Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their stories in their own words.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle.

Sports Medley: Oscar® Awarded to Accused Rapist Kobe Bryant 5 Mar 18

by Tony Medley

Hypocrisy thy name is Hollywood. In a world where Hollywood refuses to even speak to Christopher Plummer and Ryan Seacrest on the Red Carpet because they have been accused of sexual “harassment,” and whose (Hollywood’s) negativity kept last year’s Best Actor Oscar® Winner, Casey Affleck, from presenting the Best Actress Award this year just because he had been subject to “allegations” of “sexual misconduct,” it awards an Oscar® to former Laker Kobe Bryant, a married man, who was not just accused, he was formally charged with criminal sexual assault by the Eagle County, Colorado sheriff’s office, a felonious offense that could have been punished by life in prison. The details are too tawdry to mention here and Bryant eventually admitted to them, despite lying repeatedly about it. He wasn’t tried because he allegedly bought off the accuser to the tune of several million dollars so she refused to testify against him (something most rich rapists do), which raises the question, why isn’t that obstruction of justice? And now he has an Oscar®…from “me too” Hollywood!

But these Hollywood Hypocrites who voted it to him won’t talk to Plummer, Seacrest, and Affleck, who have never been formally charged with anything. They are worse than hypocrites, they are sanctimonious cowards.

That wasn’t just the worst Oscar® show in history by a long shot, it ranks with the worst television shows of all time. The Academy is partly at fault for nominating the foulest list of films for awards ever seen. But the show was far worse than the films nominated.

Probably the lowest point in the show was when host Jimmy Kimmel (a shockingly inadequate successor to Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, and Billy Crystal, and who is host through nepotism, solely because he runs ABC’s late night talk show) stopped the awards show halfway through to take some Hollywood actors to another theater to hand out treats. While the pace of the show had been dismal up until then, this nonsensical act completely stopped it entirely.

But there were lots of other low points like Best Actress winner Frances McDormand’s speech accepting the award, which led a friend of mine to threaten to join SPOWGE (the Society for the Prevention of Women Getting Everything), the fact that all the top awards went to people who were not white American men (not a good thing to be in today’s Hollywood, but it epitomizes the tenor of the show), that one of the films nominated for Best Picture glorified what in most states in the United States would be a felony, statutory rape of a young man by an older man; I could go on and on.

Because of all this it lost its audience. I gave a small dinner party for the show at a private club which was having an Oscar® Dinner. There were 80 people in attendance at all the tables of the club when the show started. When the show finally ended there were only about 15 people left in the club, most of whom were my guests. Everyone else had left before learning who won Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Movie. The show was so bad that even the people at my table were getting up and wandering around talking instead of watching the boring, unfunny, unentertaining drivel being shown on ABC. I think that this show, maladroitly produced by Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd, put a big nail in the coffin of the popularity of the Academy Awards show for the future.

Reports said viewership was down 16%. But that wasn’t the worst of it. That measures how many people saw part of the show, probably the beginning. If they measured what viewership was just before the big awards at the end, I imagine it would have been closer to down 50% if not more.