BOULDER, Colorado.  The University of Colorado announced today that it has hired Dan Hawkins, head coach at Boise State University, to replace Gary Barnett, a two-time Big 12 Coach of the Year whose tenure with the Buffaloes was plagued by controversy.

Hawkins is a student of philosophy, often exhorting his players with quotes from the likes of Lao Tse, Mother Teresa, and A. J. Ayer, the father of logical positivism.

"Coach was a great motivator," said Boise State lineback Karl Hedlund.  "One time we were down two touchdowns to Fresno State at half-time, and Hawk walks into the locker room with this book by Wittgenstein and reads one sentence to us--'We should be willing to call anything a thing.'  We got the message, and went back out second half and stomped 'em like a bug."

Other Big 12 teams vowed not to be outspent in the arms race for analytical firepower.  Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel said he had made an offer to an expert on Immanuel Kant, the 18th century German philosopher, to become his receivers coach.  "The housewives of Konigsberg used to set their clocks by the moment when Kant walked by their kitchen windows.  I want our wide-outs to run their routes with the same precision."

Nebraska coach Bill Callahan was skeptical of putting too much emphasis on philosophy.  "It's great to have somebody to explain the futility of life to your kids when they're puking their guts up during two-a-day practices in August, but you've still got to execute."  He said he would ask the Cornhusker Boosters club to fund a non-tenure track professorship in medieval philosophy to help out on special teams, especially punt coverage.  "I want somebody who knows Duns Scotus and can keep our average punt return allowed down around five or six yards," Callahan said.

Under Barnett, the Colorado football program was accused of plying high school recruits with drugs, alcohol and sexual favors.  Hawkins said he would use the example of Mother Teresa to attract the best schoolboy talent to his program.  "We're gonna bring in some nuns for national letter-of-intent day," he said.  "Mother Teresa was a saint, but she also knew how to party."

Copyright 2005, Con Chapman

FOXBORO, Mass.  Ever since Pittsburgh Steelers' wide receiver Lynn Swann worked out with a ballet instructor to improve his footwork in the 70's, football coaches have tried dance-based training methods to gain a competitive edge.

In a sign that ideas are starting to flow in both directions between the pigskin and terpsichorean worlds, several modern dance companies have recently hired NFL down linemen to help them create and perfect edgy pieces that reach out to new audiences and explore non-traditional balletic themes.

For example, the Luminaria Dance Collective in Cambridge, Mass. has hired Richard Seymour, the Patriots' All-Pro defensive end, to work with its principal ballerina and other dancers on a new piece tentatively entitled "Smash the State: PoliticArt".  The work, choreographed by the group's artistic director Trish Islington, seeks to "portray by movement and gesture the nexus between post-industrial capitalism and imperialistic adventurism exemplified by the war in Iraq," in the words of the company's brochure.

"We looked at a lot of game film," said Islington, "and we found in Richard Seymour the ur-pass rusher, the embodiment of massive movement, that we needed as a model for our dancers."

Seymour says he is teaching the group the techniques he uses to stop the run and flatten quarterbacks.  "I showed 'em one thing I do, I give the center a helmet slap with my right hand, then bring my left arm over his head real quick so by the time his ears stop ringing I'm already past him.  They liked that one."

Islington is a firm believer in creating dances from raw experience, and has even gone one-on-one with Seymour in an effort to understand the violence that is at the core of pro football and, she believes, American society.

"Richard stood me up with a forearm, then put a spin move on me," she said in a telephone conversation from her room at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is recovering from blunt trauma to the head.  "I saw stars, which to me was like the American flag--all gaudy and proud and obnoxious."

In the heartland, Colts' pass rusher Dwight Freeney is on retainer with the Indianapolis Civic Ballet as a consultant, causing some of the male dancers in the company to fear for their jobs.  "He is so strong," said Ian Lemling, who has a degree in dance from Skidmore College and performed at Jacob's Pillow in the Berkshires last summer.  "With the NFL's strict rules on blockers' use of their hands, he's going to blow by me every time."

Copyright 2005, Con Chapman

BOSTON.  As he contemplates a second run for president in 2008, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry faces charges that he embellished his hockey accomplishments as a prep school forward in the 1960's.

A new group, Prep School Defensemen for Truth, issued a statement today alleging that Kerry never achieved a "hat trick", the accolade earned by an individual player who scores three goals in a single game.  Kerry's campaign biography has listed this accomplishment since he first lobbied for membership in Yale's secretive Skull and Bones society.

Prep School Defensemen for Truth is composed of former Independent School League hockey players who competed against Kerry.  The Independent School League is made up of exclusive New England prep schools such as Groton School,  Middlesex School, and a passle of saints; St. George's, St. Mark's, St. Sebastian's and Kerry's alma mater, St. Paul's in Concord, New Hampshire.

Nils Beckwith, a spokesman for Prep School Defensemen for Truth who played for Governor Dummer Academy in Byfield, Mass., was blunt in his assessment of Kerry's hockey skills.  "He was on the third line, a real lightweight.  He never scored off of me."

Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley countered the group's charges, saying he had been given extensive access to Kerry's youth sports memorabilia, and that the hat trick claim was substantiated by a trophy that bore the inscription "Mini-Mites".

USA Hockey  Recording Secretary Jim Lopresti could not confirm the significance of that award.  "Sounds more like a self-esteem kind of thing.  You know, everybody who shows up for the last game gets one.  For a hat trick it's different--you get a little patch.  Kids put them on their jackets."

Republican party officials seized on the controversy and vowed to examine Kerry's other hockey statistics such as his plus/minus rating, the measure of a team's overall effectiveness while a player is on the ice. 

In a statement that he read from the steps of his Beacon Hill townhouse, Kerry denounced the charges as politically motivated.  "Who among us hasn't been thrilled by the sight of Bobby Esposito stopping a slap shot with his goalie mitt?  To turn hockey, a game of speed and beauty, into a partisan football is reprehensible."

One fact Kerry's supporters and detractors agree on: in four years of prep school hockey he never recorded an assist.   In response to a reporter's question, Edward "Bink" Hollings, St. Paul's hockey coach during the 60's, conceded that "if John ever passed the puck, I didn't see it."

Copyright 2005, Con Chapman

WASHINGTON, D.C.  Combining two of his passions--beach volleyball and politics--former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich today announced that he will launch a professional league for the fast-growing sport in Iraq following the advent of American-style elections in that war-torn country.

"They've got sand coming out the wazoo over there," said Gingrich at a news conference to announce the league's formation.  "We won't have to spend a lot of money on groundskeeping--just buy a couple of rakes."

Gingrich caused a stir when, at the Republican National Convention in 1996, he launched into a misty-eyed tribute to beach volleyball as a characteristic product of American values.  "Forty years ago beach volleyball was just beginning," Gingrich said at the time in a departure from his prepared text.  "No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about."

Gingrich's remarks were ridiculed at the time as the product of a mind frazzled by the partisan battles he had fought as the leader of the Republican Revolution of 1994 and the principal author of its "Contract With America".   He withdrew from public life in 1998.

Gingrich plans a 10-team league with franchises in major cities such as Baghdad, Kirkuk and Samarra, and playoffs that will include "wild card" slots, which Gingrich also hailed as a product of the American genius.  "Now that the people of Iraq have tasted freedom," Gingrich said, "they will embrace the wild card format."

Asked whether the scantily-clad females that have propelled beach volleyball to top TV ratings during U.S. winters would be a tough sell in a Muslim nation where women must be clothed from head to toe, Gingrich laughed.  "You've got to be kidding," he replied.  "Next thing you'll tell me is the guys in the stands won't want cold beer."

Copyright 2005, Con Chapman

NEW YORK.  The NBA today announced that it would begin to impose delay of game penalties on teams whose free-throw shooters blow kisses to wives or girl friends in attendance.

The practice, first adopted by Jason Kidd of the New Jersey Nets, has mushroomed as players use it as a silent form of bragging about their sexual conquests.

"I got more girlfriends in Shaker Heights than Kidd has in the whole Eastern Conference," Cleveland guard LeBron James said to reporters last week after blowing 34 kisses in a game against the Clippers. 

The penalty for a kiss-blowing-related delay would be loss of possession, plus a free throw for the opposing team beginning with the second infraction in a game. 

Kidd, who was charged with domestic violence in 2001 while with the Phoenix Suns, is believed to have developed his signature gesture as a means of overcompensating for the anguish that domestic violence brought to him and his wife Joumana. 

"It was cheaper than buying her a big rock," Kidd said, referring to the massive ring Kobe Bryant purchased for his wife after the Lakers' star was accused of raping another woman at a Denver hotel.

For her part, Joumana Kidd says that she appreciates her husband's gesture, but wishes he would swear off verbal as well as physical abuse.  "Like, I'll say to him--'Jason, please take out the trash'--and he'll get this real nasty look on his face and say 'Jouwana make me?'"

Copyright 2005, Con Chapman