Today in Zorn's Hobby Shop: Metal Sculpting

You know how NFL coaches are. Always weaving stories about sculpture into their pregame speeches. If you've heard one story comparing Rudy to Rodin, you've heard them all. But still, might as well ask the Redskins whether Jim Zorn has used his art to help them understand football.

"He's told stories before," Shaun Alexander said. "He recently told a story about molding stuff, molding iron."

Molding iron, huh?

"I did," Zorn confirmed. "I gave them a word picture last week about hot iron and how volatile it is. How we need to play hot, we need to play like hot iron. I talked to them about cast-metal sculpting, and what kind of experience that is, how hot it has to get for aluminum to melt and bronze to melt and iron to melt."

Um, hotter than an Ashburn practice field in August?

"A lot of other molten metals [are] pretty passive, you know?" Zorn said, mentioning the melting points of aluminum and bronze. "But iron, 2,900 degrees? Wheeew. It's very volatile."

By now, you're possibly wondering why it is that Jim Zorn knows the melting points of various metals for use in cast-metal sculpting. Simple.

See, he began his post-retirement coaching career still without a college degree, moving from Boise State to Utah State to the University of Minnesota, and promising his bosses at each step that he would continue his education during the offseason. Then he and the whole staff at Minnesota got canned, and he began to worry that his résumé was holding him back.

"I could not get another job," he told me. "Nobody wanted to hire a guy without a college degree. It was a little bit embarrassing. So Steve Largent made a comment, he got together with my wife, Joy, and he said while Jim has 'idle time' he should get his college degree."

So Zorn sent his college credits to what was then known as Regents College, a New York school that was a pioneer in distance education and has since changed its name to Excelsior. He needed to take 22 credits in one semester, including four upper-level courses in the same subject area. Since he loved art, he chose that as his concentration. And one of the courses turned out to be cast-metal sculpting, which he loved.

"Tremendous," he called it.

(In a conference call with Seattle area reporters this week, Zorn described going to a career counselor for guidance between his playing and coaching days. Museum curator was one of the options. "You have to make sure that the piece that you are setting out is viewed in the right way, expressed in the right way," Zorn said in the call, "and that each piece has to fit in with the gallery itself.")

But cast-metal sculpting also requires a special facility and a team of fellow artists, and by the following year Zorn had landed a demanding job with the Seahawks. So he hasn't been able to cast-metal sculpt since he got his degree from Regents, but he still has some of the pieces he made, in his house and in the homes of friends. His players have never seen these works, but that's not to say they're not familiar with his creative bent.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's got a little artwork," Jason Campbell said. "I've seen some of his stuff in his office before. It's pretty good. He makes these mirrors, and outside the mirrors there's like wood, like Indian drawings or something. He made one Redskins mural. I can't draw, but I need to come up with something. I just need something so I'm not stressing about football all the time."

(Other Zorn hobbies? "He used to ride his bicycle to the games," Seahawks Coach Mike Holmgren said this week. "And when he left, I said: 'You know, I don't think you can do that in Washington. I mean, the head coach, you've got to kind of drive the car and do the normal thing.' He might still do that, I don't know.")

Anyhow, the mirror, which Zorn said is "huge," is currently located inside the FedEx Field suite in which his wife watches games. After the season, he plans to have it relocated to Redskins Park. And after that, one can only hope, it will wind up in the Hirshzorn.