Once You’ve Been to the Summitt, It’s All Downhill

Pat Summitt, who proved testicles were not necessary to browbeat athletes into winning, has died of Alzheimer’s-related complications at the age of 64. When Summitt started her coaching career with the 1974-75 season, women’s college basketball was not yet an NCAA-sanctioned sport, with the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women serving as the governing body. She earned $250 a month, drove the team van and had to wash the team’s uniforms, which had been bought with the proceeds of a donut sale the previous year. After her second season at Tennessee, Summitt was co-captain on the women’s silver-medal winning Olympic team. She won gold as head coach in 1984, becoming the first to earn medals as both player and coach. Summitt took Tennessee to the Final Four of the first women’s NCAA Tournament in 1982, and reached at least the Sweet Sixteen every year thereafter until 2008-09. All told, she won 8 NCAA titles, the record at the time of her retirement, and is one of only 4 coaches to win more than 1,000 games, finishing with an all-gender record 1,098, never posting a losing record in 38 seasons as head coach. She won 7 NCAA Coach of the Year awards, and was named the Naismith Coach of the Century in 2000. She was so successful, that the University of Tennessee twice asked her to take over the men’s team. Of greatest satisfaction to Summitt, every player who completed her eligibility at Tennessee during her tenure graduated with a degree or is in the process of doing so.

4-Deep-6 Defense

Buddy Ryan, the head coach with the temperament most well suited to his home city in NFL history, has died at the age of 85. Ryan coached the New York Jets defensive line in Super Bowl III and the Minnesota Vikings’ Purple People Eaters. He was then named defensive coordinator of the Chicago Bears where he developed the 46 defense that carried the Bears to victory in Super Bowl XX. Much to Mike Ditka’s chagrin, the Bears then carried Ryan out on their shoulders after pasting the New England Patriots. From there it was on to Philadelphia, where in his second season, during the 1987 strike, Ryan sided with his players and refused to be involved in selecting or coaching the replacement players. The overmatched scab squad endured 3 embarrassing defeats, including a game against the hated Dallas Cowboys where Ryan felt Tom Landry had run up the score. In the first game after the strike, also against the Cowboys, with the Eagles up 30-20, Ryan had Randall Cunningham fake taking a knee, then fire a long TD pass in the closing moments. Funny quotes and hating the Cowboys would only go so far, and in Ryan’s 3rd season, he led the Eagles to the NFC East title for their 1st playoff appearance in 7 years. The Divisional Playoff game was against Chicago and Ryan’s old nemesis Ditka, so the day before the game, he had the team buses circle Soldier Field as a victory lap. The lap was premature as a heavy fog settled over the game, limiting vision to 15 yards and negating Cunningham, the Eagles’ lone offensive weapon, as the Eagles lost 20-12. Two more 1st round playoff exits followed, and Ryan was fired. His next job was defensive coordinator for the Houston Oilers, whose Run and Shoot offense Ryan had previously derided as Chuck and Duck. In the last game of the season, offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride continued calling passing plays rather than running out the clock. When an ill-advised pass attempt led to a fumble that put his beleaguered defense back on the field, the 62-year-old coach tried to punch Gilbride in the jaw before they were separated. 

Where’s Waldo?

(An epitaphany shared with Monty)

Janet Waldo, best remembered as Mrs. Slaghoople from The Flintstones, has died at the age of 96. Impressive enough in student theater at the University of Washington to get noticed by Bing Crosby, Waldo had roles in several nondescript movies and TV shows as well as an 8-year run starring in the radio program Meet Corliss Archer. That radio experience laid the groundwork for the unseen, but oft-heard majority of her career – long-time roles as Granny Sweet in The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show; Josie, of and the Pussycats fame; and Penelope Pitstop in The Perils of same and Wacky Races. And of course, most notably, Waldo voiced Judy Jetson from 1962 up to, but not including, the terrible 1990 feature film, and was the last surviving original cast member. Waldo had actually completed her work on the 1990 release when bosses at Universal decided to have fading pop star Tiffany re-record the lines. The decision led the casting director to have her name removed from the credits, the voice director to tell Tiffany to sound more like Waldo and critics to add Tiffany’s acting to the long list of problems with the movie. 

Dead Wing

Or

Gordie Not

Or

And Howe

(Kudos to Monty)

Or

Brass Bone-anza 

(Props to Don)

Gordie Howe, who was a better hockey player at 52 than 99% of the players who’ve ever laced them up in the NHL, has died at the age of 88, delaying his next comeback. The only athlete whose nickname unironically encompassed an entire sport (though as Don observed, now that his Wings are broken, he may be better known as Mister Mister Hockey), Howe was the best all-around player in NHL history. He set records for seasons, goals, points, assists and for records set en route to 20 straight Top 5 scoring seasons, 4 Stanley Cup championships, 23 All-Star Games, and 6 Hart trophies as league MVP. After a brief retirement and his induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame, he spent 6 seasons with his sons Marty and Mark with the World Hockey Association’s Houston Aeros and New England Whalers, winning 2 Avco Cups and notching 2 100-point seasons in his mid-40s. After the WHA-NHL merger, he played one more season with the Whalers, notching 41 more points at the age of 52, then skated 1 short shift with the IHL’s Detroit Vipers at the age of 69 in 1997 to record his 6th decade of professional hockey. When not lighting the lamp, Howe was probably hitting someone, as unlike other stars, he had no issues with the physical aspects of the game, earning 1685 minutes in box, where he presumably did not feel shame. Howe was further immortalized as the namesake of the Gordie Howe hat trick – a goal, an assist and a fight in the same game – despite only doing it twice himself as he didn’t find a lot of takers for fisticuff action. Despite his status as one of the game’s all-time greats, the Red Wings took advantage of his trusting nature and paid him relative peanuts – after a career high 103-point season, he found he was the third-highest paid player on the team. When this became known, his linemate Ted Lindsay started the campaign that eventually led to the NHL Players’ Association. 

Float Like a Blow Fly, Stink Like a Manatee

Or

Prostrate in the Copper State

Former Cherry Hill, NJ resident Muhammad Ali, who liked to punch people in the face, but was too good to shoot them, has failed to awaken from the Coma in Arizona and died of severe sepsis at the age of 74, leaving Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the only acceptable Muslim remaining in the United States. Cassius Clay won the 1960 Olympic gold medal as a light heavyweight, then knocked off Sonny Liston in 1964 to become the world heavyweight champion (back in the days when there was only one) at the age of 22. Then things got interesting. Renouncing his “slave name,” he rechristened himself Muhammad Ali and stopped being one of the good ones. He asserted his conscientious observer status and refused to accept being inducted into the US Army during the Vietnam War, asserting that he had no particular beef with the Viet Cong. He was stripped of his boxing license and heavyweight title and convicted after 21 minutes of deliberation. Although the conviction was overturned, he lost more than 3 years at the peak of his career, and was expected to fade into obscurity. The Poet Laureate of the Squared Circle had other plans, quickly re-emerging as a heavyweight title contender, belittling the surly, unapproachable champion Joe Frazier at every opportunity with his trained pit bull Howard Cosell at his side. Frazier responded by handing Ali his first career loss in the Fight of the Century. Ali won the rematch, setting up the Rumble in the Jungle against new champ George Foreman, where he employed his Rope-a-Dope strategy to tire Foreman out and score the knockout to reclaim the heavyweight title. Ali fought a few tomato cans and inspired Rocky by letting The Bayonne Bleeder, Chuck Wepner, knock him down/trip him. Frazier and Ali met for a final time in the Thrilla in Manila, one of the greatest fights ever, where the two men bludgeoned each other for hours in sweltering heat with Ali scoring a TKO, but calling it “the closest thing to dying that I know.” Ali lost the title, regained the title and generally hung on far too long in a series of increasingly embarrassing fights before retiring in 1981. Parkinson’s disease, diagnosed in 1984, gradually debilitated him, replacing grace with shakes and his wit with mumbles, setting up his poignantly silent, trembling torch lighting at the 1996 Olympics.