Category: Did You Hear The One About…

The Drug Dog Smelled Something

Wayne Lewis and his wife, Carol, and two members of their family flew from Raleigh to Las Vegas on Frontier Airlines a few weeks ago on vacation.  Wayne told me the tickets cost just $38 each.

“The only thing you got free on that flight was toilet paper,” he said.

But that’s not what this story is about. When we were searching for how is rabies transmitted to dogs while they pant, we met an impressive dog and so this story is about airport security dog trained to detect drugs and bombs.

* * 

Carol and Wayne Lewis
Carol and Wayne Lewis

Wayne said that when he and Carol and their son and his wife got to the airport in Raleigh he checked his luggage but kept a carry-on bag. And then, like other passengers, they lined up to go through security, you know, where you have to empty your pockets and take off your coat, your belt, your shoes and your dignity. 

“As we were walking through the line I saw this dog they were having walk around everybody,” Wayne said. “Now I love dogs, but this dog didn’t look like he was very smart. Anyway, when we walked through the line he sniffed our luggage.”

The dog sniffed and didn’t move on — and that’s when it started.

“About five security people surrounded us,” Wayne said, and escorted them away from the line. “They wanted to know what we had in the carry-on bag.”

“I said, ‘Nothing. All we’ve got is clothes, you know, we don’t have anything.’”

Actually, that wasn’t quite so.

The security men said they would have to search them and one of them asked, “Do you want us to take you to a private room, or do it here?”

Wayne said he had been frisked before, after forgetting to take something out his pocket and setting off the alarm on a metal detector. Nothing to it.

“I said, ‘Well, you know, let’s just do it here.'”

“That was a mistake because, I’m gonna to tell you, my wife has never been that intimate with me before. And me and Carol were standing there, side by side, and all of a sudden Carol was saying, ‘What are ya’ll doing!’ I’m telling you they really went over us like a fine-toothed comb.”

After finding no drugs and no bombs they finally let all four of them go on their way.

So what caused that not-very-smart-looking drug and bomb dog to zero in on their carry-on bag and alert security?

In the bag there were two ham sandwiches.

Coming Friday: Learn To Shut Your Mouth

The Football Coach Made More Than Dean

 

Coach Dean Smith
Coach Dean Smith

Dean Smith coached the University of North Carolina basketball team for ten years, took his team to three Final Fours, and won the National Invitational Tournament  before UNC began paying him as much as it paid its football coach.

UNC, whose basketball teams have been to the Final Four 20 times, more than any other team in the country, used to be a football school — and not all that long ago, either. Not a good football school, mind you, but a school where football was more important that basketball.

First, the obvious, and then I’ll tell you about the salary figures I stumbled across last month while looking up something else at UNC’s Wilson Library.

The Obvious: Facilities

Kenan Stadium
Kenan Stadium

The Tar Heels have played football in Kenan Stadium since 1927, a stadium that originally seated 24,000. Over the years UNC more than doubled the size of the stadium and upgraded it in every respect.  It doesn’t seat anywhere near as many as the stadiums where today’s football factories play ball, but it’s in the middle of the campus, almost surrounded by trees, and way more beautiful than most stadiums.

Meanwhile, from the early 1920’s to the late ’30s, Tar Heel basketball teams played at Indoor Athletic Center, better known as the “Tin Can.” It looked like a great big tin shed, the kind you might find on a farm, where they stored the tractor and plows.

George Shepard, who won 81.2 percent of the UNC basketball games he coached during his four year tenure [1931-35], had this to say about that old venue, according to Wikipedia:

“The Tin Can was always freezing […] they had icicles in the corners. To stay warm the electricians put those big-wattage bulbs under the benches, and we had blankets and wore heavy sweat clothes.”

The basketball team moved to Woolen Gymnasium in 1938, where it was still playing ball when I enrolled at UNC in the fall of 1962. Woolen was just a big high school gym, with pull out bleachers and a capacity of about 5,000. That’s where they were playing when Coach Smith was hired in 1961, an overgrown high school gym.

In 1965 the team moved into the shiny new but only slightly larger Carmichael Auditorium, where most fans could sit in chairs instead of on bleachers.

The UNC basketball team did not get an arena equal to –or better than– Kenan Stadium until it moved to the Dean E. Smith Center, better known as the Dean Dome, current capacity, 21,750, in January 1986, after Smith had coached the team for 25 years.

The Money

IMG_6055Hand written notes on a scratch pad in a file that had belong to Vernon Crook, UNC’s assistant athletic director for business, say that in 1961, when Dean Smith was hired to coach the university’s basketball team, UNC paid him an annual salary of $9,200 [$77,551 in 2018 dollars].

UNC’s head football coach, Jim Hickey, was paid $13,500 [$113,417 in 2018 dollars] effective Jan. 1, 1962 – 46 percent more than Smith.

Coach Jim Hickey
Coach Jim Hickey

Was Hickey a big winner?

No. He was the football coach.  In the 1959, ’60 and ’61 seasons Hickey’s teams lost more games than they won. And, except for one terrific year, his teams continued to lose. Hickey coached a total of eight years at UNC, 1959-1966, winning 36 and losing 45.

UNC paid Hickey $17,500 in 1966, [$135,712 in 2018 dollars] his last season. He won 2, lost 8 that year.  Smith was paid $12,600 in 1966-67 [$97,713 in 2018 dollars]. His team won the ACC regular season and tournament championships and advanced to the NCAA’s Final Four.

Coach Bill Dooley
Coach Bill Dooley

Smith did not achieve pay parity with UNC’s football coach until 1971-72, when he and Bill Dooley, who replaced Hickey, were both paid $25,000 [$154,814 in 2018 dollars].  At that point Smith had taken his team to three Final Fours and won the NIT; Dooley had won 18 and lost 24.

NOTE: Dooley coached Carolina’s football team  for 11 seasons and left with a record of 69-53-2, at that time a school record for wins by a football coach.  Smith retired after the 1996-97 season with a record of 879-254, at that time a national record for wins by a basketball coach.  His teams won two national championships.

Coming Friday: Looking In The Wrong Place