Erskine Russell

The late Erk Russell was the last 4-sport letterman at Auburn University. But as a coach his specialty was getting maximum effort out of lesser athletes.

He won a state championship as head coach of Atlanta's Grady High School, and a national championship as defensive co-ordinator for the University of Georgia Bulldogs

His defensive line talent was so pathetic in 1980,. that he desperately

sought out ways to fortify their fragile self-esteem. (He couldn't expect much help from an offense whose best hope was an incoming "true freshman" running back who had played high school ball at the single-A level.)

When passed over for the head coaching job at UGA, Erk responded to the disappointment by inaugurating the football program at Georgia Southern. In their first two years of competition in NCAA Division I-AA, his Golden Eagles won back-to-back national championships.

Now Erk has been nominated to the College Football Hall of Fame

TSSAA Final Power Ratings 2009

"Old man who is named for a convenience store." 
they asked me "what is this downfield blocking of which you speak? 
Pass-catching specialists may commit acts of violence? Offensive linemen must renounce passivity? Multiple defenders can tacklie a single ball carrier? 'Tell our coaches we want to practice harder.Teach us the ways of the ancient warrior who coached on the shores of the rivers Hudson and Tennessee/ Sonny Moore Ratings for Bearden unclassified (approximately 650 teams

Sonny Moore
Massey

Previous Years
           Sonny Moore
2009    12
2008    41
2007      6
2006    43
2005    68
2004   207
2003   114
2002   112
2001     82
2000     62
1999     36
1998    142
1999       22

Why Erk should be in the Hall of Fame

Tony Barnhart's case
Nomination

Pics

Football Album

Is  haallowe'en over yet?

Paul W Bryant

Museum-.

Quotes

Dogs on TV:

Bearden at  West, 2009

So you want to be a get- back coach?

I knew I was living on borrowed time at my last stop when a parent told me "you have the  greatest job on earth." Job? I thought those resulted in paychecks.
 Said he, I was already a "legend", on the way to becoming an "institution." If being the Get-back coach at that school were such a great gig, why wasn't anyone trying to take it away from me?  
Nobody has ever applied for the lowly job of get-back coach. I certainly didn't.   I had been away from football for more than twenty years  when  some guys who played for my forner high school coach asked me to join them for their season-opening game a hundred miles from home.
The previous season i had hollered a little too loudly from the sideline and was adopted as sideline mascot
by a bunch of kids just recovering from soccer.
 The prospect of a two hundred mile round trip in a school bus geared for short hauls should have deterred me.
 But I thought we might still have some of the magic dust that had taken the previous year's team to a Cinderella appearance in the state semifinal game.
So here I was in the lockerroom, 1o minutes til kickoff , the honored guest of the coach and team.
Then the officials  made their routine pre-game visit to the lockerroom. After checkimg  for  weapons  They asked the standard question, "Coach, who's your get-back coach?"
The HC responded, without hesitation, "Coach J is our get-back coach."
If you've just been suckered into football's most humble role, here's a primer from a legendary get-back coach whose greatness is undiminished by the fact that he desecrates the Sabbath by working on  Sundays in the No Fun League.

Neyland: The Man, the Legend

Video feature,  50 min University of  Tennessee Photo Services, 1983.
Not even Toby Sharpe could mess this up.
Rare vintage footage and interviews with Neyland alumni and writers.
Narrated by the late Lindsey Nelson. Nelson, from Columbia Tennessee, became a publicist for Neyland while a student at UT. Neyland selected Nelson to be the founding announcer of UT's radio network. Nelson wanted to call it the Volunteer Network. Neyland preferred Vol Network.

38 Commandments of Football

In 1926 Robert Reese Neyland of Greeneville, Texas, was hired as head football coach of the University of Tennessee volnteers, perennial runnerup to Dan McGugin's mighty Vanderbilt Commmodores. Neyland was arguably the greatest athlete of his generation. Not only an All-American football lineman, he was also
the national collegiate boxing champion and a major league baseball pitching prospect.  Neyland's education set him apart  from other star athletes entering the coaching profession. A member of "the class the stars fell upon" at the US Military Academy, Captain Neyland arrived in Knoxville  determined to apply the lessons of military leadership, discipline, and tactics he had learned at West Point to the sport of football:

1. Thou shalt charge and block.
2. Thou shalt charge and fight.
3. A good blocker never looks back.
4. One good blocker is worth three ball-carrying stars.
5. A team that won't be beat can't be beat.
6. The team that makes the fewest mistakes wins.
7. Never stop till the referee's whistle blows.
8. Press the kicking game.
9. Make and play for the breaks. When one comes your way, score!
10. If the game or a break goes against you, don't like down: put on some steam.
11. Don't save yourself. Go the limit. There are good men on the sidelines when you are exhausted.
12. Football is a battle. Go out to fight and keep it up all afternoon.
13. A man's value to his team varies inversely as his distance from the ball.
14. If the line goes forward the team wins; If it comes backward the team loses.
15. Never lose the ball on downs.
16. You can't fight like a man with less than 100 percent loyalty and college spirit.
17. You can't do yourself justice without getting and staying in condition.
18. At least three men make every tackle. Gang tackling!!
19. Let no one escape.
20. First rush from scrimmage equals 6 yards.
21. Eleven men in on every play.
22. Use your head: 75 percent of football is above the neck.
23. One increasing purpose.
24. A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits.
25. Keep everlastingly on the job.
26. Be the first to line up.
27. Never stop fighting.
28. No good blocker and tackler was ever left off a football team.
29. Use your eyes, your hands, your legs, and your head.
30. Be aggressive. You can't win the game on your side of the scrimmage line.
31. If the game is going against you, keep your head up, set your jaw and dig in.
This is what tests the stuff you are made of.
32. (Neyland's handwriting faded and illegible.)
33. "Turf" their defense! Get them down!
34. A winning team quickens its play as it nears the goal line.
35. Get the jump on your teammates on the charge.
36. Follow the ball!
37. Play your own position well - first.
38. Line - charge with the ball!

Captain Robert R Neyland,
Knoxville, Tennessee, 1926


The lessons didn't sink in right  away.  In his first game as Tennnessee's head coach, the Vols eked out a win over Carson-Newman.

The Mainstream

Farragut Press:  Bearden at Walker Valley

Farragut at Bearden

Planet of the Zebras

The rules of high school football are
derived from collegiate rules.

NCAA Rules and Interpretations, 2009-2010

Few high school coaches have seen or read a current official high school  football rulebook published by  the NFHS which stands for, um..."Federation"
once I saw a copy of the federation rules in a coaches' office. I picked it up off the floor, noted that it was a couple of years out of date. someone had begun to read it, underlined a few passages , and given up on page fourteen. Little wonder, the presentation leaves a lot to be desired, and the wording appears to have been do of high school football,ne by teachers, no, "educators". I asked my colleague and mentor, a veteran of over a quarter century,of high school football, about his  familiarity with the with the book. "Aw, i never read those things," he said.

Somebody out in Colorado, presumably an affable zeeb, prepared this crib sheet to keep  coaches  from breaking  into the zebra den and taking the  county  association's Authorized Version of the NFHS Rules.
 NCAA/NFHS Football Rules Differences 2009

Remember, children: high school football rules have nothing whatsoever to do with the made-for-TV farce that is the No Fun League. The purpose of the NFL is to sell beer. NFL football can be appreciated, nay, tolerated , only by inebriated individuals. Persons who are too young to buy, sell, transport, serve, or consume alcoholic beverages have no reason to watch NFL football.

More about the zeebs than you ever wanted to know at Football Refs.org:
Rules revisions year-by-year