Running at the Mouth

"A Devastating Loss"

Northwestern University head football coach Randy Walker passed away last night of an apparent heart attack.  He was 52 years old.

Coach Walker was a Miami University alumnus, fullback, head coach, and the only man I've ever met with calves bigger than my dad's.  I took Football Theory from Coach Walker and his staff, and the class was not nearly as easy as it sounds.  It was about a lot more than X's and O's; what it was really about was coaching theory and how to relate to athletes, especially high school and college kids.  The thing that sticks out most in my mind is that Coach Walker taught us that the measure of a coach is not wins and losses, but whether s/he leaves the program better than s/he found it. 

I think Walker succeeded in that regard.  At NW, Walker was the first coach to lead the Wildcats to four straight seasons of 6 wins or more since the turn of the 20th century.  They won a share of the Big 10 title and went to three bowl games.  At Miami, Walker won games at a .621 clip, which was the best in school history when he left.

Good thoughts to Coach Walker's wife and children.  May he rest in peace.

UPDATE:  Courtesy of commenter Devilgrad of EDSBS, a nice piece at MiamiHawkTalk.com.  Also don't miss this terrific Coach Walker anecdote from a KSU grad.  The man had onions.

Boulder, Then and Now

In the run-up (ahem) to the Bolder Boulder 10K on Monday, the Denver Post's John Meyer did an excellent piece on the legends who trained in Boulder during the '70s and '80s, what Boulder was like then, and how it is so very different today.  The gist of the piece is that the top runners of yesterday, like Shorter, Plaatjes and Flanagan, all lived together and/or trained together -- much like the Ethiopians and Kenyans do today -- which made them much better than if they would have trained on their own, the way American runners do now.  Peep this quote from Flanagan:

"It was kind of like the perfect storm," Flanagan said. "For one reason or another we wound up collecting in Boulder in '74, '75. We all trained together. We all worked hard and played hard."

Flanagan was just "a good club runner" who never made an Olympic team. But a girlfriend who was a marathoner followed him to Boulder, and their daughter is the current U.S. 5,000-meter champion. Shalane Flanagan, a 2004 Olympian, was born in Boulder in 1981.

"I ran 29:06 for 10K and wasn't even the fastest guy on my street," Flanagan said from his home in Massachusetts, where Shalane spent most of her childhood. "None of us knew how good we were. None of us knew how bad we were. We just all thought, 'If he can make the Olympic team, so can I."'

Notice also, in the historic results of the Bolder Boulder, that Frank Shorter ran just about as fast in 1981 as the last two Kenyan and Ethiopian winners.  I noticed the same thing with the historic results of the Indianapolis Mini Marathon:  Shorter and Rodgers in '77 and '78 ran as fast as this year's Kenyan winner.  If Americans could run those times in the '70s, why can't we now?