Norv Turner - 58-82-1 - Replaces Marty Schottenheimer - 205-139-1 - As Chargers Coach - FOXSports.com and ESPN.com

Profootballtalk.com reports that the hard-working Jay Glazer of FOXSports.com broke this story and not ESPN.

Whatever, this is not good news for the Oakland Raiders, who fired Turner just two years ago. Now they have to deal with two angry ex-Raider coaches: Turner and Denver Broncos Head Coach Mike Shanahan.



Chargers hire Turner as new head coach
By Len Pasquarelli
ESPN.com


Hoping the third time will be a winner for Norv Turner, the San Diego Chargers on Monday hired the San Francisco offensive coordinator to succeed Marty Schottenheimer as head coach.


Norv Turner's Coaching Record

The Chargers are giving Norv Turner his third crack at being an NFL head coach. He's 58-82-1 with one playoff appearance in nine seasons leading an NFL team.


Year Team Record Playoffs
1994 WAS 3-13 None
1995 WAS 6-10 None
1996 WAS 9-7 None
1997 WAS 8-7-1 None
1998 WAS 6-10 None
1999 WAS 10-6 1-1
2000 WAS 7-6 None
2004 OAK 5-11 None
2005 OAK 4-12 None


The Chargers have scheduled a 4:30 p.m. ET news conference to introduce Turner as their new head coach.

Longtime league assistant coach Ted Cottrell, whose experience with the 3-4 defense is extensive, has been hired as defensive coordinator for the Chargers.

Turner, 54, compiled a 58-82-1 record as head coach of the Washington Redskins (1994-2000) and the Oakland Raiders (2004-2005). He served as the San Francisco offensive coordinator last season and was credited with the dramatic progress achieved by 49ers' second-year quarterback Alex Smith.

Contract details were not immediately available.

One of six known candidates interviewed by San Diego officials after Schottenheimer was dismissed, Turner was the lone man with primary expertise on the offensive side. Originally, it was believed the Chargers preferred that their new head coach have a background on the defensive side of the ball.

Turner interviewed earlier this month for the head coach vacancy in Dallas, where he played a big role as the Cowboys' offensive coordinator during the team's dominance in the 1990s, but did not land that job.

In San Diego, he will inherit a high-octane Chargers offense featuring star tailback and 2006 most valuable player LaDainian Tomlinson. But Turner will also be responsible for the continued development of quarterback Philip Rivers, who was in his first year as the starter in 2006.

Beyond Turner, the other known San Diego head coach candidates -- Gary Gibbs (New Orleans), Mike Zimmer (Atlanta), Mike Singletary (San Francisco), Ron Rivera (Chicago) and Rex Ryan (Baltimore) -- are all coaches whose expertise is on the defensive side. All but Singletary are current coordinators.

Cottrell has interviewed in the past for head coach positions, and came very close to landing the top job in San Francisco four years ago.

San Diego officials prefer to retain a 3-4 defense, the scheme for which the personnel is best suited, and hiring Cottrell allows that. Cottrell was actually recommended to Schottenheimer by Smith when then-Chargers defensive coordinator Wade Phillips was hired by the Dallas Cowboys as their new head coach.

Schottenheimer instead leaned toward hiring his younger brother, Kurt Schottenheimer, as the replacement for Phillips. In addition to Marty Schottenheimer, the Chargers, who posted an NFL-best 14-2 record in 2006 but were ousted in the divisional round of the playoffs, have lost five assistant coaches since the end of the season. That includes both coordinators.

Cottrell, 59, possesses 22 seasons of NFL experience as an assistant coach, including three stints as a defensive coordinator. He most recently worked as coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings (2004-2005). Cottrell lost his job when the Vikings fired coach Mike Tice after the 2005 season, and he worked in the NFL office in 2006.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.

Dick Harpootlian Endorses Barack Obama - Former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman

Former SC Democratic Party chairman endorses Obama
Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party said Monday he would throw his support behind presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

"I see in Barack Obama ... the same magnetism I saw in Bill Clinton," said Dick Harpootlian, who met with the Illinois senator during Obama's first campaign visit to this early voting state Friday.

Harpootlian's announcement came as New York Sen. Hillary Clinton made her first campaign trek through South Carolina. Harpootlian, who has in the past called Hillary Clinton a polarizing political figure, downplayed his comments Monday and said she or any of the Democratic candidates would make a fine president.

But he said Obama was the embodiment of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that people be judged by their character, not their skin color.

Harpootlian said he would immediately begin fundraising for Obama.

"I think it will be easy to raise money for him," Harpootlian said.

Barack Obama Is Black - Deal With It!

I can't believe anyone would stoop so low as to raise the question of wheather Barack Obama is Black. What I want to know is who raised the question? Who brought it up? Who says I have to be the decendant of a slave?

My last name is Jewish. For most of my life, the matter of where I came from was muddled, but there was never a question that I was Black. So if that't the case for me, why can't that be so for Barack?

Regardless, it's not a question to seriously consider. Case closed!

Rumor: Chicago Bears NFC Champion Head Coach Lovie Smith Offered Just $3.2 million - Profootballtalk.com

Thanks to Profootballtalk.com for bird-dogging the story on the Chicago Bears and the foot-dragging they've done in giving NFC Champion-head-coach Lovie Smith an offer of just $3.2 million a year for his new contract. That's terrible. $4 million at least. Here's the story...

BEARS LOW-BALLED LOVIE

A league source tells us that the Bears have offered coach Lovie Smith an extension worth less than $3.2 million per year.

And we're told that the low-ball offer was made since the Super Bowl.

Though we'd love to be so underpaid, the number is a slap in the face to a guy who took his team to the Super Bowl in his third year on the job.

Our advice to Lovie? Coach out your lame-duck season and head to the highest bidder.

John Sheroke - Sick Man Tried To Have Dr. Shelley Ferrill, His Wife, Killed

To me, this is a perfect example of the fear some men have of strong, smart, successful women. Here, this man had it all, but apparently could not get over the fact that his wife was the producer of their lifestyle and not him. Wow. Here's also the perfect example of how some people self-destruct. They can't just enjoy what they have and thank God for it. Now, this sap's off to jail.

HOUSTON (http://www.click2houston.com/news/11037943/detail.html) -- A wife lashed out at her husband in a downtown Houston courtroom Friday as he was sentenced for trying to hire someone to kill her, KPRC Local 2 reported.
John Sheroke, 40, pleaded guilty to solicitation of capital murder in a plea bargain and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Video: Watch Wife's Entire Statement To Husband In Court
Video: Husband Sentenced For Trying To Have Wife Murdered

Investigators said he tried to hire a co-worker to kill his wife, Dr. Shelley Ferrill, but the co-worker told police. Sheroke was arrested when he was caught on tape meeting with an undercover officer to finalize the $10,000 murder-for-hire plot in October.
Sheroke wanted the murder to happen during a carjacking of her Mercedes Benz. He provided details about her schedule, route and Katy area medical practice. Sheroke even said the killer should take the Rolex off his dead wife's wrist, according to authorities.
At his sentencing on Friday, Ferrill gave an emotional victim impact statement.
"What have you done to me, your wife? What have you done to your children? What need -- what desire could possibly by more important than my basic right to breathe?" Ferrill said. "You've turned our lives into some really bad made-for-TV movie."
Prosecutors said the motive was to collect on an insurance policy. Sheroke was also having an affair.
Sheroke and Ferrill have an 8-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son.
"Who would be comforting them? Who would teach them right from wrong? You -- the man who murdered me? Your girlfriend -- the very woman who put her own child at risk by having a relationship with you?" Ferrill said.
John Sheroke was a physician's assistant at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Hospital.

Chicago Bears Not Given Head Coach Lovie Smith New Contract; Team Upset - Profootballtalk.com

Profootballtalk.com reports on this terrible state of affairs.

MUTINY BREWING IN CHICAGO - Profootball talk.com

Keep a close eye on the situation in Chicago, where the Bears have still not given coach Lovie Smith a new contract, and where there is no evidence that significant discussions between the team and the Super Bowl coach aimed at extending the deal that expires after the 2007 have begun in earnest.

A source with knowledge of the situation tells us that some members of the team have agreed among themselves to refuse to do any contract extensions or restructurings until Smith gets rewarded for the team's performance on his watch.

And there's also an intention among some of the players to be candid with the free agents whom the Bears plan to target in March, with some current Bears players ready and willing to tell any new recruits not to count on Smith being around in 2008.

We think the team should move very quickly to lock Lovie up for the next four or five years, at $4 million or so per season. That's fair value for a guy who has one Super Bowl appearance and three years of total head-coaching experience.

The sticking point could be that the Bears hope Smith will have reduced expectations because the team lost in the Super Bowl. Then again, the guy who lost Super Bowl XL ended up with an extension that reportedly pays him $7.5 million to $8.5 million per year.

Smith would have had more leverage if he'd tried to do a new deal in the dead week before Super Bowl preparations, since there was a much better overall feeling in the air about the Bears and their coach before the team put on a so-so at best performance in the February 4 loss to the Colts. But Smith gambled that the Bears would win the Super Bowl, which might have put him in line for a deal worth more than $5 million per season.

Wally Matthews Of Newsday Might have something more going on then most mainstream sports media!

I'm starting to Like Wally-He's finally Making Sense!

Wallace Matthews
Lesson in Tiki's leaving
February 15, 2007

It is more than a little distressing that here in the 21st century, too many of us still have a plantation mentality when it comes to our professional athletes. Too many of us want ballplayers, even the best and brightest of them, to say nothing more than "yes sir," and "no sir."

It is not racist, per se, but it is certainly classist. No matter how good they are or how much they get paid, they are the entertainers, the hired help. They are supposed to just shut up and hit the baseball, shoot the basketball or carry the football.

Case in point: Tiki Barber. The other day, to kick off his new career as a television commentator, Barber made the perfectly reasonable observation that his former coach, Tom Coughlin, could be a tad inflexible.

In doing so, Barber implied that his decision to walk away from the NFL at the peak of his career was aided in no small part by the realization that if he were to come back, he would have to play another season for a man so obsessed with some warped version of discipline that he would not allow his 31-year-old running back, who had more touches than anyone in the league over the past four years, to take it a little easier on Wednesdays.

For this, Barber has been roundly criticized as disloyal, egotistical, self-centered and a headache the Giants will be better off without. And that's just from members of the media, who ought to know better and who ought to want more from the people they cover than a lowered head, a shuffle and an "Aw, shucks, ma'am" brand of false modesty that should have been banished from the vernacular around the time Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

It is bad enough when the fickle fans start bashing a player such as Barber, who brought his A-plus game every Sunday and never missed a start in the last five years, for talking out of turn. But when journalists start becoming more concerned with what people say rather than what they do, then the world has officially gone nuts.

Now, white is black, day is night, down is up and wrong is right.

Today, Tiki Barber is the bad guy, Tom Coughlin the victim. Doesn't he know that only fans, commentators and journalists are allow to analyze, criticize, pontificate?

The truth is, six months from now Barber will be missed a hell of a lot more than Coughlin will be wanted. The "headache," Barber, may be gone, but the tumor, Coughlin, lingers on.

The Giants knew Barber was leaning toward retirement more than a year ago, but did nothing to plan for his absence and took no steps to procure his replacement. And as this past dreadful season wound down and it was obvious the only Giant worth holding onto was Barber, the Giants made no known effort to dissuade him from his decision, even out of respect.

Can you imagine if a week from now, Derek Jeter tells a reporter he is thinking of retiring after the season? You can bet your baseballs the Yankees would spend all season trying to talk him out of it. Yet there is no evidence anyone in the Giants organization, from John Mara to Ernie Accorsi to Jerry Reese to Coughlin himself ever sat down with Barber to ask what, if anything, could be done to change his mind.

Instead, they treated the best player to wear their uniform since LT, and arguably the best offensive player in their history, as if he were Barry Bonds, saying goodbye but thinking "Good riddance!"

And all because he had the temerity to say what he was thinking, rather than what they would have wanted him to say.

You ask me, he should have gone all the way and told the whole truth, said that it was running backs coach Jerald Ingram, not Coughlin, who really taught him to kick his fumbling problem; that the Giants will never win with a befuddled kid like Eli Manning at quarterback; that the sainted Accorsi was actually a failure as a GM, and that Reese, his successor, was a willing accomplice as his head of player personnel.

He could have said that without him, there will be no real reason to watch the Giants offense next season, and that unless they overhaul the defense and pick up some linebackers, there will be no reason to watch a Giants game for the next several seasons.

He could have pointed out what an injury-prone malcontent Michael Strahan has become since he signed that big contract a couple of years ago.

And he might have added that while running backs like Tiki Barber come along once in a generation, losing coaches like Coughlin, guys who lose their tempers, their players, their teams, their games and ultimately their jobs are a drug on the market.

But we don't want that from our athletes. We want them to shut up and do their jobs, and leave the talking to those of us who can't do anything else.



SO i finally agree 100% with Wally! I don't dislike Tom C as a Coach, because he was what the Giants Needed after "Fast" Jimmy Fassel, but he can be overly Strict at times, as Tiki can attest to. He kind of reminds me of my High school coach Marty Tamchester, who had a Brief NFL career with Cleveland, and NY before becoming a Stock Broker, and then Burning out on Wall St. and becoming a Teacher and Football coach. He was always working us Hard up untill the day before a game, too hard for some. Years later I would work for him as an asst. coach in Semi Pro Ball with The NY Bandits and i asked him " why Gassers the day before a game? " "Bill" he said. " if you can run like that in Practice, you can run like that in a game."
That's that old Vince Lombardi Mentality which worked in the 60's and 70's, but doesn't work with the Players of today who have the advantage of medical advances that tell us not to overwork players or they get injured more often(see LaVar Arrington)......