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Coach and Athletic Director

Eight Decades Strong

By Bruce Weber, Former Publisher

And now Herb’s baby is ready to turn 80! G. Herbert McCracken was the head football coach at Lafayette College, then the equivalent of a modern I-A program, when he conceived Scholastic Coach magazine in 1931. What made his task a little easier was that football coaching was a seasonal occupation in those days. In the off-season, he was the advertising salesman for Scholastic, a publishing company in New York, founded in 1920 by Herb’s friend, M. R. “Robby” Robinson. 

At the time, Scholastic had one magazine, The Scholastic, and Coach seemed to both of them an ideal way to expand their publishing “empire.” Herb played “Pop Warner football” at the University of Pittsburgh (his coach was Pop Warner), was a charter member of the American Football Coaches Association, was eventually elected to the College Football Hall of Fame and, in 1988, received the AFCA’s highest honor, the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award. But founding Scholastic Coach was perhaps his greatest achievement.

Modest Beginnings
So Scholastic Coach began, with an initial circulation list of 12,000 coaches and athletic administrators. Its first editor, Jack K. Lippert, camp counselor, basketball official and gifted writer, wrote in the first issue that there was a “need for a publication that will concern itself with the problems of the secondary school physical director and coach.” 

Starting with that first issue, the greats of the coaching profession have contributed to the growth of sports in America through this magazine. It included a piece by Colgate’s Andy Kerr on the Red Raiders’ intricate offense, Michigan’s Harry Kipke on the Wolverine punting game and national mile champion Ray Conger on cross country.  (The second issue featured a story on the need to include dance in the physical education curriculum by a University of Pittsburgh P.E. major named Eugene C. Kelly — who would become the world’s most famous dancer — Gene Kelly!) 

In the subsequent 783 issues, the magazine has grown into the No. 1 source of information for coaches and athletic administrators, on both the high school and collegiate levels.

Masin Takes Over
But the story of Scholastic Coach truly focuses on its second editor, Herman L. Masin, whose death this past June, two weeks before his 97th birthday, marked the end of a truly incredible era. That Scholastic empire envisioned by Robinson and McCracken was ready to take its next baby step in 1936, with the founding of Junior Scholastic, arguably the company’s most important product until Harry Potter came along. It was only natural that Lippert would edit that magazine, which left Coach without its leader. 

A fortuitous phone call to NYU produced a spanking new physical education major who was also the sports editor of the university newspaper. “He may be your man,” said the dean. It was the best job recommendation of his career.

Herman L. (which stood for Lewis and was always included in his signature) Masin arrived at Scholastic in September of 1936 and he never left. He edited every issue of the magazine, now known as Coach And Athletic Director, until illness sidelined him in 2008, a run of 72 years and, unless some other nonagenarian editor pops up in the Himalayas, the all-time record holder by every standard of measurement.

He opened the office every morning and was usually among the last to leave every evening. He maintained that schedule until well past his 90th birthday.

Every word was lovingly massaged; perfection was his constant goal. The coaches who wrote for the magazine may have been great coaches but few would ever be considered for a Pulitzer for their writing. But Masin was a gifted editor and in his capable hands, questionable copy came out sounding like poetry.

Every word was edited in pencil and crunched at least once, maybe more, through his manual typewriter. There was no requirement for capital improvement in the Coach And Athletic Director budget…just pencils and typewriter ribbons. While Masin came to appreciate all of the available technical innovations, the thought of using an electric typewriter (the 1970s) or, heaven forbid, a computer, made him break out in hives. As he said in a 2006 interview, “Resisting change is part of my nature. I don’t make a lot of changes in my life.”

Masin was not a man of extraordinary interests. He was an avid theatergoer, which, in New York, is a full-time occupation. He could name every heavyweight boxing champion and every Oscar-winning Best Picture — ever. And jazz remained a passion throughout his life. For years, he reviewed jazz albums for Scholastic’s school magazines under the byline, Ed Coach. (He didn’t fool many people!)
 
Coach And Athletic Director, however, was the dominant force in his life. “We never published an issue I didn’t like,” he said in 2006. That’s because every issue bore his own personal stamp. His life was reflected in the bound volumes that lined the shelf behind his desk. His Here Below editorials (the department was started by Jack Lippert; Masin, who worshipped Lippert, could never dream of changing the title) were gems. For many Coach And Athletic Director readers, that was the first thing they turned to when their monthly issues arrived. Masin, while certainly a man of strong opinions, was a beautiful writer. And if a reader objected to his positions, he or she would have a long response in the mail by the end of the workday. 

In The National Conscience
When Masin got behind an idea, there was absolutely no quit in him. When football coaches were still withholding fluids from players at practice as a motivational tool, Masin warned of the inherent dangers…and he warned about it constantly. He lobbied so hard for the National Federation to pass rules prohibiting the use of the head in blocking that when, in fact, that rule passed, then Executive Secretary Cliff Fagan wrote that the new rule should be called “The Masin Rule.” He encouraged world-ranked discus thrower L. Jay Silvester to write the first article ever published about the growth — and dangers — of steroid use by East German track athletes in 1972. 

Masin was proud that the leading coaches in America chose to be published in Coach And Athletic Director. To many, it was the seal of approval — long before Good Housekeeping got hold of the idea. The legends all appeared in the pages of the magazine — George Halas, Adolph Rupp, Clark Shaughnessy, Dean Smith, John Wooden, Paul (Bear) Bryant, Duffy Daugherty…anyone who was anyone was represented in these pages.

Masin’s greatest skill, however, was spotting unknown talent and watching that talent bloom on a national stage. A young high school football coach in West Virginia named Ben Schwartzwalder began covering coaching clinics for Coach And Athletic Director long before he went to Syracuse and coached Jim Brown, Ernie Davis and all of the Orange immortals. An unknown Philadelphia-area basketball coach named Jack Ramsay appeared in Coach, then went on to St. Joseph’s and the NBA on his way to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

But Herman’s greatest discovery was a young line coach at Adelphi College on Long Island named Al Davis. “Al Davis has the most brilliant mind in football,” he frequently said — and wrote. And he meant it. It took little more than a decade from the time the magazine published Davis’ first article until he became (a) the hottest assistant coach in the NFL, (b) head coach of the Oakland Raiders, and (c) the merger-driving commissioner of the American Football League. Masin was at his side all the way, kicking off a mutual-admiration society, which spanned more than 60 years.

Special Projects Solidify Presence 
This writer joined the team in 1965, ostensibly to serve as Masin’s assistant. Masin had reached the ripe old age of 51 and Scholastic was concerned that a succession plan needed to be in place. That never happened, of course. But while learning to be a writer and editor under Masin’s patient guidance, we gravitated toward special projects, which enabled Coach And Athletic Director to better serve our readers.

Coach And Athletic Director pioneered high school All-American teams starting with football and track in 1951. Future Hall of Famers (Bart Starr and Jerry Kramer were members of the first football team in ’51) got their first taste of national exposure in these pages. Basketball was added in 1956 (Oscar Robertson led that initial team) and the first girls basketball squad was announced way back in 1976. Adidas was the key sponsor for more than a decade.

Coach And Athletic Director coaching clinics debuted in 1970, starting with football and basketball. The faculty included all of the giants. John Wooden and Bill Russell were the stars of the initial basketball clinics. In football, Bear Bryant and Joe Paterno highlighted the early football staffs. Soccer and tennis eventually joined the list. England’s World Cup-winning manager Sir Alf Ramsey headlined the first soccer staff. Tens of thousands of coaches spent long weekends gathering information from their sports’ greatest experts and networking with their peers. 

In March 1977, just weeks after winning Super Bowl XI as the Oakland Raiders’ head coach, John Madden was the keynote speaker at a Coach And Athletic Director clinic in Allentown, Pa. Seated in the front row, taking copious notes, was Philadelphia Eagles’ head coach, Dick Vermeil, along with his right-hand man, Dick Coury. As the clinic ended, Vermeil asked if he could speak too. He jumped onto the platform and delivered two hours of great information. 

A 1978 clinic introduced us to an unknown strength coach on Joe Paterno’s staff named Dan Riley. He convinced Masin that strength training was the wave of the future. That produced the magazine’s most-read — then and now — feature, Powerline. Riley ran the department through his tenure at Penn State, the Washington Redskins and the Houston Texans before turning over the reins to Michigan State’s Ken Mannie in 2000, who produces brilliant columns every month.

Coach And Athletic Director also executed some of the most outstanding award programs for high school athletes and coaches, sponsored by companies like AFLAC, Schutt, Franklin Life, Schick and even the U.S. Army. But a 1985 meeting with the sports marketing department at Gatorade produced the most important high school award of all time, the Gatorade High School Player of the Year program, which is still the premier high school award program in the country today.   

And now the torch passes. At the end of 2008, Masin and this writer, who had been the magazine’s publisher since 1981, decided to “hang ’em up.” Rather than look for replacements, Scholastic decided to end its involvement and sold the title to Lessiter Publications, which already had a strong presence in the sports-publishing world with Winning Hoops and The Real AAU Basketball magazines.  We’re delighted that Lessiter has taken the ball and run with it.

Thousands of coaches have told us the impact that Coach And Athletic Director had made in their lives. We can’t speak for Masin (and never could) but we’re delighted that Herb’s baby and Herman’s legacy will continue into its ninth decade and beyond.