Terry Hoeppner Makes the Right Call

Below is the text of an email that I sent to Matt Hayes, the The Sporting News college football reporter. It is regarding a head coach that I admire quite a bit, Terry Hoeppner.

Mr. Hayes:

I have to respectfully disagree with you regarding Terry Hoeppner. You chararcterized him as a hot mid-major head coach who jumped
at the first big-program job offer that he received, Indiana. Your implication,
I believe, was that taking the Indiana job was a big mistake, and that he could
have held out for a better job.

I am a Miami grad and love MAC football. In the past three years, when a job opened at a major program, I had never heard Hoeppner's name mentioned once. Maybe you can let on as to which jobs those were. Most of the hot coaches from the mid-majors, it seems to me, are late 30-somethings or 40-somethings who have head coached in the lower ranks and who are offensive-minded coaches. Hoeppner was a career defensive coordinator who was a 50-something solid guy. He wasn't Urban
Meyer.

Hoeppner grew up in Indiana, went to college in Indiana (though not AT Indiana), and I take him at his word that he really wanted to coach the Hoosiers. I'm sure it was the best decision he could have made. It is a good BCS job near his home.

I am sure that he will run the Hoosiers the right way, building them with solid kids who work hard. It is going to take some time. Looks to me like the cupboard is a little barren at the present time.

Of course, the administration and the fans at IU may not give him the time he needs. But they fire coaches in the MAC, too. All you have to do is look at the rise and the fall of Gary Darnell at Western Michigan to realize that staying put at Miami has its risks, too. One injury to, say, Josh Betts, and you're looking at a 3-8 record . . . . I appreciate your time.

thankyouverymuch,

Old Cleat

Below is the link to the article (really a sidebar to an article) discussing head coaching prospects at mid-majors who will be prospects for BCS jobs. I pulled the quote concerning Gregg Brandon, which discusses Hoeppner's decision to move to Indiana.

http://www.sportingnews.com/exclusives/20050616/626096.html

Gregg Brandon, Bowling Green. The architect of Urban Meyer's offense at Bowling
Green, Brandon has further developed the system and has other MAC teams lifting
his schemes and pass sets. He has 20 wins in two seasons and has proved he can
develop a young, raw quarterback into a big-time talent (Omar Jacobs). Brandon
won't make the same mistake Terry Hoeppner made by diving into the first BCS job
that's offered. A MAC rising star at Miami (Ohio), Hoeppner is the new coach at
Indiana

Well, that's all for now.

thankyouverymuch,

Old Cleat

Jim Leyland May Skipper the Wishbone C

Being a fan of the Reds, one of the more encouraging things I've read in a while is that Jim Leyland could maybe kinda sorta be a managerial candidate for the Wishbone C.

I wanted Dave Miley to last at least throughout the year. If he would have turned it around in the second half, I would have been up for reupping him.

But that didn't happen. Jerry Narron is an interim manager. That's fine. I hope that he is one of the interviewees for the permanent job. That would be fine, too.

What happened in the first half of 2005 wasn't a managerial thing. It wasn't even an offseason 2004 thing. It was a long time in coming. It's systemic. The system is broken and needs a lot of work to get it fixed. There were too many huge problems that re-signing Paul Wilson and acquiring Ramon Ortiz and Eric Milton weren't going to fix, even if they hadn't blown up. Two games under .500 and 17 games under .500 is the same thing if you really truly can't compete.

Anyway, here is a link to the article regarding Jim Leyland, and I pulled the end quote.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/102-07062005-511074.html

By RANDY MILLER
phillyBurbs.com

... "I think I can run a major league team, and I think I know what I'm
doing."

Leyland wants one more crack at managing, but on his terms. He doesn't want
to stray too far from his suburban Pittsburgh home, which narrows his options.
Leyland isn't saying, but he'd probably only return to Pittsburgh or go to
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, Washington or Boston. His best
bet could be Cincinnati, which hired Jerry Narron as interim manager after
firing Dave Miley last month.

"I want to manage again if it's the right situation,"Leyland said. "I'm not
going to sit here and campaign for a job that somebody else has. That's not my
style."

Well, that's all for now.

thankyouverymuch,

Old Cleat

More Hank Stram

Len Pasquarelli on espn.com does a great job. I always enjoy reading his columns.

Anyway, he had a nice rememberance of Hank Stram.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=pasquarelli_len&id=2100503

I've pulled another interesting fact out of this, as well.

Given his own stature, Stram had a soft spot for vertically-challenged
players, no doubt. At the same time, though, he was fascinated by raw size.
He brought the tallest player in NFL history, 6-feet-10 tight end Morris Stroud,
into the league in 1970. Not only did he design red zone plays specifically
to create size mismatches for Stroud, but Stram also positioned him under the goal
posts, where he was instructed to try to swat away long field goal attempts.

Little known is that Stram once spent several hours attempting to convince
the splendid seven-footer Wilt Chamberlain to give the NFL a try.

I do remember Morris Stroud. Given how athletic big men in college basketball are nowadays, it surprises me that there isn't a Morris Stroud for this generation.

I remember watching Antonio Gates play basketball for Kent State. I actually think I have videotape of him playing against Miami U in some MAC tourney game somewhere. He was a great college basketball player. But that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about someone like Lawrence Roberts from Mississippi State. Or better yet, Dwayne Jones of St. Joes, who wasn't drafted. 6-11, 250. Put him in a weight room for a year, have him run 100 end zone patterns a day, and in 2006 you have a real matchup problem for other teams.

thankyouverymuch,

Old Cleat

Hank Stram died on July 4, 2005

Hank Stram died on July 4, 2005.

Just recently, I remember watching an NFL Films documentary called "The Original Six Days to Sunday." Stram of course let NFL Films get complete access to the Saints in 1976 as they prepared for a division game against the Falcons. Stram was fired before they did all the production work on the film, so they let it sit in the vaults for years before finishing it.

It was a great film. It showed Stram working with Bobby Douglass to break down game film and to become a finished product as an NFL quarterback.

Hopefully, the NFL Network or ESPN Classic will replay the film in the next few days or weeks.

Here are some other interesting things I found out about Coach Stram.

Stram won the 1948 Big Ten Medal for combining athletics and academics.

From some additional research, I found out that John Wooden won the award at Purdue in 1932.

I've linked to some of the better obits that I've found. And I pulled some quotes that interested me. I will say that I've read several columns by Jerry Magee and I love his stuff.

Stram also has a reputation of being a innovator. There are three that I would like to investigate further. The full-time conditioning coach was credited to Stram in some of the obits. The use of the zone defense in the AFL, at least, if not the zone defense itself was credited to Stram. And, Lenny Dawson said that the Chiefs were running the West Coast offense before the West Coast offense. I don't know if these are accurate or not, but I'd like to find out.

Below please find the interesting quotes.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/nfl/20050705-9999-_1s5stram.html

By Jerry Magee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 5, 2005

Two
coaches arguably had more to do with American Football League teams achieving
permanence than any others. One was the Chargers' Sid Gillman, the other Stram.
Gillman, who died in January 2003 at age 91, respected Stram. "Good plays,"
Gillman would say. But he also felt he could read Stram. One of Gillman's
deductions was that when a Stram team would get behind, it would begin blitzing.

Joe Horrigan noted that under Stram, the Chiefs were among the first
professional teams to recognize the talent pool contained in historically black
schools.

Henry Louis Stram was the son of a professional wrestler from
Gary, Ind. At Purdue, he was a running back in 1942 and in 1946-47.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/sports/3252592

By MICKEY HERSKOWITZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Stram fought
the battle of Dallas, where the Cowboys and Texans both drew so poorly that a
playoff was suggested, with the winning team getting to leave town.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/football/nfl/kansas_city_chiefs/12057041.htm

By RANDY COVITZ
The Kansas City Star

Stram was born Jan. 2, 1923, in
Chicago and grew up in Gary, Ind., where his Polish-born father was a tailor and
professional wrestler named Henry Wilszek, who performed for the Barnum &
Bailey circus. The circus changed his surname to Stram.

Although his
parents discouraged him from playing football, Hank Stram became a star athlete
in football, baseball, basketball and track at Lew Wallace High in Gary, earning
all-state honors as a halfback.

Stram enrolled at Purdue University on a
football scholarship in 1941 and enlisted in the Army reserve in 1943. He
remained in the service for three years, returning to Purdue in 1946 and earning
his degree in 1948. He lettered in football and baseball at Purdue, and as a
senior he received the Big Ten Medal, awarded to the conference athlete who best
combines athletics with academics.

Stram spent the next 12 seasons as an
assistant at Purdue, SMU, Notre Dame and Miami (Fla.) before Hunt hired him as
the head coach of the Dallas Texans of the fledgling AFL.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/12053348.htm

By RANDY COVITZ
The Kansas City Star

"I don't know if there is
anything ever new in football, but we were doing things in the `60s that teams
are doing now," said Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson. "Hank came up with so
many new twists and doesn't get the credit he deserves.

"He wasn't
afraid to try things. Back in those days, guys didn't try anything. They pretty
much stayed with what the Green Bay Packers or New York Giants were doing. Well,
Hank decided let's do some things different. We were playing the West Coast
offense before it was the West Coast offense."

And Stram deployed zone
defenses in the early 1960s as a way to combat the wide-open passing games of
the AFL when teams were loath to defend receivers in anything but man-to-man
coverage.

Stram attributed that defense to the Texans' intercepting five
passes in the 1962 AFL championship win over Houston.

http://www.nola.com/sports/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-19/1120543067262410.xml

The Times-Picayune
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Peter Finney

What
befell Coach Stram at the end of a long career, a two-year pit stop for John
Mecom's Saints, did nothing to tarnish the résumé of the most successful coach
in the history of the AFL.

Without a doubt, Hank's finest hour with the
Saints had more to do with the owner who fired him in Kansas City, Lamar Hunt,
than the man who brought him to the Big Easy.

Perhaps old-timers will
remember.

All the Saints had to do to sew up a 20-17 victory at
Arrowhead Stadium in 1976 was run out the clock. They were near the Kansas City
end zone with the final seconds ticking down when Stram called time. He told a
surprised Bobby Scott, his quarterback, "now we're going to shove it to 'em."

Scott threw a touchdown pass to tight end Henry Childs to make it 27-17.

"I wanted that last one," Hank said afterward. "Maybe these people will
learn to do their talking after the game, not before."

During the week,
Chiefs coach Paul Wiggin was quoted as saying, "I'd like to kick Stram's butt."
After the game, as Stram was being carried from the field, running back Chuck
Muncie ran over to Wiggin and handed him a poster-sized reproduction of his
words.

All and all, it was a strange setting. Stram had been best man at
Lamar Hunt's wedding. And that's not all. At the time, the coach and his former
boss were in the courts, trying to settle Hank's contract with Kansas City, a
10-year, $100,000-a-year deal terminated with seven years remaining.

So
it made for a memorable postgame scene, the Strams leaving Arrowhead Stadium
linked arm-in-arm, Hank, wife Phyllis, two sons, two daughters, all of them
singing, "When the Saints . . ."

It was right out of Dorothy and
friends, in the "Wizard of Oz," walking the Yellow Brick Road.

Hank had
found his Saints rainbow.

thankyouverymuch,

Old Cleat

What is the Best Hot Dog in Chicago? Hot Doug's

If you are in Chicago, and you have a hankerin' for the best hot dog you'll ever taste, or any other kind of sausage, you should visit Hot Doug's.

Several years ago, three coworkers and myself set out to find the best hot dog on the north side of Chicago. We reviewed more than 40 joints, and we found several that were to our liking, such as Superdawg and Byron's. But one of the members of the Hot Dog Club, Doug Sohn, did us all one better. He went out and became Hot Doug.

Doug opened his humble little sausage joint, and nobody took notice.

Just kidding.

This man had a half-page, four-color picture of himself in the New York Times, for R.W. Apple's sake. Doug is a media trollop.

Regardless, he does make on tasty hot dog. And he makes all sorts of sausages.

And if you have bratwurst on the brain, I urge you to get the Paul Kelly. And tell Doug that Old Cleat sent you.

thankyouverymuch,

Old Cleat

The Previews Are Here

The football preview magazines are here. I am just digging into them now.

I am a Street and Smith's guy. Always have been. There are other preview magazines with better information, but I just have a thing about SandS. There was a little problem a while back with the infatuation with four-color photography, but the've gotten over that.

I think TSN does a fabulous job.

Well, gotta run.

thankyouverymuch,

Old Cleat