Coaching Quiz: 1)With the retirement of Jerry Sloan of the Utah Jazz, who are the current longest-tenured coaches with one team in the NBA, MLB, and NFL? [You get Lindy Ruff of the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres at 13 years and counting] 2) What Division I college basketball coach went the longest with one team without winning a national title? 3) What NFL coach went the longest with one team without winning a title? Answers below.
It just has to be said…Pitchers and Catchers report this week! Praise the Lord and pass the domestic. For much of the country, we are more ready for spring after this brutal winter than at any time in recent memory. And the temperatures are rising. Plus, soon it will be March Madness, and “A tradition unlike any other, The Masters.” Why it’s enough to just make you want to burst out in song!
Meet the Mets
Meet the Mets
Step right up and greet the Mets
Bring your kiddies,
bring your wife;
Guaranteed to have the time of our life
because the Mets are really sockin’ the ball; knocking those home runs over the wall!
East side,
West side,
everybody’s coming down
to meet the M-E-T-S Mets of New York town!
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
The era of prohibition was from 1920-33. Thanks to the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, alcohol was illegal. Or more specifically, the prohibition of the “manufacturing, sale, or transportation” of alcohol. It was the culmination of a long campaign by church and women’s groups, Populists, temperance societies and countless others. Of course, Prohibition led to a spectacular increase in crime as bootlegging took hold and over 200,000 speak-easies sprouted across the nation.
That’s where Al Capone came in. A sixth-grade dropout who once beat up his teacher, he became the nation’s most notorious gangster, with an army of maybe 1,000 henchmen. Capone once boasted: “I own the police!”
Capone’s chief rival was George “Bugs” Moran. Actually, Capone had eliminated just about all of them except Moran. The feud between the two was legendary. Moran had once tried to eliminate Capone by slipping acid into his soup.
Moran’s headquarters were at a garage at 2122 N. Clark Street in Chicago. It was also his booze-peddling depot, marked S.M.C. Cartage Co. On the morning of February 14, 1929, six of Moran’s gang were at the garage, waiting for coffee. A 7th, tinkering with a van, was also present.
Around 10:30, a blue car pulled up by the garage. Four men got out, two dressed as cops, two shabbily dressed. The “cops” carried sub-machine guns, the other two, shotguns. The gangsters raised their hands over their heads and the four visitors marched them to the back of the garage where they were lined up against the wall. As they were being frisked for weapons, one of them asked what was happening. That’s when the word went out to “give it to ‘em!” 100 bullets were fired. Only 8 reached the wall behind the victims. One man tried to escape but a bullet shot at nearly point blank range ripped through his head.
A neighbor reported that she saw two men, who looked like police officers, walking out of the building with two others in normal clothing. The two normally-dressed men held their hands over their heads. When the real police showed up, they counted six dead with one dying.
Until then the country had romanticized gangsters. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre changed that. It was the worst single act of violence even for crime-ridden Chicago.
Capone and his gang were suspected of instigating and carrying out the massacre. President Herbert Hoover wanted Capone behind bars. It took a few years but the feds finally nailed him – for tax evasion. [Source: Angie Cannon / U.S. News & World Report]
Sloan Quits
Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan had been a fixture for 23 seasons when he abruptly resigned on Thursday in a clear case of burnout. Sloan was tired of being challenged by point guard Deron Williams, including a situation in Wednesday night’s home loss when Williams called a play on the floor that was different from the one Sloan called from the sideline; one of many confrontations between the two. On Monday Sloan had signed a one-year extension but said then he wouldn’t make a decision about returning until after the season. It’s not like Utah was sliding into oblivion. They were 31-23 this season after all.
So Sloan leaves in third place on the all-time NBA coaching wins list.
Don Nelson 1,335 wins…0 titles
Lenny Wilkens 1,332…1
Jerry Sloan 1,221…0
Pat Riley 1,134…5
Phil Jackson 1,136…11
Sloan was the longest-tenured head coach in any of the four major sports. Overall, including over two seasons coaching the Bulls, he was 1,221-803 (.603) and 98-104 in the playoffs. He is also one of three coaches in NBA history with 15-plus consecutive winning seasons (Pat Riley and Phil Jackson are at 19). Unfortunately, Sloan couldn’t win a crown with Karl Malone and John Stockton and holds the distinction of coaching one team the longest without winning a championship in the history of the four major professional sports. As a player, in 11 seasons he averaged 14.0 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists and was a first team all-defensive squad selection four times.
Chuck Tanner, RIP
Tanner died the other day at age 82. From 1970-88 he managed the White Sox, Athletics, Pirates and Braves to a record of 1352-1381, including the famous “We Are Family” World Series champion Bucs of 1979.
“(Chuck Tanner) was simply the kindest, most decent person I’ve met in sports.
“The world would be such a better place if everyone had Tanner’s attitude. Talking baseball now, if the Pirates lost eight games in a row, he would insist that really wasn’t all bad because a winning streak certainly was around the corner. If one of his players were in an 0-for-25 slump, he would tell you his breakout game would be that night. If you didn’t know him, you would think he was phony. No one could be that positive all the time, right? But he was 100 percent genuine. He was the real deal.
“I always have believed that Tanner was the big reason the Pirates came back from a 3-1 best-of-seven deficit to win the 1979 World Series against the Baltimore Orioles. That team is remembered as Hall of Famer Willie Stargell’s ‘We Are Family’ team. But make no mistake, Tanner was in charge. Never once did he back off from his prediction that the Pirates would keep battling and take the series in seven games. He demanded it, actually.
“That wasn’t a completely happy time for Tanner. His mother, Anne, died on the morning of Game 5.* But he never brought his sadness into the clubhouse. He refused to allow his players to lose focus. He was so happy for them, so proud of them, when they did come back to take down the Orioles in seven. Then, when they and the rest of Pittsburgh planned for a victory parade to honor what’s looking more and more as if it will be the last world championship baseball team for our city in our lifetime, he went home to New Castle to bury his mom.”
Tanner loved his players, even when they didn’t always return the favor or disgraced the franchise, such as with Dave Parker and the cocaine mess that hurt Tanner’s own legacy. Tanner testified that he had only cursory knowledge of the drug use in the clubhouse, but former Pirates shortstop Dale Berra testified Tanner had full knowledge of what was going on. Yet through the tough times that followed ’79, he always stayed positive, even when in the aftermath of the trials the Pirates fired him. “I would have fired myself,” Chuck said.
*When his mother died before Game 5, Tanner told his players: “My mother is a great Pirates fan. She knows we’re in trouble, so she went upstairs to get some help.” The players upon hearing of their skipper’s loss didn’t know how to react, but when he addressed them in this fashion it seemed to take all the pressure off and as reliever Kent Tekulve said, “All of a sudden, all this other stuff didn’t seem so important. We could just go out and play ball.”
Tanner, who played sparingly in the majors, hitting .261 in 396 games with a number of teams, did have the distinction of homering on the first pitch he ever saw in the big leagues.
“I’ve had the greatest life in the world,” he told Ron Cook in 2007. ‘I’ve been awfully blessed and awfully lucky.”
Brittany Ross’ Double Triumph
So my good friend Trader George’s daughter Nicki Ross won her fifth National Platform Tennis Association title the other day (with partner Corey Delaney), and now his other daughter, Brittany, took first in both the 100- and 200-butterfly at this past weekend’s Old Dominion Athletic Conference Swimming Championships, which is very cool. Brittany is a sophomore at Washington & Lee University, Lexington, Va., Bobby Lee and Stonewall Jackson territory… better known as God’s country. Gotta get down there soon myself. George and Cindy raised two talented and beautiful daughters and their friends are proud of them.
College Basketball Review
I missed undefeated and No.1 Ohio State’s loss to Wisconsin because I was in New York Saturday afternoon, attending Broadway’s “Spider-Man.” Folks, it really is as bad as all the reviews say it is. We left at intermission, despite my having scored second row seats, which was too close in actuality since the stunts were mostly behind us. It was three years ago that I told you of how a bunch of us went to Las Vegas to celebrate our 50th birthdays and I was in charge of picking a show and selected Cirque du Soleil’s “LOVE” production. All of us guys were in agreement when that was over. It was phenomenal.
But with “Spider-Man,” because of all the safety issues the actors doing the flying around the Foxwoods Theater are all in double harnesses and it hit me afterwards that some of the rope or zip line adventures you read about (not having actually done one myself) are far more daring than what you see in Spidey. Plus that means anyone can do this stuff with the precautions they are taking, as opposed to a Cirque du Soleil performance where you’re thinking, ‘No freakin’ way!’
And I haven’t begun to talk about the plotline and some of the sets for “Spider-Man.” In a word, the show is just ‘stupid.’
But people will go (our show was packed), and after all the controversy I’m glad I went, too. My brother’s family and I had some good laughs after. Plus we discovered a nice Applebee’s across the street for a needed pre-show adult beverage.
Anyway, where was I. Oh yeah…Wisconsin came from like 15 down to defeat Ohio State 71-67. And because Spidey was a matinee, I got to watch all of San Diego State at UNLV and once again the Aztecs showed their resilience with two key players out with injury and SDSU facing foul trouble, a rare occurrence for them. My boys went to 25-1 in defeating the Runnin’ Rebels 63-57. Incredibly, point guard D.J. Gay went another game, his fourth straight, without committing a turnover in playing the full 40 minutes and scoring 20 points. 150 minutes…zero turnovers. A total of 29 this season in the 26 games and he’s averaging almost 35 minutes per. Just two more games for SDSU before the BYU rematch on Feb. 26 in San Diego, where your intrepid editor will be in attendance. I am pumped big time.
[One side note to the UNLV game. The Runnin’ Rebels were 2 of 33 from 3-point land in the two games against SDSU this year.]
I also caught the second half of Pitt-Villanova on Saturday and ‘Nova’s Isaiah Armwood is a rare trifecta winner… “Jerk, Idiot and A-hole of the Week” for his amazing stupidity in punching Pitt’s Nasir Robinson in the face. Back in the day, we’d also call Isaiah a Punk. So really he takes home the superfecta. Analyst Jay Bilas correctly noted at the moment Armwood made his move, with ‘Nova up 32-27, that it was a game-changer and indeed Pitt went on to win 57-54.
Lastly, Shu passed along a piece by Blair Kerkhoff of the Kansas City Star that sums up the changing attitudes of today’s college basketball player.
“It’s unlikely Larry Drew II [UNC] or Wally Judge [K-State] spoke that brief but complete sentence when changing their status, but that’s what happened.
“They quit their teams during the season, leaving teammates and programs to adjust to their absence.
“They’re not the only ones. At least seven major-college players have walked away from their team this season, two at Kansas State.
“ ‘The situation,’ North Carolina coach Roy Williams said of Drew, ‘is unusual, and I’ll leave it at that.’
“But changing environments by quitting or transferring is becoming a more prevalent exit strategy in sports. And it’s being used more often than in the past, according to a Kansas City sports psychologist.
“ ‘In big-time college athletic programs, I think you’re seeing athletes who don’t know how to deal with negativity and failure,’ said Dr. Andrew Jacobs, who has worked with college and professional athletes….
“West Virginia forward Dan Jennings gave quitting a visual when he walked away from the bench during a game last month, a move coach Bob Huggins called ‘unexcused, inexcusable, never to be seen again, I guess.’”
“The culture has changed. Consider the path of many highly regarded prospects. Kids become recruiting targets as early teenagers. Prospects get assigned stars by recruiting services. Fans become obsessive, and how can this not affect the mind-set of a promising young athlete and the family?”
Speaking of family, in the case of Larry Drew II, a junior point guard whose playing time was being reduced by Roy Williams, Drew’s father, Larry Drew, head coach of the Atlanta Hawks, clearly had a major hand in his son’s decision, which makes the father a punk too.
I have no dog in this fight, obviously not being a Carolina fan (though I’m one of those who wants them to do well in the NCAA tourney to uphold the honor of the Atlantic Coast Conference). But from a pure fan standpoint I was ticked to read of the Drew story, and now I hope the Hawks go down in flames in the first round of the NBA playoffs, unless they’re going up against Miami, because your editor can be as fickle as the best of ‘em.
College ballplayers transfer all the time. No biggie. But to walk out on a program in the middle of the season, a school that is giving you a free ride, for starters, and has invested a ton of time and money on you, let alone what you are then doing to your teammates, is beyond classless.
–Congratulations to the Cleveland Cavaliers for breaking their record 26-game losing streak! Awesome. These guys are gooood.
–Cool moment at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am as D.A. Points won his first PGA Tour title and partner Bill Murray took his first pro-am crown.
[And not for nothing, but at the Champions Tour’s Allianz Championship, won by Tom Lehman, 65-year-old Hale Irwin finished tied for sixth.
—NFL owners walked away from the bargaining table as the NFL Players Association proposed to take an average 50 percent of all revenues generated by the league. No further meetings have been proposed as the March 3 expiration of the current collective bargaining looms. A lockout seems a certainty.
The existing CBA grants the players 60 percent of $8 billion ($9 billion gross minus a $1 billion credit in the owners’ favor). But the owners have asked for another $1 billion credit – $2 billion in total – before it split “total revenue” with players. The main issue at this point, though, is that the owners refuse to open their books. And even the ‘easy’ issues, such as rookie pay, are now being muddied. I’m guessing we are a long ways from agreement.
“Not surprisingly, the league made the fiasco a dollars issue. Only this wasn’t about money. It was about memories. It was about a kid holding his father’s hand, eyes wide, mouth agape, at the sight of his favorite players on the field. It was about Packers fan Jan Lamers, who said her Super Bowl experience was ruined.
“The refund was a nice, though obvious, place to start. A gesture. It wasn’t anywhere near enough.
“The affected fans don’t need tickets to next year’s Super Bowl. They needed seats for this game, the one that featured their team.
“They needed instant VIP status, by order of the commissioner.
“The NFL should have found a place for these fans to watch the game. And not on TV, no matter how wide the screen or how crisp the picture.
“The NFL needed to make room in the luxury suites where it has influence. Move over Alex Rodriguez and Cameron Diaz. Make room for Joe Fan from Pittsburgh, his kid and their Terrible Towels.
“These fans arrived with wedges of cheese on their heads, yes, but love and devotion in their hearts. Since the Packers are the league’s only publicly owned franchise, where fans actually have a stake in the team and a say in how things are run, it would have made sense for them to sit with Jones. You know, in the owner’s suite.
“Surely some of the fans could have been relocated to a spot on the sideline. Talk about caring for the customer. [Ed. note…my cousin did get on the sideline but really couldn’t see anything.]
“You can bet that plenty of NFL executives, their spouses and children had seats. Good ones, too. They, by executive order, should have been forced to surrender their seats for paying customers.
“Half of the questions lobbed at the commissioner during last week’s state-of-the-league press conference were about negotiations aimed at reaching a new labor contract with the players.
“A lockout is looming. The billionaires and millionaires are fighting about how to share more than $8 billion in revenue.
“Even so, the league and Jones hatched a plan to squeeze even more fans into the game in some silly attempt at setting a Super Bowl attendance record.
“Goodell spent much of his pre-game time on the field, shaking hands and posing for pictures. All while hundreds of his most loyal customers were told, in essence, that they didn’t really matter.
–And remember the Metrodome and its torn roof? It’s now been decided to replace the entire thing, which could get underway in mid-March with a goal of finishing by Aug. 1, which seems rather fast, at an estimated cost of $18.3 million. All but a $25,000 deductible will be covered by insurance. But it’s also clear this is but a short-term solution. The Vikings need a new stadium.
–Back to the labor front, while the NFL is talking about how best to divide the riches, NBA owners are pleading poverty, with Commissioner David Stern talking about projected losses of $350 million this season, while owners seek to reduce player salaries by as much as $800 million annually. Stern told Bloomberg over the weekend:
“The key to resolving it is the players realizing that it’s been a great run. There has to be a correction that enables the players to continue to be the highest-paid players in all of sport, to allow the owners to make a profit, and to allow our fans to believe that we have a system where all 30 teams can compete.”
The average player salary was $5.85 million during the 2009-2010 season, easily the highest in any North American sports league. The NBA’s collective bargaining agreement expires June 30.
–Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo has been appointed by Bernard Madoff bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard to act as mediator between New York Mets owners and Picard in the latter’s attempt to recover up to $1 billion (though more like $300 million appears to be the realistic target). Principal owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz insist they did not know of the Ponzi scheme.
Things are so bad for the Mets these days that last week they introduced a new lineup of season-ticket plans that includes free tickets. Fans who sign up for 5-, 11- and 17-game flex packs get a bonus game thrown in.
–Prosecutors reduced the number of charges Barry Bonds faces in his upcoming perjury trial (slated for March 21) from 11 to five, this while trainer Greg Anderson continues to refuse to testify against Bonds, which means he’ll be jailed yet again for contempt of court charges during the duration of the trial if he follows through on the pledge. Anderson’s actions really are fascinating. We all wonder just how much Bonds paid him to keep quiet.
—Emory Bellard died. He was 83. Bellard is the college football coach credited with introducing the wishbone offense, which was the framework for some of the great running teams in history, particularly the 1970s.
Bellard spent 14 seasons as head coach, first at Texas A&M and then at Mississippi State, but his signature contribution came while an assistant at Texas.
“The Texas team had suffered through three subpar seasons, and the coach, Darrell Royal, seeking a change, asked Bellard to devise an offensive backfield scheme that would include a lead blocker and maximize the effectiveness of the team’s three strong running backs. Bellard came up with a variant of a two-back formation called the veer: the quarterback and the three runners lined up in the shape of a Y, or a wishbone, the fullback right behind the quarterback and two tailbacks split behind them.
“From this formation, the quarterback had three options: he could hand the ball to the fullback charging up the middle, or he could fake to the fullback and sprint out to one side or the other, then turn upfield with the ball himself or, if the defense closed in on him, pitch the ball wide to a tailback….
“Texas tied its first game using the wishbone and lost its second, but it then won 30 games in a row, capturing the national championship in 1969 and sharing it with Nebraska in 1970.”
Soon, Alabama and Oklahoma followed with the wishbone. From 1969 to 1979, seven national championships were won or shared by wishbone teams.
Bellard was hired away by Texas A&M, which he led to three bowl games and two 10-win seasons from 1972 to 1978. He then coached seven years at Mississippi State, twice finishing in the top 20 in the polls. His overall coaching record was 85-69.
But while Bellard invented the wishbone, according to Darrell Royal, it was a newspaper writer, Mickey Herskowitz, who gets credit for naming it. Royal related in his 2005 book “Coach Royal: Conversations With a Texas Football Legend,” that he was asked at a news conference what the new formation was called.
“I said: ‘Well, they’re kind of in the shape of a Y back there. Call it the Y.’ I mean, I didn’t care what they called it, you know. Mickey Herskowitz said: ‘That’s not very original. Why don’t you call it a wishbone? It’s in the shape of a wishbone.’ I said: ‘You got it, Mickey. It’s a wishbone.’”
—Lindsey Vonn, feeling the effects of a concussion she suffered ten days earlier, skied the downhill at the world Alpine championships on Sunday in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and still finished a great second. Vonn is hands down the best female athlete in America and has been now for the better part of three years. She not only talks the talk, she walks the walk. [Rival Julia Mancuso took second in the Super-G.]
–Despite all the controversy, us Jets fans still love our coach, Rex Ryan, and on Friday night he appeared at Madison Square Garden to catch the Knicks-Lakers contest with his now controversial wife Michelle. It was great to see he got a huge ovation from the New York crowd, and I love that Ryan was wearing a throwback Walt “Clyde” Frazier jersey. There was a great picture in one of the area papers of the two exchanging greetings and you can just see Clyde beaming. As the years go by, Frazier’s own popularity has done nothing but grow and without giving it too much thought, I bet if you took a poll of sports fans in the area older than, say, 35, Frazier might now surpass Joe Namath, Willis Reed, Derek Jeter and Tom Seaver as the most popular living legend. [I’d throw in Mark Messier and Eddie Giacomin but the number of Rangers’ fans pails compared to the other major sports.] On Saturday my brother and I were musing about Clyde. No one in our lifetime has led the perfect life like he has. [Of course this is also a major guy thing for reasons I’m not going to get into, girls.]
–Holy Toledo! Did you see what’s been happening at the Playboy Mansion? 80 guests got ill after a conference and party there and it’s suspected they came down with a form of Legionnaire’s disease. They say the Mansion is in many respects a real throwback to a bygone era, but that doesn’t mean you don’t clean out the vents now and then, Hef! Next time I’m invited there I’m wearing a surgical mask and bringing some handi-wipes.
[Bar Chat Ombudsman: The Editor has never been to the Playboy Mansion.]
–If I could receive one Valentine Day’s card, I’d want it to be from Peggy Fleming.
–The folks that run the Oscars sent the 191 nominees a DVD with tips on keeping acceptance speeches short. Each winner will only have 45 seconds and evidently the limits will be more strictly enforced than ever. But in reading about this from a story by John Harlow in the Sunday Times of London, I got a kick out of an episode whose details I had forgotten, truly a classic.
“The actor Tom Hanks advised nominees (on the DVD) to be more original than reading out a ‘telephone directory’ of people. ‘Looking down to read a long list of names only shows us your bald spot,’ he warned.
“Hanks himself has never been one to keep it short. He rambled when accepting an Oscar for Forrest Gump in 1995 and in the previous year, while accepting the award for Philadelphia, thanked his drama teacher, Rawley Farnsworth, saying he was one of ‘the finest gay Americans.’ Until that night the teacher’s family had been unaware that he was homosexual.”
–Goodness gracious. Have you seen the ads for IHOP’s new Chicken & Waffles meal? I’m drooling. I want to make it my screen saver.
–Bar Chat Director of Shark Attacks Bob S. and I were exchanging notes the other day upon hearing of Hosni Mubarak’s departure and his exile to the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Yes, this is the same Sharm el-Sheikh where a single shark, or perhaps ‘sharks,’ killed three divers recently over several days. As best as I can ascertain, the killer(s) is still loose. The resort is known for diving so Bob and I are thinking that Mubarak will be invited onto a boat, told an aide will help him do some diving, and conveniently fed to “Jaws,” after which an official statement will be issued by the military junta.
“Former President Hosni Mubarak died in a boating accident. There will be no further word on his passing.”
—Bernard Lagat added the American 2-mile indoor record on Saturday in New York to his indoor records in the 1,500, mile, 3,000 and 5,000 meters. Not too shabby.
–From Sports Illustrated’s “They Said It,” Atlanta Hawks forward Josh Smith, after the NBA fined him $25,000 for grabbing his crotch after making a three.
“I wish they had sent me a memo saying I couldn’t do it before I did it.”
–No doubt…Kid Rock is an original. The other day he performed as scheduled in North Little Rock, Ark., despite a record-breaking snowstorm that dumped up to two feet in the area. Some fans who were unwilling or unable to brave the roads expressed displeasure that the concert wasn’t cancelled and said so on his website.
Rock responded: “YOU WILL BE GETTING A REFUND, STRAIGHT OUT OF MY POCKET.”
And then he added he’s “never ripped any of my fans off” and never missed a show. To those who then called him greedy, he said many fans made it to the show and that his own tour bus had to go through the same conditions.
One fan, Stacy Smith, said she and three companions had tickets but decided not to drive.
“We heard they were closing some roads between here and there and were afraid that we might get halfway and not be able to go on.”
But while she was disappointed, she said she doesn’t blame Rock for going ahead with it.
“I think Kid Rock did the right thing by going on with the show. His fans paid for him to show up and perform, and that’s what he did…I just hope that all of the negative comments doesn’t keep him from coming back to Little Rock.”
I’m on Kid Rock’s side. Had it been me I wouldn’t have risked the drive, but would also gladly accept a refund if offered.
–One other note on “Spider-Man”…we saw an understudy in the main role of Peter Parker, Matthew James Thomas, and all four of us were in agreement that he was pretty good. Hopefully Mr. Thomas finds something better.
–I did watch the Grammies…it was OK. But how great does Jennifer Hudson look?! Weight Watchers sales should soar. [From some of the profile shots, looks like Xtina could take some tips from Jennifer.] And Mick could have picked a better song, but here’s hoping the Stones do one more tour so I can finally see them.
Top 3 songs for the week 2/12/77: #1 “Torn Between Two Lovers” (Mary MacGregor…but it’s Valentine’s Day!) #2 “New Kid In Town” (Eagles…sucked) #3 “Blinded By The Light” (Manfred Mann’s Earth Band…bad memories of this one…freshman year at Wake…)…and…#4 “Car Wash” (Rose Royce…absolutely dreadful) #5 “Love Theme From ‘A Star Is Born’ (Evergreen)” (Barbra Streisand…ditto) #6 “Dazz” (Brick) #7 “Enjoy Yourself” (The Jacksons…easily their worst) #8 “I Wish” (Stevie Wonder…eh) #9 “I Like Dreamin’” (Kenny Nolan…I was beginning to wonder why I was born when I had been to then be subjected to such drivel almost 19 years later) #10 “Lost Without Your Love” (Bread…the other day I picked up a loaf of Pepperidge Farm Cinnamon Swirl and it is truly delicious…tastes like dessert)
Coaching Quiz Answers: 1) Current longest tenures with one team…San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich (15 seasons); the St. Louis Cardinals’ Tony La Russa (beginning his 16th season); and the Philadelphia Eagles’ Andy Reid at 12 seasons. 2) DePaul’s Ray Meyer coached 42 seasons without winning a national title. [And it was none other than Wake Forest that sent him packing for good in the 1984 NCAA tournament.] 3) Minnesota Vikings coach Bud Grant was at the helm for 18 seasons without a title.
*One other…I was surprised Clemson’s Frank Howard holds the college football mark at 30 seasons. I would have thought there would have been another who coached longer at that level without winning.
