Lombardi's Centennial

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Today is a special day for Green Bay Packers fans like myself.

It would have been the 100th birthday of Vince Lombardi.

I barely remember watching Lombardi coach the Packers to victory in Super Bowl II. My family had just gotten its first TV set a few months earlier — black and white (color TV was way out of my parents' budget in those days) — and my mind still houses memories of seeing the Packers play on TV in those days.

Granted, those memories are kind of like those scratchy black–and–white newsreels that you see from time to time on documentaries, but that's where my lifelong support for the Packers was born.

My father was a college professor when I was growing up, and sometimes he spent the summers taking advanced education courses at other schools. One year — probably a year or two after Lombardi left the Packers' sideline — Dad spent about six weeks in Wisconsin. When he came home, he brought back a copy of the Packers' yearbook for that season for me. It was my most cherished possession for the next couple of years — until it literally fell apart.

Lombardi is an iconic figure for lots of people. In Green Bay, they call him St. Vince, the only Packer coach (so far) to win back–to–back Super Bowls. One other coach did take the Packers to consecutive Super Bowls, but he didn't win both.

I suppose when (if) another coach duplicates Lombardi's achievement, he will be elevated to sainthood in Green Bay. Until that happens, though, Lombardi stands alone.

I have vague memories of watching Lombardi in his one and only season of coaching the Washington Redskins in 1969, but the Redskins hadn't been good for a long time, and they didn't get too much TV coverage in those days (as I recall). Lombardi's presence raised the interest level, though, and he did wind up coaching the Redskins to a winning season.

He probably would have accomplished even greater things in the years ahead, but he was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 1970 and died before the next season began.

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I remember when he died in September 1970. The memory is linked to a childhood memory.

My father had been away at another advanced education course (at Northwestern, as I recall), and he was due to return by air on a Wednesday so Mom, my brother, some friends of the family and I piled into the family car and drove to Little Rock to pick him up.

As we drove to the airport, we had the car radio on. On the newscast, I heard reports that Lombardi was near death.

When we arrived at the airport, we were told that Dad had been delayed several hours. I don't remember why. Perhaps there were problems with the plane. Maybe he missed his flight and had to take a later one.

Whatever the reason was, my mother consulted with the family friends and decided to go home, have dinner and drive back to the airport when Dad's flight was due to arrive. That's what we did.

As we drove back to the airport that night, I remember staring out the windows of the car at a relatively starry sky and hearing another radio report that said Lombardi was likely to die within hours.

We greeted Dad's plane and drove home. I don't remember hearing the radio on the return trip. The adults were too busy talking, and the radio would have interfered.

But the next morning, when I got up, I remember going into the living room where my father was having his breakfast in front of the TV, which was reporting that Lombardi had died a few minutes earlier. I felt a depth of loss that I have rarely felt in my life. He was 57 years old.

And today he would have been 100. Most people don't live to 100; even fewer of Lombardi's generation have done so, and I sincerely doubt that, had cancer not ended his life, he would still be alive today.

But the 100th anniversary of his birth is a good occasion for reflecting on his life and times.

There Was No One Like the Bear

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"His nickname was Bear. Now imagine a guy that can carry the nickname Bear."

Joe Namath

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Until I breathe my last breath, I will remember watching football games on TV with my father when I was growing up.

We didn't have a TV until I was in elementary school, but once we got one, my memory is that we always watched college football on Saturdays and pro football on Sundays — and then, when Monday Night Football came along, I watched those games with my father, too.

(Well, I watched the first halves. When the game reached halftime, I knew it was time for me to go to bed — and I would drift off to sleep listening to the banter from the broadcast booth coming from the TV in our living room.

(On rare occasions, my parents would permit me to stay up and watch a game to the end. I always felt a little more grown up at those times, the same as I did whenever my parents allowed me to stay up to watch Johnny Carson.)

I guess one of the nice things — one of the reassuring truths — of life in those days was the certainty that some things never changed.

Tom Landry was always the coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Woody Hayes was always the coach of Ohio State. Joe Paterno was always the coach of Penn State.

In Arkansas, where I grew up, Frank Broyles was always the coach of the Razorbacks. When he announced his retirement in 1976, I was shocked. Who would coach the Hogs? I wondered. Broyles had been the Razorbacks' only coach in my lifetime — and I was in my teens when he stepped down.

I simply could not imagine anyone else walking the sidelines that Broyles had walked all those years.

(Ironically, one of the things I always enjoyed as a student at the University of Arkansas when I attended football games was being able to watch Broyles' hand–picked successor, the hyperactive Lou Holtz, doing precisely that — but in his own Woody Allen–like fashion.)

Bear Bryant was much the same way. He wasn't the only man to coach Alabama's football team, but he was Alabama when I was growing up. I'm sure there were thousands of people in Alabama who grew up in those days who believed — to some extent — that the 'Bama coaching job was created for Bear Bryant — and would cease to exist without him.

He was always easy to spot, even if one was seated a great distance from the field — and I speak from experience on that. Once, I attended a Sugar Bowl in which Alabama participated. My seat was in the nosebleed section, but I could still spot Bear Bryant.

He was an imposing figure, and he always wore his trademark houndstooth hat — sometimes with a matching jacket — to football games. Well, there were exceptions. He didn't wear his hat when Alabama played in a domed stadium. Once, I recall, he was asked about that, and he said his mother raised him to take off his hat when he was inside.

Because of that, I didn't get to see him wearing that hat in person. That Sugar Bowl was played in the Superdome.

There were other Southern coaches who wore hats to games — in the pros, for example, Landry did and so did Bum Phillips. Like the Bear, though, most of them wouldn't wear a hat when a game was being played indoors, either.

But I believe Bryant was the first.

When I was a child in the 1960s, George Wallace was the state's most prominent, most popular (and most notorious) politician. Bear Bryant was probably the only man in Alabama who could have beaten Wallace in a race for anything.

In the long and storied history of college football, there was never anyone like the Bear. He coached Alabama for a quarter of a century and averaged a national title about every four years. When he retired at the end of the 1982 season, he had won more games than any other college football coach.

In the last 30 years, Bryant has been surpassed in total victories by a handful of coaches who had the good fortune of playing more games in a given year and who really only needed to break even to receive a bowl bid.

The team Bryant took over in 1958 had won only eight games in the previous four seasons. Bryant led the Crimson Tide to five wins in his first season alone and then proceeded to take the Tide to bowl games in 24 consecutive seasons (1959–1982) — at a time when bowl bids really meant something.

Bowl bids were more precious in the Bear's day. There must be three or four times as many bowls today as there were then. Today's bar is ridiculously low.

Yet winning was even more routine at Alabama in those days than it is today. Whenever a Bryant–coached Alabama team lost — to anyone — it was big news. Stop the presses news.

Bear Bryant died 30 years ago today. That was big news, too.

But it probably wouldn't have surprised the Bear, had he known of it.

The night of his final game, a 21–15 Liberty Bowl victory over Illinois, he was asked what he would do in retirement. "Probably croak in a week," he replied.

It was actually a month later, but his words were prophetic. He passed a routine physical on Jan. 25, 1983 but died the next day.

His cause of death was given as a heart attack, but it was actually a combination of health issues he had been battling for three years. His doctor said Bryant's battle had been "heroic," TIME magazine reported — but his motives for staying at Alabama weren't entirely altruistic.

About the only reason he stayed was to complete his pursuit of the title of winningest college football coach of all time.

He did reach that pinnacle in 1981, and he stayed on to coach another season, but he felt his performance was sub–par.

"[I]n my opinion, they deserved better coaching than they have been getting from me this year," Bryant said of his players. And he chose to step down.

A month after his last game, he was dead.

I will always remember when I heard that Bryant had died. I was working for a small newspaper in central Arkansas where the custom was for the most junior staffer to cover the police and fire beats, which occasionally meant covering trials in the county courthouse.

I was the most junior staffer in January 1983.

On this day in 1983, I was sitting in a courtroom. I don't recall now what kind of trial was being conducted, but I remember there was some kind of break, and I was sitting in the courtroom with a few other people when the bailiff came in and, with an ashen look on his face, said simply, "Bear Bryant died today."

The news was delivered in the same somber tones that are often reserved for the announcement of the death of a president or a pope.

A few minutes later, the judge came in and told us, in the same somber tones, that the court would adjourn for the remainder of the day. As I walked out of the courthouse, I saw some folks lowering the American flag to half staff.

Ordinarily, the courthouse wouldn't lower the flag unless a former president or governor had died. But they lowered the flag that day in honor of a football coach who coached and died in another state.

I suppose it helped that he was born and raised in Arkansas. Nevertheless, that is the kind of respect Bryant enjoyed.

There was no one like the Bear.

JoePa's Final Chapter

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After the child sex scandal that engulfed Penn State only a few months ago, there simply was no way that Joe Paterno's obituary — when the time for it came — would not mention Jerry Sandusky.

In fact, I remember saying that very thing to some people right after Paterno was fired. I just didn't realize Paterno's obituary would be written so soon.

But, like Richard Nixon, who lived nearly 20 years after he resigned the presidency but whose obituary still mentioned Watergate in the first paragraph, it was inevitable that, at the time of his passing, Paterno would be remembered, at least in part, for the scandal that ended his coaching career.

• Paterno was a "a legend, lion and tainted leader," wrote Rana Cash for The Sporting News.


• The first paragraph of ESPN's obituary observed that Paterno "won more games than anyone in major college football but was fired amid a child sex abuse scandal that scarred his reputation for winning with integrity."


• Paterno was an "Ivy League–educated coach who transformed sleepy Penn State University into a national football power ... only to see his career end abruptly and his legacy tarnished," wrote Chris Dufresne in the Los Angeles Times.


• The New York Times has long had the reputation for writing the best and most thorough obituaries in the print business, but Richard Goldstein, nevertheless, could not avoid mentioning the scandal in his summation of Paterno's life.
  
  Paterno, he wrote, was "a symbol of integrity in collegiate athletics only to be fired ... amid a child sexual–abuse scandal."

Try as they might, no obituary — at least, none that I have seen today — has been able to avoid mentioning the scandal.

And some really have tried.

John Canzano, writing in The Oregonian last night when rumors were swirling that Paterno was dead, spoke of the "sad irony" that JoePa's life had become.

"[N]o discussion about Paterno will ever be complete without noting that Penn State's Board of Trustees fired him Nov. 9 in the aftermath of the child sex abuse charges against former assistant and close Paterno friend Jerry Sandusky," Canzano wrote — anticipating by a matter of hours the challenge facing those who would write Paterno's obituary.

Perhaps Jack McCallum of Sports Illustrated did the best job of balancing the good and the bad.

"For so long," McCallum wrote, "Joe Paterno seemed indestructible, more icon than man ... But when the end came, it came with such breathtaking suddenness that even non–believers must pause ... to wonder if it wasn't part of some cosmic script."

In the end, I suppose, we are left with our contradictory thoughts and feelings about this man who did so much good but whose memory will be forever linked to so much bad.

JoePa Makes History

You wouldn't think that there would be anything left for Joe Paterno to accomplish at Penn State.

He's been coaching the Nittany Lions since 1966. Paterno has said that, when he told his father of his occupational decision, his father replied, "For God's sake, what did you go to college for?"

It was a fair question, I suppose, given that Paterno was taking over a program that had been mediocre at best in the previous years.

He began his tenure with a victory over Maryland on Sept. 17, 1966. That win — or the one over Boston College a few weeks later — probably qualified as his signature win in that first season at the helm. All the teams the Nittany Lions faced who had winning records that year defeated Penn State.

The next year, though, after a 1–2 start, Paterno led the Nittany Lions to seven straight wins and a Liberty Bowl date with Florida State (the teams fought to a 17–17 tie).

And the next two seasons were even better for Paterno and his teams. Their record was 22–0, which meant that, entering the 1970 season, they had won 27 of their last 28 games — and might have won all 28 if college football had allowed overtime in those days.

They also won a couple of Orange Bowls in the late 1960s, but they didn't win a national championship.

For a long time, the national title seemed a prize Paterno would never grab. He instructed many great players. He had many great teams. He coached against (and often defeated) the best of his contemporaries — Bear Bryant, Darrell Royal, Woody Hayes, Barry Switzer, Tom Osborne — but he always seemed to come up just short when the national title was on the line.

That changed in 1982, and he won another national crown in 1986.

He's won more bowl games than any other coach in the history of college football.

And now, he's won more games — period.

Yesterday's 10–7 triumph over Illinois was sloppy, but, as Stewart Mandel points out in Sports Illustrated, it was "exactly the type of game Paterno enjoys most" — one in which defense and rushing play prominent roles.

So it was appropriate for the occasion. It was Paterno's 409th Division I victory.

The milestone, in which Paterno passed Eddie Robinson of Grambling, is largely symbolic, Mandel writes, which is a fair conclusion. The Illini appear to have peaked, having been in the rankings a few weeks ago but they've stumbled lately.

Penn State has sometimes been criticized for not playing the toughest of schedules, but Robinson rarely, if ever, faced the kind of programs that Paterno has faced, particularly since Penn State joined the Big Ten nearly two decades ago.

It did seem more important when he surprassed Bryant's victory total a decade ago. Bryant, after all, built his record by beating the likes of LSU and Auburn and Georgia every year — not Rutgers and Syracuse and Temple.

Nevertheless, as Mandel said, Paterno deserves our recognition and praise. "In a sport filled with misguided, misbehaved or flat–out devious individuals, JoePa remains our moral compass, as he has for more than five decades."

Jim Tressel's Resignation

Yesterday, after I heard that Jim Tressel had resigned as the head football coach at Ohio State, I sent an e–mail to a friend of mine.

"Did you hear that Jim Tressel has resigned at Ohio State?" I asked.

"It had been building for some time after that stupid bowl decision," he replied. "Probably good for both the school and him. He'll get a job next year very easily at a top program."

I completely agree with his first sentence — and I agree with the second as well. I'm not so sure about the third. I'm kind of inclined to think this is it for Tressel — or that it may be a few years — possibly several years — before he returns to the sidelines.

It's hard for me to say, though. Tressel's decision really caught me by surprise — although, in hindsight, my friend's observation that this "had been building for some time" makes sense — and it may take me awhile to absorb it all.

Others don't seem as surprised.

Brett McMurphy of CBS Sports, for one, wants to know — What took so long?

"Any other coach would have been tossed aside months ago," he writes. "Tressel must have attended — and graduated cum laude from — the Richard M. Nixon School on how to handle a crisis situation. Yet another example: The coverup is worse than the crime."

That helps frame things for me. Tressel does remind me of Nixon in his determination never to admit to wrongdoing. Even his "defense" of his players' violations of NCAA rules against selling memorabilia — that these problems could be avoided if athletes were paid — smacks of the kind of arrogance I have come to expect from Ohio State coaches.

Which brings me to Mike Lopresti of USA Today, who put into words a thought that kept going through my mind.

For reasons I had not been able to pinpoint previously, Tressel's sudden departure reminded me of the demise of another legendary Ohio State football coach, Woody Hayes, who belted an opposing player following a turnover in a bowl game.

They were "[t]wo smart, determined, successful coaches [who] came to messy ends, each from [a] self–induced crisis."

Hayes was arrogant, too — in a different way, perhaps. But each in his own way believed that he and the Ohio State football program occupied a special zone. In that zone, Hayes was entitled to fetch a roundhouse to the chops of an opposing player on national TV, and Tressel was entitled to look the other way while his players ignored the rules by which all others must live.

("If the president does it," Nixon famously said, "that means it is not illegal.")

Nevertheless, Tressel was maybe the only thing sports fans in Ohio had going for them these days. Lebron James left Cleveland for Miami — where he will start playing for an NBA title tonight.

The Cleveland Indians are clinging to first in a pitiful American League Central, but they got hammered the day Tressel announced his resignation, and it is far from certain whether they will still be playing in October.

The Cincinnati Reds, thought by many to be a sure thing for the playoffs when the season began, are in a tailspin; they've lost seven of their last 10 games, and they are currently third in the National League Central.

And probably the less said about the Browns and the Bengals the better.

Tressel's status among suddenly embattled (and presumably embittered) Ohio sports fans may improve. After all, by the time he died, Hayes was remembered for his triumphs on the gridiron and not his indiscretion in the Gator Bowl.

And Nixon, too, was eulogized in glowing terms — nearly two decades after he resigned the presidency.

Time does have a way of healing all — or, at least, most — wounds.

Scattershooting

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If you never lived in Texas — or this region of the country — you may not know who Blackie Sherrod was.

He was a sportswriter, a sports columnist whose columns frequently were about many topics so, rather than give priority to any one subject, he would begin by writing "Scattershooting while wondering whatever became of [insert name of obscure or no longer prominent person]," and then he would launch into a stream of unrelated consciousness.

Perhaps Blackie should have patented that word. It seems almost blasphemous for anyone else to use it. At the very least, it seems it ought to be required that Blackie's name is mentioned whenever it is used.

Well, I have. And now I'm going to write about a few things that are on my mind today, starting with

• Urban Meyer, the soon–to–be ex–coach of the Florida Gators.
  
  Is there anyone who can honestly say he/she was not surprised to hear that the 45–year–old Meyer is calling it quits after Friday's Sugar Bowl contest with Cincinnati? Or that the reason for his departure was health issues presumably brought on by the stress of coaching?
  
  In Gainesville, shocked fans tried to come to terms with the news yesterday and expressed their hope that he will regain his good health.
  
  But — and this is in no way intended as a slap at Meyer or his achievements — I think Dan Wetzel's assertion at Yahoo! Sports that Meyer "was the most influential coach in college football this decade" is a little over the top. Wetzel makes a good case, but I have to point out that there are other coaches — USC's Pete Carroll, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, Texas' Mack Brown come immediately to mind — who have enjoyed enormous success and coached Heisman finalists (if not winners) in this decade. Meyer has been one of many.
  
  Again, I'm not running down what he's done at Florida. He will be hard to replace. But "most influential?"


• Well, the process of replacing Meyer probably has begun at the University of Florida. I'm sure officials in the Athletic Department have been conferring informally since yesterday's announcement.
  
  And, whether justifiably or not, football fans in the SEC — and elsewhere across the nation — are wondering if their coach will be lured to Gainesville. Matt Hayes of The Sporting News says Florida may name Meyer's replacement within a week — in other words, before Alabama and Texas play for the national title.
  
  Hayes says five names are at the top of Florida's coaching wish list: Houston's Kevin Sumlin, Stanford's Jim Harbaugh, Boise State's Chris Petersen, Arkansas' Bobby Petrino and Utah's Kyle Whittingham.
  
  At ESPN.com, Chris Low also mentions Petrino and Petersen as possibilities, but his list includes the likes of Stoops, Mississippi State's Dan Mullen and former Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan.
  
  Petrino and Mullen are the only SEC coaches whose names I have seen mentioned — so far. But SEC ties (or, for that matter, a background as a player or coach for Bear Bryant) do not mean what they once did. Meyer himself had neither on his resume when he was hired to replace Ron Zook five years ago.
  
  It's all a guessing game right now. I don't know if Florida will announce Meyer's successor within a week nor do I know who is really at the top of the Gators' list, but my prediction is that speculation will be widespread by the time Meyer's last game is under way Friday night.


• Meanwhile, Meyer has been preparing for his Florida coaching finale. Only time will tell if he will ever return to the sidelines, but it can be said that, while he won't be competing for his third national title in five years at Florida, Meyer will be finishing his career as a Gator coach in the bowl game that once was synonymous with SEC excellence — the Sugar Bowl. The opponent may not be traditional, but the setting certainly is.
  
  It is interesting, though, that Rick Newman recently wrote, in U.S. News & World Report, about something that has bothered me over the years — the odd combinations of sponsors and bowl games.
  
  For example, Newman takes exception to the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl, which will be played in nearby Fort Worth on Thursday. "If you really want to honor the men and women in uniform," he writes, "just name the bowl after them, period. Don't stick you own name in there and ride on their coattails."
  
  Newman rants about the "absurdities that will be tripping across the TV screen" during the bowl season, but, in my opinion, his complaints are pretty tame. My complaint about bowl game names goes back 20 years, when Mobil Oil was the sponsor of the Cotton Bowl.
  
  When I was growing up, the Cotton Bowl was often the game that produced a national champion, although it wasn't always obvious. Sometimes you had to wait until the pollsters voted the next day before you knew who the national champion was.
  
  That was a simpler time, a time when bowl games didn't have to have a corporate sponsor in the bowl's name. That changed at some point, and, from 1989 to 1995, the Cotton Bowl (previously called the Cotton Bowl Classic) was sponsored by Mobil Oil. As a result, the game was called the "Mobil Oil Cotton Bowl Classic."
  
  It never seemed to me that oil and cotton made a very appealing combination.

Breaking News (?) From Auburn

The Birmingham News is reporting that the decision to dismiss football coach Tommy Tuberville has been made at Auburn.

No announcement has been made so far, but Tuberville met with the athletic director yesterday and today. And today he also met with the university president.

When an announcement is made, it will be either that he's been fired or that he's the recipient of a rousing endorsement from the Auburn administration.

And I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that "rousing endorsement." The signals seem to suggest a coaching change is in the works.

Charles Goldberg points out that Auburn was a "disappointing 5-7" this season — and, certainly, the 36-0 loss to in-state rival Alabama in last weekend's "Iron Bowl" is one of the disappointments that Auburn fans endured this year.

But Tuberville is 7-3 against Alabama in his tenure at Auburn — and, before Saturday's loss, he had won six in a row against the Crimson Tide.

As it is with all coaches, it's about the numbers. The cumulative numbers.

Of course, it wasn't just the loss to Alabama that hurt Tuberville's cause — although it obviously didn't help.

Considering that Auburn came into the season as the media's choice to win the SEC West — but Alabama won the division and may play for the national title — I think it may have been just one more nail in Tuberville's coffin.

He might have been able to salvage his job with a win over Alabama — but that's going to be nothing but speculation now, I believe.

After the Tigers started the season 3-0, they won only two of their last nine games — and they will take a five-game SEC losing streak into the 2009 season, whoever the coach is.

To say Auburn's offense struggled this season is to be generous:

• Auburn was 100th in the nation in passing yards per game.


• Auburn was 71st in the nation in rushing yards per game.


• The Tigers were 112th in the nation in scoring.

Auburn was somewhat better on defense.

But the defense couldn't compensate for the fact that Auburn only scored about 17 points per game.

• Auburn was 17th in the nation in points allowed per game.


• The Tigers were 53rd in rushing yards allowed.


• Auburn was 23rd in the nation in passing yards allowed.


• And the Tigers were 26th in total defense.

Happy Birthday to a Living Legend

When I was growing up, it seems it was an era when legendary people coached in the most popular sports in America.

Players came and went, especially at the college level, but the great coaches were always there.

In baseball, managers like Walter Alston, Yogi Berra, Leo Durocher, Sparky Anderson, Dick Williams and Earl Weaver called the shots from the dugout.

In college football, Paul "Bear" Bryant, Darrell Royal, Barry Switzer, John McKay, Ara Parseghian and Woody Hayes roamed the sidelines. Joe Paterno is the only active coach who was a head coach in major college football 40 years ago.

In the NFL, Vince Lombardi, Tom Landry, George Halas, Paul Brown, George Allen, Bud Grant, John Madden, Hank Stram, Don Shula and Chuck Noll defined success at the professional level.

But no coach was as synonymous with success in his sport as John Wooden, who led UCLA's basketball team to 10 national championships in 12 years.

It's been more than 30 years since Wooden, nicknamed the "Wizard of Westwood," ended his coaching career after winning his 10th national title.

His wife of more than 50 years died of cancer 10 years later, in 1985.

But today, Wooden celebrates his 98th birthday. I hear that he's been hospitalized a few times in recent years, mostly for injuries and ailments that are typical of elderly people, but otherwise he seems to be in fine health for a man of his age.

Wooden rewrote the coaching record book while he was at UCLA. Most of it may as well have been chiseled into stone.

When I was growing up, it was practically assumed that, if UCLA was playing, you could take it to the bank that the Bruins would win.

The legendary coaches of my youth have all retired now. Many of them are deceased. But have you ever noticed that there are always a few in each generation who seem determined never to die? George Burns was like that. So was Bob Hope. They eventually died, of course, but long after common sense would have predicted.

(Burns, it is said, was once asked by a reporter what his doctor thought of his cigar-smoking habit. Burns reportedly exhaled a lungful of smoke in the reporter's direction and replied, "My doctor is dead.")

It looks like it may be that way with Wooden as well (although, just for the record, I don't think Wooden is a smoker).

Certainly, some of his achievements will stand forever.

For example, we often hear how difficult it is for a basketball team to go undefeated in a single season. UCLA had back-to-back undefeated seasons in 1972 and 1973 — the only team in college basketball ever to accomplish that feat.

The Bruins also went undefeated in 1964 and 1967.

We also hear how difficult it is for a national champion to repeat — and it is. Wooden won seven consecutive national championships, from the 1966-1967 season to the 1972-1973 season.

And, in addition to the undefeated seasons I mentioned earlier, the Bruins went 29-1 in three seasons, they went 28-2 twice and they were 28-3 in Wooden's final season in 1975.

He won about 80% of his games.

Happy birthday, Coach. And many, many more.