Local news from Green Bay, WI today included the discovery of Curly Lambeau’s birthplace house here in town. Living in Titletown, it’s football 24/7/365. There really isn’t a off-season. There could be Game 7s in the NBA, NHL and a PGA major being held on the same day, and the local media will find a way to include a “major” Packers story. It’s quite incredible. It’s fun and a bit too much sometimes.

Some might ask what does this have to do with Direct Snap? Let’s play connect the dots. The founder of the Green Bay Packers played his college ball at Notre Dame, who was coached by a certain legendary coach in his own right, one Knute Rockne. Lambeau took the Notre Dame Box with him back to Green Bay and used it as their offensive attack. Any detractor who claims the single wing is three yards and a cloud of dust is way off base. The Packers had a terrific passing attack in those ironman days of pro football. In fact they had two of the greatest passers in football history in Cecil Isbell and Arnie Herber, and one of the best football players ever anchoring the end – Don Hutson.

It’s always rewarding when football can actually recognize that there really was football before the “modern” era. In Green Bay the fans who live and die with their Packers truly have an appreciation for their historic past and need to be saluted. As a result of the discovery of Curly Lambeau’s birthplace home, a local school where my wife teaches will benefit. A non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, Friends of Nicolet School, is being established. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the home, not to be less than $50,000 regardless of what the home sells for, will be put into the foundation to benefit the students and teachers at Nicolet School. The school is located directly across the street from Curly Lambeau’s home.

Snap & Go!
Adam
adam_wesoloski at yahoo.com

I thought I would write a little more about the Direct Snap site today. As you might have noticed the site is powered by Blogger. I originally was experimenting with another free application, called Textpattern. It was a little too technical for me but it does offer some more advanced features than Blogger which attracted me originally. But I am not very good with code, time is limited, so I chose to go another route.

I came across Blogger through another weblog. This guy was actually involved wih the redesign of Blogger’s site and contributed to their stable of free templates (in fact this is one of them). I decided to give it a try. I had it up and going in 15 minutes, just like they advertize. Now I know just enough about web code to be dangerous, so I was able to do a couple things that the template didn’t provide. Nothing too serious – add the Links portion and removed a profile feature. I still have a couple things I want to do. 1) Place my logo in the header. The template is written to place the title text only, and 2) figure out how to add images. However, for right now we’ll go with it and I can always monkey with this stuff along the way.

There also might be a point where the address changes as well. Currently it is residing on Blogger’s server and I think that’s why there is an ad resting atop the page. Yucky! I am hopeful that by hosting it on a server of my choice I will have more control to exclude this ad. I am also planning to have a link to a new message board. My neighbor and friend Geoff is currently testing a few of these to see what features they offer and will be easy to work as well.

Speaking of a new message board, one feature I’d like is to be able to incorporate is the ability to control access to the message board – usernames and passwords. It has long been an area of discussion over at Delphi about the identities of the members. Are they friends or are they opposing coaches looking to spy on some secret single wing voodoo magic spell? In fact it has turned some coaches away. Maybe Direct Snap’s message board will be a little more selective and coaches will feel more comfortable within its confines.

I must confess part of the timing of Direct Snap is due to Dr. Ward. We spoke briefly about moving the National Single Wing Coaches Association site and he gave me some of the features he’d like to offer its members. This included priviledged areas similar to what was written above. I discusseed this with Geoff and he thought we could host the NSWCA site on his server, give it a facelift and keep it current. We haven’t heard from Dr. Ward but we went ahead and started looking at how to do this. We thought a test site would be cool to show him. Then “thump!” it dawned on that I could use my Direct Snap idea I had simmering on the back burner. So thank you Dr. Ward. I still hope we can get the NSWCA up and running as well, but I’m going to use Direct Snap as the guinea pig.

Finally, please spread the word about the site. If it stinks, let me know too. Ideas are welcome. Please post comments, it helps me see if there is any traffic.

Snap & Go!
Adam
adam_wesoloski at yahoo.com

I think we’re online, hopefully. Anyway, hello and welcome to Direct Snap, the online journal for single wing football coaches. I’ve been wanting to do this site for a few years, but never got around to putting together the site. I am not a web designer so with the evolution of the weblog, it seemed like the right time to give it a try.

The site name originates from the common denominator of all the formations that do not have a quarterback under center. Single Wing, Double Wing, Short Punt, Notre Dame Box, TCU Spread, etc. all have one thing in common – the direct snap.

My goal for this site is to be a location for coaches and enthusiasts to find articles about the offenses. These features will include news, coaches interviews, historical perspectives, play comparisons, book reviews and anything else we can think of. The site will be updated as frequently as possible as long as we have content to publish. I do not want to compete with the other sites out there – I want to add another place to congregate and share information.

I want to thank Ted Seay, Russell Farley, Eric Strutz, and Todd Bross for volunteering as contributors to Direct Snap. I asked each of them if they were interested and they were all kind enough to say yes. Now, these gentlemen will not be the only contributors, it is an open forum. Please e-mail me if you have an article you’d like to publish.

Snap & Go!
Adam Wesoloski
adam_wesoloski at yahoo.com