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: Pompous Popovich Should Shut Up 14 Nov16

by Tony Medley

Here’s what San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich said about President-Elect Donald Trump:

"Not basically because the Republicans won or anything, but the disgusting tenure and tone and all the comments that have been xenophobic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic; and I live in that country where half the people ignored all of that to elect someone. That's the scariest part for me.

“I mean, come on, that's what a seventh/eighth-grade bully does. And he was elected President of the United States. We would have scolded our kids, we would have had discussions and talked until we were blue in the face trying to get them to understand these things. And he is in charge of this country. That's disgusting.”

The great thing about this country is that simplistic, superficial, hypocritical people have the ability to be so and even to broadcast the level of their intelligence to the nation at large if they have the platform upon which to mount, which American athletes and coaches do, regardless of the validity of what they say.

For example, how can anyone with even half a brain logically claim Mr. Trump is “misogynistic” when he gave the most important job in his campaign to a woman, Kellyanne Conway? But, then, I’m assuming facts about Coach Popovich’s brain not in evidence.

Apparently Coach Popovich preferred Hillary Clinton to Mr. Trump, which means that his stated fears of Mr. Trump’s “character” based on mere unproven, and, in fact, counterfactual, allegations are more of a danger to this country than Hillary Clinton’s proven bad character based on hard facts, to wit (and I only scratch the surface):

1. Her dishonesty exemplified by her lying under oath to Congress, confirmed by FBI director James Comey;
2. Lying to the American people that she only used “one Blackberry,”  when in fact she used at least 12 communication devices according to Comey;
3. Her abandonment of her Ambassador to Libya to a horrible death without lifting a finger to help him (“What difference does it make?” she asked);
4. Her enthusiastic support for the murder of perfectly formed and healthy 9 month fetuses in the womb;
5. Her successful defense of the heartless rapist of a 12 year old girl and then laughing about it and admitting she knew he was guilty even though the victim has said the incident ruined her life;
6. Her putting highly confidential information on a private server in direct violation of the law in order to avoid Freedom of Information Act Requests and lying about it, confirmed by Comey;
7. Etc.

Apparently these factual character defects are not important to Popovich, but “half the people,” his own words, found them compelling and Popovich doesn’t like that. Don’t confuse this basketball coach with facts; his mind is made up.

Popovich is a supercilious, arrogant, insufferable man who goes out of his way to belittle and demean halftime interviewers who are just doing their jobs. His rudeness to them is legendary, so where does he come off criticizing Donald Trump as an “eighth-grade bully,” when that describes Popovich to a T? In fact, in belittling these interviewers he reveals his cowardice for all to see because they have no way of fighting back without losing their jobs. That’s the classic definition of a bully, someone who attacks and picks on someone less powerful who can’t fight back.

Popovich should look in the mirror and count his faults before he criticizes someone he doesn’t even know just because he read something in the MSM and found some multi-syllabic words he could use to disparage Mr. Trump and all his supporters, which constitute half the country. When Hillary Clinton tried that and called Trump supporters “deplorables,” it encouraged legions of “deplorables” to go out and vote.

Stupid and inept: On their opening drive against the Jets, the Rams’ Benny Cunningham had a 25 yard run down to the half yard line. He carried the ball under his right arm and went out of bounds on the right side of the field. Had he just extended the ball over the goal line, which is what everybody else in the NFL does, he would have scored a touchdown. But Cunningham just ran out of bounds. As a result, the Rams found themselves with a first and goal on the half yard line, which, for them, is insurmountable and they had to kick a field goal on 4^th down, which began one of the worst games in the history of the NFL.