We'll miss you, coach!

We were all sad to hear of the passing of John Pont to cancer on July 1st at his home in Oxford, Ohio.

He was indeed an inspiration to so many on both sides of the Pacific.

His coaching career at his alma mater Miami of Ohio (where he set career rushing records inhis playing days); at Yale; Indiana; Northwestern; and Mt. Saint Joseph's was impressive in the way that he loved to embrace the challenge of taking downtrodden teams to new heights. He took Indiana's to the Rose Bowl at the end of the magical 1967 season, its first bowl game ever. He guided Mt. Saint Joesph's (Ohio) through its first few years. In Japan, he took a Rokbull team all the way from the bottom into the top division.

Coach Pont did much to advance the game in Japan, not only as head coach of Rokbull, but with his John Pont coaching clinics as well. He would always take time to talk football with me, and encouraged me to get more involved. I had plans to interview him this summer for this writing project on football in Japan, as he was one of the inspirations for it.

Those of us who were blessed to know him will miss him greatly.

sometimes, "fans" suck

I was looking at on an open thread running commentary on mblog during the Minnesota-Michigan (Little Brown Jug game). The majority of the posters are very down on the coaching staff- with some going as far as to hope that Michigan loses to ensure that Lloyd Carr and the rest of the Wolverine coaching staff will be sacked at the end of this season.

Though I am occasionally inclined to agree with them from time to time on certain specific play calls or use of timeout here or there, for example; but for the most part, I believe they are fallen under the delusion which besets most North American males at this time of year- that belief that they are smarter and could coach at least as well, if not better, than the coach of their team. It happens in all sports, but I would imagine that football fans- with all that pent up aggression and its decidedly cerebral aspects- are the worst. They seem to think that you can still draw up plays in the dirt and put 'em in like that; on the other hand, the seem to think that the coaches have 168 hours a week of meeting and practice with the players to cover and install everything under the sun. Of course these guys usually fail to grasp or take into account all the aspects involved in coaching, but that's what you get when your exposure to big time football is talk radio, ESPN and X-Box. With these guys, even the most obvious mistake by players- a fumble here, a penalty there- will somehow be blamed on the coaching staff. Of course, people will only see what they really want to see.

One irksome guy in particular claimed that he had had lunch with Scott Loeffler (Michigan's rather young QB coach) when they were freshman. "I was thoroughly unimpressed with this guy. Zero personality and low IQ. He's the guy developing our QB's these days right? Carr's offensive disciples suck." As a freshman? Gimme a break. And I would tend to think that the zero personality Loeffler displayed probably had more to with his lunch companion, than Loeffler himself. I say this because I recall meeting Loeffler at the AFCA convention in Atlanta in 2000(?). We were in a room talking QB fundamentals and reads after a presentation with just four of us- Scott, myself, a Flordia State GA, and...Norm Chow. They were all nice, friendly, and very bright. In fact I recall noticing that Chow seemed quite impressed by Loeffler.

So this guy's word doesn't count for much. But when it comes to sports, especially football, I guess everybody's a know-it-all