The winningest coach you never heard of

Anson Dorrance will never be celebrated according to his deserts, because he coaches a women's team, and that team plays soccer. In December , his University of North Carolina team won its 18th national championship. There have only been 25 of them. John Wooden me no John Woodens.

"The Man Watching" is an ill-chosen title -- creepy, in fact, but the book successfully presents an exceptional man, and the story of how he has created a program and then sent his former players out to create more programs as well as to form the spine of the brilliant US women's national team makes entertaining reading. Though some of his former players and more than some of the women who played against his teams characterize Dorrance as arrogant, at his best he gives us an anecdote with which to disarm coaches inclined to take themselves too seriously. Tracked down one afternoon by a secretary and told he must return "an urgent business call," Dorrance replied, "I'm a soccer coach. How could I possibly have an urgent call?"

Pete Maravich, on the other hand, maintained that he was the recipient of the most urgent call imaginable. It came on a November night in 1982, less than two years after Maravich had ended his 10-year career in the NBA. Unable to sleep, he was counting roads not taken when he suddenly heard a voice: "Be strong," it said. "Lift thine own heart."

Maravich woke up his wife and asked, "Did you hear that?"

"Pete," she said, "you've really gone nuts, haven't you?" Then she went back to sleep.

Readers will have to decide for themselves whether Maravich went nuts. What's indisputable (and indisputably established in "Maravich") is that he was an absurdly prolific scorer, an inventive passer, and perhaps the most versatile and spectacular individual draw the college game has ever had.