Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps said, "I used this book as an inspiration for the biggest win of my career when we ended UCLA's all-time 88-game winning streak in 1974."

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. Click the Book to read the players telling their stories in their own words. This is the book that UCLA Athletic Director J.D. Morgan tried to ban.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information.

NFL Draft 2008

by Tony Medley

Something strange and wonderful is reflected in the results of the first two rounds of the NFL draft yesterday. Ignoring for the moment the fact that the draft is patently illegal, the results indicate that finally some people who actually understand football are making decisions for NFL teams. Instead of drafting running backs and wide receivers, the two most unimportant positions on a football team, these General Managers picked 18 linemen and linebackers out of the first 31 players picked. Someone finally heard my lament that football games are won on the line of scrimmage, not by quarterbacks and running backs!

Quarterbacks and running backs and wide receivers are worthless if there’s nobody there to block for them. Yet in the past the first players picked have almost always been running backs and quarterbacks. This year, only the two traditionally dumbest teams in the league, Oakland and Atlanta, two of last year’s worst, picked the glamour players. Oakland picked a running back and Atlanta picked a quarterback. Look for both those teams to bring up the rear again this year.

Who had the best draft? Miami, hands down. I can’t vouch for how good their top pick, Jake Long an offensive tackle from Michigan, is, but they realized that it won’t do them any good to have a great quarterback or great running back if there’s nobody there to block. It reminded me of George Allen who drafted Tom Mack out of Michigan, an offensive tackle, as the second player picked in 1966 (Allen never had a quarterback when he was in Los Angeles. Roman Gabriel, his choice, was so inept he kept the Rams from being the poster team of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s).

Miami’s second pick, at the top of the second round, was a defensive end from Clemson, Phillip Manning. Then they got the steal of the draft, quarterback Chad Henne from Michigan as the 57^th player drafted. This guy is a real gem. He was injured much of last year but when he finally played healthy at the end of the year he looked like a star to me.

I was about the only person outside of New York last year to say that the Giants had a real shot at beating New England in the Super Bowl (and I picked them before they upset Green Bay), and they continue to impress me. As I indicated in my columns at the end of the year, the weakest part of their team was their secondary. So what did they do? They drafted defensive backs in their two picks. If these guys are good, look for the Giants to have a great shot at repeating.

But I think that Miami is a coming team. Maybe not this year, but if their GM continues to rebuild the team by concentrating on linemen and linebackers, they will be back in a few years.

April 27, 2008