I noted the Coaches vs. Cancer golf tournament that starts today. Plenty of other golf celebrity/sports golf tournaments in the area this week tying in to the football side.

On Monday, the 14th annual Tony Dorsett/McGuire Memorial Celebrity Golf Class will be played at Treesdale Golf & Country in Pine Township Mars and Diamond Run Golf in Ohio Township.

Dorsett, a Pro Football Hall of Fame running back from Hopewell, doesn’t golf in the tournament that bears his name. But he’s got a star-studded cast of sports celebrities who’ll tee it up with 65 corporate-sponsored foursomes who’ve paid $750 per golfer to play.

Last year, the tournament raised nearly $230,000 and pushed the 13-year total to nearly $2.5 million.

“I’ve said this over and over, and I’ll say it again,” Dorsett said. “We’ll keep doing this as long as it’s a first-class tournament. And it is first class. Every year it seems to get bigger and better.”

Among the celebrities expected to play are former Pitt coach Jackie Sherrill; Freedom graduate Jimbo Covert, an All-American tackle at Pitt who went on to play with the Chicago Bears; and Aliquippa native Ty Law, an NFL cornerback who played last year with the New York Jets.

Making his debut in the tournament is Sean Gilbert, a former defensive end out of Aliquippa who played 13 seasons in the NFL.

Others celebs in the field include Pitt quarterback Tyler Palko, Pitt offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh, former Pitt defensive end Hugh Green and ex-Pitt coach Johnny Majors.

Then it’s time for more Pitt players and coaches to face Penn State.

The Pitt vs. Penn State Challenge – a golf event involving ex-football players from both schools – will be played Tuesday at Chestnut Ridge Golf Course in Blairsville.

The tournament raises money for two charities – The Second Mile, which was founded by former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky; and the National Youth Sports Program, run by the University of Pittsburgh. Both are non-profitable organizations that provide services and programs for children.

Co-captains for Pitt’s team will be Dorsett and Bill Fralic. Penn State’s co-captains will be Shane Conlan and Mike Zordich.

Last year, the inaugural event raised $100,000.

And of course, we can expect the coverage to bring up the lack of a certain annual rivalry game.

I admit it. I’m a bit of a freak in that I don’t play video games. I blame my parents for refusing to buy me the Atari 2600, then the 5200 nor Colecovision and everything afterwards. So I’ve never really bothered with them. Considering how I waste my time in so many other ways, I think it only counts as a minor character flaw.

Still, reading others drool over NCAA Football 2007, causes tinges of regret.

Tyler Palko ranks as the #10 QB in the game this year. A hat tip to Keith W. who notes the disturbing accuracy of the screen shot, “TWO Pitt lineman are laying flat on their backs. That is realism!”

Indeed.

Pitt missed out on landing a prep center project Hamady N’Diaye this year. Instead he chose to go to Rutgers. Turns out that may have worked out for Pitt in a way. N’Diaye plays at Stoneridge Prep and, as Shirts and Skins sadly notes, is one of the prep schools that has been exposed as at the very least having the appearance of a diploma mill. The school claims it’s just that they missed a deadline.

Stoneridge Preparatory School in Simi Valley, Calif., which was the subject of another report by The Post, also was listed as “inactivated” by the Clearinghouse. Lennon refused to comment on Stoneridge’s status.

The Post reported that Stoneridge players attended classes for a few hours each day and were so loosely associated with the school that most students had never seen the team play.

Jeannette Noble, an administrator at Stoneridge, said two NCAA officials visited Stoneridge last week and asked questions about the school’s classes, graduation rates and whether many of the school’s students attended college. Noble said the NCAA contacted the school after she failed to submit a questionnaire by the deadline.

“They just wanted to make sure it was a real school,” Noble said. “They took a tour of the school, and we showed them our textbooks, which are college prep. I’d hate to be lumped into that category of schools that need to be audited because I was late turning in the questionnaire.”

Under the plan from the NCAA, that means N’Diaye will not be eligible this fall.

As an amusing sidenote, since both the Washington Post and the New York Times have run stories this year on diploma mill prep schools, both are not shy of basically implying in the story that their sole coverage has been the reason the NCAA is cracking down.

A series of stories in The Washington Post has raised questions about the academic integrity of some prep schools with successful basketball programs and the NCAA Clearinghouse’s certification of transcripts from those schools.

and

The N.C.A.A.’s actions come in the wake of a series of articles in The New York Times illustrating how high schools and prep schools gave students fast and easy grades so they could qualify for athletic scholarships.

Let’s be fair and suggest that two national newspapers covering the same issue definitely pushed the issue, but suggesting exclusivity is more than a little deceptive. Someone alert the ombudsmen.

There are so many ways to go with this story on Johnny Majors. And a lot of them would end up going in a mean direction. Hell, the whole article is crying for subtext and reading between the lines. Part of that has to do with how I think of Majors.

The coming football season will mark 10 years since Majors coached his final game, 30 since he coached Pitt to a national championship and 50 since he finished second in the Heisman Trophy race and led Tennessee to a national title.

Both championships will be celebrated in style. Majors is helping organize the reunion for his Pitt team, which will be commemorated at the season opener against Virginia. A few weeks later, he’ll enjoy a bash with his boys from Tennessee.

Just don’t mistake him for a man living in the past. He refused to let retirement erode his spirit, although he admits it initially crushed him.

How could it not have? He’d practically become addicted to the structured, authoritative existence of a coach. Kids obeyed his instructions. Subordinates carried out his orders. Games fueled his competitive fire.

Then, one day, it stopped, like a 28-year roller-coaster ride pulling into the station. Majors knows many coaches — such as friend and former foe Joe Paterno – who are flat-out afraid to stop, and he can see why. They don’t want to wind up like Paul “Bear” Bryant, who died a few months after he retired.

“There really was an emptiness there for me,” Majors says. “I think I was on a practice field from 1943 to 1996. I was lost for about a year. I mean, I can’t remember my first spoken word or my first thought, but I certainly can’t remember when I didn’t love football. I saw a football before I could walk.”

Even after Pitt fired/resigned, Majors stayed associated with the school, but it was an uncomfortable time for Pitt fans to see him. He’d come into the stands during the first couple of seasons after his time ended. He’d shake some hands, exchange pleasantries and talk to people.

And he would also sit down in one of the many available spaces in the bleachers taking slugs from a flask as he was going. It was very painful to see, and unfortunately I did during that ’98 season (granted anyone who cared about Pitt probably needed to drink heavily to get through that season). Awkward doesn’t begin to describe it. People would quietly gesture, maybe whisper. Head shakes and sad, pitying looks his way. You would see security and ushers position themselves nearby to help him if he showed any signs of getting too wobbly.

Honestly, I wish these weren’t the things I think of with Johnny Majors. Unfortunately I was 7 in 1976 being raised in Central PA by Penn State alum, so there isn’t much I can tell you about that time regarding Pitt. I left Pittsburgh as Johnny Majors II began and so I didn’t see much of that period.

The optimist reading the story wants to believe that sort of thing is in the past and that he has found balance and happiness.

Before long, old interests awakened, and his schedule filled up. He hired one of his former Pitt secretaries to help him stay organized.

Travel is a top priority. Majors and his wife have seen “every state in the union.” They’ve been to Hawaii seven times, Scotland four times, Ireland and the Far East. Majors recently spent two weeks planning their next trip to Scotland. It’ll happen in the summer of 2007 with the families of coaching buddies Dick MacPherson, LaVell Edwards and Ted Tollner. The men will play four previous British Open venues.

“My next objectives are Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania,” Majors says.

What else? Well, he has walked the beaches of Normandy more than once, has a place on the board of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, plays tons of golf, buys more books than he could read in three lifetimes, fly-fishes in Montana every year, tags along with his wife on some of her botanical adventures (she’s president of the Garden Club of Allegheny County) and enjoyed a whale of a party at Paul Hornung’s house the night before the Kentucky Derby. (Alas, Hornung won again. He beat Majors for the 1956 Heisman and had Barbaro in the Derby).

Majors also retains office space at The Pete so he can fulfill his duty as “special assistant to the chancellor and athletic director.” He is heavily involved in charity work, most prominently in the form of John Majors Charities, which targets youths from disadvantaged families and involves them in sports and other activities. Some of those take place on Pitt’s campus.

Here’s hoping the stories of the hard drinking Majors are more things of the past, that make for simply some amusing anecdotes, and that he has can enjoy with some moderation.