Saturday, July 10, 2010

Sports Illustrated Pieces - Don Coryell & World Cup Final

Two good stories from the July 12 issue of Sports Illustrated.



The feature story from the issue is "Don Coryell 1924-2010"... excerpted from the Tim Layden book "Sports Illustrated Blood, Sweat & Chalk: Inside Football?s Playbook: How the Great Coaches Built Today?s Game". I'm oft interested in book excerpts from the magazines I read (as they tend to pick interesting stuff) and this piece is no exception.

The particular topic of the excerpt centers around former San Diego Charger coach and offensive innovator Don Coryell who passed ear recently after a long illness. Layden writes two different angles on Coryell... one is on his impact on the NFL passing game and one on his visit with the aging ex-coach at his San Juan Islands (WA) home.

Was very cool to read of Coryell looking back on his life and career... and the legacy from that.

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The second thing from this issue that stood out to me was a short piece by (primarily) soccer writer Grant Wahl on the upcoming World Cup Final between the Netherlands and Spain. "The Day That Lasts A Lifetime" is all about the impact of playing in the biggest sporting event in the world and what it's meant to some past winners.

Gives a sense of the scope of things when you consider that this particular game tomorrow will be giving one of these soccer-mad countries their first ever World Cup Championship.