Who The Hell is Harvey Hyde?

The Trojan Knows

In the early 1980s UNLV was looking for a head football coach. Yes, UNLV does play football - think Randall Cunningham, Ickey Woods, Keenan McCardell, Charles Dimry... A coach named Harvey Hyde was identified. He had been the very successful head football coach at Pasadena City College but was virtually unknown in Las Vegas. Local fans would have settled for, oh, Vince Lombardi or even Mike Ditka but the football program at the time was barely a dozen years old and had just begun playing at the Division I level. Harvey Hyde was the choice. It turned out to be not such a bad choice. After an initial losing season he took the Rebels to their first Division I post season bowl game.

Years have passed and Harvey Hyde's tenure as a head football coach is but a memory but he still graces the radio waves as a sports talk pundit. He does pregame shows for USC as well as a post-game show. Today I was his guest on one of his shows along with engineer/sidekick Chris Engler and as always topics were varied and controversial. Questions arose such as, "Did Bobby Petrino show disloyalty to by bolting from the Falcons after less than a full season? (No - he probably made the right move scooting back to the Arkansas and the college level). Will Les Miles skip from LSU and go to Michigan after the bowl game? (No, the average pay for head coaches in the Big 10 is roughly half that of head coaches in the SEC). Why do high visibility players such as Mike Vick get into trouble? (See my post of a few days ago on that topic).

The topic of sports is one that gets people interested and passionate. When a college administrator once asked why athletes received scholarships to go to college a grizzled coach responded, "Because 60,000 screaming fans will not pay to see a math off." Nearly everybody who ever attended college has a warm place in their heart for the old scarlet and silver, or blue and gold, or whatever the school colors may have been. Sports allows the alumnus of long ago to stay active in their school's activities if only tangentially. Rumor has it, for example, that there are more California judges from USC than any other school. Hmmmm, I wonder if that is why OJ.... but that's another story.

So Hail to the Victors, On Wisconsin, dot the i in Ohio, and ride the Oklahoma wagon celebrate your band effecting the outcome of the game. A little blogging music maestro.... How about "Be True to Your School."

Dr. Forgot