Coaches

The San Francisco 49ers used to count rings. Now they count rungs. Down the ladder of success they've gone, finishing with a losing record six years in a row and pushing those five Super Bowl victories further and further into the past. Coach Mike Singletary is pushing back, in part by staging one of the league's most rough-and-tumble training camps. "We just have to be better in everything we do," said Singletary, who had a Hall of Fame career as a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears.

This should have been the first month of the rest of Joe Torre's life. He could have treated his wife to Sunday brunch, or cheered his 13-year-old daughter at her softball game. He might have joined his fellow New York Yankees' legends for the first weekend of the new Yankee Stadium, or offered expert analysis from a broadcast booth. He should be enjoying retirement today, not managing the home team at Dodger Stadium. That was the way he planned it.

Finally, USC speaks! Actually, no, the university on Wednesday again refused to discuss the public disintegration of one of its marquee assets -- the blowing up of the men's basketball program -- but I dug up a quote anyway. The following is an excerpt from President Steven B. Sample's annual address to the faculty, delivered Feb. 10, 2009: "I have learned that difficult times often bring out the best in us. Complex challenges have a way of focusing our attention on what is essential.

USC basketball Coach Tim Floyd delivered cash to the man who steered O.J. Mayo to the university, according to a former associate of the player and the middleman. That associate, Louis Johnson, says Floyd met Rodney Guillory outside a stretch of Beverly Hills cafes on Valentine's Day in 2007, giving him at least $1,000 cash in an envelope -- which Johnson has since reported to investigators from the U.S. Attorney's Office, FBI, IRS and the NCAA.

A high school coach who helped launch several professional football careers was gunned down in front of students Wednesday by a former player who may have had psychiatric problems, authorities said. Mark Becker unloaded several rounds into Aplington-Parkersburg High School football Coach Ed Thomas and was arrested in the driveway of his parents' home soon afterward, said Kevin Winker, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

What started as a small gift from a pair of agents to their well-known client has taken off in an unexpected direction. The yellow "X" cap that Lakers Coach Phil Jackson donned a few minutes after the Lakers won the NBA championship on Sunday in Orlando, Fla., spawned a deluge of phone calls to the office of Jackson's father-and-son agent team of Todd and Brian Musburger.

Any figure skating coach can teach students how to land a jump or perform a spiral. Not every coach sees his job extending to providing life lessons that skaters will rely on long after they stop performing sit spins and triple flips. Tom Zakrajsek believes that to mold champions he must first mold character, and the accolades his students have won seem to validate his approach. The 45-year-old Ohio native guided three skaters onto the U.S.

Last year, Tim Floyd told anyone who would listen he was a USC Trojan for life. "This is my last job," he insisted. What Floyd never said was "this is my last job interview." This week, Floyd told players at the season-ending basketball banquet that he was in for the long haul. And Floyd meant it, at the time he said it. Before he knew it, though, he was on a private jet headed to Tucson and interviewing for the Arizona job. Reaction: Attach yourselves to dogs, folks, not coaches.

Minnesota Timberwolves President David Kahn told the Associated Press on Thursday that the team and Kurt Rambis were not close to a deal to name Rambis as its new head coach. Kahn said Wednesday that he is in a position to "do something within a week" and would like one or two of the coaching candidates to meet with owner Glen Taylor before a decision is made.

Kevin O'Neill, USC's new basketball coach, said he was ready to move "forward" -- his view being that the glass is half full and not cracked and leaking all over the counter as the perception has been recently. These are hardly happy times around the Galen Center, with an NCAA investigation churning on and recruits leaving with such speed that they cause vapor trails.