People at Drake have been fearful the highly-successful Stone would be a candidate at Wisconsin the minute she accepted the Bulldogs’ job prior to the 2000-2001 season.

After all, she’s a native of Oregon, Wis., and coached at Wisconsin-Eau Claire for 12 seasons before coming to Drake.

Now that Jane Albright has resigned at Wisconsin, the fear that Stone might become a possible candidate for the Badgers’ job has become reality at Drake.

Stone produced records of 23-7 and 25-8 in her first two seasons at Drake, and is 14-10 (9-6 in the Missouri Valley Conference) this season heading into Saturday’s 2:05 p.m. game against Indiana State at the Knapp Center.

However, there might be a bit of hope at Drake. It’s not a given that Stone will be the coach Wisconsin wants as the successor to Albright.

Indeed, there likely will be a number of other coaches with strong credentials who show interest in the Badgers’ opening.

Like Bill Fennelly.

What? Isn’t Bill Fennelly the guy who has done a wonderful job of building Iowa State’s program into one of the nation’s best? Isn’t Bill Fennelly married to Iowa State for the rest of his coaching life?

Yes to the first question. Maybe a no to the second question.

A close friend of Fennelly tells me that the Wisconsin job might be one in which Bill would be interested.

The source said Fennelly has some issues with the Iowa State athletic administration, and they’re serious enough that he perhaps could be talked into interviewing for a job such as the one at Wisconsin—and that he could maybe take it at the right price.

It would give him a chance to take over a sick program and build it into a strong program just like he did at Iowa State.

Oh, sure, this is a down year for Fennelly and the Cyclones. They’re only 10-15 overall and 5-9 in the Big 12 Conference. But people around the women’s basketball coaching scene know Fennelly is a solid coach who will have more outstanding teams than average teams.

Stay tuned. It could get interesting.

Maybe you’re not so excited now that you’re finding out you’ll have to pay more for your tickets to Hawkeye games next fall.

Iowa is jacking up the cost of public season tickets a whopping 25 per cent—the largest increase ever. A season ticket for 2003 will cost $246, compared with $196 last year.

The price of success, I guess.

Mike Woodley, who was an assistant football coach at Iowa State and later a football administrator on Dan McCarney’s Cyclone staff, is taking his son, Andy, with him to be an assistant on his new staff at Sam Rayburn High School in Pasadena, Texas.

"Andy will coach the receivers for me," Woodley said as he talked about looking forward to his job as head football coach and campus coordinator—another name for athletic director—at the Class 5-A school. "Andy will also be a member of Rayburn’s basketball coaching staff."

Brian, who is Woodley’s oldest son, is the head coach at Johnston High School. Matt Woodley, another of Mike’s sons, is an assistant on Terry Carroll’s basketball staff at the University of Denver.

Joe Woodley, another son, will be a senior linebacker for Iowa State next fall.

Mike, who had been at Iowa State for 8 ½ years, is eager to get started in his new job. He’ll be there in time for the start of spring practice.

"They interviewed 12 guys for the job," he said, "so I’ve got to feel good that I got it. Rayburn is in the largest class of schools in Texas.

"I enjoyed my time at Iowa State, and I enjoyed working with Coach McCarney, but I’ve got to admit that I missed being a head coach. I was intrigued with Texas high school coaching."

Woodley said he hopes to make it back to Ames for a couple of Cyclone games next fall. And he figures on being able to see Iowa State play at Texas Tech next Oct. 11.

"This is a great opportunity for Mike," McCarney said, "and I’m proud of him."

That happened to the local paper this week.

In the sports section was a story about the death in Orangeburg, S.C., of Gus Guydon, 64, who was a standout basketball player and, later, assistant coach at Drake.

Of his job on the staff of the late Maury John at Drake, the story said Guydon was reportedly the first African-American to hold such a position at a Division I university.

Uh-oh.

That piece of information originated in a South Carolina newspaper, and was carried again in the Register. When I saw it in a news release, it immediately raised a red flag in front of me, so I didn’t use it when I wrote a column about Guydon the day before the local paper ran its obituary.

I’m glad I didn’t.

I covered John’s teams at Drake, and I wrote plenty of stories about Guydon. Not once did John say that Gus was the first black assistant coach hired by a Division I school, and not once did Guydon tell me he thought he was the first black on a major-college staff.

I called Chuck Schoffner, sports editor of the Associated Press in Des Moines, and asked him what he thought of the statement saying Guydon was the first black member of a Division I coaching staff.

Schoffner, a Drake graduate and a guy who knows a lot about athletic history at the school, said he wasn’t using that piece of information in the Guydon obituary. I told him I wasn’t, either.

I double-checked with a couple of guys who were close to the Drake athletic scene when John and Guydon were big basketball winners in Des Moines. One was Paul Morrison, who then was the school’s sports information director and now is the historian there. The other was Bill Thompson, now an athletic department administrator at Drake.

Neither Morrison nor Thompson said he could recall John or Guydon saying that Gus was the first black to be on a Division I staff in the nation.

Suffice to say that Guydon was a tremendous basketball player for Drake who went on to become a very valuable assistant when Maury John had his brilliant Bulldog teams in the late-1960s and early-1970s.

And my advice to the local paper is to check with the people who know before saying some guy is the first to do anything.

Hey, they know how to make a buck.

While saying that, I’m going to give all of you a bit of advice.

If you plan on dying soon, make sure you do it before March 11.

Although Anger tried, but failed miserably, to put a positive spin on things in a column he wrote for today, the paper is going to start charging money to print the type of obituaries that now are free. The new policy starts March 11.

Anger pointed out that you can still get a free obit—as long as it’s only eight lines long.

Big deal.

Hell, that won’t even give the family of some poor bozo enough room to say that the guy’s favorite hobbies were fishing off the bridge, playing poker and taking his grandchildren on the tilt-a-whirl at the State Fair.

Any obit longer than eight lines will cost a ridiculous $3.75 per line.

The new obituary policy doesn’t surprise me, of course. After all, you’ve got to pay to get your wedding in the paper, so they might as well charge your family when you die. The next thing they’ll be charging you for is your birth announcement.

No wonder circulation is in a constant nose-dive at that place.

A retired newspaper guy wondered a while back what Diane Graham, whose job title is managing editor/staff development, does with her time.

My never-ending research has turned up the answer that among Graham’s responsibilities are scheduling brown-bag lunches and making sure the room is tidied up for the daily news conferences.

Now I have more specific numbers.

In the 6-to-10 a.m. time period, the KXNO show hosted by Larry Cotlar had a 1.9 rating compared to 0.8 by the KJJC team of Bob Dyer and Ken Miller. That’s a 111 percent increase from where KXNO was in the summer 2002 book and a 280 percent jump from where the station was in the fall 2001 book.

In the 3-to-7 p.m. slot, the KXNO show hosted by Steve Deace, had a 4.1 rating. The ESPN syndicated programming on KJJC had a 1.0 rating. That’s a 105 percent jump from where KXNO was in the summer 2002 book and a whopping 1,267 percent increase from where KXNO was in the fall 2001 book.

There used to be three all-sports stations in town. Now there are just two. You’ve got to wonder what the future holds.