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Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Morris starred in Tech’s Golden Age
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
It was years ago, but I can still see that play. It just pops into my head now and then, the linebacker turning the corner, reaching up with one meaty hand, snatching the ball put of the air without breaking stride. I couldn’t remember if George Morris scored on the interception or not, but Bobby Dodd later assured me he did. Don’t even remember the opponent, but I’ll never forget the play.
It was during the golden age of the Dodd years, and the best of his seasons at Georgia Tech. Twelve-and-oh, victory in the Sugar Bowl, and a share of the national championship (with Michigan State). Six members of that 1952 team were All-Americans, Morris, Buck Martin, Leon Hardeman, Hal Miller and Pete Brown on offense, Bobby Moorhead on defense. Buck, Pete and Bobby are gone, and now George goes to join them.
Some years ago, when Dodd was included in a lineup of coaches chosen to name the greatest athlete they ever coached for a national magazine series, he settled on a player who had played only one season for him. Clint Castleberry, a freshman of such skill that he was credited with a startling upset of Notre Dame in South Bend. Dodd was still an assistant to Bill Alexander that season. Castleberry later disappeared in a World War II bomber he was piloting, and there could be no faulting Dodd’s choice.
“Besides,” he said, “there were too many great players on the ‘52 team and I just couldn’t choose between them.”
Later, though, privately he confessed. In his heart of hearts, the chosen one would have been George Morris. No muscle-head, George. He was more than a hulking linebacker; he was an Academic All-American his senior year. He could think, sniff out opposing strategy and react. And, no, “hulking” is not a fitting word, but it will have to do for the time. It was a rare kind of football in that era, and George was a trim example. He never carried more than 215 pounds on his lithe body when the game was on.
Georgia Tech was on an unbeaten streak that ran on for 31 games, into the following season, by which time Morris and Ray Beck, among other Yellow Jackets, were on their way to the Korean War, where they also played a little “scrap-iron” football. Back from the Pacific Rim, George reported to the San Francisco 49ers, who had drafted him. They wasted him as a snapping center, and after the season he came home and found a new line of business with a soft drink company.
He returned to football as an official, 30 years in the Southeastern Conference. “Bobby Dodd had him three years, I had him 30,” said Jimmy Harper, head of the crew on which they worked together many a season. “He never was a student of the rule book, but he was a fine official. He’d throw a flag and say to me, ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s wrong,’ and he was always right.”
Seldom was there ever a dull moment around George Morris. He still carried himself like an athlete, dealt in typical male humor, and the pride of his latter years came in serving as president of the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Foundation, which, by the way, holds its annual selection meeting this very day. George won’t be able to make it. Talking on a cellphone from his pickup Monday with his friend, Jim Terry, another Dodd Foundation official, the conversation suddenly ceased. The light went out on his life.
He was 76, looked, talked and seemed, to those of us who had known him since his days with Dodd, as healthy as a horse. The old ticker just quit on him, only time, to my mind, there was ever any quit in George Morris. Now he goes to rest in the land of his upbringing in Vicksburg, Miss.
Permalink | Comments (21) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC
Blank should go get Cowher
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Arthur Blank seemed in an awfully good mood for someone who’d spent Monday night talking about his imprisoned quarterback and watching his team lose its 10th game. He was kidding the AJC’s Steve Wyche about the writer’s shirt-and-tie ensemble — “It’s beginning to grow on me,” Blank said — and he’d just seen the guy he’d identified as his team’s “CEO” hold an angered and aborted media briefing. And then the rich man walked with his wife and his security chief toward the Georgia Dome’s exit, surely believing the worst had passed.
Eighteen hours later, the CEO cut and ran.
Eighteen hours later, the worst got worse.
The franchise quarterback is in prison. The coach/CEO is bound for Arkansas. Once again, the rich man has been caught unawares by the true nature of one of his employees. Once again, the long-suffering Falcons are left to wonder if anything will ever go their way again.
What makes coach Bobby Petrino’s exit even more galling is that Blank had come to trust him. If the owner ever referred to Jim Mora as the “CEO,” I missed it. Indeed, Blank in conversation almost always paired Mora with Rich McKay, and speaking with writers before Monday’s game Blank mentioned the GM only when asked about the details of Vick’s contract. In Blank’s eyes, Petrino had become the man with vision, the man with the plan. (I should confess that I also held Petrino in high esteem and am stunned that he took a hike.)
The CEO takes a salary cut to become a Hog. What does that tell us about the state of the Falcons?
It might be funny if it weren’t so sad. Say what you will about Blank, but he has poured body and soul into this franchise, and today he looks like just another rich guy with more money than sense. I wouldn’t blame him if he sold the team to the lowest bidder — would the last man in Flowery Branch turn out the lights? — but I believe he’s in it for the long haul. Alas, the haul keeps getting longer.
For the second time in 11-1/2 months, the Falcons need a coach. At this late date, they should try anything and everything. They could round up the usual suspects, Steve Mariucci chief among them. Or they could try to lure Jimmy Johnson away from Fox. Or they could pursue Rick Neuheisel, the wild card in Georgia Tech’s search. Or they could do what makes the most sense: They could hire Bill Cowher.
Question is, would Cowher, having worked for one of the best organizations in Pittsburgh, want anything to do with the franchise now seen as the absolute worst? That’s where Blank would have to be brave. He’d have to spend big, sure, but he’d also have to be willing to let his coach become the focal point. He seemed to be moving toward that with Petrino, who didn’t stick around long enough for anything to take hold.
The Falcons are no longer Vick’s team and they never quite were Petrino’s, and the Blank Method — coddling and cajoling and empowering — has stopped working. No, the owner didn’t make Vick develop a thirst for dogfights or make Petrino turn tail, but it’s the owner who must clean up after them. Blank spoke Monday of the need to move forward, and 18 hours later his coach moved out.
The next coach needs to be made of stronger stuff. The next coach needs to be tough enough to ride out the losses and bend the organization to his will. The next coach needs to come equipped with an ego and a persona as outsized as the owner’s. Half-measures won’t rescue a franchise that has become a full-blown mess.
Petrino was a bold choice that didn’t work out. Having hit what surely must be bottom, there’s no cause to get timid now. Go bigger. Get bolder. Get Bill Cowher.
Permalink | Comments (196) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Petrino was never up to the job
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
He lost his quarterback. But Bobby Petrino didn’t quit because he lost Michael Vick.
He lost players to knee injuries, ankle injuries — injuries because the JetSki went one way and his defensive tackle’s leg went the other. But Bobby Petrino didn’t quit because the Falcons’ roster was decimated.
Bobby Petrino quit because being an NFL coach isn’t just about Xs and Os. It’s about all of those things Petrino didn’t want to handle and clearly wasn’t equipped to handle. Salary cap issues. Players egos. The most basic form of communication.
Bobby Petrino quit because he couldn’t handle almost anything.
Michael Vick lied to Arthur Blank. Bobby Petrino lied to Arthur Blank. The second guy didn’t break any laws, but the two are closer than we could have imagined in the character department.
Petrino is a quitter. Thirteen games and he is checking out for a job back in the college ranks, where he can mold young men by stepping on them first, which is something you can’t do in the NFL.
Nick Saban couldn’t handle it either. Hey, at least Nick Saban lasted two seasons. By comparison, Nick Saban is a martyr.
Thirteen games. Are you kidding?
When Blank’s head stops spinning after all he has endured this season, he should breathe a sigh of relief. He should get past the fact he has to find another coach. Get past the fact that the franchise he would open a vein for has hit bottom and will take some time to turn around.
Arthur: Get past all of that, because things probably just got better. Save the balance on the five-year, $24 million contract you gave Petrino. Find yourself a coach who won’t melt down every time the temperature rises above 78.
If football is the ultimate game of physical and mental toughness, Petrino turned out to be the ultimate mushhead. This is the NFL. This is Big Boy football. The Falcons already have too many players who stomp their feet and hold their breath. The last thing they needed was a coach who did the same thing.
Petrino said the Falcons were his dream job. He said he wanted to work for Blank and Rich McKay. He said he wanted one season to see what he could do with Vick.
Things didn’t go as planned. Obviously. Petrino didn’t win. That wasn’t really his fault, given circumstances. But there were so many warning signs about how he handled situations, you wondered how he would function in the NFL environment, even without the extreme issues.
He rarely communicated with his players. He didn’t seek any input from the veterans he inherited — and while it’s certainly his prerogative as a head coach to do as he pleases, constructing such walls is counter-productive for a coach trying to build unity.
Petrino didn’t tell players when they were being benched, or why. Some found out when they got to the stadium on game day. Joey Harrington found out from reporters in a news conference that he might not start at quarterback that week.
Say what you want about Harrington — no professional athlete deserves to be humiliated like that. No man deserves to be treated like that.
Bobby Petrino. Not a man. He is running like a coward.
It has been apparent all season that Petrino and McKay were on different pages in personnel issues (Why make Ovie Mughelli the league’s highest-paid fullback if he’s not going to be used?)
Most of all, he had lost the team. That was never more apparent than in Monday night’s game against New Orleans. Hall walked into the Georgia Dome carrying a sign, and Roddy White wore a T-shirt, both reading, “Free Michael Vick.” Once you got past the vitriol directed toward Hall and White, you had to ask yourself: Would any player have done that if they liked, respected or even feared their coach?
Petrino took exception last week when I asked him about the possibility of leaving the Falcons for a college job (I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, and figured he would wait until after the season).
“My plans are to be here, there’s no question about that,” he said. “I get asked the same question every day, and that’s my plan.”
And now his plan is taking him to Arkansas. At least 13 games covers a full college season.
The Falcons now have one less quitter to worry about.
Good riddance.
Permalink | Comments (280) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Falcons moving forward without Vick
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
When last the New Orleans Saints visited, the frazzled day ended with Michael Vick flashing two naughty fingers. That was 54 weeks ago, the longest 54 weeks any professional franchise has ever known.
“It’s a season that doesn’t seem to have an end to it,” Arthur Blank said Monday night, and what began last year only accelerated with the arrival of 2007. From the coaching change to the water bottle in Miami to the investigation in Virginia to an indictment and a plea and now a sentence, not to mention a lot of lousy football interspersed … how much can one club stand?
Here was Blank, finishing his thought: “But the beauty of the National Football League is that seasons come to an end and, because of free agency and the way the draft works, you can turn a team around fairly quickly. And I think Atlanta is fortunate to have an owner [i.e., him] who’s very competitive, is not very patient and has resources - and he’s going to use all three components to make sure we get back to being a competitive team as soon as we can.”
On the day Vick learned the depth of his debt to society, the team he wrecked lost yet another game by yet another wipeout score. But if you listened hard, listened between the boos directed toward the Falcons and the cheers of the visiting Saints fans, you could hear the rustle of a page being turned.
Blank wouldn’t say once and for all that Vick will never again play for this team, but it’s now certain he won’t play for anyone until 2009 at the earliest. “We’re going forward without him,” Blank said, and note the word choice.
These 54 weeks have been spent glancing backward and sideways, wondering who’s coming and who’s going and how many dogs died at 1915 Moonlight Road. With Vick otherwise occupied for the next 23 months or so, we turn our attention to the team he wrecked.
Blank again: “We’re really fortunate to have Bobby Petrino as the CEO of our football team,” a designation that must surely signal a demotion of Rich McKay, the titular president/general manager. “The way he has been dealing with adversity has proved to me he’s even better a head coach than I thought he’d be.”
So that, it would seem, is the new hierarchy: Blank spending, Petrino running the football operation, McKay looking for something to do, Vick locked away. The bad news: Things aren’t apt to improve much anytime soon. The good news: They can’t possibly get worse.
Even on a night when DeAngelo Hall toted a poster of Vick onto the field and Roddy White raised his jersey after scoring a touchdown to display a “Free Mike Vick” T-shirt, the feeling was that the city’s biggest newsmaker these past six years had officially been rendered yesterday’s news. He has his time to do, and the Falcons have matters to attend that no longer include him. They have a wrecked team to fix.
“We need to take a good hard look at ourselves,” Petrino said. “We need to finish the season and find something to build on.”
They’ll be able to work in relative solitude, not to be confused with solitary confinement. Nobody expects anything of the Falcons anymore. No network will dare display them in prime time after what happened Thanksgiving night and Monday. (Aggregate score: Visitors 65, Falcons 27.) They’ll move ahead without their franchise player but still with an NFL franchise, however torn and tattered.
Said Blank, speaking of Vick’s disinclination to come clean even after his plea agreement: “I’m disappointed in Michael, again. One day the light bulb is going to click on and he’ll realize he needs to be honest with people and with himself.”
Maybe he will. But what light there was in the gloom of Monday’s loss was a tiny beacon for the Falcons, a beacon pointing toward a tomorrow without Vick, without court appearances to monitor and apologies to make, a tomorrow in which the focus falls, finally and mercifully, on football.
Not the feds. Not felonies. Just football.
Permalink | Comments (73) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
