Joe-Pa rolls again!

One of the most joyous events of the 2005 football season had to be the resurrection of "Paterno the Great." From Sad Loser to Awesome Winner in one Super year!

We had met him as a young assistant football coach at Penn State and had kept in touch with him--not very warmly or often--but forever after, and that includes his ascension from assistant coach to one of the country's genuine football masters.

That's where we were when the 2004 college football season rolled around and there was the master coach, Joe Paterno, at age 75, the victim of four poor years in a row.

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It seemed impossible. He had become a loser, and it couldn't be because he had lost his skill. There could be only one reason. He had lingered too long at the fair, as most old coaches do. We felt obliged to send him an open letter:

"Dear Joe, you have had an incredible career with a record number of victories. You have done it all, achieved genuine greatness. But football remains a young man's game, and Joe, you have nothing else to prove. Why linger?"

To show what one can accomplish with the Spirit of '76.

THE NEW STATISTICS ...

Everybody respects the kind of arithmetic embodied in statistics, like runs, hits, errors, RBIs, yards rushing, fumbles, etc.

We respect the numbers, too. But, alas, they are beginning to creak a little. Statistics can be boring.

But the end is not in sight. Not too long ago, a group of bright young sportswriters (mostly baseball people) began experimenting with the dots, dashes, and percentages, and came up with a new kind of statistics called sabermetrics.

The arithmetic is still there, but it is now articulated in a form of shorthand that is sharp, colorful, and educational.

We like what our sports people have done with it and it has been exciting to find that Marv Levy is among them.

You know Marv, the white-haired extremely intelligent ex-NFL coach who did his thing for 47 years at every level of the game, including leading the Buffalo Bills to four consecutive Super Bowls.

In the early autumn of his life, he is still going three ways--offense, defense, and writing a very nice monthly football column in USA Today. It is neatly written and captivating every time out.

The day after the opening of the NFL season, we found him making a head count on the 16 winners. His discovery: 15 of the 16 winners had outrushed the loser, and 14 of the 16 had incurred fewer penalties.

His third revelation: "Football's most important statistic is the give away/take away ration (fumbles, interceptions). Levy discovered that the team that incurred the fewest errors almost always won the game.

In the opening-day schedule, the winners produced 29 more take-aways than the loser.

Allow us to certify at least one of Levy's findings: We did a check on 16 of the top-rated college games the next day and discovered that 14 of the 16 winners had outrushed their opponents.

Note: 'Tis only fair to mention that over the next two weekends of the season, the passers started to catch up with the rushers.

Still, we'd like to assure our young American males that if they want to be a hero and get along with the beautiful girls, they have to learn how to run with a football.

CLOTHES CALL ...

As prodigious reader of cheap literature and rules books, we grew up with a distrust of English teachers and adventuresome rules-makers.

Look at what the guardians of the rules have done to basketball. It wasn't enough to let the players wear long, baggy shorts and fancy jewelry. They are now striking a blow against "casual dressing."

You can no longer wear anything you like when you leave the court. Every time you go out to the street or into a business establishment, you have to be dressed for the occasion. No more sweatshirts, shorts, jerseys, sneakers, long hair, or anything else that would make you fail to look like Cary Grant or Ulysses S. Grant (pick one).

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If the NBA continues this madness, the coaches will soon be required to wear a tuxedo every time they want to tell a referee that he's blind or a bum.

THE LAST YANKEE DOODLE ...

Time rushes on and the world always turns with it. As it did in late September 2005 when the Yankees suddenly rose from the dead and won their division on the second to last day of the season.

Their big guys resumed hitting the baseball and manager Joe Torre reverted to god-hood.

And how did the wonderful press respond to the miracle? With yards and yards of torrid type lauding the players, the ground crew, owner George Steinbrenner, and of course, Joe Torre.

That was the one that sickened us. It was written by the champion of the tabloid sportswriters, a brilliant writer with just one fault: he can never remember what he wrote the day before.

On the Yankees' V-Day he wrote a beautiful double-page spread in color on the greatness of the Yankee manager: nobody knows the game any better, nobody can handle players like he can, nobody is more likable.

All of this was true, of course, but not acceptable coming from the person who wrote it. Only a few weeks before, he had written another two-page color spread on the Yankees. The team had fallen into a slump and appeared to be finished for the year. And it was all the manager's fault! The game had passed him by, and he had lost his touch with the players.

In his laudatory article three weeks later, the Little Read Writing Hood of the tabloids made absolutely no mention of that poisonous first column.

Such is sportswriting in the land of pinstripes. When the bad guys do such things, it is expected. When the good guys suddenly turn into a rodent, it's time to poison the cheese.