UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, September 27, 1996
5B
Season marks Lemieux's final shot at Stanley Cup
Penguin may opt to retire if team wins 1996-97title
The Associated Press
PITTSBURGH — After a comeback for the ages, Mario Lemieux finally admits to feeling his age.
He will be only 31 this week, a young man by society's standards, but not by hockey's or his own. He has had two back operations, years of near-ceaseless back pain, a frightening case of Hodgkin's disease and way too many elbows to the midsection. After playing the sport for a quarter-century, he almost has had enough of hockey.
However, despite being rich beyond even his own expectations, rewarded on a level few others in his sport have achieved and happy in his life away from hockey, Lemieux will take one last shot at winning the trophy he last cradled in his arms almost five years ago.
For Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins, the 1996-97 season apparently will be their last chance to win one more Stanley Cup together. Weary of too many February plane rides to Calgary, too many nights away from his family and the physical toll extracted by nine months of hockey a year, Lemieux will return for what likely will be one final season.
"I'm going to play this year and
then re-evaluate," said Lemieux, who last season led the Penguins within one victory of a third trip to the Stanley Cup finals. "But this is probably going to be my last year."
Lemieux wouldn't be back now if it weren't for Pittsburgh's Game 7 loss to the Florida Panthers in the Eastern Conference finals on June 1. If the Penguins had won a third cup, Lemieu no doubt would be spending his fall sailing tee shots rather than sharpening his slap shot. Golf, not hockey, now is his athletic pursuit of choice, and he usually plays it every day that he doesn't have a hockey game.
While Lemieux acknowledges that his passion for hockey is not what it was once, he remains a proud man cognizant of his niche in the sport's history. He wants to be remembered not as just one of hockey's best players but one of its true greats. Many others have led teams to two Stanley Cups; Wayne Gretzky, after all, has won five of them, albeit surrounded by a stronger supporting cast than Lemieux usually has had. But only a chosen few have won three, and Lemieux wants to be among them.
"I want to try to win the cup again," Lemieux said. "That is my only goal."
However, there shouldn't be anything for Lemieux to prove. Long ago, observers said he was only a scorer and never would be a leader, but that was before he won two Stanley Cups. They once said he wasn't tough enough, but that was before he scored a goal and set up two others on the same day as his
last cancer treatment.
And even when they said no athlete could take a year off and be the player he was before, Lemieux sat out a season only to return as hockey's best player. He won a fifth scoring title and a third MVP title last season and was the dominant player in the playoffs until, physically spent by his first injury-free season in five years, he fell victim to the Panthers' rat-trap defense.
"I thought he would come back," said teammate Jaromir Jagr, the NHL scoring champion when Lemieux sat out the 1994-95 season. "Why, all of a sudden, should he quit? It's not going to be hard for him physically like it was last year, when he didn't do anything for a year."
Some might say Lemieux's decision to play one more season is motivated by money — he will be paid almost one-quarter of his $42 million contract this season — but he doesn't need much more cash.
No, this season, Lemieux is being selfish. Fully aware that he cannot single-handedly dominate a game as he once did, he strongly lobbied general manager Craig Patrick to make changes that he thought would make him — and the Penguins—better.
"I've come to accept that I am not the player I was five years ago," Lemieux said. "But, as we get older, we have to change our game a little bit. You just have to adjust to what you can do and what you have."
Subsequently, the Penguins resigned one of his best friends, Dan Quinn, even though the forward has
had only one 20-goal season in the last five years. When Lemieux publicly urged the Penguins to strengthen their defense and power play, they traded for defenseman Kevin Hatcher.
"He's somebody I respect a lot." Lemieux said of Hatcher, a longtime Penguin antagonist when he played for the Washington Capitals. "I always find it tough to play against him. That was one element on our team that was missing last year."
Lemieux even made one last pitch for the NHL to enforce the obstruction rules that its officials ignore routinely. He met this summer with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and was promised that there would be more stringent enforcement.
Of course, Lemieux has heard such promises before, only to watch NHL officials revert within a few weeks to their traditional, look-the-other-way style.
"They want to improve the game, open it up and make it more fun for the players," Lemieux said. "Hopefully, it's going to last more than a couple of weeks."
And Penguins fans hope Lemieux stays around for more than one more season. But he isn't making any promises, especially not after waiting until the day training camp opened to announce that he would play this season.
"It took all summer for me to decide to play," he said. "It's going to be a pretty quick decision next year, but this will probably be my last year."
Although he is only 31, injuries and serious illness may have cost Pittsburgh Penguin Mario Lemieux years of hockey. Lemieux has indicated that this season may be his last.
ALLSPORT
Play perseveres through time
1949 technique works for Florida in 1996
The Associated Press
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Conley Snidow cooked up a formation he knew no team could defend, a formation he would save for special occasions such as the Burley Bowl.
It propelled Emory & Henry College to spectacular victories in those games, played in Johnson City, Tenn., between the best two small colleges.
Snidow, an innovative risk-taker who retired from coaching in 1972, first deployed the funky spread in the 1949 Burley Bowl, a 32-0 victory over a Hanover team that had given up only 33 points all season.
Snidow had the tackles line up wide next to the ends on both sides of the ball, with a back behind each set. That left only the center, two guards, the quarterback and a halfback in the middle of the field.
As far as Spurrier is concerned, it still works today.
S spurrier said he first saw it used by Tennessee Wesleyan, but he knew its roots — that's why he gamely referred to the spread as the "Emory & Henry."
And just like Snidow, he's not afraid to use it at pivotal times in the most crucial games.
In the 1994 Southeastern Conference championship game against Alabama, he used it twice on a late drive that gave Florida a 24-23 victory. First, it gained 9 yards on a pass when Florida was deep in its own territory. Later, Danny Wuerfel threw a lateral to Chris Doer-
ing, who threw a 20-yard pass to Aubrey Hill to the 2yard line.
The Gators pulled it off again last week in a 35-29 victory over the Tennessee Volunteers, a game that put them in control of the Southeastern Conference East division and helped vault them to No.1 in the poll.
Florida was leading 35-22 late in the fourth quarter as it tried to run down the clock. Facing fourhand-1 from its own 46, Spurrier decided to go for it.
The Gators broke the huddle and quickly shifted into the Emory & Henry. Tennessee scrambled to adjust, but it was too late — Wuerffel took the snap and picked up 2 vards.
"When we shifted, they were looking around like they didn't know how to line up," said receiver Reidel Anthony.
Three plays later, the Vols still couldn't figure it out. On third-and-5 from the 47, the Gators went back to Emory & Henry. This time, Wuerffel checked off at the line and handed off to Terry Jackson, who cut through the right side for 15 yards, effectively ending the Vols' hopes.
"We sort of keep it available a lot," Spurrier said. "There's no rhyme or reason when it goes in. We practice it every week, just about. The tackles like to be out there wide so their girlfriends can see them. Everyone feels real good about it."
Snidow feels good about it to this day. So does Chick Davis, the quarterback at Emory & Henry from 1948 to 1952. He hadn't seen the spread formation in years until Spurrer called it against Alabama.
"I saw it and recognized it immediately," said Davis, who recently retired as chairman of the music department at Emory & Henry. "I
said, "Hey, that's our spread!" It was "quite a thrill."
Davis recalls Emory & Henry going to spread formation almost immediately against Hanover, a team he described as the "Notre Dame" of small colleges.
"We opened up with the spread and it completely baffled them, Davis said/ "We used it three or four plays, moved to the 20 and they called time out. Then we went back to the regular split-T, and I threw a pass in the end zone."
"From then on, they were just discombobulated. It knocked them off balance," he said. "Coach Snidow was innovative, like Spurrier. He liked to try new things."
Spurrier is selective when he uses Emory & Henry. Still, simply using it every few years is enough to make opponents waste practice time trying to solve it — or pay the price when they don't.
As Snidow says, "The more time a team spends on the spread, the less time they have to work on the formation I'm going to beat them with."
Spurrier sees other advantages.
"At least you know the other team will have just one defense for it," he said. "They don't work on, 'OK, on first down against Emory & Henry, we'll run this; second-and-long, we'll run this.' You can predict the defense they'll play in a certain situation."
"A lot of times, plays just evolve from studying football," he said. "We coaches tend to copy each other."
Snidow is not even sure how he came up with the formation. He figured it came out of a book written by Alonzo Stagg, but when he went back to check, it wasn't in there.
After making history, Cal Ripken in demand for endorsement deals
BALTIMORE — More than a year after he set a new standard for reliability, Cal Ripken is building his income in the sports endorsement marketplace like he built his consecutive-games streak — slowly, steadily and safely.
The Baltimore Orioles shortstop, who has played more than 2,300 consecutive games, is becoming a power player in a business that in recent years has been dominated by NBA stars with attitude and NFL players with Super Bowl rings.
"He's up there with Michael Jordan, Emmitt Smith, Wayne Gretzky and very few others," said John Thorbeck, senior vice president for sales and marketing for Starter, which put Ripken in a new ad for its sports apparel.
Ripken, who like many baseball stars for years has had a high profile regionally but little or none nationally, topped the baseball charts on Forbes' list of the 40 highest-paid professional athletes last year with an income of $11.2 million, including $4 million in endorsements. This year, his handlers said, he'd do even better.
He can be seen in some markets in subdued ads for Chevrolet and other products, and his business managers said later this year he'd begin campaigns for True Value hardware stores.
Ripken's new ad for Starter plays off his record. Scientists in a laboratory beneath Camden Yards are researching how long a new jacket will hold up.
"How many games did you have in mind?" Ripken asked as he put on the jacket.
Ripken refused requests for an interview to discuss his off-the-field business, but sources close to the
shortstop said his income could reach $15 million.
When Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's streak of 2,130 consecutive games last September, he did what few baseball players have ever done: gained a national fan base and named recognition outside of the sometimes-insular world of baseball. If the Orioles reach the postseason as expected, Ripken could become even more widely-known.
"We're finding that Cal's appeal and stature now goes beyond baseball, and he really is a sports icon," said Thorbeck, who described Starter's pact with Ripken as a six-fire deal.
According to the ESPN Chilton Sports Poll, which tracks the attitudes of fans 12 and older on a wide range of sports issues, Ripken is the country's fifth favorite athlete and the only baseball player in the top 10.
Among people asked to choose an athlete to endorse a product, Ripken ranked ahead of Magic Johnson, Deion Sanders, Ken Griffey Jr. and Dennis Rodman. In 1994, before he broke Gehrig's record, Ripken was 19th on that list.
Yet, he's a walking understatement in terms of usage by endorsers, said Jenna Tourdot, who works with the ESPN Chilton poll's clients to find endorsers who might suit them.
Unlike Jordan, Ripken has no big shoe commercial campaigns planned, no major fast-food deals in the offing. And in the world of sports marketing, that has caused some sports marketers to think Ripken is keeping too low a profile.
1 don't know anybody, for example, who is wearing a Cal Ripken shoe. I don't know anybody who is going crazy about a Cal Ripken clothing line," said Mel Heltzer, a former sports promoter who teaches marketing at Ohio University.
the most wholesome people in baseball, I think he's been packaged terribly."
Ira Rainess, chief operating officer of the Tufton Group, the company formed in 1992 to handle Ripken's off-the-field business, said the lowkey approach is partly due to Ripken's personality.
He doesn't want to be distracted from baseball during the season and spends most of his free time with his family. To meet with Ripken and discuss potential deals for either endorsement campaigns or memorabilia, Rainess follows the Orioles on road trips and meets with Ripken after games.
"Despite the fact that he is one of
During the offseason, Ripken will give up only so many days to shoot commercials and do other endorsement-related work.
In fact, Rainess has turned down offers from even major players in the sports world.
"Our objective isn't to get Cal any more exposure," he said. "Last year he was exposed as much as any athlete can be."
Earlier this year, Nike, whom Ripken has had a shoe contract with since 1993, pitched the idea of putting him in a commercial poking fun at the excuses other players come up with for missing games. The idea was quickly mixed; Ripken will poke fun at himself but not at other athletes.
Sports marketing experts often call Ripken, 36, the future Arnold Palmer of the endorsement business, someone whose value as a pitchman will far outlast his playing days.
"He's meat and potatoes and Chevy trucks," said Irving Rein, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern who wrote a book on the marketing of celebrities. "In the endorsement business there's a niche for someone like that."
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