Coaches, Fathers, and Other Figures

Aubie & A Truly Great Coach

We doubt too many are honoring Gene Chizik today, but lest any feel too sorry for this one-time icon at Auburn University, the Birmingham News is reporting some very interesting details concerning his days as head coach, especially after the university's national championship. Here's a few interesting revelations:

* Almost all mandatory workouts became optional.
* Many players stopped attending classes and/or doing classwork.
* Private security became the norm--players had to be forced to follow Chizik's dictates.

In  other words, when the annals of this decade's Southeastern football are written, Gene Chizik will be considered Auburn's answer to Mike Price.

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Years ago Gary Crosby, son of Bing Crosby, penned the story of his life growing up with a famous singer/actor for a father. It wasn't pretty. It seems when informed of the sudden death of his famous father, he simply finished the golf game he was playing at the time.

Often we see those honored in local or even national media and we know their private lives were nothing like their public persona. If you want to know what a man...or woman...is like, ask their children.

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Other figures? Let's arbitrarily use an institution as a "figure." The print media today is in serious trouble. We don't blame even our local paper, if you can call it that, for scrounging for every reader it can get.

Yet, while local news once predominated the TimesDaily's online headlines, that's no longer so. Click on many stories thinking you'll find something of local interest and you'll instead be confronted with national stories that have little to do with us in the Shoals.

Obviously we should want to know what's going on nationally and internationally, but the TD is not the first place most of us look for that kind of news. That's why we're glad to have the Quad-Cities Daily and Pen-N-Sword to fall back on...no, wait, to make our first choice for what's happening in the Shoals.



Shoalanda