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: The NFL’s Breast Cancer Month Callously Ignores Prostate Cancer 24 Oct 16

by Tony Medley

Every year the National Football League has a “Breast Cancer Awareness Month.” And every year the NFL ignores prostate cancer awareness. Why? The NFL is a league of men. A majority of its fans are men. The players are men. The team executives are men. The referees are predominantly men. Wouldn’t one think that a billion-dollar organization like the NFL would be more concerned about prostate cancer, which affects men 100%, than breast cancer, in which less than 1% of the victims are men?

Other than skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men. The American Cancer Society’s estimates for prostate cancer in the United States for 2016 are:

• About 180,890 new cases of prostate cancer
• About 26,120 deaths from prostate cancer

In 2013 (the most recent year numbers are available)—

• 230,815 women and 2,109 men in the United States were diagnosed with breast cancer. 40,860 women and 464 men in the United States died from breast cancer.

So what’s more appropriate for the NFL, to devote a month to breast cancer, which killed less than 500 men in 2013, or to devote a month to prostate cancer, which is projected to kill 26, 210 men in 2016?

If the NFL has an altruistic concern about cancer, then it should not limit its “awareness” program to just one kind of cancer, it should promote cancer “awareness” for all types of cancer. Or, promote cancer “awareness” for both breast cancer and prostate cancer.

The NFL practices the height of hypocrisy when it ignores prostate cancer awareness and spends an entire month promoting breast cancer awareness. Frankly, it infuriates me to see everyone in the NFL wearing pink for a month and ignoring prostate cancer.

I’m not alone in this. The NFL's pink campaign was severely criticized by Samantha King, the author of Pink Ribbons, Inc. Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy. King claims that the NFL was looking for ways to rehabilitate its image because several of its players had had trouble with the law, and it had discovered that women made up a meaningful part of its audience, so the NFL was "interested in maintaining and extending its female audience."

The NFL’s hypocrisy in its concern for women is brought ever more clearly into focus when one considers its shoddy lack of concern about domestic violence. One could call the NFL a league of domestic violence, so many of its players have been involved in abusing their women.

When one considers that the league initially gave baby-faced Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice only a two-game suspension for knocking his then girlfriend unconscious, that allowed defensive stalwart Greg Hardy to return to play for the Dallas Cowboys after almost killing his girlfriend, and that it only gave New York Giants’ kicker Josh Brown a one-game suspension for continuous violent abuse of his wife, and that those are only three examples among a multitude that never reach the public’s eye, you realize that the league’s concern for women’s health is piddling, if not nonexistent.

Add to that the number of players who father children willy-nilly with multiple women not their wives and go off without any sense of responsibility (like superstar Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson who is rumored to have fathered five and maybe seven children out of wedlock all with different women), one realizes that the NFL’s interest in women has nothing to do with their well-being. In fact, the breast cancer awareness month is nothing more than a cold-hearted PR stunt, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, and the world should see it for what it is.

Why the Rams Lose, vol. 1:  It seems as if the Rams’ favorite play on third down with five or more yards to go for a first is to throw a short pass completed behind the first down line and hope the receiver can run for the first down, which they rarely do. Contrast this with New England and Pittsburgh where, in similar situations, both Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger throw passes that are completed beyond the first down line.

Bring back the Replacement Refs: The refereeing in the NFL gets worse and worse. Obvious pass interference with Atlanta’s Julio Jones in the waning minutes of the Charger game was not called, even though it happened right in front of the ref. It would have put Atlanta in position for a game-winning field goal, but they lost in overtime. These non-calls should be subject to challenge.