Elliott and Bret Bielema were recently named co-defensive coordinators at Kansas State by Snyder, the former Iowa offensive coordinator who has done a brilliant job as the Wildcats’ coach.

"I was in the newsroom, and Bob Modersohn was helping me try to find a couple of old photos of E. Wayne Cooley. As I was walking back toward the library, Mark Siebert yelled, ‘Hey, are you another former Register columnist coming back to work here?’’’

Offenburger said he regarded that as "a pretty good line’’ following the re-hiring by Register bosses of husband-and-wife columnist team Rob Borsellino and Rekha Basu. They left the Register in 2000 to take jobs at the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, but will begin writing for the Register again in a matter of days.

"I’ll always cherish the time I had at the Register, but I wouldn’t go back,’’ Offenburger said. "I’m happy doing other things now.’’

Offenburger said he was looking for the photos of Cooley as he prepares to write a book on the history of the Iowa Girls’ High School Athletic Union.

"The book, so far unnamed, is framed around the biography of Cooley, who will retire Oct. 1 after 48 years as executive secretary,’’ Offenburger said. "The Union’s board hired me to do it. I’ve been a longtime fan of Cooley’s, and wound up doing some parttime work for him, handling some of the TV interviews during the girls’ state basketball tournaments the past 10 years.

"I’ll have the manuscript done June 1. Independent book packager Neelum Chaudhry, whom I’ve worked with on previous books, will edit and package it over the summer, contracting the printing, and it will be out and available Sept. 1.

I’m expecting it to be something more than 50,000 words. I’ve already traveled from Coon Rapids to Fairfield, from Numa to Kamrar, from Mystic to Manilla, and also to Hansell—all those are great names in girls’ athletic history in Iowa—with many more trips ahead.

"I’ll probably interview 120 to 150 people, including the great names among the athletes, coaches, administrators and fans who’ve helped build the nation’s best high school girls’ sports program. It’s a little daunting to think of all the work ahead as I start out on it, but it will be a really fun project.’’

"I wrote the column for 21 years—more than 4,000 of them—a figure that now wears me out thinking about it,’’ he said. "I also co-hosted RAGBRAI for 16 years and, of course, I’m still riding in it. I left the Register in the summer of 1998.’’

Included among the things keeping Offenburger busy now are operating a website (which includes columns he writes, as well as guest columns), writing for The Iowan Magazine and the Cooley/IGHSAU book.

Offenburger said he’s "glad Rekha Basu and Rob Borsellino are coming back to the Register, and that Sean Keeler is coming in to do a sports column.

"I say that even though I don’t know Keeler,’’ he said. "But if he’s half as good a journalist as his mother, Buena Vista vocal director Paula Keeler, is a music director, there’s going to be some delightful sports reading coming in the Register.

"I’m horribly biased, of course, but I love reading columnists, and I think the Register’s got plenty of room for them all. In fact, they could use another one—a good, bitchy gossip columnist, and it could be male or female. All the columnists do a little of that, but wouldn’t it be fun to have somebody doing nothing but that three or four times a week?’’

I run about as low-voltage an operation as you could find. It’s a 25-watt bulb having lots of fun in a media sea filled with million-dollar, high-tech stuff. It’s like putting out a newspaper in a telephone booth. When I finish a column, I e-mail it to my web page manager (my son, a pilot who has two degrees in computer science). He puts it on the website he designed.

He cautions me that if too many people try to click onto the website at the same time, I may be shut down immediately. That shows you how big we are.

When the column is on the website, I e-mail the people who have told me they want to read the columns (the list has grown quite large and now stretches from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, from St. Paul to San Antonio, from Maui to Singapore), and even a few who haven’t told me they want to read them. In the e-mails, I give a quick review of the subject matter that’s in the column.

I have tried to follow the practice that, whenever I write about someone in a column, I make sure they get an e-mail and the website address so they can read it.

My first rejection came in this week’s e-mails.

It was from Dennis Ryerson, who sent this message: "Please Remove Me From Your Mail List.’’

Request granted.

That’s the kind of thanks I get for trying to keep that guy’s name in the news.

Actually, it was my writing of the departure of Ryerson—the Register’s former lightweight editor—that got this whole website idea rolling. An intelligent guy from Ames, who knows me, knows a lot about newspapers, politics and a lot about other things, suggested I put the columns on a web page.

The rest, as they say when they can’t think of anything else to say, is history.

My original idea was to write about such things as health and travel—two subjects in which I am very interested. I didn’t want to confine myself to sports and the morning paper. However, I’ve found that, when it comes to sports and the morning paper, there’s always something new to write about.

But I’m still hoping to be able to write about health and travel sometime soon.

Meanwhile, I’ve been spending more time with the writing and the web page than I originally planned. Hey, my goal in this deal was to just have fun. And, yes, I’m having fun. Lots of it.

Just trying to keep up with the number of people who want their names added to the column and website list is challenging enough. So it’s nice to know that Ryerson was willing to step up and ask to be taken off the list.

Before we forget about Ryerson, let me mention that a rumor bouncing around Des Moines is that he already isn’t happy in his new job as editorial page editor at the San Jose Mercury News.

That’s a shame. A real shame.

I want to explain why my e-mail traffic has been unusually heavy in the past few days. When I returned home after having my mid-week lunch with the usual gang of working newspaper guys and retired newspaper guys--plus new Register sports columnist Sean Keeler—I checked my e-mails and quickly learned that it was going to be a busy remainder of the week.

The first thing I noticed was a message from an editorial writer at USA Today. He had read my essay about Register publisher Mary P. Stier and how she, along with new editor Paul Anger, planned to make needed improvements at the paper. The essay somehow appeared on the Poynter Institute’s national website that features Jim Romenesko’s Media News.

The USA Today editorial writer wanted to ask me some things about people who work—or formerly worked—at the Register. I answered all his questions.

By the way, I didn’t send Romenesko the essay on Stier, and I don’t know who did. I doubt I’ll ever find out. Those things happen in mysterious ways. Never would I have figured that Poynter would want a column from my 25-watt operation. I’m kind of glad it happened, though.

I’d like to also point out that I put strong pressure on my low-budget website operation to get the Stier column. I paid $6.65 for my fish, baked potato, salad and coffee lunch at Baker’s Cafeteria to hear her speak.

But it was worth it. Stier did a good job. She didn’t get to where she is without being good.

A lot of people evidently read the column about Stier on the Poynter site, and many of them have been e-mailing me since. The list includes people both in and out of the newspaper business that I haven’t talked to, or seen, for 15 or 20 years, as well as people I’ve never met.

I don’t know Romenesko and the other folks at Poynter, but if I ever meet them I’ll tell ‘em they have one hell of a popular website.

Even before the column about Stier landed on the Poynter web page, it had been read in a number of the nation’s newsrooms. As you might imagine, the web page has had heavy readership in the Register’s newsroom since its start.

It is also read by people in collegiate sports, professional sports and professional offices that aren’t connected with sports. What I have found is that people like to forward things they read on the Internet to others they think might be interested.

Some folks who oversee other websites have asked if they could link my web page to theirs. One guy said such a thing could add 10,000 readers to my site.

"Do anything you want,’’ I tell those people. "I’m easy.’’

So now I have lots of new friends.

I may soon need to invest in a 40-watt bulb.

"Observation No. 1--Larry Eustachy of Iowa State is the best coach in the country. For him to have his band of non-entities come close to beating No. 6 Oklahoma State is unbelievable. And that they did beat Missouri is more unbelievable.

"Observation No. 2--Roy Williams of Kansas is the most overrated coach in the country. His Jayhawks, who have the best player in the nation in Drew Gooden, lost at UCLA, which had lost to Southern California two nights earlier.

"OK, I’ll admit I’m not over the Raef Lafrentz defection or the Nick Collison defection or the Kirk Hinrich defection. Of course, odd events led to Hinrich and Collison going south. Had Tim Floyd stayed at Iowa State, Hinrich, would have been a Cyclone (he says that) and had not No Doc been jettisoned at Iowa, Collison would have been a Hawkeye (I don’t know if he said that, but that’s what I’ve heard).

"There’s a case where Bob Busboy should have called to the Collison home in Iowa Falls and said, ‘Don’t be too quick to choose against us. We’re going to get a good coach, undoubtedly better than Tom Davis.’

"Actually, I think Kansas could win the NCAA title. I hope not more than anything, and I’ve suddenly become a Mike Shashoofski fan at Duke.’’

By the way, No Doc is Tom Davis, Bob Busboy is Bob Bowlsby and Mike Shashoofski is Mike Krzyzewski.

Then there’s this e-mail from a retiree who lives in rural Iowa:

"With Steve Alford’s reputation as a recruiter, isn’t it surprising he is trying to play without a point guard?

"He supposedly has one coming in next year, and he better. But it won’t do this club any good. It’s a team without a rudder. People are sarcastically pointing out how far the Iowa basketball program has come since Bowlsby got rid of Tom Davis. Ouch!’’

"Word has it that Notre Dame would have stuck with George O’Leary as football coach until an investigation revealed that his great, great, great grandmother was responsible for the Chicago Fire.’’