[John] McKissick remembers when he started [56 years ago], Summerville had 296 students in the top four grades.

“I was the coach,” McKissick says. “I did football, girls basketball, boys basketball, baseball. I added track. I don’t know how in the world I did it.”

Now, the high school has roughly 3,400 students. McKissick, himself, has 10 coaches on the football staff.

And as the school has grown, so has Summerville. In the early days, he’d drive around town in an old pickup he bought from surplus in Columbia, and stop by the pool hall, poke his head in, to make sure all his boys were home by 9 o’clock.

He’d make them get haircuts if they wanted to play. He still hates long hair, and ear bobs, he really hates ear bobs.

“He calls them ear bobs sometimes because that’s what they called them growing up,” Mrs. McKissick says.

“But all their heroes wear them,” McKissick says. “So we let them wear ’em around the school, just not on the field.”

Adaptation has been his ally. First rule of convention: Choose the practical solution. The best systems require retrofitting.

“He’s been able to adapt better than anyone I’ve ever seen, especially as a coach,” says Billy Long, one of McKissick’s former players and coaches. “The kids have changed, and it’s not just football. It’s everything.”

556 victories and 10 state championships. Whoa. Read it all.

Update: A CBS News report on Coach McKissick is here.

Another update: A USA Today article is there also.

The man is a real hero.

Update: There is more here also.

First, the local high school football team, which some of you may remember started their season with a big loss televised on ESPN, won huge in the playoffs and is headed to the state semifinals. Second, the College of Charleston basketball team overcame a 25 point first half deficit to Temple to win and achieve the biggest comeback in C of C history.

The Bowdoin College field hockey team completed the seventh perfect season in Division III history, capturing the school’s first-ever NCAA Championship with an 4-3 victory over Middlebury on Saturday at Ursinus College.

Wow. Great stuff.

The perjury case against former Giants star Barry Bonds is built on documents seized in a federal raid on a Burlingame steroids lab and positive drug test results indicating that baseball’s all-time home run king used steroids, court records show.

Bonds, perhaps the greatest hitter of his generation, was indicted Thursday on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. He is accused of lying under oath in December 2003 when he told the grand jury that investigated the BALCO steroid ring that he had never used banned drugs.

The 43-year-old free-agent outfielder faces arraignment Dec. 7 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, months of legal proceedings – and a federal prison term of about 30 months if he is convicted at trial, legal experts said.

In the indictment, federal prosecutors said Bonds lied when he denied using a long list of banned drugs, including steroids, testosterone, human growth hormone and “the clear,” the undetectable designer steroid marketed by BALCO.

Bonds also lied when he testified that his longtime personal trainer, Greg Anderson, had never injected him with drugs, the government contended. The trainer, who was imprisoned for contempt of court after he refused to testify against Bonds, was freed Thursday night, hours after Bonds’ indictment was unsealed.

Read it all.

Clueless Barry Bonds and the Juiced Sox Scandal of 2007.

Yeah, it’s that bad.

Not since the fixed World Series of 1919 has baseball been in such a fix, its most accomplished player indicted Thursday for lying about cheating his way to its most glamorous record.

United States of America v. Barry Lamar Bonds.

United States of America v. Its Own Doggone National Pastime.

Yeah, it’s that awful.

Read it all.

Last week we New England Patriots fans learned that Bill Belichick, our team’s wildly successful head coach, cheats. Turns out that in the first game of the season, one of Belichick’s assistants improperly videotaped the defensive coaches of the opposing New York Jets, trying to steal their signs. As punishment, the Pats were stripped of future draft picks and fined, as was Belichick. Across the nation, sports writers wagged their fingers. Editorials called Belichick a disgrace. And us fans? Well, when Belichick’s mug appeared on the video screen just before the Pats’ second game, the hometown crowd cheered so loudly and so long that Belichick actually waved. Some diehards unveiled a banner reading in bill we trust.

I wish I could say I was surprised. In truth, Pats fans already knew that Belichick doesn’t play by Marquis of Queensberry rules. This February former linebacker Ted Johnson alleged that Belichick made him practice even after he suffered a concussion and that today he has brain damage so severe that he can barely get out of bed. But in Boston those earlier revelations–like these new ones–haven’t hurt Belichick’s popularity a bit. And there’s only one thing that could: losing.

That’s the dirty little secret about sports fans. We’re basically amoral. Kant said that acting ethically means treating other people as ends in and of themselves, not merely as means to our own desires. I happened to catch this in the doctor’s office yesterday waiting for an appointment after missing it when it orginally came out. Read it all.

Read it all.

Prayer said, Scripture read, birthday song happily sung, the Rev. Roger Marsh has a message for his team. Stay on track.

“Be kind, courteous and respectful toward each other,” he says. “Keep in mind that we’re out here with a task, and that is to share the Lord.”

The pastor leads a parting prayer. Then it’s off to work, off to the multitudes swarming at Texas Motor Speedway.

Speedway officials estimate this weekend’s racing triple-header, peaking with Sunday’s Dickies 500 race, will draw 400,000 fans to the Tarrant County oval.

And as always, Dr. Marsh and his fellow volunteers of Texas Alliance Raceway Ministries are there to lend a hand, offer support and spread the word.

Read it all.

The Rockies insist that that story was somewhat overblown, and that not every player thumps the Bible behind the clubhouse doors. It’s true that men’s magazines and rap music are just as prevalent in the team’s locker room as around the rest of the big leagues, but Christianity plays a key role in the makeup of the National League pennant winners. (And the Rockies could sure use a miracle now; they enter tonight’s Game 4 of the World Series against the Boston Red Sox trailing 3-0.) “It’s a strong faith group,” says relief pitcher LaTroy Hawkins, who admits he’d rather watch football than go to church on Sunday. “A bunch of the young guys have seen the light, and found their way. They haven’t strayed.”

“The Lord gives you everything you have,” says center fielder Willy Taveras, who counts himself among the faithful, “and makes it possible to play this beautiful game.”

Even though the post-game prayer group at the 50-yard line has become as common as the quarterback sack, and individual players routinely thank the God of their choice for helping with a game-winning hit/basket/touchdown, the Rockies stand out for openly touting Christian values ”” as they define it, strong character and a moral compass ”” as a guiding organizational philosophy off the field. Club president Keli McGregor has gone so far as to say that God is “using [The Rockies] in a powerful way.”

Read it all.

This four-game sweep proceeded with delightful inexorability to its 4-3 conclusion last night. As is to be expected in any World Series, there were bumps along the way as the Colorado Rockies strived valiantly to avoid defeat, but the Red Sox countered every threat to their preeminence. What a difference from the surprise and relief three years ago when the Sox won their first championship of Major League Baseball in 86 years.

Read it all and congratulations to Red Sox fans.

Maybe he was joking, but gregarious Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder confessed today he didn’t know until Tuesday that people spoke English in London.

Read it all.

Earl Warren, former chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, told readers of Sports Illustrated in a 1968 interview: “I always turn to the sports pages first” because they record “people’s accomplishments; the front page nothing but man’s failures.”

How would Chief Justice Warren read newspapers today?

As we know only too well, sports have now migrated to the proverbial front page. And what is uniquely characteristic of the current problem with sports, both professional and amateur, is how widespread it is, casting its shadow over a multitude of different sporting activities at the same time.

The doping in cycling is so rampant that critics are calling for the Tour de France to be shut down for a few years. The National Hockey League shut itself down a few years ago when player greed locked horns with union intransigence. A steroid cloud hangs over an entire era of Major League baseball, while referee gambling haunts the National Basketball Association, and criminal activity plagues the National Football League.

Olympic athletes now perform in what is called “The Chemical Olympics.”

Read it all.

Does a high school football coach endorse religion when he takes a knee or bows his head during his team’s student-led prayer? Does it matter if the coach has a prior history of leading prayers himself or asking ministers to do so?
The bitter national debate over school prayer played out Wednesday in federal appeals court in a case brought by a New Jersey school district that fears a coach is crossing the line.

One of the three 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges hearing the case, Theodore A. McKee, voiced concern for non-believers or non-Christians on the East Brunswick High School football and cheerleading squads.

“Knowing the (coach’s) history, I’m not sure I’d want to say, ‘No, I don’t want to pray,’ ” McKee said.

Read it all.

I don’t want to talk about it.

The Chicago Cubs begin their century-long quest for a World Series title in earnest today in the shadow of one Steve Bartman.

Few fans will forget the earphones, the hat, the sweatshirt, the cursed right arm that reached over the Wrigley wall to deflect a ball away from Moises Alou in Game 6 of the 2003 N.L.C.S.

“This preceded a cascade of plays and misplays that squandered the team’s best chance to reach the World Series since 1945,” writes The Times’s Joe Lapointe, who describes the Cubs as “the most hexed and vexed team in American sports.”

Read it all.

KSH<----lifelong cubs fan. Don't ask. I actually got a card from a fellow seminarian for those grieving the loss of a loved one the day after the Cubs lost to San Diego when the ball went through Bull Durham's legs in game 5 of the 1984 National League Championship Series.

The NFL has fined New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and the team a total of $750,000 for videotaping an opponent’s signals. The team also has been told to forfeit draft choices.

The Pats were caught videotaping the New York Jets’ defensive signals during last Sunday’s 38-14 win at the Meadowlands.

CBS 2 HD has learned Belichick was hit with a $500,000 fine by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The team will have to hand over $250,000.

The Patriots will also have to forfeit at least one draft pick in 2008, but that will depend on how they finish this season. If they make the playoffs, they will lose a first-round pick. If they don’t make the postseason, they will give up their second-and third-round picks.

Belichick will not be suspended.

Read it all.

“We can’t win at home. We can’t win on the road. I just can’t figure where else to play.”

–Orlando Magic Senior Vice President Pat Williams, from the June 2007 Reader’s Digest, page 196

Over time, we’ve gotten used to John McKissick being known as the winningest football coach in the country. Every year we see him out on the practice field, starting yet another high school football season in Summerville.

This, by the way, is his 56th.

Think about that for a moment. Truman was president when McKissick started coaching the Green Wave in 1952. He shook Winston Churchhill’s hand. Studebakers were still big sellers.

With that kind of longevity, nobody is even close to his on-going record of 543 victories. He also has 10 state championships to his credit.

If you live around here, you’ve probably heard all this before. His story has been told and retold here in the Palmetto State. But if there’s a way legends can become commonplace, it’s the way McKissick has always been a low-key kind of guy around the Lowcountry.

Unassuming, pleasant and a pleasure to deal with, the 80-year-old coach simply goes about his business of coaching kids and trying to win football games. He’s been coaching so long that many of his former players are now in their 70s. Most turned out OK. And most give some of the credit to their high school football coach, John McKissick.

Read it all.

For those of you interested in this sort of thing, the local high school football team, ranked 8th nationally by ESPN, is playing Booker T. Washington from Florida, ranked 9th, and the game is televised on ESPN.

Michael Vick is almost surely going to jail and his football career is probably over. All the years he spent as a pampered celebrity in the general vicinity of education did not provide him with the insight that torturing dogs is not good and, besides that, could get him in trouble.

The plea bargain he struck with federal prosecutors in Richmond, Va., yesterday gives no real suggestion that he knows right from wrong. He does know that his former friends turned on him for the prosecutors, and that he is in big trouble, which is a start.

In one significant way, Michael Vick is part of the values of middle America: He is another symptom of America’s major gambling jones.

Up to now, Vick had been scrambling, looking for an opening, the same way he played quarterback ”” past tense, most likely. But yesterday, the play ended. By admitting to charges from the vile operations of the Bad Newz Kennels in rural Virginia, he could go away for up to five years, although he will probably serve only one.

That guilty plea should be quite enough for the N.F.L. to bar him permanently, particularly because of the gambling implications. These people who slipped furtively into the camouflaged farm Vick owned were not there just because they liked to see dogs chew each other to death. They were gambling.

Read it all (Scroll down the page about half way).

Update: Stephon Marbury defended Michael Vick, calling dogfighting a sport.

Michael Vick, the star quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons, has accepted a plea offer from federal prosecutors in a criminal case stemming from a dog-fighting ring that was run from a property Mr. Vick owned.

Mr. Vick will probably face a sentence of at least a year in prison under the deal. His future in the National Football League appears bleak.

Mr. Vick is expected to formally enter his plea on Aug. 27. The United States District Judge overseeing the case, Henry E. Hudson, announced the agreement at a status hearing in the case this afternoon.

Billy Martin, one of Mr. Vick’s defense lawyers, said in a written statement: “After consulting with his family over the weekend, Michael Vick asked that I announce today that he has reached an agreement with federal prosecutors regarding the charges pending against him. Mr. Vick has agreed to enter a plea of guilty to those charges and to accept full responsibility for his actions and the mistakes he has made. Michael wishes to apologize again to everyone who has been hurt by this matter.”

Mr. Vick has been barred by the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, from appearing at the Falcons’ training camp since the league began its own investigation of the matter on July 24, a week after Mr. Vick was indicted in the case.

Read it all.

[Wolf] BLITZER: Do you believe Barry Bonds used steroids?

[Bob] COSTAS: Absolutely. There is no conclusion other than that, that any reasonable person could possibly reach. If you gave him the benefit of every doubt, there is no longer any doubt to give him the benefit of. Absolutely he did.

BLITZER: Here’s a reasonable person who was on our show last week, Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, who said this. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIE BROWN, FMR. SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR: It’s difficult to disprove a lie. I believe he has not used steroids because, one, he says so, and number two, he has taken every possible test and he has passed every test.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: What do you say to Willie Brown?

COSTAS: With all due respect to Willie Brown, who is a charming man, that is nonsensical. People who are guilty of things say they didn’t do it all the time. He has passed every possible test, baseball had no significant tests until 2003. And then they upped it in subsequent years. Most of the juicing that Barry Bonds did, which is specifically incredibly detailed in the book “Game of Shadows,” took place prior to that, as did his greatest seasons.

And he maintained some of the benefit into 2003 and 2004. So the fact that he took and passed tests later in his career, tests which still have holes in them, and there are no tests for HGH, and other possible designer steroids, proves very little.

BLITZER: What about the argument that he has made that, you know, he doesn’t know — he may have inadvertently taken some steroids, but he never deliberately steroids?

COSTAS: Yes. That’s what he told the grand jury. And even if you leave that aside, as has been detailed elsewhere, there were other performance-enhancing drugs that there is credible evidence that he used. Plus, it is incredible to believe that someone who was as meticulous as Barry Bonds is known to be about his workouts and about every aspect of nutrition would just blithely take something, put it under his tongue, rub it on his body, and not know what it was.

Read the whole transcript.

On Sunday, Christian baseball fans will stream into Dodger Stadium for what is becoming more common fare at professional ballparks across the country — “faith day.”

Following the Dodgers vs. Rockies game, fans with special tickets will gather in a corner of the parking lot for a concert by the Christian rock band Hawk Nelson, an appearance by characters from the “Veggie Tales” Christian television program and testimonials by several devout Dodgers. The purpose, according to event organizer Brent High, is to promote the Gospel of Jesus.

High and his Christian events-promotion company, Third Coast Sports, have been organizing faith days and faith nights around minor league baseball for years. They reached the major leagues last season with three events at Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves, and will be in 10 major league cities this season. The event at Dodger Stadium will be the first in L.A.

These events, which blend religion and commerce, are the product of a partnership between High’s company and host teams. Third Coast undertakes energetic outreach to evangelical churches, getting baseball-loving church members (and, more important, their unconverted invitees) to turn out for the game and a special religious program. Believers nourish their faith and perhaps extend it to others, and teams welcome the typical surge in ticket sales and action at the merchandise and food stands. The result, according to High, “is happy teams, happy churches.”

But not everyone is so happy.

Read it all.

Two of Michael Vick’s alleged cohorts in a grisly dogfighting case pleaded guilty today, and one said the Atlanta Falcons quarterback joined them in drowning and hanging dogs that underperformed.

With his NFL career in jeopardy and a superseding indictment in the works to add more charges, Vick and his lawyers have been talking with federal prosecutors about a possible plea agreement.

Now that all three co-defendants have entered plea bargains, Vick is on his own to cut a deal or face trial on federal charges.

Read it all.

The man is a marvel!

For as long as I can remember, I’ve resisted mixing religion and sports. Whether it’s football teams reciting the Lord’s Prayer after a game or chaplains in clerical collars sitting on the bench during basketball games, I watch with a skeptical eye. Do folks really think God has the time or interest to devote to a sports competition? At the small college where I once served as chaplain, I refused to follow tradition and offer a prayer over the public address system before every home football game. Instead, I offer a challenge to the teams and fans to exemplify good sportsmanship.

So those who know me cannot help but smile whenever they hear me referred to as the “football chaplain.”

Read it all.

Scandals are nothing new to organized sports, but this summer they seem to be popping up everywhere.

Rather than watching cyclists pumping up the inclines of the Tour de France, fans have been treated to images of disqualified and departing contestants accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs.

What should be a glorious culmination to Giants slugger Barry Bonds’ pursuit of professional baseball’s all-time home run title has instead become a divisive debate over whether alleged steroid use will forever stain his monumental achievement.

Instead of smugly presiding over “I love this game” promotions, a chastened NBA Commissioner David Stern faced a packed news conference to admit that a league referee had wagered on games he officiated.

Read it all.

NO one should be surprised by the news that federal officials are investigating whether Tim Donaghy, a referee for the National Basketball Association, bet on N.B.A. games and may have used his position to manipulate game scores so that he or his associates could profit from their wagers. David Stern, the commissioner of the N.B.A., characterized Donaghy as “an isolated case,” but this both misrepresents history and misses the point.

Stern may be correct that Donaghy is the only bad apple in the current crop of N.B.A. refs, but sports betting scandals are fairly common. They are the result of persistent economic incentives that can be traced to the structure of sports gambling markets. And these incentives can be changed.

The activity known as “point shaving” gets at the heart of the problem: a corrupt player or official is rarely asked to throw a game to one team or the other. Instead he is asked to influence something rather immaterial, like the winning margin. This is profitable because gamblers typically bet on whether a team will exceed some point differential ”” the “Vegas Spread” ”” rather than whether a certain team will win.

Because basketball can be affected significantly by the actions of a single player, coach or referee, it is extremely susceptible to gambling-related corruption. But we have seen similar scandals in other sports, including football, soccer and cricket. The common thread in each case has been the existence of large-scale betting on immaterial outcomes, like the point spread, or how many combined points the two teams will score, or the winner of a meaningless “dead rubber” in cricket, a game that takes place at the end of a best-of-five series after one team has already won three games. The exception is the Chicago “Black Sox” scandal, when White Sox players threw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

Read it all.