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www.Sportspages.com killer site for the hard-core sports fan Homer Smith on Coaching Offensive Football - enough said |
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ITEMS OF USE AND INTEREST TO FOOTBALL COACHES Excerpted from Tom Pagna's book, "Notre Dame's Era of Ara." (Tom Pagna with Bob Best, 1976, Diamond Communications, South Bend, IN) "More bad news came while preparing for Purdue (1974). Ed Smothers, a good friend of Ara's, and an honorary staff member, died of a heart attack. Ed and his wife Madeline acted as surrogate "dad and mom" for black athletes attending Notre Dame. Their homes and hearts were always open, and the exercise of feeding. allowing phone calls, writing families and visiting recruits must have pinched their meager budget. The black population of Notre Dame was small and relatively new, and the Smotherses were rewarded knowing they were aiding young men in the adjustment to this environment... It seems all things come in groups of three. Ara's personal friend, an Armenian carpet dealer from Chicago, Carnig Manasian, had died of a heart attack that past summer. After the Purdue game another friend, the famed voice of Notre Dame, Van Patrick , succombed to cancer." Ara Parseghian was one of the greatest of all Notre Dame coaches. He won two national championships, was named Coach of the Year, and is a member of the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame. Now, though, he concentrates his total energies in a fight against a killer. Victory her will be the highlight of his career. The killer is Niemann-Pick Type C Disease, which has affected three of his grandchildren. The disease has already claimed one of them, and with individuals suffering from the disorder rarely living past the age of 15, the prognosis is not good for the other two children.(For more information on Coach Parseghian's efforts, check his web site: http://www.parseghian.org/ ) BONUS - As a bonus to coaches who've supported me in the past - in other words, if you've attended one of my clinics or purchased any materials from me - e-mail me for the address of the pages on which I have described our no-huddle system! |
Thanks to Walter S. Mossberg's weekly column in the Wall Street Journal, I have come upon one slick site. It is called "Quickbrowse" (http://www.quickbrowse.com/) and you are going to want to take a look at it. It is what is known as a "metabrowser," and without going into any detail (mainly because I'm technologically incapable of doing so), it enables you to hook up several of your bookmarked sites - your really "Favorite Places" - into one browsable "metasite." If you're like me, you have bookmarked a zillion sites, but you really visit just a handful of them on a regular basis. Let's say they're your favorite five or six football sites (including this one, of course). Instead of doing what you normally do, which means opening a site, then closing it then opening the next one, and so forth, or opening all of them at once and jumping back and forth between them, Quickbrowse enables you to open them all at once - as one interconnected site. Think of it as one long window, made up of the first pages of all your favorite sites, connected, end-to-end, just as if you had Scotch-taped them together. Once everything's loaded, you can scroll right through the whole bunch - no opening and closing, opening and closing, no jumping around from site to site. If you want to go deeper into one of the sites, or pursue a link to an "outside" site, you can do so and still return to your metasite. This is so cool! In return for this convenience, you will find a banner ad inserted between each of the interconnected sites - the friendly folks at Quickbrowse aren't stupid. They're trying to make money, which is not an easy thing to do with a web site. Now, maybe I'm easy, but until they start advertising porn sites, I think it's a small price to pay. Check it out and let me know what you think!
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Just think: it only takes one of their votes to cancel yours out. Just in case you wondered whether our democratic form of government is in good hands, consider this: a recent Oregon Lottery commercial was followed by a disclaimer saying, "Should not be used for investment purposes."
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The next time you think that it really doesn't make any difference who gets elected President, just remember that Supreme Court justices are appointed by the President - and they serve for life. You would do well to remember that if it bothers you that the United States Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-3, essentially outlawed student-led public prayer before high school football games. (We're talking Texas, where football and religion come together briefly - and some people say you can't tell the difference, anyhow.) Seems those pre-game prayers made a tiny minority of people in the stands feel uncomfortable. So rather than listen passively, or leave, or wear a Walkman, or arrive late, that tiny minority sued. Ever heard of martyrs? Most religions have had them - people willing to die for their beliefs. In the America of today, the only people willing to die for their beliefs are the old guys in Appalachia handling rattlesnakes, but we do have a whole new class of martyrs. These modern-day martyrs don't exactly defy the Emperor, though - instead, they get the Emperor to do their dirty work, using the good ole American judicial system to shut down those religious zealots all around them. In Texas, they came to watch a football game and didn't like what was going on there before the kickoff, so they sued to make 'em stop. And the Supreme Court, naturally, agreed with them. Said those poor folks were made to feel like "outsiders." Well, this may come as a surprise to the ladies and gentlemen on the court, but that's because that's what they undoubtedly were. Now, though, despite a centuries-old tradition of newcomers having to adjust to the ways of the community, this is America in the year 2000, where the community has to make accomodations for the newcomer - where ballots are printed in foreign languages, and cityfolk buy tract homes in agricultural communities, then sue farmers because they don't like the smell of the fertilizer. Just once, I'd like to see a judge lean forward and say to someone whining about being made to feel uncomfortable, "Get over it." Oh, and back to that presidential election bit: Said George W. Bush, ''I support the constitutionally guaranteed right of all students to express their faith freely and participate in voluntary student-led prayer.'' Said a spokesman for Albert "Alpha Male" Gore, ''He feels ... in this case that the prayer was found to be government-sponsored and participation was not truly voluntary.'' In other words, he feels very strongly whatever the polls at the moment tell him he should feel. The three dissenters to the decision were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Rehnquist wrote that the court's decision ''bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life.'' (Knowing the way the Reno Justice Department operates, I'm not sure about continuing to ask my players to join me in prayer. I can just see the Feds busting down our locker room door, assault rifles at the ready... SCENE: Twilight in the small town of Tyrone, Texas. The tallest structure in town, the water tank, reads "Tyrone Tornadoes. State Champs, 1987" It's Friday night, which in Texas means high school football, and the lights are on at the football stadium. It's getting close to kickoff, and a large crowd sits in the stands, waiting for the teams to come onto the field. CUT TO LOCKER ROOM: A small group of high school players and their coaches mill around nervously in the locker room; the clock on the wall reads five minutes to eight. One man, obviously the head coach, steps to the center of the room. HEAD COACH: "Okay, men. Five minutes to kickoff. Let's all take a knee. (Players and coaches all kneel, heads bowed) CUT TO OUTSIDE THE DOOR: A man, dressed in Department of Justice coveralls, kneels and presses his ear against the locker room door, listening to what's going on inside. When he's heard enough, he turns to a stout woman standing nearby and says, "They're getting ready to pray, Ma'am" STOUT WOMAN (WHO ON CLOSER INSPECTION TURNS OUT TO BE JANET RENO), TURNING TO THE ARMED MEN WHO SURROUND HER: "Lock and load!" CUT TO LOCKER ROOM: HEAD COACH: "Dear Heavenly Father..." SUDDENLY, THE PRAYER IS INTERRUPTED BY SHOUTING FROM OUTSIDE THE DOOR. IT IS THE VOICE OF A WOMAN - CLEARLY ONE USED TO WIELDING POWER. IT IS THE VOICE OF JANET RENO: "Federal Agents! We know you're praying in there! We're coming in!" SMASH! CRASH! (Sound of locker room door being smashed by battering ram!) A TEAR GAS BOMB EXPLODES TEAR GAS PERVADES THE LOCKER ROOM AS FEDERAL AGENTS, DRESSED FOR ARMED COMBAT, GAS MASKS ON AND ASSAULT RIFLES AT THE READY, POUR THROUGH THE DOOR JANET RENO: (Enters room last, holding riding crop, which she slaps into her hand as she surveys the scene) "All right - Get 'em up off their knees an get 'em on the buses! I don't want to see any heads bowed either! And if you see any lips moving, slap 'em shut. 'Dear Heavenly Father' huh? Give us any trouble, and you'll be meeting up with Him sooner than you think! Hahahahahahahaha!"(Cackles fiendishly at her own joke!) THE AGENTS GRAB THE PLAYERS BY THEIR ARMS, JERKING THEM, COUGHING, TO THEIR FEET, AND SHOVING THEM IN THE DIRECTION OF THE DOOR. THE PLAYERS STAGGER OUT, STILL COUGHING. OUTSIDE, NATIONAL GUARDSMEN HERD THE PLAYERS AND COACHES ONTO TWO WAITING YELLOW BUSES, IDENTICAL TO NORMAL SCHOOL BUSES EXCEPT FOR THE IRON GRATING OVER THEIR WINDOWS. THE SPORTS REPORTER/PHOTOGRAPHER FOR THE LOCAL WEEKLY NEWSPAPER TRIES TO PHOTOGRAPH THE SCENE BUT IS PICKED UP AND BODY-SLAMMED TO THE GROUND. HIS CAMERA AND NOTE PAD ARE CONFISCATED. THE BUSES, "UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT - DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE" STENCILED ON THE SIDE, PULL OUT OF THE PARKING LOT, AS FEDERAL AGENTS AND NATIONAL GUARDSMEN WITH FIXED BAYONETS KEEP ANGRY TOWNSPEOPLE BACK. ARMY TANKS CAN BE SEEN IN THE BACKGROUND. HELICOPTERS HOVER OVERHEAD, ILLUMINATING THE AREA WITH THEIR POWERFUL LIGHTS.
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(Above) Ben Schwartzwalder as a HS player in Huntington,
WV; (Rt) Major Floyd Schwartzwalder, 82nd Airborne, World War II;
(Far Rt) Head Coach Floyd "Ben" Schwatzwalder at Syracuse
University, 1971
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In his senior year
of high school in Plainfield, New Jersey, Milt Campbell scored 23 touchdowns
for his unbeaten football team, won two state titles in swimming
and three in track, and that summer, at 18, won a silver medal
in the decathlon in the 1952 Olympics, held in Helsinki,
Finland. Four years later, in Melbourne, Australia, he won the
gold medal in the Olympic decathlon, setting an Olympic record
while defeating fellow American Rafer Johnson. In the interim he
attended Indiana University, where he played football and
competed in track, winning an NCAA title in the 120 high
hurdles. In May, 1957, he tied the world record in the event,
with a time of 13.4. Following his amateur track career (they
really were amateurs then), he played pro football briefly with
the Cleveland Browns and the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL. He
was a national-class competitor in judo. He is a member of the
Indiana University Hall of Fame. In 1992 he was voted into the
Olympics Hall of Fame. He is the only person to belong to both
the Swimming and Track Halls of Fame. He was named New Jersey
Athlete of the Century. A Sports Illustrated article on him was
titled "The Best Athlete You Never Heard Of". Congratulations to Adam Wesoloski of dePere,
Wisconsin - only coach to identify him
Amazing what a little negative motivation will do. When Washington State basketball coach Paul Graham was an assistant to Dave Bliss at SMU, back in the early 1980's, Coach Bliss invited him to go golfing at a nice Dallas country club. Unfortunately, Coach Graham had never so much as picked up a golf club before. You can imagine what happened - he wound up providing a lot of laughs for the other three guys in the foursome. Stung, Coach Graham went out and got himself some clubs and began to practice obsessively: he put up a net in his backyard and got up at 5 every morning to hit balls into it; he went home for lunch every day and hit balls into it; he came home after work and, until well after dark, hit balls into it. Every chance he got, he went to the driving range, where he hit balls by the hour. "All I could think about was those people laughing at me," he told Ken Goe of the Portland Oregonian. Amazingly, the next time they played, he beat the boss by three strokes. "You've been practicing," Coach Bliss observed. Answered Coach Graham, "Coach, you'll never laugh at me again." (You might tell your kids this story as an example of what a real competitor does after failing at something.)
An interesting thing to contemplate at graduation time... How can a school system with 30,000 students, almost half of them eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, only 60 per cent of them in the same school they started the school year in, a system far more racially diverse than the American population at large, consistently produce results comparable to those of the best school systems in the nation? If its scores were to be compared with those posted by states, this system's 8th-graders would finish second only to Connecticut in the writing portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), considered the most significant of such tests; they would finish fourth in reading. A full 80 per cent of its high school graduates go on to college, compared with 67% nationally. Nationwide, while only 10 per cent of free or reduced-price lunch kids achieve writing proficiency, in this system, it's 35 per cent, not far below the 40 per cent achievement of their better-off peers. The 26% scores achieved by black students and 32 per cent by Hispanic students far exceed their figures nationwide of 10 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively. Where is this miracle school system, anyhow, and what is it doing right? To begin with, its schools are spread all over the country. All over the world, in fact. It's the network of base schools run by the Pentagon for the children of military personnel who live on-base. Originally set up overseas to provide for the education of American personnel serving in Europe after World War II, base schools were also established in the formerly-segregated South to provide integrated schools for soldiers' kids. There are now 71 such schools in the US, and 153 overseas. Why are they so successful? Well, money could be part of the answer. With a budget provided by the Department of Defense, they do receive about $7,700 per student per year, roughly 25 per cent more than most US public schools. That helps, but it has yet to be proven anywhere that more money automatically produces better results. Teachers, a high percentage of whom have graduate degrees, are well -paid, and schools are well-equipped. But there's a lot more to it than that. First of all, there are parent volunteers. Lots of them. And many of them are males, given time off for the purpose - an hour a week here, a half-day a month there - by their commanders. And there are fathers at home. A high percentage of the base kids live in two-parent homes, which, although it is not politically correct nowadays to say so, does correlate highly with better academic achievement. William Raspberry, columnist for the Washington Post, suggests another major reason: unlike far too many poor and minority people in the civilian world who tend to believe that life is unfair - that "breaks are haphazardly distributed," and race is "a near-insuperable barrier to success" - these kids' parents believe that they can succeed through their own efforts. They are living proof of it, and they pass their beliefs on to their kids. And then there is the problem of kids moving from school to school. Unlike civilian schools, which often do little more than wring their hands at having to educate transient kids, base schools deal with parents' frequent relocation by first of all being aware of the problem: many of the teachers are wives of soldiers, and many were themselves "Army brats," familiar with growing up on the move. They take special steps to alleviate the stress of a kid's adjusting to a new school, and they stay in touch with kids who move away. Additionally, moving from school to school within the system is made easier by an element of common sense often missing in more "progressive" public schools: since 1994, all Pentagon schools have shared the same curriculum. (The five high schools in one district near where I live have five separate and distinct class schedules, five separate "menus" of class offerings, and five different sets of graduation requirements.) But here, in my opinion, is the biggie: discipline. Not only are these kids likely to come from families that repect and live with discipline, but from all reports, the schools are able to establish and uphold standards of conduct rarely found on the outside. Not only do they demand discipline - they get it. That's because they have a hammer that would be the envy of any public school: if a soldier's kid misbehaves, or if the soldier ignores a school's requests for a conference, the school can contact his commanding officer. From there, at a minimum the parent will get a chewing-out; at the extreme, he and his family can be evicted from base housing - meaning that junior will find himself in the local public school. One soldier received a reprimand when his kid joined a gang; when the young fellow's behavior didn't improve, the family was kicked off the base. Coaches will like this: after a mother insulted a cafeteria worker, her soldier-husband was informed by his commanding officer that his family's conduct was his responsibiliy, and that without an apology from the mother and an assurance that there would be no further incidents, the family could start packing. (I don't even know whether any of these schools have football teams, but if they do, I somehow doubt that there are too many parents in the coach's face after a game.)
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As kids growing up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, we would occasionally see punch-drunk ex-fighters walking down the street, throwing punches at the air, lost in their own world as they sparred with God-knows-who. Those being less sensitive times, we laughed, and joked about people being "punchy." It was routine to say that a guy acted as if he'd "taken one too many punches." If he were an ex-football player who acted a little punchy, we'd say he acted as if he'd "walked out of one too many huddles." Reporters, now a very sensitive lot (at least until it comes time to make fun of Christians and Republicans), used to get a lot of chuckles writing that former President Ford, who had once captained Michigan's football team, had "played too much football without a helmet." Even now, in football, it is fairly common to make light of a head injury by saying that a player has "had his bell rung." Truth is, it's no laughing matter, as superstar athletes Steve Young, Troy Aikman and Eric Lindros will attest. Each has suffered numerous concussions. And if each seems to be growing increasingly concussion-prone, that's because he is. Neurologists say that once a person has suffered a concussion, he is four times as likely to suffer another one. Furthermore, the more concussions a person sustains, the less it takes to cause another one, and the longer it takes to recover from one. We now know - at least, we should know - that the old myth that it was all right to put a player back into a game - even after being knocked cold - so long as he could tell you how many fingers you held up is just that - a myth. The fact that a player may now be thinking clearly is no assurance that a fresh brain injury has not occured. The real danger in putting that player back in is that a second concussion, suffered before he has fully recovered from the first one, can lead to what is called second impact syndrome, which can result in permanent brain damage or even death. The American Academy of Neurology has established guidelines for coaches, classifying concussions into three grades, based on their severity. In the most severe grade, the athlete is out cold for a prolonged period of time. But any time an athlete who has "had his bell rung" loses consciousness, no matter how briefly, or experiences symptoms such as headache, amnesia, blurred vision or nausea that don't go away within 15 minutes, the academy recommends he be kept out of competition until there have been no signs of any symptoms for at least a week.
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It was heartening to learn that there are still plenty of football people who know who Tom Harmon was - and I don't mean as Mark Harmon's dad. Old Number 98 was truly the All-American boy. You really ought to find out more about him, and I've found the perfect place to go do it: The Detroit News has put together a wonderful photo album of all-time Michigan Wolverine great Tom Harmon. Ray Lewis is out and so is John Rocker. Lewis, much to the relief of Baltimore management and fans, is out of the dock, and free to return to the green playing fields of the NFL. I heard a Ravens' teammate mention the word "vindication," but that is not exactly true. Lewis copped a plea, proving that just as the police on the street are often outgunned by gangs with superior firepower, so are the people's lawyers - the prosecution - outmanned and outgunned by the lawyers these celebrities can afford (Can you say O.J?). Mr. Lewis agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge - considerably lesser - than murder, in return for his testimony against a couple of his riding buddies. For his sin, reduced by the court from mortal to venial, he has received two years' probation. He is now free to return to being the "good family man" he was initially portrayed as, before videotape proved otherwise, and presumably his probation will not prevent him from attending next year's Super Bowl festivities in his full-length white fur coat. Rocker is also out. Of the major leagues, that is. For the time being, anyhow. Thanks to a lot of well-meaning advisors, he seemed to be keeping his mouth shut on his way to a sort of redemption (hey, Marv Albert's back, isn't he?), but now he may have totally blown it by coming close to doing what baseball players from time immemorial have wanted to do - punch out a sportswriter. We are told that in a dark, lonely stadium tunnel (Okay, okay. I made up the dark and lonely business. But it was a stadium tunnel.) he came upon the very Sports Illustrated reporter who wrote the story that got him in trouble in the first place. Angry words were supposedly exchanged (actually, it doesn't sound like it was much of an "exchange" in the strictest sense of the word, since evidently Rocker got in most of the words), something on the order of, "This isn't over between us," and "Do you know what I can do to you?" (I'm guessing he didn't mean "strike you out with men on base," but who knows?) Rocker even turned his cap around backwards, the better to get - literally - in the reporter's face. (Although it is possible that after his diversity training, he was merely going hip-hop on us, just one more step in his rehabilitation.) Anyhow, Rocker has now been banished to the minors, and our Sports Illustrated guy can breathe a little easier. That was a close call there in that tunnel. That was scary. What if it had been Ray Lewis?
At least now we know why the Redskins recently announced they'd have to charge people $10 a pop to watch pre-season practice. And $10 a car to park. And why they'll probably be passing the hat at those practices. They had to come up with $8 million to snare the Great Deion Sanders. An $8 million signing bonus! (I swear I heard him say, after he signed, "I don't play for the money." Right. And the check's in the mail.)
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Today is the 56th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Northern Europe - "the day," as Cornelius Ryan wrote in his 1959 book, "The Longest Day," "the battle began that ended Hitler's insane gamble to dominate the world." Sorry, but it is impossible for me to imagine large numbers of the "Why me?" Americans of today doing the incredible things that young Americans, Canadians and British unquestioningly did on that day - in that war - because somebody had to do them. It is because of his role in masterminding the so-called D-Day Invasion, among other things, that Dwight D. Eisenhower is high on my list of Greatest Americans. Any football coach who has ever had to get a team ready for the opening game will identify immediately with General Eisenhower and the problems he faced in coordinating all the various factors - manpower, transportation, supplies, intelligence, weather - with a deadline, trying to keep a lid of semi-secrecy on the largest massing of armed forces the world has ever seen, and all the while having to massage the competing egoes of people on his own staff. Counselor alert. If the place where you live is anything like the Pacific Northwest, any time something scary happens in or near a school, they bus in the counselors to talk to the kiddies. In fact, that's the first thing the school muckety-mucks let the public know at such times, reassuring us that they are doing everything they possibly can to limit collateral damage. Now, I know some of you are counselors, but without trying to minimize your importance or your usefulness, I do think that there are limits to what you can - or should - do, and I do find it somewhat ironic that the secular humanists of education have removed any signs of religion and clergy but have still found it necessary to provide something - counselors - in their place. I also think that busing in the counselors at the slightest provocation - like when a dog nearly gets hit by a car in front of the school - either implies that our kids can't deal with tough times, or goes even further in helping reinforce in them the belief that they can't tough it out. And shouldn't be expected to. (Imagine them landing at Normandy.) Now, just to the southwest of me, across the Columbia, is Portland, Oregon, which runs neck-and-neck with San Francisco for touchy-feely capital of the Free World. There is only thing that otherwise laid-back Portlanders allow themselves to become passionate about - the Portland Trail Blazers. And their Trail Blazers went and - sniff - blew a 15-point fourth-quarter lead in the seventh game of the NBA West finals Sunday. They just knew their Blazers would win. Their disc jockeys and TV sports guys as good as guaranteed it. You talk about traumatic. This calls for emergency action. Surely President Clinton could fly in to reassure the residents of the Rose City that everything is going to be all right. And that he is calling on Congress to put aside its partisan differences and provide $5 billion to fly in counselors from around the country. To tell the children - er, Blazers' fans - that this, too, shall pass. SENDING IN THE PLAYS - PART III - The legendary and innovative Paul Brown, whose Cleveland Browns were the best team in football from the mid-1940's through the 1950's, had this to say on the subject of his then-radical idea of calling plays from the sideline, sending them in to the quarterback by way of "messenger guards" - "After every play we knew exactly why it had succeeded or failed and if it remained viable for our game plan. A quarterback not seeing all this might abandon an unsuccessful play when only a few adjustments might be needed to make it work, another reason why I preferred to call the plays. I knew just how little a quarterback saw of the overall defensive action once he handed off the ball or was buried by a tackler. In our final game in 1959 in Philadelphia we had a first down on the Eagles' five-yard line. The play called for Jim Brown to run up the middle, but he was stopped for no gain. In our coaches' booth, Fritz Heisler and Howard Brinker noted that our quarterback, Milt Plum, had not called the Eagles' defense properly, and they told us to use the same play, but to tell Plum to check the defense. He did so the second time, which changed the blocking patterns, and Jim ran into the end zone without being touched. Another quarterback, calling his own plays, probably would have given up on that one." From "PB: The Paul Brown Story" by Paul Brown with Jack Clary , 1979, Signet Books (Bear in mind that Coach Brown was considered radical and out on the edge - and not necessarily good for the game - because of his many innovations, including calling the plays for his quarterback. Today, pro coaches wouldn't even consider allowing their quarterbacks to call the plays, but Brown's system was derided - by coaches, fans, sportwriters and, of course, quarterbacks - because it took the initiative away from the quarterback, who, it was then commonly believed, had a "better feel for the game.") I am somewhat familiar with Washougal, Washington High School, having coached its football team. Washougal High has just gone through the throes of replacing principal Ed Fitts, who announced his retirement earlier this year. The field of candidates to replace Ed, a former football coach himself and a great guy, was first narrowed down to six, then to two, one of them an "outsider," and the other the current assistant principal. The job was finally offered to the outsider, a person with impressive credentials. But three of next year's seniors, who had attended a "Meet the Candidates" night held by the school board and then took exception the board's selection, circulated a petition signed by more than half the school's student body, asking the board to reconsider. At the same time, a similar petition was submitted to the board by 14 teachers. The board held firm, but good luck to the new principal working with people like that. (The assistant principal, who denied any involvement in the petitions, was no doubt disappointed, and told the local paper she wasn't sure whether she'd stay on to assist the new principal.) What really got my attention as I read the newspaper article was a comment by one of the student petitioners. He told the newspaper that there should have been student input in the decision, because "We're the final customers." Time out. Uh, actually fella, as long as you're going to use the business model, let me clear something up: students are not the "final customers." Neither, although you'd never know it from the way administrators suck up to them, are their parents. Customers, by definition, are purchasors - those who pay for the product or service. That would mean, then, that the customers of public schools are the taxpayers, the ones who pay for the product. It would be helpful to all concerned if educators would try to remember that occasionally. (Parents, of course, to the extent that they are taxpayers, too, are among the customers, but by no means the only ones.) The students, to carry the analogy further, are the product that the taxpayers are paying for. Somehow, I don't see the people at General Motors, who do care a lot about what customers think, asking the cars for their input. "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess (generous gifts) out of the public treasury." Alexander Tytler, Scottish historian.
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SENDING IN THE PLAYS - PART III - The legendary and innovative Paul Brown, whose Cleveland Browns were the best team in football from the mid-1940's through the 1950's, had this to say on the subject of his then-radical idea of calling plays from the sideline, sending them in to the quarterback by way of "messenger guards" - "Contrary to common knowledge, I did not call every play on my own - in fact, the key to this system was the information that came from our assistant coaches in the press box and in the end zone. When a play was sent in, everyone knew what it was and what to look for. For example, if we sent in a trap play, the end coach watched the tight end's block on a linebacker; the guard coach watched the guard's trap block, the coach in the end zone looked at the line spacing and double-team block to see if they were effective, and I watched the point of attack to judgs that play's effectiveness. On a pass, the line coach watched the pass blocking to see where any breakdowns occured, and why, the end and the backfield coaches watched the progress of the play and how well the quarterback followed the progression of receivers and I watched the overall pattern." From "PB: The Paul Brown Story" by Paul Brown with Jack Clary , 1979, Signet Books (Bear in mind that Coach Brown was considered radical and out on the edgeand - and not necessarily good for the game - because of his many innovations, including calling the plays for his quarterback. Today, pro coaches wouldn't even consider allowing their quarterbacks to call the plays, but Brown's system was derided - by coaches, fans, sportwriters and, of course, quarterbacks - because it took the initiative away from the quarterback, who, it was then commonly believed, had a "better feel for the game." ) Leslie Shorb graduated with her class. You may remember her. She was the sweet little innocent high school girl in Powers, Oregon who just as a prank took a post-PE shower in the boys' locker room - with five male classmates. As her punishment, she was stripped (sorry - couldn't pass up the chance) of her role as valedictorian, but she was allowed to graduate with her class. When interviewed after graduation by the news media, she seemed uncertain as to her future plans. My son-in-law, a former submariner, suggests that if (when?) the Navy finally decides to put women on submarines, it could save a whole lot of money and space it would otherwise have to devote to providing separate quarters for women if it would just recruit Leslie Shorb and others like her. It would probably make it easier to recruit guys for underwater service, too.
Don't know if you've ever heard of Anne Graham Lotz, but she is quite a woman. Quite a preacher, too. I saw her recently on a Promise Keepers video and I liked the things she had to say and the way she said them. Her daddy says she's the best preacher in the family, and that's saying something - he's the Reverend Billy Graham. Which reminds me - there is going to be a Billy Graham TV special sometime this week on a non-network channel (hard to get Christian-based shows on the major networks these days - they're so busy being "fair" and "non-judgmental" and "tolerant of diverse views.")
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More Reunion Stuff: At my recent class reunion in New Haven, I had a
chance to listen to Yale Coach Jack Siedlecki talk about Ivy League football in
general and Yale football in particular. Coach Siedlecki is at the top of his
game, having delivered, in his third year at New Haven, the turnaround he was
hired for: following a one-point loss in last season's opener, the Blue ran off
nine straight, including season-ending wins over arch-foes Princeton and
Harvard, to finish 9-1. (The year before he was hired, Yale was 1-9.) He is an
advocate of throwing the ball, pointing out that going into last year's final
game, Harvard ranked in the nation's top 10 in defense against the rush. "That's
great," he said. "But we didn't run it against them." Instead, Yale's QB Joe
Walland threw 67 times - including 53 straight in the second half - and
completed 42 for 473 yards to lead a great come-from-behind win. Coach Siedlecki
said the biggest changes that have happened recently in the Ivy League both
involve recruiting: number one, it is so tough to find kids who can meet Yale's
admissions standards and play football, too that it is essential to recruit
nationally (this year's 30 incoming freshmen represented 19 different states;
the state with the most players on this year's Yale roster is now California,
with 16); and number two, greatly affecting Yale and its "highly motivated"
alumni , is the total elimination of any alumni involvement. Coach Siedlecki was
enthusiastic about his improved ability to recruit, now that a facilities
improvement program had taken Yale's weight room from "worst to first" in the
Ivy League. He admitted that his biggest recruiting disadvantage is the negative
perception - he stressed the word "perception" - of the city of New Haven, used
extensively against Yale by its competitors. Yale sits in the middle of the
city, and New Haven, a once-proud industrial city, has gone through some hard
times. But Coach Siedlecki emphasizes that it is perception and perception only
- "If we can get good players to visit here - they'll come," he says. I asked
Coach Siedlecki his opinion of the Ivy League's refusal to take part in the
Division I-AA playoffs, and he said that the league's coaches generally are in
favor of the playoffs. But the last time the League presidents voted on the
issue, the vote was 5-3 in favor (it takes six in favor to approve). He did
point out, though, that Yale's - and presumably Harvard's - athletic director is
opposed to anything that might diminish the importance of the season-ending
Yale-Harvard game, which last year drew 53,000 to Yale Bowl. (Crowds as large as
70,000 were common in the 50's and 60's, but 53,000 at an Ivy League game now is
colossal.) Coach Siedlecki mentioned also that he is privileged to serve on the
American Football Coaches Association's ethics committee, which is called on
from time to time to deal with accusations of ethical infractions against its
own members. "One of the great things about the AFCA, " he said (and one of the
reasons, I would submit, why for the most part football coaches don't suffer
from the sleazy reputations of some of their basketball counterparts), "is that
we try to deal with things before they get to the NCAA."