The coat and tie

I'm watching the Colts and Jaguars on ESPN Monday Night Football tonight. Jacksonville coach Jack Del Rio is wearing a tie on the sideline!

Now that's how a ball coach should dress, dammit.

Call me retro, call me old school, but I'll never go for the slovenly "I'm really not homeless" look that, oh, say, Bill "Cheater" Belichick favors. Nor the wimpy visor and polo shirt that the ol' ball coach brought to the SEC.

Give me a suit, tie, pissed off visage, and preferably a houndstooth cap -- or at least a men's dress hat. Men like Neyland (it's pronounced KNEE-land, by the way), Majors, Landry, Lombardi and, of course, the ball coach, Paul William Bryant.

I spotted several Alabama students dressed up in Tuscaloosa on Saturday. Man, that looks good. If nothing happens, the Big Orange suit will be pulled out of the closet for Saturday night's game.


Tony Basilio interviewed another favorite coach, former Texas A&M and Alabama legend Gene Stallings, on his radio sports show last Friday. If you want to hear what a real football coach sounds like, click on tonybasilio.com and look for the "Gene Stallings" link.

Compare a guy like Stallings to a clown like Dennis Franchione. I bet those folks in College Station wish they'd never heard of that guy. Serves him right for the lies he told those kids at Alabama.

Nick Saban wasn't wearing a suit and tie Saturday, but the way his team dismantled Tennessee, you'd have thought we'd turned the clock back to the mid-70s. I kept looking for Bear on the sideline.

Earth to John Chavis: Tackling usually helps stop an offense. I'm tired of hearing this "young team" stuff. Even Pee Wee teams know how to tackle.

Whatever. I'm going to finish this Colts game, then I might watch "The Junction Boys" again.

It doesn't get any better than a suit, a tie and a snazzy looking hat.

'War and Peace' update: Well, Russian Romanticism isn't exactly good reading before bedtime. I read a few pages last night, suffered through the passages in French, and finally gave up and went back to reading a biography on FDR, "A Rendezvous with Destiny," that I had started a few weeks ago. Don't worry, though. I'm going to try again; I just don't need to be reading Tolstoy before bed.