Practice Plan for 5th and 6th Grade Basketball

Of all the posts I've put up over the years, the one that has drawn the most comments has been one on coaching second-grade basketball. It's not the easiest to find a practice plan -- there are books (Dave Faucher, one-time coach at Dartmouth, wrote a good book on coaching youth basketball) and videos (Sysko has some good ones), and there are many books on plays, but not necessarily any on how to run a one-hour practice. I figured I'd take this time to tell you what we do with our rec league team, a fifth and sixth grade team that practices one hour a week and plays one game on the weekend.

First, a key decision that you'll have to make is whether to run scripted plays. Last year, we did, but we had a group with a very high basketball IQ, with every kid having played for years. Even then, it was a struggle, if only because we practice one hour a week and there is little time for reinforcement. This year, we started out with running plays, but figured out that of the ten kids we have on the roster, four just don't have the experience to run the plays well. So, after five games, we decided to scrap the plays, keep the kids in a 1-4 stack, and then freelance depending on what the point guard does (I'll explain the 1-4 stack a bit later on).

Second, you probably won't have an optimal space to practice at. We're fortunate in that we have a half court of a middle-school gym, and this half-court also has baskets on each side, so that we can divide the group of kids into smaller groups for individual instruction. Most of the time we do not do that (nor does the team that practices at the same time). We tend to work with the group as one, trying to develop skills.

Third, we try to give the kids a few guiding principles to go on. Some, of course, will pick up the principles faster than others. Some have played more, some are better learners, some watch the game in addition to playing it and figure out what to do. But others show up because their parents make them, because it's something to do. Yet others don't want to show that they don't know, so they'll nod, not ask questions, and then make the wrong type of mistakes -- traveling, double-dribbling, three- and five-second violations. And, depending on their attention spans, they might make repeated mistake of this type during the season. All this comes with the rec league.

What are the basic principles? Here goes:

• Defend hard. No matter how skilled or unskilled a kid is with the ball, each kid has the ability to stay with the man he is assigned, guard him tightly, put a hand in his face, deflect the ball way. At this level, teams will have a chance in each game if they defend vigorously (teaching "switching" or "help" defense is something you'll need to do at some point, too).
  


• Play under control. Or, to quote John Wooden, "be quick, but don't hurry." Translated, play under control, don't force things, and take what's given to you. Translated further, don't try to throw a chest pass through the lane, pick up your dribble in the corner (where the baseline and sideline act as additional defenders) and don't try to dribble between two defenders.



• Use space well. Meaning, don't run right next to a fellow offensive player, unless a) to set a screen under the right circumstances (but not when the teammate has stopped dribbling!) or b) to take a handoff from a teammate who has stopped dribbling.



• Finish a play well. The teams who insist upon drilling on plays end up missing a lot of shots because the kids don't practice shooting. Teach the kids not to shoot when under the basket (as the basket poses an additional defender) and to take a good angle to the basket to enable them to use the backboard (you'd be surprised as to how many kids go straight at the basket, toss up a prayer and have it bounce out or miss totally).
  

There are probably others, but remember, if you have one hour per week, you are limited in what you can convey and teach. With that principle in mind, try to think of Mr. Miyagi in the original Karate Kid movie and create drills with enough repetition that the kids might just deep down remember to draw on one of them in a game. So, with that in mind, we separate our practices into 3 twenty-minute sessions, as follows:

Part I

• Talk with the kids about what you're trying to accomplish. Use "we" and not "you," remind them that everyone can make a contribution beyond scoring points, emphasize a few themes, encourage questions. Even ask whether you're being clear, whether something is working. It's okay not to know everything and to show them that you might be wrong on occasion. Take a few minutes for this.



• Three-man weave (sideways on your half of the court). The kids absolutely love this drill. The basic principle, as I learned from my junior high school's gym teacher, is "behind the man I pass it to and head down court." You probably can find this drill on YouTube, but it involves movement, precision passing and finishing. It also helps the kids get loose and get into better shape. I usually run this for five minutes.



• Two-on-none passing drill. (Four minutes). Here you have two lines that start under the basket, and they make quick chest passes to each other, halting between the top of the key and half court, then they do the same back toward the basket, with one player throwing a bounce pass to the other at the and for a layup. This helps them move quickly, make good decisions, and finish.
  


• Two-on-one drill. (Four minutes). We have found that scrimmaging or playing two-on-two or three-on-three ends up having the kids in a major defensive scrum that doesn't yield many baskets. So, we have the kids form two layup-like lines near where the key starts, and they try to get by the defender with crisp movement and passing (we switch the defender every 5 plays or so). The goal is to work a lopsided advantage and finish well. This drill also deals with too much unselfishness, because sometimes you'll find that kids are so unselfish that the last pass is under the basket, goes out of bounds. We also have the defender lay back or charge upon our instruction, to make the kids think.



• Jab Step Drill. (5 minutes). You might need to search this on Google or YouTube, but this drill involves a ballhandler with a defender up close on him. The ballhandler then establishes a pivot foot and jabs his foot in one direction, then the other, trying to get the defender to bite and move in the opposite way of where he wants to put the ball on the floor and then try to make a basket. We've had great contests of will, some good finishes and a lot of fun. You never know who can smoke who and who can defend. It's a great drill to get the kids more confident in their abilities both to handle the ball and be an up-close defender.

Break

Part II

• Shoot off the Blocks. (5 minutes) Both sides of the lane have a square about 5 feet from the basket. We line 5 kids on a diagonal (45-degree angle) from the blocks and have them shoot off the backboard from both sides, trying to get them so focus on finishing, to speed up the line and to make shots. The importance of this drill? Many teams cannot finish. We've taught the weakest players to shoot using this drill, and some of the best athletes figure out that using the backboard makes sense. Interestingly, our less athletic teams fare better at this drill than the most athletic teams. At one point in practice this year, our kids hit 18 of 20 shots. Good stuff. Each line has 1 basketball.


• "Princeton" shooting drill. (5 minutes). We saw Princeton use this drill before a game, and we adopted it. Basically, you have two horizontal lines, one starting on each side of the lane, both about 8-10 feet from the basket. The kids on left dash to the center of the lane, and the kids on the right hit them with a chest pass. The receiver then shoots it. We teach the "LEEF" principle (push with your Legs, Eyes just slightly beyond the front of the rim, Elbow beneath the ball and Follow through). Using this drill, the kids learn to catch and shoot and adopt a shooting philosophy (shoot it slightly beyond the front of the rim). We use two balls in this drill.


• Chase drill. (5 minutes). We have two "layup" lines, one on the right near the top of the key, one a few feet to the left of the left lane line between halfcourt and the top of the key. We give the ball to the player in the right line, and then yell "go." The kid in the left lane "chases" the player with the ball, in order to pressure him. The goal is for the kid in the right line to make the basket under pressure.

Break

Part III

• Rebounding drill. (5 minutes). There are two lines. One is under the basket, the other at about 12 feet (3 feet before the foul line). The player in the lane under the basket throws a chest pass to the player in the other line, who then takes a shot. The passer "rushes" the shooter, but is instructed not to try to block the shot. The two players are supposed to jostle for the rebound, trying to box each other out.


• Switching drill (3 minutes). One coach plays the role of a player near the low post. The other coach plays the role of the defender of the point guard. There are two lines -- the point guards near the top of the key, and then the low-post defenders. We let the point guard blow by his defender, and then the low-post defender is supposed to dash before the point guard to cover him. Not a very complicated drill, but it's important to make sure the kids keep their heads on a swivel.


• Situational Matters (10 minutes). We'll typically work on an inbounds play and showing kids some basic concepts out of our 1-4 stack offense (two wings, two posts and a point guard). We try to work with the kids on passing and screening, passing and moving and screening and moving. This isn't easy; some kids get it, some don't, but it's the best we can do in a short time. Even if you don't run plays, you must show the kids what to do when they do not have the ball. After this, we wrap up practice.

There are more drills that you can run. You can have all sorts of dribbling drills (dribbling the length of the floor with the good hand and then back with the bad, have the kids shout out the number of fingers you put up (so that they keep their heads up when dribbling), play dribble "tag" -- dribbling the ball with one hand while trying to steal their "tag" partner's ball with the other) and passing drills (basics of overhead passes and bounce passes). We also on occasion run pick-and-roll, give-and-go and handoff drills.

We tend to review the prior week's game closely and then figure out what we need to work on. Each week, it's something different, whether it's setting a high screen, fundamentals of a defensive stance, figuring out what the opponent's "bad" hand is and forcing him in that direction, foul shooting, something. The key thing is to be organized, make it fun and plan every precious minute. The kids will appreciate the discipline, they will try to keep up with each other, and they will see themselves getting better.

Have fun!

The Toll That Football Takes

The year-end Sports Illustrated piece on the collective health of the Cincinnati Bengals 25 years after their good 1986 season is telling. Peter King and some colleagues talked to almost the entire roster of players. Most deal with significant health issues. Most would do it all over again. Interestingly, the toughest defender of the bunch, strong safety David Fulcher, would not.

It's a great piece. Read it.

Today, circumstances are different. The playing surfaces are more forgiving, the training methods better, the allowed hitting in practice more infrequent. But the players are bigger and faster, and the training methods that are better not only aid in recovery but in delivering an extra wallop when making a hit. Regardless of generational differences, the article confirms what we all know -- that football is a collision sport that takes its toll. You can decide, upon reading the article, whether it's worth it.

More Bad News Out of Yale: The Story Behind a Collapsed Candidacy for a Rhodes Scholarship

Read this and then contemplate it.

Who are the real heroes?

What can you believe any more?

A QB allegedly turned town a Rhodes interview to play in the "Game" against Harvard. Gets national coverage. A possible testimony to what's right and pure about college athletics.

Except. . . that he was yanked as a Rhodes candidate ostensibly before he would have had the chance to interview. For what's it's worth, he had a disciplinary record -- both at Yale and at the university from which he transferred -- and because of football either went to three high schools in four years or four in three years.

Role model?

Yale QB. Great grade-point average. Choosing teammates over fame.

Sounded great, didn't it?

But it was too good to be true, it seems.

What are we supposed to believe anymore?

An Afternoon at a Volleyball Match

I'm sure that each of us prefer one or the other, depending on whether we have a team that we're rooting for, whether we know someone involved with the team and, most importantly, whether our team wins or loses the game. Clearly, you want your team, your friends, your kids, your kids' friends and your friends' kids to give a good effort and to win. That's why they keep score.

There are levels to this of course. You want your professional teams to win championships. You want your favorite college teams to do the same, or, at a minimum, beat the rivals and those over whom you want bragging rights or, perhaps better, don't want to hear bragging from. You want your kids' teams to win, yes, but you want your kids to play on the right teams for their level of ability so that they can get the level of instruction, playing time and involvement that they seek. As well as good coaches and good kids, because when it's all said and done, if the teammates aren't good kids, the experience can be dreadful.

Yesterday, I witnessed a very good volleyball match between two teams that gave it their all. My daughter happened to be on one of them, and her team, while playing hard and competing reasonably well, loses a lot more than it wins. Yet, the girls play hard, they are spirited, they support one another, and when you see them before a game you cannot tell that they lose more than they win. That's a tribute to their coach, their captains, and the girls themselves.

They were playing a team that had beaten them twice before, once in three straight games on the road, and then in their own gym in four games. They found themselves short a captain and a few upperclassmen as they ventured on the road to play this rival for a third time.

To call the opponents' gym a "band box" would be an understatement, as a shoe box would be more like it. There was barely any room on the sidelines for parents to sit, and the floor itself was very hard, not the most conducive to diving and sliding. At any rate, the teams battled mightily. The hosts got off to a quick start and won game 1, while the visitors rebounded nicely and won game 2 by a nice margin. The hosts then took game 3, and right then I figured that my daughter's team would battle gamely, lose a close game, lose the match 3 games to 1 and call it a day. That's been their modus operandi -- they simply have enough talent to go so far.

Yesterday was different. It was as though after the third game the bells in the song from Rocky "Go the Distance" started chiming, and the group of girls on the floor looked particularly game. They didn't look resigned, they looked pretty relaxed with a tinge of a sense of purpose that indicated that perhaps they had one more run in them yet. The hosts also sensed the kill, and they upped their intensity. Yes, there were some bad serves and unforced errors that gave the other team points, but by and large there were good points, hard fought. For my daughter's team, girls who had trouble serving served better, diggers dug with fewer mis-hits, hitters kept the ball inside the lines and blockers blocked pretty well. The result was a solid victory in Game 4, which meant that they'd have to play a 15-point Game 5 to decide the match.

The referee held a coin flip, which the hosts won. They promptly chose the side they wanted over serving, and the referee told me it was because the team that won each game took the side that the hosts just took. I smiled. The way I figured it, my daughter's team got to a Game 5, not a frequent occurrence. In certain ways, the pressure was on them to overcome prior odds and win. In other ways, the pressure was on the hosts not to lose to a team in their own gym that they had beaten twice before.

The action was intense, and the hosts pulled ahead 11-8. It looked somewhat bleak for my daughter's team, but then they rallied to tie it and ultimately go ahead, 14-13. They needed one more point and were serving. They got a good serve, but the other team made a few good hits and won the point. Tied at 14.

The hosts' served, and there was a vigorous back and forth that led to a set for the outside hitter of the hosts, perhaps the most talented player on the floor. She might be about 5'6", but she has hops, and up she went, launch a cannon shot between two of the visitors' back line. There was no way they could return it, except. . .

it was out. By two feet, not even close. 15-14 visitors, serving for the match.

Again.

In a loud, crowded gym.

Against a team that beat them handily about a month ago, less handily several weeks ago, and without a few regulars.

The serve was in. The hosts returned it, and the visitors answered, placing a ball near the feet of a host player who just couldn't get to it.

The visitors -- my daughter's team -- won!

For the first time in a long time.

In the fifth game. On the road. In a crowded gym.

It was something to behold. A barnburner of a game. In a tight space, with young kids who gave it their all and who played their hearts out.

It wasn't the NBA, the NFL, the BCS championship game or anything close.

What it was was a hard-fought contest between two well-coached teams who gave a great effort and got a lot out of their abilities. What it also was was a victory by a team against the odds, and you seldom see that. When you do, it's pretty satisfying at many levels, a real treat.

I had texted my wife with updates all afternoon, and she offered that I really built the excitement because of the way the match unfolded. I am sure that her exclamation after my report of the final point was louder than mine, as I had developed a friendly relationship with a dad from the host team who was sitting next to me. And besides, why act like you hadn't been there before, like winning was new or rare?

Games like these are the most rewarding. Sure, part of it is because you know the kids. But perhaps a bigger part of it is that these kids play for their schools, each other and for the love of the sport -- and that's it.

And it's more than plenty.

It's pure gold.

What Happened Between Ryan Madson and the Phillies

Madson's agent, Scott Boras, says that the Phillies and Madson had a deal and then the Phillies decided to sign someone else.

Ruben Amaro, Jr., the Phillies' GM, sharply disagrees but doesn't want to get into a public dispute with Boras.

Whom do you believe?

The story I heard was that Madson and the Phillies had agreed in principle on a four-year, $44 million deal and then it got stuck on the desk of Phillies' owner David Montgomery. Then, a few days later, voila, the Phillies inked Red Sox' closer Jonathan Papelbon to a 4-year, $50 million deal. That story would suggest that the Phillies had told agents for both players that they would go hard after both and try to sign them fast, so that they both should be ready to deal. What the Phillies didn't say, logic suggests, is that they wanted Papelbon all along and that either a) his agent would respond quickly or b) they would use Madson's faster response to prompt a decision from Papelbon or settle with Madson. And then they signed Papelbon (and perhaps significantly overpaid for him given that no other team gave Madson a huge deal, which means that in all likelihood there might not have been serious competition for Papelbon, either). Of course, this is plausible if you believe the initial report that the deal got stuck on Montgomery's desk -- and that's where things get murky.

To me, Boras's public statement is logical, and the Phillies' denial is logical perhaps if only to save face, because Boras's explanation hints that the Phillies used Madson to get Papelbon, and, while players use one team to leverage another all the time, the Phillies' management doesn't want to look bad to the players on the team and therefore will deny what Boras says and perhaps get away with the denial because Boras is unpopular in Philadelphia. But, there's another equally plausible explanation.

Then again, I'm an Amaro fan, so I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt. It just may be that Boras didn't have a deal but is saying what he's saying to save face before his player (Madson), his other players (many) and potential future clients. Why is that logical? Because if Madson signed with the Phillies, he would have gotten a 4-year, $44 million deal. Now he'll get a 1-year, $8.5 million deal, and that looks very bad if you are an agent.

So what really happened? That's a good question.

And one that will be forgotten pretty quickly.

Pitchers and catchers report in 5 weeks.

On Bill O'Brien's Hiring at Penn State

Penn State alums have nothing to complain about insofar as who the powers that be chose to follow Joe Paterno as head football coach. The powers that be so screwed up any meaningful succession process because of the alums idolatry about Paterno that they just need to embrace who they got, period, and move on.

They resisted any meaningful call for a decent succession plan, going so far as to get nasty to anyone who suggested otherwise, even on these pages (where I have touched upon this point for years). And while the passage of time has proven that Jerry Sandusky was far from fit, a toxic cocktail of nepotism (in the form of the overemphasis on Jay Paterno's role, thus impeding any succession planning process), pushing out one possible candidate years ago (Fran Ganter, who might not have been perfect but who did all the right things), Paterno's stubbornness on the question and the pretentious fawning of alums over all things Paterno led to the combustion of the Penn State program and its "we're better than you" image. So, when you have a disaster on your hands, you do the best you can.

By enabling the Paterno aura beyond reason, the powers that be created a situation where the most viable of candidates wouldn't want to enter because how could they "replace" Joe Paterno (as it turns out, given what we believe has happened, that might be much easier to do than anyone thought). By waiting this long, they missed out on some good candidates. By having the scandal on their hands, many people who otherwise would have jumped at the chance probably passed. Say goodbye to Kirk Ferentz, Urban Meyer, James Franklin, Gary Patterson, Chris Petersen, Al Golden and others. So, it's not as though Penn State had its pick, which is a shame, because years ago it would have. What it was left with was a group of risers who might be great be who offer less certainty than an "A" list that would have emerged had those who ran Penn State at the time run it well and not permitted anyone to become bigger than the institution.

Enter Bill O'Brien. Symmetrically ironic in that he went to the same school that Joe Paterno did, Brown University. Interesting in that he's the offensive coordinator for one of the best coaches in the history of the NFL, Bill Belichick. But a question mark because none of Romeo Crennel, Charlie Weis, Eric Mangini or Josh McDaniels has succeeded as a head coach. And that makes the selection of O'Brien the triumph of hope over experience. At least for now.

And, to a degree, it shows how deep the Penn State administration had to dig to find the right candidate. To LaVar Arrington, Brandon Short and those who are upset, they should ask themselves why they are upset. Are they angry because someone shattered their myth? And, if that's the case, are they angry with themselves for believing in the myth so deeply, perhaps more so than their own religion or self-worth? Are they angry with the guy who sold them the myth? That would make sense. And are they hurting? Of course. They, like the rest of the Penn State faithful, should reflect as to why this happened, why they let any one person have such a disproportionate emphasis on their extracurricular activities and self-esteem, and why their institution -- which should be in charge first and foremost of the betterment of society and the individuals who go there, individually and as a whole -- let everyone down?

But they should not be angry at those who were left to pick up the pieces, to make some sense out of everything and to move the institution forward. When you look at all the problems in the world today, this is a relatively high-class one. We're not talking about avoiding a nuclear war, the overthrow of a government, a plague, massive hunger or double-digit unemployment. We're talking about a state university's football program, and that's all that it is, ever was, or should be. So to get all lathered up about the selection of Bill O'Brien as opposed to someone who has Penn State somewhere in his pedigree doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Because that culture was flawed.

Bill O'Brien will try to play nice, and he'll say all the right things. He'll be diplomatic with those with whom he has to be, but if he's smart he'll try to put his own image on things quickly. He'll use the intellect that gained him admission to Brown in the first place and the passion that he's demonstrated on the sidelines to create a program that not only talks about how good it is, but that really is good and stands up where it counts. I don't have any qualms with Arrington or Short -- they are hurting and like the rest of us lost something late last year -- but O'Brien cannot rebuild a program by worrying about the feelings of anyone with a history with the program.

No sir. Bill O'Brien must create a vision and lead toward it. It shouldn't be about a P.R. machine, about image building and defending, the building of statues or anything else.

It should be about the values that we all hold dear and that led to the ripping asunder of the same institution that disappointed everyone so completely because in the end, it forgot those values and didn't live them.

O'Brien may or may not be the right choice, but it doesn't really matter now. He is the choice, he deserves the full support of all Penn State faithful, and he should be given every chance to succeed. Comparisons to his predecessor might be inevitable, but they for right now are very much unwarranted.

The quicker Penn State moves forward into the next chapter of its football history, the better.

It's time for the alums to end their mourning period. What happened was terrible.

Let a new chapter begin.

What Jeffrey Lurie Really Said

His press conference was a mixed bag, but listening closely, one concept keeps coming back to me -- he's the best coach for us to win a championship next year. That's what Lurie said, so let's consider the comment.

First, if you agree with the premise that this team can win a championship next year, then logically it might follow that Reid knows the personnel the best and, therefore, is best situated to continue with his team and win a championship.

Second, if you agree with the premise that over the past couple of years the Eagles needed to shift gears, get younger and re-tool, you might be more patient with Reid than others because at some point the team did need to get younger. But that doesn't mean that you agree with the next premise, that the re-tooled team is in a position to win a championship.

Third, if you listened closely, does Reid pretty much have an ultimatum -- push the rock up to the top of the hill or leave town?

I don't agree that this team can win a championship. The team lacks linebacking, had iffy safety play, has some holes in its offensive line, needs a seasoned defensive coordinator and more consistent play from its quarterback, who, yes, must learn how to slide to protect the team's investment. He also must learn how to play in the pocket more, because it's hard to name a QB who won a Super Bowl by not staying in the pocket. One does not exist. The team does have a bunch of talent, should improve next year, but win a title? Unlikely.

I do think that in saying that he did without being very blunt, Lurie has told us that if Big Red doesn't win a title, he might be gone. Or, perhaps the impression he wanted to give off, but no fan bit. And the reason that no fan has bit is because had the Birds gone 4-12 this year, Lurie might have had no choice but to fire Reid. But the Birds went 8-8, and, well, it's tough to argue with Reid's entire body of work. Especially if you are Jeffrey Lurie. So, it stands to reason that despite this "ultimatum," were the Birds to go 11-5 next year and lose in the NFC Championship game, well, Reid might just get another 5-year deal.

So. . . tea-leaf readers might infer that Lurie gave Reid and ultimatum. Or they just might infer that Lurie is bullish that the combination of the re-tooled team, another year of experience and Reid's helmsmanship might be able to win a title next year. That's probably the most logical inference.

But not one that makes any Birds' fan happy at all.

It's Lurie's team, the fans will keep on coming back and buying merchandise and expensive beer no matter what, so Eagles' fans shouldn't expect any dramatic changes. Drama, yes, but dramatic changes at the top? Probably not.

What they can expect is a steady state of 8-8 to 11-5 finishes, perhaps an appearance in a conference championship game, etc.

But not a Super Bowl title.

Eagles' Fans Should Vote With Their Feet

They cannot fire owner Jeffrey Lurie, but they can try to make him look bad, not buy the team's merchandise, and so forth.

Lurie's announcement today that he will bring back head coach Andy Reid means that the owner has the following thoughts -- he thinks with his heart and not his head. Reid has been with the Eagles for 13 years, and Lurie is loyal to him, even though a) they haven't been to the Super Bowl in 7 years, b) Reid made a boneheaded decision in naming Juan Castillo his defensive coordinator, c) the team has only had one good linebacker during Reid's tenure and d) inking Michael Vick to a long-term deal doesn't look like a good decision now. Oh, and there's another one -- Lurie probably feels bullet proof because the demand for his tickets and merchandise is such that his fan base would probably re-up even if Joe Kuharich or Jerry Williams were coaching the team and guys like King Hill were still playing quarterback.

Ugh. Aargh.

Will this prompt the second "WTF?" headline from The Philadelphia Daily News, second only to the one that the people paper inked when Reid named Castillo his defensive coordinator after having served as the o-line coach since Bill Clinton was elected for his second term? Look, Reid is a good coach -- his record proves that. But there is a difference between someone who can manage the team to make the playoffs and someone who can win a championship. Reid has had plenty of opportunities to win a championship, and he hasn't gotten there. And look, this past season he put together a team more designed to draw headlines than to win games. The team lacked good coaching, lacked good leaders and blew 5 second-half leads. Win 2 of those 5 games and you make the playoffs. Lose all 5 and then win your last 4 and have a 5-1 record against divisional opponents and try to rationalize the season wasn't all that bad.

It was a train wreck. And it's been a series of train wrecks frequented by blind spots about positions (such as going into a season once without a punt returner and then without a fullback and almost never with linebackers who can come close to make a Pro Bowl save Jeremiah Trotter), bad time management, and, this season, almost no leadership among the players, no one holding DeSean Jackson accountable for his attitude or Michael Vick accountable for his, yes, stupid unwillingness to slide to avoid hits. I like Vick, but where is a leader who will tell him that the team needs him to avoid getting hit?

Sorry, but I just don't get it. And the only way for Eagles' fans to send Lurie a message that his head coach is the fourth best among the four major teams in the city -- is to vote with their feet. Don't buy the merchandise, don't buy the tickets, and don't go for being teased that almost is good enough. Every year, we get pumped up that "this is the year" and every year we hear sanitized nonsense about how the Eagles are improving and how it's Reid's fault when they don't and you hear Howard Eskin arrogantly dictate to us that football is complicated, we don't know the game and the Eagles obviously know more than we do. Huh?

Football is a game, it's easy to understand because it is a game, and it's not higher math, rocket science or neurosurgery. Not even close. If it were, it wouldn't have so many fans. And what the fans see is accurate -- and that is that the team was flawed, that it's head man cannot handle the dual role of coach and GM, and that under his leadership it won't go any further than say 10-6 any more, perhaps a division title and perhaps to a conference championship game. Reid has had an owner who has given him carte blanche, and he hasn't delivered.

True, I've written before that a fundamental tenet of human resources is that you shouldn't can someone without a better alternative as a replacement. That said, there must be better alternatives out there. Duke didn't hire Coach K knowing that he'd be the most successful college hoops coach ever. He was a young head coach with a career record of 1 win over .500 at Army when he got the Duke job. Dick Vermeil was the Eagles' 6th choice in the 70's when he got the job, and for a while he had the highest rating as a celebrity on Philadelphia-area commercials because of his success as a coach (okay, he didn't win a Super Bowl in Philadelphia, but he was a much more straightforward communicator).

There is another Mike Tomlin or Mike McCarthy out there. Jeffrey Lurie should have taken the time to check around, figure that out and go get the guy. 14 years ago he thought he had another Shula or Noll in Reid, but it just didn't work out that way. And it doesn't look like it's going to work out any time soon.

So, instead of change, we'll have to listen to the likes of Cullen Jenkins telling us that the defense finally jelled, despite the fact that they did so when they were 4-8 (or, put differently, garbage time for their season), that the players like Juan Castillo (sure, because if you have a coach who doesn't know what he's doing, he won't hold you as accountable as one who does), that Castillo will be back, that DeSean inexplicably won't be despite what he means to the team, that linebacking isn't all that important to their scheme, that somehow they'll figure out a way to play Nnamdi Asomugha, and that their safeties are actually pretty good. Worse yet, you'll have media types buy into the hype and tell us that they should be a favorite to win the division. The whole rap will be so saccharine that if you don't brush after listening you might just get a cavity.

Sorry to be so tough, but clarity can be offensive, and Jeffrey Lurie made it perfectly clear that somehow, after watching this regression, Andy Reid can rebound and turn the franchise around and get the team a championship. I suppose that if you tell yourself something like that enough, you'll be able to convince yourself of anything. The will not to believe is always strong, and, in Lurie's case, the will not to believe is that Lurie refuse to believe that his chosen coach cannot win a championship. That's a dangerous way of thinking, and Lurie's stubbornness not to admit what many of us believe is either courage or folly.

And most fans would argue folly.

I hope that Lurie is proven right, but I don't think that he will be.

And where will the accountability be if the linebackers stink again, the safeties can't cover, and the offensive line has holes in it?

Because we'll hear, "well, we've been working to get the team younger, and I'm looking forward to having Andy return for another year."

Huh?

Really?

WTF?

Reflections from the Winter Classic

When they announced that Philadelphia would be hosting the Winter Classic, my sixth grader offered that it might be neat to go. Well, have a partial season ticket plan to the Phillies, and, presto, I got a chance to enter a lottery to buy two tickets to the event, "won" the lottery, got two tickets underneath the cover on the third-base line that gave me an obscured view of the scoreboard (but a good view of the rink) for the same amount of money that third-row seats to the NBA Finals featuring the 76ers about 10 years ago cost (for some perspective; I was a guest at that game). My wife and I decided to surprise my son for this birthday, so when he opened a relatively light box inside was an email touting the game and a warm pair of Wigwam socks. That was about four weeks ago.


The build-up was fun, what with the alumni game and a 66 year-old Bernie Parent, who lives on a houseboat in Wildwood, NJ, strapping on the pads for the first time since perhaps Ronald Reagan was President (first term) (the team hasn't won a Stanley Cup since 1975). The coverage of that was pretty cool and set the backdrop for yesterday's game.


The powers that be postponed the game from 1 to 3 p.m., owing to weather patterns, sun angles, glare, possible sun melt and whatever combination of meteorology and outdoor ice hockey would have not blinded the players and turned the playing surface into what the average Center City street corner looks like the day after a snow storm. So, my son and I ate lunch at home, foregoing the opportunity for a quick stop at John's Roast Pork for a cheesesteak (among the best in the city and featured in, of all things, Zagat's national restaurant guide). The traffic to Citizens Bank Park was okay, and when we arrived at the stadium complex we noted how early the tailgaters got there. We parked in our usual lot, albeit a bit further from the Bank because where we normally park was full of tailgaters who seemed content hanging out in 40-degree weather in little more than a turtleneck and a $199 commemorative jersey over it drinking much cheaper beer than they would find inside.


Our contribution to the great sale of all things Flyers was the purchase of two wool hats, the one for me being relatively standard, the one for my son being the type with the flaps that go over the cheeks. As we were walking to the stadium, we started chatting with a couple who presumably was doing the same thing. The man had on a Claude Giroux jersey, and my son offered that the Flyers' star was his favorite player. To which he got this response, "That's nice to hear. We're his parents." And then we got to chatting about how Claude likes Philadelphia (loves it) and whether they've had cheesteaks (plenty of times -- remember, I'm with a 12 year-old -- and that they had been to Geno's just the other day). They ended up peeling off to go to a get-together near the Wachovia Center, and we made our way to the stadium.

My son honored me and the old Flyers by wearing, as his fourth layer atop cold-weather Under Armour, a long-sleeved Flyers t-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt the Moose DuPont #6 jersey that my father bought for me at Mitchell & Ness (well before they made the vintage jerseys) when the Flyers went to the Stanley Cup for the first time in 1974. Under those layers, it looked pretty good on him, and it was neat to see him where it. Despite the fervence of the fans and some near misses, the Flyers haven't won a Cup since 1975. It was cool to see him in this garb, even if the temperature dictated pretty quickly that he needed to don his winter jacket to stave off the cold.

The whole area was jammed, a sea of orange and black, with some New York Rangers' red and blue interspersed (Flyers' fans take note -- the average Rangers' fan spent a lot more for his tickets than you). The weather was okay to start, but got colder as the sun began to set and the winds kicked in. It was electric to a degree, and here are some observations:

1. The "experience", as it were, lacked two things that the Phillies add that would have made it a little more fun -- a) having photographers take commemorative photos of you that you can purchase on the website and b) giving out towels for the fans to wave. The former would have created revenue and keepsakes; the latter, well, a more electric environment akin to a Phillies' playoff game.

2. It's amazing how many beers people will drink in a below-freezing wind-chill factor environment.

3. The bathrooms seemed much more crowded than at any Phillies' game. Is it because the crowd is more male, or because people can go 18 times between innings, and only twice between periods?

4. People who wore only a turtleneck beneath a $199 dollar commemorative Winter Classic jersey found out how cold it can get and were cold.

5. We counted 20 different Flyers jerseys, at least from the names and numbers on the back. the most prominent were Giroux jerseys, but we also saw Hextall, Clarke, Powe, Sinisalo, Boucher and a dozen or so others.

6. I wore about 4 layers, we had blankets, and the "warmers" that hunters use that we kept in our gloves to keep our hands as warm as we could. We sat under cover, and the wind kicked up pretty strongly for most of the game.

7. We had pretty good seats, sitting behind the goal where the Flyers shot at twice. Henrik Lundquist, the Rangers' goalie, was terrific as the Rangers sleep-skated through the first period. The crowd stood for the entire first period.

8. Yes, it was hard to see the puck and the average fan cheered not at a score, but when he/she saw the players from his favorite team celebrating a goal. Remember, baseball stadiums are designed for baseball viewing, not ice hockey. So while it was exciting, it wasn't like every seat was a good one (and the purist could debate how many seats really gave the viewer a great shot at the action -- perhaps the luxury boxes along the third base line, which were high up enough to see above all the boards).

9. The Flyers need a goaltender.

10. People were generally pumped up to be there, as most people in most cities like to go to events, spend a lot of time at them and a lot of money on them. We had fun, we were cold, and we wished that the outcome were different. Overall, it was a good experience and showed a city that favors football and baseball that hockey can appeal to a group that's larger than the core of diehards that has subscribed to season tickets for years.

11. As for prices. . . beers were $7.75, programs $10, and parking $25 ($50 for larger vehicles).

12. We saw Barry Melrose walk by us as we walked into the stadium. The grey mullet kind of works on him, but he's not as big as he looks on camera.

13. Is it me, or have they grown bigger hockey players since, say, 30 years ago? The Rangers have a 6'7" center, and there were a bunch of players over 6'4" out there.

14. By my count, players from about 10 different countries were represented.

It was, in many ways, a classic, and, of course, when you go to a main event with your son for his birthday present, it's all the more special.

Setting the Bar Higher

Lately I have found myself saying the following: "If you set the bar low, many people will figure out ways to fall beneath it. If you set the bar high, you'll be amazed and how much people can accomplish." Perhaps that derives from John Wooden's, "If you aim for perfection, you'll achieve excellence," but I think that there's some truth to it.

I was working with my son on his overall basketball game, and he's worked hard on the form of his shot, and it's been great to see the improvement. The other day, I suggested that he work on his weaker hand. I asked him to go through a bunch of lefthanded layups, and it was very difficult for him. He had trouble putting the ball up consistently with his left hand. And, yes, he wanted at times to give up.

I got to thinking about people who learn foreign languages. While it's nice to be able to sit in a class room in the U.S., get taught a language and then go home and speak English and not reinforce it, we've all heard the stories of people getting some training on a foreign language and then going to live in a foreign country. They get immersed in everything -- and have no alternative but to learn more of the language in order to live life daily. So, gradually -- and probably with some tutoring -- they become proficient. Translated. . .

We kept going back to the gym, and day after day -- guess what -- my son's left hand got stronger in just one week. Why? Because he concentrated on it and he knows that to play against better competition he needs to develop both hands well. With that sense of urgency and focus, he not only showed improvement, but he looked forward to doing the drills and trying to improve daily. The alternative would be to tell him that he's terrific and doesn't need to change, but then, I think, that wouldn't be fair or honest. No, it's not because I want a superstar or delude myself that he'll be one, it's just about developing good habits, concentration and a sense of trying that understands that before you see gains, you have to put in the work to get there and, to use an overused phrase, you have to enjoy the journey.

So, each week when we coach our team, we set a brisk pace for the kids to keep up. We ask them to defend well, to protect the ball, to steal it and deflect it, to run the break where possible, find the open man and screen where there is an opportunity. We do not settle -- even in a rec league -- for telling them that it's okay whatever they do so long as they are out there. We challenge them a bit more, run plays, and tell them that if they focus on trying to improve, they will have every opportunity to do so.

I figured that I would share this tidbit because sometimes I need to remind myself of it. Emerson wrote that our chief want in life is to have someone push us to become something more, and let's take the opportunity -- with caring, encouragement and thought -- to help make each other -- each coach, each player -- better.

The Philadelphia Eagles' Big Off-Season

Questions abound:

1. Will owner Jeffrey Lurie fire Andy Reid?

2. If the answer to question 1 is no, will Jeffrey Lurie make Reid choose between being the GM and the head coach?

3. If the answer to question 1 is no, will Andy Reid fire or demote defensive coordinator Juan Castillo?

4. If the answer to question 3 is yes, will perhaps soon-to-be-former Rams head coach, former Giants' defensive coordinator and former Eagles' linebackers coach Steve Spagnuolo become the Eagles' defensive coordinator?

5. Will the DeSean Jackson return to the Eagles?

6. Will the Eagles demand that highly paid QB Michael Vick learn how to slide (unbelievably, he dissed the concept of sliding at a recent post-game press conference, hubris to the initiated because the odds are that if he continues his bold ways he'll become a one-dimensional cardboard cutout propped up on the sidelines and talked of in the "he coulda been a contender" type of way)?

7. Will the Eagles get some leaders who set the tone for the team?

8. Will Asante Samuel return?

9. Will the Eagles get some linebackers?

There are probably more questions than that, but those are the big ones. Lurie is loyal to Reid, and one of the fundamental issues in human resources is that you don't replace someone who has been a good performer unless you can get someone who is better. So, with respect to the biggest question -- the one about Big Red -- who could Lurie get to replace Reid? And before you start that Jon Gruden and Bill Cowher both are available, remember that no coach has won a Super Bowl with two teams (the closest were Dick Vermeil and Bill Parcells). So, if you want an up-and-comer, the best one in a while coaches in San Francisco, and it's hard to say whether Nick Saban would succeed or not. After all, some coordinators for legends have failed, and some relative lesser knowns (Mike McCarthy) have succeeded. So, the bet here is that Reid stays -- gulp -- in both roles.

That leaves an open question about the defense. It's hard to see Castillo remaining, and it would be interesting to find out whether, if Reid were to remain, that a condition was to fire Castillo and hire a veteran defensive coordinator (Jack Del Rio, the deposed Jaguars' coach, also is available). The bet here is that the Eagles have a new defensive coordinator.

Jackson will return, Samuel will go, Vick will learn how to slide for 3 games before forgetting and being turned into one of the pretenders that fought Rocky for the title in Rocky III, and the team will make some moves that will get it some vocal leaders and perhaps a linebacker or two not named Ernie Sims or Takeo Spikes (two guys who were supposed to have the special sauce but failed in Soft Pretzel City). It is hard to believe that for all the money they paid these guys, that neither Nnamdi Asomugha or Michael Vick is a leader. Cullen Jenkins, the DT acquired from Green Bay, is vocal, but the dearth of leaders for such a highly paid squad is striking.

Right now, the Eagles are a disappointing fantasy football team, a team in disarray, a team without any zing and oomph that has enough talent on a given day to beat anyone but a pronounced difficulty to succeed in life's red zone, let alone the NFL's. There are only so many times that you can blow a second half lead before fans will just give up hope that you can close the deal. The Eagles, plain and simple, need finishers. (And I think that DeSean Jackson, for all his warts this year, is one of them, as are Jeremy Maclin and LeSean McCoy).

So the Eagles will play the Redskins this weekend, probably win by two touchdowns, have an 8-8 season, with Reid's trying to take a victory lap of sorts for a strong finish while acknowledging that the failure to make the playoffs starts with him, that it's all his fault and that he failed to do enough before the season to prepare the team for making the playoffs. It will all sound very good, until you do a compare and contrast with teams like the Packers, Saints and 49ers and realize that each of them has twice the giddy up that the Eagles do. Reid and his front office can do all the scouting that they wish, but somehow they miss out on the guys with the "gotta/wanna/have it" as Sal Palantonio of ESPN calls it. (As an aside, they thought that they had one of those guys with 26 year-old first-round pick Danny Watkins of Baylor, who admitted prior to the season that he was overwhelmed. Many fans' responded with a "how hard do they try to find guys like this?").

This season was a train wreck for the Philadelphia Eagles. Normally, I would bet the mortgage money that Jeffrey Lurie would back Andy Reid 100%. But as I write this I have more doubts than ever before. Lurie opened up the checkbook to sign big free agents, gave Michael Vick a big contract, brought in two expensive position coaches in Jim Washburn (defensive line) and Howard Mudd (offensive line) and signed Michael Vick to a big extension. He also acquiesced to permit Reid to hire Castillo as defensive coordinator. In short, he indulged every whim and desire of Andy Reid, with disastrous results. If Lurie were ever to can his beloved head coach, he might be tempted to do so now. It might not be the right move, but it would be a popular one with the fans, most of whom have concluded that while Reid is a good coach, he might not win a Super Bowl, at least not here.

It's funny, when you spend the big bucks, ignore popular wisdom that your perennial shortcomings can bite you (read: this season, safeties, Vick's blind side and linebackers) and you hold yourself out as the team that outfoxed everyone else with respect to having bandwidth for signing free agents after the lockout, that instead of making yourselves the envy of the league, you make yourself the biggest target and the one subject to the most derision when you fail. I hope that in there off-season Jeffrey Lurie and Joe Banner do a root cause analysis -- with a root cause analysis expert -- as to what went wrong and then begin to fix the team based on that analysis.

And I hope, also, that they get some linebackers, too.

Memo to Top 100 Harvard Basketball Recruits: Why?

Several decades ago (give or take one, perhaps), I had a conversation with a friend who was a very good Ivy League basketball player. He had mentioned that his high school, a basketball powerhouse, had a player who had succeeded him at his position and who was drawing national attention. North Carolina, Kentucky, UCLA, to name a few, were hot after this player.

My friend also offered another tidbit: "And the thing of it is, his grades and scores are better than mine."

Which drew the following automatic response from me: "So why doesn't he go to your school?"

My friend laughed. "If you could really play, why would you play where I do?"

I tried to talk about the benefits of an Ivy education, that sometimes an Ivy school could have a breakthrough, perhaps get to the Round of 16, but my friend wasn't buying what I was selling. He had gone Ivy and done well, but he lacked foot speed and a jumper to go to a big-time school, despite the reputation of his high school and its coach.

He just shook his head and offered that if you were that good a player, you had to go where the best players played to see how good you were and to play at an elite level. He also offered that if you were reasonably motivated as a student -- as this kid was -- you could get a good education at any of those schools (my note: back then he was right; today, you have to wonder about a) being "one" and done and b) the pressure put on the kids, so much so that do they have time to progress toward a degree in something other than keeping seaweed off the fine arts' program's batik collection, and, as for a), well, then, you're en route to a pretty good career, aren't you?).

The compulsion, though, was the competition. My friend went Ivy because it suited him and because the combination of aid, academics and basketball was better than say a low-DI school that had offered him a full ride. But the thought -- for an 18 year-old -- of playing in the ACC on national TV against the best competition and for Dean Smith, for example, was very compelling to him. But what of the kids who now populate ESPN's Top 60 for the Class of 2013, three of whom have Harvard on this lists (as do one or do of the Top 100 for the Class of 2012)? What are they thinking?

Sure, Harvard is a great school, perhaps the greatest, but what is Harvard and coach Tommy Amaker trying to accomplish? And will these kids be happy in a place where they pretty much will be kids who participate in just another extracurricular activity and who have to play Columbia and Cornell on back-to-back nights twice, when, legitimately, they could be playing a Pac-12, Big Ten, Big East or ACC schedule? And, presumably, if their academics are that good, get a pretty good education, to boot, depending on how much effort they elect to put into their school work?

In other words, these recruits can really play. They are not a step slow, a few inches too short, have limited range, a weaker left hand, etc. They are the real deal. And forget all the hype about Harvard's trying to do something special. If you're an elite cellist, you'll want to go to Juilliard or Curtis. If you're an elite astrophysicist, MIT, Cal Tech or Princeton, to name a few. And if you're an elite basketball player. . . you'll want to go to . . . Harvard?

Not Carolina? Kentucky? Duke? Ohio State? Syracuse?

Food for thought.

FIFA 12 -- Achieving Goals

I once spoke at a professional seminar, and the topic of creating balance in one's live and having diversions came up. It was a very driven group, so I got their attention by talking about how you can always figure out how to achieve goals on a given day -- even when everything can go haywire at the office.

I told the group that after a long day I would go home into the kid/man cave in the basement, put in the FIFA soccer game (then on PlayStation, but now we have an XBox) and play a very good English Premiership team (usually Arsenal) against a League Two team, play at the amateur level (there are five levels, and amateur is the lowest) and then win something like 12-0. "So," I offered, "if you can't achieve any goals at the office, you can go home at night and score tons of them in this video game." You probably had to be there, but I recall that the audience laughed at my suggestion. Given all of the connectivity we have and the fast pace of the world, I think that it was hard for them to find diversions. Or so it seemed.

Now I have discovered one of the best video games there is -- "Manager Mode" in FIFA 12. Basically, you get a team and a salary and a transfer budget, you get to sell contracts of players, buy them, loan players to other teams for experience, hire scouts to sign teenaged prospects, offer them contracts for the big club and then run your lineups. Players have a bunch of grades -- overall excellence, some subgrades for about 6-8 difference competencies depending on their position and then are evaluated on a color-coded system for morale, energy and form, and they can get suspend for red cards or accumulating too many yellow cards, and they can get hurt. Translated, if you play a 4-4-2 formation, you'll need 2-3 goalies, 9 defenders, 8 midfielders and 5 strikers to get through a season, plus a bunch of junior players whom you loan out to other teams, either with the hope of playing them in your rotation the next season or, alternatively, selling their contracts to create more funds to purchase more or better players. You also negotiate contracts and have to be sure that you have enough budget at all times to extend contracts (or not). Finally, you'll get emails from the ownership about your performance and from players asking for more playing time or telling you that they're tired. And, yes, you'll see newspaper headlines about the major leagues in the world.

Put simply, it's a comprehensive game, and here's what we've learned. First, you need a very solid back line. Sure, you need to score goals, but if you have shutdown defenders the way the NFL has shutdown cornerbacks, it helps. Having one of the best goalies in the world is helpful but not essential. Then again, the top teams's goalies typically rank among the world's best. You need all sorts of players at midfield at up front -- defensive midfielders, playmaking midfielders, speedy wings and strikers who can create shots in very little space. It's probably good to sell players' contracts when they hit a certain age, and it's wise to sell a player for whom you get a significant over-market bid if you are not the best-funded team, because you can parlay that money into 2 or 3 key signings that can help fortify your team. Most goalies and defenders don't sell for as much as young, playmaking midfielders (among the up-and-comers, the Dane Christian Eriksen and the Brazilian Lucas) and strikers with significant potential (Man City's Mario Batelli and Chelsea's Romelu Lukaku come to mind).

As you can see, the realism and the combinations of activities are captivating and a worthy diversion from the rest of your day. Your career can go for 15 years, after which you'll get an e-mail from your management congratulating you on your retirement -- in 2026. At that time you'll still be coaching against Man United's Sir Alex Ferguson, who will be a chipper 82. I took Man City in one simulated career because of the oil money that fortifies the team and won 13 premierships and 12 champion's league titles (hint: it helps if you play the games yourself as opposed to simulate them, because typically you'll fare better). By 2026, when I had a bunch of youth squad players whom I had developed into regulars, the game retired me.

It's a great way to learn the international game, who the key players are, who the established stars are and who the up-and-comers are. During that career, I was offered the top jobs at Inter Milan, Juventus, Athletico Madrid, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Schalke 04, Borussia Dortmund, Newcastle, Arsenal, Paris St. Germain, PSV Eindhoven to name a few. Okay, so perhaps I'm just a kid at heart, but it was fun playing games in the large stadiums with English announcers talking about the pitch, using the word "nil" for zero and marveling about my team's patience and passing ability.

Check out the game yourself -- set goals for yourself as manager, score a few, while you're at it, and have fun. And tell me if you think that this is a good team:

GK -- Manuel Neuer
RB -- Subotic
CB -- Pique
CB -- Hummels
LB -- Criscito
RCM -- Wilshere
LCM -- Bale
CAM -- Fabregas
LW -- Balotelli
ST -- Neymar
RW -- Lukaku, with, among others

Ramsey, Gourcuff, Song, Acerbi, Benedetti, Walcott, Sturridge, Baumann and others on the bench.

Enjoy!

Yale's Football Coach Resigns Amidst Controversy About Resume Misrepresentations

You can read the story here.

My friend Jeff from Philadelphia (not to be confused with Jeff from Manhattan) and I used to wonder over beers whether what some people were telling us about their backgrounds was true. Among the questions were "did this guy really play there?" and "was he all-league?" Some of the boasting we dealt with was before the age of the internet, which has enabled all of us to instantly check someone out. And there were occasions where what we were told differed from the truth. And how did we find that out? Because on occasion we once would come across someone about whom it was well-known that he played there, and we would ask, "well, then, you must know so-and-so, who played there at the same time." When you get met with a blank stare and a "I don't know him," well, you start to wonder.

As Jeff from Philadelphia would have said, "Well, as [former President and Michigan football All-American] Gerald Ford used to say, 'everyone is an All-American more than 50 miles from where he grew up.'" That held true say 20, 20+ years ago, but you would have figured that people who might have been wont to embellish or outright lie would have stopped such behavior because, well, it is easier to check out. That said, the checker outers, as they were, are busier than ever, and, well, most people don't want to assume that they are being lied to, especially by as accomplished a guy as Tom Williams was when he applied and got the Yale head coaching job. It makes one ask the question, "why did do this; did he really need to do it?"

Williams became unmasked when a big wire story circulated that his QB bagged a Rhodes Scholarship interview to skipper the team against Harvard in The Game. It didn't take a Yale graduate to connect the dots between the QB's goal and the coach's representation that he had interviewed for a Rhodes. Heck, that's a pretty cool, feel-good story for a sportswriter to write in so many ways. Except when it didn't exist. Then that same writer gets a pretty hot story to write about how someone claimed to be something that he wasn't.

Why do people do this? Who do they think that they are impressing, and should we let ourselves get impressed by things other than competencies, character and personality? Should that Rhodes cache made one bit of difference for Yale to determine whether to hire Tom Williams as its coach? Probably not. Better yet, would he have gotten the job had he not mentioned that lie on his resume? Probably. (Of course, it's also surfaced that Williams claimed that he was on the 49ers' practice squad 18 years ago, when in truth he was at a 3-day tryout camp).

This is a sad day in so many ways.

And the Justification for a High Salary for a Low DI Men's Basketball Coach Is?

Princeton beat Northeastern in Boston 71-62.

938 people attended.

My guess is that the Northeastern coach makes north of $250,000 a year, perhaps significantly so.

Why?

Because men's basketball is a revenue sport?

Really?

Could it be that ticket sales and revenues from the concession stands didn't pay for the cost of running the game? I would bet that's the case.

So the justification for a big-time DI program with scholarships and highly paid coaches is exactly what?

A chance to win a low-ranked conference and go to the NCAA Tournament, for the opportunity for a school like Kentucky or Kansas to pound you into the hoops equivalent of dust?

Really?

Remember my adage -- that I don't want my kids to go to any college where a coach makes more than the university president. That still holds, unless, of course, it can be proven beyond a doubt that any coach is worth it.

Bread and circus?

One thing is for sure -- Northeastern's circus doesn't generate enough bread to pay for the program.

A Boy's Best Birthday Present

I've coached my son's team in the rec league for going on five years now, and we've won many more than we've lost. I can joke that it's because of superior coaching, but truth be told we get a bunch of kids who come eager to learn and to play hard. We also have gotten "older" kids who encourage the younger ones, and, yes, I'm sure that the friend with whom I coach and I have something to do with it. But mostly it's the kids who try so hard that make it all happen.

One of the kids we coach asked me before the season began what he could do to improve. I told him that while he's aggressive on defense, we need him to shoot and score more. So, in the second quarter of our first game (the first quarter in which this player saw action), what did he do? He took four shots from fifteen feet or beyond, making only one, and that came when he shot from between the foul line and the top of the key and he banked it in. And, no, he didn't "call" it.

We were up big at halftime, so when he and his unit came off the floor I observed that when I advised him to shoot more during the season, I didn't recommend that he take a season's worth of shots in his first quarter of play. (We all got a chuckle out of that.) I told him and a teammate that there was room to drive and shoot from closer, and, to this player's credit, when he got a pass at the foul line in the fourth quarter he drove the lane and made a layup, a much higher percentage shot. That's a great feeling for a coach, when your kids take the feedback quickly and improve upon their play. It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, you smile.

Of course, later in that game he was on the baseline and a long rebound made its way to this same player. But instead of driving the baseline (akin to driving toward the basket from the foul line as he did earlier in the game), he opted to put up a fifteen footer -- which missed badly. After the game I said that if he were to see a wide open lane to the basket again, he'd need to take the ball to the hoop. He nodded in agreement.

On Saturday we played our second game of the season, against a tougher and more aggressive opponent. It was a close game -- well-defended -- and we found ourselves trailing by four at the half. The younger players then went out in the third quarter and left it all on the floor and made it closer, but with 30 seconds to go we were down one and got a rebound. I called timeout.

I have a clipboard with a basketball court on it, and I took my marker and drew a play, getting nods from each kid after asking him what he was to do. I designed a "picket fence" of a triple pick for our leading scorer, with the inbound passer to loop behind him for a handoff and shot if our leading scorer was over-defended. The inbound passer was the kid I wrote of earlier, aggressive on defense but sometimes reluctant on offense.

The play broke down immediately. Our big fellah went the wrong way, our leading scorer was hounded, and another would-be screener bumped into the ballhandler. Bedlam. But then, suddenly, a sense of calm and purpose set in, and the ball made its way to the inbound passer, who found himself on the baseline with pretty much was an open lane to the basket. Without hesitation (and unlike just a week earlier), he put the ball on the floor, drove to the hoop, laid the ball up on the rim where it took a soft bounce and dropped through the hoop. We were up by one! Our leading scorer then forced a turnover, and the game was over.

As I wrote, we have won over the years many more than we have lost, but coming from behind and winning that close a game is about as satisfying as it gets. Parents from both teams acknowledged how exciting it was and how hard the kids played. The kid who hit the game-winning bucket -- who has tried hard over the years and received some kudos and missed out on some others -- was all smiles. That morning he turned 12, and he got a few things for his birthday that made him smile widely.

But, perhaps, not as widely as this, because there are times in life when the best gifts are the ones that you work hardest for to earn -- because you've failed before, because you've learned from an error, and because you've picked yourself back up and mastered a skill, in this case, finishing a play properly.

As a coach, this type of situation is a great thing to see.

Especially when that player is your son.

He got many gifts that day, but saved the best one of all for his coach and, more importantly, himself.

It was a great day in many ways.

A Vote for Tony Dungy as Penn State's Next Football Coach

It's pretty simple, really.

Urban Meyer?

To Ohio State.

Philadelphia-area native Dan Mullen, the Mississippi State coach (and former Meyer assistant)?

Not interested.

Al Golden?

Signed a longer-term deal at Miami, perhaps opting to stay with a more manageable crisis situation.

Truth be told, Penn State needs a Mr. Clean. Or so that's the perception. Well, DI football, as currently constituted, requires coaches to be aggressive. And that might mean ignoring bad behavior (Jim Tressel), raising money from boosters and being ignorant of bad behavior (perhaps Randy Shannon and Pete Carroll) or embarking upon some recruiting techniques that might push the envelope. That is not to say that all coaches out there are bad actors. But it is to say that whoever Penn State -- the school that has put itself out there as holier than holy -- chooses -- will be subject to great scrutiny.

Scrutiny that turns blemishes into Stage 4 melanoma under the media spotlight quickly. Scrutiny that might have most stakeholders holding the coach to a higher standard than they hold themselves? Pinch a secretary's butt once twenty years ago? Done. Text the #1 recruit in the land 5 times 2 hours before it was permissible to do so, thereby drawing a sanction? You're out. Or something like that.

Which brings me to the most revered man in recent years in football coaching -- Tony Dungy, a man who has won, a man who looks very comfortable in his own skin, a man who has mentored many, including, most notably, Michael Vick. A man who coached in the NFL for so long that he won't have the possible baggage of transgressions while having coached in college. A man who just might have one more gig left in him and who might relish the challenge of helping heal the Penn State community. Tony Dungy would attract top-notch assistants, at least 2-3 of whom, under his mentoring (for coaching, recruiting and good conduct) could grow into successors when he and the powers that be in State College believe that they have done much to help restore Penn State's brand.

Many of the current coaches whose names are bandied about are probably scared. If they're successful, they probably have a very good gig, one where they aren't under a constant microscope for the types of things that any coach in State College now will be. At one point, it would have been an honor to survive the scrutiny to be tapped to succeed Joe Paterno (even if frightening that the comparisons to him would have been harsh). Now, it's not so much an honor as a burden -- a burden of proving what Paterno preached but ultimately failed to live up to -- that he and his program were better than all others when it came to doing the right thing -- playing hard and fair, graduating players, behaving well. That would be a tough set of standards to meet, one that might rival the requirements for canonization.

I don't want to equate Tony Dungy with sainthood, as that's not fair to anyone. But he's a terrific guy with a great track record, someone who is as respected -- if not more respected -- than anyone out there who might be available to coach Penn State. And while he might be comfortably retired and enjoying his TV work, this could be the one challenge that might interest him enough to come back to the sidelines -- to help heal a once-sacred community and set standards of excellence in actions and not, sadly, in just words.

This could be a great match.

The End of the Innocence: Penn State, Football and Us

Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn't have a care in the world
With mommy and daddy standing by
But "happily ever after" fails
And we've been poisoned by these fairly tales
The lawyers dwell on small details. . .


-- from Don Henley's "The End of the Innocence."

I've waited for a while to comment on the Penn State situation because of two factors. First, as a native Pennsylvanian and Pennsylvania resident, I have gone through many emotions -- disbelief, shock, anger, frustration and sadness, to name just five. Second, I know from experience that it's good to let a difficult situation settle in to gain some perspective before writing on it.

The entire situation is a very sad one and one where there are no winners. Everyone lost, particularly what we'll probably learn are dozens if not hundreds of young boys who were victims of Jerry Sandusky and a culture/system that failed to protect them. My guess is that the situation will get worse before it gets better, because we will learn many more disturbing facts as the investigators continue to turn over rocks. My guess also is that certain powers at Penn State -- most notably Joe Paterno and the higher ups in the university -- knew of Sandusky's "dirty little secret" long before now on-leave assistant coach Mike McQueary witnessed a horrifying act in 2002. Why no one did anything -- other than presumably force Sandusky to an early retirement near the peak of his career perhaps because his secret was coming into their workplace too often -- is a question that we will discuss for a long time. At the core, a culture existed in the now-misnamed Happy Valley that failed to protect some of society's most vulnerable members. We all feel deeply for the victims.

Beyond that, we learned something very disturbing about our society, our belief system, our needs and ourselves. As a Pennsylvanian, I can assure you that I have wonderful neighbors, people who extend many kindnesses to one another. I have among my friends many Penn State alums and friends whose kids have gone to Penn State. Forever, they all have cherished the place -- as some type of haven unsullied by the pace, grime and higher crime rates of big cities, as a haven where goodness rules and where a demigod named Joe Paterno set a morale code on the campus that enabled the university to play its extracurricular games on national stages at a high level while ostensibly not sacrificing its standards of making sure that players both graduate and behave. You could hear the reverence of Penn State, State College and Paterno in the way they talked about the place. Some would watch Penn State games with life-sized cardboard cutouts of Paterno in their family rooms. The whole aura of Penn State -- and their connection to it -- gave them an extra bounce in their step.

And now that's all gone. Here are two pieces -- one from the leading sports talk show host in Philadelphia (a Penn State alum) and a business writer in Philadelphia (also a Penn State alum) that touch upon this very notion. The former suggests that perhaps the gritty town from which he went to Penn State wasn't so bad after all. The latter -- who chose Penn State over Temple because of similar idyllic reasons -- is shaken to the core. Make no mistake -- first and foremost they have expressed sympathy for the victims -- but they too are hurting because they are wondering how their once-sacred alma mater could have let them down and, derivatively, how they -- educated and intelligent people -- could have bought into a system in the first place that let vulnerable kids and our society down so greatly.

And perhaps because so many reporters and commentators have covered so many aspects of this case that I will choose a different angle. Many have commented on the power of Joe Paterno, the culpability of the administration, whether university president Graham Spanier (whose specialty as an academic ironically is family therapy) should have lost his job, whether Paterno should have lost his job, whether assistant coach Mike McQueary should have lost his job (he's on administrative leave), what happened when the university seemingly compelled Jerry Sandusky's departure over a decade ago, why some students rioted after the news of Paterno's dismissal, whether Saturday's game against Nebraska should have been played, whether the remainder of the season should have been cancelled and many other topics related directly to the university, the people there and its alumni. There have been many eloquent pieces written, from Phil Taylor's great piece in Sports Illustrated to dozens of columns particularly in Pennsylvania papers. I would recommend many of them.

But the topic that I would like to address is how and why our society has evolved the way it has, why we need football so much, why we have put it on a pedestal, why people's self-esteem can rise and fall through a connection with a program or an institution and its successes and failures and, correspondingly, the lengths that people will go to ignore problems in order to protect their beloved institutions seemingly at all costs. Is it simply human nature that we don't feel complete unless we align with a group, a school, a team everyday in some way? Does it have to be the case that we can't feel good about ourselves unless those associations are excellent? And when I say "we" I mean people in general, as we all know of someone who thinks that football is silly and that spending a day watching a contest means that you're spending a day not exercising, not reading, not improving your house or volunteering to help others.

One linked writer wrote of all of her Penn State swag that decorates her home and her cube at the newspaper. The other linked writer talked of how he wasn't proud of where he grew up, and Penn State was supposed to be an idyllic, special place. But in the end, does the omnipresence of the swag suggest the worshipping of a golden calf, a lesson that the human race once learned a very long time ago? And does the relative dissatisfaction with where one grew up -- and a thanks that one did not have to endure the gritty streets where Temple University is located -- say something bad about ourselves? That we equate proximity to a factory with bad values and four years in Happy Valley with good ones automatically and without question? More poignantly, should we feel superior about ourselves and our institutions -- and blindly follow them and not question whether sports get emphasized out of proportion -- just because they have "excellent" football programs and coaches who seem larger than life. Maybe we don't give ourselves, our communities and what we do daily enough credit, that maybe all of that stuff is good enough -- without a need to feel better because our gridders beat up on someone else's.

At the end of a day, football is -- or perhaps should be -- an extracurricular activity the same way student government, the band and the school newspaper are. At the end of the day, head football coaches are university employees and should not be more important than the university president or the university itself. In David Halberstam's book on Bill Belichick, the author spoke of how the coach's father, a legendary football scout, responded to comments that his son was a genius. "Genius," the father mused. "All he does is run up and down on the sidelines in a sweatshirt coaching football."

For an institution to be worthy of enduring respect, it must be bigger than any coach, any team, any professor, any department and command the respect of those who work there. Why? Because people come and go, but the institution -- if having the right values -- will and should endure for much longer. Penn State had, has and will have much more going for it than the football team and its coach. None of my friends who went to Penn State had any involvement with the football program other than going to games and all have much to recommend themselves regardless of where they went to school and whether their alma mater had a good football team or a legendary coach. But somehow the football program grew to be bigger than the school and, tragically, forgot why it was there and, as a result, a reasonable measure of accountability.

The entire Penn State affair shows how societies can lose perspective on what's important. I hope and pray that everyone involved with Penn State -- especially its board of trustees and its leadership -- does a deep dive as to what a major university's priorities should be and, over time, reconstitute and re-earn the faith and trust that many placed -- without question -- into Pennsylvania State University. And, in the process, teach us that what we do every day -- by being good neighbors, good friends and good family members -- should give us enough self-esteem that we don't have to blindly protect our institutions and football programs at all costs so that we can feel better about ourselves. If Penn State's leaders can achieve that, then as a public university Penn State will do all citizens a lot more good than Joe Paterno's 409 wins and packed stadiums in State College ever have.

Pennsylvania State University, its football team and its coach were among the things and people that the average Pennsylvanian and alumnus could believe in as some of the best things their society had to offer, shining examples of what a public university, its teams and its leaders should be. The news of the past few weeks ended the innocence of those who were the true believers in everything blue and white, all but a few of whom are decent people, the neighbors and friends of you and me. Yet, that tragic realization is far eclipsed by the stories of the victims, whose innocence ended far too early and far too awfully. Penn State alums would readily trade their current misery -- and the happiness they had while they were in State College -- so that this whole thing would never have happened.

Let's hope and pray that those same decent people will work to heal their community, to do right by the victims, and to work to make Penn State a better place.

Is Harvard Officially the Evil Empire of Ivy Men's Basketball?

You have to either subscribe to ESPN the Insider or ESPN the Magazine to get the article about Harvard's recruiting efforts, which amount to trying to lure 3- and 4-star recruits to Cambridge. It's pretty amazing as to how a) Coach Tommy Amaker (who still hasn't convinced me that he is a good technical coach, as opposed to a good recruiter) can lure these kids to Cambridge, b) how so many top players are good enough students to play at Harvard and c) how the kid featured in the article said that he liked the concept of Harvard because of the possibility of making good basketball connections and going to "an Ivy." From this article, it also sounds like talent-loaded Harvard has a bunch of recruits who could be the Ivy's version of the "Fab Five" -- AAU teammates who might choose the Cantabs over bigger-time basketball schools.

Too often in my life have I run into situations that seemed too good to be true. Sure, call me a jealous hoops zealot who is lamenting the loss of the vivid Penn-Princeton rivalry and who resents Harvard as a wannabe interloper. I can assure you that's not it. I enjoyed watching the Crimson last year and marveled at the assemblage of talent. (I also think that had Sydney Johnson coached the Crimson, they wouldn't have lost a single game). It's just that it seems hard to believe that having gone 65 years without an NCAA tournament bid and without having put a very good team on the court for decades, that all of a sudden perhaps dozens of top-notch recruits are considering Harvard over scholarship schools with good academics and traditional Ivy basketball titans Penn and Princeton, not to mention recent superpower Cornell, which had about as good a three-year run of any Ivy team in a long time.

I recall talking to a Princeton assistant about six, seven years about a top 100 recruit who had a connection to Princeton. The kid was considering Duke (he eventually went there), but word came through that he was interested in Princeton. The recruit went to the school for a visit, but he ultimately chose Duke. Commented the assistant, "We always lose kids when we go up against Stanford, Duke and schools like that." I'm sure that Penn probably would say the same thing. Yes, the schools get good recruits, but increasingly over the years both Penn and Princeton have lost players to schools that somehow Harvard is now competing against and perhaps winning.

What gives? It's not that Harvard has a winning tradition (it doesn't). It's not that Harvard has a great facility (it doesn't). It's not that Harvard has an outstanding coach (Amaker didn't do well at either Seton Hall or Michigan, and while he's recruited well at Harvard he hasn't won a title yet, although with the talent he has he should mail it in and win a title this year). Sure, Harvard has a huge name, but since when has the huge name simply been enough? Especially when you have schools with storied programs in your conference.

Something just doesn't seem to add up. It could be that Harvard finally has gotten it's men's hoops' act together and corralled the optimal combination of hoops talent that can qualify for Harvard. If so, congratulations for catching lightning in a bottle or something like that. Go on-line if you subscribe to ESPN the Insider or buy the magazine and see what you think. Is it newly found brilliance on the Charles River, or something else? And, if so, what?

Any way you slice it, Harvard is certainly defining itself as the team to beat (perhaps for years) in the Ivies. They'll still have to beat archival Yale (which has a good team this season) and take on Penn and Princeton on back-to-back nights twice this season. That's a tough challenge whether you have three- or four-star recruits -- or not.

More Evidence That Penn State Football Is Eroding Even More

A top recruit from the Philadelphia suburbs, who once gave an oral commitment to the Nittany Lions, is going to Wisconsin.

The reason offered up is that Wisconsin is Offensive Linemen U., and the recent article in Sports Illustrated -- an elegy to the Badgers' development of offensive linemen -- had to help. Look, if a kid wants to go into a profession (and especially where there is no grad school to gain an extra credential), why shouldn't he look at the school best suited to give him the training to get to that career? Because that's precisely what J.J. Denman is doing, and, yes, Wisconsin is a good academic school too.

But here's the thing for Penn State devotees -- Penn State used to get kids like this automatically just by showing up. Penn State was the default drive, the major aspiration -- good program, kids get their degrees, chance to vie for a national title. But the first is in question and the last hasn't been true for a while. So, recruits like Denman will go to a place where not only to they have a better chance to fulfill their potential, sadly, they also will have a better chance to connect with the head coach (read the whole article and see what I mean).

Penn State fans shouldn't be mad at J.J. Denman. He's doing the right thing for himself. If they're frustrated, they should direct their disappointments and dissent to the Penn State administration, which has let the entire issue of succession planning for Joe Paterno get out of hand. Look, I've written this before -- Paterno's body of work is tremendous in every way -- but how far is the administration supposed to let the program slip because they're honoring the past -- extremely so -- at the expense of the present?

No, of course, Penn State won't put together two consecutive 0-12 seasons and fall off the proverbial cliff, but the Nittany Lions are a far cry from what they used to be -- a dominant presence as to the right way to run a major college program that can win championships. Perhaps Penn State fans are okay with the current state of play, and that's okay if the majority of them are.

It's just that they, the university, Coach Paterno and his friends -- they all can do a lot better.

And everyone knows it.