Life-Changing
Originally published Dec. 7, 2008 in the Vallejo Times-Herald
By Dan Nied
Times-Herald sports writer
Times-Herald sports writer
don’t understand it or don’t take advantage of it. And maybe it’s just one shot. You may just get
one shot, and you don’t know it.”
-- St. Patrick-St. Vincent High football coach Marlon Blanton
He knew selling crack wasn’t part of a happy childhood, but 11-year-old Mike Meekins didn’t really see that he had a choice.
A child of the rough parts of Vallejo, the sixth grade had to wait while family members forced
Meekins into that tough reality on Benicia Road. Ten dollars a rock. Maybe nine, no less than eight. And yeah, he pocketed a few dollars here and there.
It’s not the kind of thing that looks good on a private high school application.
So yes, there were a few twists and turns in Meekins’ transition from adolescent drug dealer to an all-League linebacker for St. Patrick-St. Vincent High School.
In those earlier days, he usually lived with either his mom or his aunt, bouncing from houses to apartments to motels. When she was sober his mother provided a loving base for her son and his five siblings. But then she’d be gone for days at a time, and it would be back to living with his aunt. And though she did her best, his aunt fought her own demons often while mothering a house overflowing with 11 people.
“It wasn’t totally depressing because we all had to pull together as a family and as cousins,” said Meekins’ cousin La’Shawn Collins. “But it was pretty rough.”
There were street fights and two short juvenile hall stints for, among other charges, assaulting a police officer. The situation and a father he never met fueled a budding anger problem.
That was life. But that wasn’t Mike Meekins. Even when he and his brother, Robin, were selling rocks on Benicia Road, Meekins said he pleaded with his aunt to enroll him in school.
“We’d come out and we would smoke weed, or have to go sell something,” Meekins said. “I was just tired of it, wanted to get out of the house. Everyone else was at school. We were the only ones who weren’t at school.”
When he finally got to Vallejo Middle School midway through the year, Meekins passed the sixth grade thanks to a teacher he remembers only as Mr. Samson. The next year he started playing football. Soon his opportunity to escape that life came.
The look in his eyes
Jim Neary remembers the summer of 2002.
The then 12-year-old Meekins wanted to play football. So he came to Neary, then president of Benicia Youth Football and coach of the junior midget team. Neary had just received a Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame grant for participation of underprivileged kids.
“Son, can you pay?” Neary asked.
“I have nothing, coach,” Meekins said.
“I am sure we’ll be able to help you,” Neary told Meekins.
Neary quickly realized there was something different about this kid.
“I saw something special in Michael’s eyes, believe it or not,” Neary said. “Not an athlete, but a sincere look in his eyes. It’s like spiritual if that makes any sense. I’m not trying to go on a religion thing, but it’s like he had the holy... like he had a soul. You know what I mean?”
Neary had to improvise with the fast, but raw, Meekins. He would give Meekins the ball and say,
“Just run toward me.” Then Neary would size up the defense, and strategically pick his spot 20 or 30 yards down the sidelines.
“Honest to God we got four or five touchdowns that way,” Neary said.
Meekins and Neary’s son, Adam, became friends and the coach took an interest in his new player. As the son of an alcoholic father, he knew the perils of addiction and kept an eye on Meekins’ surroundings.
The next summer, Adam suggested Meekins might be in trouble.
Meekins and friend Tony Edmondson were staying with a friend they called “Uncle B” who had been convicted on charges that neither Meekins nor Neary can remember today.
For two weeks Meekins and Edmondson lived alone in Uncle B’s house. The food ran out, the electricity was a few days from being turned off. Somehow the phone still worked.
A phone call from Neary, Meekins answering in a lowered voice, immediately hanging up. A guilt-laden redial back to the Neary house, a few pointed questions, and the admission that yes, there is trouble and Meekins needed help.
It happened so fast. But soon Neary was on his way to rescue Meekins and Edmondson from a dire situation. Each came to the car with their possessions stuffed inside a black garbage bag. Meekins didn’t realize then that his life’s path was about to be drastically altered. His mind was on more immediate goals.
“At that point I was hungry and they had video games,” Meekins said. “That was pretty much it. I wanted to eat that night because we were scrapping.”
The Nearys took him and Edmondson into their home off Columbus Parkway. A few weeks later, Edmondson went to live with his mother. He would go on to Vallejo High, where he just completed his senior season of football.
But Meekins never left the comfort of that house.
‘One day at a time’
Around the same time, Meekins had been arrested for participating in a fight at a middle school dance. As Meekins recalls now, it was “a contest to see who could knock the most people out.” Neary still can’t figure out how it happened. He showed up to Meekins’ court dates, and somehow was allowed to look at the child’s records.
And when Meekins was found guilty, he still ended up going home with Neary that night.
The judge decided to give Meekins another chance, releasing him into Neary’s custody on probation until at least his 18th birthday.
“I put my arm around Michael and said ‘keep walking, don’t turn around. I think what just happened is like a miracle,’ ” Neary said.
His message to Meekins that first night was this: I can give you everything, but if you don’t want help, it won’t matter.
“One day at a time.” That’s the mantra Neary kept repeating. To his wife Iolani, to Adam, to
Meekins, to himself.
One day at a time to instill the values to which Meekins had never been exposed. Meekins responded by doing homework for two hours a night. He managed to curb violent impulses and improve his social skills. In time, he wasn’t just a foster kid adapting to a new place. He was a son to Iolani and Jim. A brother to Adam.
He knew that a minimum 2.0 grade point average was required to stay eligible for football, so that became his goal. And when Neary suggested that Meekins had the ability to play college football one day, that became his goal, too. But one screw up -- a misguided punch in a fit of rage or a positive drug test -- would land Meekins back in juvenile hall, or worse.
Neary had to be frank.
“You get in one fight, you’re done. I don’t know how to tell you not to stick up for yourself,” he told Meekins, “but if you do, you’re going back to where you were, and there’s nothing I can do.”
Five years later, Meekins hasn’t screwed up once.
“I think Michael had desire,” Iolani said. “And I think we as a family have shown Michael different things than what he was exposed to before... We have laid a road for him. That is his terminology, but it was an opportunity and he took to the opportunity.”
A mirror image
Soon, the Nearys had to decide what high school would be best for Meekins and Adam. De La Salle-Concord, with its legendary football program and a history of accepting underprivileged kids, was the first option.
But St. Patrick-St. Vincent High was just down the road. And its football coach shared a very similar background with Meekins.
Actually, Marlon Blanton was one of those kids accepted to De La Salle. Blanton grew up with a drug-addicted mother and bounced around from home to home. He got by on syrup sandwiches and the coldest water in Pittsburg. Why was it so cold? “There was nothing else in the fridge,” Blanton said.
Youth football coach Vic Galli took Blanton under his wing and led him to De La Salle, where Blanton starred as a running back in the early 1990s. That led him to St. Mary’s on a football scholarship and, ultimately, to St. Pat’s.
Though he’ll say that the big difference between the all-boys De La Salle and St. Pat’s is that St. Pat’s has girls, Meekins admits that he had read Blanton’s story in a book about De La Salle’s football team, and was blown away by the similarities.
“When I read that, all I could think is that this was basically a mirror of what I went through and how my life played out,” Meekins said. “There were so many things that were alike. That right there just put the nail in the coffin. A little extra sauce to our spaghetti.”
At St. Pat’s, Meekins found he no longer had anything to prove to people on the streets. He knew he could win a fight. Everyone else did too. The old moniker “Killer Mike,” bestowed on him during a brief time in Richmond, could be laid to rest. But could he really put his past behind him, abide by Blanton’s -- and the school’s -- strict code and properly repay the opportunity the Neary family had given him?
Ultimately, Blanton served as a unique role model for Meekins because their stories were so in sync. Unlike Neary, Blanton had been through Meekins’ saga.
“I feel like there is a sense of understanding because we both kind of went through something similar,” Blanton said. “I can speak about it. He can look at me and I can look at him and he knows I am not BSing him, but I can speak about it because I’ve been through it.”
Meekins uses his coach almost as a litmus test for problems that seem unique only to him. Eventually, Blanton had to cut his birth family out of his life. When Meekins was recently struggling with the same option, he went to the coach.
“Sometimes I feel like I am the only person who has that problem,” Meekins said. “I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I feel like saying ‘F’ it, sometimes I feel like saying ‘F’ them and cutting them completely off. I talk to coach Blanton and I become relaxed, because he got through it so I can get through it.”
Collins, Meekins’ 32-year-old cousin says her relatives are proud that Meekins took advantage of the opportunity to improve his life.
“He was the only one who got the opportunity and the chance to get out of that environment,” she said. “The rest of us weren’t that fortunate. He was the one that was blessed and fortunate to have someone open that door for him and let him in. I am so proud of him. I am honored that he is my cousin because he did overcome his odds.”
Meekins overcame those odds as the focus of a support system designed to keep him from stumbling backward in life. It wasn’t just football, because he could have been the best linebacker or running back in the world, but an injury could end it all. Meekins had to ensure that his grades alone were good enough to get him into college after high school.
“I didn’t want to be another person from Vallejo who was a good athlete but couldn’t get it done in the classroom,” Meekins said.
He had to be the one to set a new course for his family. His two older siblings and cousins, his aunt and mother had already set their own. But to his three younger siblings scattered across the country -- Temagen, 14, Tiffany, 10, and Moses, 9 -- he could be a true role model.
“I knew he wasn’t putting himself first,” Neary said. “I use that as a tool with him. ‘Here’s who you need to impress, here’s who you need to work for. If you are the first one to go to college, they will follow. Somebody has to start doing good in the family, and that’s your job.’ ”
There was always something that Meekins put before himself: A desire to become something more than another tough-luck ghetto kid.
“I think we all have the same innate ability to succeed,” Blanton said. “I just think Mike has taken advantage of that ability to succeed... I think the edge that Mike may have is that he was smart enough to take advantage of the situation he was given.”
A life reversed
Here is Mike Meekins today, a senior at St. Pat’s with a 2.86 cumulative grade point average, a three-year starter for the football team at linebacker and a two-year starter at running back, and the two-time Bay Shore Athletic League defensive player of the year.
He just took an unofficial football visit to the University of San Diego, and is fielding interest from UC Davis and Sacramento State, as well as some out-of-state schools.
On Jan. 10, his 18th birthday, he will eligible to come off probation. In his years with the Nearys, Meekins has come out of his shell to let his sense of humor dominate his interactions. He’s just a happy high school senior awaiting the next stage of his life.
“I knew him as a quiet guy who really kept to himself,” Adam Neary said. “Even when he moved
in with us he was still quiet. But over the past couple of years he has opened up to all of us.When he moved in with us he finally got to be a kid. He finally got to be a high school kid.”
Last week the Neary family sat in their warm, comfortable living room recounting their journey
with Meekins. From “one day at a time” to “Five years later, and here we are.”
“We’re not hiding things just because Michael is Michael Meekins or ‘foster child’ or whatever title. We call him our son,” Iolani Neary said. “We are the blended family. All odds were against us. They said it would never work.”
--30--
Breaking Down Barriers in Mixed Martial Arts
Published July, 2008 in the Vallejo Times-Herald
By Dan Nied
Times-Herald sports writer
Published July, 2008 in the Vallejo Times-Herald
By Dan Nied
Times-Herald sports writer
For a split second, everyone in the training room at Combat Fitness paused to let out a slight gasp at one of those small things that’s not exactly planned.
But Schlosser ignored it, staying in the moment of the drill, keeping her weight on top of Erin Beal without vengeance for Beal’s errant knee.
The setting was almost begging for a knee to the chin, after all at Combat Fitness, a martial arts academy tucked into a corner of the Lakeridge Fitness health club on Sereno Street, the two women drilled in a UFC-style cage, learning the ropes of mixed martial arts.
Since its development in the 1990s, MMA has largely been a man’s sport, solely dominated by testosterone-driven fighters. But recently, the other side has begun to make waves. Just as women infiltrated boxing behind cardio punching classes and the “we can do it, too” vigor of Christy Martin and Laila Ali, they are starting to find traction in the surging world of MMA.
Take, for instance, the sport’s primetime network television debut on CBS on May 31. While street-brawler Kimbo Slice stole the top billing for the Elite XC event, it can be argued that Gina Carano’s undercard TKO of Kaitlin Young was the night’s top performance.
The weekly women’s 1-hour MMA training class at Combat Fitness is evidence of that traction. As the class instructor, and part owner of the academy, Roque Rapacon puts his students through rigorous one-on-one training with the idea of one day fielding a woman’s MMA fight team for tournaments. Rapacon gets up to 10 women per week in the class, most of whom are also regulars in daily kickboxing classes.
“I train them just like the guys,” Rapacon said. “They do pretty much all the workouts that guys do, but on a lower scale. They carry less weight, but they have a desire.”
That desire is apparent after Schlosser takes that knee to the chin and keeps on going, not wanting to waste a second of training time. After class, a sweaty Schlosser explains that contact -- whether accidental or by design -- is no longer a deterrent for her.
“Today I am a lot tougher than I was two years ago,” she said. “I mean, if I got whacked in the face like that I probably would have been a little more traumatized. Now it’s no big deal.”
In the last year, Schlosser, 31, has become serious about working toward competing in MMA fights. But that goal is still far away. Her first fight experience will come at the end of this month in a point sparring tournament that resembles kickboxing more than MMA. Realistically, she said, she is two years away from her first MMA fight.
“We’re building our way up,” she said. “MMA, there’s a lot involved in it. I guess we’re taking baby steps.”
With 5-years training under the Rapacon family (Roque’s father, Chris, has taught Martial Arts in Vallejo for nearly 40 years), the 18-year old Beal is a veteran of point sparring tournaments, but wants to move into the world of MMA tournaments when she is ready.
“It’s like everything I have been training for, but it’s more,” said Beal who, under the Rapacons, has earned her brown belt. “It was just fun. Martial Arts is a lot of standup stuff, then Roque showed us some groundwork and that has a lot to do with MMA, and I just got hooked.” Rapacon, who has trained with Carano and UFC star Chuck Liddell, estimates he has four or five women with fighting potential and hopes to find them opponents in the future.
Women’s combat sports have enjoyed some recent attention in the scattered world of American popular culture. The modelesque Carano, who has a 6-0 record in MMA and plays Crush on the NBC show “American Gladiators” has given women’s MMA a face. And the Oxygen Network reality show “Fight Girls,” which documented 10 Muay Thai fighters (and also featured Carano as a trainer) living and training together, may have altered some preconceived notions of female combatants.
In April, “Fight Girls” contestant Ardra Hernandez made an appearance at Total Combat Fitness and spoke to the women’s MMA class.
“I could see a lot of potential in a few of the girls,” Hernandez said by phone last week. “You can tell when someone has it. They are just a natural at it. There were girls I saw that were naturals.”
Though she has exclusively been a Muay Thai fighter, Hernandez has recently begun training for her entry into MMA, a sport in which, she said, there are barriers that still need to be toppled.
“It’s still kind of sad to say but a lot of people still feel like (MMA) is a man’s sport,” she said.
“It is really brand new but once more women do it, it is just going to go through the roof.”
More amateur cards are starting to form. Rapacon said he has fielded a few offers for female fights. Though the sport is in its infancy, Vallejo could be a fertile breeding ground for the sport.
Many of the top men’s MMA stars came to the sport after amateur wrestling careers. With Hogan and Vallejo High, the city is home to two of the best girls high school wrestling programs in the country. As a graduate of Vallejo High, Rapacon is familiar with the town’s girls wrestling success, and said he believes he could help wrestlers get into MMA.
Recent Hogan High graduate Monica Gonzalez won two wrestling state titles during her high school career. Though she won’t look for a career in MMA after her wrestling days are done, she does see the sport as one more chance for women to prove equality.
“It is an amazing opportunity for women to be in MMA or wrestling or any contact sport that is basically known for only men,” Gonzalez said. “It will help the men see what women are capable of and that women are capable of doing the same as men.”
Beal, who is home-schooled and close to graduation, said she thought about wrestling, but decided against it.
“I couldn’t hold back my punches,” she said. “One of my best friends wrestled at Hogan and she always wanted me to get into it, but I don’t think I could hold back everything we could do here.”
When the Rapacons opened Total Combat Fitness in March, they marketed to women as well as men. They asked Katrina Barajas -- a 34-year old mother of 4 who has her eyes on competing in MMA and whose husband, Joe, is a member of the Combat Fitness men’s fight team -- to pose for a promotional card. Next to a photo of Barajas in a fight stance, are the attention-grabbing words “Hey Tough Girl!” printed in pink. The card follows with a list of classes the academy offers for women, including the MMA class.
The girls who frequent the MMA class participate in an hour of unabashed intensity, wrestling against the cage’s chain-links and taking out a week’s worth of frustration on life-sized dummies. It’s the ultimate self-defense class that, for innocent male bystanders, can provide a twinge of intimidation.
“I would say (MMA is for) any woman that’s not afraid of stepping into a men’s sport,” Barajas said. “Seriously, you are using everything when you step in there. It’s not just kick boxing, it’s not just boxing, it’s groundwork and stand up work. You are using everything. You have to be strong-minded to do it and you are using every part of your body.”
The ceiling for female MMA fighters is yet to be determined, though the sport’s participants insist that it has the potential for big success. That doesn’t mean that the obstacles are the same as in other sports, like boxing or wrestling. The old-fashioned argument of whether women are tough enough to handle a rough-and-tumble sport has gone the way of the Pet Rock.
“Girls aren’t afraid to get in there and get scrappy too,” Schlosser said. “So why take that from them? If that’s something they want to do, who cares if they are male or female?”
Women’s MMA is still growing out of a grassroots effort taking cues from the men’s side.
“The more women that get out there and the more popular it becomes,” Hernandez said, “The easier it is for women, like it is for men now.”
With so much left to be determined on the popularity of the sport, the women at Combat Fitness will just focus on their fight training. The accidental knees to the chin are just fine, and the bruises and cuts serve as badges of pride.
They’re women who aren’t afraid to step into a men’s sport. Maybe one day, they’ll make it a sport all their own.
--30--
Two Losses, Too Many
Originally published at CoachesAid.com on Sept. 2, 2010
By Dan Nied
CoachesAid.com California Content Coordinator
By Dan Nied
CoachesAid.com California Content Coordinator
CONCORD -- Two losses don’t work when perfection is expected.
And perfection is expected, at least for those on the outside looking in at the Concord De La Salle football program.
Maybe Bob Ladouceur has said it a million times, that coaching his team is ultimately about instilling discipline and molding young men. That a year-round commitment to the program, and a strong bond with teammates is a recipe for success.
But that results in winning. And the Spartans have won enough for people to be shocked when they lose even one game.
For a team that produced a 151-game winning streak and has become nationally recognized as
the standard of excellence in high school football, a 12-2 record is a disappointment. Those two losses in 2008 came in a mega-matchup against New Jersey powerhouse Don Boscco Prep and in the CIF Division I state title game against Corona Centennial. De La Salle also survived non-conference scares against San Mateo Junipero Serra and Los Angeles Loyola. Certainly nothing to be ashamed of, but not quite the Spartan way.
“I just felt that as a team last year we just underachieved,” said defensive coordinator Terry Eidson. “I think that’s the most disappointing thing. I don’t think its about record. I think its about getting the most out of your ability... We really should have been 0-3. We really lucked into two wins to go 2-1. We should have lost to Serra and we should have lost to Loyola.”
But that was last year. Let’s set the scene for 2009: The Spartans are hungry to get back to their standard. And though they are unsettled at quarterback and receiver, they are potentially dominant across both lines, led by senior Tom Hickel and junior Dylan Wynn.
They open against Serra – helmed by former De La Salle player and coach Patrick Walsh – once again, and Friday’s 7:30 p.m. showdown in Concord pits Coaches Aid’s No. 1 teams in the North Coast and Central Coast sections.
Then the Spartans, ranked No. 14 in USA Today’s national Top-25, travel to New Jersey for the rematch with Bosco before hosting Florida power Lakeland. Then comes the brutal East Bay Athletic League slate, featuring Danville Monte Vista, San Ramon California and Pleasanton Foothill.
And two losses aren’t in the plans.
“No two losses, no loss in state, no loss in big games,” said senior running back Terron Ward, the top returning skill player. “That’s not De La Salle tradition to lose in big games.”
“Tradition” is a word tossed around among top programs. But perhaps at De La Salle it means a little more. A winning streak that spanned 12 seasons, more than doubling the previous national football record, and five mythical national championships tend to lend weight to a phrase. But Ladouceur says he faces a challenge to make current players understand that wins don’t come to De La Salle by birthright.
“I don’t think they understand, you know, how hard the kids before them played,” the coach said. “Even the kids from those national championship teams, and even from the guys that went on to the NFL, I don’t think they understand how hard those guys worked. So if anything, it’s a complacency that we have to fight thinking that winning here is a right of passage. And it’s not. All those great teams we had were hard, hard working teams. Tough kids. (Current players) don’t know because they never saw them and never competed against them.”
But those past teams do create current expectations. Though the winning streak ended in the 2004 opener, the Spartans have never stepped off the national pedestal. They routinely play nationally ranked teams, and they’ve played in the Division I state title game in each of the three years since the game was installed by the CIF, sandwiching a 2007 win around two losses.
The state title game creates a tangible goal. After all, a high school national title is purely mythical, and with the Spartans’ national schedule, it’s more difficult to count on an undefeated season. But as the 2009 season draws near, Ladouceur isn’t thinking about the state championship. He’s got more pressing issues on his mind.
“Right now, I just want some of these guys winning spots on our team, playing to a standard we want,” he said before the Spartans’ scrimmage last week. “Because right now we don’t look like a state championship team or contender yet. We’re just not there.”
Whether they will reach that level relies largely on how a new quarterback plays, and whether Ward can stay healthy after a junior year that saw him miss time with injuries.
So far, Ward believes this team is well ahead of last year’s.
“I think it’s been a better tempo than last year,” he said. “Last year by this time we were really down. I think we’re more ready for the season. We’re not taking those first four games to get ready. We already set the tempo the first week of pads that our season isn’t going to be like last year.”
Maybe the main goal for the 2009 season is to get back to that Spartan way: The commitment and camaraderie and program-wide discipline that gets the most out of players each week. It’s not that the mindset ever left the program, but there seems to be a suggestion that there is room for improvement.
“We want to send a message out to everyone that this is the old De La Salle and we’re bringing back the tradition,” Ward said.
“No more losses.”
--30--
‘Aints’ No More
Originally published Feb. 5, 2010 in the Marin Independent-Journal
By Dan Nied
Special to the Marin Independent-Journal
Originally published Feb. 5, 2010 in the Marin Independent-Journal
By Dan Nied
Special to the Marin Independent-Journal
Jim Kovach remembers the first brown paper bag in the stands.
It was the fifth game of the 1980 NFL season. The New Orleans Saints were 0-4. Kovach, a second-year inside linebacker for that Saints squad, was warming up before a game against the St. Louis Cardinals at the Superdome.
"Basically I'm on the sideline and I look over and see a person with a bag on their head," Kovach said this week. "I say, 'What is that person doing with a bag on their head?'"
Kovach may not have known it then, but he had walked right into the infamous 'Aints years in New Orleans. The Saints would lose that game 40-7 and finish the season with a 1-15 record and the stigma of one of the worst teams in league history.
So imagine how Kovach feels now, 29 seasons later, as the Saints prepare for Sunday's Super Bowl XLIV against the Indianapolis Colts.
Sitting at a table in his office at the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato on Wednesday, Kovach (now 53) offered his support for his former team after they reached the point few thought would ever be possible for a franchise synonymous with losing.
"To this day, people know the 'Aints," said Kovach, a Greenbrae resident. "To be able to put the final nail in the coffin and move on, boy, that's very motivating for me. So hopefully the Saints will not only win, but win handily."
It isn't that Kovach is a die-hard Saints supporter, or really even much of a fan at all. But from 1979 to 1985, he was at the center of what seemed like a hopeless cause.
In his six full seasons in New Orleans, the Saints had a 32-57 record. As a starter for most of that time, he knows how deeply the losing affected the city where he met and married his wife, Nora, in 1984 and had strangers offer to pay for his meals in restaurants. Now he feels a profound happiness for the fans and Saints staffers that have been waiting for this moment for the 25 years since he left town.
"There is a joy of life in New Orleans, an attitude that is just appreciation of living," Kovach said. "It manifests itself through diets and partying habits that definitely are real and are part of its charm and allure. The people who live there, it's not like a vacation destination. That's how they are all the time. They just enjoy the emotions and visceral living. That's why they are so passionate about the Saints. Football is black and white, it's an environment where you just lay everything out there. That's how New Orleans is. That's the reason they have that passion for the Saints."
No, that romanticizing isn't quite the standard, unemotional answer you might find from today's athletes. But in so many ways, Kovach isn't like modern-day athletes. Then again, he stood out in his time, as well.
Kovach began medical school while playing football at the University of Kentucky, and he graduated while still with the Saints, earning the nickname Doc from teammates and fans. When his career ended after half a year with the 49ers in 1985, he went to Stanford Law School before settling in as the president and chief operating officer of the Buck Institute.
"There are a lot of (people) that have played in the NFL and gone on to be medical doctors. And there are a lot that have gone on to be lawyers. But I don't know if any other than him have gone on to do both," said John Paul Young, Kovach's former linebacker coach with the Saints.
Young, a longtime NFL and college coach, calls Kovach the smartest field general he's ever coached. Young was devastated when the Saints tried to sneak Kovach through the waiver wire on a Saturday afternoon in 1985 (back then, Young says, teams didn't check the wire on Saturdays) only to have the 49ers make a claim on him.
"It was one of the most heartbreaking experiences in my career," Young said.
Then again, there was a lot of heartbreak going around in New Orleans in the 1980s.
But now the tables have turned. Still, if the Saints don't beat the Colts for their first NFL title on Sunday, Kovach may indirectly be at fault.
Before Peyton Manning was the Colts' all-Pro quarterback, he was a little kid who showed up with his dad Archie -- the famed Saints quarterback -- for the team's family day. Kovach saw the youngster throwing the ball with a sidearm motion, just like his dad.
"I remember going over to Peyton and saying, 'Peyton, look, you don't want to get in that habit like your dad. I want you, forevermore, to throw it more upright,'" Kovach said.
"And he threw it like that and he said 'Gosh, thanks Doc, I'll always do that.' So really, I was the guy who instilled that in him."
That last part was told with a laugh, but the story itself serves as a bright illustration to how intertwined Kovach is with this Super Bowl.
Even with his protege starring for the Colts, Kovach foresees a fitting ending for his old team on Sunday.
"I think the Saints will win by a touchdown," he said. "They'll come back and win on the final drive."
And then perhaps the brown paper bags will be put away forever.
--30--
Raiders Get What They Ask For
Originally published in the Vallejo Times-Herald on April 26, 2009
By Dan Nied
By Dan Nied
Times-Herald sports writer
ALAMEDA -- “This is the guy we wanted the whole time.”
With a straight face, Raiders coach Tom Cable said those words Saturday. Deadly serious, with even a hint of old-fashioned Raiders defiance, Cable didnʼt defend the seventh-overall selection of Maryland receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey as much as he made it seem like one of the greatest moments in Raiders history.
The guy they wanted the whole time. Lucky for them, no one else wanted him. Not in the top 10. Not with higher-rated receivers Michael Crabtree and Jeremy Maclin still on the board. Not when most mock drafts had Heyward-Bey falling to the second round.
But Cable didnʼt stop there in his praise of the pick. Not only was Heyward-Bey the guy they wanted the whole time, but he immediately makes every offensive player better and the Raiders thought they may have to trade up to get him.
Cable could have easily pulled a sly smile on the media and uttered a slick “April Fools” to nobodyʼs surprise. Instead, the coach compared Heyward-Bey to the most notorious ex-Raider of all.
“Well, we talk with scouts and everything, and they bring up the name Randy Moss,” Cable said. “And obviously when you look at the great receivers that have been Oakland Raiders, itʼs always been about that vertical speed. Being able to stretch the field, take the top off the defense and this certainly does that for us.”
This isnʼt an April Fools joke. The Raiders got their man.
It was starting to look as if things had settled down in Oakland. The Lane Kiffin controversy had subsided and the Raiders spent their last two first-round picks on Darren McFadden and JaMarcus Russell. Finally there seemed to be a clear logic to a lengthy rebuilding process. But with one pick Saturday, the team reverted back to its head-scratching ways.
With Crabtree or Maclin sitting there, waiting to team with McFadden and Russell to create a potentially deadly trio, the Raiders grabbed a receiver with a reputation for shaky hands and a mere 13 collegiate touchdown receptions and no 1,000-yard receiving years.
Even Heyward-Bey couldnʼt really give a specific reason why he was chosen over Crabtree and Maclin. His best guess: Maybe it was the pro style offense he played in at Maryland.
“I donʼt know why I moved ahead of those guys,” he said in a conference call with Bay Area media after the pick. “But definitely the Raiders saw something in me.”
But the reason is obvious. Old habits die hard, and the Raiders are still addicted to speed. Cable intimated that they didnʼt hold a private workout for Heyward-Bey, but the Raiders became enamored with his 4.3 speed in the 40-yard dash at the NFL combine.
They envision Heyward-Bey settling in underneath Russell bombs that no one else in the league can catch up with, and using his 6-foot, 2-inch frame to pull down balls in crowds.
“This is a guy that I had targeted a month ago” Cable said. “Heʼs the one guy who made everyone better around him... We needed the ability to throw the ball over peopleʼs heads, and JaMarcus has obviously shown that he can out-throw most everything. And this is a guy now that can go run that down and catch it.”
But Heyward-Bey comes to Oakland with a stigma already attached. The Raiders chose him over Crabtree, the consensus top receiver in the draft. And Crabtree, of course, fell to the 49ers at No. 10, giving Raiders fans a real-time comparison of what they wanted and what they got.
Cable insisted that the Raiders werenʼt deterred by Heyward-Beyʼs paltry collegiate numbers, that if he had been in a spread offense like Crabtree or Maclin, he might have scored 50 touchdowns in his career.
Thatʼs not a lot of consolation for Raiders fans, though, who bought into the idea that Crabtree was a sure thing while Heyward-Bey was a risky gamble.
But for Cable, this is the new Randy Moss. Hopefully he was talking about Mossʼ stints with the Vikings and Patriots rather than his two-year debacle in Oakland. But with the Raiders, you never know.
Heyward-Bey didnʼt shy away from comparisons to elite receivers, even comparing his work ethic to Jerry Rice.
“My favorite player is Jerry Rice and he played for the Oakland Raiders later in his career,” he said. “His work ethic was beyond anybody else. Thatʼs who I try to model myself after when it comes to work ethic.”
As for the Moss comparison? He didnʼt back down from that either.
“I take that with honor,” he said. “Randy Moss (may be) the most talented wide receiver to ever play the game talent-wise. To be compared to him is great, but I have to go in there and have to prove myself and make a name for myself, and thatʼs Darrius Heyward-Bey.”
Darrius Heyward-Bey is not Michael Crabtree, not Jerry Rice, not Randy Moss. But he is, to the ire of fans and the delight of Cable, the guy the Raiders wanted the whole time.
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