Last Monday, April 13, Jim Rally, a towering figure in Bay Area soccer and US Open Cup history, passed away. He was 85.

In 1949, Rally, then just 19 years-old, founded Greek-American Athletic Club (AC) with his older brother, John.

In its 56 year history, Greek-American AC advanced to the US Open Cup Final three times, winning in 1985 and 1994. The club first reached the Open Cup Quarterfinals back in 1963 and over the next three decades would finish with 12 Round of 8 appearances, which remains tied for the third-most in tournament history. They also won the San Francisco Soccer Football League championship 16 times.

During those Open Cup years, Greek-American AC had a roster that included Nigerian internationals Andy Atuegbu and Godwin Odiye, Honduran Salvador Bernardez, Iranian Hadji Rahimipour and American players like John Doyle, Paul Bravo, Mark Semioli, and Tim Martin.

The Rallys were able to assemble such a talented roster because they treated their players with a respect uncommon even in the professional ranks.

Greek-American AC: 1994 US Open Cup champions. Photo: Greek-American AC

“There was an allegiance and affiliation with John and Jim that existed at the club level that did not exist at the professional level,” said midfielder Derek Van Rheenen. “There was a clubhouse. There were fans of Greek origin. And John and Jim were very beloved. We had a real desire to play for them, and as quirky as they were, there was a real affinity that didn’t exist at the professional level.”

“(The players) liked the group,” Rally said in an interview last year. “They liked the way that the spectators and fans treated them. They were all on a pedestal. They didn’t get that kind of treatment from any other team. We took care of them. We took them out.”

The players returned their owners’ affections.

Said Greek-American AC goalkeeper Aram Kardzair: “John and Jim were like my dad. They were like my father. It was just because of their passion for not only the game, but for the Greek-American (team). They were very proud of us.”

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for John and Jimmy and their love of the game and what they did with that club and with the players,” said forward Mike Deleray. “You’re talking about hundreds of people that went through the club over the years. It was a special environment.”

Greek-American AC celebrate their 1994 US Open Cup championship. Photo: Greek-American AC

Among the players, Rally was also infamous for writing long letters to the team after every match. In them, he would often make jokes at the players’ expense. About Deleray he once wrote: “Mike never lost a step because he never had one.”

But Jim Rally fought hard for his club off the pitch, even in adverse circumstances.

When a team from Seattle once tried to use legal action to stop Greek-American AC from playing in a national tournament, Rally did everything in his power to help his team get on the field and back into the tournament. He even went so far as to convince spectators to pose as Greek-American AC players so that the Seattle club couldn’t take the pitch.

Rally’s craftiness and knowledge of the game, together with his brother’s bonhomie and largesse, fashioned Greek-American AC into one of the best amateur club teams in the entire country.

It’s fitting then that Greek-American AC, a club that embodied the familial and friendly spirit of the amateur game, were the last such club to win the US Open Cup in 1994.

But tragedy struck in 1997, when a massive fire broke out at an industrial laundromat managed by John Rally. The fire destroyed much of the memorabilia and trophies that the brothers had acquired through their many decades of patronage. All that was left to them were their memories.

Yet, when asked why he and John devoted so much of their time and money to Greek-American AC, Rally didn’t even hesitate with his reply.

“That was our life,” he said.

Originally hailing from the Bay Area, Tim Froh is now a Digital Content Writer for the Portland Timbers and has also written for SoccerWire and MLSsoccer.com. You can find him on Twitter @TimFroh.

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History really came alive for Natalye Pass Harpin in college, where she saw herself reflected in the stories and events they were learning about in class, and was also learning about other groups of people. It was in that environment where history wasn’t just about what happened in the past, but its relationship to the present.

“I wanted to be able to create that environment for others, so that they could feel more connected to it,” says Harpin, a continuing lecturer at UC San Diego, where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history. She’s also an associate professor at Grossmont College. “Also … to be able to connect it to the things that are happening today and how many of these communities are still affected by the legacies of the histories that we’re learning about.”

She’s heard people describe history as “boring,” but she wants to make it accessible and meaningful. Part of that effort will be in her upcoming lecture at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Central Library in downtown San Diego, “Afro-Descendants in Nazi Germany.” To close out Black History Month, Harpin will share the history of the Nazi’s racial policies toward Black Germans during the 1930s and ‘40s, and how they were inspired by the racism of America’s Jim Crow-era South. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. )

Q: Can you talk about what initially brought Black people to Germany before World War I? Where did they arrive from? What were their circumstances in Germany before the Nazi party came to power?

A: I’m not saying this is the definitive history, but from the research that I’ve done, it looks as if some of the people emigrated from the continent of Africa, in the different areas that had German occupation, to Germany to do things like go to school. Some of these people were children of dignitaries or other important people in their home countries. Around the time period of World War I, there were talks about if and how they would restrict people based on the fact that they were a different race. If they could be German citizens, what would it look like for children who were mixed race? Oftentimes, it would have been African men having children with German women. Sometimes, in the colonies, you’d have German men who would have marriages to African women. If those children [from those relationships] would be “legitimized” and have German citizenship, there were concerns about giving people access to citizenship because of this racialized aspect. From what I understand, there wasn’t a set of rules, like we had in the American South, because there wasn’t a very large population of Afro-Germans and they weren’t all segregated to one area. They were more spread out, so when you see some of the primary sources of people who did grow up then — like Theodor Michael and Hans Massaquoi, who were biracial and had German mothers and African fathers — they describe how they stood out because they were darker than their peers, but it wasn’t as hostile, with regard to them not being able to go to formal school, until the Nazis came to power.

Q: From what I’ve read, Black people in Germany were already dealing with anti-Black racism in Germany, so what was different once Adolf Hitler was leading the country?

A: There was a lot more push to forcibly sterilize, for example. So, because these people were non-Aryans [by Nazi ideology] — there were terms like “mischling kinder” (mixed children) or “Rheinlandbastarde” (Rhineland bastard)— and were considered to be a result of colonization within continental Africa, a lot of them were forcibly sterilized because [the Nazis] didn’t want them to be able to have their own children who would be German citizens because of where they were born, sort of like in the United States. If you’re born here, on the soil, generally, you’re regarded as an American citizen.

There was also the delegitimization of a lot of these people’s relationships, so they weren’t allowed to be in public spaces with their non-Black partners anymore. It sort of became a Jim Crow situation, like in the U.S. The Nazis borrowed a lot from the Jim Crow South and applied it to their populations of non-Aryans in Germany, so that included people who weren’t Black. [There were rules like] not being able to go to parks or other public spaces on certain days and only having a certain time where you could go to those places if you wanted to. A lot of anti-Blackness had already been a thing, but now there was more of an incentivized push to encourage people to do that type of anti-Black violence, even with adults doing it to children just to prove that they were part of the Aryan group, part of the Nazis.

I was reading in Hans Massaquoi’s book, “Destined to Witness,” and he was talking about how, often, the principal would organize a day where the students would document their Aryan status, or there would be Hitler Youth drills, but he would specifically single out Hans and not allow him to showcase anything. Hans talked about how he, of course, is a German boy because nationality and race are two different things. So, he’s a German boy and his friends are doing these types of exercises and he wants to be involved, but he’s never given the chance to show that he’s just as good as, or better than, everybody else around him. The principal would do things like publicly call him out or stop him from doing something and make it very clear to all of the other children that he was not like the rest of them.

I’m not saying it didn’t happen before, but you also had instances where people were more encouraged to say racist chants or sayings to Black people they would encounter in public spaces. There’s one that he referenced where the translation is basically calling someone “nigger, nigger, chimney sweep.” There were more of those types of displays where it was no longer considered rude to do those kinds of things; it became encouraged that you should do it because you’re Aryan and they’re not. In that hyper-nationalist state, that fascist state, where everybody is supposed to try to outdo each other to prove that they’re more Aryan than their counterparts, that became something that was even more aggressive toward non-Aryans, in general, and to Afro-Germans in particular. [Afro-Germans] had to constantly worry about people harassing them in public spaces.

Hans also mentions that when he was a child, an SS officer tried to grab him and pull him into a pub as an example of the shame of Germany that they’d allowed all of this diversity to happen in the first place. That there were Black people living there, mixed-race people living there. His mom had seen him and she intervened, but he was about 6 or 7 years old when this pack of adults decided they could assault and torment a child. It’s interesting the things that people have to learn to survive, like always having to be hyper-aware of your surroundings.

Q: Can you talk about the role that German citizenship, or the denial of it, played in the lived experiences of Black people in the country during this time?

A: In the earlier part of the 1900s, they had determined that they would give German citizenship to children who were born in the colonies who had a German parent and a non-German parent. That citizenship was really called into question in the late ‘30s as Hitler rose to power and the Nazis had taken over politically. That’s not unlike different times in American history where you had a lot of people classified as “mixed race” having their citizenship questioned or potentially revoked. I think a lot of people at that time who were benefitting from what the Nazis were doing (as far as having access to employment and leisure activities, how life was for the average, German citizen), made excuses for treating people who were non-Aryans this way because they felt like the benefits outweighed the risks. It was easier to go along when you can now take care of your family and inflation isn’t through the roof, so you had a lot of people who felt like they were personally benefitting and that their families were prospering under this. There was a huge propaganda machine that was discussing how people who weren’t Aryan weren’t even full humans, couldn’t be trusted, and they shouldn’t be seen as national brothers and sisters. Since the Nazis owned all of the forms of media, there was nothing to counter that narrative. Even Hans Massaquoi talked about how even he bought into the antisemitism that was disseminated at that time. Again, we have someone who’s from one marginalized group buying into things about another marginalized group, but because he’s a child at the time, he’s not really making all of those connections to say, ‘Well, if I’m not the way that they’re depicting, maybe these people aren’t like that either.’

Q: What is the legacy of these racist policies for Black people in Germany, and in Europe, today?

A: That, I’m not familiar with. I mentioned that Germany had pulled a lot of the similar barriers that were in practice, de facto and de jure, in the Jim Crow South. The Nazis thought that the Jim Crow system took things too far, like the one-drop rule, for example. [The one-drop rule is the idea that any kind of Black ancestry — one drop — makes a person racially Black.] The Nazis thought that the one-drop rule was too far because they also recognized that a lot of people had technically been mixed in at some point; but the Nazis were really in awe of the fact that the United States maintained this innocence and this whole public image around the world as being a place of liberty and freedom, but never having anyone sort of confront that, ‘How are you the country of freedom and liberty when you’re restricting people and what they can and can’t do, where they can and can’t eat, and these are your own citizens?’ So, the Nazis thought that it was too far to try and implement everything, but they liked the fact that the United States sort of got away with having a sterling reputation of freedom and liberty on its public face, but behind the scenes were really practicing a lot of the same ideologies among the marginalized communities here. [The Nazis] didn’t organically come up with that themselves, they pulled a lot of that from the Southern states’ de jure segregation laws.

Q: The Nazis were known for destroying documents connected to concentration camps and their sterilization programs, making it very difficult to retrace the experiences of the victims of their regime. Currently, we continue to be confronted with things like the rejection of African American studies in schools, or the banning of books and discussions of the racism and bigotry in American history. As a historian, what happens when societies are successful in altering and erasing history in this way? What is the danger here?

A: As a historian, I would say the danger is that we open ourselves up to having to repeat it because I find that when people don’t know the things that actually happened, they can’t analyze how they may be participating in the early stages of it, modern day. When you don’t learn about the things that have happened to other people, even today, you can’t understand why their descendants are still upset. So, it’s very easy to say things like, ‘Well, you know, everyone has freedom. That’s what they fought for in the 1960s.’ But, if you don’t know that redlining continued, that sundown towns continued, into the 1970s in California, you’re not going to really think about, ‘Why are there no Black people who live in this neighborhood?’ Or, ‘Why is everyone homogenized in these pockets of San Diego?’ All of this is by design, so when you ban those perspectives and histories, it makes people potentially doomed to repeat it because they don’t know what happened and how to stop it from happening again. It makes it so that they can’t understand different perspectives, or what different families are going through currently, as a legacy of those time periods.

I also think that it leaves open other histories to now be potentially excluded because we’ve seen throughout history that when negative things happen to Black people, they also happen for other groups down the road. That has always, historically, happened. So, if we’re talking about banning Black history, or different cultural things, it then opens the door to ban Asian history and women’s history and Latinx/Hispanic history. When society has allowed Black people to be excluded, and rules that have restricted us throughout our time in this country for the last 400 years, it makes other people have to deal with a lot of the same things we do, it’s just tailored differently to their population. You see that with regard to the Black lynchings, and in the southwest people were lynching Mexicans at the same time, for different reasons. The point is that if it’s OK to do it to this group, then now it’s OK to do it to another group because it’s still part of this whole idea that “these people are not really Americans like us.” The thing that I don’t think enough people appreciate is that, even if they don’t see themselves reflected in this and they think that, ‘This doesn’t personally affect me or my culture,’ it will eventually affect them because it’s never just stopped at Black people.

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Jim Schwartz walks across the field before a 2020 Eagles Giants game in Philadelphia. (Derik Hamilton – The Associated Press)

The Browns began interviewing potential backup players for fired defensive coordinator Joe Woods on Jan. 11, and for the most part their schedule won’t conflict with teams preparing for the playoffs.

Jim Schwartz, who has held the senior defensive assistant title with the Tennessee Titans for the past two years, was interviewed by Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski on Jan. 11. The Browns announced that Schwartz would be interviewing early.

Brian Flores, a Steelers senior defensive assistant and linebackers coach, is expected to take his turn on Jan. 12. Jerod Mayo, the New England Patriots’ inside linebackers coach, is also on the Browns’ radar to replace Woods.

The Titans, Steelers, and Patriots were eliminated from the playoffs during the final weekend of the Jan. 7-8 regular season.

Sean Desai, assistant head coach of the Seahawks, is the only known candidate for defensive coordinator on the staff of a team that has qualified for the playoffs. The Seahawks, an NFC wildcard team, visit the San Francisco 49ers on Jan. 14 at 4:30 p.m.

“We’re going to look at all these candidates very closely, and schematically they look at our list and they look at our tape and we can start talking about the ball and what we could do differently,” Stefanski said on March 9 January in a wrap-up press conference with General Manager Andrew Berry. “These are all discussions to ensure that our staff then fit into the vision of what we want to do.

“I believe in our player corps. Especially on the defensive side of the ball we have a lot of people who can influence the game, can influence the passer, are good at the back end and all those things. We definitely look forward to finding the right person.”

Schwartz, 56, was a scout for the Browns from 1993 to 1995 when Bill Belichcik was the Browns head coach. He began coaching in 1996 as an outside linebackers coach with the Baltimore Ravens of the NFL.

Schwartz was the Titans’ defensive coordinator from 2001 to 2008. Success in that role opened the door for him to become the head coach of the Detroit Lions. He was 29-51 and was released after five seasons. He was the Bills’ defensive coordinator in 2014 and had the same role with the Eagles from 2016-2020 after retiring from coaching in 2015.

The 2017 Eagles beat the Patriots 41-33 in Super Bowl LII, with Schwartz as the defensive coordinator. The 2017 Eagles allowed 295 points. They held opponents to 17 or fewer points seven times, caught 19 passes, recovered 12 fumbles, and kept opponents in third place with a conversion rate of 32.2.

Flores also has experience as a head coach. In this respect he was more successful than Schwartz. At 41, he might be able to engage with players better. Flores served as the Dolphins’ head coach from 2019-21 24-25.

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IRVING, Texas & SAN FRANCISCO – (BUSINESS WIRE) – Nexstar Media Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: NXST), today announced that Jim Rose has been named vice president and general manager of its San Francisco (DMA # 6) operations. TV (MyNetwork), KRON4.com and KRONOn.TV, the first local 24-hour digital streaming news application available anytime, anywhere to viewers and users in the Bay Area. Mr. Rose will begin his new role on May 17, reporting to Matthew Rosenfeld, Senior Vice President and Regional Manager of the Broadcasting Division of Nexstar Media Inc.

Mr. Rose brings more than 30 years of broadcast management, programming, research and sales experience to his role at Nexstar. Over the course of his career, he has steadily increased sales and profitability by identifying and cultivating positive, non-traditional revenue through a variety of innovative cross-platform marketing initiatives and sponsorship opportunities. Through his leadership, Mr. Rose has successfully demonstrated the importance of developing unique and innovative strategies for advertising and marketing clients and connecting local businesses to nonprofits to achieve mutual reach and local service goals.

Mr. Rose has held a number of senior positions over the past two decades, including serving as President and General Manager of KING 5 Media Group in Seattle, WA (DMA # 12) overseeing KING-TV (NBC) for the past five years. , KONG-TV (Ind) and its associated digital and social media channels. During his tenure, KING 5 expanded its local news, created or expanded several significant partnerships with major Seattle advertisers and community organizations, and increased its commitment to local initiatives, such as KING-TV’s partnership with Northwest Harvest, to address food insecurity in the United States to decrease metropolitan Seattle.

“Jim is an exceptional broadcast, sales and marketing manager with an impressive career spanning more than 30 years,” said Rosenfeld. “Together, our linear and digital media platforms in San Francisco produce more than 122 hours of locally produced weekly content for viewers and users in the Bay Area. Jim fully understands the breadth of KRON 4’s commitment to excellence and has the experience required to lead the station’s talented staff. Jim has a long track record of creating unique local content, expanding local audiences, and effectively developing appropriate linear and digital advertising solutions to meet the needs of advertisers and marketers. I am confident that his extensive broadcast, content, sales expertise and dedication to localization will enhance the leadership of our operations in San Francisco, build on the accomplishments of the KRON 4 team, and strengthen our overall presence on the West Coast become. ”

Commenting on his appointment, Mr. Rose said, “I am very excited to join the Nexstar team in San Francisco. KRON 4’s impressive commitment to quality journalism and its strength in broadcasting, digital and social media for audiences and advertisers in the Bay Area are competitive. I’m particularly looking forward to working with the talented staff at the local Bay Area news network. Nexstar’s unconditional commitment to quality, hyperlocal content, and omni-channel delivery sets new standards in our industry, and I couldn’t be more proud to join Nexstar and the KRON 4 team. ”

Mr. Rose received his BS in Communication Media from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and later received the university’s Distinguished Alumni Award. He is an active participant in industry-related groups and was the chairman of the Washington State Broadcasters Association. He is also an active member of a variety of community organizations and is vice chairman of the King County chapter of the American Red Cross and a board member of ArtsFund, a nonprofit that supports the region’s not-for-profit arts sector.

Mr. Rose and husband Eric have been together for 27 years and will move to the San Francisco area. You have a grown son, Isaac.

About Nexstar Media Group, Inc.

Nexstar Media Group (NASDAQ: NXST) is a leading diversified media company using the locality to deliver new services and value to consumers and advertisers through its traditional media, digital and mobile media platforms. The wholly owned operating subsidiary Nexstar Media Inc. consists of three business areas: Broadcasting, Digital and Networks. The Broadcasting Division operates, programs, or provides sales and other services for 198 television stations and related digital multicast signals reaching 116 markets, or approximately 39% of all US television households (reflecting the FCC’s UHF rebate). The division’s portfolio includes the major subsidiaries of NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, MyNetworkTV and The CW. The Digital Division operates 120 local websites and 284 mobile apps that deliver hyper-local content and industries to consumers and advertisers. Viewers can choose where, when and how to access content and create new revenue opportunities for the company. The Networks Division operates NewsNation, formerly WGN America, a national news and entertainment cable network that reaches 75 million television households, the multicast network Antenna TV and WGN Radio in Chicago. Nexstar also has a 31.3% stake in TV Food Network, a world-class cable company. Further information can be found at www.nexstar.tv.

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Puppy That was fast.

The San Francisco 49ers wasted absolutely no time lowering the gavel after the charitable conclusion of their disastrous 2015 NFL campaign.

Though head coach Jim Tomsula managed to knock out the St. Louis Rams in their final game of the year, he couldn’t even leave Levi’s Stadium with a job intact – the 49ers announced that Tomsula had been relieved of his duties after just one season at the helm .

The season record for the Niners 5-11 is almost flattering and shows an utterly chaotic season in which they not only ended up dead in their division, but also Colin Kaepernick – the man who led the team to a Super Bowl appearance two seasons ago led – losing his boast and ultimately his job as starting quarterback for the team.

The plot thickens when you consider that it was Tomsula who convinced Jarryd Hayne to sign with San Francisco – rather than the Detroit Lions – when he made the biggest code jump in Australian sports history.

Tomsula’s experience in the NFL’s European Feeder League, particularly guiding athletes from other sports through the transition to American football, was why Hayne made the leap over. Hayne himself confirmed this during the media circus that followed.

Of course, the NFL is a breakneck business at the best of times – far more than our local soccer codes, which new coaches are more likely to give new coaches a grace period of at least a few years – but the Niners were absolutely a team dumpster fire in 2015. And not a ton of play from a Ragtag Australian (no matter how phenomenal he may be) could have fixed it.

Tomsula joins the growing number of laid-off coaches from 2015, including Mike Pettine (who was banned from the Cleveland Browns after two seasons), Chip Kelly (who issued his marching orders from the Philadelphia Eagles after three years) and the longtime New York Giants leader Tom, Coughlin is believed to be on the brink of retirement, and big question marks hang over the future of Jim Caldwell of the Detroit Lions and Dan Campbell of the Miami Dolphins.

Soccer. It’s one hell of a gig, friends.

Photo: Michael Zagaris / Getty Images.

Source: Fox Sports.

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