The Browns ran the ball all of 15 times, the Redskins just 16 times. If they have TV in heaven, Vince Lombardi and George Halas are watching monster trucks on Sunday afternoons.

October 25 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 55. High school players don't act as if it's Christmas morning every time they score a touchdown.

I spent at least an hour Sunday putting together a tape - slow motion, telestrator, time code and all (it helps to know video production) - of several plays in our last Friday's game in which our opponent's players attacked our kick-out blockers at the knees on powers, counters and "g" plays. In several cases, the offender started out a yard outside of our "over" tight end in an "Over Slot" set, putting him clearly outside the free blocking zone when the play started; in other cases, the ball had left the free blocking zone - meaning that the free blocking zone had disintegrated - before the illegal contact occured. One of their coaches was actually witnessed on the sidelines gesturing to their defenders to take on our blockers at the knees. I shouted to their defensive coordinator in the box above me that it was illegal, that he knew it, and that he was teaching it. I made sure he heard every word I said. His kids did the same thing last year, when my La Center team lost to them, but this year, fortunately, we won, so I can't be accused of being a sore loser. And on the basis of my video clips, which I have been able to isolate and identify down to the individual frame (1/30th of a second), I stand by my charge. Of course, there's nowhere to go with my tape, since our officials' association basically exists just to collect our money and assign officials, but I would ask this of my Friday opponent and any other coaches out there who think they are so clever in ignoring the rules of the game in their efforts to defeat the Double-Wing: are you proud of your role in teaching kids to win by cheating? ... have you read the part in the Coaches Code of Ethics (Page 82 of the National Federation Rule Book) where it says, "The coach shall not seek an advantage by circumventon of the spirit or letter of the rules"? ...are you prepared to defend yourselves against the lawsuit that will inevitably come when a player is severely injured as a result of illegal tactics that you taught? ...will you be able to deny under oath that you taught them? I also wonder if it has occured to officials that, having been warned beforehand in a pre-game conference of the likelihood of such tactics, they have a duty to protect kids from them. I wonder if they think that calling blocking below the waist a couple of times while ignoring it on dozens of other occasions in a game is sufficient evidence that they are looking out for the safety of the participants. I am by no means the most litigious of persons, but a few of my kids' fathers were, shall we say, rightfully indignant over what they saw happening to their sons out on that field Friday night, and in the event of an injury to one of them, I would have been the first to encourage them to sue everyone who advocated - and allowed - the illegal tactics that caused the injury. Call me a pompous ass. I could care less. Just play by the rules.

Hey, you California coaches! Say it isn't so. Jon Newman, a former player now at Weber State in Ogden, Utah, a beautiful city at the foot of the Bear Paw Mountains, tells me that the weather is beginning to get chilly, and the Californians - who make up a large percentage of the guys on the Wildcats' roster - aren't all that excited about practicing in the cold. And when it rained the other day, that was it - they told Jon, "I can't believe you guys practice in this." They said that back home in Southern California, their coaches often cancel practice - or at least go inside and practice in the gym - when it's raining. Jon, defending the best traditions of Northwest football, told them, "You guys haven't played football if you haven't played in the rain!" (For what it 's worth - we haven't had a rainy game yet this year.)

My wife asked her third-graders to fill out a "self-evaluation," in preparation for parent conferences. Asked to finish the statement, "I have made the most improvement in....." , one of her students answered "splleg."

Evidently "upstate" New York (the great majority of the state which is not New York City, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the Empire State) has some sort of JV playoffs, and as a result, Albany High and its Double-Wing, after an 18-7 semi-final win over Saratoga in last Thursday's semi-finals, has made it into this year's JV "Super Bowl" game against Troy, whose varsity teams have won several state championships in recent years. Best of luck to Albany coach Pete Porcelli, former Arena Football player, and his staff and kids.

"Hugh, A true cautionary tale for double wingers. We have had a good season to this point ( 3-4 but a huge improvement). I suspend a QB and the backup wins one when he plays. I fall in love with the 1st -teamers arm and open up in the shotgun Friday. With 5 minutes to go in the 3rd we are trailing 21-0. I even heard one of my players mutter" why are we playing p.... football." I wake up in time to stick the back-up in at Qb and we win 22-21 to go 4-4 ( the exact number Louisa had won the last 3 years combined). We threw one pass and ran only 2 plays ( 3 trap at 2 and superpower). We won the game on 2 straight..........WEDGES!! ( You may remember I was anti-wedge for a while). Congrats on your season." Charlie Jones (Coach Jones is in his first year at Louisa County, Virginia, after cutting his teeth on the Double-Wing at Montgomery Catholic High in Alabama.)

This from Coach Bill Davis, head coach at Woodberry Forest School in Virginia, now 5-1 after a 42-21 win Saturday over St. Christopher's of Richmond: "I have to tell you what one of the Landon (Washington, D.C.) coaches told me last week. He said " that is the ugliest, most efficient offense I have ever seen". We have only punted the ball 8 times in six games because we generally go for it on 4th and short. Last week we went for it on fourth down on fourth down and three on our own 45 yard line. We made it and a couple parents questioned me about it after the game and all I could say was 'we made it, didn't we?'" (Coach Davis is now 12-3 since converting to the Double Wing.)

From Coach Jon McLaughlin, whose Rich Central (Olympia Fields, Illinois) Olympians qualified for a state playoff berth with a 50-0 win over Tonley Park Friday: "Our Freshmen won today 44-30. So, RC's program has been 40-14 over the two years since you introduced it. It is amazing what a good system, great kids, and good coaching can do."

October 23 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 54. High school fans don't need a scoreboard to tell them when to cheer.

Tied 7-7 at halftime, the Washougal Panthers fell behind, 14-7, early in the second half, then stormed back with 21 unanswered points to defeat the White Salmon Bruins, 28-14 at White Salmon, Washington Friday night. Cody Morris threw for three scores, one to tight end Josh Brock and two to C-Back Danny Stineback, who also scored a third TD on an 11-yard run. It was the Panthers' fifth straight win, leaving them 4-0 in the Southwest Washington League and tied for the lead with Castle Rock, 48-8 victors over Woodland. The win assured the Panthers of their first post-season playoff spot since 1994, and a finish no worse than second place in the league. Washougal and Castle Rock meet at Washougal in the final regular season game, in two weeks. Next week, it's Ridgefield, which has been running the Double Wing in one version or another since I introduced it there in 1991 as offensive coordinator.

It is probably too early to pass judgment (at risk of offending any readers of Hellenic origin, the classic admonition is "beware of Greeks bearing gifts"), but the NFL's site dedicated to high school football (nflhs.com) looks, at first glance, to be pretty good. I have been squawking for some time about the need for the NFL to stop preening itself about all the dog-and-pony-show clinics it has been putting on, and actually do something to advance the cause of those who represent its future. Properly promoted in a way of which the NFL is capable, this site is certainly a promising start, and I applaud the NFL for the effort. It has obviously committed considerable resources to this site, and I remain enough of a cynic to wonder what its angle is - when it's going to expect this site to start paying for itself, or when it's going to try to purchase a major share in the National Federation of High School Associations, as it has already done with NFL Europe, the Canadian Football League and, most recently, Arena Football. The NFL never does anything out of sheer altruism (unselfish concern for the welfare of others).

Dick and Andy Maurer are small-town guys from Prospect, Oregon, a tiny dot on the map in the Cascade Range of Southern Oregon. They and their three brothers are football rarities: all five of them made the jump from 8-man high school football to play in the PAC-10 (or PAC-8 at the time). Dick and two of his brothers played at Oregon State; Andy and one of his brothers went on to play at University of Oregon, and Andy played in two Super Bowls in an NFL career that took him from Atlanta, to New Orleans, to Minnesota, to San Francisco, to Denver. Now, Dick and Andy are high school coaches in the same league and in the same town, Medford, Oregon. Dick is the head man at St. Mary's, while Andy is the head coach at Cascade Christian. They are close, and every Monday they get together for lunch, but when they meet today at 2 PM at Medford's Spiegelberg Stadium, they will be trying to beat each other's brains out. With Double-Wing offenses. The 2 PM starting time is something of a family issue, because it is St. Mary's home game, and since they don't have lights, their league requires them to play home games on Saturday afternoons. That creates a bit of a problem for Andy, who would have preferred a Friday night game ("He's mad at me," Dick says) so he could get to Corvallis today to watch UCLA play at Oregon State, where Andy's son, Marty, plays tight end. So as he has done on previous Saturday afternoon games, Andy plans to put on a pair of headphones and listen to the Oregon State game when Cascade Christian is on defense, and then, at the conclusion of his game, to continue listening to the OSU game while walking up and down the field, like a human piece on a huge football board game, marking the position of the ball. "If they're on the 40," he says, "I'm on the 40. They run off tackle, I run off tackle over there."

The major news media, which have an agenda all their own, have not made a big issue of it, but unknown to most of us, this week has been proclaimed "National 'Character Counts' Week " by, of all people, the Man from Hope. In his proclamation, William Jefferson Clinton urged parents and teachers (and presumably coaches) "to impart to our youth the core values they need to be good citizens...By sustaining these shared values, we can realize our common hope for a more just and honorable society." Does Jay Leno know about this?

"Coach, I haven't e-mailed you this year but we were at your Chippewa camp in '98. Well, two seasons of Double-Wing and this year we made the playoffs. Only the third time in 20 years. Coach Huseth was sold on your offense and last year was a learning year and this year we made it. Coach Huseth has taken a troubled program and in three years has brought them to the playoffs. Hats off to you and Coach Huseth." Tom Daniels Assist. Varsity Coach, Cameron, Wisconsin

October 22 - - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 53. High schools don't have luxury boxes; even the president of the local bank has to sit in the stands

The first reported win by a Double-Wing team this weekend took place last night when Assumption High, of Davenport, Iowa, upset undefeated and sixth-ranked North Scott. The win should be enough to put Assumption in the state playoffs for the 11th straight year.

USA Today ran an article on Wednesday about the service academies and the fact that they rank one-two-three in the nation in rushing (Army is first, followed by Air Force and Navy). Running out of somewhat similar sets, the three academies have all finished in the top 10 nationally in rushing for the last four seasons. This year, they are all averaging around 300 yards per game rushing, with rushing accounting for roughly 3/4 of their offensive yardage. There is a conventional explanation for their pursuing an on-the-ground offensive philosophy when almost everybody else seems to be heading full-speed toward "grass basketball": since the service academies can't recruit the talent that the passing schools do, they play offenses better geared to the patience and discipline characteristic of the "lesser athletes" they can recruit. Okay, up to a point. But one of the reasons why so many people elsewhere give for airing it out - even schools that don't get first pick of the recruiting crop - is that it enables them to be competitive with the big guys. Wait a minute - isn't that why, supposedly, the service academies are running the ball? Actually, there may be another reason. A couple of springs ago, Fred Goldsmith, then head coach at Duke, suggested to me that one big reason why, other than the service academies, you don't see dedicated running offenses - wishbone, wing-T - at the major college level is the fact that, like it or not, major colleges are in the entertainment business. They compete with - and are compared to - the NFL, and its total dedication to the passing game. True, they have to win, but just winning is not enough - they also have to entertain their alumni, whose contributions they depend on. Make sense? Now, answer this: What three major colleges don't have to depend on alumni contributions to keep their athletic programs healthy? (If you said Air Force, Army and Navy, you understand another big reason why they have the luxury of being able to run offenses that work, regardless of how much or how little they imitate the pros.)

A very dear friend whom I've come to know through football is a teacher, a coach, and a priest, and often I find myself benefitting from the insights he is able to provide me from those three highly-interrelated perspectives. I recently shared with him the fact that our head freshman coach was recently accosted following a game, in our parking lot and in full view of several players, by an angry and vituperative (using harsh and abusive language) parent, enraged because he didn't realize his son had had a game - "nobody told me." Not even, apparently, his own son (who had in fact known this for three days), so obviously it was the fault of these jerks who coach his kid. That's what he told our coach, followed by a series of threats intermingled with vulgarities. Among his threats was the old "I'll have your job" routine. Right. For years, this coach has been an outstanding freshman football coach, a highly successful wrestling coach, and in the last few years (evidently he needed something to do in the spring) the girls' softball coach - and you're going to have his job? Now, if I were King of the World (better head for the hills when that day comes, Bill and Hillary), I'd have called every parent and kid on the team into my (very large) office and, in front of them all, told this parent that there are three selections on the menu: (1) apologize, promise that it will never happen again, and stay off school grounds for an entire year as a condition of his kid's being able to continue to play; (2) do all the above except take his kid someplace else; (3) Do nothing and face charges for abusing and threatening school personnel. I would inform the other parents present that the same choices await anyone else contemplating similar confrontations with their kids' coaches. (Why is it that we're so hung up on violence in the schools that a third-grader can draw a picture of a gun and get expelled, but abusive, out-of-control louts are routinely allowed to assault coaches and then crawl back into the shadows until it's time to strike again, as if it's their God-given right?) One of these days, the Teamsters will organize the football coaches, and then watch what happens when a parent berates a coach. Anyhow, this is the response I received from my friend, who is, as you will detect, a man with stones:

"When I read the story of that parent getting in the face of your freshman coach I would have laughed had I not been so irritated. Certain parents would love to make teachers and coaches their indentured servants or slaves. When their kids aren't doing such and such it's so easy to blame someone at the school, where the kids spend so much of their time. In about a week we'll have parent-teacher night and I always wonder if or how many aggressive parents I'll run into, people who want me to be their sons' baby-sitter and chief bottle washer. But they're talking to the wrong person. If there is anything I hate on this planet, next to raw sin, it's babying high school kids. It just isn't in me. As fast as I can I throw the ball back into their court. On occasion a parent has appeared so ridiculous to me that I've actually enjoyed observing them. I wonder what that says about me?"

October 21 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 52. In high school football, overtime doesn't end as soon as somebody kicks a field goal.

Not so fast, you guys who tease us about our rain out in the Northwest. Bet we had a nicer day than you did yesterday. It was 72 degrees and sunny in the Portland area, and it is predicted to remain that way through the weekend. And when the sun shines in the Pacific Northwest, there is no more beautiful place on earth. (I personally don't think it's all that bad when it's raining.) This year, we have yet to have a rainy game or practice. In fact, we have had less than an inch of rain since late June. Warm, dry summers are the norm in the Pacific Northwest, but this is about as late as I can recall our going without having to put on the duck shoes and rain gear.

Not everything's well, though. The only morning paper you can get delivered to your door in these parts is the Portland Oregonian, which is okay, I guess, unless you happen to like football. Then, you've got problems. Because it may be football season everyplace else in America, but out here in Liberal Land, roughly 90 per cent of the past week's front sports pages in the Oregonian have been taken up by other concerns. There is baseball, of course, with the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Fondas (can't call 'em "Braves" - the Oregonian won't print the word. Didn't I say we were liberal out here?). And, of course, there are the Trail Blazers. They are all over the page, and it's just the exhibition season. And on top of that, local princess Tonya Harding is back skating. Wow. How can any sports editor be expected to fit much football on his front page when there is so much other news of overwhelming public interest?

A recent high school game in Kansas went into eight overtimes, and took 4 hours and 15 minutes to play.

To no one's great surprise, a survey of some 3,000 of our leading military officers has found them to be "overwhlemingly Republican conservatives." The officers, either recently promoted or deemed ready for promotion, proved eight times more likely to call themselves Republican than Democrat. Only six per cent of them called themselves "liberal," with 65 per cent calling themselves "conservative," and 20 per cent calling themselves "very conservative." There was a small group - smaller than one per cent - that identified itself as "very liberal." (Look for those to be the guys that the Clinton administration puts on the fast track to the Pentagon.) The purpose of the survey is to highlight the growing gap (gasp!) between the military and civilians, a gap that can only grow wider as we entrust our security to paid professionals and segregate the military as a group apart, while we encourage civilian slackers to diss the military.

Thanks for the nice stadium - chumps. Not so very long ago, the taxpayers of the state of Washington voted against providing funds to build a new factory - er, stadium - for a private industry - er, baseball team - which can afford to pay its employees - er, players - millions of dollars a year. We weren't talking about helping Boeing or Microsoft, which provide tens of thousands of well-paying jobs for people in the Puget Sound area. We were talking about the Seattle Mariners, for crying out loud - a baseball team that provides a couple of hundred part-time jobs selling beer and weenies, and gives another nine or so millionaires something to do in the summertime. But damn the taxpayers! As we all know, if there is a way around them, politicians will find one, and the Gary Locke, Governor of the Evergreen State, has proved to be a wizard at doing just that. So the taxpayers built the Mariners a beautiful new stadium, and the Governor has been taking his bows for having "saved" the Mariners. And to show how much we really want them, he allowed them to sell the rights to name our stadium after some dumb insurance company named Safeco - and pocket the dough. Today, it's Taxpayer Appreciation Day down at the Mariners' offices, where they have just announced a ten per cent across-the-board increase in ticket prices for next year.

Last Thursday was Arkansas Razorbacks' coach Houston Nutt's 42nd birthday, and when his players asked him what he wanted, he confessed that he would like a win on Saturday. The Razorbacks were playing South Carolina, and Coach Nutt had been both a player and a graduate assistant at Arkansas under Lou Holtz, now the head coach at South Carolina. What Coach Nutt got was a 48-14 trouncing of the winless Gamecocks, and a post-game snubbing from his former coach. Well, maybe not a snubbing, but as Wally Hall of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette of Little Rock wrote, the pair shook hands after the game, "and when Nutt started to talk, Holtz gave Nutt a glare stare, pulled his hand free and stormed off." It has not been an easy season for Coach Holtz, whose wife has undergone surgery to treat a cancer, and whose football team has been badly overmatched. And then he had to suffer a 48-14 indignity at the hands of Arkansas, a place where, had he chosen to stay, he might be governor by now. (And who knows where being the Governor of Arkansas can take a fellow next?) Instead, he is enduring the roughest season by far of his otherwise illustrious career. "At the end of the first 15 minutes," Hall wrote, "it appeared next weekend might be tougher on the Hogs than South Carolina. It is hard to get up 24-0 on an open date." Hall didn't go any lighter on Coach Holtz in describing the his game demeanor: "Holtz, who spent much of the time with his hands dug into his pockets, was supposed to be the one coach you never want to face. A mad genius when it came to play-calling. Saturday night he was only mad...if his hands were any deeper in his pockets they might have been in his socks. He looked like an undersized lifeguard who had wandered upon the Titanic." By all accounts, Arkansas substituted freely and did not run up the score, and Coach Nutt had nothing to answer for Without asking Coach Holtz, it is impossible to say why he would have acted so uncharitably toward a former player and assistant, but undoubtedly the man is under great strain. "Holtz can't be doing this for the money, Hall wrote. "The guy probably has 90 cents of every dollar he has ever been paid -- and there have been millions of those. In 27 seasons, Holtz was 216-95-7. He won the national championship at Notre Dame in 1988 with a perfect 12-0 record. Holtz left a a beautiful home in Orlando to work on another perfect record, 0-7." At the end of the game - following the snub - Coach Nutt and his players gathered at midfield where they gave him his birthday present - the game ball.

October 20 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 51. High school players don't hold out - yet.

Orchard Park, Double-Wing power in the Buffalo area and ranked #1 in Western New York, made it into USA Today's national rankings this week, picked #10 in the East.

I happened to be on the Indiana High School Athletic Association's web site the other day, and clicked on "NICKNAMES." After looking at the Ten Most Popular Nicknames of Indiana high schools (Panthers, Warriors,Tigers, Bulldogs, Eagles, Trojans, Cougars, Knights, Wildcats, Braves), I went to the alphabetical listing. I wasn't even through the A's (Vincennnes Alices, Pendleton Heights Arabians, Martinsville Artesians) and I was hooked. Logansport Berries...Hobart Brickies...Cloverdale Clovers...Rising Sun Shiners...Shoals Jug Rox (huh?). Now, a state that produces a David Letterman has to have a sense of humor, so you've got to like the folks in Frankfort, who nicknamed their teams the Hot Dogs. Some nicknames are highly appropriate, such as the Speedway Sparkplugs. One, the Rochester Zebras, could even be seen by some as an attempt to curry favor with officials. Not one, but two schools - Clay City and Eminence - are nicknamed the Eels. And the PC Police, if they ever get around to checking out the heartland, would certainly seem to find fertile ground in Hoosierland: beyond the #2-ranked Warriors and #10-ranked Braves, there are four Redskins. Crusaders against violence in our schools can't be happy with the Washington Hatchets or the Tell City Marksmen, either. And although some might find it hard to believe in this day and age of sensitivity and political correctness, the site actually says that the Indiana School for the Deaf's nickname is "Deaf Hoosiers."

This is taking diversity in the student body a little too far. Lake Oswego, Oregon is, to say the least, a well-to-do community. Like any other community, the local people were understandably disturbed when a 23-year-old convicted sex offender was released from prison recently after serving four years (are you kidding me?) for the rape of a 4-year-old girl and the sexual abuse of two other children, and moved in with his parents in their Lake Oswego home. But the townspeople didn't react to a pervert in their midst the way folks in a blue-collar community might have. Oh, no. You see, violence doesn't solve anything. Instead, they propose to raise funds - to send him away to college! Oregon State was mentioned as a possibility. I guess there's a scholarship for everything if you look hard enough.

Coach Jon McLaughlin of Rich Central High, in Olympia Fields, Illinois has to be excited. His Olympians just won their fifth straight (after opening with three losses against a brutal early schedule of three ranked teams) and are one win away from a likely playoff spot (In Illinois, seven wins guarantee a spot, six all but assure one). But he has two more reasons to be optimistic: RC's sophomore team is 7-1 and its freshman team is 6-2.

BEYOND PIERCING - A FASHION UPDATE FROM THE WEST COAST: Tired of plain old piercing? Had yourself pierced in every place possible, and some places you didn't think possible? Maybe it's time for you to move on to - stretching! Terry Dupuy, a Vancouver, Washington "body piercer", has a 7/8-inch hole in his ear lobe, in which he is able to keep an assortment of decorative plugs. It took him two years to stretch it to that point. Ric Mason, owner of Painless Ric's, in Camas, Washington (my town), says he usually has a counseling session with someone wanting to stretch. "The first thing I tell them," he told the Vancouver Columbian, "is that this isn't going to shrink back to its normal size...if you take out the jewelry it will shrink some but it will never go back to the way it was." "Painless Ric" also points out the hidden costs: "Each time you stretch the ear, you have to buy a new piece of jewelry."

October 19 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 50. Most high school players earn less than their coaches.

The Rebels of Jasper Place High, in Edmonton, Alberta, are successfuly employing the Double-Wing in Canada. Yes, in 3-down, 12-man Canadian football, they are currently ranked #2 in the province, after a 31-7 defeat of the Strathcona Lords.

Top Ten public high schools in the United States, on the basis of SAT scores over the last 10 years : (1) Chapel Hill, North Carolina, High School; (2) Granville, Ohio, High School; (3) Highland Park High School (Dallas); (4) Lower Merion High School (Ardmore - suburban Philadelphia - Pennsylvania); (5) New Trier High School (Winnetka - suburban Chicago - Illinois); (6) Niskayuna High School (Schenectady, New York); (7) Palos Verdes Peninsula High School (Rolling Hills Estates - LA area - California); (8) Pine View School for the Gifted (Osprey, Florida); (9) Roslyn High School (Roslyn - Long Island - New York); (10) Weston High School (Weston - suburban Boston - Massachusetts).

After writing yesterday about the intense interest in the Twin Cities in the U. of Minnesota's academic cheating(by athletes) scandal, I came across the following web site: www.FindLaw.com/tarnished which lists "Football's Tarnished Twenty." The PAC-10 may be unrepresented in the Top 25, but three of its teams - UCLA, Washington and Washington State - make it into the "Tarnished Twenty." l

Coach Tim Murphy of Ygnacio Valley High in Concord, California had a look at what it takes to hold the longest wining streak in US high school history, when his team went down to its first defeat, 71-32 at the hands of De La Salle High, also of Concord. Ygnacio Valley became De La Salle's 94th straight victim. De La Salle led just 31-24 in the third quarter when 6-2, 230-pound running back D.J. Williams, showed his power and 4.55 speed, ending the evening with seven touchdowns, a new school record.

I just received my copy of "The Story of Darrell Royal," a 60-minute videotaped documentary of this life and career. I have only watched 10 minutes of it and it is magnificent. I obtained my copy by calling 1-800-314-2626. It cost $24.95 plus $4.95 shipping, and I can't wait to get a minute or two to watch the rest of it.

October 18 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 49. High school players don't come back as TV color analysts and begin second-guessing coaches the minute their playing days are over.

Yesterday , October 17, was the 32nd anniversary of the Battle of Ong Thanh, in which Army All-American Don Holleder was killed, in 1967. It is a date honored every year by the comrades of Major Holleder and those who died with him that day, and I salute them all, awed by a loyalty and devotion to fallen comrades that is undiminished after all these years. If you have read my account of Don Holleder's senior season at West Point, you have some idea of the love I feel for a man I never met. God knows that football had something to do with making him the man he was. Despite all that's happened in our culture, it's reassuring to look out on the field on a Friday night and know that, the best efforts of the feminists notwithstanding, there are still a lot of Alpha Males in this country.

So preoccupied are the folks in the Twin Cities with the cheating scandal at the University of Minnesota that cost Gopher basketball coach Clem Haskins his job that the St. Paul Pioneer Press' web site has buttons taking you to the areas the paper covers on a regular basis: "VIKINGS," "GOPHERS," "TIMBER WOLVES," "TWINS," "LYNX (WNBA)," and "ACCUSATIONS OF ACADEMIC FRAUD."

Michael Oriard, a former Notre Dame player, writes in his review of David Maraniss' biography of Vince Lombardi in the Philadelphia Inquirer that Coach Lombardi's achievements "began and ended with the Packers." He points out the irony of Coach Lombardi's never allowing his own assistants the same flexibility allowed him by his principal coaching mentors, Earl "Red" Blaik at West Point and Jim Lee Howell with the New York Giants. Possibly as a result, none of his assistants went on to become successful NFL head coaches themselves. By contrast, numerous successful NFL head coaches were launched from the staffs of such coaches as Paul Brown, Sid Gillman and Tom Landry ("Lombardi's personal rival"), a reason why Mr. Oriard gives them credit for having had "considerably more influence on the development of professional football" than Coach Lombardi. (In addition to Vince Lombardi, no fewer than 14 of Coach Blaik's assistants - including Sid Gillman - went on to become college or professional head coaches. READ ABOUT COACH BLAIK)

TOUGH LOSSES OF THE WEEK - Northwest Halifax, Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina lost to Warren County, 28-26; Maple Shade, New Jersey, looking for their first win, lost to Burlington, 7-6.

Coach Wyatt: My brother Dan and I coach a JAAF Midget team (12,13 and 14 year olds) here in southern Cal. We took the team over this year. Last year they won 1 game. We obtained your tape and installed the offense. We are now 4-2, yesterday we had over 500 yards of O on he ground...Thanks for being a great resource!" Rick Tyler

This came to me Saturday morning from Coach Doug Baker in Snow Hill, Maryland. Coming off a huge win over previously-unbeaten Cambridge the night before, you'd think he'd have plenty to be thankful for, and you'd be right. But there's more: "Yesterday morning," he wrote, "I was involved in a very serious car accident. Crossing Rt. 50 on my way to work, my truck was totalled, as were two other vehicles, when a van ran a red light. Talk about a gaining an immediate perspective on life. I thank God that I am able to write to you this morning while my son plays with the keyboard keys and my little dog, Coach, begs for attention!"

Huntland, Tennessee's most famous son was on hand to watch the 5-2 Huntland High Hornets play powerful Moore County, 6-1. Johnny Majors, one-time single-wing tailback at Huntland, All-America single-wing tailback at Tennessee under Coach Bowden Wyatt (no relation) and later a highly successful college coach at Iowa State, Pitt (1976 National Championship) and Tennessee, was on hand because of the significance of the game and because of his ties to both teams. "It's good to honor your tradition, " Huntland head coach Bob Robertson said, "and he is a big part of our tradition at Huntland." Coach Majors actually started his high school career at Moore County as a freshman in 1949, while his dad, Shirley Majors, started the football program at Huntland. But he transferred after that one year. "Shirley said he would never coach against one of his kids again," Coach Robertson said. Shirley Majors went on to become the winningest coach in Tennessee history, and ended his career - correct me if I'm wrong, Tennesseeans - at the University of the South ("Suwanee"). Unfortunately for Coach Robertson and Huntland, the Double-Wing and Coach Majors' presence were not enough, though, as Moore County won, 25-16 to take the lead in the region with a 7-0 record.

October 16 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 48. High school teams don't have to stand around waiting until a guy on the sidelines in a red hat notifies the officials that the TV timeout is over.

Danny Stineback scored four touchdowns to help the Washougal Panthers celebrate homecoming with their fourth straight win, a 27-7 defeat of the Woodland Beavers. Washougal's record is now 4-2 (3-0) in league play, while Woodland, after a 3-0 start, drops to 3-3, and 1-2 in the league. Stineback scored on passes of 11 and 22 yards from QB Cody Morris, and on a 23-yard run. It was a hard-fought game. Stineback's first touchdown came on the first play of the second quarter, as the Panthers were held scoreless in the first quarter for the first time this season, but his biggest came with the Panthers holding a 13-7 early in the fourth quarter, when he intercepted an option pitch and sped 50 yards to break the game open. In addition to his four TD's, Stineback carried 17 times for 137 yards, giving him 744 yards for the season on 80 carries. The Panthers, now tied for the Southwest Washington League League lead with Castle Rock, also 3-0, travel next week to take on third place White Salmon, 61-0 conquerors of Tenino. (Humorous sidelight: Woodland's TD was set up by a 47-yard reverse play on which their runner clearly stepped out of bounds at the line of scrimmage - right in front of where I stood. The wing man, though, obsessed all night with making sure that there were never more than three coaches in our box, was far too busy with that to do the rest of his job, and missed the call. But Channel 6 in Portland just happened to show a few game highlights on their 11 PM show, one of them Morris' first touchdown pass to Stineback, the other the Woodland reverse, clearly showing the runner stepping on the sideline.)

Am I the only one who is noticing that more and more officials - especially younger, "entry-level" ones - seem to think that listening to John Madden on Sundays gives them a waiver on having to read our rule book? I have already engaged in somewhat heated debate with one striped shirt who began telling me that my defender was allowed only one chuck on a receiver, and none beyond five yards. Pro junk. First of all, it is always legal to make contact with a receiver on his side of the line of scrimmage (Rule 7- Section 5- Article 7: "Pass interference restrictions only apply beyond the neutral zone and only if the legal forward pass crosses the neutral zone."). Here is what our rule book says about contact with an eligible receiver beyond the line of scrimmage: (Rule 9- Section 2 - Article 3-d. "A defensive player shall not contact an eligible player who is no longer a potential blocker.") How do we know he is a "potential blocker?" When he is in front of us, and the ball hasn't been thrown (Rule 7- Section 5- Article 8-b. "Pass inteference restrictions begin for B (defense) when the ball leaves the passer's hand.). IN OTHER WORDS, EVEN IF THE QB HAS DROPPED BACK - AND EVERYBODY IN THE STADIUM KNOWS HE INTENDS TO PASS - IF THE BALL HASN'T BEEN THROWN, IT IS STILL POTENTIALLY A RUNNING PLAY, AND ANY OPPONENT IN FRONT OF A DEFENDER IS STILL A POTENTIAL BLOCKER . WITHIN THAT DEFINITION OF A POTENTIAL BLOCKER, APART FROM A DEFENDER'S NOT BEING ABLE TO HOLD, GRASP, ETC., OUR RULES SAY NOTHING ABOUT HIS NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY OFF A POTENTIAL BLOCKER ANYWHERE DOWNFIELD (EVEN BEYOND FIVE YARDS!), OR CHUCKING HIM MORE THAN ONCE.

Then, at a freshman game Thursday night, another Einstein called one of our players for a face-mask violation because he had a runner in a headlock. The official began quoting to one of our coaches one of those newly-minted NFL save-the-quarterback rules prohibiting hitting an offensive player in the head. OUR rule (Rule 9- Section 4- Article 2-h) is quite clear as to what constitutes a face-mask violation: "No player shall grasp an opponent's face mask or any edge of a helmet opening."

What's next? Gotta have two feet in bounds after a catch?

A crowd of 30,400 watched the Braunschweig Lions defeat the Hamburg Blue Devils, 25-14 to win the German Bowl and the championship of the Bundesliga (Germany's top league).

I heard him say it, with my own ears (he was referring to what Republicans were supposedly doing to him): "When a person is taking a position that he simply cannot defend, the only defense is to attack the opponent." William Jefferson Clinton, The Man from Hope (Try that same sentence, inserting in place of "an opponent" (A) Kenneth Starr; (B) Yugoslavia; or (C) An aspirin factory in Sudan)

If you're a football coach and you sometimes wonder whether the people you work for understand you, stop wondering. They probably don't. If everyone else in the faculty room gushed over the wonderful gender-equity presentation you just had to sit through, while you football coaches sat in the back the entire time, drawing plays and trying to stay awake, there's a reason. It's because as a coach, you are almost certainly ironic - you deal with life as it really is, and see the humor in it - while the speaker, and your fellow faculty members - like most modern educators, sadly - are earnest. (Try getting a laugh out of a member of NOW.) Earnest people, writes David Brooks in last Friday's Wall Street Journal, succeed because of "their ability to bore the rest of us into submission...with their castor-oil mentality, they think that the duller something is the more worthy it must be." (Ever listen to an entire speech by Hillary Rodham Clinton?) Irony, on the other hand, carries with it a cynical form of humor characteristic of warriors - of people who go out and put it on the line. Mr. Brooks gives as one example his days as a police reporter on Chicago's South Side, watching police in their spare time play a game called "Name That Felon." One of them would hold up an old mug shot for all to see, while the others would try to recall the felon's name and the crime he committed. One advantage of irony, says Mr. Brooks, is that ironic people can be a little ironic, and can turn it off when necessary. But, "You can't be a little earnest," he says. Earnestness "seeps through a person's being, adding mass and humorlessness to everything it touches." Ironic people, he tells us - people such as Mark Twain and Jerry Seinfeld - have seldom done any real harm, while certain earnest types, such as Hitler and Lenin "have a lot to answer for." Earnest people take themselves seriously - very seriously. Part of the reason, Mr. Brooks hypothesizes, is that they didn't watch enough television when they were young, because for all its faults, he gives television credit for giving kids who watch it "a sophisticated schooling in ironic inflections, comic timing and mainstream humor. Kids who watch even a minimal amount of television receive a curriculum on verbal dexterity that would have been available only to devoted followers of Oscar Wilde a century ago." On the other hand, people who have been denied television as youngsters "tend to be tone deaf to American patter." Mr. Brooks points out the difficulty of acquiring an ironic sense of humor later in life: "Squads of consultants," he writes, "have spent years trying to insert irony implants into Al Gore, without success."

Vince Lombardi raised more than one eybrow when he used to say you should love your opponent, because without him you wouldn't have a contest. Then came this almost unbelievably beautiful articulation of grief from Celtics' great Bill Russell, on the death of Wilt Chamberlain. "I feel unspeakably injured. I've lost a dear and exceptional friend and an important part of my life. Our relationship was intensely personal. We just loved playing against each other. The fierceness of the competition bonded us as friends for eternity." The love of one warrior for another.

October 14 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 47.- High school fans aren't required to buy personal seat licenses giving them nothing more than the "right" to buy tickets.

Out of teaching, after years of being forced to donate my dues to the National Education Association (euphemistic name of the largest national teacher's union, and the largest single contributor to the Democratic Party), and watching them use my money to advance liberal causes, elect liberal Democrats, and fight to save the jobs of incompetent teachers, I'd almost forgotten the feel of the NEA's grubby hands rummaging around in my pockets. But along came Lattrell Sprewell to remind me. The notorious Mr. Sprewell, a week late in reporting to the New York Knicks, offered up some lame-ass excuse about needing to drive cross-country rather than fly, because he had to pick up some stuff in Milwaukee, and, besides, he wanted to make sure his Mercedes arrived safely in New York. (Hey, Lattrell - ever hear of leaving earlier?) Knicks' management, understandably "disappointed" with Lattrell for not so much as calling them even though he was missing a week of training camp, at first fined him $30,000. Later, though, as their disappointment mounted, management suspended him for one exhibition game. The suspension will cost him $100,000. If it is enforced, that is. Because in the great tradition of the NEA, the NBA Players' Association is not going to stand by and watch justice being done to one of its members, no matter how richly deserving of it he is - not when it has all that money given it by hard-working, rules-abiding members. Not when it can use that money to defend the indefensible. And so, it is considering filing a grievance on Sprewell's behalf.

"I couldn't help myself so I am writing again - but I just read yesterday's news (out of the office all day yesterday) and reason number whatever about high school teams going for the touchdown on the goal line. Last Saturday both teams were undefeated and we were behind by 2 points with the ball on their 5 yard line with 3 seconds to go in the game. I sent the field goal kicker and snapper onto the field to kick. Now our kicker is good about 50% of the time so our big tackle just stepped out of the huddle and looked up at me in the tower with his hands turned up. At the same time our other linemen in the huddle are begging coach Rice to run the ball. Tim calls up and says, "Jack, what do you think?" With 3000 screaming fans we change the call and run 56 XX Lead. Some might think a double handoff on the goal line with the game on the line is not a safe call but we practice XX Lead so much it has become second nature. We run the play and our A-Back goes 3 yards deep into the end zone. The amazing thing is that they are all screaming "watch Smith, watch Smith," but the motion and the handoff going left is just to much for high school kids. On the tape you can watch the left side of their defense step and turn toward 99 powerand by the time they recover the ball is in the end zone. Quite exciting and another reason why high school football is better than the NFL." Jack Tourtillotte, Boothbay Harbor, Maine

There was an article in our local paper about a 64-foot ocean sailing yacht just built in a Washougal shipyard (Washougal is on the Columbia River) and being readied for delivery to its owner in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. I mentioned this to Jack Tourtillotte, a lifelong resident of Boothbay Harbor and principal of Boothbay Regional High School (as well as offensive coordinator). Jack not only knows the gentleman in question but said that he has been a benefactor of the school and the community, "willing to share his heard-earned fortune."

After six games, Assumption High, of Davenport, Iowa is 5-1; Assumption, coached by another old WFLer (New York Stars) Mark Kaczmarek, has rushed for 1588 yards and thrown for 809, which works out to an average of 400 yards total offense per game!

Those who have seen my Dynamics IV video may remember my mentioning our 14-12 loss in 1998 to the eventual state champion, Kalama. Since then, we are now playing in Class 2-A, but Kalama remained in Class 1-A, and the Chinooks, with eight starters back on both sides of the ball, have been kicking some serious tail. Running out of the wishbone, they are now 5-0, and have outscored opponents 312-18. Their closest game was this past weekend, a 38-0 drubbing of previously unbeaten Onalaska. One of their running backs, Josiah Wilfong, has gained 923 yards and scored 16 touchdowns on 46 carries.

October 14 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 46. - High schools aren't constantly tinkering with the rules to try to favor the offense (meaning, in reality, "the passing game").

Sadly, I deal with the death of Wilt Chamberlain, as a little of my past slips away. I grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia (I went to Germantown Academy at the same time that Bill Cosby was playing football at Germantown High, but that's another story) and Wilt Chamberlain, two years ahead of me in school, was from West Philadelphia, and played at Overbrook High, clear on the other city of the city. But Overbrook did play a game in our gym against our varsity, a pretty good team in our league. We had a couple of "big" guys (6-4 or so) and I'll never my first look at Wilt - he was flanked by our two big men, and was a full head taller. His legs were long and spindly but his shoulders seemed a yard wide. We enjoyed bantering with the members of his entourage - he had one long before Allen Iverson - who called him "Dippy." ( Short for "Big Dipper," his preferred nickname. He never did like the nickname "Wilt the Stilt.") The game, of course, was no contest. Nor were most of the games he played in. I travelled with my buddies to the University of Pennsylvania's Palestra - taking the "S" bus, then transferring first to the Broad Street subway and then to a trolley - to watch Wilt play in the Public Championships and then the City Championships, against the Catholic League champions. (The Philadelphia public schools have never belonged to the PIAA, the state governing body, and so Overbrook never had a chance to play for a state title.) Overbrook lost one City Championship, as I recall, to South Catholic, whose coach was resourceful enough to simulate shooting against a 7-footer by standing a manager on a training table which he had placed between the hoop and the free throw line. Wilt may possibly have been the greatest athlete of all time: in the spring of his senior year in high school, he was first in the city in the high jump, the shot put and the 440. At least one Philadelphia boxing figure - I believe it was Frank "Blinky" Palermo - wanted him to box professionally. Imagine what he would have made nowadays, going right from high school into the NBA! In those days before freshman eligibility, he actually had to spend a year at Kansas, playing on the freshman team. He had his flaws (who could have known that one day, every kid would emulate Wilt's habit of not showering after contests, a habit which earned him the nickname, "Big Musty?") and he could sometimes sound like an egomaniac. But he was awesome. We grew up worlds apart in the same city, but he was a Philly guy. And he was our treasure.

Under Coach Tim Murphy, an early Double-Wing convert, Ygnacio Valley High, of Concord, California, has been having a great season. It would be an all-time great season if they could pull one out tomorrow night. It won't be easy: the opponent is De La Salle, also of Concord, currently ranked #3 nationally in USA Today, and bringing a national-record 93-game win streak into the game.

Where have you gone, Vince Lombardi? I am a great admirer of Paul A. Gigot, the Wall Street Journal's political columnist, and I read everything he writes. Sometimes twice. I am also an admirer of Vince Lombardi. So when I came across a review by Mr. Gigot of David Maraniss' just-published biography of Coach Lombardi, "When Pride Still Mattered," (Simon & Schuster, $26.95), I read it immediately. Having written a series of profiles of the Man from Hope in 1992, Mr. Maraniss is presumably now better-qualified as a judge of character to write a biography of Lombardi, the football great whom Mr. Gigot calls "the ultimate anti-Clinton." (How's that for high praise?) Coach Lombardi himself defined character as "the perfectly disciplined will." Bill Clinton, in Mr. Gigot's judgment, is "the perfectly undisciplined will." Mr. Gigot, who grew up near Coach Lombardi's home in Green Bay and attended the same church, points to author Maraniss' description of three powerful formative influences in making Coach Lombardi the man he became: "the immigrant streets of Brooklyn"; "the West Point of coach Red Blaik and General MacArthur"; and "the Jesuits of Fordham." I was eager to share this review with my readers, but wouldn't you just know - before I could, before I could even get out (or get on-line) to buy myself a copy, one arrived in the mail yesterday, a gift from a good friend I've made through coaching. I am deeply grateful and I will treasure it.

We had a player injure his neck in practice Tuesday. Nothing serious, as it turns out - just a hyperextension - but medical protocol requires us to treat any head or neck injury as a serious injury. We were scrimmaging; he was a blitzing linebacker, and he was rather forcefully down-blocked, winding up on the ground at the bottom of a pile, holding his helmet and shouting that his neck hurt. If you experience such a moment- begin by immediately clearing everybody else away and getting them back to work, while making sure that, other than checking for signs that he can use his arms and legs and that he has feeling in them, the player remains completely immobile. Don't wait for him to get better or get up. Let him lie there - hold his head steady if necessary - and immediately send for the Fire & Rescue, the EMT's, or whoever responds to emergencies in your area. Don't try to remove his helmet; don't even unsnap it. The professionals will place him on a board and, without removing pads or helmet, will immobilize him by taping his helmet to the board. (Another reason, in case you needed one, why you want to make sure that a player's helmet fits him snugly.) Ironically, I had just been reading an article about neck injuries that stressed the importance of not moving the injured person - it stated that an estimated 50% of the damage in such cases can occur after the initial incident - from the mishandling of the victim by otherwise well-intentioned people. In cases of head or neck injuries - leave it to the professionals. Common-sense follow-up would suggest a post-practice talk with the rest of the team, assuring them that the ambulances and EMT's were only there because you just won't take chances with any neck or head injury, and calls to home - first to notify the parents of the injury and the care being given, then to check up on the player and reassure his parents.

From Coach Ron Timson, in Umatilla, Florida: "You just keep bringing things up from my past on your web site. Not many people who viewed your web site would know anything about Roanoke Rapids, NC, but it just so happens that I was stationed there in 1969-1970 at a Radar Site. I had just come back from Vietnam and was sent there in May 1969,and then in August I got married and that was the first place I took my wife on our Air Force adventure. Roanoke Rapids could use some excitement like high school football, because it was a paper mill and textile mill town. J. P. Stevens had a textile mill in town and we played fast-pitch softball against them. It is a very small world." (Coach Timson, who should know a thing or two about the excitement football brings to a small town, recently relocated from Bennington, Nebraska - population 1,000 - to Umatilla, Florida - population 4,000. Roanoke Rapids is a town of about 16,000 people.)

Coach Mack Brown, of the University of Texas, got career win number 100 last Saturday against Oklahoma. "I remember a time," he recalled, "where I said, 'If I can get to .500 I'll be happy.'" (He was 19-48 after his first six years as a head coach, at Appalachian State, Tulane and North Carolina.)

October 13 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 45. On fourth-and-goal from the three, a high school team will probably go for the touchdown.

I know that Orchard Park, New York, outside Buffalo, is now 6-0 and ranked #1 among large schools in western New York, but I haven't spoken with Coach Gene Tundo lately. I also know Medina, New York is now 5-1 but I seldom hear from Coach NIck Benedetti. Will somebody please tell me how they did last weekend?

With its 28-21 last-second win over power Owego Free Academy last Saturday, Corning West High, in Painted Post, New York, is riding the crest of a three-game winning streak. But Saturday's win was anything but easy, according to Corning West coach Mike Johnston. "We began the game with our backs against the wall right from the get go, " he writes. "In pre-game our best lineman, who plays offensive tackle and defensive tackle, went down with a possible season ending shoulder injury. Ok, so we move on to his backup, a kid who has seen considerable time this year at offensive tackle and starts for us at defensive tackle. Well, on the 2nd series on defense he injures his knee, and he, too, is looking at a season ending injury. Things would be looking pretty dismal if we hadn't been running the double offense. We went to our #5 tackle on the depth chart and he plays a solid game for us at offensive tackle, to say the least. After starting our first drive out on our own 20 and then punting the ball into our up-backs back on 4th down, we gave up a score after playing good hard tough-nosed defense for 7 or 8 downs. Again, I attribute our toughness on defense to the double wing offense and its development of mental and physical toughness."

Chicago Westinghouse High's basketball team may not begin practice until November 22 - two weeks later than the state permits - and Westinghouse basketball coach Chris Head has been suspended and prohibited from having any contact with players until January 1, 2000, as a result of a finding by the Illinois High School Association that Head organized and coached a team of Chicago area basketball players in the AAU Junior National Championship Tournament in Orlando, Florida last July . Nine of the "Chicago area" players on the team were from Westinghouse. The IHSA found that Head and Westinghouse were in violation of state by-laws regarding limits on seasons, and guidelines for coaching/supervising non-school teams. Meantime, while basketball players enjoy their all-expenses-paid trips to Florida and other glamorous places, football players stay back home and toil in their weight rooms.

Keith Babb, youth coach outside Chicago, wrote to ask if I had seen a recent interview of Governor Jesse "The Soul" Ventura on ESPN. "Sometimes ole Jesse's mouth gets in the way of his brain," Coach Babb writes, "But, when asked by the interviewer if he got paid to coach football, he answered, 'yes, but in a currency much better than money.' He went on to say that he figures 20 years from now one of his former players will think about where he learned about teamwork and sacrifice for a greater good and that's his payoff."

Political Correctness clearly has not reached Australia yet. Reports from the Sydney Olympics show that in Basketball, all 21 of the men's sessions are sold out, compared to just 33% of the women's sessions; men's team handball (a sport practically unknown in the US) is nearly sold out, while only 32% of the women's sessions are; 70% of men's baseball session are sold out, compared to 43% of women's softball sessions.

Northwest Halifax High in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, ranks second in the state in rushing with 377.3 yards per game.

The Portland Trail Blazers will, I'm sure, find the money to pay Scottie Pippen his $14 million this year. Say that slowly - FOURTEEN MILLION DOLLARS. And various NFL teams will pay out gazillions to guys you've never heard of (and likely never will). Meantime, the financially-strapped Portland Public Schools, with a $2.8 million budget for all school sports, can't even begin to consider an additional $2 million outlay to start organized football in their middle schools. And the NFL, which just peddled a franchise in Houston for $700 million (say that slowly!), which could write $1 million checks for each of the top 50 cities in the US and scarcely miss the money, prefers instead to put on dog-and-pony shows called "clinics" in inner cities (notice that there are always TV cameras on hand to record the NFL's generosity?), teaching various skills of the game to little kids who may not even have any place to use those skills when they're old enough, anyhow. Come on, NFL owners - name another business your size that spends as little as you do on product development. Time to stop leeching. At the very least, you should be investing one per cent of gross revenues on developing football at the youth, middle school and high school level, combatting the inroads of soccer instead of standing by and letting those of us on the front line do your fighting for you.

October 12 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 44. High school offensive linemen can do something besides pass block and hold.

At halftime Saturday against USC, Arizona coach Dick Tomey asked his players how many of them had been offered scholarships by SC. When only two of them raised their hands, Tomey went around the locker room, asking the rest of the players, one by one, why they had not been offered. "It was always the same thing," quarterback Steve Smith told the Arizona Daily Star. "I was too small. All the players said the same thing. I didn't get recruited there or invited to visit or anything. And whenever we play them, it's like, 'I'm going to prove you wrong.'"

Ken Dryden, president of the Toronto Maple Leafs, commenting on the NHL's campaign against personal slurs, part of its diversity and sensitivity training: "In our worst moments, in the moments we can't finesse, things come out of us that we're not terribly proud of. That's why sensitivity training is so difficult to make work. The problem isn't that people don't know the words are hurtful. The problem is they know the words are."

I saw in the latest edition of Texas Coach Magazine that "The Story of Darrell Royal," a 60-minute documentary on the life of the legendary Texas Longhorns' coach was now available in videotape cassette, so I just ordered mine. It is produced by Hall of Legends Sports, and can be obtained by calling 1-800-314-2626, or by checking Hall of Legends' website at www.halloflegends.com. Coach Royal certainly got it done on the field, winning three national championships, but few people outside Texas, even those who knew of his coaching achievements, were aware of Coach Royal's wit and wisdom - his "simple way of speaking even the most complicated of truths," as Texas Coach puts it. The tape costs $24.95 plus $4.95 shipping, and I expect it to be a great addition to my library.

My son, Ed, passed along to me a purely Australian phrase: "He bats and bowls." Based on cricket terminology, it is the Australian version of our describing a bisexual as a "switch-hitter".

Ed also tells me that for a moment the other day he thought he was in New Jersey when he heard Melbournians using the word "youse," as in "where are youse going?" In the US, westerners may not be aware of this peculiarly eastern phenomenon - the Jersey equivalent of y'all - or that it has various forms. Growing up in Philadelphia, I remember hearing it pronounced as "yizz," and there are parts of western Pennsylvania where it becomes "yuns", a contraction of "you 'uns." (It is not unusual to hear an old-timer in Appalachia use the term "'un" to mean "one" as in "he's a big 'un.")

"I'm more mature"- Dick Vermeil, explaining to Al Michaels on Monday Night Football why, burned out, he dropped out of coaching at 46, yet now, at 62, he's coaching with renewed enthusiasm.

Top 5 Major Colleges in all-time winning percentage: (1) Notre Dame; (2) Michigan; (3) Alabama (4) Ohio State; (5) Texas.

October 11 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 43. High school coaches know more than one way to run the football - the option, even

WONDER WHAT HE WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF A COUNTER PLAY: Charles Eliot, President of Harvard from 1869 to 1909, was once congratulated on the success of his school's baseball team. He replied, "I'm told the team did well because one pitcher had a fine curve ball. I understand a curve ball is thrown with a deliberate attempt to deceive. Surely that is not an ability that we should want to foster at Harvard."

TOUGH LOSS OF THE WEEK: Queen Annes (Centreville, Maryland) 34, Snow Hill 26 (2 OT) Snow Hill is the smallest school in the state playing football; Queen Annes was a 4A school until just two years ago. Both teams entered the game with 4-1 records.

IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU: Former Washington high school stars Teyo Johnson and Amon Gordon (NEWS, September 16) have helped their new high school, Mira Mesa (California) get off to a 3-1 start. The two players, expected to be two of the top recruits in Washington this year, were being counted on to take Everett, Washington's Mariner High to the state 3A finals for a second straight year. But along the way, through their involvement in a San Diego NIKE League team, they came to the attention of the good folks at Mira Mesa, and somehow someone worked out the details of the the long commute from Everett to San Diego. Oh - as of last week's game, Mariner was 1-3.

"Coach Wyatt, we did it again! Florence 26, Yazoo City 6. We move to first place in the district at 3-0 and 6-1 overall. By the way, we lost our Quarterback to an off-the field injury prior to the Wingfield game. We have won the last two with a sophmore backup. (Good example of the fact that this offense is not QB intensive!!) Thanks for your help and the great clinic. By the way, we assured ourselves of the first winning season since 1986." Coach Steve Jones, Florence, Mississippi

From yesterday's Denver Post: "Park Hill's Machebeuf High School doesn't have a field, and it has won just five times in the last four years. The defensive coach is Vince Phason, a former professional football player who became a quadriplegic in a car accident a year ago. Phason rolls up and down the field in a power wheelchair, yelling at players through an electric megaphone attached to his chair by a Machebeuf parent.. Phason coached under head coach Dave Sidwell at Denver's Manual High School, Regis College, and then arena football's Colorado Wildcats, now called the Rocky Mountain Thunder. So when Machebeuf hired Sidwell this summer, the new coach asked Phason if he wanted to assist. Phason, a former University of Arizona Wildcat, started playing professional football for San Diego in 1974 and went on to play at Winnipeg, Green Bay and Montreal over the next 12 years. But he had his doubts about coaching from a wheelchair. Though he has some movement in his elbows and shoulders, he cannot use his hands. "And my voice wasn't very strong - the yelling you have to do, you know? I said, 'OK, I'll try and do it.' I never say I can't." The first game, on Sept. 4, was hard. "I felt so distant from the kids and the coaches and the game itself because of my voice,'' he said. "I coach like I played - I yell and I'm really into it. This game hurt so bad because it didn't work out that way. I started crying on the field.'' Sidwell believes that day "was the first time Vince realized he wasn't the same guy he was before.'' Then Glenn Ortiz, parent of a Machebeuf player, became Phason's second voice. At first, Ortiz held a megaphone when Phason needed to yell. Then he went to an audio shop and rigged the megaphone to the wheelchair. Now, Phason just presses it when he wants to speak. Ortiz laughs about the first time they used it. Phason yelled "Rashad'' to junior Rashad Younger, and the sound boomed onto the field. Younger looked like he'd just heard the voice of God. "Vince has a way with kids and he needs to be heard,'' Ortiz said. "They don't feel sorry for him; they're inspired by him.'' The Buffaloes won their first game against Nederland, 19-13, then lost to Lake County 14-9, to Denver Christian 58-0 and to Denver Lutheran 33-22. Last week Machebeuf played Holy Family, an old rival because they're the only two Catholic teams in the 2A league, and won 21-17. It took home the Loretto trophy, which goes back and forth between the two teams, for the first time in 10 years."

October 9 - - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 42. High school cheerleaders don't stand around holding their pom-pons at their sides waiting for a TV camera to focus on them before they start to "cheer."

It is late Friday night and I've just returned from White Salmon, Washington, about an hour east of Washougal in the Columbia River Gorge. The White Salmon Bruins are a traditional small-school power, and this year they were among the favorites to win the Southest Washington League title; La Center, my former team, was expected to be rebuilding. But tonight, playing at White Salmon, the La Center Wildcats, after falling behind 13-0 in the first four minutes to play, rallied to upset the Bruins, 48-35. My very best to La Center coach John Lambert, who played for me and assisted me, and did a masterful job of keeping his kids in the game tonight. His Wildcats are now 3-2.

I spoke to an interesting man yesterday named Steven Bass, an executive with a start-up TV cable network called Cavalcade of Sports, due to start airing next April. He was hoping I might have access to some World Football League footage for one of his shows.. I have exactly 60 seconds of 16-mm film of Rufus Ferguson, Don Horn and Jim Evenson, our three best-known players in Portland, so I wasn't much help to him, but in the course of our conversation I learned of his involvement with the International Football Federation (IFF). Scheduled to get under way in early 2001, the IFF intends to tap into Americans' great interest in football by offering pro football from winter until mid-summer. In other words, avoiding head-to-head competition with the NFL (good decision!) and instead going up against major league baseball, where interest is becoming, shall we say, soft. The IFF will be a "single entity" league - the league will own all the teams - in hopes of avoiding the owner selfishness that threatens to destroy the economic viability of the NFL (can you say "Dallas Cowboys?" "San Francisco 49ers?"). Every player will become a free agent at the end of every season. Sound crazy? Think about this - instead of the current NFL system in which teams bid against each other for the services of a limited number of often mediocre free agents, the IFF system, with every player a free agent, would result in players' competing with each other for the available money. And presumably driving salaries - for other than real stars - down. At least that's how the thinking goes, and in terms of Econ 101, it sounds plausible. One thing the IFF proposes that makes we want to ask "where do I buy my tickets?" is its plan to "take the foot out of football." Example: if a punt goes out of the end zone, a point is awarded to the return team; but if the ball is punted into the end zone and the return team can't run it out, a point os scored for the punting team (no fair catches!). Example: a missed field goal scores a point for the defense, as well as possession of the ball, and the longer a field goal attempt, the less it will count. Example: taking a cue from the World Football League's "Action Point," there will be no kicks for point-after-touchdowns; teams must run or pass. All I can say is, good luck. In trying to move in on the NFL, the IFF is taking on one of the most powerful, firmly-entrenched organizations in any industry.

Coach Don Gordon, at Frontier Junior High in South Deerfield, Massachusetts was quick to note that in my necessarily short biography of Amos Alonzo Stagg, I neglected to mention that he had coached briefly at Springfield (Massachusetts) College, of which Coach Gordon is an alumnus (Class of '70). Coach Stagg may not even be the best-known sports innovator associated with Springfield College. Springfield, originally a YMCA college and a wellspring of American physical education, is where a physical educator devised an indoor game designed to keep young men fit during the long New England winters. A fellow named Naismith. (For a great site devoted to Amos Alonzo Stagg)

October 8 - - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 41. High school defensive backs are still allowed to play pass defense, once you are able to convince high school officials that the "five-yard rule" does not apply in real football.

The Washougal Panthers defeated the Stevenson Bulldogs last night in a Thursday night contest, 61-7. The Panthers, who rushed 43 times for 587 yards, built a 34-0 first quarter lead, and rushed for 395 yards in the first half, as they led at halftime, 48-0. Washougal never fumbled, never punted, and never gave up the ball on downs. Nine different Panthers carried the ball, led by Dan Stineback, with 151 yards on four carries and two long TD runs to go with a 70-yard punt return, and Tim Ensley, whose 85-yard run helped him rush for 129 yards. Chris Martell scored from 59 yards out, Dave Saberi from 55 and Josh Brock from 35. The win, the Panthers' third in a row, improves their overall record to 3-2 and their Southwest Washington League record to 2-0.

Dr. Tom Osborne has been honored as this year's recipient of the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award, given annually by the American Football Coaches Association for services "outstanding in the advancement of the best interests of football." The formal presentation is always made at the AFCA's annual convention, which will be held this year on January 10, 11 and 12 in Anaheim, California. The award is richly-deserved, and well-named. For those unacquainted with Amos Alonzo Stagg, a brief introduction is in order. Mr. Stagg's career began as a freshman player at Yale in 1885, when football was more like rugby than the game it is today. He was still actively coaching in his 90's. Head coach at the University of Chicago for 40 years, with an an overall record (Chicago was then a member of the Big Ten) of 243-104-48, he was forced to retire in 1932. But he was only 70, and his work wasn't finished. "I went into athletic work," he said, "because it offered me the largest opportunity for service through contact with young people." Moving west to Stockton, California, he took the head job at College (now University) of the Pacific, where he was named Coach of the Year by his peers in 1943 - at age 81. Forced into retirement again in 1946, he still wasn't through- he joined his son, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Jr., then head coach at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, as an assistant. There he stayed until 1953, when finally, his wife's illness forced him to be by her side in Stockton. What a tribute he paid her: "My buddy, the mainstay and center of my life for fifty-nine years, needs me," he told the Associated Press. "I will stay by her in every way." Even in semi-retirement, though, he returned occasionally to assist at Pacific. "To attempt to list all of Stagg's inventions and originations staggers the imagination, " wrote Allison Danzig in 1956 in The History of American Football. "One hardly knows where to begin. He has had the most creative mind football has known. To begin with, he created his own system of football, and it was from that system that most of football offense derived for many years, as well os some defense." How about a short list of Mr. Stagg's contributions to our game: the huddle, the lettermen's club, intersectional competition (Chicago vs. Stanford), the man in motion (1898), the criss-cross (1890), the sleeper play (1899), the cross buck (1899), the lateral on a kickoff return (1894), the QB under center in "T" formation (1894), the QB keep (1905), and others far too numerous to mention.

Old buddy Art "Ozzie" Osmundson, long-time Double-Winger at Ridgefield, Washington is basking in the glow of what has to be one of the biggest passing nights put up by a Double-Wing offense since Don Markham first ran it. By halftime last Friday, "Air Osmundson" had produced over 200 yards and three touchdowns (40, 35 and 40 yards), with six completions in seven attempts against Stevenson. Nothing fancy. All you have to do is be known as a running team, then have people who can throw and catch. Ridgefield wound up winning, 43-14.

October 7- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 40. It is still possible to find a surface somewhere in a high school stadium that hasn't been sold to an advertiser. And when there are signs, they're likely to advertise BBQ joints, towing companies, well drillers and taxidermists.

Last Thursday, before our big game, Washougal's kids were warned by both the Washougal and Camas Police Departments that they would be arrested if they carried on their traditional pre-game motorcade through the streets of neighboring Camas, taunting their rivals and fanning the flames of a football rivalry that dates to 1913. Enraged by Camas' daring to paint "CHS" in red on several of the big white Panther Paws that lead up 39th Street to our stadium, they retaliated by splashing orange (Washougal's colors are orange and black) paint on the big rock outside Camas' stadium; somehow "obtaining" a large red Camas flag and painting a large, black-and-orange "W" over the "CHS" before returning it; and, after catching some Camas students entering our stadium parking lot at night, "persuading" them that perhaps there were better uses for the cans of spray paint they were carrying. But the game itself, unlike last year's, which ended in a near-riot as a Washougal player angrily charged one official after another before finally being restrained by his coach, went off without incident. The Camas players, understandably dejected after being so soundly defeated, handled themselves with class, as did our kids. And in Tuesday's edition of the weekly Camas-Washougal Post-Record, Camas coach Bob Holman paid our kids a high compliment. "Last Friday," he said, "we lost to a bunch of street fighters." Some of our kids' mothers were upset at the thought that their sons were being called hoodlums, but the dads - and their coach - assured them that "street fighter" is a label that a football player wears with pride. (STORY)

By now, we've probably all heard about the experiment the girls' soccer people tried someplace. It could only have been hatched by touchy-feely liberals. Someplace (it really doesn't matter), fans (other than parents, who watches that stuff, anyhow?) were asked not to yell at kids' soccer games. Not anything. Not even positive stuff. Coach Glade Hall, a youth football coach in Seattle, read about the experiment in the Seattle Times, and said he never noticed much shouting - either way - at girls' soccer games, anyhow: "I coach youth football and last week we had our biggest game. Everyone behaved themselves and had a good time . My daughter played soccer last year and I was able to attend a few games . I remember commenting to my wife " Boy , it's sure quiet around here ." " That's because everyone's busy drinking their latte and reading the paper in their lawn chairs" she said. I looked around. She was right."

Coach D.J. Harris called me from Kankakee, Illinois to give me an update. Kankakee is now 5-1, but headed into a murderer's row over the next three weeks, preparing this week to play #5-ranked (Class 5-A) Thornton Fractional South. Kankakee is not unarmed, though, with a B-Back who is being recruited by Missouri and two wingbacks being recruited by Wisconsin. Coach Harris said the Double-Wing "has helped us from top to bottom." They're now running it in all three high school programs (varsity, JV, frosh) and in the middle school and youth programs as well. Kankakee had 54 kids turn out for frosh football this year, the largest number on years. Coach Harris attributes the large number to the fact that they don't lose skilled kids to other schools the way they used to when they ran I formation and only one back was featured. (On the Kankakee varsity, as many as six kids will get 9 or 10 carries a game.)

"It's a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers." Thus, in a manner befitting Marx or Lenin, was organized religion dissed by Minnesota's Governor Jesse "The Soul" Ventura, who owes his name, his fame and his office to - speaking of shams and crutches for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers - professional wrestling. I wonder how he would have described "Robbins' Results 2000, " Tuesday's gathering in Portland's Memorial Coliseum of 15,000 supposedly intelligent people, who had paid from $50 to $350 to attend. They were there to have themselves, their lives and their careers jacked up by a series of so-called "motivational speakers," most of them Juice Man clones who had never accomplished anything of substance themselves other than successfully marketing their ability to speak to large crowds for large sums of money. As the Portland Oregonian describes it, the featured speaker, Anthony Robbins, "whips the crowd into what he calls a 'peak state,' as they jump up and down, clapping to the beat, pumping fists in the air, answering his question, 'Does that make you feel good?' with repeated cried of 'YES! YES! YES!'" What's humorous is how many of those frenzied people, without fully realizing the idiocy of what they were caught up in, would probably agree with Governor Ventura that religion is, indeed, "a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers."

October 6 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 39. When they are not in the game, high school kids are still interested in the game, and don't sit on the bench totally oblivious to what's happening to their teammates out on the field.

"Coach, the Rigby Trojans of Rigby, Idaho won again.They beat Blackfoot High who was ranked #2 in the state by a wide margin of 17 points. Now Rigby is 5-0 on the season with a huge game against the Madison Bobcats on Friday. This one should be good - this is a huge rivalry. I will get all the scores together from the other games and send them to you."KE Young (This is the first I have heard of Rigby High's progress, and I have asked for scores to post in the Winner's Circle.)

Although I could hardly be called a MacIntosh cultist, I am a relatively confirmed Mac user, so I am not intimately familiar with Windows' noted propensity to crash. However, Walter S. Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal's Personal Technology Editor, recently kept a personal diary for one week in which he recorded his travails as a Windows user. From September 22 through September 28, using an assortment of new computers from Dell, IBM, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard, all with at least 64 megabytes of memory, Mr. Mossberg, who knows a thing or two about personal computers, experienced six crashes in addition to various other failures to perform normal tasks. "I haven't tried to diagnose these problems," he writes. "That would take too much time and trouble...The whole point is that owners of computers shouldn't have to get involved in making them work as promised. They should just work, all the time." (Amen. How many of us would screw around with a video camera that stopped recording, without warning, in the middle of a game?)

We've all experienced the sheer terror of watching a kid free-lance, going against everything he's been taught...and the relief-followed-by-joy of watching him somehow make a big play out of it. Playing UCLA a couple of weeks ago, Stanford coach Tyrone Willingham watched his punter go far to his right to catch a bad snap, and decide to run the ball rather than kick it. He picked up 32 yards and a first down. Coach Willingham said later, "It's like a basketball play where a guy shoots a 30-footer and the coach is saying, 'no, no, no - YES!'"

Another program heard from for the first time: "Coach, Just thought you'd like to know that good old Lutheran Northwest (Rochester Hills. Michigan), which entered the season with a lifetime record of 16-86, now stands at 3-3, following our 49-7 win over St. Francis Cabrini. We lost our first game 20-14 in overtime to Lutheran North, a school two Classes above us. The second loss 27-14, was to the best team in the league Livonia Clarenceville who currently stands at 6-0 and is also two classes up. Our third loss 28-24, was a bizarre affair at Hamtramck. It was Homecoming and the referees made it clear right away that they were not about to put up with our double wing shenanigans. They said we were giving ourselves an unfair advantage by putting our hands down so hard when we said go. To which I responded "what do you think a hard count is and besides you're punishing us for doing something better than our opponent. there is no rule regarding how fast or slow a team puts their hand down." So every time we drew the other team offsides it was penalty on us and we often caught our opposition with 12 men on the field, they tackled us all night, what can I say. AND we STILL almost won. We killed them with overtight 6 & 7-G pass. If we win this week we tie the school record for wins with four and will break every offensive record before the year is out." Coach Rick Desotell

Rugby in the USA has always had a small but highly-devoted following. Now, though, supplied with money paid by Rupert Murdoch's (The Fox guy) Sky television in return for TV rights, USA rugby hopes to gain a footing with American TV viewers. Not that there is a move afoot to dislodge football in the hearts of Americans: "I'm not delusional," says US rugby coach Jack Clark. "We'll always be a niche sport. But there'll be room for us. Let's face it - we're a country of people who sit on our sofas and watch giant trucks run over each other."

"Coach, After Attending your clinic last spring, ( North St. Paul) I was excited to try your offense. Being a coaching minor, at UW-River Falls , I was looking for an offense to run that would help me become a better coach and help me in my coaching practicum class this fall. So for my class I had the choice to be an assistant at high school level or be a head coach at 5th and 6th grade level. I chose 5th and 6th grade because I wanted to install and run the DW. Boy Did I have fun. The Rules only let us play with nine men and six had to be on the line of srimmage; no motion is allowed. Our basic set was an uptight formation. I played with an E/WB on each side depending who was up. To make a long story short we went 6-0 and won our league championship! The kids were excited. I overheard one parent comment that we looked like the old army offense! I just smiled. This success we had even-though we had 5 first year players and this league is Flag!(Shoulderpads and Helmets) One coach commented, later on in the season how he hates our wedge play!. I laughed. ( The kids love it.) Our Trap play was also very fun to watch. I just wanted to E-Mail you and tell you, thank you and I really believe in the DW and think I now have an offense to run as a coach and be successful AT ANY LEVEL!" Grant Weir, River Falls, Wisconsin

October 5- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 38. High school coaches still stress the fundamentals of blocking, tackling and ball-handling, instead of depending on their players' God-given talents.

Got a call from an old pal, Chuck Raykovich, at Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Chuck's Cardinals are now 6-0, averaging 440 yards a game in offense, and ranked #10 among the state's large schools. Two weeks ago, Chippewa Falls enjoyed a big win - and a rare one at that - over regional power Menomonie in front of 7,000 people at Menomonie's homecoming.

"I had a 20 minute meeting with the oficials before the game in regard to the rules. Interestingly enough they just had a Meeting on Tuesday previous to the game. The topic of discussion was illegal blocking below the waist by the defense." Ray Pohlman, Perrysburg, Ohio

Brian Buchkowsky, head coach at Jasper Place High School in Edmonton, Alberta, called me to tell me of the success his program has been enjoying running the Double-Wing on both the senior (17 & 18 year-old) and junior (15 & 16 year-old)teams. This is real Canadian football, with 12 men on a side, and three downs to make 10 yards, and the seniors are currently 5-0, averaging 39 points per game, while the juniors are 4-1. Jasper Place is a school of some 2,000 kids, and this past summer 150 kids tried out for football for approximately 40 spots on the Junior team and another 40 on the senior team.Junior coach Kyle Wagner said, "Many of my players are in their first year of football and they are able to understand the offense easily." He also passed along the address of the Jasper Place web site:http://jp.epsb.net Coach Buchkowsky said he saw the recent Toronto-Edmonton CFL game, and was highly impressed by the job Toronto did running our Double-Wing. He said he doesn't know why they didn't stay with it - the Edmonton Eskimos couldn't stop it .

"On Saturday, I saw my son's team, Lake Forest Academy play North Shore Country Day School, who runs the DW. I had mixed emotions as I wanted my son's team to win but I also wanted to see the DW do well. North Shore won 24-13. North Shore got off to a slow start but they began grinding out the yards in the second quarter and eventually took a 13-7 half time lead. It was all North Shore in the 2nd half. I was particularly impressed with the coach's call on a 2nd down and 17 at his own 35. He ran 3 trap at 2 for about 15 yards then wedged it for the 1st down. There was nothing the LFA defense could do to stop the power running game in the 2nd half. After the game, I introduced myself to North Shore's coach and told him how impressed I was with how they ran the offense. He said that this was the 2nd year they had been running the DW and he really liked it for how it got all of the kids involved. You're doing a great job of spreading the DW word. It's fun to watch a team run plays I'm familiar with because they're from "my" playbook. I just hope no one I coach against wants to run the DW anytime soon." Keith Babb, Deerfield, Illinois

Coach Jon McLaughlin, at Rich Central High in suburban Chicago, is now 3-3. RC started the season 0-3, but those first three opponents are now a combined 16-2. All three are rated in the Top 10 for the Chicago area. Bremen is rated #2 in 4a, Crete-Monee # 4 in 4a, and Thornton Fractional South # 5 in 5a. And as of Monday morning, Rich Central is rated #9 in 4a.

Chris Davidson of Philipsburg-Osceola High in Central Pennsylvania experienced his first shutout in three years as a head coach with a 24-0 white-washing of Indian Valley. The score was only 3-0 at the half, though, and as Coach Davidson tells it, "Apparently there were 3 old men following me up and down the sideline all game making disparaging remarks about my coaching ability and the things we were doing. I did not hear them because I was wearing the double ear headphones. But at half I was coming off the field and one of these fine gentlemen said, 'Come on, coach - just give it up and run the 'I'!' All this did is solidify my commitment to the D.W. In fact in the second half I did not break the wing even once, and we dominated the game. Funny though, couldn't find those old men after the game....." Some of you may have heard me tell about Chris' AD watching one of his first practices and, after seeing our goofy Double-Wing for the first time, asking Chris to promise him that if he didn't have 300 yards rushing after three games, he'd consider running the "I". Chris had over 300 yards after one game.

October 4 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 37. Unlike a pro, a high school kid who acts like a jackass may still grow out of it.

IT TAKES A SET! I'll let Coach John Bowen, of Glascock County High in Gibson, Georgia, tell you his good news in his own words: "We were able to break our school's 81 game losing streak in a 12-6 win over AAA Cross Creek High School. It was a great example of DBL WING versatility: A-Back: 8-98, 1td; B-Back: 15-60;C Back 7-28; QB: 4-21 rushing, 6-11 for 80 yards passing. Next week we host Pike County who defeated our DBL WING last year 16-14 (with our starting QB out). A chance to start a streak the other way? Our school has never won 2 games in a row in its football history. 2 wins is the most ever won in one season. Those were against a school that no longer plays football." This was my reply to Coach Bowen: "My kids were sure excited on Friday night after defeating their arch-rivals, but I'll bet no kids in the country felt the excitement and sense of accomplishment that your kids did. I am very happy for you and your kids. I am also very proud to be associated with you and men like you who work with kids day after day, week after week, trying to convince them that no matter how grim things may get, they still have a chance if they'll just stick with it. Your kids have gotten something from football that people who have never played the game will never understand." Take a minute and send along your good wishes to Coach John Bowen and his kids at : jddb@JeffersonEnergy.com

TOUGH LOSS AWARD: Mt. Vernon, Indiana, which had beaten Tell City just twice in the last 35 years, was within four seconds of doing it for the third time Friday night, when Tell City kicked a last-play field goal to win, 23-22.

After my Washougal team's big win Friday night over Camas - the next town over, and the town I live in - it was especially enjoyable walking the streets of Camas Sunday with my wife and our dog. I proudly wore my Washougal jacket and cap, and thought of Lefty Driesel, former Maryland basketball coach. So obsessed was the ole lefthander with breaking the domination of ACC basketball by Duke, North Carolina and NC State that when his Terps finally won the conference title, he announced his intention to take the conference trophy and "screw it onto the hood of my car and drive it all over the state of North Carolina!"

IT TAKES A SET! Chuck Noll, Hall-of-Fame coach who took the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowl championships, won the first Steelers' game he ever coached - then lost the next 13 in a row! He finished the 1969 season 1-13! I would love to talk with the man and ask him how he kept his staff and players on track. I'd also like to ask him how many people suggested he change what he was doing - what he believed in - and how he managed to keep those people at bay for an entire NFL season. I'm sure he couldn't have done it without an owner like the late Art Rooney. And a set of stones.

October 2- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - UNNUMBERED SPECIAL- HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL DOESN'T NEED HYPE LIKE THE GROTESQUE AD IN YESTERDAY'S USA TODAY APPEALING TO US TO WATCH AN NFL GAME ON FOX, BECAUSE....(DRUM ROLL PLEASE) "DEION'S BACK!"

SPECIAL: A jam-packed crowd watched the Washougal Panthers win their second in a row Friday night, defeating arch-rival Camas, 36-14, to even their record at 2-2 on the season. The Washougal Double-Wing offense was in high gear as the Panthers rushed 71 times for 424 yards and 21 first downs. The first Washougal score came with 9:24 left in the first quarter when Chris Martell burst 40 yards on a 6-G play. The second score, a 1-yard run by Martell (6-G), capped an 18-play, 82-yard drive that consumed seven minutes. Cody Morris' 6-yard pass to Pete Hughes (58 Black Throwback) gave the Panthers a 22-0 third-quarter lead before Camas finally got on the board with 1:05 left in the quarter to cut the lead to 22-7. From that point on, though, it was all Washougal, as the Panthers consumed much of the fourth quarter with two long drives. Danny Stineback, who rushed for 177 yards, score from 16 yards out on a lead criss-cross 47-C, and Tim Ensley on an 88-Super Power. Camas' final score came with 18 seconds remaining.

If prayer is a part of your life, say a prayer for Coach Lou Holtz, of the University of South Carolina and his wife, Beth. Mrs. Holtz is scheduled to undergo surgery on Monday at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

October 1 - - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 36. High school has no free agency. Unless players graduate, or their families move, or they get a job or they decide to spend the fall getting ready for basketball, you can figure on their being on the team again next year.

Perhaps the biggest test of a Double-Wing team so far this season will take place tonight in suburban Buffalo when Orchard Park, Western New York's #1-rated Large School team, takes on #2 Lancaster. Best of luck to Orchard Park and Double-Wing Coach Gene Tundo.

Hard to take, but the story is that Coach Spike Dykes is getting some serious heat at Texas Tech, especially after the Red Raiders' recent loss to North Texas. On top of that, he has lost premier runner Ricky Williams (different one) to a serious knee sprain. Coach Dykes, a former Texas high school coach and by all acounts a coach's coach, has done a marvelous job overall at Texas Tech, and has never been one to duck the tough guys, playing non-conference games in recent years against the likes of Penn State, Georgia and Tennessee. "They say in this business every year you coach you lose 10 per cent of your support," Coach Dykes told USA Today. "I've been here 13 years, so figure that out."

Goldendale, Washington High saw its 10-game losing streak come to an end last Friday, but it required action by the state governing body, the WIAA, to make it happen. Playing Riverside, which brought a 13-game losing streak of its own into the game, Goldendale thought it had finally won when it stopped Riverside on its own 5-yard line, taking over with one second left on the clock and leading, 14-10. Think again. Inexplicably, Riverside was given a fifth down, and, making the ost of it, scored on the play to "win," 16-14. Now, it's long been my impression that state bodies do a great job of preaching about being "in it for the kids," but when they're actually called on to dispense justice, they usually back the referees and screw the kids. Not this time, though - the WIAA ordered the game be played from the point at which Riverside was awarded the extra down. In other words, it would be Goldendale's ball on its own five, with one second remaining. Riverside chose not to resume the contest, giving Goldendale its first win in over a year.

Relocating has its drawbacks. One of them is losing touch, as Ron Timson has discovered. Ron, former head man at Bennington, Nebraska and an early Double-Wing convert, is now coaching in Umatilla, Florida, working with Tim Smith, another Double-Winger, to get the program there turned around. He says he misses corresponding with his Double-Wing buddies, so here's his new address: TimsonR@lake.k12.fl.us

The leading individual rushing performance in the NFL so far this year is the measly 132 yards on eight carries put up last weekend by Carolina's Tim Biakabutuka. He had touchdown runs of 67 and 62 yards. That's 129 yards on two carries. Do the math - that means he gained a grand total of three more yards on his other six carries. In the meantime, on the other end of the scale, playing on a field uncrowded by 240-pounders who run 4.6 40's - in fact, playing on a field uncrowded at all, an 8-man player in Eastern Washington ran for 477 yards last Friday night. Of course, he needed twice as many carries as Biakabutuka - 16 - to gain 345 yards more. Justin Young, a 5-11, 195-pounder for Columbia-Hunters, scored six touchdowns on runs of 5, 55, 96, 51, 68 and 18 yards, gaining 445 yards on 14 carries in the first half as Columbia-Hunters took a 63-24 halftime lead over Falls Christian High of Post Falls, Idaho. The final score was Columbia-Hunters 76, Falls Christian 44, as Young touched the ball just twice in the second half. His coach, Chuck Wyborney, had to be hard-pressed to find enough subs to keep the score under control, because like many other teams in sparsely-populated Eastern Washington, Columbia-Hunters is a co-op team formed by two rural high schools without enough kids to form 8-man teams of their own. (Young's performance, although Washington 8-man's second best of all-time, wasn't close to the record, a 591-yard performance by Nick Bates of Colton, in 1997.)  

September 30- - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 35. Most high school players have not yet fathered illegitimate children.

A crowd of about 500, including the entire University of Georgia football team, gathered Tuesday in a Baptist church in Athens, Georgia to say good-bye to Coach Pat Watson, a Georgia assistant who died of a heart attack last Saturday night after the Bulldogs' win over Central Florida. One of the speakers was his 22-year old son, Cal. "This is the toughest thing I've ever had to do in my life," he said. "But I know what my dad would say. He'd tell me to 'suck it up and do it,' and that's what I'm going to do. I don't think we could have scripted a better departure. My father went out a winner, undefeated on the field and in the game of life." Coach Watson, a native of Enterprise, Mississippi and a graduate of Mississippi State, was a college coach for 32 years.

From Coach Scott Barnes, a native Texan now living in Parker, Colorado (near Denver): "I was able to spend last night in Mesquite, Texas, watching my twin 8th grade nephews play football - This was the ONLY time I've ever been "homesick" since I moved to Colorado almost 5 years ago! As soon as we drove to the stadium (yep, stadium , albeit they only had grandstands on one side of the field), I realized what I missed most about Tejas ... The parking lot was full, and we had to jump a curb and park on the grass. You could hear the band playing and the crowd cheering .. we made it into the stadium in time to see the "B" team Bears defeat the "B" team Cougars 7-6. (Each of these junior highs have an A, B, C team in both 7th and 8th grade.) My guys played on the A team and were up next - about kick-off time a legendary "Blue Northern" blew into town dropping the temp almost 30 degrees in an hour - cold wind, crowd yelling, band playing - 8th grade football in Mesquite - doesn't get much better than that! The mighty Bears were behind 13-0 at the half, but screamed back to a 13-13 tie - 43 seconds left, the Bears tried a 27 yd field goal for the W, but the high wind took it left about 2 feet too far - makes ya want to cry, huh??? I regret my sons won't have a chance to bepart of this!!"

In Medford, Oregon, a judge ruled this week that there is no "fundamental right" to play middle-school football, refusing to force McLoughlin Middle School to allow a 13-year-old private school student to play on one of the school's teams. The private school that the youngster attended does not have a football team. The policy of the Washougal (Washington) School District, where I coach, is to allow its residents' private-school children to participate on our teams if the school they attend does not offer the sport. (A policy I heartily applaud, incidentally, since one of our best freshman players attends a small Christian school in nearby Vancouver, Washington.)

"Just let the children express their feelings." "The most important thing is that they be creative." "Don't worry about spelling, punctuation and grammar - they'll get that later." Now, after years of refraining from teaching kids the fundamentals of writing - grammar, spelling and punctuation - because doing so might make the fragile little darlings "fearful" (a liberal educators' word) of writing, after years of prestigious colleges such as Cal Berkeley having to offer remedial English to freshmen, the United States Department of Education (motto: at least our kids still outscore East Timor) has "discovered" the amazing fact that more than 75 per cent of American kids can't write proficiently. Well, duh. If we coaches were to put teams on the field without teaching them how to line up, block, tackle, block-protect, fall down and get up, backpedal, etc., etc., what do you suppose our teams would look like? What if we decided not to teach our kids the fundamentals, simply because we "didn't feel like" teaching them? (We'd rather just show them videotapes of games.) What if we decided not to be "judgmental," and instead tried to build our players' self esteem by telling them what a wonderful job they were doing, even when they sucked? What if we decided to have peer evaluation, letting the very players who hadn't been taught the fundamentals themselves grade the performances of their teammates? Guys, everything I described - unthinkable to football coaches - is characteristic of how English is "taught" in far too many American schools. If we "taught" football that way, we'd quickly be found out. The public would see it on Friday night, and we'd be fired. If shop teachers let kids build a house without teaching them how to use tools, they'd be fired. I say it's time for English teachers to get off their asses. (Feel free to show them this.) English teachers (excuse me - "language arts" teachers) have been slacking on the fundamentals of writing for years, and now that they've been exposed, they'll probably be awarded enormous grants to let them buy more computers so their kids can write even more garbage - like this e-mail I recently received, from someone whose tag was "NYpunk": "hi i am an 11 grader and our team uses ur offence. It is totaly predictabele the person that goes in motion 99% of the time gets the ball..teams flow and know who to get. The first tight rip 6-G works and the 5x works really good. If you have any pointers tell me we only rushed for a toal of 107 yards in total in the first game and lost 24-0 The scouts from the other teams know the plays and it is hard to get yards please give me some pointers" - Although I am aware that it may have been a set-up, and although I don't normally respond to unsigned mail, my reply in this case was "Have your coach e-mail me. Also your English teacher." Call me judgmental. I don't care. That's my job. I'm a coach.

September 29 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 34. High school players don't squat on their helmets on the sidelines.

From Don Capaldo, in Keokuk, Iowa: "I just read about the illegal tactics on your web site. This happened to us every Counter Power, Power and C we ran against (a certain) opponent. I was so outraged that I sent a film to the officiating crew and had my Athletic Director look at it and then call the other team's A.D. You are very right when you say that kids do not do this on their own. The OLB and Safety and Corners were coming up and attacking our guards and tackles at the knees each time we ran the one of these plays. It is very dangerous."

Tuesday's Portland Oregonian sports section featured a front-page article by Brian Meehan on Dick and Steve Coury. If you really follow football closely you may have heard of Dick Coury, a long-time NFL assistant who first paid his dues as a high school coach, and had the hard-luck experience of going down as a head coach in two different "pretender leagues." Dick, a native of Athens, Ohio and a Notre Dame grad, was too small to play football at Notre Dame, but he had the good fortune to be able to sit in on coaches' meetings held by the legendary Frank Leahy. By 1957, he had worked his way up to the head coaching position at Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, California, where he turned out great teams and great players. One of his best-known players, John Huarte, went on to win the Heisman Trophy as a Notre Dame quarterback. From Mater Dei he moved up to a spot on the USC staff of John McKay, and following a short stint as head coach at Cal State-Fullerton, wound up coaching receivers at Denver under John Ralston. And then our paths almost crossed. Coach Coury was hired in 1974 as head coach of the World Football League's Portland Storm. I arrived in Portland a year later, when the entire league was reorganized and the Portland entry was renamed the Thunder, but by that time Coach Coury was safely back in the NFL, with the San Diego Chargers. To say he distinguished himself as a person of strength by holding the Portland Storm together - during a time when the players were going without paychecks and depending on the generosity of townspeople for their meals - is to understate the case. After San Diego, Coach Coury joined Dick Vermeil in Philadelphia, making it to the 1981 Super Bowl. He had one more stop as a head coach - of the Boston/New Orleans/Portland Breakers of the USFL - before hanging it up. As a pro coach, that is. Because he's still coaching. Now, he's assisting his son, Steve, head coach at Lake Oswego, Oregon High School. Steve, one of Dick's 12 kids, was a standout wide receiver at Oregon State, and worked under his dad on the Breakers' staff. Now, at 70, Dad is helping him, and as far as Dick is concerned, it's not a step down. "If you can coach it in high school, " Dick Coury says, "you can coach at any level. The game doesn't really change. I am living proof of it, a high school guy who moved up."

Just in case you were still undecided: Shaquille O'Neal has just announced that he is endorsing Al Gore for President.

From a coach in Nebraska: "Coach, we played JV's last night in the rain. As the game got into the 4th quarter our center went down. Our second center was already hurt. Needless to say wet ball new center fumbled snap after fumbled snap. My assistant begged and pleaded for us to go to Wildcat. Our JV's had only run a few plays in the preseason in Wildcat and so I didn't want to do it. After 3 possessions without getting a snap I decided it couldn't get any worse. Guess what? We moved the ball. We didn't score because we ran out of time but we did show our fans something new and we got every snap run from Wildcat." (READ ABOUT THE "WILDCAT" DIRECT-SNAP PACKAGE)

September 28 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" Number 33. High school kids aren't paid to tell us where they're going after winning the big game.

We have once again encountered the illegal and dangerous tactic of defenders' cutting our kick-out blockers at the knees. Without getting into the issue of whether or not they start out in the free-blocking zone ("extending laterally 4 either side of the spot of the snap, and 3 yards behind each line of scrimmage"), RULE 2, SECTION 17, ARTICLE 4 says - "The free-blocking zone disintegrates and the exception for a player to block below the waist and or the exception for an offensive lineman to clip during close line play is not to continue after the ball has left the zone." In other words, at the moment that your ball carrier on a power, counter, etc. sets his foot a split hair deeper than 3 yards from the line of scrimmage - which normally occurs when the runner catches the ball on Super Powers, and well before a defensive end has had a chance to cut your blocker at the knees - there is no longer a free-blocking zone - and it is no longer legal for anyone (including a defender) to block below the waist. It is at best a questionable tactic to be teaching, at worst an illegal and unsafe one. We are not just talking about cheating to gain an unfair advantage; we are talking about teaching a player to injure an opponent. It is why blocking below the waist was made illegal many years ago. Kids are not deciding to use this tactic on their own. They are being taught it, in a gross violation of coaching ethics. Coaches teaching - and officials allowing - this illegal, dangerous tactic ought to be made aware of the litigiousness (willingness to sue) of our society, and ought to realize their legal exposure should a player be injured by tactics that they have taught. Pleading ignorance of the rules will not work with a skillful plaintiff's attorney.

The UCLA Parking-gate scandal provided the ideal set-up for the Stanford Band when the Bruins visited Palo Alto Saturday night. As the band formed the universal man-in-a-wheelchair handicapped symbol, the Stanford Tree mascot performed on the field in a wheechair.

Jeff Matthews, of Sidney, New York, writes , "Something that is really working for us during practice I found in the clinic notes. 'Talk it, walk it, rep it, run it.' And bird dogging has really cut down on our mistakes. It's the little things isn't it?"

September 27 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 32. High schools have strict rules against taunting and they are observed.

"Dear Hugh, What a weekend!!! First, as promised, we got back to basics. We ran the core plays only with only DW and Tackles over DW formations. At the end of the 1st Qtr. our faith was sorely tested as we were down 0-10, but we stayed the course. Final score Rio Mesa 35 - Agoura 24. We had 69 rushing plays for 401 yards (QB, A and B each had over 100 yards). "Air Rio Mesa" was 3 for 8 for 24 yards, including 2 Two Point PAT's and a key first down in our last TD drive.After the game my wife and I went home, got up at 3:00 a.m. Saturday to catch a 6:30 flight to Seattle for the UW-Colorado game. I'm a UW grad and my wife worked there. We go to one game at UW each year as a semi-reunion with old friends. I can only do this because of my faith in our coaching staff. Great Weekend Part Two: As we got off the plane I bought a Seattle paper and saw the score "Washougal 43 - LaCenter 27". Congratulations on your first win at your new school!!! Great Weekend Part Three: UW 31 - CU 24 - Good luck this week. - George Contreras, Rio Mesa H.S., Oxnard, CA"

At least he lets his son play football - Sunglasses-wearing Men in Black - secret service agents - infiltrated the rustic campus of St. James School in Western Maryland last week, as Vice President and Mrs. Gore sat in the stands watching their son, Al Jr., play for Sidwell Friends against St. James.

This week's Tough Loss Award is a three-way tie among Coach Paul Herzog of North St. Paul (Minnesota) High, which dropped a 37-33 decision to Woodbury; Coach Daren Hatch, of Arapahoe, Nebraska, whose team lost a 22-21 heartbreaker to Bertrand, and Coach Bill Davis, of Woodberry Forest, Virginia, which lost to always-tough Fork Union Military Academy, 26-24. (Even after allowing two blocked punts that led to Woodbury scores, Coach Herzog's Polars were on the verge of pulling out the win until Woodbury intercepted with five seconds remaining.)

Coach Scott Moshier, of Hoxie, Kansas, writes: "We started a little league team here in our small town (pop. 2000) and they only had 4 practices in full pads, and with the double wing offense played their 1st game to a 20 -20 over-time tie. I helped them with the offense and they did a good job in running it. 56-c went for 2 scores."

Nothing against Miami, but after all that the people of eastern North Carolina have been through - including the players and students at East Carolina University - it was exciting watching North Carolinians momentarily forget the heartache and damage of Hurricane Floyd long enough to enjoy the East Carolina Pirates' upset victory Saturday over - the Hurricanes!

From the Dallas Morning News: CELINA, TEXAS - As they have for generations, the crowd at Celina High School stadium stood for the national anthem, then prayed for the football players' safety and thanked God for Friday night's game. This was in spite of a federal court ruling that banned school-sponsored prayers at public athletic events. Students and parents said they have the right to continue what has been a tradition in this small town 40 miles north of Dallas. Many in the town of about 2,100 made their statement by wearing orange and white T-shirts, the school's colors, that read: "Celina Bobcats Pray Before They Play." "They can't take God away from us," said Janice Hester, 16, a sophomore cheerleader. "He put us here, and we live for Him." The Celina school board wasn't acting in defiance when it voted Monday to go ahead with the prayers, school board president Pat Hunn said. Lower court rulings have been mixed on the issue, and the district plans to continue the pregame prayer until the U.S. Supreme Court rules, he said. "This is something we feel we have the right to do as a Christian community," said Mr. Hunn, also announcer at Friday night's game against Denton's Liberty Christian School. "We need to pray more, not less." Officials from the American Civil Liberties Union, which is monitoring the district's actions, say pregame prayers violate other peoples' right to freedom of religion as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. So far, nobody has approached the ACLU to challenge Celina's actions, said Michael Linz, who serves on the agency's state board of directors. "The smaller the town, the less likely anyone will say anything," he said. "You have to hire the moving company the same day you speak up." The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February banned school-sponsored prayers before public athletic events. Some districts, such as McKinney, have ended the prayers. But others, such as Frisco, Rockwall and Lewisville, have used a moment of silence instead. The 1,000-student Celina district opened its season with prayer at its Sept. 3 game against the nearby Anna High School. Many parents and students say they hope the practice continues. "I just think it's ridiculous that they're trying to take it out," said Billie Jean Brumfield, who has children in Celina's middle and elementary schools. "Why take out prayers?" Celina High sophomore Christen Erwin, 16, another cheerleader, said she needs prayer in her life. "I can't live without prayer," she said. "I have to have it." A pregame prayer was not controversial for Liberty Christian School. "Obviously, we're a Christian school, and we enjoy having that freedom," said LeAnn Squier, who has a daughter at the high school. "I feel for those who want that freedom in public school." As the Rev. John Mark Arrington sees it, Celina is following the law - God's law. Mr. Arrington, pastor at Lighthouse Full Gospel Church in Garland, has printed and sold 250 of the Bobcats pray shirts. Mr. Arrington, who lives in nearby Gunter, said he will donate $1 from each purchase to a Celina elementary school library. The rest will help finance his Grace World Inc. outreach ministries. He plans to print the shirts for a few other small towns he has heard plan to continue the prayers. "We are obeying the law of the land," he said. "We are obeying the law of the spirit of life in Christ's spirit."

September 25- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 31. High school players for the most part really like and care about each other. They live and eat and play together when practices and games are over. Many of them have grown up together, and in many places, so have their parents.

WASHOUGAL PANTHERS 43, La Center Wildcats 27.Take it from me - going up against against former players, who are now coached by former assistants, and playing them at their place, can create high anxiety - especially when your kids are coming off a 1-8 season and you've dropped your first two games. I found myself in that position Friday night as we travelled to LaCenter to take on the Wildcats, coached by a former player and assistant, John Lambert. La Center, off to a 2-0 start, came out well-prepared and sky-high, jumping out to a 27-15 lead with back-to-back scores in the first minute of the second period. Up to that point, the Panthers had run just six offensive plays, two of them resulting in long touchdown runs by Dan Stineback. Late in the half, the Wildcats were driving for what could have been the clincher when the LaCenter passer threw under pressure into the hands of Panther Chris Martell, who returned the interception 49 yards to the LaCenter 39-yard line. Three plays later, with 56 seconds left in the half, Stineback started left and cut back against the grain to go 20 yards for his third score of the half and cut the LaCenter's halftime lead to 27-22. From that point, the Panthers took complete charge of the game, coming out in the second half and shutting out the Wildcats - allowing just three first downs -while scoring three touchdowns to pull out the win. Washougal rushed for 346 yards on 46 attempts, led by C-Back Stineback's 151 yards and three touchdowns (not to mention two more called back) on 12 carries, and B-Back Martell's 113 yards on 16 carries, including a 57-yard burst up the middle for a touchdown. Quarterback Cody Morris threw seven times, completing four for 50 yards and a touchdown.The Wildcats stayed out of the tight double-wing formation most of the night, running most of the time from "spread" and trips formations, and did most of their damage in the air, as Brett Yaw threw for 173 yards - 165 in the first half - and two TD's. I'm not sure that there's any greater thrill in coaching than getting that first win after you've been losing, but I know that there's nothing better than watching your kids celebrate that win. Next week, the Panthers host neighboring town Camas (2-1), in one of the West's oldest high school rivalries. Hey - I may live in Camas, but I'm a Panther!

Got a call from Coach Gene Tundo, at Orchard Park High, outside Buffalo, New York. Year in and year out, Orchard Park is one of the toughest programs among Western New York's large schools, and this year is no exception. Orchard Park is off to a 3-0 start, but it hasn't been a walkover. In fact, in the last two games, Orchard Park has won with long fourth-quarter scoring drives. Two weeks ago, it took a 94-yard, 18-play drive to defeat perennial power Jamestown 17-10, and last Friday, it took a 99-yard drive against North Tonawanda. One adjustment that Coach Tundo has made in running the "G" play against a DE who pinches down hard through his playside TE's outside shoulder: he turns his TE out on the DE, and takes care of the playside DT-LB by blocking down with his tackle and folding his guard around for the inside linebacker.

September 24 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 30. High school coaches have to play the hand they're dealt, routinely adapting their offenses and defenses to the talent on hand.

Jeff Leahy, head coach at The Hill School, a prep school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, has to wonder what he has to do to get away from the Double-Wing. I coached against Jeff in 1991 in Finland, where my team, the Southeast Eagles, was doing a pretty good job of running the offense, and gave his team fits. This past Saturday, Jeff went up against Coach Bill Davis' Woodberry Forest Tigers, from Virginia, and lost 35-0. Coach Davis, a former wide receiver at the University of Virginia, was a noted advocate of the passing game, and his last passing QB is now on the squad at the University of Florida. But sensing a change in the talent coming in, Coach Davis took a suggestion from his freshman coach, Dick Glover, and went to the Double-Wing last season; he was pleasantly surprised by a 7-2 season. Coach Glover, highly-successful wrestling coach at Woodberry Forest, played his college football at Wabash College, where his coach was the legendary Dr. Ken Keuffel. (Single-Wing fans know Dr. Keuffel as the head coach at Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, and probably the game's leading expert on the Princeton Single-Wing.) Coach Davis, incidentally, is one more coach who has noticed an increased interest in football, with 74 players, all of whom live a considerable distance from the school's remote location in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, reporting back for early football practice.

"After being rained out on Tuesday, we squeaked out a 22-18 win on an overcast, wet and drizzly Wed. afternoon. Twelve practices seemed hardly enough to get ready, but we ran 88/99 power, 2 wedge and 47C. We must have run the wedge 10 to 12 times (not counting the PAT's). It's not very pretty, but I'll take positive yardage on a damp afternoon anytime. I told them at halftime the wedge could bust open for a long gain or possible score. Wouldn't you know it? With less than 2 minutes to play and our opponents with 3 timeouts and us inside our own 10 yd line (no place to have to punt), we called on the wedge. Two plays and a first down! One more wedge and it broke for a 70 yard TD sealing the victory." Yours truly, Don Gordon, Frontier Regional Middle School, South Deerfield, Massachusetts

It was over 50 years ago, in a long-forgotten league called the All-American Football Conference, that a young service veteran named Bill McArthur saw his brief pro career come to an abrupt end. McArthur was a superb athlete who had run a 9.5 100-yard dash (serious speed started at 10 flat in the 100 and went down from there) in high school. After graduation from Oregon College of Education, he enlisted in the service, and on his discharge, passed up a chance to sign with the Chicago Bears in order to sign for even more money with the Bears' crosstown rivals, the AAFC Chicago Rockets. Great things were predicted for him.But in an intrasquad game, he intercepted a pass and, on the runback, was high-lowed. He knew he was hurt badly. "What a hell of a short career that was," he was said to have commented as he as carried off the field. Short, indeed. Doctors were unable to restore the circulation in his leg, and finally, after gangrene set in, had to amputate his leg. The next year, he returned to Oregon College of Education, now known as Western Oregon University, where he remained for 37 years as its highly successful head football coach, sending hundreds of young men out into the high school coaching ranks of the Pacific Northwest. Coach McArthur, who died a few years ago, was enshrined in the NAIA coaches' Hall of Fame. Two weekends ago, UC Davis' Sam Paneno, a transfer from Hawaii, got his first start at running back, gaining 114 yards on 26 carries and scoring two touchdowns before being hit hard by two opponents on the first play of overtime. His knee was dislocated, and the dislocation cut off the circulation in his lower leg and foot. Reluctantly, doctors had to amputate his right leg. His UC Davis teammates went on to a 44-30 win over their opponent - Western Oregon.

September 23 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 29. At high school games, you see the future of our sport - little kids playing football on the grass behind the goal posts; at pro games, even if their parents can afford to bring them, armed guards keep them off the field.

Southwest Airlines, a small operation that took on the big guys and in the process became a big operation itself, owes much of its success to Herb Kelleher, its co-founder and its CEO since 1978. He was interviewed recently in the Wall Street Journal about his unusual management methods (he has a good sense of humor, and enourages Southwest's employees to enjoy their jobs, as you might have gathered if you've ever flown on Southwest). It comes across to me, as a fairly frequent traveller, that Southwest employees like their jobs and like their company. (I once flew TWA to New York and had to listen to coast-to-coast griping by a couple of flight attendants about TWA's then-chairman Carl Icahn.) "The intangibles are more important than the tangibles," Mr. Kelleher told the Journal. "Someone can go out and buy airplanes from Boeing, and ticket counters, but they can't buy our culture, our esprit de corps." It all starts with the hiring, he said: "We want people with positive attiudes." Then, he believes in encouraging people to motivate themselves and motivate others.That's where the humor sometimes comes in. "You don't have to fit into a constraining mold at work - you can have a good time. People respond to that. We also try to show that what they do matters. That's why we share with employees the letters we get from passengers. We got one from a divorced dad who said that if it weren't for our low fares, he wouldn't be able to visit his son as often as he does." Southwest also makes it possible for people to move around the company occasionally and do other people's jobs - "we just want everybody to understand what everybody else's problems are." There is no magic formula for Southwest's success, he insists. Instead, "it's like building a giant mosaic - it takes thousands of little pieces." The end result: "It's just a bunch of people knocking themselves out."

Radio talk-show host Michael Medved says the problem with young people today is not , as so many "experts" claim, that they are being forced to grow up too soon. Instead, it is that they are not being forced to grow up at all, allowed by mommy and daddy to remain in a long drawn-out state of adolescence. Think about that the next time some mommy or daddy - who cheerfully give the kid the keys to the car and let him set his own hours - gets in your face because of some wrong you have allegedly inflicted on their little darling (usually related in some way to forcing him to grow up). It won't make the experience any more pleasant or useful, but it may help you understand why you are going through it.

One of the biggest adjustments I had to make to life on the West Coast was watching the early NFL games come on at 10 AM on Sundays. But that's nothing compared to life Down Under - if you like American football, that is. And my son, living in Australia, does. Here's what it means, if he wants to watch events live: NFL on Fox - first game live at 3 am Monday, second game live at 6 am Monday... ESPN Sunday Night Football - live at 10 am on Monday... Monday Night Football - live at 11 am on Tuesday... College Football - Fox live game at noon on Sunday, other live games on ESPN at various times.

September 22 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 28. High school teams don't fly charter flights; they travel in school buses. Sometimes, the coach has to drive.

In a new book entitled "Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism And Conflict In Big-Time College Sports," (Princeton University Press, $24.95, 256 pages), Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College in Massachusetts makes a strong case for professionalizing college sports. He argues that the NCAA itself is a major reason for the hypocrisy of major educational institutions running quasi-professional sports organizations - so shorthanded is the NCAA that in investigating violations it relies more and more on "self-reporting," in which universities caught with their pants down hire Kansas City attorneys with ties to the NCAA who grease their ways to lenient treatment. Yet there is so much money at stake now that if the NCAA were to push for radical reform, there is always the chance that powerful, money-generating colleges might bolt from the NCAA and cut their own TV deal. Indianapolis and CART come immediately to mind. One of Professor Zimbalist's suggestions is that the NFL and NBA, which currently benefit from the free player-development sytem that the colleges provide, subsidize the colleges. Short of that, Zimbalist recommends that colleges permit up to 15 football players and and five basketball players to be designated "nonmatriculated athletes" - pure players who don't have to be enrolled in college. "It might not be the way things would be in the ideal world," Zimbalist said. "But it would be an enormous step forward." He argues that today's system - in which high school stars with low SAT's and low GPA's are put on campus and expected to combine the demands of big-time sports with classes that they don't even understand - makes no sense.

Zimbalist advocates barring freshmen as another positive step. He would trim costs by dramatically reducing football scholarships, pointing out that from 1945 to 1950 Notre Dame used only 38 players and didn't lose a game. He also calls for shortening seasons, shortening practice hours, and taking away coaches' lucrative shoe contracts.

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal selected its NFL All $tar Team - the highest-paid players at every position. Some of them might surprise you. For example, take Troy Aikman at QB. At $16 million for 1999, the Journal argues that he is not worth $10 million more than Brett Favre. Or, for that matter, Steve Young. How about Indianapolis (I won't say "Colts") rookie running back Edgerrin James? Is he really worth more money than Jamal Anderson? Or Terrell Davis? Packers' wide receiver Antonio Freeman will earn $6.5 million in 1999; Randy Moss' salary is $300,000. Kyle Bradu didn't even start every game at tight end for the Jets last year; this year, with Jacksonville, he's the NFL's highest-paid tight end at $4.5 million for 1999. Want some bargains? How about Tim Dwight of Atlanta, due to be paid $250,000 this year? Or Bryan Cox, who for all his attitude can still play the game - he'll earn $600,000 in 1999.

After 33 years in the Army, General George Crocker is retiring as post commander at Fort Lewis, Washington. He is a good example of the virtue of hanging in there. A graduate of West Point's famed class of 1966, which was celebrated in the book, "The Long Gray Line," he arrived in Viet Nam six months after graduation, and after Viet Nam wound up in Germany. He had been forewarned by a superior who warned him, "Don't be disheartened if the Army has a bottoming-out after Viet Nam; we're going to have a low time, but stick with it. The Army's a great institution - it'll rise again." Sure enough, it bottomed out during his stay in Germany. There were times, General Crocker says, that he wondered why he stayed in. "I wondered what the hell I was doing in the Army in the early '70s in Germany," he says. "The barracks were burned. The headquarters was set on fire. An armored battalion commander was shot by his own troops. Our headquarters company first sergeant - the druggies kicked in the door of his room, stabbed him." But General Crocker stayed the course, and now, as he contemplates retirement, sounds very much like a retiring coach: "the only legacy you leave in the short term is trained units, and in the long term, it's leaders, people that you develop. They won't even remember your name (I don't believe that, General) but maybe, in some situation down the road, the leader will remember something that you trained them on."

September 21 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 27. The taxpayers built the local high school stadium, and they own it. They built the pros' stadium too, but they don't act as if they own it.

Our buddies in eastern North Carolina are still under water, with more flooding due when the rivers crest on Tuesday. Whenever your kids gripe about the heat, or about having to practice, remind them about those people, who would give anything just to be able to practice football again. God help them all.

Not that I watch that much Profootball, but on last night's game it was pointed out that both head coaches - Chan Gailey of the Cowboys and Dan Reeves of the Falcons - had played their high school ball in Americus, Georgia and both had played for the same head coach - whom they both still call "Coach," as if a southerner would ever call his coach anything but - and the coach was on the sidelines at last night's game. Ten years or so ago, there were two NFL coaches who hailed from the same town in East Texas. Can anyone out there name the coaches and the town?

"Coach Wyatt, this is the third year we have run the double wing. The first 2 years it kept us basically from getting anyone killed and between the 30's it was pretty effective. The 1st year I ran it with 7 freshman starting on offense then last year we had about 5 sophmores running it. This year with a junior senior mix it is not only effective between the 30's but is putting more points on the board than have been scored here in about 7 yrs." Coach Daren Hatch, Arapahoe, Nebraska

A headline in a California paper reads, "Is Bloomington Better than Ever?" Bloomington, California, is where the legendary Don Markham set a national scoring record of 880 points in 14 games, and the Bruins, a few years after Coach Markham's departure, are off to a spectacular start this season. "After two games," the story goes, " against highly regarded Norco and Victor Valley, Bloomington's double-wing offense has 126 points and 1,062 yards. In fact, Bloomington is on pace to score 882 points over a 14-game season two more than the national-record 880 scored by the 1994 Bloomington team."We're not aiming for that," Bruins coach Richard Smith said Saturday, "but we do have the potential. What I'm gonna do different from teams that set scoring records, we've got 50 kids and we're gonna play them all. Our chances of breaking a record like that are slim."Victor Valley coach Bryan Griggs is impressed by Bloomington, which scored 72 on his team Friday. "They present problems nobody else does because this year they can throw the football," Griggs said. "Last year, they had that big (Adam) Iloilo kid who could knock you down, but it was anybody's guess where the ball was gonna land when he threw it. Last year, you wanted to make them throw. "The kid this year, he drops back and you say, `Oh, no, he can throw.'"

Coach John McLaughlin at Rich Central High in Olympia Fields, Illinois, got off to a rough start before finally winning over district rival Rich East Friday night. His first three opponents, to whom he lost touogh ones, are now 11-1. But Coach McLaughlin's program is on the way now: his sophomore team is 3-1 and his freshman team is 4-0 against the same competition.

"Well, if you want smart people to become teachers, you first have to welcome them. Though our training program gives our students hands-on classroom experience, they don't major in teaching. They choose their own disciplines, from history to chemical engineering. We don't want people who can't get jobs elsewhere. We want stuents who excel in their discipline and who also want to teach." Father Timothy Scully, vice-president and associate provost at Nore Dame, and founder of the Alliance for Catholic Education.

"It's the greatest sport in the world. It teaches you how to work with people, how to go beyond expectations. I played since I was seven. If God allowed me to take a pill and get fixed, I'm there in a heartbeat." Mike Utley, former Detroit Lion, left a quadriplegic by an on-field injury in 1991.

September 20- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 26. High school teams can't threaten to relocate.

I've only been in the Northwest since 1975, but I don't know when the two Oregon PAC-10 schools were last 5-1, while at the same time the two Washington schools were 0-5. The Washington Huskies start out 0-2 about as often as the Oregon State Beavers start out 3-0, and even though I have to support the locals, it was a beautiful thing watching the Air Force option offense operating against the Huskies. With the win, Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry became the winningest head coach of any service academy, passing the record of Army's incomparable Earl Blaik. Coach Blaik's son, Bob, incidentally, lives in Colorado Springs, home of the Air Force Academy, and has expressed great support of Coach DeBerry's worthiness in surpassing his dad's record.

The Oregon State Beavers, under new coach Dennis Erickson, are now 3-0, after Saturday's win over I-AA power Georgia Southern. The Eagles, whose practice schedules this past week were re-ordered by Hurricane Floyd, nevertheless managed to fly cross-country and, behind their devastating option attack, take a PAC-10 team to 48-41 before finally falling. Oregon State now has a week off to prepare for USC. "USC is not an option team," Erickson said with obvious relief after the Georgia Southern game. "But they might be now."

This from Coach Todd Solberg, of Birchwood-Weyerhaeuser High School(s) - it's a co-op team - in Wisconsin: "as a fundraiser, we set up a Yard-a-Thon. Each player was asked to get pledges of $.01 to $.05 per yard or just get a dollar amount for a donation. I will report back and let you know what kind of money we made by this event. Our QB got a pledge of $.10 from one fan which equals $47.10." (The Cats gained 471 yards on Friday night.)

Coach Jeff Matthews, of Sidney, New York takes this week's tough -loss consolation prize, losing 29-28 in overtime to defending state finalist Notre Dame of Elmira. Sidney rushed for 345 yards and 17 first downs on 62 rushes. For the second week in a row, Coach Ron Hennig of Frankfort, Kentucky Western Hills High is in contention. Last week it was an 8-7 loss to #1-ranked Campbellsville. This week, it was a 32-26 overtime loss to Anderson County as Coach Hennig and his staff try to turn a long-dormant program around. Also in the running: Coach Jet Turner, of Ware Shoals, South Carolina, whose club lost a 56-44 shootout with Crescent.

Coach Lou Condon JV coach at Corning (New York )West high writes: "We rushed for a total of 466 yards and and won by a 66 -16 score. Our players are true believers in the Double wing system and think they can score any time they touch the ball. The team we played this weekend accused us of running up the score but our second and third teams scored 24 points in the 4th quarter. It's hard to tell kids of this age who work hard all week in practice not to try to get into the end zone. The opposing coach was really screaming at me and I let him know that all our subs were in the game. He still continued so I yelled across the field to him if I should ask the cheerleaders to go into the game - they were the next likely subs."

"Keep up the good work on your Internet sight and yes I will always, always, always teach the shoulder blocking and tackling technique. I keep in touch with my old high school coach (he's in his late 70's now) and he always asks me every time I talk to him, "You're not teaching that pushie, pushie, grabbie, grabbie blocking crap are you?". He would disown me if I did, so I never will!!!!!"Sincerely, Line Coach (forever) Brad Elliott - Soquel HS, Santa Cruz, California

September 18 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 25. The players dance after - not during - high school games.

My Washougal Panthers dropped our second game of the season to Forks, 30-19. For the second week in a row we took the opening kickoff and drive for a touchdown, but Forks scored on its first play from scrimmage, and after a Washougal fumble (!), took only two plays to score again. Another fumble, another quick Forks score, and a fourth TD just before halftime made it 27-6 Forks at the half. Stiffening up and limiting Forks to a field goal on the opening drive, the Panthers rallied, combining power football with aggressive defense, scoring once in the third period and once in the fourth, and on another drive penetrating to the Forks two before turning it over on downs. The Panthers' three scores came though the air, as Cody Morris threw to Dan Stineback for two scores and Josh Brock for one. (I can't remember the last time a team of mine scored three times on passes without a rushing touchdown.) Besides the passing (5 of 12 for 37 yards and three TD's), we rushed for 240 yards on 46 attempts. Not where we ought to be yet, but a heckuva second half rally. Next week: La Center, my former school.

Thoughts and prayers for everyone in the path of Hurricane Floyd. Undoubtedly, this weekend's football schedule will be affected in many parts of the East. There are several Double-Wing coaches whose schools were directly in Floyd's path through the Carolinas, including South Carolinians Jim Ferdon in Pleasant Hill and Allen Poston in Andrews, and North Carolinians Gordon Walters in Wilmington, Eddie Cahoon in Swan Quarter, Andy Bulfer in Havelock, and Daryl Allen in Ahoskie. I hope that somehow their opponents are the main thing they have to worry about this weekend.

Not that officials at big high school games are perfect, but if you coach in a small school, there is a strong likelihood that you will get the worst officials - guys with little experience who aren't always sharp on the rules. As a coach, you must anticipate this. Following up on my suggestion yesterday that you carry a rule book with you, Coach Bruce Eien writes from Brethren Christian High in Los Angeles: "Every year I read the rule book and highlight the parts that pertain to rules I know will be questioned (DL cutting OL) and I write the page on the front of the book. I even go as far as memorizing the rule so I can quote it for the officials. If you look like you know what you are talking about and have the rule book in your back pocket to use as a defense, most officials back off. I also burn a timeout in the 1st half every game to have a conference with the white hat after a questionable call. I discuss with him as a profesional the rule/infraction and this usually lets them know they better be up on their calls. I read an article from an official in some magazine of how he hates officiating Don shula's games. He said Don was on the rules committee and knows them frontwards and backwards. He always had to be on guard for not only himself but his entire crew. This type of accountablity really helps during crunch time. This would really help your DWers in reagards to the grasp rule. Keep up the good work. Bruce Eien" (Check out Coach Eien's web site. It's a good one.)

It's tough enough on the Washington Huskies that their long-time stranglehold on Northwest football - PAC-10 football in general, for that matter - forged under Coach Don James seems to have been broken by to the Oregon Ducks. But in their season-opener against BYU they were victimized by, of all things, an Oregon-bred running back named Luke Staley. Staley, a true freshman who was Oregon Class 4A Player of the Year last year, gave the Cougars the running game they've lacked for years, scoring two heroic touchdowns in the BYU win. (Thursday night, Staley again stood out, celebrating his 19th birthday by rushing for 65 yards and three TD's and catching three passes for 35 yards as BYU defeated Colorado State, 34-13.) Meantime, the PAC-10's reputation as a pitty-pat passing conference inspired by the offensive brilliance of Coach Bill Walsh has been fortified by butt kickings administered to Arizona by Penn State, to Stanford by Texas, to UCLA by Ohio State, to Cal by Nebraska. (In UCLA's behalf, they were playing without several starters, thanks to Parkinggate, and in Cal's behalf, the Golden Bears actually did a decent job of keeping Nebraska's running game under control.)

When was the last time a major college team was the visiting team on its own field? That's the spot Washington State finds itself in today, as the Cougars are "hosted" on their own Martin Stadium turf by the "home" Idaho Vandals. The unusual situation was brought about by Idaho's move to NCAA Division I-A. Since the 17,000-seat capacity of the Vandals' own home stadium, the Kibbie Dome, wasn't sufficient to qualify for the move, Idaho and Washington State officials worked out a plan for the Vandals to use WSU's 40,000-seat Martin Stadium, just 10 miles away, as their "home" field. So today, it's Washington State at Idaho. At Washington State.

Provided that the game can go on as scheduled after the passing of Hurricane Floyd, the Abington (Pennsylvania) Galloping Ghosts will play their first home game since 1996 against Harry S. Truman High of Levittown, PA. The Ghosts (my wife's alma mater) have been on the road since their league declared Abington's facilities (including Porta-Potties a city block away from the field) substandard, and refused to play on the Abington field. The frustrations of having to take a team on the road every week for over two years took their toll on players and coaches, and played a major role in the decision of long-time Abington Coach Doug Moister, a great human being if ever there was one, to hang it up after last season. Abington is a solid, middle-class district which has both the plans and the money for a new stadium , but has run into legal opposition from neighbors expressing concern over the anticipated traffic and other unspecified problems caused by five home football games a year. (Notwithstanding the fact that the school campus and the proposed stadium site were already in place when most of those "good neighbors" moved in.) Best of luck to new coach Marshall Roberts, an Abington grad who played college ball at Rutgers, and his staff and kids. Welcome home.

September 17- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" Number 24. High school kids really do represent the town they play in. In fact, they actually like it and the people who live there, too.

It is 7:00 AM Pacific Time. I just hung up from talking to my son in Melbourne, Australia, where it is already midnight tonight. I asked him how we did in our game tonight.

Need some ammunition in persuading parents to let their kids play football? Instead of ammunition, how about a broadside? It seems that a youth coach in the Chicago area (A fellow Double-Winger, I might add) noticed that under "occupation" on a questionnaire he had sent home to parents, one of his kids' dads had written, "Retired Professional Athlete." As it turns out, this coach has the privilege of coaching the son of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Jordan! Respectful of their privacy and their right to raise their kids as normally as possible given Michael Jordan's fame, I asked the coach to see if Mr. and Mrs. Jordan would object to my passing this information along - I mean, at a time when mommies and daddies everywhere are unloading the kids out of the SUV's and setting up the lawn chairs to watch soccer practice, here comes the greatest vote of confidence youth football - football in general - could possibly ask for! In return for my pledge not to name their son or his coach or give any other particulars, Mr. and Mrs. Jordan (which is how the coach addresses them) have consented to my making this information semi-public.We should all be grateful to them for allowing their son enjoy our great game; I am grateful to them for allowing me to let other coaches know that the greatest basketball player in the history of the game thinks it's okay for his son to play football. Incidentally, tell those people out there who think kids should concentrate on one sport and not play them all that Mr. Jordan disagrees. According to the coach, Mr. Jordan doesn't think kids should specialize in one sport until college. Interesting. That's the very thing I heard a couple of weeks ago from former Penn State and Seattle Seahawks' running back Curt Warner.

I have heard from some coaches who are having trouble - once again - with what seems to be the least-enforced rule in the game - defensive players who grab or tackle your pulling linemen. Some of the coaches have even said that officials (!) told them it was legal! Now, I suppose there is not a lot we can do about opposing coaches who don't know the rule, or worse, unethical ones who do know the rule and go ahead and cheat anyhow; but as for the officials... RULE 9, SECTION 2, ARTICLE 3 - "A defensive player shall not (c) use his hands or arms to hook, lock, clamp, grasp, encircle or hold in an effort to restrain an opponent other than the runner." Seems pretty clear-cut to me, unless Referee Clinton tries to say it "depends on your definition of the word 'not.'" It's in the 1999 NFHS rule book, as it has been for years. You might want to keep a copy in your pocket, with page 54 marked for quick reference. (You know you're in trouble if you hand the rule book to the official and he says, "what's this?")

Maybe it's not too late for President Clinton to appoint fellow Arkansan Jerry Jones, owner of the Cowboys, to head a Presidential Commission on Ethics and Responsibility in Sport. "He is an outstanding player," Mr. Jones said of one of his Cowboys. "We need him." The player the Cowboys "need" is Leon Lett, five-time violator of the NFL's substance-abuse policy, who is due to come off his latest suspension (his third) on November 9. Tell the sculptor to start work on Leon Lett's bust. Now that Lawrence Taylor has paved the way, this guy is a shoe-in for the NFL Hall of Fame,

September 16- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 23. In high school, because field goals are not automatic, there is still a small amount of excitement to them.

Think it can't happen to you? John Ondriezek has just seen a potential state championship go "poof!" With most of his starters back from a 1998 state semi-final club, Coach Ondriezek, of Mariner High in Everett, Washington had to be excited about 1999. Two of his returning starters, 6-6, 245-pound QB-Receiver Teyo Johnson and 6-4, 255-pound fullback Amon Gordon, were two of the best-looking kids I saw anywhere last year. Coach Ondriezek has incorporated a little of my Double-Wing into his multiple scheme, and you can imagine how tough Amon Gordon could be at fullback. "Maybe once in your career, if you're lucky, you'll get players like them," Coach Ondriezek told USA Today. Trouble is, both Johnson and Gordon left Mariner just before the start of this year's practice - for San Diego. San Diego! Not exactly the next town over. Coach Ondriezek first heard about the planned move from a college coach - two weeks before the kids told him. Seems that for the past two summers, Johnson and Gordon have played on a "High Five America" all-star team - sponsored by Nike - in San Diego! One of the team's coaches was one Dan Regas, head basketball coach at San Diego's Mira Mesa High School. And that's where the two star athletes are now playing. You draw your own conclusions. But the next time you hear someone talking about a national high school football playoff, remember John Ondriezek at Mariner High, and ask yourself if this is the direction in which you want high school sports to be headed. Oh, by the way - with Johnson catching five passes for 70 yards and Gordon rushing 13 times for 135 yards, Mira Mesa opened with a 37-16 win over Granite Hills; Mariner, ranked 20th in USA Today's top 25 last week, fell to Mountlake Terrace, 13-9.

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times recognized the 20th anniversary of ESPN by looking at the ways in which the revolutionary all-sports cable newtwork, especially its Sports Center, has redefined sport itself. Consider the flip way that even the guy at your small-town radio station now talks about "I-N-T's" instead of "interceptions," and says "A-L" instead of "American League." Everthing is a highlight - baseball highlights have become a summary of that night's home runs, with an occasional strikeout thrown in. Football tends to be long passes, especially those following which a receiver jumps into the stands to high-five fans. (If a player expects to be on the highlights, it helps if he has a trademark dance with which he celebrates his individual accomplishments.) Oh, yes. Sports Center does seem to think that last-second field goals are very exciting. Basketball, of course, is just one season-long slam-dunk competition, plus a once-in-a-while three-pointer. Pull-up jumpers? Forget it. Is it any wonder that shooting has become so poor that the NBA has had to take steps to improve scoring? I can't help wondering how boring a whole baseball or football game must seem to someone raised on Sports Center who goes expecting to see highlight after highlight.

I don't know what you think about the Denver Broncos' uniforms and the hood-ornament logos on their helmets, but if you like that look, you'll love the new look of the Oregon Ducks. Oregon, alma mater of Nike chairman Phil Knight, has been apparently been anointed to model the latest in Nike fashions. The "Iridium" helmets look okay, maybe because, realizing that young kids usually don't run out to their nearest sporting goods stores to buy helmets, Nike was willing to allow them to be tasteful. The Nike-designed Oregon home uniforms, are rich in gaudy swatches of green, gold and black (has the NCAA decreed that black must appear somewhere on every team's uniforms?). The word "kitsch" comes to mind. And regardless of what the old folks think - reportedly, Oregon's fans laughed when the team took the field last Saturday , but the joke is on them. So they buy season tickets! So they write the checks that keep the recruiters' pplanes in the air! So what? Nike - and Oregon - don't care what they think. This is just one more episode in the "teenagerizing" of America - MTV comes to the gridiron. What Nike and Oregon do care about is kids buying apparel. Flashback: When I started coaching in Europe 12 years ago, tariffs on imported clothing made buying American-made football jerseys and pants prohibitively expensive, so teams had to buy from European manufacturers. Those people had some strange notions of what real football uniforms were supposed to look like, and some of their designs were, shall we say, off the wall. We American coaches over there would look at them, and at each other, and after a good laugh, we'd pass it off as just another one of the little cultural anomalies that didn't really get in our way. Now, Nike, a 25-year-old company which has already done so much to change the face and conduct of American sport, appears to have its own idea of what our 125-year-old sport should look like. Remember John Ondriezek.

Coach Daren Hatch, of Arapahoe, Nebraska, commenting on the Baylor coach's fateful decision to go for a last-second score,rather than taking a knee - "Imagine this: up three in the Orange Bowl over Miami, or FSU. Solich (Nebraska coach Frank Solich) decides to punch one more home. (Even though the game is won and his team has no chance to move up in the polls.) Whoa, Buckhalter fumbles and they run it back. The plane comes home with at least one less coach on it."

Frank Simonsen writes from Cape May, at the southern tip of New Jersey: "Another selling point for the system: we have another F-ing hurricane coming and will hold practices the rest of the week in a church gym. Try that with trips, slots, and single back "Os". With our Bird dog drill looking at all the different "D" sets and multiple ball drills, etc. we can get a lot done. Of course I still soak a ball in a bucket of water and make them practice in the rain if we are going to have a wet game. Don't want to make total pussies of them."

September 15 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 22 - Instead of lining up in the shotgun and playing "PE with pads," high schools still play real football on fourth-and-one.

My nomination for toughest loss so far may be Frankfort, Kentucky Western Hills's 8-7 loss to number-one-ranked Campbellsville. Toughest opening schedule goes to Rich Central, of Olympia Fields, Illinois. Jon McLaughlin's RC Olympians are now 0-3 with three tough losses against opponents who are now a combined 8-1. The only loss came in a match-up between two of the three teams.

With the Sydney Olympics less than a year away, my son, Ed, after working international soccer (I know, I know) and Australian Rules Football for Fox in LA, has termporarily relocated Down Under. He writes of Melbourne, "It's so interesting living in a place where the public transportation is good, reliable and not inhabited by gangs of unruly youths and old, drunken transients." The almost universal reaction, I might add, of Americans encountering Europe for the first time. One of the things you realize after travelling elsewhere and then returning to the Land of the Free is that the people who seem to have the most freedom in the United States are the lawless and the unruly.

"What Were They Thinking?" Department: Baylor is winning Saturday over UNLV, 24-21. Baylor has the ball with eight seconds remaining, UNLV is out of time-outs. You don't need Jack Reed's book on Clock Management to know it's time to take a knee and get outta Dodge, right? Well... not if you're Baylor coach Kevin Steele, apparently. For some reason, Coach Steele chose to run off tackle. (Did I mention that Baylor was on the UNLV 8-yard line?) Maybe a three-point win wasn't enough for him - UNLV coach John Robinson could be heard loudly inquiring as to whether Baylor might not be trying to rub it in. Whatever, the ball was swatted out of tailback Darrell Bush's hands, and bounced into the hands of UNLV's Kevin Thomas, a yard deep in the end zone. As a stunned Baylor crowd of 33,000 (no doubt including Coach Steele) looked on aghast, Thomas lit out for the other end of the field, and with all zeroes showing on the scoreboard, crossed the Baylor goal line in one of the most shocking turnarounds in the history of our game. Any of us who has ever made a similar error in judgment yet survived to coach another day must commiserate with Coach Steele, who is no doubt catching heat for his error. Let this serve as a lesson to football coaches everywhere.

Coach Don Capaldo, in Keokuk, Iowa, has been active in working with his town's youth program, and he recenrly received this note from one of the youth coaches: "Hi Coach, just wanted to thank you on behalf of the players and coaches for letting us use the high school field on Saturday. I know everyone appreciated it and I'm sure it helped hold down the number of injuries to the players. I did see the "royal blue" team, coached by Rick Blood run the double wing offense in the first tackle game of the day. What I did see, they looked good with their best gains on QB keeps. Our team is "Black" and we played in the third game. On the opening kick-off we kicked and they ran it back for a TD. That really shook up our players. Then on our first possession we ran the wedge successfully for a couple first downs. We were able to drive to the goal line and after getting called for a penalty we were stopped on 4th down at about the 5. Our next two drives stalled but on the fourth possession we ran tight liz 99 power for a 25yrd TD,tieing the game. At half time the score was tied 6-6. The other team scored first in the 3rd quarter then we fumbled on our next two drives but late in the third we scored on tight rip 3 red from their 40 yd line. They scored again on a broken play making the final 18-12. This was one of those games where the score doesn't tell the whole story. We were able to put together some good drives but the penalty at the goal line and the two fumbles really hurt us. We had 6 practices, and 13 of the 21 players are 5th graders who have only played flag football. The first 3 practices went really slow but the last 3, the boys have started figuring out what we were trying to learn. I really believe they are learning this offense and with more practice and game time they will have a pretty good grasp of the basics of this offense as well as the game of football itself. We ran the following plays; tight 2-wedge,tight rip 3 trap 2,tight rip 88 power and 99 power,tight rip 47-c and 58-c,tight liz 2 blue,tight rip 3 red. We will try to add next week; tight rip 77 power,tight rip lead criss cross 47-c and maybe 1 pass play.Thanks again for your interest and your time+energy. ED P.S. You might want to put a warning on the book DYNAMICS OF THE DOUBLE WING telling coaches who read it they will experience side effects like sleeplessness,anxiety,lack of concentration at work and an overall inability to think of nothing...but football."

What do you have to do? Our local news weekly, the Camas-Washougal Post-Record, just came out with its annual Football Special issue, complete with pictures of the players and coaches from Washougal High, where I coach, and Camas High, where I live. They did a nice job with it, but at least seven times in the accompanying story on our club, the writer refers to Washougal's new "Wing-T offense." I am always very careful to say "Double-Wing," but some people just seem not to hear. Maybe when I declare it to be the "Official Offense of the New Millennium" (who's to stop me?), they'll give the Double-Wing the respect it deserves.

September 14-"LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" -Number 21. Local High School Booster Clubs serve up better food than NFL concessionaires - quicker, and at far better prices. And the help is friendly.

I received a call yesterday from a dear old friend, Joe Gardi, head coach at Hofstra University, telling me that his Flying Dutchmen will be coming to play Portland State in Portland next year! It will be a triumphant return of sorts for Joe. He and I worked together in 1974 with the World Football League's Philadelphia Bell, he as running backs and special teams coach, I as director of player personnel. We hit it off right from the start, rooming together on road trips and sitting together on flights. Before the WFL, Joe had been a successful high school coach in New Jersey, and an assistant on Jerry Claiborne's staff at Maryland, and I was tremendously impressed by his knowledge, his thoroughness, his ability to teach the game, and his overall professionalism. He had paid his dues as an assistant, and he was somewhat resentful of former pro players who hadn't - who just stepped right into coaching positions as if that were the natural progression. Joe had a plan in place for when he became a head coach; he kept adding to it and making changes, always preparing for the opportunity. (A lot of my thinking has been influenced by Joe Gardi and his thoroughness.) The entire league disbanded after the 1974 season, and after its reorganization for another go-round in 1975, I was offered a better opportunity in Portland, and headed west. Joe decided to try again in Philadelphia. When Bell head coach Ron Waller was sacked after the first game, Joe was named interim coach, just two days before flying out to play us.(Talk about conflict - we had lost our opener in Birmingham, and desperately needed a win to gain a foothold in a town that was beginning to call itself "Soccer City," yet here was my old ridin' buddy coaching our opponents!) Despite the turmoil associated with the Bell's coaching change, Joe managed somehow to bring order out of chaos and, in an incredible display of coaching, defeated us, 31-30. He had shown that he was a head coach! But the obvious decision to make Joe the permanent coach was not so obvious to the geniuses running the Bell, who, no doubt thinking of marquee value, chose instead to elevate secondary coach Willie Wood, former Packers' All-Pro. Joe was offered a scouting job. (Here's an answer to a trivia question: Willie Wood, in becoming new coach of the Philadelphia Bell, became the first black man to be named a pro head coach!) So Joe Gardi, frustrated after finally getting his shot and then, after demonstrating his fitness, being unceremoniously dumped in favor of a former pro, languished in the Bell's front office. And then, in mid-season, we had a coaching crisis of our own in Portland. I like to think that I had something to do with reminding our GM, Bob Brodhead, of the the job that Joe Gardi had done against us earlier in the season, and of his availability, and Bob managed to get together with Philadelphia's management and work out the details that freed Joe to coach the Portland Thunder. What a difference he made in our club! Before his arrival, we were a talented but largely unmotivated bunch; after his arrival, we were an aggressive, cohesive unit. We lost a game in overtime, then won a pair, and with the WFL season divided into a first half and a second half for playoff purposes, we were on top of our division in the seond half. And then, just like that, the league folded. Once again, Joe's head coaching plans had been stifled. He wouldn't become a head coach again until 1990. Returning east, Joe managed to catch on with Lou Holtz, who had just been named head coach of the New York Jets, and Joe remained with the Jets through the Lou Holtz, Walt Michaels and Joe Walton regimes, rising to become defensive coordinator of the Jets' famed "New York Sack Exchange" unit. He left the Jets in 1985 to work in the NFL offices as Assistant Supervisor of Officials, and remained in that position until 1990, when he was named coach at Hofstra, then a Division III school. (You and I can understand his reason for leaving a well-paid, secure position in the NFL office: he said he missed being called "Coach.") Since then, he has successfully led Hofstra's move into Division I-AA, combining a sound defense with a wide-open offense, and producing a number of NFL players, the best-known of whom is Wayne Chrebet of the Jets. This year's Hofstra team is off to a 2-0 start with wins over UConn (which next year will be playing in Division I-A) and Maine. His offense is led by QB Giovanni Carmazzi, who transferred from U of Pacific after that school's program folded. Carmazzi is a senior whose numbers on the field (3700 yds passing and 73% completions as a sophomore) and off (31 of 32 on the NFL intelligence test), as well as his physical stats (6-3, 220 with a 4.55 pro-timed 40) have attracted pro scouts to every Hofstra practice. (Joe says it's amazing what it will do for your practice intensity to have a few pro scouts looking on.) As an independent, Hofstra has a tough battle finding a spot in the Division I-AA playoffs, and road games at South Florida and defending I-AA champ UMass stand in the way. But here's one vote for the Flying Dutchmen and Coach Gardi.

Coach Paul Maier and his staff and players at Mount Vernon, Indiana, are still celebrating their big win Friday night over perennial powerhouse Vincennes. Vincennes is a historic old city, the site of one of the oldest settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains, and its role in the Revolutionary War was described by Maurice Thompson in his novel, "Alice of Old Vincennes." Now, I was a history major, and I appreciate a town's reverence for its past, but I do wonder how Vincennes' football players enjoy being called the "Alices." No lie.

"As I learned from last year, when putting this system in at the eighth grade level when they have run I and pro for the last five to six years, there is definitely a learning curve. Just like last year it took two pre-season games and the opener before my backs really began to TOTALLY trust the idea of "cruising" in the backfield and waiting for their blockers, and respecting their kick out blocks. Yesterday we beat a very tough team, Downers Grove, 26-6. Our three starting backs only played in the first half - A back Leon Wiggins 213 yards, B back Bryan Mead 108 yards and C-back Ben Urbaniak 43 yards. Needless to say, I think it is starting to click. Downers Grove is a large, affluent suburb with three high schools in its boundaries. They had 129 kids to choose from for their traveling A team at 125 pounds, they take the best 25 and the rest play in an in-house league. While we take the first 26 kids we can pull off the streets or the basketball courts....ha, we have no B team let alone an in-house league, some years we play with 16 kids. P.S. - We put in the Wildcat this week but both times we ran it our center was a bit overzealous and he hit the shoulder pads.....something to work on.....Regards, Bill Lawlor" (Chicago)

"I received a call EARLY Saturday morning from the West Valley coach who had a game scheduled with Reseda. Reseda was suspended by the league and lost their appeal so we ended up playing them. We played well offensively, when we had the ball. Coach I don't really know how to explain this game, except that it was WEIRD. Very Weird! We kicked off to them and they had the ball for about 10 plays without scoring. They would get a first down, we would throw them for a loss, and on and on.... Then we got the ball. We ran two play THE ENTIRE FIRST HALF and scored. Ran the Spread 88 Power for nearly 30 yards and then the Spread 99 SP for a 47 yard TD. Wedged in the 2 point conversion. (I moved a kid who never played before to my A Back and he looks good!) They got the ball and held on to it the entire second quarter. They RAN 19 plays without scoring. Though it was not pretty, it was not a bad effort. We recovered a fumble to end the first half. (My assistant is sure that the Ref screwed up the clock and did not tell anyone. This had to be the case. Only 2 plays the entire first half!) We ran only 12 plays the second half and scored on the BEST 3 trap at 2 you have ever seen. A 48 yard scamper. The play should be in your video library. Blocked to perfection! Needless to say we won but a weird game, none the less. Final score was Castaic Cougars 14 West Valley Eagles 0. Castaic had 227 yars rushing in only 14 plays! " Coach John Torres, Castaic, California

September 13- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 20. At high school games, you don't have your view blocked time after time by the same bozo on his way to get a beer...and on his way back after getting it...and on his way to the rest room...and on his way back...etc., etc.

If there's such a thing as having a good experience when you lose, I guess you could say I had one on Friday night. We opened on the road in Elma, Washington, a logging town about 2-1/2 hours' ride to the north. I must confess to having a great deal of trepidation when I took the job at Washougal, Washington, and then learned that we had to open at Elma, a town with a proud football tradition (state AA champions in 1997, runners-up last year) and a following that any team would be proud to have. It is not the sort of opponent you would normally choose for your first game with a brand-new team. But visiting there, it was clear I was in a town where football was important. I got the sense of playing somewhere in Texas: the facilities were first-rate, and AD Steve Rich did a great job of accomodating his visitors. The fans started filling the large stadium an hour before game time, and with a half-hour to go until kickoff it was packed, while a long line of people still waited to buy tickets. The fans were loud and rabid but not abusive, and appreciative of the football played by both teams. Their team, the Elma Eagles, was well-coached, as you might expect, and they played the hard-nosed football typical of logging towns. Unlike a lot of teams nowadays, though, they went about their jobs in a workmanlike, sportsmanlike fashion, keeping their mouths shut and playing football. Elma is a class act. We stung them with 14 early points and two early goal-line stands, but, playoff-seasoned, they never lost their poise. They just kept coming at us, finally defeating us 28-14. Their QB, an athletic 6-3, 220-pound junior named Kyle Basler, is a good-looking prospect. We held him somewhat - 175 yards on 22 completions in 32 attempts - but he threw for two scores and he ran for 75 yards. The loss notwithstanding, it was an encouraging opener for our kids. Overall, we played well. The kids competed, and the Lord watched over us and no one got hurt. This week it's another logging town from the north, Forks, the northwesternmost town of any size (3,000) in the lower 48. Find it on the map - it's a six-hour bus ride, much of it on winding, two-lane roads. . Fortunately, this year Forks comes to our place!

I received this from a D-W coach whose team, shall we say, defeated its opponent handily. (For obvious reasons, I have omitted his name, although I'll be happy to give it to any coach with whom I have had dealings.) "Again we faced a new coaching staff who had little respect for the DW. In fact, (they) had commented in the papers we looked slow and the offense was "out of date". No comments after the game. We only ran super power, XX lead, wedge, guard trap and ran mostly DW. We did run some tackle over but they never adjusted and never seemed to realize what was happening. It was so easy we stopped using it and went back to the tight formation." What's really scary is that the opposing coach got a HS varsity head job without knowing anything about a system that is creating problems for defensive coaches everywhere, and is so ignorant that he dismisses it as "out of date." So is the single wing. He should try defending that. It would be tempting to step outside the boundaries of good sportsmanship and run it up on a guy like this, just to bring him "up to date.". The definition of true ignorance is, "he doesn't know and doesn't even know that he doesn't know."

8-man update: "Hi Coach ! It's me, Coach Earl in Avalon. We decided to bastardize our 11 man Double Wing that we learned last year from you tapes and use it for 8 man football. If you recall, you faxed me some 8 man plays, keeping the fullback and a single wing back. While we use this formation, we had tremendous luck using the double wing (which we still call "tight") formation, using the QB for the wedge while antagonizing the defense on the Superpower, going outside or inside depending on the block of the pulling guard. As usual, just when they knew they had to watch the middle, just when they tbought they had the Rip and Liz motion figured out, we would use a crisscross, bootleg pass, or and inside ("C") handoff. In 8 man it gets even easier! Our play call is condensed to Tight Rip Superpower. We don't need the first digit to tell the FB where to go. We don't need the second digit since we read the block of the pulling guard and run to daylight. The guys knew the offense and we learned the plays in one day, giving us time to install some of the traditional spread type passing (yeah, some people still want to watch their kid catch a pass !!) and running options etc. Here is all we say in the huddle, going left or right simply by the motion direction. Tight Liz or Rip Power, Superpower, Crisscross, Bootleg Keep, Bootleg Pass, and Scissors. (Scissors is just like the "C" -an inside handoff. They seem to be less confused when we say scissors to signify an inside handoff, such as "Tight Liz, Scissors". We use the scissors on our single wing plays as well. We still use the play call 2 trap at 3 or 3 trap at 2 out of the I formation, letting the FB lead and giving the ball to the TB. We scored 6 TD's today and 4 of them were from the Double Wing system you taught me. I thought you should know ! In appreciation, Earl Schrader, Avalon Lancers, Catalina Island, California PS...NO ONE HAS BEEN ABLE TO STOP OUR WEDGE UNDER 5 TOUGH YARDS !!@!!! What a rockin' play!"

"Coach Wyatt , We opened our season today with a tough team, very well coached . We went down 13 - 0 in the first half making mistakes along the way . In the second half we settled down and ran our Double Wing for 228 yards ( 341 over all ) and 4 touch downs . The final score was 26 -13 going away ! The big hitters were TR 47 C plus the XX and Stack 88 and 99 . The thing that impressed me the most about our team was the toughness on defense . The second half was a shut out , I think it's due to the DWing . It's made our kids like contact and gives them the confidence to come from behind. Coach Glade Hall, Seattle, Washington." (341 yards in a youth game, with 8-minute quarters, ain't bad!)

September 11- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 19 - The noises at a high school game come from an actual crowd of real, live people, who are watching the game and cheering for the action, and don't have to be orchestrated by a huge replay screen over the scoreboard.

Coach, Last year we were the only team to beat the Upper Township Indians. However they did beat us in the championship game and were considered to be one of the best teams again this year. Last night we opened at their field and showed them what this "O" will do with good athletes. The score was Lower Township Raiders 28, Upper Township 0. We had 3 TDs. called back (all 40+ yards). The league has an 18 point rule. When a team gets ahead by 18 points they must put in a second team. Our second team played most of the 2nd. half and also had a score." Frank Simonsen - Cape May, New Jersey

Coach, Opened well! Played a local 4A J.V. Had 320 yards rushing. 8 different people scored. Havelock 51 West Carteret 6. The thing that is most amazing - it was raining cats and dogs! Long live the double wing! Coach Andy Bulfer, Havelock, North Carolina

At the bottom of page 16 of this week's Sports Illustrated is a picture which gave me chills - it's the 1955 Army team, being led onto the field by the great Don Holleder, an All-American who answered the call when his team needed him, and later, when his country needed him. Standing behind the team, dressed impeccably as was the style of coaches at that time, is Army's legendary coach, Earl "Red" Blaik.

A high school kid in Illinois was tossed off his basketball team last spring after being arrested twice for alcohol-related offenses. Now, he is suing for reinstatement under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Get this - his claim is based on the fact that he was "discriminated against".because of his "disability" - he is a "Recovering Alcoholic."

September 10- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 18 - High school teams don't have owners.

My Washougal Panthers open tonight against Elma, which returns seven starters offensively and defensively from a team that made it to last year's state finals. Their quarterback, who threw for 2,677 yard and 25 touchdowns last year, is one of the returnees. Our local newspaper, the Vancouver Columbian, has picked us to lose by 28 points. They've been wrong before.

Lots of teachers - and even an occasional coach - get letters from parents, and I just got one that David Crump, a Double-Wing coach in Owensboro, Kentucky, chose to share with me: "Dear Mr. Crump, I know this is long overdue, but better late than never. I want to thankyou for what you did for my son, Jon Meyer, last year. You had him for 6th grade math. At the beginning of the year he had someone else for math andhe hated it. Then, he came to your class after Christmas. The first day he had you, he came home talking about how much better he thought it was going to be in your math class. I knew Jon was a weak student in math, he just did not like it. But, you made it understandable, he told me you explained thing very well and if he had any questions he never felt belittled for asking for help. I often saw where you worked examples on his paper. I don't think Math will ever be his best subject but having a good math teacher dramatically improved his attitude towards it, he worked harder at it here at home ("No, Mom I don't need help, I can do it.") and he improved his math grades. A-B honor roll at the end of the year! So thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!!!! Remember as the new school year starts, or even when the year seems to be grinding on forever, you are a great teacher, you are reaching them, and parents do care. Sincerely, Stacie Meyer" (I told Coach Crump that few teachers and coaches will ever experience financial prosperity, but there are lots of millionaires living in places like Aspen who will never know the satisfaction of realizing that they have made a difference in the life of another human being.)

I have heard from several coaches who are reading "Lombardi," and it brings to mind poignant memories of watching my Baltimore Colts go head-to-head with Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers. A word of caution, though: present-day coaches considering emulating Coach Lombardi - a true coaching great - should be aware that in almost any other environment, he might not have achieved the spectacular success he did. He certainly couldn't have existed unchanged in today's climate of "positive self-esteem." But when he took over, America was still a hard-nosed country - World War II was just 15 years in the past... Korea was still fresh in peoples' minds... and most adult males had served in the military, a military that hadn't felt the need to lure them with job training, college scholarships or excellent adventures. Yet even in those days, Coach Lombardi's ways, tyrannical to many, would not have worked as well anywhere other than in the small, football-crazy city of Green Bay (where the fans' desire to win was so great that they would call him from taverns to report players out after curfew). And they certainly wouldn't have worked had he not had the collection of players that he did. Consider some of them - Jim Taylor, Elijah Pitts, Paul Hornung, Bart Starr, Dave Robinson, Boyd Dowler, Bob Jeter, Gary Knafelc, Willie Davis, Tom Moore, Ron Kostelnik, Bill Curry, Bob Skoronski, Max McGee, Forrest Gregg, Ray Nitschke, Ron Kramer, Dave Hanner, Jerry Kramer, Dan Currie, Fuzzy Thurston, Herb Adderly, Jim Ringo, Bill Forester, Henry Jordan, Willie Wood, John Symank, Lee Roy Caffey, Tom Brown, etc., etc. Economics worked for him, too: in those days, the best chance any player had of a big bonus was through success as a team - winning an NFL championship check. Now, players talk more about the Super Bowl ring than about the money, because most present-day players already have so much money that the championship bonus is incidental. Coach Lombardi had total control of his players; they weren't going anywhere unless it was his decision. But present-day free agency - offering both instant riches and the chance to get out from under Lombardi's iron rule - would have quickly broken up the Packers' dynasty. Green Bay's ownership situation is the best in the business: coaching the Packers, with their community ownership and virtual non-profit organization, totally isolated Coach Lombardi from any egotistical, meddlesome owner, and, totally in charge of the football operation, he had no fear of palace intrigue. Finally, Coach Lombardi was able to deal directly with his players, man-to-man. He is famous for having traded all-pro center Jim Ringo on the spot when a guy came into his office claiming to be Ringo's agent. Early in my career, I mistakenly thought that Lombardi-type methods would be justified by success o the field. I was wrong, and there are times when I find myself still paying for the lesson. It took me a long time to realize that Vince Lombardi was one of a kind - that what worked for him could not be successfully emulated elsewhere. But even if Coach Lombardi is not to be emulated, he is no less a man to be admired.

Not campaigning, you understand - but a certain Texas Governor , speaking recently about the need to improve educational opportunities for minority kids, used a phrase which illustrates to me what's right about football and wrong about our society: "the soft bigotry of low expectations" was what he called this fuzzy notion common among our liberal elite that we really shouldn't expect as much from kids who come from poor backgrounds or bad neighborhoods, and as a matter of fact, we should even fudge their standradized test scores to make them look better. These low expectations, the Governor says, are themselves a form of bigotry, a way of saying that certain groups of people are just incapable of measuring up to the same standards as everyone else. "Excuse-making must end," he said, "before learning can begin." Football coaches hear that and say, "No kidding, Governor." We, of course, have never thought otherwise. A football team is a pure meritocracy. It can't be run any other way. You could try all kinds of feel-good social tinkering, but the problem is, you just couldn't sneak it past an opponent. What coach do you know of who would knowingly jeopardize the success of ten other kids, just to create a position for a low-achiever, no matter what his background? What coach do you know of who would take a kid's background into consideration when deciding on a starting lineup? What coach do you know of who would accept less performance from a poor kid from a broken home than he would from the banker's son? What coach do you know of who would just write off a poor minority kid as inherently low-achieving, without working with him to help him improve?

"Two months ago I gathered the core of our team and had a weigh in. They lost last year in the state finals of the 110 pound division by four points. Now I had to make a decision to commit this years team to the 150 or 125 lb. slot. At 125 we would be the consensus favorites to get back to the championship but at 150 we probably would be middle of the pack. After the weigh in, I had 8 kids more than 8.5 pounds overweight and one was my stud wingback Leon Wiggins. I explained the options to them and they unanimously voted to play 125 and drop the excess pounds. I told them that I was not going to allow plastic suits or any kind of BS weight loss techniqes, that they would have to do it by working hard and cutting out the McDonalds. Some of them had 11 and 12 pounds to drop and I was a bit worried of what my team would consist of if they were not dedicated. Well anyway, come Sunday morning, four hours before the official weigh in, all but Leon and our center had made the cut. They were both 1.5 over, and Leon said coach I want to win a championship and I will do anything it takes...so off we went to the local sauna and we sweated the 1.5 off in about 70 minutes. The great thing was that 15 of the other kids came along and took turns going in and out of the sauna with their mates until the weight was off. It was really great to see them drop the weight 1/4 pound per day the right way and not by doing stupid wrestling weight cutting methods. I never once had to tell them what to do, they all stayed after practice and ran 4-6 extra laps a night in order to keep it off. Also, the parents were all supportive and made sure they purged their house of all "Junk Food" rather then yell at me for making their kids lose weight. Hugh, there is still hope for this coddled generation!!!! "Bill Lawlor, Chicago. Let's hear it for Finland's greatest contribution to mankind - and her sole contribution to the English language - sauna . (Correctly pronounced, by the way, "SOW", as in female pig, "na").

September 9- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 17. High school receivers only need to have one foot in bounds after making a catch; the rule is simple and straight-forward and the call is a lot easier for officials to make.

Mount Vernon, Indiana's JV's (in Indiana, they call 'em reserves) piled up 471 total yards in a 36-18 win Monday night. Their A-Back, Marshall Steward, gained 325 yards and scored four touchdowns! I know their JV coach, John Mitchell, and he obviously knows enough to keep sending a man through an open door.

North Delta Colts 22 - North Surrey Eagles 0 (Vancouver, B.C., Canada) - "We (Jr. Bantam North Delta Colts)in the Vancouver Mainland Football League (12 man football) won the first game of the season using the Double Wing. Using mainly the Wedge, Tight Rip 88 Super O, 3 trap at 2, Tight Liz 99 Super O and 47 C, we rolled up 250 yards rushing (A back- 140, B back 80, c back 30), winning 22-0. The opposition coaches were arguing amongst themselves on the sideline, trying to figure out the offense. My kids (12-13 year olds) feel special." Roger Kelly, Delta, British Columbia

In 1999, for the 24th straight year, overall enrollment in West Virginia's public schools is down. In the meantime, just one Nevada county - Clark County (Las Vegas) - has added 14 new high schools in the last ten years, and at last report had three more scheduled to open this fall!

Today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) contains a report calling sports-related concussions among teenagers "a major public health issue." The article estimates that 63,000 high school athletes suffer concussions every year, 63 per cent of them in football. The article's major points are (1) being "knocked cold" is not the only sign of a concussion - a concussion is "any alteration in mental function after a blow to the head. Signs or symptoms (including headache, dizziness, difficulty with balance or memory, confusion, or personality change) can be subtle; (2) Multiple mild concussions are more likely than a single concussion to lead to long-term problems, such as headaches, difficulty sleeping and concentrating, and the ability to learn words, think quickly, and handle complex tasks; (1) the youthful brain may require a longer recovery time after a concussion; and (4) athletes with learning disorders appeared to be affected most by multiple concussions, suggesting an ever longer recovery time for such athletes.

The same issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that amateur soccer players score lower than other athletes in tests of memory and planning, and suggests that repeated blows to the head may be the reason. (Maybe they should have tested the soccer players first, just to be sure they weren't that way before they started playing soccer. I have my suspicions. )

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh (a Pittsburgh Steelers fan) has been having a lot of fun going after the soccer folks with his Keep Our Own Kids Safe (KOOKS) organization, trying - only half-jokingly - to alert mommies and daddies to the dangers of letting their little darlings play soccer.

September 8- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 16. Pro coaches don't have to perform the miracle of making players out of kids who've never played the game before.

It's called the Law of Unintended Consequences. Since 1971, Central Bucks West High (Doylestown, Pennsylvania) has ended its regular season against its arch-rival, Central Bucks East. But playing such an emotional game a week before playoffs begin has had disastrous effects on playoff performances - in 1996, both teams entered the final game unbeaten, but a week later both teams lost district playoff games. So this year, at the request of CB-West, the big game will be played earlier in the season. (No one can accuse CB-West coach Mike Pettine of making excuses, because CB-West is defending state 4-A (largest class) champion.) Only trouble is, CB-West now will end the regular season against North Penn, of Lansdale. Many pre-season polls have CB-West and North Penn ranked 1-2 in the state. Emotional? North Penn is coached by Mike Pettine, Jr.

Readers of Golf Digest Magazine were recently asked whether they would vote to admit Our Fearless Leader, William Jefferson Clinton, to membership in their club. Sorry, Mr. President. The vote was 480-141 against.

Since 1993, there have been 82 youngsters killed in school shootings. In that same time, 99 kids have been killed by (government-mandated) air bags.

The Stuttgart Scorpions, of Germany's Bundesliga, made it to the league semi-finals last year running the Double-Wing. But they lost their coach to another European team, and financial constraints prevented them from signing any American players this year, so this season has been a struggle. Nevertheless, they stuck with the Double-Wing, and last weekend, they played the Braunschweig Lions, Europe's top-rated team. They took a 70-20 pounding, but nevertheless managed to score more points against the Lions than any other German team so far. I have seen tapes of some of their games, and they do a nice job of running the Double-Wing, first introduced to them three years ago by their then coach, Gary Etcheverry. Coach Etcheverry now serves as an assistant coach with the Toronto Argonauts, of the Canadian Football League, and thanks to him, the Argos occasionally run a Double-Wing package as a change-of-pace in the most wide-open type of football there is!

September 7- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 15. High school players have to finish junior high first before moving on to play high school ball.

Coach T. J. Mills first came to Sealy, Texas in 1985.Sealy, about 40 miles west of Houston, has always had a proud football tradition which included turning out a pretty fair running back named Eric Dickerson, and Coach Mills has compiled an impressive 134-37 record in his 14 years there. But what he did in a four-year span between 1994 and 1997 is unprecedented: the Sealy Tigers won four straight class 3-A state titles, becoming the first Texas high school in any classificationto do so. Included in the championship run was a 35-game win streak. Coach Mills told the Houston Chronicle that of all the titles, winning the fourth was the toughest: "How many people have been in that situation?" Mills said. "You can't blow that or come away from it saying, `Boy, I wish I would have worked a little harder.' It became a 24-hour-a-day mission, and even when you sleep, you don't really sleep. That was extremely hard, mentally and physically, on all of us. You can look back at the TV highlights from that season and see the strain in our faces, both the players and coaches, but it was worth it."

Still in Texas, the Texas high school governing body, the University Interscholastic League (UIL), is investigating an ugly incident occuring in a scrimmage between two Corpus Christi schools. A penalty against a Corpus Christi Carroll player resulted in a brawl in which Corpus Christi Calallen's starting center received a broken arm. Videotape was rolling, and reportedly the tape shows a Calallen assistant being hit repeatedly by a person wearing Carroll coaching gear.

I came across this in a recent column in the L.A. Times by Carol Jago. She argues that the worst thing that successful parents can do for their kids is to try to give them a life of ease. "Without meaning to," she says, we give our children "the things - cars, clothes, vacations - we coveted when we were young but could never imagine being able to afford. If we want our children to be other than spoiled yuppie offspring, we are going to have to help them think about a different kind of direction for their own lives." And then, to bolster her point, Ms. Jago quotes President Theodore Roosevelt (we could probably use a man like him right about now): "I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual."

September 6- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 14. Most high school offensive linemen play from a three-point stance and are taught not to "tip" whether the play is going to be a run or a pass; most pro teams don't even bother putting their offensive linemen in a 3-point stance because they are going to pass most of the time anyhow, and they don't care who knows it.

This time last year, Richmond Heights (Ohio) High, in suburban Cleveland, had started on its way to a 9-1 season under Coach Mike Glodowski. Not so very long before, Richmond Heights had gone several years without a win. I had a chance to visit Cleveland and witness first-hand what Mike was doing there in accomplishing one of the great turnarounds in Northeast Ohio football history. Last spring, unfortunately, Coach Glodowski and most of his staff reluctantly resigned their positions in protest of an administrative decision. Clearly, he is missed: last Saturday, Richmond Heights lost to Waynedale, 66-0. Anyone looking for a very good double-wing coach?

"Dear Coach Wyatt, I am running your offense for the first time this season and it has rejuvenated my passion for the game.This is my 20th season coaching players 8 thru H.S. and my 8th as the head coach of the Manchester, N.H. Bears. I stumbled on to your site looking for dbl. wing option info. and after finding a set ordered your tapes and began installing the offense.We have been practicing for three weeks and open up on Sept.12.We have played in a jamboree and had a scrimmage and have been very succesful running only 88,99 Power and Super Power,2 Wedge,6G,47C and Thunder.My team is doing well with motion and we have introduced 56C and 7G. We have been very succesful in the past as a feeder for the local H.S. programs and compiling a record of 54-12 and 5 State Championship game appearances over the past 7 seasons.We also have a scholar athlete program where each player and cheerleader receives a trophy for G.P.A. of 3.0 or better.Our program is much more than football to our kids and your site has been a breath of fresh air to me.I go to your site every day for news and tips.Our team site is www.manchesterbears.com if you get a chance to check it out and my e-mail is jktrish@mediaone.net.I look forward to meeting you some day and please realize that you do make a difference in keeping the game we love strong.John Trisciani, Manchester, New Hampshire" If my stuff can have that kind of an effect on a guy who is so obviously dedicated to our game and our kids, I am a happy man. You would be interested in knowing how often I hear the very word - "rejuvenated" - used in the same way that Coach Trisciani has used it. I am tired of hearing people say that football is a young man's game. I don't accept that. It is a man's game, period. True, it is played by young men, but it is important that we keep the so-called "old men" in it, because it is one of the few ways left in which we can pass along some of our culture to our young men. As Joe Paterno said in the Philadelphia Inquirer recently, "You know, coaches never grow up. When you do grow up, it's time to retire. Guess I haven't grow up yet."

Alan Andrus, a youth coach in Salt Lake City, Utah writes: "We played our first league game today using your offense, and it went well. We won 28-0 and the officials had no problem with our wing-backs pushing on the tackles. We used only 88 super, 99 super, 47-C, criss-cross 47-c, 6-g, 3 trap at 2, 99 power keep, (my QB is a tough runner and good passer), 5-x, 58-C, 2 wedge, and 3 pass plays. The lighting throwback to "C" was open 3 times and we scored once on it. We will add a couple of plays this week. Our "D" was outstanding with a base 5-3, shifting into G.A. Moore's 10-1 and 10-1 special, allowing only two first downs. The team we played today was much bigger and was well coached. I agree with G.A. Moore when he says he doesn't agree with going against a physically superior opponent with the conventional look, and saying okay, because this is what we see on Sunday, we will use it and get beat. He says, "find a way to compete". Thanks to you and Coach Moore, and Coach Jack Reed, my teams really compete. I agree with you and Coach Moore, in that if you have superior personnel, you will be successful, even if you don't really execute. However, you guys find a way to compete when the talent isn't as good, and that is the philosophy I try to relate to my teams. Thank you, Alan Andrus" (Coach G.A. Moore is a successful high school coach in Texas who has popularized a 10-1 defense, and Jack Reed has published "Coaching Youth Football" and "Coaching Youth Football Defense," in which he praises his experience with Coach Moore's 10-1) Coach Andrus is right on about giving your kids something that lets them compete. It is amazing how many coaches emulate the pros without recognizing the obvious - that teams succeed on Sunday doing the things they are doing because they have pro athletes doing them.

"Coach, Just wanted to write to tell you the excitement that the DW has brought to our football program and its die hard fans. I had told you that we have struggled to be successful over the past 13 years due to lack of size, commitment to the program, specialization in 1 sport, etc. I think that this is the only offense that I will ever run as long as I coach football. I only wish that I had had you as a resource a mere 6 years ago, because I know that our program would have been turned around right from the onset. We didn't win the other evening but there's a great story behind the game. We went into Friday's game knowing that we would be minus 3 starters as of the previous Wednesday, one because he chose to miss practice to go to Hersheypark with his significant other, the second, my franchise who is a 4 year starter at FB and MLB out for 4 weeks with an SI joint injury, and a third who is the only lineman returning this year for us, is out with a back injury. The simplicity of your offense allowed us to move our quickest tackle to guard and put our back-up tackle in his place with no dilemmas. They did this on one day's notice, no problems. Needless to say, our line, consisting of 3 sophomores, a junior, and a 165 pound senior, and might I add with none of them ever taking a varsity snap previously, ground out 324 yards on the ground. My C-back, John Robinson rushed 13 times for 149 yards, he's a converted SE that can fly, my b-back Ian Tuttle, who's my third fullback, rushed 12 times for 61 yards, and my A-back, Chris Scanlon rushed 18 times for 119 yards. I have never coach a game where 2 backs have rushed for more than 100 yards in a game. Lead XXC was awesome, they couldn't stop it! A couple of scenarios that occurred during the game were, with 1:19 showing on the clock just before halftime, we went to our hurry-up mode, using the wristbands that you suggested and we drove the ball from our own 20 to the opponents 19 only to get sacked on Red-Red because we did not reach the corner so that the QB could get a good look. Also, it was 7-6 at the half and then it was a shootout for the entire second half. If we could stop anyone and not give up kick returns for touchdowns we will be unstoppable. Finally, we were down 26-24 with 3:00 minutes to play in the game. We got the ball at our own 30, we ripped of several sizable runs on LXXC and a play that we call 88/99 Super G-O Reach, a great play when the defense starts to be inside conscious. Then it was 2T3 for 25 yards and finally 2 Wedge for 12 yards on 4 and 4 with 52 seconds remaining. Talk about excitement! Our crowd was into the game for the first time in probably 13 years, it was unbelievable. Our clock management was tremendous, we broke LxxC to the 5 yard line with 31 seconds and then ran 2 wedge on 1st and 2nd down to the 2 yard line. On third we spiked the ball to stop the clock with 9 seconds remaining. We are going to run 2 Wedge right down their throat to win this sucker and wouldn't you know it, my left end jumps offsides and its now 4 and 7. We would have kicked the FG but we have no one that can kick with consistency, except another one of those kids who is ineligible because he came out for the team a week late. So we decided to run the play that got us here in the first place Lead XX56C. The defense shut down the kick-out block and we had to bounce, and were stopped at the 3. It's so disheartening to see the kids have to lose with such a great effort like this. After the game I had former players and fans alike come down out of the stands to tell me that that was the greatest offensive display that they had watched at Corning West H.S. in over a decade. Sounds great, but a win would have been a hell of a lot better. By the way, our JV's also ran for 322 yards in a losing effort, for the most part because they didn't hang onto the ball once they broke free. Hope to talk soon. Thanks for everything and good luck." Mike Johnston,Corning West H.S., Painted Post, New York

September 4- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 13. Except in times of utter desperation, the onside kick is never seen in pro football. thanks to the way they've turned the game over to soccer-playing kickers.

It is 7:00 AM Saturday morning and I have already received four solicitations from the geeks who run the porno sites, and three from the losers trying to make money with on-line casinos. (Sorry if I offended anybody.) Anybody have any bright ideas?

Scores from last night are beginning to come in. Please e-mail yours and BE SURE to give me the score and name of your opponent! They will be posted on the WINNER'S CIRCLE page as I am able to get them. Include any stats that might indicate how well your kids performed. And if you have individuals whose performances were especially noteworthy, include their names and stats, too.

Last night's jamboree was a successful start for the Washougal Panthers, as they played defending league champion White Salon to a 14-14 tie, and shutout Stevenson, 16-0. QB Cody Morris threw for two of the scores, with Danny Stineback and Chris Martel each running for one. Our JV's managed to split against White Salmon and Stevenson. (We did learn something very useful with our JV's - they are still having trouble with the length and duration of motion and as a result, the runners tend to have trouble taking the super power inside the kickout block; finally, just as a stopgap measure, we ran the play without motion - and things clicked immediately! We then took a look at the same thing in the varsity session and liked what we saw.)

Jack Tourtillotte, offensive coordinator (and principal) at Boothbay Regional High in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, has seen an incredible change in the culture of his town (he's a native) as football has become the sport. Although the sport was nearly dropped for lack of interest six years ago, Jack, head coach Tim Rice and assistant Ted Brown managed to get the Seahawks to the state Class A finals last year. (Ahem. Double Wing team.) The whole town is turned on. Player turnouts in the lower grades are way up. But there's still one nagging problem: Boothbay Harbor is a gorgeous town, the kind of place one envisions when thinking of Maine. The movie "Carousel" was filmed there. Tourists jam its streets in the summer months. And businesses serving the tourists need lots of workers. That's where Boothbay football came in. In the past, kids wouldn't be available for football until the tourists left - after Labor Day. Unfortunately, the high school season would already have started without them, and there was a constant problem with players never getting up to speed. This year, Jack and Tim Rice decided that it was time to take a stand for football. First, they met with local merchants, and asked for their cooperation. Now that Boothbay football is on the rise, they got the merchants' attention and, for the most part, cooperation. They also met with parents, and laid it on the line. In jack's words, "We just said life was full of choices and on some issues there could be no compromise. Thier kids could come to practice or work but could not do both. Some mashing of teeth from the parents and threats to go to the "Super" but I had already touched bases with powers that be and have full support from them.We have not had a kid miss practice in the last five days so the message has been sent and not one of the workers chose work over football. You just have to take a stand in this world full of compromise and make choices some of which have to be of the yes or no variety. We have made a stand." A very wise and courageous one, I might add, in these days when kids are being fed the garbage that they can "have it all."

September 3- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" - Number 12. High school players aren't paid to take off their helmets and slap on baseball caps the minute they come out of the game. (Cap manufacturers might as well forget it - most high school coaches require their players to keep their helmets on.)

Good Luck tonight, Double-Wingers! My Washougal Panthers play host to a jamboree attended by league rivals Stevenson and White Salmon, and defending Class 1-A (one class lower than us) champion Kalama. I asked my seniors if they had any preference which two teams we played, and they chose Stevenson and White Salmon, based on a desire to go against teams in our league. Washington is not in any hurry to let kids start playing: in order to be eligible to play in the Jamboree, a kid must have taken part in all 10 days on practices since the 23rd, and then the most a team can play is 20 plays (10 against each opponent) on offense and 20 plays on defense.

I spent two hours yesterday morning as guest, along with my son, Ed, on the sports-talk show of an old friend, Steve "Dream" Weaver, on Portland radio station KGUY. We spent part of the time talking with John Rawlings, editor-in-chief ot The Sporting News, about his latest publication, Pro Football's 100 Greatest Players, and then fielded a few calls. One of the callers, identifying himself as "Doug," addresed himself to me and asked me if I remembered coaching a semi-pro team called the Van-Port (Vancouver-Portland. Get it?) Thunderbirds in the summer of 1979. I confessed that I did, whereupon he began telling me how he had tried out, etc., etc. and I began to worry. Was this a guy I had cut? Had I been short with him? Fortunately, he had fond memories of the season, and best of all, he had nice things to say about me. And suddenly I remembered a young guy named Doug Collins, who was a dependable, hard-working receiver. Those of you who accuse me of pushing a Stone-Age offense would have been amused to hear him praise me for the way I worked with receivers (what are they?) and quarterbacks.

I spent a few minutes yesterday talking with our area's newest Chevrolet dealer in his showroom. He's Curt Warner, new owner of Curt Warner Chevrolet in Vancouver, Washington. He's the same Curt Warner who not so long ago played running back for the Seahawks and Rams, and before that, played on Penn State's 1982 National Championship team, finishing in the top ten in that year's Heisman Trophy balloting. I noted that, like my kids, he was a small-town guy (Pineville, West Virginia), and I also noted that he was a three-sport athlete in high school, earning all-state mention two years in a row in football, basketball and baseball. He is opposed to one-sport specialization, feeling that college is time enough to decide which sport to concentrate on. Curt Warner, on his way to a successful career in business, is an excellent example of the "scholar-athlete" the NCAA likes to brag about.

"Coach Wyatt: Finally, we got to hit someone besides each other! We started off slowly but ended up scoring 4 TD's and had several long gains in 40 plays. The only problem was we fumbled 3 times (all by the same kid) and we will correct that before the opening game. Surprisingly, the opposing coach commented how he thought our tight line splits reduced our effectiveness. I guess that's what you say when every wedge play gained only 5 yards (or more), they never sacked our QB, and we nullified all of their blitzes. I was also pleased with how our line responded to their different defensive fronts. We had only 3 breakdowns that resulted in little or no gain. Most importantly, the kids saw how good they can be and they want to get better. Thanks for your teaching aids that has made this possible. I'll keep you informed as the season progresses." Keith Babb, Northbrook, Illinois

September 2- "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL" Number 11. High schools have fight songs played by live bands, and the fans actually know the words; they usually have something to do with encouraging their team to do something harsh to the opponent. Pro teams play rock oldies over the PA system; they have absolutely nothing to do with the game being played or with either of the two teams, and fans jump around and wave their hands as if they are at a rock concert.

Now that it has been suggested that SAT scores be adjusted to allow for the fact the certain students have advantages (books in the house, parents who think that an education is important, good teachers, etc.) that give them an academic edge, it is only a matter of time before this egalitarian thinking finds its way to sports. For football, recognizing that certain teams have advantages that give them an edge, I propose a system of handicapping games, based on pre-game evaluations of both teams. The disadvantaged team would start the game with a certain number of points awarded to it in advance.Here is how to calculate the number of points your team would have to allow an opponent:

The head coach has been at the school more than 3 years.................................................1 point

More than 3/4 of the staff has been together more than 3 years...........................................1 point

Your staff works as hard at football in the off-season as well as in-season..............................1 point

Your coaches let the kids know that they love them and they're proud of them..........................1 point

Your junior high is using the same offensive and defensive system as the high school.................1 point

At least one of the youth teams in your community is, too..................................................1 point

Your principal is a former football coach......................................................................1 point

Your baseball, basketball and wrestling coaches are on the football staff..................................1 point each

Your team has a good, well-run off-season weight program................................................1 point

Your players will work during the summer to prepare for football..........................................1 point

Weight training is offered as a class and most of the football players are in it..............................1 point

Your program stresses discipline and fundamental soundness................................................1 point

You promote, develop and support strong senior leadership ..................................................1 point

A large percentage of your kids lives in a stable home..........................................................1 point

A large percentage of them lives with a mature adult male, preferably their father...........................1 point

A large percentage of their dads were (or are) in the military....................................................1 point

A large percentage of their dads (and brothers and grand-dads) played football...............................1 point

A large percentage of them also played at your school............................................................1 point

A large percentage of them played on winning teams at your school............................................1 point

A team scoring a point for each of the above categories would have a handicap of 21. If it turns out that this is still insufficient to enable certain disadvantaged teams to win, further adjustments may be required.

IF I WERE THE DEVIL by Paul Harvey - "I would gain control of the most powerful nation in the world; I would delude their minds into thinking that they had come from man's effort, instead of God's blessings; I would promote an attitude of loving things and using people, instead of the other way around; I would dupe entire states into relying on gambling for their state revenue; I would convince people that character is not an issue when it comes to leadership; I would make it legal to take the life of unborn babies; I would make it socially acceptable to take one's own life, and invent machines to make it convenient; I would cheapen human life as much as possible so that the life of animals are valued more that human beings; I would take God out of the schools, where even the mention of His name was grounds for a law suit; I would come up with drugs that sedate the mind and target the young, and I would get sports heroes to advertise them; I would get control of the media, so that every night I could pollute the mind of every family member for my agenda; I would attack the family, the backbone of any nation. I would make divorce acceptable and easy, even fashionable. If the family crumbles, so does the nation; I would compel people to express their most depraved fantasies on canvas and movie screens, and I would call it art; I would convince the world that people are born homosexuals, and that their lifestyles should be accepted and marveled; I would convince the people that right and wrong are determined by a few who call themselves authorities and refer to their agenda as politically correct; I would persuade people that the church is irrelevant and out of date, and the Bible is for the naive; I would dull the minds of Christians, and make them believe that prayer is not important, and that faithfulness and obedience are optional; I guess I would leave things pretty much the way they are."

Penn State kills Arizona, yet this week, all of the newspaper stuff out here - probably written before last Saturday's fateful visit to State College, Pennsylvania - has Arizona picked as the team to beat in the Pac-10. Especially with so many UCLA guys dropping over from exhaustion after having to walk to practice from the closest non-handicapped space. Wendell Barnhouse in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram writes, "The Wildcats perpetuated the image of the Pac-10 as a touch-football conference." Ouch.

September 1 - "LOTS MORE THAN 50 REASONS WHY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL IS BETTER THAN PROFOOTBALL": Number 10. High school refs don't announce to the entire crowd the number of the player who committed an infraction; in fact, high school officials aren't even miked.

Just received an interesting new book called It's in Their Blood, by Robert Gill. It's a compilation of autobiographies and stats of some - not all - of Orgon's greatest coaches. Now, Oregon is a small state, population-wise, and I am not a native, but I can name a couple dozen outstanding coaches whose names were left out of this book. I can only imagine what a problem it wuld be putting such a book together in Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois or Florida, without leaving out some truly great coaches.

Are you kidding me? Is there something that says you have to be from Florida to be ranked Number One? Must be. But, uh - may I ask what more Penn State, after its win over number three Arizona, could have done to move ahead of Florida State, conqueror of mighty Lousiana Tech? And these are the people who couldn't be trusted to pick one team to be the National Champion. Now, we're supposed to trust them to pick two teams - to play for the National Championship.

Portland, Oregon Public Schools, showing once again where their priorities lie, raised participation fees from $75 to $90 per athlete, per sport. No athlete must pay more than $200 in a school year, nor must any family pay more than $400 total in a school year. Low-income students, who had been charged only $25 per sport are now expected to pay full freight. Some well-to-do suburban school districts, such as Beaverton (home of NIKE) charge $125 per sport, with no family spending cap. Other places, such as Medford, in southern Oregon, still do things the old-fashioned way. Medford's two high schools each sell more than 2,000 season tickets to their football games every year, eliminating the need for participation fees in any of its sports. (Wonder if any of the participants in those other sports ever thank the football players and their coaches?)

After learning at our recent officials' meeting that only balls with the special National High School Federation stamp would be allowed this season, I called around trying to find such balls. Right. Our sporting-goods supplier, faced with eating the balls we ordered last spring (they didn't contain the stamp) did some calling around and got back to us with the information that there will be a one-year delay in implementation of the requirement.

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