Methods Have Changed, and Probably for the Better

And then there was the time . . .

Crack open that dusty yearbook and put “Glory Days” on the Hi-Fi. One of the quickest ways to get a football coach misty-eyed about the good old days is to ask him about his high school coach. Now there was a tough old cuss, the kind of guy who knew how to dole out discipline and was allowed to do it.

One complaint many high school coaches have about their jobs today is that they’re not allowed to administer the kind of punishment their coaches did.

Sure, there have been innovations since then, changing the game forever, but more than a few coaches would give their nickel defense to deal with those things that never change--like fumbling--the way their coaches did.

For the most part, the crimes coaches believe require punishment are usually of the misdemeanor variety. There will be one bad-apple-thrower in every bunch, sure, but usually a coach’s wrath is confined to a player fumbling, jumping off-sides or losing concentration during practice.

“When I was playing, if I came home and told my mom the coaches punished me, she’d call the coach to thank him,” said Mike Marrujo, Valencia coach, a graduate of Pius X. “If I tried what my coaches did today, I’d get calls from parents telling me they’re going to sue me.”

Marrujo’s most painful memory of his playing days was of The Swat. If a player was late to practice, or judged not to be trying his hardest he would be told to drop his pants. Then, in front of the entire team, he would be given a swat with a wooden board.

“The worst thing was that it was so humiliating,” Marrujo said. “I never got one. After seeing a few of my friends go through the pain and embarrassment, I made sure I didn’t screw up.”

Then there is the infamous, Bull in the Ring.

Once one of the most common punitive drills, it is nearly extinct. The Ring was made by a number of players. In the middle stood a player who had not performed satisfactorily. A coach would rapidly call out players’ numbers who would then run and hit the player in the middle.

Other disciplinary drills, such as the Burma Road, also have been left by the wayside.

What caused the change in attitude? No one is quite certain.

Parents became less tolerant of having their children abused in the name of football. Also, new and younger coaches brought a new way of thinking.

Fred DiPalma, the 27-year old coach of Santiago who has led the Cavaliers to a 5-0 start this season, says he’d rather talk to a player than punish him.

“I’ll go the extra mile and try to find out what’s really wrong,” DiPalma said. “I think that’s more effective than drills.”

And one must not overlook the effect of the Frank Kush case. Kush, head coach at Arizona State from 1958 to 1980, and a noted disciplinarian, was sued by Kevin Rutledge, a punter for the Sun Devils.

Rutledge sued Kush, the university and other parties for $2.2 million in damages--claiming Kush split his lip with a punch after a 27-yard punt in Arizona State’s 41-7 loss to Washington Oct. 28, 1978 in Seattle.

Kush was found innocent, but the case, along with the changing views of how far a coach can go to get his point across, gave most coaches the impression they better take it easy . . . or else.

“The days when you could really punish a kid are long gone,” said Art Michalik of Los Amigos. “There were so many things you could get away with then that you’d probably be sued for now. . . . It’s not that they were bad things to do to a kid, it’s just that the way people think about football has changed.”

Though it may pale in comparison to what their coaches did, today’s coaches do have their methods.

There are hundreds of yards of sprints in full gear, or Green Bays, a drill that requires a player to slam himself, belly first, on the ground. A combination of wind sprints and body slamming is called the Ute drill.

Edison Coach Bill Workman first saw the Ute watching a University of Utah practice. The drill entails 200 yards of sprints interspersed by belly-slams every five yards.

When Workman first saw the Ute, he said to himself, “Gee, that looks like something people would not want to do. It seems to be working quite well.”

Another popular technique is the dreaded bear crawl, which requires a player, in full gear, to navigate hundreds of yards by running on his hands and feet.

Dick Enright, Capistrano Valley coach, usually has his players do the crawl around a track. Enright was introduced to the bear crawl in 1972 when he was coaching at Oregon. Sam Robertson, an assistant coach, brought it to the Northwest from Alabama, where he played.

“It’s a great drill, it really gets the players attention,” Enright said. “You do 440 yards of bear crawls and you feel like you just climbed Mount Everest. It really hurts, but it’s not dangerous. They just think they’re going to die.”

Enright knows all about pain. He experienced a big swat of it at Gardena High School.

“I liked this beautiful blonde for a long time, but she didn’t even know who I was,” Enright said. “Finally after trying for a long time, she asked me if I wanted to go to the beach. It was the first time she talked to me, I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity.”

Enright went, even though he knew by going he would miss practice and thus incur the standard penalty.

“At Gardena they had a great big paddle to give out swats,” he said. “They split that thing on my butt. But it was well worth it.”

It certainly was. The beautiful blonde eventually became Jean Enright, Dick’s wife of 29 years.