The Coach

There are good Jerrys:

Jerry Seinfeld

Jerry Rice

Jerry, of Tom and Jerry fame

There are bad Jerrys:

Jerry Springer

Jerry Bruckheimer (Armageddon, anyone?)
Hurricane Jerry, 1985

And then there’s the Jerry:

Jerry Sloan

Jerry Sloan is the best coach in the NBA. Go ahead, argue with me. Try and tell me about Greg Popavich, Phil Jackson, or Pat Riley. Tell me that Sloan has never won a championship or that Sloan won’t play rookies. Tell me that Sloan is too old, that he won’t change, that he’s too stubborn.

Tell me that, and I’ll tell you this:

At the beginning of the 2003-04 basketball season, the Utah Jazz were predicted to be the worst team in NBA history. 72 —that’s how many games one ESPN analyst predicted the Jazz to lose. I didn’t disagree with the prediction; I couldn't. The Jazz had lost John Stockton and Karl Malone that offseason, and there was no reason to expect the Jazz would be competitive. Just take a look at their roster that year:

Any roster with that many white guys had to lose a lot of games, right? Well, Jerry Sloan took this club full of no-name bums (Gordan Girikek, Curtis Borchardt, to name a pair) and recorded a 42-40 record in a Western Conference that boasted such players as Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Novwitzki, and Arvydis Sabonis. In the process the Jazz set the record for most wins by a team that has only 4 black players. The squad that was predicted to be the worst in NBA history missed the playoffs by one, stinking, measly game. Said Jazz general manager Kevin O' Conner of the feat, "For that (Jerry) should have been named coach of the century." Of course, despite 16 straight consecutive playoff appearances (18 overall), 2 conference championships, and 12 seasons with 50 or more wins, Sloan has never been awarded coach of anything.

Do you think Phil Jackson or Greg Papavich could have coached that Jazz team to 42 wins? Not a chance. These so-called "great coaches" of the NBA can't succeed unless they have the greatest players to ever score playing for their teams. Meanwhile, Sloan continues to set the standard for consistency whether his team is made up of Malones or Millsaps.

A couple of years ago, Sloan joined elite coaching company by winning his 1,000th game as a head coach. This season he became the first basektball coach to ever win 1,000 games with the same team. The longest tenured coach in all of pro sports has led the Jazz for 20 years; there have been 222 coaching changes in the league since his hiring.

When great players finish their careers, their number is retired. When Jerry Sloan ends his career, I hope to see his name retired. No more Jerrys should be born into the world, for none can live up to his name.

Collie's New Calling

I feel like I've been whacked in the face with a tree multiple times during these last few weeks. First the Cougars lose to the Utes. Then the Cougs lose to Arizona. Then the Utes go to the BCS. Then the Utes crush their BCS opponenent. Then people think the Utes should be number one. Then former Ute coach Urban Myer wins the National Championship (For the second time). Then this:

Austin Collie, the wide receiver who owns BYU's record books, has decided to leave the team early to enter the NFL. I can't blame him. The stats and records testify of his talent. Greg Wrubell (BYU play-by-play announcer) provides the following numbers on his blog:

"Collie concludes his BYU career as the Cougars' alltime leader in:

Single-season receiving touchdowns: 15 (2008)

Career receiving touchdowns: 30

Single-season receiving yards: 1,538 (2008)

Career receiving yards: 3,255

Single-season receptions: 106 (2008)

Career receptions: 215

Single-season 100-yard receiving games: 11 (2008),

Career 100-yard receiving games: 17

Single-season all-purpose yards: 2,112 (2008)

Collie also owns the MWC record for single-season and career receiving touchdowns, along with single-season and career 100-yard receiving games. Collie finishes second to Curtis Brown in BYU career all-purpose yards, and his 180 career points are the most scored by a BYU receiver. He also tied the NCAA record for consecutive 100-yard receiving games with 11 straight."


Austin Collie is the man. He leaves BYU as the best wide receiver in school history and my favorite BYU player of all time. I will miss seeing number 9 terrorize and enrage opponents. Though his departure adds further pain to my recent suffering, I congratulate him for a career well done.

Monday at its Finest

What do the LDS church, the National Football League, comic strip legend Garfield, and Spencer Hansen have in common?

We all hate Monday.

During my youth I never put much stock in the myth that Monday was a day set on destroying peoples happiness. I always disliked Monday of course, but that was due to the fact that I disliked all days that included school. As I grew older I almost arrived to a point where I felt that Mondays were acceptable.

Until yesterday*.

It was 5:40 in the morning. The phone rang. Nathan Ballard spoke.

"Hey, I can't drive today. Can you pick me up for work?"That was the first bad thing to happen. I hate driving. Especially at 5:40 in the morning. Especially when I have to leave so fast that I don't have time to finish my cereal or brush my teeth (work started at 6:00).Those were the second and third bad things to happen. I hadn't even left the house and Monday had punched me in the face three times. Once at work I was sent to mow the greens. Naturally my mower was on the fritz, so I had to abandon my Jacobsen 5000 for the reserve mower.

Sidenote: There's a reason the Toro Greensmaster 1100 is a reserve mower.

Among other deficiencies, the machine has no brakes. Despite the troubles of the Toro-mobile, I was looking forward to being at one with the early morn, watching the sun rise, paving the checkerboard pattern onto the green. What I wasn't looking forward to were gnats, golfers, and cloudy weather. All three made an appearance on this dreaded Monday. If you believe that waiting 30 minutes for golfers to putt is torturous, try it with 10,000 gnats trying to build a hive in your nose.

Monday followed me to the third hole. Golfers were on the green of course, taking 50 minutes to line up each putt, so I parked the Toro on top of a surrounding hill and began the wait.

Sidenote: Please recall the main deficiency of the Toro.

Once Tiger Woods put the ball in the hole on his fifth putt, I hopped off the mower and requested that the golfers leave the flag out so I could mow over the cup. They responed to my request with the following words."Watch out!!"

I blame Nathan for what happened next. Having watched a couple seasons of Smallville with him during the Summer must have left me with a Superman complex, for as the Toro crashed down the hill towards me, I stuck out my feeble hand in an effort to stop it.

Sidenote: A person's hand cannot stop a 200 pound machine crashing down a dew-laden hill with a 62 degree slope.

Let's recap. I had only been awake for an hour and a half and I had already had my breakfast interupted, didn't get a chance to brush my teeth, had gnats go in my nose, and been ran over by my own mower. Could Monday treat me any worse? Suprisingly, the answer is no. It didn't need to be any worse. My mood had been substantially poisoned. Monday could take the rest of the day off and rest up for next week's appearance.

What can be done to stop the madness which is Monday? There have been various attempts with few successes. The first recorded efforts that show an assault on Monday came from LDS Church President Joseph F. Smith, who in 1915 called for family members to gather and stow away in their homes on Monday nights in order to limit the chance of bad things happening to them. This practice later grew to include making treats and playing games and was named Family Home Evening. In 1964 the NFL decided they could improve monday by dedicating one game a week to be played on the day. Meanwhile, Garfield creator Jim Davis has been including subliminal messages against Monday in his cartoons for years.

Today, the first Monday of 2009, is the worst Monday of the entire year. It represents the return to school, the return to work, the death of the Christmas spirit, and the end of college football. Do not let this Monday take away your happiness. My suggestion to you for this day is to barricade yourself in your house, watch as much football as you can, eat treats, play games, avoid work, and read comics.

Sidenote: Best of luck to you.