Max

Max Coley, whose mother was a full-blooded Cherokee, was a better than average running back in college.  He would not have looked out of place bare chested astride a galloping horse.  Max coached running backs and quarterbacks for Len Casanova at the University of Oregon where he and I became friends.  We investigated after hour establishments from time to time and I grew to appreciate his deep knowledge of the game of football.  One Saturday morning I called Max to suggest we go to a track meet that afternoon and he said no, he didn't think so because he didn't really enjoy sports where people didn't hit each other.

At a scrimmage in 1969 Max was putting in plays for the next game.  Jim Fegoni was the center who would form the huddle and Max would lean in over Fegoni's back and call the plays he wanted run.  Sometimes when Fegoni left the huddle he would take a chop step back and plant his cleated foot right on top of Max's foot.  Ouch.  After the play Max would collar Fegoni and tell him, "DO NOT CHOP STEP OUT OF THE HUDDLE".  Fegoni would do fine and then he would forget and drill Coley again.  The third time it happened Coley limped up and confronted Fegoni. He placed his hands on the kid's shoulders and looked him in the eye saying, "Jim, I think I now know why the Italians lost the war".  Fegoni,  not blinking,  replied,  "How'd the Indians do, Coach?"

Max went on to a long,  successful professional career in the NFL and was Terry Bradshaw's coach at Pittsburg in those great Steeler years.

A football Memory

Senior year. One of our early games after the Grayback pre-season training camp was against Myrtle Point High School on their field, about 70 miles from Grants Pass. We would make the trip in one of our ancient yellow school buses that had all the comfort of a railroad boxcar with benches. Coach Ingram never embraced the idea of football as a fun activity for young scholars to engage in; he saw it as a character building opportunity that required the players to observe a disciplined regimen of physical and mental commitment. And that long bus trip was an opportunity to study your book of plays and concentrate on the game plan.

Yeah, right.  Larry Aschenbrenner is going to sit quietly on a bouncing bus for more than three and a half minutes before sneaking up the aisle and sticking a paper match in somebody's shoe sole and setting it on fire for a "hot foot"? Or maybe tying somebody's shoe laces together? Or instigating plots with others to keep the laughter rolling to the distress of the coaches?

Our high school is three times the size of theirs and the game in a pouring rainstorm is essentially over by the end of the first quarter. With about one or two minutes left in the game Ingram has cleared the bench of back-up players and on the last play of the game our third-string quarterback calls a pass play to show our coaching staff why he should be a starter. His pass connects and the receiver is off for the end zone.  Whoever is running facility control for Myrtle Point figures the game is over and he throws the master switch for lighting. The field plunges into total, deep-in-the-coal-mine darkness. People are shouting as chaos ensues.  In just a few minutes the lights come back on and we see our receiver lying flat out on the grass in the end zone.  He had run full speed into the goal post.

The kid came around without major injuries.  But we never got to kick the extra point.