Doug Dieken and Dwight White weren’t exactly bosom buddies, to put it mildly, when they played against each other for a decade 50 years ago during the fierce Browns-Pittsburgh rivalry.
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Dieken didn’t like it that the Steelers right defensive end kept playing through the whistle. White didn’t like it that the Cleveland left tackle would cut-block him at the line of the line of scrimmage.
Indeed, there was absolutely no love lost, and they let each other — and everyone else, for that matter — know it in no uncertain terms.
One time in the week leading up to the teams’ game at Cleveland in 1974, a reporter asked Dieken about White.
“My parents always taught me that if I couldn’t say something good about a person, then I shouldn’t say anything at all. So, I have no comment,” Dieken said with a snicker.
Rivalries bring out the best — and sometimes also the worst — in people, including being left speechless.
But when White passed away in 2008, I could tell that it affected Dieken in a way I certainly hadn’t expected. This was about life, the real world. That other stuff years before was just football.
We bring all this up in light of what happened to Sherrone Moore on Wednesday, when he was fired as Michigan head football coach, with cause, because of his having an inappropriate relationship with a staffer. Things then began to unravel further with a series of other events. His career, his reputation and his personal life, especially his wife and his children — everything he valued andhad worked so hard to build over the years — was gone, quite possibly for good, in a veritable blink of an eye and he, himself, was the sole reason for it.
When that happens, you’re not really an Ohio State Buckeyes fan, but rather a fan of humanity. Pray for this guy — yeah, the former Michigan coach, on the other side of the greatest rivalry not just in college football but team sports overall as well — and also, and especially, all the other people who are involved and, innocently so, have been so tremendously hurt.
Again, as with Doug Dieken, this is about life, the real world. The other stuff over the many years with these two schools was just football.
Steve King
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