Catching up with Washington Post articles: Maryland's Honor Violation; Navy Steps in the Wrong Direction

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Here are two of my latest from The Washington Post --------

When the Maryland basketball team won the national championship in 2002, Gary Williams received hundreds, if not thousands, of letters congratulating him on taking the Terrapins to a place few dreamed they could ever go.

Williams read almost all the letters. Some meant more than others, coming from old friends and coaching colleagues. One stood out. It came from a former Maryland coach.

“Congratulations,” it read in part. “You have now made Maryland the UCLA of the East.”
The note came from Lefty Driesell.

It was Driesell who made the term “UCLA of the East” famous when he came to Maryland in 1969 and boldly predicted he would build a program somehow comparable to college basketball’s most incomparable program.

Driesell came up 10 national championships short of John Wooden but he did put Maryland basketball on the national map, taking the Terrapins to eight NCAA tournaments in 17 seasons, twice reaching the Elite Eight. He left in 1986 in the aftermath of the Len Bias tragedy.

It was Williams, after the disastrous three-year tenure of Bob Wade, who picked up the pieces of a shattered program and made Maryland matter again. Ultimately, he did what Driesell could not do, taking Maryland to back-to-back Final Fours and the national title that brought the kind of joy to the Maryland campus that for years seemed impossible in the wake of Bias’s death.

Click here for the rest of the column: Maryland's Honor Violation

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In November 1995, I was standing on the sidelines at Michie Stadium on a frigid afternoon watching the Army football team practice. Al Vanderbush, then Army’s athletic director, was watching with me. In the midst of small talk about plans for Thanksgiving, Vanderbush suddenly said, “Mind if I ask your opinion on something?”

Flattered, I said, sure.

“What would you think about us joining Conference USA?” Vanderbush said.

My answer was instinctive rather than thought-out: “You’re kidding, right?”

Sadly, Vanderbush wasn’t kidding, nor was anyone else at West Point. They thought that being part of Conference USA’s TV package would give them more exposure and more revenue and being part of a league would help in recruiting.

Put simply, the end result was a disaster, culminating in an 0-13 season in 2003. To be fair, Todd Berry, who was hired in 2000 to replace Bob Sutton as coach, and Rick Greenspan, the athletic director who hired him, had as much to do with that record as playing in Conference USA did. But the decision to join C-USA in 1998 led to Sutton’s firing and a fall from football grace so precipitous that, all these years later, Army is still recovering.

Click here for the rest of the column: Navy Steps in the Wrong Direction

My newest book is now available at your local bookstore, or you can order on-line here: One on One-- Behind the Scenes with the Greats in the Game 

Colleges have long had problems with agent-player contact -- time for NCAA, NFL and NBA enforcement to change

Back in 1981, I was the Maryland beat writer for The Washington Post. Lefty Driesell had two clear-cut first round draft picks on that team: Albert King and Buck Williams. King was a senior; Williams a junior.

After games, when I was in the locker room talking to players, I frequently saw two men who very clearly weren’t members of the media circling the room, glad-handing the players. Often, they would wait until those of us on deadline finished and then swoop in to tell King and Williams how wonderfully they had played.

The two men were David Falk and Donald Dell. In those days, they were still partners, Falk working for Dell at ProServ, which was then one of the mega-agencies in sports, trailing only IMG for prestige, power and name clients. I remember saying to Driesell back then, “why do you let agents in your locker room?”

Lefty shook his head and said. “If I don’t let ‘em in, the players will be upset. They’ll think I’m trying to keep them away.”

“You SHOULD keep them away,” I said. “Agents shouldn’t be talking to players during the season under any circumstances and you shouldn’t be sanctioning it by letting them in the locker room.”

Lefty didn’t listen to me just as 99 percent of the coaches alive would not have listened to me. Like most coaches, he was afraid that if banned the agents, they would tell the players (which they would) ‘your coach isn’t looking out for your best interests. He’s only worried about what you can do for HIM.’

At the end of that season, Buck Williams left Maryland a year early and turned pro. The agent who guided him through the process of making that decision was—you guessed it—David Falk. (Dean Smith once told me that the first time Dell introduced him to Falk he said to his assistants, “I don’t trust that young one.” Boy did he have the one right).

Years later, agenting had become more sophisticated. The big-shots like Dell and Falk only made their presence felt when they truly needed to do so. Falk spent a lot of time in the 90s traveling to Duke to woo Mike Krzyzewski. He didn’t spend much time with the players. Instead, he would go in to see Krzyzewski after games to tell him what a great job he had done that night. Eventually, Krzyzewski hired him as his agent and a lot of Duke players landed with Falk—just as virtually every Georgetown player has landed with Falk since John Thompson became a client of his thirty years ago.

In 1994 I was on a trip to Hawaii with Maryland. Joe Smith was a sophomore and a lot of people thought he had a chance to be the first pick in the NBA draft if he turned pro that spring. Throughout the trip there was a guy hanging around the team who was clearly bird-dogging for an agent. He was outside the locker room waiting whenever the bus pulled up and would hug most of the players as they walked inside. One afternoon I saw him walking on the beach with Smith.

Later that day, just prior to a game he walked up to Chuck Walsh, who was Maryland’s sports information director and said, “Hey Chuck, my man, you got a media guide for me?”

Gary Williams was standing no more than 10 feet away and his face was chalk white as Walsh went to get the media guide. He said nothing. As soon as the bird-dog walked away, Gary went off on Chuck. “What are you doing?!” he screamed. “Why are you helping him? Don’t you understand—he’s the ENEMY! You don’t help him in any way.”

Gary was exactly right. He WAS the enemy. Smith turned pro at the end of that season and there was nothing he could do about it. If he had told Smith to stay away from the bird-dog or any other agenting types, just as Lefty had said, Smith would have seen the order as selfish and self-serving and the agents would have reinforced that every chance they got.

That’s what makes this latest spate of NCAA investigations into player-agent relationship so difficult to deal with as an outsider. It’s very easy to say, “police the agents,” but how? To begin with, the NBA and NFL would have to work with the NCAA and that almost never happens. Beyond that, most agents are smart enough to not leave a trail behind. As Digger Phelps once said about coaches paying recruits: “it’s tough to prove cash.”

It’s tough to prove anything—especially given that the NCAA has always been monumentally understaffed in enforcement and seems more concerned with not talking to the media than with actually getting anything done.

Look, I’m not making excuses for anybody. The agents and the people who work for them shouldn’t be anywhere near college athletes and if they go anywhere near one, coaches should have the guts to tell them to get the hell away. If a player gets upset about it, you explain to him why he cannot be associated with an agent or anyone who has even been breathed on by an agent. If they don’t understand that, chances are they already have their hand out and you (the coach) have a serious problem.

Any agent caught dealing with a college athlete should be banned. And if it someone who works for him in any way, same thing. By banned I mean he can’t be registered with the NFL or the NBA or negotiate a contract with a team on behalf of an athlete for at least two years. I don’t mean if he’s caught giving a kid money, I mean if he shakes hands with a kid.

Years ago, when Eddie Fogler was still an assistant at North Carolina, I was standing with him on the court at University Hall at Virginia about 45 minutes before a game. All of a sudden, Eddie said, “oh dammit, now I’ve got trouble.”

I looked up and saw a man walking in his direction, hand out, smile on his face. I honestly don’t remember the man’s name but Eddie began waving his arms and saying, “Mr. Jones (made-up-name) nothing personal, but I can’t even shake your hand, I’ll be breaking the rules.”

The man was a potential recruit’s father. The last thing Fogler wanted to do was be rude. But the no-bump rules back then meant even accidental contact could be a violation.

Did Fogler act that way because I happened to be standing there? I don’t think so, but even if he did—fine—those are the kind of rules agents needs to be forced to live under. We all know all these excuses are, to put it in polite terms, hooey. The agents are friends of the family; they’re trying to help a kid out (that’s the biggest lie of them all); they just happened to have a house they could rent to a kid’s parents for $25 a month—and on and on. Just say none of those excuses wash. If it WAS an innocent mistake, well, too bad, you lose.

And the notion that the players don’t know they’re doing something wrong? Oh please. They’re all told the rules and they’re all told to stay away from three groups of people: agents, gamblers and the media. (We’re bad guys too because we ask questions). Here’s what I’ve heard coaches say to players: “If ANYONE wants to give you something for free, come tell me. Do NOT accept it, not even a movie ticket.”

The players know the rules but they’re also taught that they’re above the rules. And most of the time, even when they get caught—see Bush, Reggie; Mayo, O.J. et al—they don’t pay the price, the next generation of players and coaches pay the price. That’s another problem with NCAA enforcement: it moves so slowly that the guilty parties are usually out of dodge by the time the posse gets to town. (See Carroll, Pete and Floyd, Tim—who is somehow coaching at UTEP this coming season with no penalty while USC is still under NCAA sanctions).

The bottom line is this: It’s a hard problem for everyone. But the solution is NOT to do nothing. The solution is to understand that no answer is perfect but try to find one that sends a clear message to players, coaches and agents that this behavior won’t be tolerated. And if that behavior upsets a player—tough. Gary Williams was right—agents (and their surrogates) ARE the enemy. In college athletics it isn’t some of the time that they’re the enemy it is ALL the time.

Fred Barakat, ACC insider, passed away last night; Comments on the comments

Fred Barakat died last night. He had a heart attack at a hospital in Greensboro where he had just undergone knee surgery. He was 71 and had dealt with all sorts of health issues for the past several years.

Unless you are a big-time ACC basketball fan you probably have no idea who Fred was. But he played an important role in changing the college game. He came to the ACC in 1981 as the supervisor of basketball officials after 11 years as the coach at Fairfield University. His hiring was an out-of-the-box move by the ACC. Until then, almost without exception, the men in charge of basketball officials had been former officials. They had a tendency to be very defensive about the guys who worked for them, often because they were former colleagues and friends.

There was an aura of secrecy that surrounded college basketball officials. When I was in college, I did a story on officiating in the ACC—a controversial subject then as now—and I was able to talk to all seven conference coaches. (To be fair, I got Dean Smith to call me back by saying I wanted to give him the chance to respond to what Lefty Driesell had said and I got Lefty to return my call by saying I thought he should hear what Dean had said about him. When Lefty asked me what Dean had said, I fessed up and said I’d just told his secretary that to get him to call. Lefty said, “that’s pretty good son, you got me.”).

I couldn’t get anyone from the ACC to comment on officiating. No one. That was the norm until Fred arrived. From day one, he took every call he got—from coaches, from the media, from just about anyone. “I let them talk,” Fred once told me, talking about the coaches. “I knew how they felt because I’d been a coach. Sometimes when they were done I told them why they were wrong. Other times I had to tell them they were right and we’d try to do better. But I think they always felt better because I let them talk.”

According to the coaches he was right. “You always knew Fred would listen,” said Gary Williams, who has complained about ACC officiating as much as anyone through the years. “Sometimes you’d get pissed at him because he’d defend someone you thought shouldn’t be defended but he never cut you off, he never got impatient and you knew he wanted his guys to do better the next time. That’s really all you can ask.”

When Rick Barnes was at Clemson he got so frustrated with what he saw as Duke-Carolina bias in the officiating that he flew to Greensboro armed with tapes to show Barakat what he was talking about. Barakat sat and watched all the tapes with him, then showed him some tapes of his own. “I still wasn’t happy when we were done,” Barnes said. “But I left there knowing that Fred was conscious of what I was talking about. He gave me an entire morning and never flinched.”

“I let him vent,” Fred said later.

Fred was the same way with the media. He always returned phone calls. Sometimes he called YOU if he thought what you’d written was unfair or not entirely correct. He defended his guys but he also knew they weren’t perfect. He was disliked by a number of officials because he stopped giving them ACC assignments. Officiating was very much a good old boy network into the 1980s. Fred began working with younger officials, bringing them along so they could work bigger games. Occasionally they were put in over their heads and couldn’t swim. Others did swim and became very good refs.

Fred and I had our battles but it was more over the way he ran the ACC Tournament than his work with the officials. Fred thought the tournament needed more discipline. He hired a thuggish security company run by a thug and pretty much gave them the run of whatever building the tournament was in. Sadly, that company is still working for the ACC. Two years ago in Atlanta, the guy who runs the company decided the hallway that led to the locker rooms and the interview rooms should be off-limits to the media—it’s about 100 yards wide—until the players and coaches had reached the interview room after a game. That created a five-to-seven minute delay in starting postgame interviews with people scrambling on deadline. When I asked him why he needed such a rule in such a large building he said, “I don’t, I just decided to do it.”

When I told him that was a ridiculous and arbitrary decision he looked at me and said, “What does arbitrary mean?” He was serious.

That disagreement aside, I always liked Fred. He and I had an annual routine at The Final Four (now it can be told I guess) where he would tell me on Friday who the nine referees were for the weekend. The NCAA always tries to keep the names of the refs a secret (I think it has something to do with the way the games are bet on depending on who might be calling them) and it always gave me great pleasure to tell Hank Nichols, who was then the officiating supervisor, who his nine officials were for the weekend. Fred didn’t think Nichols ever selected enough of his guys. This was one little payback for him.

It also helped me to know who the officials were when writing my advance stories: certain guys were going to ref the game one way; others in a different way.

Fred was a gentleman—always. You could disagree with him, argue with him, even tell him his security company buddy was a thug and he’d tell you why you were wrong and when it was over you’d always shake hands and vow to have a drink together soon. Coaches respected him because he’d coached and he understood their frustrations. The media respected him because he never ducked a question and those he worked with him respected him because he worked hard and was fun to work with and work for. My old friend Tom Mickle nicknamed him, The ‘Cat,’ early on and it stuck because Fred was quick and smart and sly.

I always looked forward to seeing him, especially in recent years. He had retired but still had his hand in and knew what was going on in college hoops. He was a good resource to get an expert’s honest opinion on officials, especially those he had NOT worked with because he was completely unbiased. And he always had a good story to tell, one he would tell with a big smile on his face.

I’ll miss him. So will a lot of people.

******

Two notes to some recent posters: For those of you who are bothered by my criticisms of Tiger Woods—seriously—just don’t read the blog anymore. There are enough people out there willing to kiss Tiger’s butt for anything and everything that he doesn’t need me to do it and you don’t need to get all bent out of shape reading what I think about him. As one poster said: “Tom Watson good, Tiger bad, what a surprise.”

Yup, that’s the way I feel. I don’t think Tiger’s changed even a little bit since his fall from grace—one reason he will start winning majors again soon—and I do like and respect Watson. Has he lived a perfect life as one angry e-mail pointed out? No. Neither have I and I suspect neither have you. But he’s learned as much as anyone I’ve ever met from his failings and changed considerably through the years.

Am I biased? Of course I’m biased. As I’ve written before, we’re ALL biased. I’m just more willing than some of my colleagues to admit my biases and try to be aware of them. I’ve always recognized Tiger’s brilliance as a golfer (tough to miss) and thought of him as bright and someone with great potential to do good. His failure to do that—and please don’t tell me about his foundation, that exists for PR purposes as with so many athletes—with his money, power and platform disappoints me. Sorry if you don’t like that. Again, there are plenty of places to go to read about what a great guy Tiger is.

And, as for the one comment that when I wrote “a lot of guys,” thought Tiger was acting like a baby last Thursday that I got that from other media members or The Golf Channel people? Are you kidding me? Do you watch Golf Channel? My God, Tiger walks on water there most of the time to the point where I tease people there about it. And I do NOT quote other media members. I should have written “a lot of players.” I thought that would be understood. But believe me it was players who thought he was being a baby.

So, as I said, if my being critical of Tiger is that bothersome, go on his website and find comfort there.

Second: To the poster who wondered how much I got paid for the rights to ‘A Season on the Brink.’ Let me answer that this way: If giving back the money would have kept the movie from ever being seen, I would have done it in a heartbeat.


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John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:



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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

New York City college basketball, Hall of Fame; Going over comments on Georgetown, others

Last night I hosted a radio show that will continue through The Final Four. It is being syndicated by WFAN in New York and it is strictly a college basketball show. Having grown up in New York, I find it dismaying what a wasteland the city has become for college hoops.

When I was a kid, believe it or not, Columbia had good teams. NYU and Manhattan were also pretty good and played doubleheaders in Madison Square Garden a couple of times a month. St. John’s wasn’t a national power but Lou Carnesecca had very good teams. Rutgers and Army were good too. Fordham was almost always competitive and had that one spectacular season under Digger Phelps when it beat Notre Dame in the Garden, lost in overtime to No. 1 ranked Marquette (both in front of sellout crowds) and eventually reached the sweet sixteen.

Yup, Fordham. I like to tease Digger sometimes by saying, “You know Digger, you were a great coach…at Fordham.”

If you liked college hoops there was plenty to watch—and listen to. I was such a junkie that I would LISTEN to games on the student radio stations: WKCR for Columbia; WSOU for Seton Hall; WFUV for Fordham.

Now, as with all things, it’s a lot different. St. John’s has played a majority of its home games at the Garden instead of Alumni Hall in Queens for years now. NYU dropped basketball and then came back as a Division 3 school. Manhattan has had some blips, most recently under Bobby Gonzales, but never plays in the Garden anymore. Fordham has changed leagues twice and is currently buried at the bottom of The Atlantic-10 (winless in league play, two wins all season) and Columbia was last good when, well, when I was a kid. Rutgers and Seton Hall are in The Big East. At least the Pirates are showing progress this season and have a shot to make the NCAA Tournament. Army has had ONE winning season since Mike Krzyzewski left to coach at Duke THIRTY years ago. Ouch.

As a result, especially since the city’s signature team—St. John’s—has been down for 10 years now—I wondered if the show would get ANY calls—since the only place it was broadcast live last night was in New York. (Other cities like DC and Boston for example aired it on tape-delay). When I listen to WFAN, which I often do especially in the car at night and when Steve Somers—easily their best and most entertaining host—is on, I NEVER hear a college hoops call. I mean never.

One of the reasons I enjoy the station is because I can tune it in driving through a snowstorm in January and hear a solid hour of debate on the Mets. Or the Yankees. I can live without the Knicks talk and enjoy the hockey talk—99 percent of it Rangers—and the pro football talk is fine too. There is also ZERO college football talk because New York simply doesn’t have college football, even if you count Rutgers, which is an hour from the city (with no traffic) and people just aren’t going to get that fired up by trips to The St. Petersburg Bowl. Army last had a winning season in football in 1996.

And yet, the phones were lit up throughout the show and there was a good range of questions from the predictable, ‘how far can the ‘Cuse go,’ to people responding to my thoughts on a 96 team tournament to questions about how to fix the one-and-done rule which currently afflicts the sport.

Sadly, no calls about Columbia or Army. There was one about St. John’s. The caller said Lou Carnesecca was under-appreciated. I pointed out that Lou is in the basketball Hall of Fame and was about as beloved as any coach I’ve ever known.

In all, it was fun although the short segments (LOTS of commercials) made me feel rushed at times.

I had two guests: Dan Bonner, who in my opinion is the most underrated college hoops analyst going. Bonner, who played at Virginia under Terry Holland, really gets basketball because he was one of those guys who had to work very hard and learn to understand the game in order to be any good. He’s bright, works extremely hard to prepare and has a great feel for the ebb and flow of a game. (Yes, we’re good friends but if I didn’t think this I’d just keep my mouth shut). The only thing that keeps Dan from being a big star is he doesn’t have shtick. He doesn’t make up words (Clark Kellogg) or scream like a maniac (you-know-who) or repeat the same pet phrases over-and-over (Bill Raftery). He’s just good. Billy Packer without the edge.

My second guest was Mike Krzyzewski. Did I ask him to come on because I’m a Duke grad? No, I asked him to come on because he coaches Duke. (This is a take off on a Jim Valvano line: “Did I recruit Vinny Del Negro because he’s Italian. No, I recruited him because I’M Italian).

Actually I asked Krzyzewski to come on because his team was off last night, because he’s the winningest active Division 1 coach out there and because his opinions are always interesting—whether we agree or disagree.

One subject we got on to was the Hall of Fame. Krzyzewski has been instrumental in setting up a College Basketball Hall of Fame the last five years and yesterday, Christian Laettner, the best player he ever coached, was voted into the new Hall of Fame. That raised the issue—at least with me—about the Naismith Hall of Fame, the one in Springfield.

The politics of the Hall of Fame are shameful. The names of the 24 voters are kept secret, ostensibly because the Hall doesn’t want them lobbied---if you’re qualified to vote for a Hall of Fame you should be able to withstand lobbying—but really because the Hall doesn’t want them to have to stand behind their votes. What a joke.

Ironically, Mike brought up Lefty Driesell and Gary Williams as two people who should be in the Hall of Fame who aren’t. I agree on both and my opinions on Lefty not being in there have been made clear on numerous occasions. It’s a joke. The irony, of course, is that Mike brought up two Maryland coaches and Maryland people absolutely revile him. Trust me when Duke plays at Maryland next Wednesday it will not be a pretty sight. (The game may be great, the fans not so much).

The next show is Tuesday night. I may open it by ripping the Hall of Fame (again) for its ridiculous voting procedures and for keeping Lefty out. He won’t be going in this year either: none of the nominees are college coaches. That’s because the NBA now controls the Hall. Lefty, Gary, Jim Phalen, Herb Magee (who just broke Bob Knight’s all-time record for NCAA coaching victories on Tuesday with his 903d win at Philadelphia University) all come to mind right away.

What a joke. Seventeen days to Selection Sunday.

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A couple of notes from yesterday’s posts—many of which were both smart and fascinating.
To my old buddy Poncho: You’re right, I did take shots a couple of Northwestern guys. But you, being the smart Northwestern guy you are know they were NOT cheap shots, just shots…

To the guy who hacked into my Wikipedia—usually something my teen-age son likes to do to mention how cool he is—to claim I applied to Georgetown and didn’t get in and that’s why I have a bias against Georgetown: If I had applied to Georgetown I might not have gotten in; it’s a great school. But I didn’t apply.

I have one problem with Georgetown. It is not John Thompson the elder, with whom I had many battles but always respected and get along fine with now. It isn’t John the third, who I’ve known since he was at Princeton as a player. I like him and think he’s a terrific coach. My problem is simply this: Georgetown has consistently refused to play in a local charity basketball tournament for 15 years that raises an average of $500,000 a year that goes to kids at risk in the D.C. area.

We (the board of directors of the charity) have tried everything to get Georgetown to play: we’ve offered them potential opponents ranging from Maryland (a game that should be played every year in my opinion) to Texas to Holy Cross—with plenty of others in-between. John the elder wouldn’t meet with us at all. Craig Esherick did meet with us but his first demand was that we throw George Washington, which has been involved since day one, out of the event. John the third has met with us and keeps coming up with different reasons not to do it.

So yes, I’m guilty, I have a bias there. But that has NOTHING to do with my AP ballot this week. I’ve had Georgetown as high as, I think, seventh during the course of the season. Until their win at Louisville Wednesday they had gone through a stretch where they lost to an awful Rutgers team; a mediocre South Florida team (at home) and were lucky to beat Providence. Their best wins—Duke and Villanova—were at home. So, for one week when they weren’t playing very well, I gave some smaller schools a nod because I always do that when given the chance. Since my vote—and the polls in general—has absolutely no affect on who gets into the tournament or where they’re seeded—I see no reason not to throw a vote to Cornell or consistently underrated teams like Old Dominion (which, as you recall beat Georgetown in December) or some of the teams in the Atlantic-10 or Missouri Valley Conference. I had a total of TWO ACC teams in the poll last week (I think Maryland is a lot better than people know) and four Big East teams in the top 13.

Here’s my advice: Get over it. And tell the powers-that-be at Georgetown you want your school in The BB+T Classic.

Finally: Thanks to the poster who caught my slip on the GAG line with the Rangers. Brad Park obviously played defense. (I was such a sick fan as a kid I sometimes argued he was as good as Bobby Orr. Okay, fine, I know better now. But Park was great). The GAG line was, of course, Hadfield, Ratelle and Gilbert. I still haven’t completely recovered from Ratelle and Park being traded to the hated Bruins.

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa and, of course a Happy Festivus (for the rest of us)

I have written before about how much I detest baseball’s All Star break because it means three days with no baseball—unless you like watching an exhibition game in July—forcing me to watch even more ‘West Wing,’ on DVD than I normally do until the real games start again on Thursday.

Christmas week isn’t much better. Last night there were some good college basketball games to watch and what looked like a good bowl game (Brigham Young-Oregon State which turned out to be pretty much a snooze) but the closer you get to Christmas Day the more your choices dwindle. By Christmas Eve you’re down to one pretty lousy bowl game (I’m just not that psyched for Nevada-SMU) and then on Christmas Day there’s one NFL game—at night—and all those NBA games that, sorry, I just can’t bring myself to care about. Check back with me when the playoffs start. Actually check back with me when The Finals start. Maybe.

There’s also the family issue. People expect you to hang out with kids and in-laws and brothers and sisters. It isn’t that I don’t like any of these people—I love many of them—it’s just that after a while you’d rather watch a ballgame than talk about how cute someone’s dog is or hear about how funny your nephew can be. The other problem for me is I can’t claim on Christmas Eve that I really need to watch that Nevada-SMU game for work.

Christmas has always been an interesting part of my life. Clearly, I’m Jewish. My dad was raised orthodox and completely rejected all religion as an adult. My mom had no religious training at all and thought Christmas was a better holiday for kids than Chanukah (my daughter Brigid might argue differently since she still clings to the idea that she’s owed eight gifts) so we always had a Christmas tree and always celebrated Christmas—albeit in a secular way.

Without sounding glib I can honestly say that the births of Lefty Driesell and my agent, Esther Newburg, on Christmas Day have had more meaning in my life than the birth of Jesus Christ. My friend Ken Denlinger once described Lefty as “God’s unique Christmas present to the world in 1931.”

One of my more vivid Christmas memories involves Lefty. I had traveled to Hawaii with Maryland in December of 1984 for what was then The Rainbow Classic. This was before ESPN had created all these strictly-for-TV events at Thanksgiving and The Rainbow, which started back in 1964, was THE holiday tournament: eight quality teams every year. The schedule called for two games Christmas night; two games the next day and then four games on the 27th and the 28th since everyone played three games.

Maryland was playing Iowa on Christmas night. On Christmas Eve morning, I went with Maryland to practice at the old Blaisdell Arena, an aging mini-dome that seated about 8,000 people. Blaisdell had a certain character to it. You had to walk across little bridges to get inside because the building was surrounded by what would best be described as a moat. There was absolutely no parking for the building but if you knew what you were doing you parked at the bank right across the street.

After practice I went back to the hotel and had lunch with Lefty to get some pre-tournament quotes for my advance the next day. As we were finishing, a Maryland booster who had made the trip approached Lefty.

“Coach we were wondering about some free time for the kids tomorrow after morning shootaround,” he said.

“Free time,” Lefty said. “What for?”

“Well, we wanted to have a little Christmas party for them…”

“Christmas!” Lefty thundered. “Christmas! I didn’t come here to have a Christmas party I came here to win games!”

Take that Bah and Humbug.

Maryland won two games—beating Iowa and Hawaii before losing at the buzzer to Georgia Tech in the finals. Because the championship game was on TV back east it started at 6 o’clock local time. Tommy Stinson of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and I walked into Blaisdell at about 5:59 that night because we were sitting by the hotel pool listening to Al McGuire tell stories and we lost track of the time.

I’ve never really minded working on holidays—again it isn’t because I don’t love my family—it’s just, well, what I do. I’m used to working on weekends when others aren’t working so working on a holiday doesn’t feel strange to me. Of course when I still worked at The Washington Post, I frequently got into battles with George Solomon who would—understandably—assign the Jewish members of the staff to work Christmas Day. I didn’t mind working if I was on the road someplace (especially if it was in Hawaii) but I certainly didn’t want to come into the office to write some kind of advance on the college basketball games being played the next day or get sent out to Redskins Park to hear Joe Gibbs talk about how that Sunday’s opponent was the greatest team in football history.

So, every year I’d check the schedule and there I’d be, penciled in for Christmas Day. I’d go see George.

“I can’t work on Christmas,” I’d say.

George—who, to be fair, always put himself on the schedule on Christmas—would look at me and say, “what are you talking about?”

“My family celebrates Christmas. My mother will be upset if I’m not there to open presents in the morning.”

“What do you mean your family celebrates Christmas?”

George literally didn’t believe me at first. Then, when he did believe me, he decided he had to teach me how to be a real Jew. One year he insisted that I come to break-fast at his house on Yom Kippur. I showed up (having not fasted) and wasn’t eating anything because, to be honest, other than soft kosher salami, I’m just not into that sort of food at all.

George’s wife Hazel, one of the world’s nicest and most patient people, came up to me looking puzzled and said, “John, you’re not eating.”

Without thinking about what day it was I gave Hazel the answer I always used if I was at someone’s house and didn’t like the food being served: “Hazel, I’m sorry, I had a really big lunch very late.”

Whoops. She looked at me as if I was insane and went off to—probably—tell George he needed to fire me. George STILL hasn’t let me off the hook on that one.

Anyway, the bottom line is, I like the holidays. I like the warmth and I really like the music and I especially like the corny movies. 1. “It’s A Wonderful Life.” 2. “White Christmas.” 3. “Miracle on 34th Street” (the original) watched it last night. 4. “Rudolph.” (Burl Ives second greatest performance right behind, ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,”—talk about range). 5. “Elf.”

I enjoy seeing relatives and friends I don’t often get to see. But I’m also really happy on the morning of the 26th because there are LOTS of games to choose from, places to go and people to see—and write about.

So, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa and, of course a Happy Festivus (for the rest of us). If something actually happens today, I’ll write a blog tomorrow if only to keep a little bit busy. If it is as quiet as I suspect it will be, I’ll be back Monday after everyone has, I hope, a great holiday.

There will be, no doubt, lots to write about Monday. Thank God for that.

Harvard beating BC -- one reason I love college basketball; Stories of Tommy Amaker

If you want to know why I love college basketball, consider the following: In the calendar year 2009, Harvard University has a record of 2-0 against crosstown rival Boston College. In that same calendar year, North Carolina coached by hard-working Hall of Famer Roy Williams was 0-1 against Boston College. Duke, coached by two-time Olympic coach and Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski was 1-1 against the Eagles.

Think about that: Harvard, which last played in the NCAA Tournament in 1946 (its only appearance) has beaten BC twice—once last January a few days after the Eagles had won AT North Carolina—and once last night, 73-67. Both Harvard victories took place (surprise) at BC.

Now you may say I have a bias here—and I do—because I’ve known Harvard Coach Tommy Amaker since he was a high school junior. In this case though my bias has very little to do with it, especially since Frank Sullivan, the man Amaker succeeded at Harvard, is a good friend whose firing three years ago was grossly unfair.

In fact, I would say this: if any Ivy League team beat an ACC team two seasons in a row I would get a big kick out of it. It just isn’t supposed to happen. And yet, in college basketball, results like that DO happen. Already this season Cornell has won at Alabama and in seasons past my friends in The Patriot League have pulled off some decent sized upsets as in Bucknell over Kansas and Arkansas in back-to-back NCAA Tournaments and Holy Cross going into Notre Dame and beating the Irish in the NIT.

Let’s go back to Amaker for a moment. I remember the first time I saw him play because it’s a funny story. I was doing a magazine piece on Mike Krzyzewski, who had just finished his first season at Duke and had more or less washed out in recruiting—finishing second for players like Chris Mullin, Bill Wennington, Uwe Blab and Jim Miller. In recruiting, finishing second and $4 will get you a latte at Starbucks.

Krzyzewski was in Washington to see Johnny Dawkins play in the old Jelleff League, which was up Wisconsin Avenue in northwest DC. The league was a Washington tradition, with games played indoors and outdoors and was most famous for a game in the early 1970s when DeMatha was supposed to play St. Anthony’s for the championship. Because DeMatha Coach Morgan Wootten had refused to schedule St. Anthony’s during the regular season, St. Anthony’s Coach John Thompson played his cheerleaders in the game.

“If he won’t play me in the winter, I’m not playing him in the summer,” Thompson said at the time.

When Thompson was the coach at Georgetown he refused to recruit any of Wootten’s great players. I asked him about that once and he said to me, “there are some people on this earth who you can live away from.” Of course now that Wootten and Thompson are both retired and in the Hall of Fame they joke when Wootten appears on Thompson’s radio show about how the media created their alleged feud.

Sure. And Thompson and Lefty Driesell were buddies back then too.

Anyway, on this particular night, Krzyzewski was sitting in the stands watching Dawkins play when Red Jenkins, then the coach at W.T. Woodson High School in northern Virginia stopped to say hello to him. “You need to stay for the next game,” Jenkins said. “You need to see my point guard. He’s only going to be a junior and he’s little but watch him play.”

Krzyzewski figured he didn’t have much else to do so he decided to stick around at least for a few minutes to see what Jenkins was talking about. “Red’s a good coach,” he said. “I don’t think he’d tell me to watch this kid unless he was pretty good.”

By halftime, Krzyzewski was like a teen-age kid in love for the first time. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Amaker, who probably weighed about 140 pounds at the time. Someone had pointed Amaker’s mother out to Krzyzewski and at halftime he walked over and said (probably breaking about 14 NCAA rules) to her: “Your son is going to look great in Duke blue.”

The funny thing is Amaker really wanted to go to Maryland because John Lucas had been his boyhood hero. But Lefty had recruited a kid named Keith Gatlin so he didn’t pursue Amaker, who was only 6-feet-tall, that hard. A few years later when Amaker was a junior at Duke and Gatlin was a sophomore at Maryland, Gatlin sat out a game at Duke with a bad back.

That was the year I was in Indiana doing ‘Season on the Brink.’ Two days after the game at Duke, Maryland played at Notre Dame. I drove up to South Bend to see the game and my friend Sally Jenkins, who was covering the Terrapins at the time. When I walked into the arena the first person I saw was Driesell.

“Hey Lefty, how’s Gatlin feeling?” I asked.

Lefty looked at me quizzically. “Gatlin?” he said. “He’s fine.”

“Really? I saw where he didn’t play at Duke because something was wrong with his back.”

“Oh that was nothing,” Lefty said waving his hand. “He just had a case of Amaker-back.”

Any guard knowing he was going to be guarded by Amaker for 40 minutes began to feel back pain. Gatlin was no exception.

Amaker seemed destined for stardom when he became a college coach. In his third year at Seton Hall he took the Pirates to the Sweet Sixteen and he had a big time recruiting class on the way including Eddie Griffin, who was supposed to be a superstar. But Griffin proved to be a troubled kid and at the end of the ’01 season he left for the NBA and Amaker left for Michigan. There, he constantly seemed on the verge of turning the program around after taking over in the wake of the revelations about The Fab Five, but never made the NCAA Tournament in six seasons. He was fired after the ’07 season—a stunning turnaround for someone who had appeared to be a lock for coaching stardom.

He landed at Harvard but not without controversy, although it wasn’t his doing. Frank Sullivan had done remarkable work keeping Harvard competitive for 16 years working with one hand tied behind his back in recruiting because Harvard’s admissions standards were far more difficult than any other school in the Ivy League—not to mention the entire country.

When Amaker got the job, Harvard agreed to loosen the admissions standards to bring them in line with the rest of The Ivy League. Naturally, other Ivy League coaches instantly noticed that Amaker was recruiting kids that Sullivan couldn’t have touched and they talked about it to Pete Thamel of The New York Times. Harvard’s response should have been simple: “Yes, we decided to give our new coach a level playing field to recruit just as we do in football and hockey.” Instead, some blowhard in admissions insisted the standards hadn’t changed and Bob Scalise, the athletic director, tried to claim Amaker was just a better recruiter than Sullivan.

Whether that’s true no one will ever know because the two men were working under completely different sets of rules. Regardless, Amaker’s done a good recruiting job with a more level playing field and his third Harvard team appears to be behind only Cornell right now in The Ivy League. The Crimson play at Cornell on January 30th and host the Big Red on February 20th. Both those games will probably be worth seeing.

Maybe next year there can be an ACC-Ivy League Challenge Series. As of right now, The Ivies appear to have the edge. Come on, even if that’s not close to true, you have to love it. I wonder when the BC folks will let Harvard know that they won’t be playing anymore. My over-under is sometime this morning.

A Thanksgiving of Traditions – Swimming, the Lions and the New One, College Basketball

Everyone has Thanksgiving traditions. Even now, I try to sit down and watch the start of the football game from Detroit because I remember doing it as a kid. That’s been tough in recent years because the Lions have been so bad and, most of the time, the game has been out of hand by midway in the second quarter. At least yesterday it was competitive into the second half.

I know there has been talk about taking Thanksgiving away from the Lions. I think that would be a terrible decision. Yes, they’ve been lousy for a long time but at some point they will improve and there are some traditions you don’t mess with. They’ve played Thanksgiving football in Detroit since 1934. You don’t blow up a tradition like that so that a TV network can pick up a ratings point or two.

The game in Dallas is the one I don’t understand. I’m okay with the Cowboys hosting it but I wonder what the NFL is thinking sometimes when it chooses the opponent. It isn’t like with the Lions where they’re locked in. Did it come as a shock to the schedule-makers that the Raiders are bad again this year? If this is a year when the NFC East plays the AFC West why not send the Chargers in there on Thanksgiving Day? Or at least the Broncos.

Who would have thought that the highlight of Thanksgiving Day would be ESPN’s decision to create a bunch of college basketball tournaments? My goodness, do I owe the Bristol boys a thank-you note?

Actually my favorite Thanksgiving tradition the last dozen or so years has been getting up to go workout at the pool. Among the holidays, Thanksgiving is usually the best one for a workout because people aren’t feeling guilty yet about too much holiday eating and it isn’t New Years’—worst day of the year—when everyone has made their resolutions to lose weight.

This Thanksgiving workout had a little more meaning than some others. It was my first real attempt to swim since my heart surgery. I’ve been cleared to swim for a couple months but, to be honest, I was so far behind in my work that committing the time was really difficult. It was a lot easier to just walk for an hour than to get in the car, drive to the pool, workout and drive home. So, I made a deal with myself: as a soon as I finished the two books I was working on (one on the ’03 majors; the other the fifth book in the kids mystery series) I would make a serious effort to get back in swimming shape.

I finished the second book on Wednesday. Thursday morning I was in the pool. To say that I’m out of shape is like saying Dick Vitale talks a lot. Actually, my legs aren’t too bad because of the walking and the same is true of my wind. I was able to hold my turns for about as long as normal. The problem is my arms. They felt as if they had 50-pound weights on them. I did a set of 6x50 meters on 1:15 that would normally be an easy warm down set, one that if I was really in shape I’d swim butterfly. I was seriously hurting before I was finished. At the very end I tried to swim ONE length of butterfly. It felt like the end of a 200 fly.

So, I’ve got a long, long way to go. Still, it felt SO good to be back in. I made it through 1,300 meters—a nice warm-up for most of my friends—but was happy I did it. As soon as I finish writing this morning, I’m heading back to the pool. Maybe by spring I’ll be in some kind of shape.

Among all the holidays, Thanksgiving is probably the one I’ve had to work or travel on least often. It is only in recent years that a lot of college hoops has been played at Thanksgiving. I remember flying home on a red eye from the Maui Classic one year when Maryland played in it and getting home on Thanksgiving morning.

Probably my most memorable Thanksgiving trip was way back in 1984 when Maryland went to The Great Alaska Shootout. The games didn’t start until Friday—in those days no one played before Thanksgiving Day—but I flew on the same flight with Maryland on Tuesday since the flight went through Salt Lake City and Seattle before landing in Anchorage.

In Seattle, we were joined by the Kansas team, which had flown from Kansas City to Seattle. Larry Brown was on the flight with his wife. Lefty Driesell looked at Larry’s wife and said, “You decided to make this trip? No way could I get Joyce to come this far especially to go to Alaska.”

“She just can’t bear to be away from me for five days,” Brown said.

“Yeah, that’s my whole problem,” Lefty said. “The only one who can’t bear to be away from me for five days is Feinstein.”

He was probably right about that.

Anchorage was a little bit like a wild west town—lots of bars and guys who were miners or prospectors. Seriously. The sun came up at about 10:30. I remember waking up on Thanksgiving morning to go down and have breakfast so I could be back in my room at 8:30 to watch the kickoff of the Lions game. It was really eerie watching the game when the sun hadn’t come up yet.

A guy named Happy Fine was the Maryland beat reporter for The Washington Times back then and he insisted on making a “pilgrimage,” to the gym on the Air Force base where Patrick Ewing had made his college debut three years earlier. By 1984 the tournament had moved to a brand new 8,000 seat building. Loren Tate, the long-time Illinois broadcaster walked in the first day looked around and said, “it’s just another gym—except this one’s a long way from home.”

UAB ended up beating Kansas in the final after Kansas had come from way behind to beat Maryland in the first game. I still remember a young Kansas assistant named John Calipari who I had met the previous summer at the Five-Star camp grabbing my arm in the locker room and saying, “you aren’t going to believe how good Danny Manning is going to be.”

Manning was a Kansas freshman at the time. We flew home on a red eye on Sunday night. I remember buying an “Alaska,” coffee mug in the gift shop at the airport because I’d forgotten to buy any souvenirs. I still have the mug 25 years later.

A month later, Maryland played in The Rainbow Classic in Hawaii—in those days you could play in two exempt events in the same season—and I interviewed Lefty on Christmas morning sitting on a balcony overlooking the ocean.

“Faahnsteen,” he said. “Think about it. Because of me, you’ve gotten to see the world this year.”

I didn’t argue.

Other Games I’d Like to See; Comments on the Len Bias Documentary

As I'm sure is apparent to anyone who reads this blog, I love doing Navy football games on the radio. There is only one drawback and that's the fact that I don't have the flexibility to go to games involving other teams, especially this time of year. Every week I look at the schedule and, while I look forward to the game I'm doing that Saturday, I see games I'd really like to be able to go to that week.

More often than not, these aren't the games the TV talking heads are analyzing and re-analyzing 47 times during the week. This Saturday, I would love to be at the Williams-Amherst game. I've never seen one although I know all about the traditions--thanks in large part to a superb piece my pal Larry Dorman wrote in The New York Times years back--and I know that just about every year the game decides the league title. This year is no different: Amherst is 7-0, Williams is 6-1. In their conference the schools play eight games, none outside the conference, so it is pretty easy to figure out who is in first place. To give ESPN credit, it did take its self-important College Game Day show up there a couple years ago, a rare acknowledgment from the BCS apologists that there is football outside the six major conferences.

There is also Penn at Harvard this Saturday which will pretty much decide The Ivy League title. Al Bagnoli has coached at Penn for 17 years, Tim Murphy at Harvard for 16. They have been the league's dominant coaches during that time, each winning multiple league titles and putting together undefeated seasons. Penn, by the way, has played more games than any college football program in history--it just went past 1,300 last month. In the 1890s, John Heisman played there. Later he coached there. That game would be a lot of fun to see.

The other game I'd really like to see on Saturday won't be played very far from Harvard: Lafayette at Holy Cross. I have an affinity, as people know, for The Patriot League because of the book I wrote a few years back, "The Last Amateurs," about Patriot League basketball and because I continue to do the league's basketball TV package. (It is on CBS College Sports this year for those of you who need to sign up to get that network). But because of my friendships with people in the league, I follow the football programs pretty closely too.

When I was working on the book, Lehigh was the dominant program in the conference. Now, the Mountain Hawks have fallen off and Lafayette, Holy Cross and Colgate--which reached the Division 1-AA national championship game a few years back--have come on to the class of the league. Holy Cross is a remarkable story. Six years ago, Crusaders Coach Dan Allen was dying of ALS, trying to coach from a wheelchair. He died not long after the 2003 season ended and was replaced by Tom Gilmore who has done a remarkable rebuilding job.

The key though for the Crusaders has been their quarterback, Dominic Randolph, who didn't even start in high school and is now getting serious looks from NFL scouts. Pete Thamel wrote a great piece in The New York Times on Randolph a few weeks ago which included quotes from his high school coach. One of them was, "Someday when Dom's an NFL quarterback people are going to say, 'so who's the dope who didn't start him in high school?" I love coaches like that. The final score of this game might be 70-63 because both teams can score but can't, as my old pal Bob Knight used to say, "guard the floor." Lafayette beat Colgate 56-39 last week. Holy Cross's only loss was to Brown in a game in which the two quarterbacks threw more than 100 passes and gained close to 1,000 yards.

Of course next week is Harvard-Yale, The Game as it is called. It's in New Haven this year. Navy is off. Maybe, if I can get a hall pass, I'll take a drive up there. I saw Harvard-Yale once, way back in my early days at The Post, in Boston. At either place, it is a unique experience. The only problem this year is that Yale isn't very good, although it does have a good defense.

I'm not saying the big time games aren't worth seeing or that I don't care about them. I do. I would probably care more if the games were leading to a playoff rather the silly BCS, but they are still worthy of attention. I've never been to USC-UCLA and would like to do that someday. I'd like to see Boise State play and I'd like to see TCU play. I know Gary Patterson from his Navy days and couldn't be happier for the success he has had since taking over at TCU. I'd like to spend some time at South Carolina and hang out with Steve Spurrier. He may not be the coaching superstar he was in his Florida days but he's still as entertaining and interesting as anyone in the sport. I'd like to see West Virginia play Pittsburgh, regardless of the team's records in a given year. There are plenty of other traditional games worth seeing and maybe someday I'll have a chance to do that. At least I get to see Army-Navy every year. That's one game I would never miss under any circumstances.

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I finally watched The Len Bias ESPN documentary the other night. I had avoided it, in part because I'm really not into the self-aggrandizing ESPN series which pop up as self-celebrations every five years, but more because I know the story, I lived the story and I didn't think I needed to see someone else's version of the story. But, I was flipping around the other night, missing baseball, with no hockey to watch and came upon it being rerun, so I stopped on it because my pal Mike Wilbon was on the screen at that moment.

I'm almost hesitant to write about this because every time I write about ESPN I know my bias against the suits who run the place is probably in play. But I sat there and watched and waited for someone to say something like, "Len Bias did this to himself." Instead, it almost sounded as if Len Bias was a martyr. One person after another came on screen to say what a great guy Len Bias was and then--this was the best part--how he had saved lives by dying as if he had run into a burning house to rescue people and died after carrying people to safety.

Look, I knew Len Bias well. I covered Maryland during his sophomore and junior seasons and saw him emerge as a star. I liked him and spent considerable time with him. Check the clips on the stories I wrote about him. He was bright, a talented artist, almost a mama's boy when I covered him. He admitted to me once that he took his laundry home for his mother to do whenever he had the chance. I also know during his senior year, when everyone knew he was going to be a very high draft pick, a lot of people who knew him became concerned about the hangers-on who had come into his life. I heard it from a number of people second-hand because that was the year I was in Indiana doing "A Season on the Brink."

Bias's death was stunning and it haunted Maryland for years and years. It was one of the reasons Bobby Ross fled as football coach and it led to Lefty Driesell being forced out as coach by the self-righteous chancellor John Slaughter. Slaughter then hired a high school coach, Bob Wade, who promptly got Maryland into an NCAA investigation that led to major sanctions. In 1997, when I was doing my book on ACC basketball--11 years after Bias's death--Maryland lost a game at Duke. Afterwards, I sat with alone with Gary Williams, who was in the process of rebuilding from the rubble left after Bias and after Wade. Gary was disconsolate and emotional at that moment. He later told me regretted saying what he'd said but at that moment I know it was what he felt.

"When a player comes to Duke," he said, "he expects to play in The Final Four. There are times when I think all our players want to do is get out of here (Maryland) without dying of an overdose of cocaine."

An over-reaction to a tough loss? Perhaps. But it symbolized just how much Bias's ghost continued to stalk the Maryland campus. I believe it was only after Gary took Maryland to the Final Four in 2001 and won the national title in 2002 that it was finally exorcised.

There's almost none of that in the ESPN documentary. There are just excuses: people didn't know how serious cocaine was in 1986 (they may not have known it could be instantly fatal but they certainly knew it was dangerous and illegal). The notion that Bias had never used before is repeated by almost everyone except the county prosecutor who says, "recreational users don't use that pure a form of cocaine."

Many, if not most of the people interviewed barely knew Len Bias. The exceptions of course, are his parents, Lefty Driesell and some of his ex-teammates. Understandably, they want to protect his memory. Even Brian Tribble, the guy who was doing cocaine with Bias that night, is portrayed as someone who just made this one horrible mistake--even though it was seven years later that he was convicted for drug possession.

Clearly a lot of money was spent on this thing and, since ESPN can self-promote better than anyone, it will get a lot of attention. I would like to think if it was any good, if it shed any new light on the tragedy, that I would say so and give credit where it was due. To me though, it came off as an infomercial. No one doubts that Bias's death was a tragedy and there's no questioning that it had a deep, long-term affect on many, many people. I liked Len Bias, enjoyed the time I spent with him. But he was no martyr regardless of how many people the director lined up to lionize him.

The summer that Bias died, Bob Knight spoke at The Five Star camp. He talked about the dangers of drug-use to the campers. "A lot of people think that using drugs is cool," Knight said. "Len Bias thought it was cool. He was so cool that now he's cold."

That may sound cold and harsh. Sadly, Knight spoke the truth--unlike most of the people on camera during the documentary.

College Basketball Gets Started Today -- Stories on ‘Coach’ Wooden

Two days ago, John Wooden celebrated his 99th birthday. Today, college basketball teams officially begin practice. Three weeks from Monday--remarkably--the season begins. By then The World Series may--or may not--be over.

I'd like to talk about Coach Wooden first. There are very few people that I call "coach." To begin with, it is over-used in sports to the point of being obnoxious. Some people actually come to believe that "coach," is their first name. When I first began covering sports while in college I tended to call most coaches, "coach," because they were older than me and my parents had taught me long ago you didn't address adults by their first name unless they asked you to do so. The first truly famous coach I remember telling me to not to call him coach was Dean Smith. It was shortly after I graduated from college and had gone to work at The Washington Post.

"You're a college graduate now," he said. "You work for a great newspaper, not the Duke Chronicle. (little Dean zinger there). Call me Dean."

I was also instructed early on in my days at The Post by Len Shapiro, one of my early mentors and role models not to call coaches, 'coach.'

"Makes you sound like a kid," he said. "You're implying they have some kind of authority over you--which they don't."

When I met Bear Bryant I couldn't bring myself to call him "Bear," or "Paul." And I would never dare call John Wooden anything but 'coach." If anyone ever earned that title for life it was John Wooden.

He was retired by the time I got into the business but I learned early on that if you wanted a quote on anything relating to basketball, he was someone you could call. His home number was always available and he would pick up the phone himself and talk to you for as long as you needed. I can remember pinching myself a few times thinking, 'John Wooden is talking to ME?'

I'm like anyone else who has been around college hoops: I've heard the stories about Sam Gilbert, who supposedly made sure all the UCLA players were well taken care of during the dynasty days. You know what, I don't care. Elite athletes get taken care of at most schools and, unless it is absolutely blatant, people look the other way. All I know about Wooden is that he won 10 national titles in 12 years--to me the most astonishing run in sports history given that he was winning a single elimination tournament--and is one of a handful of coaches who I KNOW touched his players’ lives in ways that went well beyond basketball.

In my dealings with Coach Wooden he was always smart, honest, candid and clearly had great respect and love for the game and for those who played it and coached it. He certainly could have traded on his fame to make a LOT more money than he ever did and he opted not to do that. The respect people in the game had (and have) for him went well beyond wins and championships.

I've told this story a number of times in the past but I think it bears repeating. In 1984 I was hanging around late one night in the lobby of the coaches hotel at The Final Four in Seattle. I had seen Coach Wooden in the lobby a little earlier with his wife Nell. She was in a wheelchair, terminally ill and had come to the Final Four, essentially, to say goodbye to old friends. Everyone in basketball knew how sick she was.

Late in the evening, the Woodens said good night to the group they had been talking to and Coach Wooden starting pushing his wife's wheelchair across the lobby in the direction of the elevators. I have no idea who started it--but someone began to clap. People looked up from what they were doing and the applause began to build. By the time the Woodens had reached the elevator, everyone in the packed lobby was standing and clapping. It was one of the most moving things I've ever seen because it was so spontaneous and so genuine and so warm.

Six years ago, I ran into Coach Wooden again at The Final Four. I was having breakfast in the lobby at the coaches hotel in New Orleans when I saw him across the room. I went over to say hello. Coach Wooden was 93. In a situation like that I never assume that someone remembers me.

"John," Coach Wooden said shaking hands. "Tell me what book you're working on these days."

I was flattered he remembered. "Actually coach, I'm working on a book about a good friend of yours--Red Auerbach."

Coach Wooden smiled. "Oh Red," he said. "He's such a nice young man."

A young man--of course. Red was only 86 at the time.

Last year I did a column for The Post on Coach Wooden's great grandson, a walk-on at UCLA. He told me a story about shooting hoops in his driveway when he was little. "My great-grandfather came out and started telling me what he wanted me to do with my shot and with my dribble," he said. "I went into my mom and dad and said, 'what the heck does great-grandfather know about basketball? Why is he trying to coach me?'"

It wasn't until a few years later that he found out that his great-grandfather knew a little about basketball.

My guess is that if he was still in the business, Coach Wooden wouldn't be a big fan of all the hoopla that now surrounds the opening night of basketball practice. Lefty Driesell started the whole, "Midnight Madness," concept 35 years ago at Maryland and now almost every college team has some kind of 'celebration,' associated with the start of practice even though the players can now be coached throughout the fall in so-called, 'individual workouts,' and there's no 12:01 a.m. kickoff on October 15th anymore. It's just the third Friday in October. The notion of coaches allowing a PRACTICE to be televised would no doubt leave Coach Wooden shaking his head.

But it is 2009 and life is every different than it was in the 60s and 70s when UCLA was, well, the UCLA of college hoops. Back then, when I was first learning the game, no one played a game before December 1. Then it became Thanksgiving weekend. Now it is Nov. 9th and the national championship game won't be played until April 5th. Coach Wooden's teams played 30 games en route to national titles--26 in the regular season, four in the NCAA Tournament. Now teams routinely play 33 or 34 games BEFORE the NCAA Tournament begins.

It's still a great game--flawed as it may be. When Coach Wooden's teams were dominant a typical college basketball game took about 90 minutes. Now two hours and 15 minutes is routine. One other thing you may or may not remember: Until 1973, the national championship game was played on a Saturday afternoon. Talk about the good old days!

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Couple of quick notes on some recent posts: In response to the blog about 'no cheering in the press box,' someone asked about Sid Hartman the legendary columnist from Minneapolis who was known as a bit of a homer. Years ago Sid's Vikings were playing the Redskins in a playoff game and one of the Vikings was called for holding. Sid stood up and angrily screamed, "If that was holding I'll eat s----!"

My friend Ken Denlinger, one of the nicest men in the history of our business couldn't resist. He tossed a copy of that mornings Minneapolis Star-Tribune at Sid as the replay showed a clear hold and said, "Your column's on page two Sid."....

Ouch.

One of our regular posters, Vince, brought up Harry McGurk after reading my homage of Harry Hughes, reminding me that McGurk had run against Governor Hughes in the Democratic primary in 1982. McGurk's nickname was "soft shoes," because he moved quietly around the senate gathering votes when he needed them almost un-noticed. I had the chance to get to know Senator McGurk and wrote a long feature on him and on his candidacy that year. Not sure, Vince, if you can find it in The Post archives but it would be there sometime in the summer of '82. He was a very, very good man.... 

Selective Reading – Garfinkel, Lefty and Myself

Every morning when I wake up I take a look at the comments posted from the previous day's blog. They usually range from funny to smart to inquisitive to--occasionally--correcting a mistake I've made. That always frustrates me. I don't like making mistakes. There are also occasions where someone is upset with what I've written (a surprisingly low percentage actually) and, often as not, those comments come from people who think I should keep politics out of what is most often a sports blog.

On those mornings I agree to disagree, sip my coffee (Thank God I have a new coffeemaker and thanks for the concern and understanding from some of yesterday's posters and e-mailers) and move on.

On occasion though, there's a note that makes me shake my head because it reminds me of how selective we can all be when we read. There was an example of that this morning in the post from Sarah, who I'm going to guess is a Twins fan. Sarah, it seems, was upset with my criticism of Major League Baseball and home plate umpire Randy Marsh for not admitting Marsh missed a call in the top of the 12th inning of the Twins-Tigers game Tuesday night when a bases loaded pitch grazed the uniform of the Tigers Brandon Inge.

This is not to pick on Sarah, who is simply standing up for her team. But what she read in the blog was quite different from what I wrote. More important though what she read was me saying the Tigers got robbed. In fact I made the point that there was NO guarantee the Tigers would win if Marsh had gotten the call right especially with Tigers closer Fernando Rodney clearly exhausted in the bottom of the 12th. She also seemed to think I was somehow demeaning the Twins victory. I think most people understood I was as thrilled for the Twins as I was disappointed for the Tigers. That was the beauty of the game. Both teams were deserving.

The larger point is this: people selectively read all the time. I'm as guilty as anyone. I've been remarkably lucky throughout my career to get very good book reviews. I would guess somewhere around 90 percent have ranged from good to great and, even in the 10 percent that weren't there were still some nice things said in almost every case. And yet, I guarantee I remember the 10 percent--and even the mild criticisms in some of the 90 percent--far more than the praise.

When "A Season on the Brink," came out The New York Times book review completely ignored it. One of the nasty little secrets about publishing is that The Times, which wields tremendous power because of its bestseller list, is about as blatantly political as any entity on earth. I know I come at this from a biased position but it is almost impossible for anyone with a Washington Post connection to get a fair shake from The Times and there are very few books written by Times-connected people that don't (A) get full reviews and (B) get positive full reviews. There are exceptions on both sides--I've even got a couple of decent reviews--but they are few and far between

Anyway...After 'Season on the Brink," had been No. 1 on The Times list for 14 weeks they finally got around to reviewing it. The review as five paragraphs long and very complimentary except for a weird final sentence which, 22 years later I still remember almost word-for-word: "That's great reporting (referring to something in the book) and yet the man still somehow eludes us."

Huh? What the hell did that mean? Fast forward five years. I'm at the Major League Baseball winter meetings and a guy walks up and introduces himself. "I thought I should introduce myself because I reviewed 'Season on the Brink,' for The New York Times," he said. (To this day I can't tell you his name). Clearly he expected me to thank him for the good review--which I probably should have. But I reacted instinctively: "What the hell does 'the man still eludes us?' mean," I said. As soon as I said it I felt bad--I had done to him what people often did to me--pick out one line and forget everything nice that had been written. He was nice about it, then I was nice about it and everything was fine after that.

Of course sometimes reviewers can be infuriating because they don't READ what you've written. When 'A Good Walk Spoiled,' came out in 1995 the reviews were overwhelmingly good. One guy, however, was incensed because--he wrote--"Feinstein has flat out stolen a line from Mark Twain and claimed it as his own for a title." The opening sentence of the introduction to the book reads as follows: "It was Mark Twain who said, 'Golf is a Good Walk Spoiled.'

A few years later one of the Times more obnoxious regular reviewers ripped me in her review of, "The Last Amateurs," for "ignoring," players like Tim Duncan who went to big time schools and passed on taking the NBA money early to get their degrees. Again, in the introduction, I wrote about Duncan being one of the exceptions that proved the rule and how much I had enjoyed getting to know him while writing, "A March to Madness," during his SENIOR year.

See what I mean about remembering every slight? (that would be me).

I still smile when people describe me as the guy who "excoriated," Bob Knight. (Read the book, it is anything but an excoriation). The fact is we all do it all the time. You and I can read the same story and come to completely different conclusions about it. I have no doubt there is a Tigers fan out there who thinks I went too easy on Marsh for missing the call in the 12th. It makes the world go round.

My favorite story about this sort of thing goes back to 1984. I had traveled the summer basketball circuit which was being taken over by the shoe companies at the time and had written a lengthy, glowing story about The Five Star Camp, which was the original basketball camp. Unlike the meat market shoe company camps, Howard Garfinkel, the camp's founder and director, still ran a camp that was about teaching and having fun and learning the fundamentals of the sport. I went on at length about all the traditions of the camp: no numbers on the players uniforms; Garf shooting free throws to cheers and boos every day; all the clinician/coaches who came in to speak; the outdoor games at night under the trees at Robert Morris University; the bad food; station 13 where everyone had to go every day for instruction.

It was, in essence, a 100 inch infomercial for Five Star.

The day it ran my phone rang. It was Garfinkel. "I saw the piece today," he said. I waited for the thank you. "What do you mean lousy food?!"

Actually there is one story better than that and it involves--surprise--Lefty Driesell. When I first started covering Lefty and Maryland he frequently complained to me about The Post's coverage of the program, specifically citing Ken Denlinger, who was then--along with Dave Kindred--one of the papers two very good sports columnists. (Neither one liked hockey very much. In fact, Kenny walked into the newsroom one winter morning and announced, "I have built an insurmountable 1-0 lead on Kindred this season in hockey columns." Turned out he was right).

Lefty always referred to Kenny as "your buddy Denklinker," because he knew how much I looked up to Ken. He told me repeatedly that he had never forgiven, "your buddy," because when he first arrived in town Ken had written a story about him that was full of "unanimous quotes," from his Davidson players saying he couldn't coach very well.

"I still have it in my desk," Lefty said. (This was 11 years later). "He tried to run me out of town before I even got to town."

One day I was in Lefty's office and asked to see the infamous piece. "Got it right here," Lefty said.

He pulled open a drawer in his desk and pulled out a massive file marked, "negative publicity."

"It's in there," he said.
I began working my way through the file. Finally I found a story and, sure enough, it was full of "unanimous," quotes from Davidson players insisting that Lefty didn't know what he was doing at the end of a close game. I began reading the story to Lefty--who was across the room from me.

"THAT'S IT," Lefty screamed. "Look at that--you buddy Denklinker runnin' me out a town on a rail. All unanimous quotes. No one on the record."

He was absolutely right. "Yup, you're right Lefty," I said. "There's just one thing."

"What's that."

"This story appeared in The Washington Star. It was written by Steve Hershey."

"Oh really?" Lefty said. He stalked across the room, grabbed the story from my hand and looked at the byline.

"Wow," he said. "Guess I owe Denklinker an apology."

Of course I should have known all along Ken didn't write the story. He was never really into 'unanimous,' quotes.

Time to Get Lefty Driesell into the Hall of Fame

Lefty Driesell called me last night. He has called on a regular basis ever since my heart surgery to check up on me--a number of people have done this including my favorite basketball scout, Tom Konchalski who remains the only man I know who refuses to put any kind of answering machine on his phone or carry a cell phone.

Lefty didn't call last night about my health. He had just receive the form one has to fill out to be nominated for the basketball Hall of Fame and he asked me again if I could figure out how it was that he hasn't made it to the Hall yet.

I told him I simply couldn't figure it out.

Lefty won 786 games as a college coach, meaning he is currently, I believe, ninth on the all-time list. What's more, he won those games at four schools that were exactly nowhere when Lefty took the job. Davidson, a school which had 900 male students in 1960 when Lefty arrived, had averaged seven wins a year for the previous 10 seasons. Over the next ten it finished ranked in the top ten nationally four times and reached the final eight of the NCAA Tournament twice. Maryland was the dregs of the ACC when Lefty took over in 1969. It was a national power by 1973 and went to the tournament nine times while Lefty was there even though only one ACC team could go until 1975 and only two could go until 1980. He took over a down program at James Madison and became the dominant team in the CAA and then took Georgia State to the NCAA tournament in 2001, winning 29 games and beating Wisconsin in the first round of the tournament.

The man could build basketball programs like no else could.

And yet, he's not in the Hall of Fame. The excuse that he didn't make the Final Four doesn't carry water because there are other coaches--including, most recently Temple's John Chaney--who didn't make The Final Four who are in the Hall. Lou Carnesseca made one Final Four while spending his entire career coaching traditional power St. John's and won 260 games LESS than Lefty. He's in the Hall. No one is saying those guys don't deserve it but certainly Lefty should be there too.

Old rivals like Dean Smith and John Thompson have both said publicly that Lefty deserves to be in Springfield. Anyone who knows basketball would agree. But the secret society of 24 that votes hasn't picked Lefty. He's been a finalist twice--but not since 2003. He's retired and it is as if the alleged basketball experts who run the Hall of Fame have forgotten him.

There's really only one reason that Lefty's been left out and it is a bogus one: Len Bias. Since Bias's death in June of 1986 of a cocaine overdose all sorts of myths have grown surrounding his death. It reminds me, on a much different level of another seminal sports event in 1986: Billy Buckner's boot in game six of The World Series. To this day there are people who think the Red Sox were still ahead when Buckner made the error and would have won the game and the Series if he had fielded Mookie Wilson's ground ball cleanly. Not true. The game would have gone to the 11th inning.

In the Bias case there are lots of people who think his death led to Maryland's probation in the early 1990s. Indirectly, it did. Bias's death and the surrounding furor gave Maryland Chancellor John Slaughter an excuse to force Lefty out of the job. Slaughter was going to prove he was a great reformer and leader. He wanted to hire an African-American coach and did: yanking Bob Wade from the high school ranks even though Wade's reputation wasn't exactly sterling among college coaches. Sure enough, Wade broke NCAA rules, was caught lying by NCAA investigators and Maryland was nailed with a two year probation that included one year off of TV and two years out of postseason in 1991 and 1992.

Only in the sense that Bias's death allowed Slaughter to get rid of Lefty--with nine years left on his contract--did it have anything to do with Maryland's probation. Lefty was never once accused of violating NCAA rules. In fact, Maryland had to pay him every dollar of his remaining contract because the only way it could NOT pay was if Maryland was found guilty of a single rules violation under his watch. It was not.

And yet, the myth remains. There are still stories told about Lefty trying to cover up for Bias even though police investigations debunked those rumors years ago. There is no question that Bias's death shadowed Maryland for years--why the school retired his uniform when he never graduated and died the way he did remains a mystery. It's as if the uniform hangs there saying THIS is part of our legacy. But it has shadowed Lefty more than anyone. After 23 years it is time to give the myths a rest. Basketball people from Smith to Thompson to Mike Krzyzewski (who coaches at Lefty's alma mater and has a fair amount of influence) to Dick Vitale to Gary Williams should band together and DEMAND that Lefty get into the Hall of Fame RIGHT NOW. He's 78 and last I looked not getting any younger. While they're at it, they should also demand that the Hall stop being so secretive about its voting process. If you choose to vote for any Hall of Fame you should be publicly responsible for explaining your vote. If you don't want to do that, don't vote.

Look, I am (no pun intended) biased. I covered Lefty while at The Washington Post and came to like and respect him even though we did battle almost constantly when I was the beat write. He would frequently wake me up early in the morning to yell about something I'd written. He would swear never to speak to me again, then would come over to greet me at practice that day, usually by saying something like, "what's up son, you got a scoop?"

I have about a million Lefty stories, far too many of them relating to Dean Smith. Late in his career, when he was closing in on 800 wins I pointed out to Lefty that if he coached a few more years he might go by Dean's all time record of 879 wins.

"Never happen," he said.

"Why not?"

“'Cause if I ever got close, Dean would come back."

Probably true.

I've told this one many times but it bears repeating. In 1981, when Gerry Faust became Notre Dame's football coach I was sent to cover his first game. Faust was as outgoing and friendly as any football coach I've ever met and his story--devout Catholic who had coached at Moeller High School and been plucked for his dream job--was compelling. On game day he drove around campus in a golf cart greeting fans as they came in. "Gerry Faust--great to see you. Let's go whip LSU today!"

I wrote a glowing story after Notre Dame won easily about how everyone in South Bend was in love with the new coach whose personality was the polar opposite of predecessor Dan Devine. Sure enough, early Monday morning the phone rang.

"Wake up son, I gotta get on you.”

"In September? What can I possibly have done to make you mad in September?"

"Gerry Faust. He's won one damn game at Notre Dame. Dan Devine won a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP and you're writing that Faust is Knute Rockne."

He did have a way with words. "What have you got against Gerry Faust?" I asked.

"Nothing. But I got plenty against you."

Several years later with Notre Dame foundering and 'Oust Faust,' signs all over the Notre Dame campus, the phone rang again. "Hey Fahnsteen, ya buddy Faust still riding around out there in a golf cart or did he get himself an armored tank!"

One for the Lefthander.

Final story. I was doing a magazine piece on him and went on a recruiting visit (before the NCAA created what some call 'the Feinstein rule,'--seriously--and banned coaches from taking media members on home visits because it was an 'unfair advantage.') to the home of Sean Alvarado in southeast Washington, D.C. It was Halloween. As we got out of the car a group of about a dozen kids ran up screaming, 'Trick or Treat!'

"I ain't got any treats," Lefty said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his money clip and began tossing bills into the kids’ goody bags. He kept going until he ran out.

As they ran away, Lefty shook his head and said, "Damn. I hope I didn't have any big bills on there."

The man would give away his last dollar without checking to see how much he was giving away. He revived college basketball in Washington--revived BASKETBALL in Washington--and was a program builder wherever he went and did as much to grow the game in popularity as anyone who has ever coached.

He needs to be in the Hall of Fame. It is time for all of us who play any role in the game to right this wrong.

Great Driesell One-Liner; Zanedogs: How a Post Column Changed Eating in a Press Box

I know the NFL season begins tonight. Actually, it is impossible NOT to know the NFL season begins tonight because the hype-machine that surrounds the league has been in full force since training camps opened in July. From February until June it only goes at about 90 percent.

Okay, fine, I know most of the country will be obsessing about the NFL from tonight until The Super Bowl is finally played on the first Sunday in February. My guess is there will come a day soon when The Super Bowl is played on President's Day weekend at the end of an 18 game regular season.

My mind tends to work in mysterious--and not always efficient--ways. This morning I've been thinking about Zanedogs. Bear with me a moment while I explain.

In yesterday's Washington Post, in addition to a special section ostensibly on the NFL but really on all things Redskins there was a column about some player's aunt who loved him so much that she kept making phone calls to see if he had made the team this weekend. I only got a few paragraphs into the story and I honestly can't tell you the player's name. But I found myself laughing at a memory as I read it.

Years ago, Dave Kindred, one of the best sports columnists to ever grace a sports page, wrote a lengthy piece about John Thompson, who was still coaching at Georgetown at the time. In the piece, Kindred wrote movingly about how Thompson had cared for his aging mother near the end of her life. There was lots of detail: how he bathed her, sang to her, kept her company for hours at a time.

The next morning, George Solomon, then The Post sports editor got a call from Lefty Driesell, then the coach at Maryland and an often bitter rival of Thompson's. "Hey George," Lefty said, "Aah got a momma too you know."

To say that line has been oft-repeated among people at The Post is like saying Rush Limbaugh has bashed President Obama on occasion. So, a few paragraphs into the column I couldn't resist sending Solomon and some of my old Post colleagues a note. It said, "aah got an aunt too you know."

At almost the same moment, an e-mail popped up from my friend Doug Doughty, who has covered Virginia football and basketball for--I'm not making this up--35 years. Doug says he was 12 when he first got the beat. The long and short of the e-mail was that it now costs $15 if you want to eat in the Maryland football press box.

Which brought up Zanedogs and one of my funnier memories.

Jack Zane was the sports information director at Maryland forever--and then the ticket manager forever and a day after that until he retired a couple of years ago. Jack was, to put it mildly, a big guy. (He's lost a lot of weight in recent years but he's still big). He was best described in 1976 when he walked around at The Cotton Bowl (Maryland was playing) wearing a red, ten gallon hat. Mark Whicker, then of The Winston-Salem Journal said, "he looked like TWO Hoss Cartwrights." (That's Bonanza for you younger folks).

I started covering Maryland football and basketball in 1979. Jerry Claiborne was the coach and, we were, to put it mildly, just a little different. Claiborne was a classic southern football coach. He tolerated, but didn't especially like the media. Practice was always open in those days but one day when the players were on a water break I made the mistake of trying to ask him a quick question.

"Son," Claiborne said (I was 23) "I don't talk to the media on the practice field--EVER."

I was a wise-guy Jew from New York. Claiborne was a son of the south who refused to open the weight room on Sunday mornings to encourage players to go to church. He didn't like to answer any questions about individual performances until he had looked at the film--it WAS film then--which was delivered to his house promptly at 5 a.m. on Sunday. Stories about Claiborne going nuts if the film was five minutes late were legendary at Maryland.

Claiborne was a very good coach and a very good man. Maryland had dominated the ACC under him from 1975 to 1978 but was starting to slip a little when I arrived on the beat. The Terrapins just couldn't beat truly good teams. Then, as now, the ACC was a mediocre football league and a team had to beat someone good outside the conference to be taken seriously nationally. Maryland couldn't do it and, in '79 and '80, it lost badly to Penn State and Pittsburgh and even lost a couple of ACC games.

Solomon decided a series about Maryland's fall from grace should be done. I started calling ex-players--you could never get a current player to talk honestly for the record and the consensus was pretty direct: Claiborne was a really good coach but Maryland just played too conservatively to beat really good teams.

"I remember Coach saying in a quarterbacks meeting that the ideal way to play the game would be to punt on every play and win with defense and special teams," Bob Avellini, who was then with the Bears told me. That summed it up.

So did a very funny Claiborne line, delivered after a too-close Maryland win at Duke in which tailback Charlie Wysocki carried the ball 55 times. I asked Claiborne in his postgame press conference if he worried about Wysocki getting worn out carrying the ball so often.

"John, that football's not very heavy," Claiborne snapped.

I'm now getting to the Zanedogs.

When my three part series came out, labeled, "Maryland Football: At The Crossroads," in The Post, all hell broke loose. Several players called me that week to warn me I might not be safe in the Maryland locker room after the N.C. State game. Claiborne had told the players in a meeting that, "John Feinstein doesn't know if the football is stuffed or pumped up."

Jack Zane had called my friend Ken Denlinger, then a Post columnist, to tell him that I was "through," at the University of Maryland.

And remember, this was BEFORE Maryland people hated everyone and everything associated with Duke.

So, that Saturday, George came to the game to stand up--if needed--for his young reporter. Sure enough, Jim Kehoe, then the athletic director--and a guy I always liked a lot--came into the press box demanding to speak to us. I stood back out of the way while George and Kehoe went nose-to-nose. It was an impressive display of anger on both sides. Kehoe finally concluded by waving a hand and saying, "It's people like you that make the world a bad place to live," and stalked off.

I went to watch the second half. George went to get a hot dog--which were affectionately known to all that covered Maryland as Zanedogs, the theory being that Jack cooked them himself before the season began and they were still sitting there waiting to be eaten by those who didn't know better in November.

George sat down in the press box next to me. Seconds later, Kehoe walked back in to tell Jack something. The first thing he saw was George taking a bite out of his Zanedog. Without missing a beat he SCREAMED for the entire press box to hear, "You see that, you see that--they come out here and eat all our food and then try to destroy our program!"

Off he went. I was almost on the floor laughing. George was not. He slammed down the Zanedog and screamed at me, "I don't want you to ever eat their food again!"

"ME eat their food?" I screamed almost crying I was laughing so hard. "I wouldn't be caught DEAD eating one of those things."

At the end of that football season, Maryland received a check from The Washington Post to cover food expenses. From that day forward, George sent checks to all the local teams in case he ever felt like a hot dog or a Zanedog--or more importantly to me if I felt like eating Ledo's Pizza at one of Lefty's press conferences.

The trend began there. Now, almost all press boxes at the pro level and many on the college level charge the media to eat.

And to think, it all started 29 years ago with one bite of a Zanedog.