Foxes bark, which I didn’t know, and won’t attack a bigger animal that’s making fun of them. The early morning hours are like Apocalypse Now across the fallow fields of Sussex County. The thud of rapid shotgun blasts are like Morse code for “we got your outlet malls right here!”

CLEARING HOUSE - A holiday season with no big-time basketball tournament at the Little Big House. I knew something was missing. I have not done a study on national high school tournaments going belly up, but it is the rule, not the exception. The monies and expenses just don’t make sense.

The Slam Dunk and Bay Ball showcased a facility that seemed perfect for tournament basketball and a community set up perfectly to handle 40 visiting teams and their families. There is already talk of bringing back a small, elite tournament to Cape once the new Big House is built and the bricks from the storied Little Big House are sold or hoarded for future Christmas gifts.

By the way, has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?

LANCE ALL DECADE - Lance White, former Cape cross country All-American, was recently selected to the 1970s Delaware High School Cross Country All-Decade team, and his plaque is sitting on my desk because I was his coach during his senior year in high school and Lance lives in Italy. Other members of the team are Pat Gahan, William Penn; John Greenplate, Newark; Bill Nagle, Salesianum; Dan Rincon, Dover Air; Wade Thorp, Christiana; and Chris Wetherhold, Harrington/Lake Forest.

Bob Keeney was the Cape cross country coach during Lance’s first two seasons of high school. Tom Hickman actually discovered Lance when he was a little guy as coach Hickman traveled the countryside with cones, stopwatches and ribbons and conducted track meets in fields. Hickman remains the man - the rest of us are just posers!

FINDING A FOOTBALL COACH - Cape Henlopen will sift through the list of football candidates in January then decide who to interview and see whether or not that person needs a job. It is always easier to hire someone who is already employed by the district, and I found there is always more interest in who will be coach than who is the coach as most practices are attended by no fans.

The new look Cape with its million-dollar facility is a hard place to figure out and the dissipation and dispersal of talent make predicting success close to impossible. Coaches like to retire to the beach, but is that the guy the community needs? I could go out the door any day and come back with 10 former head football coaches in the time it takes to drive the Surf Bagel, Wawa and Dunkin’ Doughnuts triangle.

I’m a former head coach myself and a retired guy except for this here “little article” I write twice a week.

The University of Pennsylvania awarded Buckminster Fuller “A Chair” back in the 1970s after his retirement. Fuller was hired to show up if he wanted, talk to students if he felt like it and think of new stuff if so inspired. Bucky, president of Mensa, was an inventor, futurist and visionary and the man who coined the term Spaceship Earth.

Spaceship Cape offered me “A Chair” and an office in that new building and I’ll think about lots of stuff, including coaching the football team. I always wanted to ruin the broken-bone, spread formation, Houston Veer Wing-T jumbo package, but as grandmom Rose told me. “You’re just like your grandfather - the belly is no option.”

SNIPPETS - On second thought, try getting rid of your game face!

The Ravens play the Dolphins at 1 p.m. followed by the Eagles at Minnesota. You may as well break every New Year’s diet resolution on the same day, and the same goes for improving your language. Both sixth seeds, the road warrior Ravens and Eagles are each predicted to win and some think keep winning all the way to the Super Bowl. But what if it rains or drizzles? Are you a football fan or what?