FAN PORTRAIT- Calvin Case meets Rich Brooks

FAN PORTRAIT--CALVIN CASE MEETS RICH BROOKS

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In Dec-Jan, of 76/77, while at Los Altos High school I got to play under Rich Brooks for 3 weeks. Brian Clark, (Michigan State and latter the #3 backup behind Montana and Young, bumped Bono by a year latter) the son of Monte Clark (ex Lions coach and current SF coach at the time) was our QB. We were 11 and 0 going deeper into the playoff and the Niners, after what used to be the traditional double shellacking by the Rams were done for the season. Brooks, my Uncles neighbor and old chum and golfing buddy (they went to Scotland the summer of Brooks hire here in STL together to play golf) came down with Monte Clark and a bunch of the 49 staff to see what they could do about helping us.

We were a 2A school and we had tied a Ca state record for shutouts with 9 in a row, the tenth game our rival school Mountain View had managed a field goal ending the streak. Anyway Ca is such a big state that they don't have a state championship but rather a couple of regional champions, the upshot the second week of Jan we were still playing football. Anyway we had 2 a days again over xmas break (boo hoo, sob) but this was made more palatable by getting to run rinky dink plays out of the 49 play book. They had us doing things like picking defensive backs (interfering), really really flooding zones and just stuff our coaches never even dreamed about.

The upshot was we were going to have to play 5a schools to go deeper into the playoffs. Before the Bay area quarter finals and the semi finals all the coaches gave speeches (the coaches always did the speeching, our job was to make loud aggressive noises at the end). Well some of the 49ers coaches were having fun with this, whipping up a bloodthirsty mob and all and getting the kind Uoo-Rah rah!! rah!! response from our team that they could never get from real pros any more

Anyway Brook's speech would have been good at a ladies tea room and was given in the tone that you would use there too some thing like: "remember your assignments gentlemen", "lets go out and play a good game", "get up clean, be good sports"..snooze, snooze. This was in complete contrast to say Monte Clark's fiery rousing speech that consisted of something like "Smash! Stomp! Kill!Step all over them, no mercy! destroy destroy!" By the end Clark had us chanting Kill!!! Kill!!! while smashing our helmets into the lockers while doing gorilla stomps where as Brooks method worked better than SOMINEX.

I guess Clark was just telling us to go do what he had seen the Rams do to his 49ers and what the Rams will do to the 49ers this year....
twice!

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