All set? You bet! Ready o? Lets go! Whaddya say? OK!Thats the chant.Thats how practice started every day for Gordie Lockbaum in his four years playing ftball at The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.It was a daily reminder of the passion, the camaraderie, the structure and the discipline that was to follow.It was the way his coach, Mark Duffner, started practice during Lockbaums heralded junior and senior seasons, when the team went 21-1 and Lockbaum became a two-time Heisman Trophy finalist.In their corner of the college ftball universe, much has been said and written about those teams, but not about the genesis of them. And almost none about the man who built it all from nothing.While the two seasons Lockbaum and Duffner spent together were remarkable, the tragic path they tk to get there is one neither would have taken if given the choice.In 1980, 37-year-old Dayton coach Rick Carter was a budding star. He had just coached the Flyers to the Division III national championship, punctuating the season with a 63-0 victory over Ithaca in the title game, and he was named national coach of the year in D-III.Thats when other colleges started calling, none more determined than Holy Cross. So committed were the Crusaders to hiring Carter that they called in the biggest weapon in their arsenal: superlawyer Edward Bennett Williams, owner of the Orioles, Redskins and the chairman of Holy Cross board of trustees.It was a pivotal time at Holy Cross, said Lockbaum. The college talked about going to bowl games. They wanted to be recognized, and Coach Carter was going to be the one to make that happen.Gregg Burke, Carters sports information director at Holy Cross and the current golf coach at Rhode Island, remembers the schl being aggressive in its pursuit.Williams sent his plane to Ohio to get Coach Carter, Burke said. You didnt hear about that kind of recruiting around here before.Carter assembled a staff that included future Green Bay Packers head coach Mike Sherman, future NFL coach Kevin Coyle and future Holy Cross head coach Mark Duffner, who also went on to coach in the NFL.Carter also helped recruit Burke, who himself had only recently graduated from Holy Cross.I was at the University of Michigan, Burke said. I just kind of got my feet wet there for 12 or 13 months. I was working with the basketball team, and my responsibility for ftball was shadowing Bo Schembechler. Theres a job thats every boys dream if they win and every mans nightmare when they lose.I had 10 minutes with Coach Carter, and I was sold. I was about to become the youngest Division I SID in the country, and was leaving Michigan to do it. That sounds crazy, but Coach Carter was so inspirational that I wanted to do it and do a gd job for him.In Carters first season, in 1981, Holy Cross finished 6-5 -- just the schls fourth winning season since 1963. The 82 campaign saw even more improvement, with an 8-3 record. But in 1983, Holy Cross went 9-2-1 and qualified for the I-AA playoffs for the first time in schl history. Holy Cross captured the Lambert Cup as the best I-AA team in the East and the ECAC Team of the Year award. Carter, meanwhile, was named Division I-AA Coach of the Year, his second such national honor in just four seasons.Holy Cross was on the map -- so much so that it became a home for players such as Gill Fenerty, who left LSU for Worcester and quickly rewrote the schls record bks before being drafted by his hometown New Orleans Saints and playing in the NFL and Canadian Ftball League.Fenerty was a superstar, Burke said. He was one of LSUs top recruits, but his father wanted him to go to a Catholic schl. Coach Carter changed the culture to make Holy Cross a destination. He made that transfer happen.Carter was on the national map, t. NC State came calling, and the job was Carters if he wanted it. It would have been a meteoric rise from Dayton to Holy Cross to a major college job in the ACC. But the Rev. John E. Brks, the president of Holy Cross, and Williams --?Carters recruiter and trustee chairman -- would not let him out of his original five-year contract.This was devastating for him, Burke recalled. His red-hot trajectory had come to a halt. When other schls knew the president wouldnt let him out of the contract? Forget it. Why even bother calling?It was the beginning of a rift between Carter and the schl. His next contract would include an escape clause, but there was a much bigger challenge lming: The impending creation of the Colonial League (later renamed the Patriot League), led by Father Brks himself, de-emphasized ftball.Not only would Carter not be coaching at the highest level, but his own schl was taking a step back from its commitment to ftball.While he hoped to appeal to save his program, Carter learned its fate 10 minutes before a news conference after a 24-0 victory over nationally ranked Delaware. Carter was simply handed a news release announcing that Holy Cross was dropping athletic scholarships, shaking an already shaken man.Rick was ashen, Burke said. He couldnt speak. He wanted to keep on winning to go to the next level.Despite the disappointment, the 1984 team started out 7-0 and featured a promising freshman defensive back named Gordie Lockbaum.Carter had a huge role in me chsing Holy Cross, Lockbaum said. He had built that place as a destination, to a level you could just see it was going up. When he came to my living rm, he made such a huge impression on my family. He was a major league closer with this VCR he would bring to show highlights. He was young, energetic, enthusiastic and had this innovative staff that just bubbled with excitement.The team ended the season at 8-3, and as Holy Cross prepared for 1985, Carter tk an interest in another project -- unheralded quarterback recruit Jeff Wiley, from Celina, Ohio.Signing day was over, and he came out to the town I grew up in a driving snowstorm, Wiley recalled. I mean, he didnt even have a scholarship to offer me. And it wasnt like I was 10 minutes from any airport. This was a drive from wherever he was. That has stayed with me to this day.[I was] the quarterback that no one else seemed to want. But I was undersized, and I grew up in Ohio. You could describe coach the same way. Perhaps, and I dont know because he never said it to me, but I think he saw himself in me a little.If you were with Carter, you were family. And family was everything to him. Family can bring out the best and worst in us, and in Rick Carter, you could argue it did both.Carter was uniquely close with his father, Cloyd.As close to his father as any father-son relationship I have ever seen, Burke said. His father would not only go to every game, but every practice. The two of them talking together all the time. They were inseparable. Coach also would bring his younger son, Andrew, along. To have both of them there? And to have his older son, Nick, at Holy Cross as a student? He was the happiest guy in the world.In August, that all changed. Cloyd was diagnosed with cancer, and he died just a week later. Carter then learned that his mother, Henrietta, had terminal cancer as well. The tree, the foundation that sprung forth every part of Carters success, was crumbling.Coach Carter changed dramatically when his dad passed that summer, said Burke.His father was his mentor, Lockbaum said. When he passed, it shk him to the core.Carter was not one to let anyone know he was hurting, or worse, slipping into a deep depression. This was 1984. Depression, like chemical dependency, was not considered a disease by people outside the medical community. It was seen as a weakness, a social failing. So how could a college head ftball coach step away to get help?Coach wasnt about to talk about how he was feeling, said Lockbaum. One time I got hurt, and Im on the table getting my knee drained. Im in so much pain, and I have tears running down my face. I open my eyes, and heres Coach Carter holding my hand while its happening. If theres any way he could take pain from you, he would have done it.It didnt work both ways.I wish he knew that the type of people he surrounded himself with would have supported him and jumped over walls or canyons to get him what he needed, Lockbaum said.Things on the field didnt help either. The previous spring, Holy Cross all-league quarterback, Peter Muldn, had graduated, leaving a huge hole in the offense. The Crusaders played three quarterbacks due to injuries, and Holy Cross finished the season at 4-6-1, the first losing season in Carters tenure.With the season behind him, Carter retreated to Ohio to visit his ailing mother. Tragedy struck again when his sister-in-law died from cancer.His wife, Deanna, noticed that Carter couldnt seem to remember or focus. He also wasnt eating or sleeping -- textbk signs of clinical depression. She made him privately seek treatment in Massachusetts.The man just wasn`t himself, Deanna would tell the Boston Globes Jackie MacMullan in 1986. He was not acting the way my husband would have acted.In January 1986, Carter was recruiting and preparing for a season while also making frequent trips back to Ohio to visit his mother, who was slipping in and out of consciousness. On one trip to Dayton, Deanna had seen enough.The minute I talked to him, I knew he was sick, she told MacMullan. He thought everyone knew. He thought they all could tell. He was torn between going to his mother and attending to his job at schl, but he was in such an upset state, he wasn`t thinking clearly.Carter listened, and on Jan. 24, a Friday, he admitted himself to Kettering (Ohio) Memorial for treatment of depression. He stayed until Monday, appearing to return to a more recognizable state.The medication seemed to work right away, Deanna said. He was sleeping better. His complexion was coming back. He laughed for the first time in weeks.A week later, on a Friday, Carter returned to Holy Cross with a promise to his doctor in Ohio to seek further treatment. The banquet was on Sunday, and there were recruits in town. On Saturday, he was at the Holy Cross fieldhouse going over details for next season and the banquet when he ran into his quarterback.It was the day before our banquet. ... We were talking about what was going to come up with next season, film he wanted me to watch and how he wanted me to be the best QB I could be, Wiley said. Last thing he said was he couldnt wait to get to work on that.Carter headed to his home in West Boylston, a nine-mile drive from campus.It was early Sunday morning and my rmmate handed me the phone, Burke recalled. He said, Nick Carter is on the phone. Why was Nick on the phone? I had no idea.Gregg, my dad died. I made him repeat that more than once. I was in shock. I kept asking, What happened? again and again. All Nick said was, My mom told me I had to call you.Deanna didnt want anyone to know that it was a suicide. She didnt want anyone to remember her husband that way.As the day unfolds, it became really hard, Burke said. The story that Rick tk his own life is getting out, and kids are coming by the ftball office and my office all night and were weeping. We never went home.Duffner, the assistant coach, called for a team meeting to let everyone know.When we were called in that Sunday morning, our thought was maybe Coach Carters mom passed away, Lockbaum said. His life circumstances were a lot worse than anyone knew. He shouldered everything -- thats Rick Carter.Still, people wanted answers. How could a 42-year-old coach with a resume most were envious of make this decision? Some people thought a coach who had always won, who had a career record of 137-58-7, just couldnt handle a losing season.Rick wasnt a winner. He was a competitor, Burke said. That record would only inspire him to work harder, not to give up. Some folks want to think that way, so it makes sense to them. If thats what they think, then they dont understand the full picture.The legacy of Coach Carter can probably be best seen in the 30 for 30 short The Throwback. Players and coaches didnt drift apart after the tragedy -- they came together under Duffner, who was named head coach sn after Carters passing.I didnt think I was ever going to leave there when I was with Rick, Duffner said. If he was still at Holy Cross, I know I would be there. We thought we had it all there with Rick.Over the next six seasons, Duffner led the Crusaders to a 60-5-1 record. In Duffners first two years, Lockbaum was twice a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, finishing third in 1987, ahead of Thurman Thomas and Emmitt Smith.You knew everything was initiated by Coach Carter, Lockbaum said. The two seasons I played without Coach were just an extension of this. You cant fake something that. Yes, it was pretty amazing for us to bounce back, but it was Coach Carter. He led the charge to build all that.Mike Philbrick is an editor for ESPN and an alumnus of The College of the Holy Cross.Buy Adidas Superstar . "I wrote 36 on my sheet at the beginning of the game," the Cincinnati coach said, referring the yard line the ball would need to be snapped from. Adidas Superstar Cheap China .R. Smith realized how easily basketball can be taken from him, and he wasnt going to take his place in the NBA for granted anymore. http://www.cheapadidassuperstar.com/ . After the whistle, Thornton skated the length of the ice, pulled Orpik to the ice from behind and punched him in the face several times. Cheap Adidas Superstar . -- The Bishops Gaiters are showing they belong among the countrys top varsity ftball teams. Discount Adidas Superstar . Burke is expected to miss two to three months after breaking a finger in the teams third preseason game. Tinsley, a 10-year veteran, spent the last two seasons in Utah, where the point guard averaged 3.England face their longest and busiest home season next year, followed by an Ashes tour to Australia, and managing the workload of players and coaching staff will be at the forefront of the teams planning.Trevor Bayliss, the England head coach, confirmed there have been discussions about him taking a break at some stage over the next six months while other members of the backrm staff will also be given the opportunity to rest. Australias head coach, Darren Lehmann, missed the recent tri-series in the West Indies and in 2014 Bayliss himself std in for Lehmann during a T20 series against South Africa.We have spoken about in the next six months different staff members having a series off here and there, including myself, Bayliss said. That hasnt been finalised just yet but with the staff as well its day-in, day-out, a 24-hour job, it may not seem like it at times but you are always thinking about the cricket. Theres always someone on the phone to you. Its important that the staff get a decent place as well.Players are often reluctant to concede their place but particularly those who play all three formats face a gruelling schedule. After Pakistans tour, England are due to visit Bangladesh - although that tour is now in doubt after the terrorist attacks in Dhaka - and then there are five Tests in India before Christmas.They return to India in January for three ODIs and three T20Is, then have a short tour of the West Indies from late February for three more ODIs - that trip could be a potential opportunity for Bayliss break. After West Indies there is a brief pause before Englands home season starts on its earliest-ever date of May 5 with ODIs against Ireland.ddddddddddddSouth Africa then arrive - their tour split by the Champions Trophy - before a full visit by West Indies concludes the 2017 summer which ends on September 29. Ashes tours normally begin around mid-to-late October.England have rested Joe Rt, Alex Hales and Moeen Ali - three of the players to appear in the three formats - for the one-off T20I against Sri Lanka at the Ageas Bowl. When fit Ben Stokes is another who would feature in Tests, ODIs and T20Is. Jonny Bairstow and James Vince are now also part of the squad in all formats.Paul Farbrace, the assistant coach, has previously spoken about the depth England now have available without weakening the side - particularly in reference to the one-day side - and while Bayliss said in his mind he was fairly close to knowing his strongest group of players for the Champions Trophy next summer the bench strength would come in useful.That will be on a case-by-case basis going forward, keeping a bit of an eye on the players, Bayliss said. If they are showing any signs of fatigue we will try to find some way of giving them a bit of break. It certainly is an issue these days in the international game. We have a group of players so it is a chance for some of those guys to get a game in the next 12 months and be waiting in the wings if we need them. ' ' '