The Heart of Football: Why the Small College Game Matters
Phil Maas loves just about everything about football and the coaching profession.
That shines through in his book, “The Heart of Football,” which focuses on what he believes are the merits of the sport, in particular at the lower levels.
Maas, 75, lives in Weed, Calif., a town of about 3,000 situated at the base of Mount Shasta, just an hour south of Ashland. A high school and junior college coach for 50 years, he still coaches running backs at College of the Siskiyous, a member of the California Community College Athletic Association located in Weed. Chris Knudsen, the well-respected long-time coach at Gresham’s Centennial High, says Maas is a bit of a legend in coaching circles.
Talking Dame before Tokyo
Prior to the start of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Jon Teitel of HoopsHD.com interviewed me about Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard. The results of our discussion are here.
For Chad Forcier: 25 years in the NBA, and now two rings
Most coaches never get to experience the thrill of an NBA championship.
Chad Forcier has done it twice — once with the San Antonio Spurs in 2014, this year with the Milwaukee Bucks.
“I was so fortunate to have gone through it once with the Spurs,” says Forcier, a long-ago assistant coach at both Oregon State and the University of Portland. “To have a second shot at it with the Bucks … I’m not sure that ‘living a dream’ adequately describes it. I’m keenly aware of how many players and coaches never get to taste that. I feel very blessed.”
Forcier was on the bench alongside head coach Mike Budenholzer as Milwaukee took the Phoenix Suns in six games to secure the franchise’s first NBA title in a half-century. The city was agog over the prospects. An estimated 65,000 people jammed into the Deer District surrounding Fiserv Forum to watch Tuesday night’s Game 6 on a big screen outside the arena and then celebrate afterward.
Offering a final salute to the legacy of Bud Ossey: ‘He went out on top’
I thought Bud Ossey would live forever.
I don’t really mean that, of course. Forever isn’t in the cards for anybody.
But after 101 very solid years on the planet, with his health reasonably stable and his intestinal fortitude beyond mortal levels, I figured those who called him friends — and there were so many of us — would be lucky enough to have him around for at least a couple of more years.
Mick Challenge: A Worthy Cause And a Friend Worth Remembering
By Jim Wilson
Mickey Riley passed away in 2011 at 51 after a six-year battle with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Shortly thereafter, a group of close friends established the Mickey Riley Foundation, aimed at keeping the name of the former Oregon State baseball standout alive through scholarships, activities and events.
As a foundation board member, I have found that endeavor to be one of my life’s most rewarding experiences. Mickey was a great Beaver and even better friend to a ton of people.
“Mick had a great ability to make friends,” says Jack Riley, Mickey’s father and the coach who won 613 games in 22 seasons as Oregon State’s baseball coach, second only to Pat Casey in the program’s 115-year history.
Herb Brown, Mark Warkentien Endorse Blazers’ selection of Billups as head coach
Herb Brown was an assistant coach with the Detroit Pistons for only one season — but what a season it was.
The older brother of then-Detroit head coach Larry Brown was on hand for the Pistons’ ride to the NBA championship in 2003-04. One of his favorite players to work with on that team was the new head coach of the Trail Blazers, Chauncey Billups.
“I love him,” says Herb, now retired and living in Traveler’s Rest, S.C. “He was terrific when I was with the Pistons. He’s a major reason why we were successful. He was a great leader. He took coaching. He understood coaching. He was truly professional.”
Ex-Beaver standout, coach Andy Jenkins back in Pac-12 —With the Washington Huskies
For nearly two decades, Andy Jenkins was a dyed-in-the wool Oregon State Beaver.
Now he is a Washington Husky.
The former slugger and assistant coach at OSU has been hired as an assistant coach for — of all people — Lindsay Meggs
On Kevin Calabro and Jordan Kent, the sports broadcasting scene in Portland, Ime Udoka, James Allen, the Cambia Portland Classic and much more …
Knocking it around on a potpourri of sports topics …
• Kevin Calabro’s return to the broadcasting booth with the Trail Blazers is not a done deal.
The Blazers, who let Jordan Kent go last week as their TV play-by-play announcer, have extended an offer in principle to Calabro, who served as their TV play-by-play man from 2016-20 but gave up his job during the COVID-19-interrupted 2020 campaign.
Bud Ossey Gets 75-year Pin, Scholarship Named in His Honor: ‘God, That’s Out of this World’
I was on a short list of friends and family invited to attend a recent reception for Bud Ossey at his home at Bonaventure of Tigard as the Centenarian received yet another award.
The Society of American Military Engineers presented the No. 1 fan of Oregon State athletics with a 75-year pin as one of the organization’s “distinguished Fellows.”
Buddy Barnes, a retired lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Army, a professional engineer and the 100th president of SAME in 2019, was on hand to present the award to Ossey.
Ben Golliver’s Travels From Inside the ‘Bubble’
Bubbleball: Inside the NBA’s Fight to Save a Season
By Ben Golliver
Abrams Press
Ben Golliver didn’t just write the first book of his career. He lived it.
The Washington Post’s NBA writer was one of the select few who spent the entirety of the league’s post-shutdown portion of the 2019-20 season in the isolation zone — called the “Bubble” — at Disney World.
In “Bubbleball,” Golliver chronicles the three-months-plus experience of being inside the Orlando Bubble that allowed the NBA to complete its season and saved the league more than $1 billion in revenue.
Steve Kerr’s Life Story was Worth Writing, and it’s Worth Reading
Scott Howard-Cooper had it all set up.
The veteran Sacramento journalist was prepared to write a book about the Golden State Warriors’ fourth NBA championship in five years in 2019.
“We were screwed,” Howard-Cooper says. “Nobody wanted to read a Warriors book coming off a loss.”
Howard-Cooper’s literary agent, Tim Hays, had another idea.
“He encouraged me to write a book on (Warriors coach) Steve Kerr,” Howard-Cooper says. “He stayed on me. He said, ‘Write out a proposal. Take a little time and put something on paper.’
Covering some baseball topics: Pat Casey, Friends of Baseball and Mavericks Independent League
Let’s talk baseball as we head toward summer …
• Sources say Pat Casey pulled his name from the running for the vacant LSU head coaching job because of family considerations.
Buck doesn’t stop at Olshey —At least, he says it doesn’t
Neil Olshey conducts a press conference not so much to inform the media as to educate them.
When the Trail Blazers’ president of basketball operations (general manager) believes the narrative about his team and the job he is doing is off-kilter, he’ll gather the scribes and set them straight.
Olshey has long been president of the Neil Olshey Fan Club, and when membership gets low, he does what he can to drum up the numbers.
That’s what he did during a Monday Zoom conference with local reporters, whose collective wisdom, he is quite sure, fits neatly on the head of a pin. Not only does Olshey not suffer fools gladly, he enjoys delivering a proverbial kick in the tush when he deems it necessary.
Barlow’s Tom Johnson: He inspires, he mentors, he teaches life lessons, and he wins …
I walked into Barlow High on a recent Friday night to the sweet sound of basketballs bouncing in the gym, and the reassuring sight of fans filing in the doors and milling around in the lobby, awaiting a game.
There were no concessions being sold, no cheerleaders dancing, no pep band playing, and everyone was masked up.
Even so, it was a return — somewhat — to the normalcy that COVID-19 had stolen from us more than a year ago.
Gresham beat Barlow 61-47 before a crowd I’d estimate at about 300 spectators, seated in every other row in a facility with a capacity probably about 1,000.
With Rich Dorman, talking OSU pitching on eve of Fort Worth Regional
If Oregon State is to rise up and claim the Fort Worth Regional, its pitching will have to be a major part of the story.
Statistically, at least, the No. 2 seed Beavers (34-22 overall, 16-14 in Pac-12 action) take the league’s best pitching staff into Friday’s 11 a.m. Regional opener against No. 3 Dallas Baptist (37-15).
“As a whole, we competed pretty well and gave ourselves a chance to win a lot of games,” pitching coach Rich Dorman said Thursday night on the eve of the Beavers’ opener in Fort Worth. “At times we did a really good job, and at times we didn’t.”
OSU led the Pac-12 in most pitching categories through the regular season, including ERA (3.42, eighth nationally), opponents’ batting average (.217), walks and hits per innings pitched (1.2, eighth nationally), hits allowed per nine innings (7.1, fifth nationally) and strikeouts per nine innings (10).
A discourse on Dame Time with the feral Scott Ferrall …
I was on with one of my favorite national sports talk show hosts, the incomparable Scott Ferrall, on Wednesday’s edition of “Ferrall Coast to Coast" after Damian Lillard’s record-breaking scoring/shooting performance in Game 5 of the Trail Blazers’ playoff series with Denver. We covered a lot of ground concerning Lillard’s heroics, his legacy and the current situation with the Blazers. He doesn’t drink alcohol anymore but invited me to go on a bender with him in some tropical paradise if he scores 55 points and makes a dozen 3’s in one of his pickup games. I told him I’d hold him to it.
The Schonz at 92: ‘I’m one of the old guys now’
Bill Schonely and I had lunch the other day in our annual celebration of his birthday.
His 92nd, which comes Tuesday, June 1.
“I remember as a young kid, I would see some of the older people walking around,” the legendary voice of the Trail Blazers said. “I thought, ‘Boy oh boy, are they old. I don’t ever want to be old like that.’
“Well, guess what? I’m 92. I’m one of those old guys now.”
Phil at the PGAs: ’The Best Theater Ever in a Major’
(Special contributor Steve Brandon, an afficionado of watching golf’s majors on television, filed this report about Phil Mickelson’s victory at last week’s PGA Championship. Mickelson, who turns 51 on June 16, is the oldest man ever to claim a major title.
Like the guy said while trying to get his ball out of the pit of a bunker in the Workday commercial:
“Phil? Phil? Phil!”
Your chance to Wish ‘The Schonz’ a Happy 92nd Birthday
On Tuesday, June 1, Bill Schonely will observe his 92nd birthday.
I use the verb “observe” rather than “celebrate,” because by the time you get to 92, enjoying life becomes more of a challenge.
Loy’s toy is a ’79 Malibu, and he drives it very fast
As a basketball player, Loy Petersen was more smooth than fast.
At age 76, though, long after his career gracing the hardcourts had ended, speed is at the essence of Petersen’s latest pursuit.
The former Oregon State standout and NBA player is one of the top drivers on the National Hot Rod Association’s Northwest circuit.