Words to the wise.

"It is far better to play the game squarely and lose than to win at the sacrifice of an ideal." Coach Andy Smith, U. of California, 1/1/1921

THE PERFECT BLENDSHIP...

WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN captivated by the way so many of our top football coaches bond with the schools they coach.

Maybe it's the dynamics of the game, maybe it's the passion with which it is played and coached, maybe it's the shared suffering. Whatever it is, it makes for a close, enduring bondship.

Think of Paterno and Penn State, Osborne and Nebraska, Alabama and the Bear, Bobby Dodd and Georgia Tech, Woody Hayes and Ohio State. Even after Ohio State had to fire Woody for slugging an opposing player, it gave him an office on campus for the rest of his life. That, friends, is how true love is expressed in the Big Ten.

Please, no cynicism. Don't tell us that such relationships rarely survive a losing streak. We know that anytime a coach buys in for 10, 20, 25 years, there is a lot mote involved than winning records, money, and prestige.

That is why so many of our current coaches--now that they are making the big bucks--have started wearing their hearts on their sleeves and bankbooks. They will buy a library for their school, or a chemistry lab, or some other fabulous manifestation of their love for their school.

It isn't, of course, a brand new thing. It began happening a long time ago. The first case we heard about occurred at the University of California in 1925. Its hero was a football coach named Andy Smith.

A native of Philadelpbia, he was lured to Berkeley to revive a moribund football program. He arrived in 1916, turned the program around in a couple of years, produced a Wonder Team in 1920, retired after the 1925 season, and returned to Philadelphia to live.

Rather shockingly, he didn't do that for very long. He died of pneumonia just six months later.

His will stunned everyone. He had left his entire estate to the U. of California and his fraternity, and had requested that his remains be returned to the Berkeley campus.

At noon on January 15, 1926, as a campanile rang out over the campus, the student body, led by Coach Andy Smith's Wonder Team of 1920, walked to Memorial Stadium and watched a plane drop the coach's ashes over the football field.

Next time you visit Memorial Stadium, make sure to check out the Andy Smith Bench on the home side of the field. You will find this inscription:

"We do not want men who will lie down bravely to die, but men who will fight valiantly to live... winning is not everything. And it is far better to play the game squarely and lose than to win at the sacrifice of an ideal."

Notice the phrase, "winning is not everything." The man who wrote those words obviously had far better values than the man who, maybe 50 years later, tacked on the words, 'It's the only thing.'

It never was and will never be 'the only thing' as long as coaches put the period after "winning is not everything"... understand what coaching is really all about.

OUR PICK 'N' ROLLS...

THE SONG IS PROBABLY ended for our favorite two-man basketball team, John Stockton and Karl Malone. They no longer can carry their franchise, the Utah Jazz.

But the melody lingers on. The two aging wonders can still make beautiful music with their variations on the pick 'n' roll. They have made an art form out of it--a whole half-court offense in itself.

And that isn't all they do for their team. They also lead it by character and work ethic. Both on the court and off.

Witness this paragraph from an account of their arrival in Salt Lake City the morning after a grueling playoff game in Seattle the night before:

"By 8:45 a.m., most of the Jazz players had joined Stockton and Malone in the weight room at the team's practice facility. This was just barely eight hours after arriving home from their game in Seattle and just 1 1/2 hours before a scheduled 10:00 a.m. practice."

One thing you can count on when the statues of these two immortals are mounted in the Hall of Fame five years after their retirement. By 7:00 a.m. the next morning, they will be leading all the other statues in a brisk 45-minute workout on the barbells.

BALLIN' THE JACK...

IT'S ALWAYS NICE TO KNOW a guru who is willing to share his genius whenever you ask. And so when our phone rang one morning and it turned out to be Jack Ramsay, we knew Christmas had come early.

We had been looking for a high-class basketball brain to pick, and who had better credentials than Jack Ramsay? He has been a peerless coach on the high school level, the college level, and the pro level. He has been elected to the Hall of Fame and is currently a peerless TV analyst and basketball writer for the internet. He is the only coach we know who became an outstanding writer by reading a book on How to Write Well.

His phone call made our day. After the obligatory 15 minutes of small talk, we hit him with the $1 million (up from $64,000) question that has been bugging us the past year:

"Jack, all the basketball whiz kids have been moaning about the diminishing scoring in the NBA. Hardly anyone scores 100 points anymore, and you keep seeing scores in the 70's and 80's.

"What has happened to the shooting? Have coaches stopped working at it? Have the players stopped focusing on it?"

It was a layup for Jack:

"It's the team defense. It's physical, tough, relentless. The players help out, double team, clog the passing lanes, and challenge every shot.

"And they play defense for 48 minutes. How are you going to score 100 points against that kind of defense?

"Remember what the defensive coaches used to say: Good defense rarely has off-nights. When your offense goes off, you can win with defense.

"The press calls it ugly basketball. It's really beautiful defense."

What Jack didn't have to tell us is that he was one of the pioneers of team defense, one of the earliest coaches to play pressure defense, trapping all over the court, smothering the offense.

He was ahead of his time the way he did it, and we always knew that he had a rendezvous with the Hall of Fame.

OUR GEORGIA PEACH...

ONE WEEK AFTER HITTING jack-pot with Jack Ramsay, the U.S. mails delivered another Cracker Jack to us in the form of a package from our all-time baseball contributor, Jack Stallings.

It contained two choice items--the usual quality baseball article and a report on his first year as the retired baseball coach at Georgia Southern.

The article was, of course, great (and we will publish it later on in the year). But it was his letter that charmed us. It was so typically Stallings--warm, witty, and winsome:

"Well, I have survived my first years as a full-time faculty member at Georgia Southern, and it has been interesting and exciting.

"I have been teaching some courses that were new to me and so I had to do a lot of reading, study, and preparation for them. That kept me from sitting around my office and thinking about 'Who in the world am I going to pitch this Saturday?'

"I even get to take Saturdays off now that I have retired from coaching, and that is something I haven't been able to do since I started in this coaching business in 1955 (or as a player back in the mid-40's).

"I was discussing Georgia Southern's graduation program with some faculty members last week and remarked that I never marched in a graduation ceremony in high school and college. We always had had a double header that day!

"Thank goodness my parents (especially my mother) understood what real priorities were!"

BUM RAP...

JUST WHEN WE WERE beginning to think that the CEOs of TV sports were beginning to know what they were doing, ABC TV came up with a wild pitch.

They informed their once fair-haired beauty, Donna deVarona, that at age 52, she no longer could cut it as an announcer. They were looking for younger announcers who would appeal to younger audiences.

The logic escaped us. Why should younger announcers appeal more to younger audiences? Broadcasting isn't a beauty contest. How many times do you see the announcer during a broadcast?

And what is the criterion for an announcer? It is always--know your stuff, know how to articulate it, be fair, don't be silly.

Look at practically all of the great male announcers: John Madden, Vin Scully, Hubie Brown, Al Michaels, Tim McCarver, John Miller, Ken Venturi, Doug Collins, Bud Collins, Keith Jackson.

Not a pretty face among them and hardly anyone under 52. Why are they being paid the big bucks and the reverent homage? Because of one thing--talent. So why should it be different for a female announcer?

The law of the land is pretty strict about a thing called age discrimination, and Donna daVarona, a former two-time Olympic gold medallist in swimming, is now testing these waters. She is suing ABC Sports for $30 million.

Wouldn't it be lovely if the judges awarded Donna the 30 mil, she bought ABC TV, and sent the "suits" out to be cleaned and depressed.

KNIGHT-MARE...

WITH THE SUMMER HALF gone and football coming on, everyone is already beginning to look forward to hoops in Bloomington, IN.

Is the Knightmare over? After 28 years of various malfeasances, the basketball coach was put on trial by an apologetic college president (Brand X) and a friendly jury... and got the benefit of a home-town decision. He could resume coaching, but... one more choke, punch, chair throw, or botch-up, and he would be history, if Brand X could be believed.

So much for all the rhetoric. What about the rest of it? Could a coach with an ungovernable temper and overwhelming sense of righteousness spend an entire season under a microscope--knowing that every eye would be fastened on him for 40 minutes and that any slip could put his job in jeopardy.

For a lot of coaches, this kind of scenario had the makings of a tragedy. Not in Bloomington, IN, however. The coach has a lot of things going for him: a friendly president, a bland student body, worshipful young players, and intimidated reporters.

He also has a driving goal--to overtake Dean Smith in career victories (he needs about six or seven more 20+ winning seasons).