2004 Week 13
December 1, 2004
First off, I'd like to express my regret over the departure from Notre Dame of coach Ty Dillingham.
Coach Dillingham followed in the footsteps of giants such as Bob Davis. Like Coach Davis, Coach Dillingham managed to continue to sell out the seats at Notre Dame, reversing the shameful trend of empty seats in the final two years under Coach Holts. That's the sort of legacy the next Notre Dame coach will be able to build upon.
Ty did face his share of controversy, especially when he chose to play his son Ty Dillingham Jr at quarterback, and later when he replaced Ty Junior with Carl Holiday and, subsequently, Tom Brady's kid brother Quinn.
Earlier this year Coach Dillingham was kind enough to send me a personalized autographed picture. It sits proudly in my den next to my Ted Tollner bobblehead doll.
I'd like to share it with all of you, in tribute to Coach Ty Dillingham and his years with the Fighting Amish.
It was a pretty interesting weekend of football.
For some reason Pitt did not have their traditional Thanksgiving showdown with Penn State. Instead I read in the paper that my Panthers were to take on the Mountain Men of Western Virginia in a backyard brawl.
I tuned in to this backyard brawl, expecting to see Hatfields, McCoys, and lots of frightened sheep. Instead they just played football and Pitt won the game and was awarded the Lambert Trophy because the Pitt linebackers, stunningly, had fewer teeth than the Mountain Men. Heck, they had fewer teeth than Jack Lambert himself!
Another interesting game was the matchup of Rutgers and Yukon, which was played at 10 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning. That's far too early for a bunch of east coasters like the Black Knights of the Exxon. Yukon had a big advantage thanks to their training under the midnight sun. This time of year way up there the sun doesn't shine during the regular day, just at night.
Missouri pulled out the upset over Iowa State, throwing the Big Eight race into a great big mess. Oklahoma has the inside track for the traditional Big Eight Orange Bowel berth, though Colorado might just pull the upset.
The strangest play of the weekend came in the Texas vs. Texas A&M shootout. An Aggie extra point was blocked, then was picked up by Texas A&M, then fumbled into the end zone, where A&M recovered. The referees ruled it a safety for Texas but only gave the Aggies one point.
I thought about this issue that night, then I called my good friend Chris Fowler to ask him why that safety was only worth one point. Chris said "damnit Beeno, it's 2 a.m., put down the bourbon and go to sleep". I don't know why he thought I was drinking bourbon all night, that's not like me at all. Scotch goes down much more smoothly.
The history of the safety is an interesting one. Around the start of the 20th century if a player got tackled in the end zone, they'd just put the ball back there and line up the next scrimmage play. There were no quick whistles in those days either, so teams would shove the ballplayer back as far as possible.
One of the most famous players of that era, Walter Eckersall of the University of Chicago, was a great back. He also was quite a man about town, and had fathered 10 children by about 12 different Chicago ladies. Walter was allergic to leather so wasn't able to wear the pre-latex type of condominiums in use back then. His coaches, his teammates, even his opponents begged him to do something about his habit of leaving women in a family way.
Finally, one day, Chicago lined up against Minnesota. On one play Walter was driven back into the end zone and, with legs parted, was slammed into the goal post.
Strangely enough, after that play, Walter was no longer able to father children. In fact, he left football to become the director of the Vienna Boys' Choir.
Because of the damage from the ramming incident, the rules were changed to allow for faster whistles and to stop the action and award two points when someone was slammed down in the end zone.
In honor of Walter's falling sperm count, his resultant avoidance of subsequent paternity suits, and the fact that he was now "safe" when he did his deed with the ladies, the play was named the "safety".
And now you know the rest of the story.