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. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their stories in their own words.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle.

Sports Medley: How Clueless are the New LA Rams? 19 Sep 16

by Tony Medley

‘Twas ever thus: As I’ve said before, losers make trades to draft quarterbacks. Winners know that football games are won on the line of scrimmage and draft linemen and defensive players.

The New Los Angeles Rams traded their entire future, 6 draft choices all in the first three rounds over the next few years, so they could draft quarterback Jared Goff from California. But when he got to camp they apparently discovered he had never been in a huddle in college or high school or grammar school or his cradle, and, as a result, poor baby, didn’t know what to do.

To get Goff, they passed on both Carson Wentz and Dak Prescott. Fuzzy-cheeked rookie Wentz was a star in his opening two games for the Eagles, who are 2-0. Prescott, a 2016 4^th round draft pick, is starting for the Dallas Cowboys and has performed astonishingly well. Trevor Siemian, a 7^th round pick of Denver in 2015 out of Northwestern, of all places, after appearing for only one play in 2015, is starting for the Super Bowl Champion Broncos and doing a better job than future Hall Of Famer Peyton Manning did last year.

The Rams have been here before. In 1959 they traded almost an entire team for Ollie Matson and slid from 8-4 in 1958 to 2-10 in 1959. Then, after they fired George Allen, they traded many of their starters to Allen who was immediately grabbed by Edward Bennett Williams to coach his Washington Redskins (called the Ramskins after the trade; Williams commented about Allen, “I gave him an unlimited budget and he’s already exceeded it”). Allen’s record with the Rams was 49-17 (6 of his losses were in his first year when he improved the Rams record from 4-10 in 1965 under Harlan Svare to 8-6 in 1966.

But Owner Dan Reeves was itching to get rid of George, even though he had single-handedly made the Rams into a powerhouse, and he finally dumped him after the 1970 season. All George did with the Ramskins was take them to the Super Bowl in his second year while the Rams slid from George’s 9-4-1 in his last year to 8-5-1 and 6-7-1 under Tommy Prothro before Carroll Rosenblum came to Los Angeles’s rescue by purchasing the team after Reeves died in 1971, dumped Prothro, and hired Chuck Knox to coach the team.

An example of how good teams draft was seen Sunday in the Pittsburgh-Cincinnati game when Steeler corner back Atrie Burns, a rookie drafted as the Steelers’ first pick as no. 27 in the 2016 draft (well after the Rams picked Goff), made a spectacular play on the second to last play of the half knocking down a perfectly thrown touchdown pass, limiting the Bengals to a field goal in a game the Steelers won by one touchdown. In contrast, the Rams’ Goff watched from the sidelines (as his inept team could manage only 3 field goals in a win over a depleted Seattle), no doubt trying to learn how to act in a huddle.

Superstar or superschmuck? With the game tied 13-13, Giants quarterback Eli Manning threw a perfect 35 yard pass into the arms of highly publicized wide receiver Odell Beckham, Jr., you know, the guy with the bleached blonde hair, who dropped it on the 2 yard line with less than two minutes left in the Giants-Saints game. Undaunted, on the very next play with 1:29 on the clock, Manning then threw an identical pass to Victor Cruz on the other side. Unlike his highly publicized and overexposed teammate, Beckham, however, Cruz caught it as he went out of bounds on the 2, setting up the Giants’ game-winning field goal.

Bochy gets what he deserves:­ Dave Roberts isn’t alone in his failure to understand that pitchers are not fungible. Monday night, Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy pulled Madison Baumgarner leading 1-0 after 7 innings of near-perfect baseball, allowing only one hit and no walks while striking out 10, to put a game the second place Giants had to win in the hands of his woeful bullpen, which failed to get an out in the bottom of the ninth as the Dodgers rallied to win, 2-1. Really, Bruce? You would really rather have guys named Will Smith, Derek Law, Javier Lopez, and Hunter Strickland on the mound in the final innings of a 1 run game than Madison Baumgarner, one of the best pitchers in baseball, a guy who was pitching a one-hitter? John McGraw, Miller Huggins, Joe McCarthy, Leo Durocher and all the other managers from when baseball was managed by people with common sense are rolling over in their graves at this nonsense.