By Bob Markus
This is the week that columnists wait for all year. Please don't analyze that sentence too closely, because if you do you'll realize how absurd it is. Of course it's the week columnists--and everybody else--wait for all year. It's the last week of the year for God's sake. But what makes it special for columnists and other pundits is that they can look in any direction and find gold. They can look back and make lists of the top this or that of the year. Or they can look ahead and make predictions about what next year will bring. It's so easy a caveman could do it. This year we are doubly blessed since New Year's Eve not only will mark the end of the year 2009, but the end of the decade.
Who's the Athlete of The Year? Of the decade? What were the top stories of the year? Of the decade? The answer to all four questions is the same, my friends. Tiger Woods. The AP sports editors named Tiger the top athlete of the decade and I don't see any reason to argue the point. He's so dominated his sport--we're talking about his golf game here--that the only question I have is whether golf is actually a sport and whether golfers are actually athletes. It is a question I resolved in my own mind many years ago. Or, at least, Arnie Palmer resolved it for me. Palmer had just been named Athlete of the Year or the Decade or some such and I, new to columnizing, had written that golfers were not athletes. I had in mind the fact that a golfer could be as pot bellied as Santa Claus or as skinny as the holes opened by the Chicago Bears' offensive line and still win golf championships. A few weeks later I was invited to a luncheon where Palmer was one of the guests. As it happened Arnie was seated right next to me and after the introductions were made, the golfing great said: "Chicago Tribune. There was a guy from The Tribune who wrote an article saying golfers aren't athletes." "Yeah," I confessed, "that was me." "Aw, that's O.K.," said Palmer. "It didn't bother me." He then went on to refute my case, pointing out the tremendous stress involved in playing 72 holes of tournament winning golf, holding one's swing together through fatigue and pressure, knowing if you didn't play well you weren't getting paid that week."
So, conceding that Tiger Woods is an athlete, he gets my vote for the grand slam--best athlete and best story for the year and decade. As far as story of the decade is concerned, Woods could easily be placed one, two. His miraculous one-legged U. S. Open win in 2008 was leader in the clubhouse until Woods' Thanksgiving night nightmare opened a can of worms that are eating him out of house and home cooking.
However, Tiger Woods isn't really the subject of today's column. What I really wanted to discuss was the other half of the equation--the vote for Female Athlete of the Year. I don't pay enough attention to tennis to know if Serena Williams deserved the honor, especially since I don't know her from her sister Venus. Oh, Serena's the one who threatened an official with bodily harm over what she considered a blown call? What I do know is that the runner-up has always been a model of decorum. There are no neigh-sayers when it comes to Zenyatta, whose victory over the best male thorobreds in the Breeders' Cup electrified racing fans and galvanized at least 18 voters into naming her Female Athlete of the Year.
Why the wing-footed mare, who turns 5 on New Year's day, didn't win the whole frittata is beyond me. Somebody must have a prejudice against horses. All Zenyatta did was score the biggest victory for feminism since Billie Jean King turned Bobby Riggs into an old man in the course of a few sets of tennis. This one might have been bigger. Riggs, after all, was 55 years old and had not been a big hitter even in his prime. It was as much a victory of youth over old age as it was of female over male. Zenyatta defeated the best field that could be assembled, albeit not a particularly star-studded one.
We may never know how Zenyatta feels about the slight, because horses are notoriously close-mouthed when it comes to blowing their own manes. But, although it was four decades ago, I do have some experience in talking with horses. I had received an invitation to meet Governor Max, one of the favorites to win a big feature race at Arlington Park. Max was hoping to become the first Governor to win a race in Illinois and not subsequently go to jail. I was a little uneasy about the meeting because I didn't know the etiquette involved. Do you offer to shake hands with a horse or do you wait until he puts his best hoof forward? Emily Post was no help. apparently she had never met a horse, either. I must tell you that Governor Max's trainer was known as the Joe Namath of horse racing, which might account for the conversation that ensued.
Markus: Hi, Max, glad to meet you.
Governor Max: You a sports writer?
Markus: Yeah.
Governor Max: I don't usually talk to sports writers. They always try to put words in your mouth. What did you want to see me about?
Markus: Well, you know, you're one of the bigs stars of this race. I just wanted to find out what kind of guy, er, horse you are.
Governor Max: Well, you just ask the questions and if I feel like answering 'em, I'll answer, 'em.
Markus: O.K. First, how will you prepare for the big race Saturday? I understand you're regarded as somewhat of a playcolt. Do you plan to spend Friday night in bed with a filly and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red?
Governor Max: Neigh!! I don't drink Johnnie Walker Red. Old Overholt's my brand. We horses are partial to rye, you know.
Markus: And how about the filly?
Governor Max. Don't believe everything you hear. After I win on Saturday I'll have all the fillies I can handle. Mares, too. The older women kind of go for me, you know. After I win this race they'll be coming to me. I'll have to beat 'em off with a jockey stick.
Markus: You really think you can win this thing? Some of these horses have run in better company than you have.
Governor Max: I know I'm going to win it. I personally guarantee it.
But horse talk, like any other foreign language, needs to be practiced. So when I decided to give Zenyatta a call, I wasn't too confident about how it would turn out. I needn't have worried. Zenyatta turned out to be a perfect lady, "and that's more than you can say for that Serena Williams,"she snorted into the telephone. "I take it you're a little unhappy about finishing second?" "I've never finished second before in my life. Fourteen starts, fourteen wins."
"Speaking of going unbeaten, how about that Rachel Alexandra beating the boys in the Preakness. She's unbeaten, too." "Yeah, but she's still just a baby. A 3-year-old. Let her get some more races under her saddle cloth and then she can come see me. Besides, she had her chance to run in the Breeders Cup and she chickened out. She knew she couldn't beat me."
"Her trainer says she didn't run in the Breeder's Cup because of the artificial surface at Santa Anita." "Unh huh, and my name is Man 'O War. Tell you what, mister. I'm going to do this again next year and I'm going to be Female Athlete of the Year. I guarantee it." Now where have I heard that before?
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
By Bob Markus
Christmas brings memories. Memories of childhood and sleepless nights, waiting for Santa. Memories of fatherhood, anticipating the looks on the childrens' faces when they found the gifts piled all around the tree. And for a sports writer who was there, memories of one of the greatest games in National Football League history. It was Christmas day, 1971, and instead of watching my kids open their presents, I was sitting in the press box in Kansas City's old ball park, watching what was, at the time, the longest game in football history. The game had everything: The Chiefs' Ed Podolak producing an individual tour de force that should have been enough to produce a victory; Chiefs' kicker Jan Stenerud, a future Hall of Famer, missing the chip shot field goal that should have won the game in regulation time; and, finally, Garo Yepremian, a balding, 27-year-old Cypriot who had never even seen a football game until five years earlier, kicking the game-winner for Miami 8 minutes into the second overtime.
The game was swaddled in controversy before it was even played, because it was also the first NFL game played on Christmas day. Commissioner Pete Rozelle was roundly criticized for scheduling the game on one of organized religion's two most sacred holidays. He was either Scrooge or The Grinch, take your pick. I didn't see it that way. In a column I wrote before boarding a plane on Christmas Eve day, I pointed out most of the criticism was coming from fans in the two cities involved--the NFC playoffs were opening in Minneapolis the same day--and that nobody was water boarding them to force them to attend the games. The only ones who had no choice were the teams, the officials, and the media. As a member of the last-named group I couldn't find it in my heart to complain. I pointed out there were worse places one could wake up on Christmas morning. Viet Nam, for instance.
Although this was the first year I can recall missing Christmas Day itself with the family, in most years we'd have our gift opening in the morning, have a festive midafternoon meal, and I'd be on a plane to the Rose Bowl or an NFL playoff by Christmas night. Once, in the days when The Tribune not only allowed but mandated that its employees fly first class, I was the only passenger in the front section on a Christmas night flight to Baltimore.
Missing out on holidays is an occupational quid pro quo for a sports writer. I almost never was at home on New Year's Eve. I can recall Thanksgivings in Dallas, covering the Cowboys, and in College Station, covering Texas at Texas A M. , and in Norman, Okla., covering the 1 vs. 2 showdown between Nebraska and Oklahoma. That was especially bitter sweet, because while the game was one for the ages, it came during a week when my wife's beloved aunt Grace died and I barely made it home for the funeral.
When my wife's alma mater, Illinois, went to the Rose bowl after the 1983 season, the whole family flew out to Pasadena. I went early, arriving a few hours after the Illini landed at the John Wayne Airport in Orange County. After reaching the team's hotel I immediately got into a screaming match with an assistant athletic director, who turned down my request for an interview with Head Coach Mike White on grounds that he had given a mass interview at the airport. White happened by in the middle of the ruckus and, obviously upset, grumbled, "Hey, we've got a big ball game coming up here." He eventually agreed to meet with me a few hours later, but the tension he displayed was not a good omen. Illinois, which had won its last 10 games after an opening game loss to Missouri, was a heavy favorite against a UCLA team that went into the game with a 6-4-1 record. What everyone overlooked was the fact that the Bruins, after an 0-3-1 start, had won six of their last seven games. No one expected them to even be in the Rose Bowl game, let alone win it. In fact, on the final week-end of the Pac 10 season, with Illinois having already clinched the Big 10 title, I had gone to Seattle to interview several Husky players for a special Rose Bowl section. After arch-rival Washington State produced a shocking upset on Saturday, I threw away my interview notes, placed a call to UCLA's athletic department and advised them I'd be in Westwood by Monday morning to interview some of their players.
Because New Year's day was a Sunday, the 1984 Rose Bowl was played on Jan.2, a date that will live in infamy in Champaign-Urbana. Illinois was never in the game. In a complete reversal from the 1947 Rose bowl when Illinois (7-2) had dismantled an unbeaten UCLA team that had lobbied to play Army (of Blanchard and Davis fame) instead, the Bruins returned the favor. They tore apart a young Illinois secondary in a 45-9 spanking that gave me the once in a lifetime chance to write: "Illinois has seen 1984 and it is more horrible than anything George Orwell could have imagined."
It's been many years since I last left hearth and home for Christmas. But it's also been many years since the entire family has celebrated the holiday together. I miss the old days. Still, I have my memories. I imagine you do, too. Merry Christmas, everyone.
Christmas brings memories. Memories of childhood and sleepless nights, waiting for Santa. Memories of fatherhood, anticipating the looks on the childrens' faces when they found the gifts piled all around the tree. And for a sports writer who was there, memories of one of the greatest games in National Football League history. It was Christmas day, 1971, and instead of watching my kids open their presents, I was sitting in the press box in Kansas City's old ball park, watching what was, at the time, the longest game in football history. The game had everything: The Chiefs' Ed Podolak producing an individual tour de force that should have been enough to produce a victory; Chiefs' kicker Jan Stenerud, a future Hall of Famer, missing the chip shot field goal that should have won the game in regulation time; and, finally, Garo Yepremian, a balding, 27-year-old Cypriot who had never even seen a football game until five years earlier, kicking the game-winner for Miami 8 minutes into the second overtime.
The game was swaddled in controversy before it was even played, because it was also the first NFL game played on Christmas day. Commissioner Pete Rozelle was roundly criticized for scheduling the game on one of organized religion's two most sacred holidays. He was either Scrooge or The Grinch, take your pick. I didn't see it that way. In a column I wrote before boarding a plane on Christmas Eve day, I pointed out most of the criticism was coming from fans in the two cities involved--the NFC playoffs were opening in Minneapolis the same day--and that nobody was water boarding them to force them to attend the games. The only ones who had no choice were the teams, the officials, and the media. As a member of the last-named group I couldn't find it in my heart to complain. I pointed out there were worse places one could wake up on Christmas morning. Viet Nam, for instance.
Although this was the first year I can recall missing Christmas Day itself with the family, in most years we'd have our gift opening in the morning, have a festive midafternoon meal, and I'd be on a plane to the Rose Bowl or an NFL playoff by Christmas night. Once, in the days when The Tribune not only allowed but mandated that its employees fly first class, I was the only passenger in the front section on a Christmas night flight to Baltimore.
Missing out on holidays is an occupational quid pro quo for a sports writer. I almost never was at home on New Year's Eve. I can recall Thanksgivings in Dallas, covering the Cowboys, and in College Station, covering Texas at Texas A M. , and in Norman, Okla., covering the 1 vs. 2 showdown between Nebraska and Oklahoma. That was especially bitter sweet, because while the game was one for the ages, it came during a week when my wife's beloved aunt Grace died and I barely made it home for the funeral.
When my wife's alma mater, Illinois, went to the Rose bowl after the 1983 season, the whole family flew out to Pasadena. I went early, arriving a few hours after the Illini landed at the John Wayne Airport in Orange County. After reaching the team's hotel I immediately got into a screaming match with an assistant athletic director, who turned down my request for an interview with Head Coach Mike White on grounds that he had given a mass interview at the airport. White happened by in the middle of the ruckus and, obviously upset, grumbled, "Hey, we've got a big ball game coming up here." He eventually agreed to meet with me a few hours later, but the tension he displayed was not a good omen. Illinois, which had won its last 10 games after an opening game loss to Missouri, was a heavy favorite against a UCLA team that went into the game with a 6-4-1 record. What everyone overlooked was the fact that the Bruins, after an 0-3-1 start, had won six of their last seven games. No one expected them to even be in the Rose Bowl game, let alone win it. In fact, on the final week-end of the Pac 10 season, with Illinois having already clinched the Big 10 title, I had gone to Seattle to interview several Husky players for a special Rose Bowl section. After arch-rival Washington State produced a shocking upset on Saturday, I threw away my interview notes, placed a call to UCLA's athletic department and advised them I'd be in Westwood by Monday morning to interview some of their players.
Because New Year's day was a Sunday, the 1984 Rose Bowl was played on Jan.2, a date that will live in infamy in Champaign-Urbana. Illinois was never in the game. In a complete reversal from the 1947 Rose bowl when Illinois (7-2) had dismantled an unbeaten UCLA team that had lobbied to play Army (of Blanchard and Davis fame) instead, the Bruins returned the favor. They tore apart a young Illinois secondary in a 45-9 spanking that gave me the once in a lifetime chance to write: "Illinois has seen 1984 and it is more horrible than anything George Orwell could have imagined."
It's been many years since I last left hearth and home for Christmas. But it's also been many years since the entire family has celebrated the holiday together. I miss the old days. Still, I have my memories. I imagine you do, too. Merry Christmas, everyone.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
By Bob Markus
As Frank Sinatra memorably crooned: Regrets, I've had a few. One of them is that I'm probably the only baseball writer who didn't vote for Roberto Clemente when he first appeared on the Hall-of-Fame ballot. Since Clemente, obviously, was one of the greatest right fielders of all time, that, on the face of it, appears to be outrageous. No one admired the Puerto Rican born Pittsburgh outfielder more than I did. On the one occasion I met him, in the dressing room after his second home run in two days gave the Pirates a 2-1 victory over Baltimore in the seventh game of the 1971 world series, I found him cooperative, thoughtful, and surprisingly articulate in his second language.
What, then, was my problem? It was this: Clemente was killed in a plane crash while on a mission of mercy after the 1972 season. There was an immediate stampede to place his name on the ballot, despite the rule that a player must wait for five years after his retirement before being eligible for the Hall-of-Fame. My argument was that if we bent the rule for Clemente, there might come a day when we would bend it for someone not so worthy. Besides, as far as I was concerned, Clemente was already in a higher Hall of Fame and he didn't need any writers' votes to validate it. I intended all along to vote for him five years later and I did write his name in on my ballot that year. Which was my second mistake, although not one that I regret.
While pondering this year's list of eligible players, I was reading through the rules for voting as determined by the Baseball Writers Association of America and came upon clause (D) under rule 3--in case of the death of an active player or a player who has been retired for less than five full years, a candidate who is otherwise eligible shall be eligible in the next regular election held at least six months after the date of death or after the end of the five year period, whichever occurs first. Whether that clause was in effect in 1973, I don't know. Reading further I find under rule 4, Clause (B) that "write-in votes are not permitted."
Now comes another player named Roberto and once again I'm torn. I know that some year, if I'm still around, I'll vote for Roberto Alomar. There are 15 players eligible for the first time this year and it seems to me that Alomar is the best of the lot. Some of the first timers can be dismissed without much thought, guys like Kevin Appier, Ellis Burks, Pat Hentgen, Mike Jackson, Eric Karros, Ray Lankford, Shane Reynolds, David Segui, Robin Ventura, and Todd Zeile. If any of these guys gets the required 5 per cent of votes needed to keep them on the ballot next year, I'll be surprised.
But a few names made me pause. Andres Galarraga, one home run shy of 400 and a former National League batting champ. Barry Larkin, 19 years with one team and the first shortstop to hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases. Fred McGriff, 493 homers, 1550 r.b.i. Enough said? Edgar Martinez, .312 lifetime batting average over 18 seasons, all with the Seattle Mariners. And, of course, Alomar. Some people may remember Alomar as the player who spit in umpire John Hirschbeck's face in 1996 and was suspended for five days. But the well-travelled second baseman should be remembered for his 10 Gold Gloves, his 12 consecutive All-Star appearances, his lifetime .300 batting averge and 474 steals..
There are those who feel that the Hall of Fame is becoming diluted, with too many players being voted in who were very good--but not great--players. I tend to favor the exclusionary side myself, but it's awfully hard, sometimes, to define greatness, especially so in these times when ball players are hanging around for up to 20 years, compiling numbers that almost demand inclusion.
Last year I was disappointed that Tommy John did not make it in his 15th and final try. This year I don't think I'll be disappointed even if no one gets the required 75 per cent. Last year I voted for seven players, including Harold Baines. I admitted that I ws only voting for him to help him get the 5 per cent he needed to stay on the ballot. He did that, but from now on he's on his own. As the Hall of Fame is now constituted I don't think he belongs there. At some future date, who knows. I voted for only five players this year, finally deciding that as long as Mark McGwire's name is on the ballot it's not up to me to rule on his character. So he got one of my votes. Lee Smith, the big, hard throwing relief pitcher, whose 478 saves rank third alltime, also gets an "x" next to his name. He definitely belongs. I voted for Andre Dawson, who captured 67 per cent of the votes last year and is the leading returning vote getter, and for Pitcher Bert Blyleven, who got nearly 63 per cent in his 12th try. Obviously his time is running out.
I considered Martinez and probably will vote for him some day, but all his numbers were accrued as a designated hitter and I have a problem with that. Finally, I voted for Alomar. I hope I don't regret it.
As Frank Sinatra memorably crooned: Regrets, I've had a few. One of them is that I'm probably the only baseball writer who didn't vote for Roberto Clemente when he first appeared on the Hall-of-Fame ballot. Since Clemente, obviously, was one of the greatest right fielders of all time, that, on the face of it, appears to be outrageous. No one admired the Puerto Rican born Pittsburgh outfielder more than I did. On the one occasion I met him, in the dressing room after his second home run in two days gave the Pirates a 2-1 victory over Baltimore in the seventh game of the 1971 world series, I found him cooperative, thoughtful, and surprisingly articulate in his second language.
What, then, was my problem? It was this: Clemente was killed in a plane crash while on a mission of mercy after the 1972 season. There was an immediate stampede to place his name on the ballot, despite the rule that a player must wait for five years after his retirement before being eligible for the Hall-of-Fame. My argument was that if we bent the rule for Clemente, there might come a day when we would bend it for someone not so worthy. Besides, as far as I was concerned, Clemente was already in a higher Hall of Fame and he didn't need any writers' votes to validate it. I intended all along to vote for him five years later and I did write his name in on my ballot that year. Which was my second mistake, although not one that I regret.
While pondering this year's list of eligible players, I was reading through the rules for voting as determined by the Baseball Writers Association of America and came upon clause (D) under rule 3--in case of the death of an active player or a player who has been retired for less than five full years, a candidate who is otherwise eligible shall be eligible in the next regular election held at least six months after the date of death or after the end of the five year period, whichever occurs first. Whether that clause was in effect in 1973, I don't know. Reading further I find under rule 4, Clause (B) that "write-in votes are not permitted."
Now comes another player named Roberto and once again I'm torn. I know that some year, if I'm still around, I'll vote for Roberto Alomar. There are 15 players eligible for the first time this year and it seems to me that Alomar is the best of the lot. Some of the first timers can be dismissed without much thought, guys like Kevin Appier, Ellis Burks, Pat Hentgen, Mike Jackson, Eric Karros, Ray Lankford, Shane Reynolds, David Segui, Robin Ventura, and Todd Zeile. If any of these guys gets the required 5 per cent of votes needed to keep them on the ballot next year, I'll be surprised.
But a few names made me pause. Andres Galarraga, one home run shy of 400 and a former National League batting champ. Barry Larkin, 19 years with one team and the first shortstop to hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases. Fred McGriff, 493 homers, 1550 r.b.i. Enough said? Edgar Martinez, .312 lifetime batting average over 18 seasons, all with the Seattle Mariners. And, of course, Alomar. Some people may remember Alomar as the player who spit in umpire John Hirschbeck's face in 1996 and was suspended for five days. But the well-travelled second baseman should be remembered for his 10 Gold Gloves, his 12 consecutive All-Star appearances, his lifetime .300 batting averge and 474 steals..
There are those who feel that the Hall of Fame is becoming diluted, with too many players being voted in who were very good--but not great--players. I tend to favor the exclusionary side myself, but it's awfully hard, sometimes, to define greatness, especially so in these times when ball players are hanging around for up to 20 years, compiling numbers that almost demand inclusion.
Last year I was disappointed that Tommy John did not make it in his 15th and final try. This year I don't think I'll be disappointed even if no one gets the required 75 per cent. Last year I voted for seven players, including Harold Baines. I admitted that I ws only voting for him to help him get the 5 per cent he needed to stay on the ballot. He did that, but from now on he's on his own. As the Hall of Fame is now constituted I don't think he belongs there. At some future date, who knows. I voted for only five players this year, finally deciding that as long as Mark McGwire's name is on the ballot it's not up to me to rule on his character. So he got one of my votes. Lee Smith, the big, hard throwing relief pitcher, whose 478 saves rank third alltime, also gets an "x" next to his name. He definitely belongs. I voted for Andre Dawson, who captured 67 per cent of the votes last year and is the leading returning vote getter, and for Pitcher Bert Blyleven, who got nearly 63 per cent in his 12th try. Obviously his time is running out.
I considered Martinez and probably will vote for him some day, but all his numbers were accrued as a designated hitter and I have a problem with that. Finally, I voted for Alomar. I hope I don't regret it.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
By Bob Markus
Even when the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) gets it right it can't get it right. The BCS did the popular thing--and the right thing--when, for the first time, it invited two nonmember schools to its postseason bowl party. Most college football fans were rooting for TCU and Boise State to be selected for one of the major bowls, all of which are controlled by the BCS. But not against each other.
The whole idea was to give the Horned Frogs and the Broncos, both of whom went undefeated in the regular season, the chance to prove they can play with the big boys. No one cares whether TCU can beat Boise State. What we want to know is whether TCU can beat a Florida, whether Boise State can beat a Georgia Tech or Iowa. Boise State will be playing in its second major bowl, having upset Oklahoma in the Fiesta bowl a few years back in one of the most exciting college games ever played. The Fiesta bowl once more will be the venue and once again Boise State will be the underdog against TCU. It could be an exciting game, but it is totally meaningless. How much more interesting the bowl season would have been had TCU, for instance, gone to the Sugar bowl to play Florida with Boise State squaring off with Big East champ Cincinnati in the Fiesta bowl or ACC champion Georgia Tech in the Orange.
This, of course, was a strange season, with five teams going undefeated. The BCS was lucky to have escaped another controversy when Texas had to kick a last second field goal to defeat Nebraska, 13-12, in the Big 12 championship game and remain undefeated. If the kick had failed, Cincinnati would have been in the national championship game against Alabama and TCU fans would have been livid. Because Cincinnati jumped over TCU in the final rankings on the basis of a last minute 45-44 victory at Pittsburgh. The Bearcats, of course, also ended up undefeated, and presumably moved up because of strength of schedule. Pittsburgh, which had gone into the game 9-2, was a big prize for the Bearcats no matter how slim the margin of victory.
TCU's schedule, while not overwhelmingly difficult, had a few high hurdles that needed to be negotiated. The Horned Frogs won at Clemson, which played in and almost won the ACC championship game, and handled a respectable conference schedule, which included wins at Air Force and Brigham Young and a home victory over Utah. Utah, by the way, destroyed Alabama in the Sugar bowl last year, making it 3-for-3 in favor of non-BCS teams over the last few years. With the TCU-Boise matchup that streak will come to an end. Somebody has to lose. Besides the fans, that is. TCU quite likely could beat any of the other bowl teams on a given day. Boise State had one given day and it was its opening game of the season when it embarrassed Oregon, 19-8. None of the Broncos' subsequent opponents presented much of a challenge, although Nevada was riding the crest of an eight game winning streak when it played the Broncos, who won, 44-33. If there is a difference between TCU and Boise State it probably is on the defensive side of the ball, although Boise State's defense was sensational in the opener when it held Oregon without a first down until the third quarter. Oregon was to lose only one more game all year and will be the favorite to beat Ohio State in the Rose bowl.
The other significant development over an exciting week-end of college ball, was the whittling down of Heisman Trophy candidates to five. Alabama's Mark Ingram appears to be the favorite on the basis of a good, but not dominating game, against Florida in the Southeast Conference title game. . There are those who feel that Stanford's Toby Gerhart, the leading rusher in the nation is better. Count me in that number although I admit my judgment was formed on too little evidence. The only game I saw Ingram play was the Auburn game, when he was mediocre at best. The one game I saw Gebhart play he tore Notre Dame apart.
But that's the trouble with Heisman voting. The voters may see a lot of games, but many if not most see one game a week, because they are working that game. I probably saw Notre Dame more than any other team because they are always on TV and a few weeks ago I opined that Irish QB Jimmy Clausen would get my vote if I had one. But Clausen did not have a good final game against Stanford and Notre Dame finished with a 6-6 record. Clausen would probably be one of the Heisman favorites next year but has decided to enter tne NFL draft, along with his talented receiver, Golden Tate. With their top two players gone, the Irish are going to need their new coach to be the second coming of Knute Rockne if they are to win as many as six games next year.
Oddly, two of the three quarterbacks who went into this season as best bets to win the Heisman are not generating much happy talk, despite the fact their teams went a combined 25-1. Both Florida's Tim Tebow and Texas' Colt McCoy were less impressive than last year and with Tebow losing his last game and McCoy being sacked seven times and almost letting time expire before the Longhorns kicked their season-saving field goal, it would be a surprise if either won.
The fifth candidate is the most intriguing and the player I now think should--but probably won't--be the Heisman winner. He's that boy named Suh that Johnny Cash used to sing about and I don't know if his name helped make him tough, but I do know that Nebraska tackle Ndamukong Suh played the greatest defensive game I've ever seen on a college football field Saturday night. He should change his first name to Kingkong, because he was flinging Texas players around like the giant ape of movie fame. He singlehandedly, well, actually two-handedly, almost beat Texas all by himself. Look at these stats: 7 1/2 tackles for loss; 4 1/2 sacks. In one game! Draft guru Mel Kiper says that Suh will be the first player chosen in the next NFL draft and calls him "as productive a defensive tackle prospect as I can remember in my 32 years in the business." In all the years of Heisman voting there has been only one defensive lineman to win it--Notre Dame's Leon Hart, who also was a standout tight end on offense. Suh would be the first true defensive lineman to win. He says he plans to come back for his senior year and if he does he'll likely be the Heisman favorite next year.
Even when the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) gets it right it can't get it right. The BCS did the popular thing--and the right thing--when, for the first time, it invited two nonmember schools to its postseason bowl party. Most college football fans were rooting for TCU and Boise State to be selected for one of the major bowls, all of which are controlled by the BCS. But not against each other.
The whole idea was to give the Horned Frogs and the Broncos, both of whom went undefeated in the regular season, the chance to prove they can play with the big boys. No one cares whether TCU can beat Boise State. What we want to know is whether TCU can beat a Florida, whether Boise State can beat a Georgia Tech or Iowa. Boise State will be playing in its second major bowl, having upset Oklahoma in the Fiesta bowl a few years back in one of the most exciting college games ever played. The Fiesta bowl once more will be the venue and once again Boise State will be the underdog against TCU. It could be an exciting game, but it is totally meaningless. How much more interesting the bowl season would have been had TCU, for instance, gone to the Sugar bowl to play Florida with Boise State squaring off with Big East champ Cincinnati in the Fiesta bowl or ACC champion Georgia Tech in the Orange.
This, of course, was a strange season, with five teams going undefeated. The BCS was lucky to have escaped another controversy when Texas had to kick a last second field goal to defeat Nebraska, 13-12, in the Big 12 championship game and remain undefeated. If the kick had failed, Cincinnati would have been in the national championship game against Alabama and TCU fans would have been livid. Because Cincinnati jumped over TCU in the final rankings on the basis of a last minute 45-44 victory at Pittsburgh. The Bearcats, of course, also ended up undefeated, and presumably moved up because of strength of schedule. Pittsburgh, which had gone into the game 9-2, was a big prize for the Bearcats no matter how slim the margin of victory.
TCU's schedule, while not overwhelmingly difficult, had a few high hurdles that needed to be negotiated. The Horned Frogs won at Clemson, which played in and almost won the ACC championship game, and handled a respectable conference schedule, which included wins at Air Force and Brigham Young and a home victory over Utah. Utah, by the way, destroyed Alabama in the Sugar bowl last year, making it 3-for-3 in favor of non-BCS teams over the last few years. With the TCU-Boise matchup that streak will come to an end. Somebody has to lose. Besides the fans, that is. TCU quite likely could beat any of the other bowl teams on a given day. Boise State had one given day and it was its opening game of the season when it embarrassed Oregon, 19-8. None of the Broncos' subsequent opponents presented much of a challenge, although Nevada was riding the crest of an eight game winning streak when it played the Broncos, who won, 44-33. If there is a difference between TCU and Boise State it probably is on the defensive side of the ball, although Boise State's defense was sensational in the opener when it held Oregon without a first down until the third quarter. Oregon was to lose only one more game all year and will be the favorite to beat Ohio State in the Rose bowl.
The other significant development over an exciting week-end of college ball, was the whittling down of Heisman Trophy candidates to five. Alabama's Mark Ingram appears to be the favorite on the basis of a good, but not dominating game, against Florida in the Southeast Conference title game. . There are those who feel that Stanford's Toby Gerhart, the leading rusher in the nation is better. Count me in that number although I admit my judgment was formed on too little evidence. The only game I saw Ingram play was the Auburn game, when he was mediocre at best. The one game I saw Gebhart play he tore Notre Dame apart.
But that's the trouble with Heisman voting. The voters may see a lot of games, but many if not most see one game a week, because they are working that game. I probably saw Notre Dame more than any other team because they are always on TV and a few weeks ago I opined that Irish QB Jimmy Clausen would get my vote if I had one. But Clausen did not have a good final game against Stanford and Notre Dame finished with a 6-6 record. Clausen would probably be one of the Heisman favorites next year but has decided to enter tne NFL draft, along with his talented receiver, Golden Tate. With their top two players gone, the Irish are going to need their new coach to be the second coming of Knute Rockne if they are to win as many as six games next year.
Oddly, two of the three quarterbacks who went into this season as best bets to win the Heisman are not generating much happy talk, despite the fact their teams went a combined 25-1. Both Florida's Tim Tebow and Texas' Colt McCoy were less impressive than last year and with Tebow losing his last game and McCoy being sacked seven times and almost letting time expire before the Longhorns kicked their season-saving field goal, it would be a surprise if either won.
The fifth candidate is the most intriguing and the player I now think should--but probably won't--be the Heisman winner. He's that boy named Suh that Johnny Cash used to sing about and I don't know if his name helped make him tough, but I do know that Nebraska tackle Ndamukong Suh played the greatest defensive game I've ever seen on a college football field Saturday night. He should change his first name to Kingkong, because he was flinging Texas players around like the giant ape of movie fame. He singlehandedly, well, actually two-handedly, almost beat Texas all by himself. Look at these stats: 7 1/2 tackles for loss; 4 1/2 sacks. In one game! Draft guru Mel Kiper says that Suh will be the first player chosen in the next NFL draft and calls him "as productive a defensive tackle prospect as I can remember in my 32 years in the business." In all the years of Heisman voting there has been only one defensive lineman to win it--Notre Dame's Leon Hart, who also was a standout tight end on offense. Suh would be the first true defensive lineman to win. He says he plans to come back for his senior year and if he does he'll likely be the Heisman favorite next year.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
By Bob Markus
In a perfect world, Notre Dame would have waited a week to fire Charlie Weis or Tiger Woods would have settled for a cold shower. As it is I now have two huge national stories to comment on, three actually, if you count the virtual sacking of Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden, whose 34 year tenure at Florida State has taken him beyond the bounds of regionalism and into the national spotlight.
Let's start with Tiger, whose post-midnight prowl on Black Friday gave the newly-minted term for the day after Thanksgiving new meaning. Woods may be among the world's greatest drivers, but apparently that applies only to the golf links. Behind the wheel of his SUV, Woods appears to be a duffer. How else explain his double bogey--a demolished fire hydrant and a bruised tree--at the home hole? Indeed, his failure to explain where he was going at 2:30 in the morning, why he presumably floored it exiting his driveway, why he was wearing no shoes, and just how he lost control of his vehicle is the very crux of a story that has made front page headlines throughout the known world. Who knows what the Martians are using to fill the news hole these days?
By Florida law, Woods doesn't have to tell anyone, including the police, what happened and there are many who believe that he has every right to remain silent. And he does. But he has already discovered that the absence of information inevitably leaves a vacuum that will soon be filled with rumor and innuendo. Surely, even those who most staunchly defend and even encourage Tiger's silence must wonder what did happen. Everyone has his own interpretation of the few facts that exist and here's mine: Tiger and his wife have a violent argument, not in the physical sense, but in the decibel sense. The argument probably has nothing to do with the consistency of the mashed potatoes in the recently consumed Thanksgiving dinner. More likely Elin, his wife, had seen the article in the National Enquirer which claimed that Woods was having an affair with a woman from New York and confronts him with it. He denies it (or maybe he doesn't) but at some point the discussion escalates to the point where Woods is agitated enough to storm out of the house, jump into his car and stomp on the gas pedal. He likely wasn't wearing a seat belt, which would account for the facial bruises and brief period of unconsciousness that has been reported.
If that is the truth of the matter, or something near the truth, it would serve Woods well to own up to it. Most people could relate to that. What married couple hasn't had a knockdown, dragout screaming match at least once in their lives? I've had more than one myself and my ultimate response has been to walk out of the house with the appropriate slamming of the door (just to make sure she knows I'm leaving) and walk off my anger.
Woods' image, which along with his unmatched golfing brilliance has made him a billionaire, is going to take a hit no matter how this story plays out. Perhaps it will soon be forgotten, as other sports heroes' escapades have gone away. How many people think of his rape trial when they watch Kobe Bryant play for the Los Angeles Lakers? Chances are, Tiger will keep winning golf tournaments and piling up endorsements, but for the short term when you hear the name Tiger Woods, "great golfer" will not be your immediate mental response. Rather, you might find yourself wondering, just why did Tiger's wife have that golf club in her hand when she went out to see what had happened?
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Notre Dame is easy to love and easier to hate. Its football players, by and large, are good kids who stay out of trouble. You rarely hear of a Notre Dame football player being involved in a barroom brawl. But its fans are insufferable. That's why being the head coach of Notre Dame's football program is the second toughest job on earth. Barak Obama has the toughest. The last three Notre Dame head coaches have all been fired, despite posting winning records. None of them lasted longer than Charlie Weis's five years. The longest tenured Irish coach was also, arguably, the greatest--Knute Rockne. The Rock served for 13 years and might have gone on for 13 more had he not been killed in a plane crash.
Since then there have been three more highly successful coaches at Notre Dame. Curiously, they each coached the Irish for 11 seasons and quit while they were ahead. The three of them, Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, and Lou Holtz all had something in common when they took the reins in South Bend. Experience. Frank Leahy was 20-2 in his two years as head coach at Boston College before coming to Notre Dame in 1941, just as America was preparing to go to war. His teams lost only four games in three seasons before he himself went off to war and when he returned he was even better.
His teams went undefeated for four consecutive years, then, after three comparatively mediocre sesons, he ended up with a fifth undefeated season. That one was marred by a 14-14 tie against Iowa in a game that changed football history. The Irish scored their two touchdowns on the final play of each half after faking injuries to stop the clock. His successor, Terry Brennan, had no head coaching experience at the college level and was a Leahy assistant for only a year. Despite four winning seasons out of five and a monumental 7-0 upset of Oklahoma, which broke the Sooners' 47-game winnning streak, Brennaan was fired. Then began the bleakest era in Fighting Irish history and it was Parseghian who came to the rescue. Ara had loads of experience when he took the Notre Dame job in 1964. He had been at Miami (o.), the Cradle of Coaches, for five years and at Northwestern for eight more. He had twice guided the perennial doormat Wildcats to the No.1 spot in the polls, only to see the dreams fade away because of a lack of depth. It was to fulfill his ambition to coach a national champion that he took the Notre Dame job and he almost accomplished it in his first season. The Irish, in a stunning turnaround (they had gone 2-7 the previous year), won their first nine games and led Southern Cal 17-0 in the season finale before losing 20-17. Nevertheless quarterback John Huarte went from obscurity to the Heisman Trophy during the course of that magical season. Parsegian got his national title in 1966, either because of or depite the infamous 10-10 tie with Michigan State. He repeated with an undefeated team in 1973 but in another year, burned out by the pressure, he retired, never to coach again.
Parseghian's successor, Dan Devine, had plenty of experience. I first met him when he was coaching Arizona State in the 1950s. I was stationed in Yuma, Ariz. at an army base where, as public information specialist I had a disc jockey show on Saturday afternoons. There I met Chuck Benedict, the radio voice of the Sun Devils, who took me along as a spotter on several occasions. Later Devine coached at Missouri, my alma mater, and with the Green Bay Packers, where I got to know him fairly well. On the day Parseghian resigned, acting on a tip, I flew to Green Bay, where Devine was getting ready to announce he was leaving for the Notre Dame job. After ending a hastily called press conference in the late afternoon, he crooked a finger at me and said, "Bob, come into my office for a minute." When we were alone, he said to me, "I just want you to know that whoever gets this job here will start with better personnel than I had when I got here." That was typical Dan Devine. In one sentence he had absolved himself of blame and put pressure on his successor, who happened to be Bart Starr.
I covered several Notre Dame games while Devine was head coach, including his only loss, 20-13 to Mississippi, in a game played in Jackson, Miss. That loss came early in the year and Devine's Irish won the national championship by beating Texas, 38-10 in the Cotton bowl. Devine worked for six years in the pressure cooker before resigning. To replace him the Irish turned once again to an untested coach, Gerry Faust, who had a brilliant record as a high school coach in Ohio, but no college head coaching experience. That turned out to be a disaster and, so, the Irish went back to the tried and true, hiring Holtz away from Minnesota. Before that he had seven successful years at Arkansas, where I first met him. You couldn't help liking the man. He spoke quickly, and with a lisp, and performed magic tricks with true dexterity. As coach at Notre Dame, Holtz won a natyional championship with a 12-0 team in 1988 and finished second in 1989 and 1993. The Irish haven't been in serious contention since Holtz left. During Monday night's NFL telecast Holtz commented on the Notre Dame situation, noting that the three coaches who followed him were good men, but lacked experience. Bob Davies and Weis had never been head coaches, he reminded and Tyrone Willingham had only a few years as head man at Stanford. Actually he coached the Cardinal for seven years. Holtz also dismissed the popular conception that it's easy to reruit at Notre Dame. "Notre Dame recruits nationally," he said, "which means when they recruit in Oklahoma they're going against Oklahoma and Oklahoma State and when they recruit in Pennsylvania they're up against Penn State."
I don't know who the next Notre Dame coach will be, but it's likely to be an experienced, successful college coach. Several names have been put out there, but there's one name I haven't heard and I wonder why. How long has Nick Sabin been at Alabama now. Two years, three? Isn't it time for a change?
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Bowden has spent 34 years turning Florida State from an ugly frog into a handsome prince. He didn't deserve the kissoff he was given Monday by school administrators. Their offer to keep him on for a final year with diminished responsibility was an insult. You're either head coach or you're not. Bowden was right to turn the offer down. Bowden not only was a great football coach, but a great guy. I covered his team only once. It was a battle of Titans against Miami and Bowden's team lost it when he went for a two point conversion in the final minute and missed. The next morning he hosted a media breakfst and was charming. I hope he enjoys his retirement. He once said that "after you retire there's only one more big event in your life." I hope, too, that he enjoys many little events before the inevitable big one.
In a perfect world, Notre Dame would have waited a week to fire Charlie Weis or Tiger Woods would have settled for a cold shower. As it is I now have two huge national stories to comment on, three actually, if you count the virtual sacking of Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden, whose 34 year tenure at Florida State has taken him beyond the bounds of regionalism and into the national spotlight.
Let's start with Tiger, whose post-midnight prowl on Black Friday gave the newly-minted term for the day after Thanksgiving new meaning. Woods may be among the world's greatest drivers, but apparently that applies only to the golf links. Behind the wheel of his SUV, Woods appears to be a duffer. How else explain his double bogey--a demolished fire hydrant and a bruised tree--at the home hole? Indeed, his failure to explain where he was going at 2:30 in the morning, why he presumably floored it exiting his driveway, why he was wearing no shoes, and just how he lost control of his vehicle is the very crux of a story that has made front page headlines throughout the known world. Who knows what the Martians are using to fill the news hole these days?
By Florida law, Woods doesn't have to tell anyone, including the police, what happened and there are many who believe that he has every right to remain silent. And he does. But he has already discovered that the absence of information inevitably leaves a vacuum that will soon be filled with rumor and innuendo. Surely, even those who most staunchly defend and even encourage Tiger's silence must wonder what did happen. Everyone has his own interpretation of the few facts that exist and here's mine: Tiger and his wife have a violent argument, not in the physical sense, but in the decibel sense. The argument probably has nothing to do with the consistency of the mashed potatoes in the recently consumed Thanksgiving dinner. More likely Elin, his wife, had seen the article in the National Enquirer which claimed that Woods was having an affair with a woman from New York and confronts him with it. He denies it (or maybe he doesn't) but at some point the discussion escalates to the point where Woods is agitated enough to storm out of the house, jump into his car and stomp on the gas pedal. He likely wasn't wearing a seat belt, which would account for the facial bruises and brief period of unconsciousness that has been reported.
If that is the truth of the matter, or something near the truth, it would serve Woods well to own up to it. Most people could relate to that. What married couple hasn't had a knockdown, dragout screaming match at least once in their lives? I've had more than one myself and my ultimate response has been to walk out of the house with the appropriate slamming of the door (just to make sure she knows I'm leaving) and walk off my anger.
Woods' image, which along with his unmatched golfing brilliance has made him a billionaire, is going to take a hit no matter how this story plays out. Perhaps it will soon be forgotten, as other sports heroes' escapades have gone away. How many people think of his rape trial when they watch Kobe Bryant play for the Los Angeles Lakers? Chances are, Tiger will keep winning golf tournaments and piling up endorsements, but for the short term when you hear the name Tiger Woods, "great golfer" will not be your immediate mental response. Rather, you might find yourself wondering, just why did Tiger's wife have that golf club in her hand when she went out to see what had happened?
-0-
Notre Dame is easy to love and easier to hate. Its football players, by and large, are good kids who stay out of trouble. You rarely hear of a Notre Dame football player being involved in a barroom brawl. But its fans are insufferable. That's why being the head coach of Notre Dame's football program is the second toughest job on earth. Barak Obama has the toughest. The last three Notre Dame head coaches have all been fired, despite posting winning records. None of them lasted longer than Charlie Weis's five years. The longest tenured Irish coach was also, arguably, the greatest--Knute Rockne. The Rock served for 13 years and might have gone on for 13 more had he not been killed in a plane crash.
Since then there have been three more highly successful coaches at Notre Dame. Curiously, they each coached the Irish for 11 seasons and quit while they were ahead. The three of them, Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, and Lou Holtz all had something in common when they took the reins in South Bend. Experience. Frank Leahy was 20-2 in his two years as head coach at Boston College before coming to Notre Dame in 1941, just as America was preparing to go to war. His teams lost only four games in three seasons before he himself went off to war and when he returned he was even better.
His teams went undefeated for four consecutive years, then, after three comparatively mediocre sesons, he ended up with a fifth undefeated season. That one was marred by a 14-14 tie against Iowa in a game that changed football history. The Irish scored their two touchdowns on the final play of each half after faking injuries to stop the clock. His successor, Terry Brennan, had no head coaching experience at the college level and was a Leahy assistant for only a year. Despite four winning seasons out of five and a monumental 7-0 upset of Oklahoma, which broke the Sooners' 47-game winnning streak, Brennaan was fired. Then began the bleakest era in Fighting Irish history and it was Parseghian who came to the rescue. Ara had loads of experience when he took the Notre Dame job in 1964. He had been at Miami (o.), the Cradle of Coaches, for five years and at Northwestern for eight more. He had twice guided the perennial doormat Wildcats to the No.1 spot in the polls, only to see the dreams fade away because of a lack of depth. It was to fulfill his ambition to coach a national champion that he took the Notre Dame job and he almost accomplished it in his first season. The Irish, in a stunning turnaround (they had gone 2-7 the previous year), won their first nine games and led Southern Cal 17-0 in the season finale before losing 20-17. Nevertheless quarterback John Huarte went from obscurity to the Heisman Trophy during the course of that magical season. Parsegian got his national title in 1966, either because of or depite the infamous 10-10 tie with Michigan State. He repeated with an undefeated team in 1973 but in another year, burned out by the pressure, he retired, never to coach again.
Parseghian's successor, Dan Devine, had plenty of experience. I first met him when he was coaching Arizona State in the 1950s. I was stationed in Yuma, Ariz. at an army base where, as public information specialist I had a disc jockey show on Saturday afternoons. There I met Chuck Benedict, the radio voice of the Sun Devils, who took me along as a spotter on several occasions. Later Devine coached at Missouri, my alma mater, and with the Green Bay Packers, where I got to know him fairly well. On the day Parseghian resigned, acting on a tip, I flew to Green Bay, where Devine was getting ready to announce he was leaving for the Notre Dame job. After ending a hastily called press conference in the late afternoon, he crooked a finger at me and said, "Bob, come into my office for a minute." When we were alone, he said to me, "I just want you to know that whoever gets this job here will start with better personnel than I had when I got here." That was typical Dan Devine. In one sentence he had absolved himself of blame and put pressure on his successor, who happened to be Bart Starr.
I covered several Notre Dame games while Devine was head coach, including his only loss, 20-13 to Mississippi, in a game played in Jackson, Miss. That loss came early in the year and Devine's Irish won the national championship by beating Texas, 38-10 in the Cotton bowl. Devine worked for six years in the pressure cooker before resigning. To replace him the Irish turned once again to an untested coach, Gerry Faust, who had a brilliant record as a high school coach in Ohio, but no college head coaching experience. That turned out to be a disaster and, so, the Irish went back to the tried and true, hiring Holtz away from Minnesota. Before that he had seven successful years at Arkansas, where I first met him. You couldn't help liking the man. He spoke quickly, and with a lisp, and performed magic tricks with true dexterity. As coach at Notre Dame, Holtz won a natyional championship with a 12-0 team in 1988 and finished second in 1989 and 1993. The Irish haven't been in serious contention since Holtz left. During Monday night's NFL telecast Holtz commented on the Notre Dame situation, noting that the three coaches who followed him were good men, but lacked experience. Bob Davies and Weis had never been head coaches, he reminded and Tyrone Willingham had only a few years as head man at Stanford. Actually he coached the Cardinal for seven years. Holtz also dismissed the popular conception that it's easy to reruit at Notre Dame. "Notre Dame recruits nationally," he said, "which means when they recruit in Oklahoma they're going against Oklahoma and Oklahoma State and when they recruit in Pennsylvania they're up against Penn State."
I don't know who the next Notre Dame coach will be, but it's likely to be an experienced, successful college coach. Several names have been put out there, but there's one name I haven't heard and I wonder why. How long has Nick Sabin been at Alabama now. Two years, three? Isn't it time for a change?
-0-
Bowden has spent 34 years turning Florida State from an ugly frog into a handsome prince. He didn't deserve the kissoff he was given Monday by school administrators. Their offer to keep him on for a final year with diminished responsibility was an insult. You're either head coach or you're not. Bowden was right to turn the offer down. Bowden not only was a great football coach, but a great guy. I covered his team only once. It was a battle of Titans against Miami and Bowden's team lost it when he went for a two point conversion in the final minute and missed. The next morning he hosted a media breakfst and was charming. I hope he enjoys his retirement. He once said that "after you retire there's only one more big event in your life." I hope, too, that he enjoys many little events before the inevitable big one.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
By Bob Markus
Whenever I make a new acquaintance I wait until asked what I did in my previous life. I used to respond: "I was a journalist," but that sounds a little pretentious and there are those who wonder whether a sports writer is a real journalist. Many who think that way are "real" journalists who disparage sports writers as members of the toy department. In truth, however, the best writers on most newspapers can be found right there amid the Tinker Toys and electric trains. Was there a better writer on the Los Angeles Times than the late Jim Murray? Red Smith could outwrite any "real" journalist at the New York Times with one hand tied behind his typewriter. As for the Chicago Tribune, where I worked for more than 36 years, I leave that judgment to others. But in my heart I knew I could write with anyone else on the paper.
So, in later years when asked the inevitable question I would answer, "I was a sports writer," an answer which, in addition to being less pretentious, was a good deal more specific. The usual followup question was, "what sport did you cover?" The answer I usually gave was: "All of them." While that was, strictly speaking, not true--I never covered badminton or shuffleboard, although I did once write a column about a shuffleboard game--I doubt if any other writer ever covered more fulltime beats than I did for The Tribune. Oddly enough, my first fulltime assignment was as a columnist. That was almost unheard of at the time, the usual progression being from beat writer, most often the baseball beat writer, to columnist. I didn't expect it at the time, but I was destined to reverse the process. When you start out on top the only direction to go is down. I didn't start out as a sports columnist, of course. I had been on The Tribune for seven years before that happened. Like everyone else, at that time, I started out in Neighborhood News, which produced weekly zoned sections and served as the paper's training ground. I was there, reading copy, for about six months when an opening came up on the sports desk. Although I was last in seniority on the copy desk, the other copy readers were all "real" journalists and wanted no part of the toy department. For me it was the dream job. When I took it, I was told by sports editor Wilfrid Smith that I would be, as Alabama Governor George Wallace might have put it, "a copy reader today, a copy reader tomorrow, a copy reader forever." That turned out to be about as prophetic as Wallace's "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, etc."
Although the paper had a large stable of sports writers, at least enough to cover every major beat and some not so major, from time to time there would come an event that needed coverage and no staff writer was available. Then one of the rim men on the copy desk would be given the assignment. For instance, there was at the time no pro basketball team in Chicago, the Stags having folded and the American Gears, led by George Mikan, moved to Minnesota as the Lakers. Then, all of a sudden, there were two pro teams in Chicago and nobody to cover them. George Strickler, the assistant sports editor at the time and eventual successor to Smith, solved the problem by doling out home games to the copy desk slaves. Strickler, a pro football man (and the Notre Dame publicist who came up with the idea of taking a picture of the Four Horsemen mounted on horseback), hated basketball with a passion. His usual method of assigning someone to a pro basketball game would be to say: "Markus, go out to The Amphitheater and cover the short-pantsed bastards." You'd be given six or at the most seven paragraphs to tell the story.
There was a good deal of competition and even animosity among the desk men, most of whom wanted to be writers. I was gradually given more assignments, occasionally filling in for the baseball beat men and, since The Tribune covered every Big Ten team in football, I worked my way into the rotation to the point where, by my fifth year at the paper, I covered a game every Saturday. My biggest break came in the week before the 1966 Notre Dame-Michigan State "Game of the Century," the one that ended in a 10-10 tie. I was not expecting to be a part of the coverage and was sitting on the rim of the copy desk on Monday or Tuesday when Strickler came out of his office and told me: "Dave Condon's supposed to be at Michigan State, but we can't find him. Go home and pack a bag and get to East Lansing." Condon, the sports department's lone columnist, had attended a Muhammad Ali fight in Houston and hadn't been heard from since.
The only thing I can remember about that week was that Spartan Coach Duffy Daugherty, at one of his daily press conferences, sang a ditty called:"My Sister's a Mule in the Mines." My game day assignment was the Michigan State locker room, but the story was in the Notre Dame locker room where Ara Parseghian attempted to explain why he'd run out the final minute and accepted the 10-10 tie. I did not write a memorable story out of the Spartans' locker room and, in fact, I was disappointed in myself. But on Monday afternoon Strickler called me into his office and informed me that The Tribune was breaking its long standing trdition of having a lone sports columnist and that I was going to write the second column. So now you know how I got the column and maybe in a future blog I'll tell you how I lost it. Meanwhile, getting back to the main topic, my subsequent assignments included: Beat writer for the Cubs and White Sox. Backup writer for the Bears. Beat writer for DePaul basketball in Ray Meyer's last year and Joey Meyer's first. Beat writer for Notre Dame basketball. Ditto for Northwestern. Beat writer for Illinois football and basketball. National college sports--football and basketball--writer. And, finally, Black Hawks beat writer. During the entirety of my stay, except when another beat precluded it, I was the auto racing writer and also covered my share of big fights, including Ali-Frazier I and Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Roberto Duran in Montreal. About eight months after being told I was no longer a columnist, I was assigned to the Ali-Leon Spinks rematch in New Orleans. David Israel, the guy who took my place as columnist, also was assigned to the fight and on our first night in New Orleans we had dinner together and ended up at one of the Bourbon Street joints, drinking Sazeracs. It was somewhere between drinks No. 3 and 4, that Israel, who was, I believe, 26 years old at the time, confided that he didn't intend to stay long at The Tribune. "I may go to law school," he said. I could have used a good lawyer about then because I could barely restrain the urge to strangle him.
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Note to readers: No blog next week in honor of daughter Trish's visit. See you in two weeks.
Whenever I make a new acquaintance I wait until asked what I did in my previous life. I used to respond: "I was a journalist," but that sounds a little pretentious and there are those who wonder whether a sports writer is a real journalist. Many who think that way are "real" journalists who disparage sports writers as members of the toy department. In truth, however, the best writers on most newspapers can be found right there amid the Tinker Toys and electric trains. Was there a better writer on the Los Angeles Times than the late Jim Murray? Red Smith could outwrite any "real" journalist at the New York Times with one hand tied behind his typewriter. As for the Chicago Tribune, where I worked for more than 36 years, I leave that judgment to others. But in my heart I knew I could write with anyone else on the paper.
So, in later years when asked the inevitable question I would answer, "I was a sports writer," an answer which, in addition to being less pretentious, was a good deal more specific. The usual followup question was, "what sport did you cover?" The answer I usually gave was: "All of them." While that was, strictly speaking, not true--I never covered badminton or shuffleboard, although I did once write a column about a shuffleboard game--I doubt if any other writer ever covered more fulltime beats than I did for The Tribune. Oddly enough, my first fulltime assignment was as a columnist. That was almost unheard of at the time, the usual progression being from beat writer, most often the baseball beat writer, to columnist. I didn't expect it at the time, but I was destined to reverse the process. When you start out on top the only direction to go is down. I didn't start out as a sports columnist, of course. I had been on The Tribune for seven years before that happened. Like everyone else, at that time, I started out in Neighborhood News, which produced weekly zoned sections and served as the paper's training ground. I was there, reading copy, for about six months when an opening came up on the sports desk. Although I was last in seniority on the copy desk, the other copy readers were all "real" journalists and wanted no part of the toy department. For me it was the dream job. When I took it, I was told by sports editor Wilfrid Smith that I would be, as Alabama Governor George Wallace might have put it, "a copy reader today, a copy reader tomorrow, a copy reader forever." That turned out to be about as prophetic as Wallace's "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, etc."
Although the paper had a large stable of sports writers, at least enough to cover every major beat and some not so major, from time to time there would come an event that needed coverage and no staff writer was available. Then one of the rim men on the copy desk would be given the assignment. For instance, there was at the time no pro basketball team in Chicago, the Stags having folded and the American Gears, led by George Mikan, moved to Minnesota as the Lakers. Then, all of a sudden, there were two pro teams in Chicago and nobody to cover them. George Strickler, the assistant sports editor at the time and eventual successor to Smith, solved the problem by doling out home games to the copy desk slaves. Strickler, a pro football man (and the Notre Dame publicist who came up with the idea of taking a picture of the Four Horsemen mounted on horseback), hated basketball with a passion. His usual method of assigning someone to a pro basketball game would be to say: "Markus, go out to The Amphitheater and cover the short-pantsed bastards." You'd be given six or at the most seven paragraphs to tell the story.
There was a good deal of competition and even animosity among the desk men, most of whom wanted to be writers. I was gradually given more assignments, occasionally filling in for the baseball beat men and, since The Tribune covered every Big Ten team in football, I worked my way into the rotation to the point where, by my fifth year at the paper, I covered a game every Saturday. My biggest break came in the week before the 1966 Notre Dame-Michigan State "Game of the Century," the one that ended in a 10-10 tie. I was not expecting to be a part of the coverage and was sitting on the rim of the copy desk on Monday or Tuesday when Strickler came out of his office and told me: "Dave Condon's supposed to be at Michigan State, but we can't find him. Go home and pack a bag and get to East Lansing." Condon, the sports department's lone columnist, had attended a Muhammad Ali fight in Houston and hadn't been heard from since.
The only thing I can remember about that week was that Spartan Coach Duffy Daugherty, at one of his daily press conferences, sang a ditty called:"My Sister's a Mule in the Mines." My game day assignment was the Michigan State locker room, but the story was in the Notre Dame locker room where Ara Parseghian attempted to explain why he'd run out the final minute and accepted the 10-10 tie. I did not write a memorable story out of the Spartans' locker room and, in fact, I was disappointed in myself. But on Monday afternoon Strickler called me into his office and informed me that The Tribune was breaking its long standing trdition of having a lone sports columnist and that I was going to write the second column. So now you know how I got the column and maybe in a future blog I'll tell you how I lost it. Meanwhile, getting back to the main topic, my subsequent assignments included: Beat writer for the Cubs and White Sox. Backup writer for the Bears. Beat writer for DePaul basketball in Ray Meyer's last year and Joey Meyer's first. Beat writer for Notre Dame basketball. Ditto for Northwestern. Beat writer for Illinois football and basketball. National college sports--football and basketball--writer. And, finally, Black Hawks beat writer. During the entirety of my stay, except when another beat precluded it, I was the auto racing writer and also covered my share of big fights, including Ali-Frazier I and Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Roberto Duran in Montreal. About eight months after being told I was no longer a columnist, I was assigned to the Ali-Leon Spinks rematch in New Orleans. David Israel, the guy who took my place as columnist, also was assigned to the fight and on our first night in New Orleans we had dinner together and ended up at one of the Bourbon Street joints, drinking Sazeracs. It was somewhere between drinks No. 3 and 4, that Israel, who was, I believe, 26 years old at the time, confided that he didn't intend to stay long at The Tribune. "I may go to law school," he said. I could have used a good lawyer about then because I could barely restrain the urge to strangle him.
-30-
Note to readers: No blog next week in honor of daughter Trish's visit. See you in two weeks.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
By Bob Markus
Picking a Heisman trophy winner has always been a little bit like going truffle hunting with a pig or panning for gold. The pig may turn up a few of the expensive delicacies and the gold panner may flush out a few nuggets of precious ore, but don't count on it. There is no defined criterion for choosing a Heisman trophy winner, so each elector must use his own set of standards. some look at gaudy numbers and exclaim: That's my boy. Others look to the top ranked team, single out its best player, and pronounce: You da man. Others still look at the award as a sort of national MVP. Which player meant the most to his team?
I had a Heisman vote for a few years when college sports was my fulltime beat at the Chicago Tribune. I took the job seriously and was seriously upset on the few occasions when I felt a gross injustice had been committed. One of those came in 1987 when Notre Dame's Tim Brown was the winner. Brown was the last of the seven Fighting Irish Heisman winners and a case could be made that only one or two of them deserved it. Brown averaged nearly 22 yards a catch for the 8-4 Irish that year, so I'd have to say he was Heisman worthy. But not in that year. That was the year that Don McPherson led Syracuse to a perfect 11-0 regular season, only the second undefeated season in the Orangemen's history. To me, McPherson was the embodiment of what the Heisman is all about. I voted for him, gave my third place vote to Gordie Lockbaum, the two-way star from Holy Cross, and, though I can't really remember, probably gave my runner-up vote to Brown. Lockbaum was a great story, a Galahad of the gridiron whose main virtue was his virtue.
A few years later I got another chance to sulk when the man I voted for not only didn't win, but finished seventh in the voting. That was Jeff Blake, the quarterback from East Carolina, which lost its opening game to Illinois, then ran the table, winning 11 in a row, including its 37-34 win over North Carolina State in the Peach bowl. Blake was a one-man highlight reel that autumn, turning up almost every Saturday night on the postgame score shows, performing yet another miracle. Mine was one of only seven first place votes he received. Michigan's Desmond Howard was the winner.
It's difficult of course for a player to emerge from almost total obscurity to the Heisman in a single season. Unless, of course, you play for Notre Dame (see John Huarte, 1964, a year that included the likes of Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers, who didn't even crack the top 10). The history of the prized statuette is replete with players who sort of sneaked up on the honor, gaining a spot on the ballot for a year or two before winning. Even Army's great Glenn Davis finished second twice before finally winning it in his final year. Doak Walker was third the year before he won as was Johnny Lujack, the one Irish player who undoubtedly deserved the honor in 1947, although Walker, Charlie Conerly, Bobby Layne and Chuck Bednarik were among the future pro stars who also played that year. Of the five, Lujack probably had the least productive pro career, but then, the Heisman is not meant to be a predictor of NFL potential. In fact, going back to Ricky Williams in 1998, only Carson Palmer, the Cincinnati Bengals quarterback, has had a solid pro career after winning the Heisman. The jury is still out on Reggie Bush.
Of all the Heisman trophies that have been presented since Chicago's Jay Berwanger won the first one in 1935, the one that has me most puzzled was the one given to Paul Hornung in 1956. Hornung became a Hall of Fame running back with the Green Bay Packers and also a friend, so I hope he'll forgive me for saying this. But Hornung was the quarterback of a Notre Dame team that finished 2 and 8. Runner-up Johnny Majors starred for a 10-1 Tennessee team and a guy named Jim Brown was finishing his college career at Syracuse.
I no longer, of course, have anything to do with voting for the Heisman, although I probably have about as good a handle on it as the current writers, since they see only one game a week and I can see a dozen of them, or parts thereof, on any given Saturday. When this season began, it appeared pretty certain that the trophy would go to one of the three players who finished one-two-three last year--Oklahoma's Sam Bradford, Texas' Colt McCoy, and Florida's Tim Tebow. Bradford didn't even make it out of the starting gate before his season imploded with an opening game injury. McCoy and Tebow are still alive since their teams are unbeaten and figure to meet for the national championship. But neither has had the kind of season they anticipated. Tebow admits his performance is down from the last two years and nine interceptions thrown by McCoy speak for themselves.
According to an ESPN poll of 15 experts, the current leader is Alabama running back Mark Ingram, who drew 10 of the 15 first place votes. Kellen Moore, the quarterback of unbeaten and unappreciated Boise State got two votes, while Tebow, McCoy, and Houston's Case Keenum got the other three votes. Keenum, the Houston quarterback, has piled up some unreal numbers for the 8-1 Cougars. In his last two games alone he's thrown for close to 1,100 yards and eight touchdowns. He has 28 touchdown passes for the season. Almost matching that is Boise State's Moore with 27 touchdown passes and only three interceptions.
I admit I haven't seen too much of Alabama's Ingram and I suspect he is a candidate because someone on the Crimson Tide offense has to be partly responsible for the defense-oriented team's unbeaten record. Talent-wise, receiver Julio Jones should be the man, but he has underachieved for the most part this year. As for my own choice, I think I'm going to surprise you. After all my Notre Dame bashing, if I had a Heisman vote I think I'd spend it on Irish quarterback Jimmy Clausen. The Irish may be struggling a bit, but without Clausen (and his marvelous receiver Golden Tate) the Irish could be 1-8 and there would be no speculation about Coach Charlie Weis' fate. Clausen has repeatedly brought the Irish from behind and four of their victories and all three defeats have been by seven points or less. I'd probably vote Keenum second and Moore third. But that's just me. What do you think?
Picking a Heisman trophy winner has always been a little bit like going truffle hunting with a pig or panning for gold. The pig may turn up a few of the expensive delicacies and the gold panner may flush out a few nuggets of precious ore, but don't count on it. There is no defined criterion for choosing a Heisman trophy winner, so each elector must use his own set of standards. some look at gaudy numbers and exclaim: That's my boy. Others look to the top ranked team, single out its best player, and pronounce: You da man. Others still look at the award as a sort of national MVP. Which player meant the most to his team?
I had a Heisman vote for a few years when college sports was my fulltime beat at the Chicago Tribune. I took the job seriously and was seriously upset on the few occasions when I felt a gross injustice had been committed. One of those came in 1987 when Notre Dame's Tim Brown was the winner. Brown was the last of the seven Fighting Irish Heisman winners and a case could be made that only one or two of them deserved it. Brown averaged nearly 22 yards a catch for the 8-4 Irish that year, so I'd have to say he was Heisman worthy. But not in that year. That was the year that Don McPherson led Syracuse to a perfect 11-0 regular season, only the second undefeated season in the Orangemen's history. To me, McPherson was the embodiment of what the Heisman is all about. I voted for him, gave my third place vote to Gordie Lockbaum, the two-way star from Holy Cross, and, though I can't really remember, probably gave my runner-up vote to Brown. Lockbaum was a great story, a Galahad of the gridiron whose main virtue was his virtue.
A few years later I got another chance to sulk when the man I voted for not only didn't win, but finished seventh in the voting. That was Jeff Blake, the quarterback from East Carolina, which lost its opening game to Illinois, then ran the table, winning 11 in a row, including its 37-34 win over North Carolina State in the Peach bowl. Blake was a one-man highlight reel that autumn, turning up almost every Saturday night on the postgame score shows, performing yet another miracle. Mine was one of only seven first place votes he received. Michigan's Desmond Howard was the winner.
It's difficult of course for a player to emerge from almost total obscurity to the Heisman in a single season. Unless, of course, you play for Notre Dame (see John Huarte, 1964, a year that included the likes of Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers, who didn't even crack the top 10). The history of the prized statuette is replete with players who sort of sneaked up on the honor, gaining a spot on the ballot for a year or two before winning. Even Army's great Glenn Davis finished second twice before finally winning it in his final year. Doak Walker was third the year before he won as was Johnny Lujack, the one Irish player who undoubtedly deserved the honor in 1947, although Walker, Charlie Conerly, Bobby Layne and Chuck Bednarik were among the future pro stars who also played that year. Of the five, Lujack probably had the least productive pro career, but then, the Heisman is not meant to be a predictor of NFL potential. In fact, going back to Ricky Williams in 1998, only Carson Palmer, the Cincinnati Bengals quarterback, has had a solid pro career after winning the Heisman. The jury is still out on Reggie Bush.
Of all the Heisman trophies that have been presented since Chicago's Jay Berwanger won the first one in 1935, the one that has me most puzzled was the one given to Paul Hornung in 1956. Hornung became a Hall of Fame running back with the Green Bay Packers and also a friend, so I hope he'll forgive me for saying this. But Hornung was the quarterback of a Notre Dame team that finished 2 and 8. Runner-up Johnny Majors starred for a 10-1 Tennessee team and a guy named Jim Brown was finishing his college career at Syracuse.
I no longer, of course, have anything to do with voting for the Heisman, although I probably have about as good a handle on it as the current writers, since they see only one game a week and I can see a dozen of them, or parts thereof, on any given Saturday. When this season began, it appeared pretty certain that the trophy would go to one of the three players who finished one-two-three last year--Oklahoma's Sam Bradford, Texas' Colt McCoy, and Florida's Tim Tebow. Bradford didn't even make it out of the starting gate before his season imploded with an opening game injury. McCoy and Tebow are still alive since their teams are unbeaten and figure to meet for the national championship. But neither has had the kind of season they anticipated. Tebow admits his performance is down from the last two years and nine interceptions thrown by McCoy speak for themselves.
According to an ESPN poll of 15 experts, the current leader is Alabama running back Mark Ingram, who drew 10 of the 15 first place votes. Kellen Moore, the quarterback of unbeaten and unappreciated Boise State got two votes, while Tebow, McCoy, and Houston's Case Keenum got the other three votes. Keenum, the Houston quarterback, has piled up some unreal numbers for the 8-1 Cougars. In his last two games alone he's thrown for close to 1,100 yards and eight touchdowns. He has 28 touchdown passes for the season. Almost matching that is Boise State's Moore with 27 touchdown passes and only three interceptions.
I admit I haven't seen too much of Alabama's Ingram and I suspect he is a candidate because someone on the Crimson Tide offense has to be partly responsible for the defense-oriented team's unbeaten record. Talent-wise, receiver Julio Jones should be the man, but he has underachieved for the most part this year. As for my own choice, I think I'm going to surprise you. After all my Notre Dame bashing, if I had a Heisman vote I think I'd spend it on Irish quarterback Jimmy Clausen. The Irish may be struggling a bit, but without Clausen (and his marvelous receiver Golden Tate) the Irish could be 1-8 and there would be no speculation about Coach Charlie Weis' fate. Clausen has repeatedly brought the Irish from behind and four of their victories and all three defeats have been by seven points or less. I'd probably vote Keenum second and Moore third. But that's just me. What do you think?
Monday, November 2, 2009
By Bob Markus
As any college football fan could tell you, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has one too many letters in its acronym. It should drop the middle letter and what's left (BS for those of you who are acronymically challenged) would just about describe it. The presumed purpose of the BCS is to ensure that the best two college football teams in the land meet at the close of the bowl season to determine which is truly the No. 1 team in the country. Trouble is, they haven't yet figured out a sure fired way of determining who the top two are. Every year, it seems, somebody is flashing Winston Churchill's famous V sign and insisting: We're No. 2. There are certain instances, you see, when it's good to be Avis. Last year it was Texas, which was left out of the national championship game in favor of Oklahoma, which it had beaten. Another year it was Southern Cal, which had been named No.1 in both wire service polls, but deemed no better than No. 3 by the complex melange of computers and human pollsters the BCS entrusted with the task.
This year there seems to be little doubt about who will play in the national championship game. It will be Texas, the undefeated Big 12 champion which already has defeated its most significant adversaries, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, and the winner of the SEC championship game--either Florida or Alabama. The only other team with even a whisper of a chance is Louisiana State, which, if it can upset Alabama this week-end and win the rest of its games would win the SEC West and play the Gators, to whom they have already lost once. There is a chance that the BCS will actually get it right with this pairing, but there is also a chance you'll run into a flying pig some day. These same three teams have been at the top of the leaderboard since even before the season opened and that is one of the problems.
For a number of years in the mid-1980s I was a voter in the Associated Press poll. While not a total maverick, I did tend to have some ideas that were thought to be, well, a little odd. For instance, I thought a team's performance on the field should outweigh my preconceived notion of who's No. 1. That's why I thought they should do away with preseason polls and wait until the games are played before trying to sort it out. Under the system that prevailed then--and the one that prevails now--many of the voters seemed to think their ballots were cast in stone and could not be dislodged without, as the sportscasters of today love to say, "indisputable evidence." That evidence would not include, say, a team like Alabama beating unranked Arkansas 12-10 by blocking a potential season-destroying field goal. Nor would it include a team like Florida losing at home to Mississippi, which hasn't been a national powerhouse since Peyton and Eli Manning's father was playing there, as happened last year. These voters, and I believe they are in the majority, decide who is No. 1 in August and will not change their minds until that team is beaten and sometimes not even then. I always voted by the theory that my preseason vote was merely my best guess and that changing one's mind is allowed and even ought to be encouraged.
It well could be that Texas, Alabama, and Florida, in whichever order you chose to rank them, are indeed the three best teams in the country. But if I were voting today I'd probably rank two teams ahead of them. Now, don't laugh. Snickering is okay, but please no raucus outbursts of laughter. I think the best team in the country at the moment is Oregon, which dismantled a good, but admittedly not great, USC team Saturday night, 47-20. I mean this was an old-fashioned A No. 1 butt stomping of a team that has ruled its conference for nearly a decade under Pete Carroll and rarely finishes out of the top five. And it was no fluke. Previously, Oregon had walloped California, which at the time was in the top 10 or so in the rankings, 42 -3. The week after that the Ducks quacked all over Washington State, 52-6 and only the week before their demolition of the Trojans had laid the wood to Washington, 43-19
I watched most of the Oregon-USC game and here's what I saw. I saw quarterback Jeremiah Masoli rush for 164 yards and pass for 222 more. I saw halfback LaMichael James run for 183 yards. In all, Oregon rolled up 613 yards against a team reputed to have one of the best defenses in the country. It was simply an awesome display. So I'd vote Oregon No. 1? No, I wouldn't. It's not because the Ducks lost their season opener. I've seen Notre Dame do that and still win a national title. No, it's not the fact that they lost, but who they lost to--Boise State.
That's not a rap at Boise State. Au contraire, the reason I wouldn't make Oregon No.1 is because that's where I'd have Boise State. I know, I know, Boise State has played a one-game season. But what a game! The Broncos literally strangled Oregon in a 19-8 season opening victory. The team that got 613 yards against Southern Cal? It had 14 yards in the first half--and no first downs--against Boise State . Its star runner, La Garrette Blount, carried eight times for minus five yards and those numbers have yet to change, since Blount was suspended for the rest of the season after slugging a Boise State player in the jaw after the game. Blount, with the help of mentors like Tony Dungy and his coach, Chip Kelly, reportedly has tried hard to make amends and there is a good chance he will be reinstated for this week-end's game at Stanford. With or without Blount, Oregon should beat Stanford and everyone else on its schedule. Boise, too, will likely run the table. But finish one-two in the BCS standings? Not a chance. Football writers, no matter what their personal politics, are as conservative as Rush Limbaugh when it comes to voting in the polls. It'll be Florida and Texas in the Rose bowl Jan. 7. Book it.
As any college football fan could tell you, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has one too many letters in its acronym. It should drop the middle letter and what's left (BS for those of you who are acronymically challenged) would just about describe it. The presumed purpose of the BCS is to ensure that the best two college football teams in the land meet at the close of the bowl season to determine which is truly the No. 1 team in the country. Trouble is, they haven't yet figured out a sure fired way of determining who the top two are. Every year, it seems, somebody is flashing Winston Churchill's famous V sign and insisting: We're No. 2. There are certain instances, you see, when it's good to be Avis. Last year it was Texas, which was left out of the national championship game in favor of Oklahoma, which it had beaten. Another year it was Southern Cal, which had been named No.1 in both wire service polls, but deemed no better than No. 3 by the complex melange of computers and human pollsters the BCS entrusted with the task.
This year there seems to be little doubt about who will play in the national championship game. It will be Texas, the undefeated Big 12 champion which already has defeated its most significant adversaries, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, and the winner of the SEC championship game--either Florida or Alabama. The only other team with even a whisper of a chance is Louisiana State, which, if it can upset Alabama this week-end and win the rest of its games would win the SEC West and play the Gators, to whom they have already lost once. There is a chance that the BCS will actually get it right with this pairing, but there is also a chance you'll run into a flying pig some day. These same three teams have been at the top of the leaderboard since even before the season opened and that is one of the problems.
For a number of years in the mid-1980s I was a voter in the Associated Press poll. While not a total maverick, I did tend to have some ideas that were thought to be, well, a little odd. For instance, I thought a team's performance on the field should outweigh my preconceived notion of who's No. 1. That's why I thought they should do away with preseason polls and wait until the games are played before trying to sort it out. Under the system that prevailed then--and the one that prevails now--many of the voters seemed to think their ballots were cast in stone and could not be dislodged without, as the sportscasters of today love to say, "indisputable evidence." That evidence would not include, say, a team like Alabama beating unranked Arkansas 12-10 by blocking a potential season-destroying field goal. Nor would it include a team like Florida losing at home to Mississippi, which hasn't been a national powerhouse since Peyton and Eli Manning's father was playing there, as happened last year. These voters, and I believe they are in the majority, decide who is No. 1 in August and will not change their minds until that team is beaten and sometimes not even then. I always voted by the theory that my preseason vote was merely my best guess and that changing one's mind is allowed and even ought to be encouraged.
It well could be that Texas, Alabama, and Florida, in whichever order you chose to rank them, are indeed the three best teams in the country. But if I were voting today I'd probably rank two teams ahead of them. Now, don't laugh. Snickering is okay, but please no raucus outbursts of laughter. I think the best team in the country at the moment is Oregon, which dismantled a good, but admittedly not great, USC team Saturday night, 47-20. I mean this was an old-fashioned A No. 1 butt stomping of a team that has ruled its conference for nearly a decade under Pete Carroll and rarely finishes out of the top five. And it was no fluke. Previously, Oregon had walloped California, which at the time was in the top 10 or so in the rankings, 42 -3. The week after that the Ducks quacked all over Washington State, 52-6 and only the week before their demolition of the Trojans had laid the wood to Washington, 43-19
I watched most of the Oregon-USC game and here's what I saw. I saw quarterback Jeremiah Masoli rush for 164 yards and pass for 222 more. I saw halfback LaMichael James run for 183 yards. In all, Oregon rolled up 613 yards against a team reputed to have one of the best defenses in the country. It was simply an awesome display. So I'd vote Oregon No. 1? No, I wouldn't. It's not because the Ducks lost their season opener. I've seen Notre Dame do that and still win a national title. No, it's not the fact that they lost, but who they lost to--Boise State.
That's not a rap at Boise State. Au contraire, the reason I wouldn't make Oregon No.1 is because that's where I'd have Boise State. I know, I know, Boise State has played a one-game season. But what a game! The Broncos literally strangled Oregon in a 19-8 season opening victory. The team that got 613 yards against Southern Cal? It had 14 yards in the first half--and no first downs--against Boise State . Its star runner, La Garrette Blount, carried eight times for minus five yards and those numbers have yet to change, since Blount was suspended for the rest of the season after slugging a Boise State player in the jaw after the game. Blount, with the help of mentors like Tony Dungy and his coach, Chip Kelly, reportedly has tried hard to make amends and there is a good chance he will be reinstated for this week-end's game at Stanford. With or without Blount, Oregon should beat Stanford and everyone else on its schedule. Boise, too, will likely run the table. But finish one-two in the BCS standings? Not a chance. Football writers, no matter what their personal politics, are as conservative as Rush Limbaugh when it comes to voting in the polls. It'll be Florida and Texas in the Rose bowl Jan. 7. Book it.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
By Bob Markus
They tell me there's more than one way to skin a cat. I've never had any desire to skin a cat and if I ever did, I doubt that I could figure out even one way to do it. Where would I start?
At the head? The tail? I imagine I'd start by calling a taxidermist. What brought about this odd musing was the news that Mark McGwire has been named batting coach by the St. Louis Cardinals. McGwire has avoided the spotlight ever since his non-testimony before Congress four years ago. He has done no interviews. Now it is going to be nearly impossible to avoid them. I'll guarantee you that on opening day of spring training next February there will be a record number of media members flying down to Florida, all wanting to know: did he or didn't he?
How McGwire responds--if he responds at all--could go a long way towards determining if he ever gets in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Because the men asking the question are the same men who vote for or against enshrinement and McGwire at the moment has a long way to go to win the 75 per cent approval he needs. In his first two years on the ballot, the former major league home run single season record holder has garnered less than 25 per cent.
There have been players in the past who have been left at the post in their early years of eligibility. The time honored way to gather support has been to go to the radio or TV booth and mingle with the electorate. It worked for Ralph Kiner; it worked for Lou Boudreau; it worked for Phil Rizzuto, all of whom were voted into the Hall of Fame after years of cozying up to the baseball beat writers. I don't mean to imply there was anything phony about their relationships with their fellow media members. It's just that, try as one might to remain objective, it's difficult to remain objective about someone you know and like.
I can't recall an example of a player gathering Hall of Fame votes by becoming a coach, but the possibility is there, just the same. McGwire will be in daily contact with many of the men who hold his fate in their hands. Whether he takes advantage of the opportunity remains to be seen. If he refuses to answer any questions about his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs, he can forget about the Hall of Fame. If he refuses to talk to reporters at all, he can forget about the Hall of Fame. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that's the way it is. There are many voters, probably a majority, who believe that any records set while under the influence of artificial enhancement are invalid. To them, McGwire's rookie record of 49 homers for the Oakland A's back in 1987, his 70 homers in 1998 when he beat Sammy Sosa in their epic race to to erase Roger Maris' record of 61, his 583 career home runs all are tainted by his presumed use of steroids.
I personally doubt that McGwire was drugged up all the way back in 1987. There seems to be little doubt that he was using a steroid named androstenodione in '98 during the duel with Sosa. In fact, he left packages of the drug in his open locker where anyone could see them and he has admitted that he took the drug. But at the time androstenodione was neither illegal nor a banned substance in major league baseball. It wasn't until 2004, three years after McGwire had retired, that the United States government declared the drug a steroid and made it illegal.
It seems to me that McGwire's wisest course would be to tell anyone who asks that, yes, I did take androstenodione back in '98, but I didn't know it was a steroid and it wasn't a banned substance. Even if he 'fesses up, he's not going to get into the Hall of Fame within the next year or two. But eventually, if he stays around the game and gets more comfortble with the writers--and they with him--his time will come. Although their cases may all be different, there are three other players who should be watching the McGwire situation with interest. As it stands now, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro share McGwire's plight. All of them are suspected steroid abusers, none has admitted it, and Palmiero explained away his one positive test by claiming he had been given a tainted B12 injection. He passed a lie detector test and never failed another drug test before or since so there is the possibility that he told the truth when he said, "I have never knowingly used steroids. Never."
Palmeiro will be the first of the three eligible for the Hall of Fame and as it stands now, he won't make it, despite the fact he is one of only four players ever to amass 3,000 hits and 500 homers. The other three, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray, are all Hall of Famers. Next up will be Sosa with his 609 career homers balanced against his embarrassing corked bat fiasco, which muddies the water when considering whether he's telling the truth when he denies using steroids. Bonds will be the most difficult choice of all, since many consider him the greatest hitter in baseball history (I'll stick with Babe Ruth), but in the current climate the steroids issue outweighs any statistics, no matter how gaudy.
It won't be easy, but Mark McGwire has been given the opportunity to change all that. Meanwhile there are approximately 100 ball players who have yet to be outed after failing a drug test in 2003. Until we know more about them, I'm throwing the problem back in baseball's lap. As a Hall of Fame voter I don't think it's my responsiblity to determine who is or is not eligible for the Hall. That's baseball's responsibility and if baseball sees fit to put Mark McGwire's name on the ballot, I'm going to vote for him. Bonds, Sosa and Palmeiro, too.
They tell me there's more than one way to skin a cat. I've never had any desire to skin a cat and if I ever did, I doubt that I could figure out even one way to do it. Where would I start?
At the head? The tail? I imagine I'd start by calling a taxidermist. What brought about this odd musing was the news that Mark McGwire has been named batting coach by the St. Louis Cardinals. McGwire has avoided the spotlight ever since his non-testimony before Congress four years ago. He has done no interviews. Now it is going to be nearly impossible to avoid them. I'll guarantee you that on opening day of spring training next February there will be a record number of media members flying down to Florida, all wanting to know: did he or didn't he?
How McGwire responds--if he responds at all--could go a long way towards determining if he ever gets in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Because the men asking the question are the same men who vote for or against enshrinement and McGwire at the moment has a long way to go to win the 75 per cent approval he needs. In his first two years on the ballot, the former major league home run single season record holder has garnered less than 25 per cent.
There have been players in the past who have been left at the post in their early years of eligibility. The time honored way to gather support has been to go to the radio or TV booth and mingle with the electorate. It worked for Ralph Kiner; it worked for Lou Boudreau; it worked for Phil Rizzuto, all of whom were voted into the Hall of Fame after years of cozying up to the baseball beat writers. I don't mean to imply there was anything phony about their relationships with their fellow media members. It's just that, try as one might to remain objective, it's difficult to remain objective about someone you know and like.
I can't recall an example of a player gathering Hall of Fame votes by becoming a coach, but the possibility is there, just the same. McGwire will be in daily contact with many of the men who hold his fate in their hands. Whether he takes advantage of the opportunity remains to be seen. If he refuses to answer any questions about his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs, he can forget about the Hall of Fame. If he refuses to talk to reporters at all, he can forget about the Hall of Fame. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that's the way it is. There are many voters, probably a majority, who believe that any records set while under the influence of artificial enhancement are invalid. To them, McGwire's rookie record of 49 homers for the Oakland A's back in 1987, his 70 homers in 1998 when he beat Sammy Sosa in their epic race to to erase Roger Maris' record of 61, his 583 career home runs all are tainted by his presumed use of steroids.
I personally doubt that McGwire was drugged up all the way back in 1987. There seems to be little doubt that he was using a steroid named androstenodione in '98 during the duel with Sosa. In fact, he left packages of the drug in his open locker where anyone could see them and he has admitted that he took the drug. But at the time androstenodione was neither illegal nor a banned substance in major league baseball. It wasn't until 2004, three years after McGwire had retired, that the United States government declared the drug a steroid and made it illegal.
It seems to me that McGwire's wisest course would be to tell anyone who asks that, yes, I did take androstenodione back in '98, but I didn't know it was a steroid and it wasn't a banned substance. Even if he 'fesses up, he's not going to get into the Hall of Fame within the next year or two. But eventually, if he stays around the game and gets more comfortble with the writers--and they with him--his time will come. Although their cases may all be different, there are three other players who should be watching the McGwire situation with interest. As it stands now, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro share McGwire's plight. All of them are suspected steroid abusers, none has admitted it, and Palmiero explained away his one positive test by claiming he had been given a tainted B12 injection. He passed a lie detector test and never failed another drug test before or since so there is the possibility that he told the truth when he said, "I have never knowingly used steroids. Never."
Palmeiro will be the first of the three eligible for the Hall of Fame and as it stands now, he won't make it, despite the fact he is one of only four players ever to amass 3,000 hits and 500 homers. The other three, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray, are all Hall of Famers. Next up will be Sosa with his 609 career homers balanced against his embarrassing corked bat fiasco, which muddies the water when considering whether he's telling the truth when he denies using steroids. Bonds will be the most difficult choice of all, since many consider him the greatest hitter in baseball history (I'll stick with Babe Ruth), but in the current climate the steroids issue outweighs any statistics, no matter how gaudy.
It won't be easy, but Mark McGwire has been given the opportunity to change all that. Meanwhile there are approximately 100 ball players who have yet to be outed after failing a drug test in 2003. Until we know more about them, I'm throwing the problem back in baseball's lap. As a Hall of Fame voter I don't think it's my responsiblity to determine who is or is not eligible for the Hall. That's baseball's responsibility and if baseball sees fit to put Mark McGwire's name on the ballot, I'm going to vote for him. Bonds, Sosa and Palmeiro, too.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
By Bob Markus
If the deaths of three runners in Sunday's Detroit Marathon proved anything, it might be that life is a crapshoot and sooner or later you're going to roll snake eyes. There seems to be no logical explanation for the sudden deaths of Daniel Langdon, 36, Rick Brown, 65, and Jon Fenlon, 26, all within a 16-minute span. All three were entered in the half marathon, just over 13 miles, a distance that, while daunting to your average couch potato, is not beyond the imagination of any reasonably fit runner. In my own running days I once ran 10 miles in Los Angeles' Griffith Park and felt I could go farther.
But 26.2 miles? On the face of it that has always appeared to me to be a sure sign of insanity. If it doesn't kill you, it will certainly wreak havoc on some of your body parts, in particular your knees. Actually, the chances of it killing you are minimal, statistically almost nonexistent. A marathoner is more likely to be hit by a car during a training run than drop dead during a race. But it happens. It happens to one in about 75,000 marathon runners. That doesn't include those who die during training, most notably Dr. Jim Fixx, who became a millionaire extolling the health benefits of running in three best-selling books, but succumbed to a heart attack, at 52, just after completing his daily run.
That running a Marathon may prove to be dangerous to your health was proved by the very first marathoner, a Greek named Pheidippides. Shortly before he won the Marathon gold medal at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Frank Shorter was musing about the distance, precisely 26 miles and 385 yards. "The guy who invented the marathon got the distance just right," Shorter told me, "because he knew exactly how much the human body can stand." Actually Pheidippides might have been better off walking those final 385 yards. Because after blurting the glorious news of a major military victory at Marathon to the people of Athens, the swift soldier collapsed and died on the spot.
Shorter won that gold medal in only his fifth marathon. He was basically a middle distance runner, whose finishing kick was good, but not quite good enough . But in the Marathon, he said, there is no finishing kick. "It's a question of who's decelerating the least over the last six miles."
Even for a great champion like Shorter there was a price to be paid. "Pain? Sure there's a pain factor. But there's a pain factor in every race beyond 200 meters, but each race has its own kind of pain. Actually, you can't describe it unless you've done it." But why do it? Probably for the same reason you'd climb Mt. Everest or swim the English Channel. It's a challenge, but one that is more reachable than Everest's 29,000 foot summit or the vast expanse of ocean between Dover and Calais. I'm reasonably certain there is also at least a modicum of addiction involved. I can vouch for that from personal experience.
I came late to running, not starting until I was well into my 30s. I started after a routine visit to a new doctor, Dr. Smith, who listened to my heartbeat for a few seconds and asked me: "What are you taking?" I named a drug meant to revive a comatose thyroid and he advised, "You don't need those pills. Throw them away and start exercising." Until then, I had led a mostly sedentary life except for eight weeks of Army basic training more than a decade earlier. But inspired by Dr. Smith I set a goal of running a mile in 15 minutes. Serendipitously, I was scheduled to go on a two week assignment to the Kansas City Chiefs training camp in Liberty, Mo. The Chiefs, as Super bowl champions, were preparing to play the College All-Stars in the season opening exhibition game sponsored annually by my newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. It appeared to be the perfect opportunity to get myself in shape. Accordingly, on my first morning in camp, I arose early and went to the quarter mile dirt running track and set out to run my first mile. I had just finished my first lap, however, when a short, thick-set man jumped in front of me with his arms in the air.
"What are you trying to do," he asked me. When I told him, he said, "You're going about it the wrong way. Let me help you and I guarantee you'll run that mile." For the next 10 days, Alvin Roy, the Chiefs' strength coach, worked with me every morning. His training regimen consisted of lifting weights and interval running. At no time did he let me run more than one lap until the last day, when he took out his stop watch and sent me out for my final exam. I don't remember what my time was but it was under 10 minutes and I was satisfied with that. From then on, I was hooked on running. I usually ran three miles before breakfast. Often I would run with Andy McKenna, who was on the board of the Cubs, White Sox, and Bears, with whom he had a minority ownership stake. The White Sox were up for sale at the time and rumors were flying all over town, but with my morning runs with Andy I had a pretty good grasp of what was going on. It was especially neat to find good running trails on out of town assignments. I think of all the runs I've had, the one I enjoyed the most was at a park in Syracuse, N.Y. the morning of a Syracuse-Penn State football game. The run was through a woods on a carpet of autumn leaves with a lake on my right hand side. It was an exhilerating moment.
The beginning of the end came one morning in Laramie, Wyo. I had just finished my morning run and sat down on the bed to take off my socks when a jolt of pain shot through my left knee and almost dropped me to the floor. Several cortisone shots and an arthroscope later the knee felt better, but that didn't last. I kept breaking down. Either my knees would get sore or my back would go out and I finally figured somebody or some thing was trying to tell me something. Today both knees are shot through with arthritis and the pain is constant, though bearable. Oddly enough, the knees don't hurt as much when I walk so that's how I get my exercise now. But I do miss running and if you were to ask me: Knowing what you know now would you do it over again, I'd reply, Damned right.
If the deaths of three runners in Sunday's Detroit Marathon proved anything, it might be that life is a crapshoot and sooner or later you're going to roll snake eyes. There seems to be no logical explanation for the sudden deaths of Daniel Langdon, 36, Rick Brown, 65, and Jon Fenlon, 26, all within a 16-minute span. All three were entered in the half marathon, just over 13 miles, a distance that, while daunting to your average couch potato, is not beyond the imagination of any reasonably fit runner. In my own running days I once ran 10 miles in Los Angeles' Griffith Park and felt I could go farther.
But 26.2 miles? On the face of it that has always appeared to me to be a sure sign of insanity. If it doesn't kill you, it will certainly wreak havoc on some of your body parts, in particular your knees. Actually, the chances of it killing you are minimal, statistically almost nonexistent. A marathoner is more likely to be hit by a car during a training run than drop dead during a race. But it happens. It happens to one in about 75,000 marathon runners. That doesn't include those who die during training, most notably Dr. Jim Fixx, who became a millionaire extolling the health benefits of running in three best-selling books, but succumbed to a heart attack, at 52, just after completing his daily run.
That running a Marathon may prove to be dangerous to your health was proved by the very first marathoner, a Greek named Pheidippides. Shortly before he won the Marathon gold medal at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Frank Shorter was musing about the distance, precisely 26 miles and 385 yards. "The guy who invented the marathon got the distance just right," Shorter told me, "because he knew exactly how much the human body can stand." Actually Pheidippides might have been better off walking those final 385 yards. Because after blurting the glorious news of a major military victory at Marathon to the people of Athens, the swift soldier collapsed and died on the spot.
Shorter won that gold medal in only his fifth marathon. He was basically a middle distance runner, whose finishing kick was good, but not quite good enough . But in the Marathon, he said, there is no finishing kick. "It's a question of who's decelerating the least over the last six miles."
Even for a great champion like Shorter there was a price to be paid. "Pain? Sure there's a pain factor. But there's a pain factor in every race beyond 200 meters, but each race has its own kind of pain. Actually, you can't describe it unless you've done it." But why do it? Probably for the same reason you'd climb Mt. Everest or swim the English Channel. It's a challenge, but one that is more reachable than Everest's 29,000 foot summit or the vast expanse of ocean between Dover and Calais. I'm reasonably certain there is also at least a modicum of addiction involved. I can vouch for that from personal experience.
I came late to running, not starting until I was well into my 30s. I started after a routine visit to a new doctor, Dr. Smith, who listened to my heartbeat for a few seconds and asked me: "What are you taking?" I named a drug meant to revive a comatose thyroid and he advised, "You don't need those pills. Throw them away and start exercising." Until then, I had led a mostly sedentary life except for eight weeks of Army basic training more than a decade earlier. But inspired by Dr. Smith I set a goal of running a mile in 15 minutes. Serendipitously, I was scheduled to go on a two week assignment to the Kansas City Chiefs training camp in Liberty, Mo. The Chiefs, as Super bowl champions, were preparing to play the College All-Stars in the season opening exhibition game sponsored annually by my newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. It appeared to be the perfect opportunity to get myself in shape. Accordingly, on my first morning in camp, I arose early and went to the quarter mile dirt running track and set out to run my first mile. I had just finished my first lap, however, when a short, thick-set man jumped in front of me with his arms in the air.
"What are you trying to do," he asked me. When I told him, he said, "You're going about it the wrong way. Let me help you and I guarantee you'll run that mile." For the next 10 days, Alvin Roy, the Chiefs' strength coach, worked with me every morning. His training regimen consisted of lifting weights and interval running. At no time did he let me run more than one lap until the last day, when he took out his stop watch and sent me out for my final exam. I don't remember what my time was but it was under 10 minutes and I was satisfied with that. From then on, I was hooked on running. I usually ran three miles before breakfast. Often I would run with Andy McKenna, who was on the board of the Cubs, White Sox, and Bears, with whom he had a minority ownership stake. The White Sox were up for sale at the time and rumors were flying all over town, but with my morning runs with Andy I had a pretty good grasp of what was going on. It was especially neat to find good running trails on out of town assignments. I think of all the runs I've had, the one I enjoyed the most was at a park in Syracuse, N.Y. the morning of a Syracuse-Penn State football game. The run was through a woods on a carpet of autumn leaves with a lake on my right hand side. It was an exhilerating moment.
The beginning of the end came one morning in Laramie, Wyo. I had just finished my morning run and sat down on the bed to take off my socks when a jolt of pain shot through my left knee and almost dropped me to the floor. Several cortisone shots and an arthroscope later the knee felt better, but that didn't last. I kept breaking down. Either my knees would get sore or my back would go out and I finally figured somebody or some thing was trying to tell me something. Today both knees are shot through with arthritis and the pain is constant, though bearable. Oddly enough, the knees don't hurt as much when I walk so that's how I get my exercise now. But I do miss running and if you were to ask me: Knowing what you know now would you do it over again, I'd reply, Damned right.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
By Bob Markus
The Oakland Raiders may have forgotten how to win, but they haven't forgotten how to handle the media--with disdain bordering on contempt. The Raiders are the most p.r. disfunctional organization in all of sports and have been so almost since their inception in 1960. Ever since Al Davis, then a 33-year-old assistant coach with the Los Angeles Chargers, became head coach and general manager of the Raiders in 1963, there has been an attitude of suspicion surrounding the team that makes Georgetown basketball's Hoya paranoia look like glasnost. The latest manifestation was on display last week, when Davis tried to keep Rich Gannon, a CBS analyst, out of his headquarters building, where the network was holding production meetings. Apparently, Gannon, who was the Raiders' quarterback the last time the team went to the Super Bowl, has been too critical of his old team. Of course, there is much to be critical about. The once potent Raiders have suffered six consecutive losing seasons since that 48-21 Super Bowl loss to Tampa Bay, a team coached by Jon Gruden, who had been Oakland's coach the three previous years. They may have reached rock bottom Sunday when they were blown away by the New York Giants, 44-7, in a game in which many of the Giant stars were given the second half off. Davis, once a superb judge of talent--there are 11 former Raider players in the Pro
Football Hall of Fame--squandered the first pick in the draft three years ago when he chose LSU quarterback JaMarcus Russell, who has been beyond terrible. While other young quarterbacks like Joe Flacco, Matt Ryan, Mark Sanchez and Chad Henne are leading their teams to victory, Russell is leading the Raiders on the road to ruin.
There are other indications that Davis is out of touch with NFL reality. He hired Lane Kiffin, a 31-year-old assistant coach at Southern Cal, to be the Raiders' head coach in 2007. Four games into the next season, he fired Kiffin, saying he had made a huge mistake. He compounded that mistake by replacing Kiffin with Tom Cable, whose head coaching experience consists of four years at Idaho, his alma mater, where he delivered an 11-35 record. Cable will finish the season, but he could finish it in jail or a courthouse after one of his assistants accused him of breaking his jaw in a blind side attack a few months ago. "He was screaming, 'I'll f---ing kill you! I'll f. . .ing kill you,'" according to the assistant, Randy Hanson. Hanson said he thought the attack was inspired by something he had said the previous day. While Cable was in a meeting with the Raiders' underachieving defensive backs, Hanson reportedly was telling the other assistants: "You know what's going to happen. Tom's gonna come out of that meeting and say I'm the problem. I'm the one confusing them and blame it all on me." The NFL and the Napa, Cal., police department are conducting separate investigations into the incident. Good luck to them. Prying information out of the Oakland Raiders has always been as difficult as prying the first pickle out of the jar.
My first dealing with the Raiders was pretty typical. I was on the West Coast covering the Rose bowl for the Chicago Tribune and the Raiders were getting ready to play the Houston Oilers for the AFL championship and the right to go to Super bowl II. I flew up to Oakland to cover the game and get a pregame column. After checking into my hotel I called the Raiders' publicity director, Lee Grosscup, a former quarterbacik from Utah who was famous for his white shoes. I told Grosscup I was there to do a pregame column and wanted to go to practice and interview one of his players. "Who do you want to talk to?" Grosscup asked. "Billy Cannon," I replied, referring to the former Heisman trophy winning halfback from LSU, who had made the transition to all-pro tight end. "My God," Grosscup exploded, "you can't talk to Billy Cannon. Nobody can talk to Billy Cannon." I then requested George Blanda, a former Bear and winner of the first two AFL championships as quarterback and kicker for the Oilers.
"No, you can't talk to Blanda," said Grosscup. "Then who can I talk to?" "Jim Otto," replied Grosscup, who added that practice started at 1:30 and gave me directions. When I arrived at 1:30 the practice field was empty and so was the locker room--except for one lone figure staring into his locker. Of course, it was Jim Otto, the Raiders' Hall of Fame center, who obviously had been told to wait for me.
That was the way the Raiders were, controlling, secretive, mistrustful. Recalls Ted Hendricks, the Hall of Fame linebacker who spent the last nine of his 15 pro seasons as a Raider: "The joke around here always used to be that if anyone was in the stands during a practice, he had to be a spy. Of course, everybody assumed Al (Davis) was using a spy, too. " Even though the Raiders usually made life difficult for me, I came to have a grudging admiration for them. In the early years of the AFL, many papers more or less ignored the upstart league, none more so than The Tribune, which was more or less in bed with the Bears' George Halas. But when I went out to cover my first Rose bowl after the 1965 season, the Buffalo Bills were playing the Chargers, who by then had moved to San Diego, in the league championship game. Except for Paul Zimmerman of the New York Post I might have been the only national writer covering that game. Zimmerman, of course, became the famous Dr. Z for Sports Illustrated, but back then he was more known for the elaborate charts he kept of each play, a system I never could understand, and for running the writers' pool at the Super Bowl. I once won it two years in a row and after the second time, Paul informed me that his pocket had been picked in the rush to the dressing room. Nevertheless he ponied up the money without much resistance. For those of you wondering where Dr. Z's predictions have gone, I'm sorry to report that Paul has suffered a series of strokes beginning last October and as far as I know he is still unable to speak. I spent many a night in his company--he was a wine connoisseur and the first one to point out to me the merits of Ridge Zinfandel. I certainly wish him well.
If you covered the AFL in those days you were bound to run into the Oakland Raiders frequently. I covered their loss to the Jets in Shea Stadium, the game in which Joe Namath threw through a biting wind to Don Maynard to send the Jets to the Super bowl. I was one of the few writers who did not expect the Baltimore Colts to blow away the Jets in the Super bowl, although I admit I wasn't brave enough to pick the Jets to win it. I covered the "Immaculate Reception" game in Pittsburgh and remember attending a late press conference the night before in which John Madden, the Raiders' coach, revealed that the team had watched the movie "Jaws" on the flight to Pittsburgh and, "Boy, I wish I could have that guy as a linebacker."
I think my favorite Raiders game was the famous "Ghost to the Post" playoff in Baltimore when Raiders tight end Dave Casper (the ghost), not only set up the tying touchdown with a 42-yard reception, but caught the game-winner in overtime. If that wasn't enough, when I got back to the football press box after doing the locker room interviews there was a small craft airplane lodged in the nearby baseball press box, the dare devil pilot having attempted to fly through the goal posts.
The Raiders in all their arrogance were fun to cover in those days. But those days are gone. Al Davis seems to have lost his way. His famous utterance: "Just win, baby," seems more like a prayerful plea than the unconditional demand it used to be.
The Oakland Raiders may have forgotten how to win, but they haven't forgotten how to handle the media--with disdain bordering on contempt. The Raiders are the most p.r. disfunctional organization in all of sports and have been so almost since their inception in 1960. Ever since Al Davis, then a 33-year-old assistant coach with the Los Angeles Chargers, became head coach and general manager of the Raiders in 1963, there has been an attitude of suspicion surrounding the team that makes Georgetown basketball's Hoya paranoia look like glasnost. The latest manifestation was on display last week, when Davis tried to keep Rich Gannon, a CBS analyst, out of his headquarters building, where the network was holding production meetings. Apparently, Gannon, who was the Raiders' quarterback the last time the team went to the Super Bowl, has been too critical of his old team. Of course, there is much to be critical about. The once potent Raiders have suffered six consecutive losing seasons since that 48-21 Super Bowl loss to Tampa Bay, a team coached by Jon Gruden, who had been Oakland's coach the three previous years. They may have reached rock bottom Sunday when they were blown away by the New York Giants, 44-7, in a game in which many of the Giant stars were given the second half off. Davis, once a superb judge of talent--there are 11 former Raider players in the Pro
Football Hall of Fame--squandered the first pick in the draft three years ago when he chose LSU quarterback JaMarcus Russell, who has been beyond terrible. While other young quarterbacks like Joe Flacco, Matt Ryan, Mark Sanchez and Chad Henne are leading their teams to victory, Russell is leading the Raiders on the road to ruin.
There are other indications that Davis is out of touch with NFL reality. He hired Lane Kiffin, a 31-year-old assistant coach at Southern Cal, to be the Raiders' head coach in 2007. Four games into the next season, he fired Kiffin, saying he had made a huge mistake. He compounded that mistake by replacing Kiffin with Tom Cable, whose head coaching experience consists of four years at Idaho, his alma mater, where he delivered an 11-35 record. Cable will finish the season, but he could finish it in jail or a courthouse after one of his assistants accused him of breaking his jaw in a blind side attack a few months ago. "He was screaming, 'I'll f---ing kill you! I'll f. . .ing kill you,'" according to the assistant, Randy Hanson. Hanson said he thought the attack was inspired by something he had said the previous day. While Cable was in a meeting with the Raiders' underachieving defensive backs, Hanson reportedly was telling the other assistants: "You know what's going to happen. Tom's gonna come out of that meeting and say I'm the problem. I'm the one confusing them and blame it all on me." The NFL and the Napa, Cal., police department are conducting separate investigations into the incident. Good luck to them. Prying information out of the Oakland Raiders has always been as difficult as prying the first pickle out of the jar.
My first dealing with the Raiders was pretty typical. I was on the West Coast covering the Rose bowl for the Chicago Tribune and the Raiders were getting ready to play the Houston Oilers for the AFL championship and the right to go to Super bowl II. I flew up to Oakland to cover the game and get a pregame column. After checking into my hotel I called the Raiders' publicity director, Lee Grosscup, a former quarterbacik from Utah who was famous for his white shoes. I told Grosscup I was there to do a pregame column and wanted to go to practice and interview one of his players. "Who do you want to talk to?" Grosscup asked. "Billy Cannon," I replied, referring to the former Heisman trophy winning halfback from LSU, who had made the transition to all-pro tight end. "My God," Grosscup exploded, "you can't talk to Billy Cannon. Nobody can talk to Billy Cannon." I then requested George Blanda, a former Bear and winner of the first two AFL championships as quarterback and kicker for the Oilers.
"No, you can't talk to Blanda," said Grosscup. "Then who can I talk to?" "Jim Otto," replied Grosscup, who added that practice started at 1:30 and gave me directions. When I arrived at 1:30 the practice field was empty and so was the locker room--except for one lone figure staring into his locker. Of course, it was Jim Otto, the Raiders' Hall of Fame center, who obviously had been told to wait for me.
That was the way the Raiders were, controlling, secretive, mistrustful. Recalls Ted Hendricks, the Hall of Fame linebacker who spent the last nine of his 15 pro seasons as a Raider: "The joke around here always used to be that if anyone was in the stands during a practice, he had to be a spy. Of course, everybody assumed Al (Davis) was using a spy, too. " Even though the Raiders usually made life difficult for me, I came to have a grudging admiration for them. In the early years of the AFL, many papers more or less ignored the upstart league, none more so than The Tribune, which was more or less in bed with the Bears' George Halas. But when I went out to cover my first Rose bowl after the 1965 season, the Buffalo Bills were playing the Chargers, who by then had moved to San Diego, in the league championship game. Except for Paul Zimmerman of the New York Post I might have been the only national writer covering that game. Zimmerman, of course, became the famous Dr. Z for Sports Illustrated, but back then he was more known for the elaborate charts he kept of each play, a system I never could understand, and for running the writers' pool at the Super Bowl. I once won it two years in a row and after the second time, Paul informed me that his pocket had been picked in the rush to the dressing room. Nevertheless he ponied up the money without much resistance. For those of you wondering where Dr. Z's predictions have gone, I'm sorry to report that Paul has suffered a series of strokes beginning last October and as far as I know he is still unable to speak. I spent many a night in his company--he was a wine connoisseur and the first one to point out to me the merits of Ridge Zinfandel. I certainly wish him well.
If you covered the AFL in those days you were bound to run into the Oakland Raiders frequently. I covered their loss to the Jets in Shea Stadium, the game in which Joe Namath threw through a biting wind to Don Maynard to send the Jets to the Super bowl. I was one of the few writers who did not expect the Baltimore Colts to blow away the Jets in the Super bowl, although I admit I wasn't brave enough to pick the Jets to win it. I covered the "Immaculate Reception" game in Pittsburgh and remember attending a late press conference the night before in which John Madden, the Raiders' coach, revealed that the team had watched the movie "Jaws" on the flight to Pittsburgh and, "Boy, I wish I could have that guy as a linebacker."
I think my favorite Raiders game was the famous "Ghost to the Post" playoff in Baltimore when Raiders tight end Dave Casper (the ghost), not only set up the tying touchdown with a 42-yard reception, but caught the game-winner in overtime. If that wasn't enough, when I got back to the football press box after doing the locker room interviews there was a small craft airplane lodged in the nearby baseball press box, the dare devil pilot having attempted to fly through the goal posts.
The Raiders in all their arrogance were fun to cover in those days. But those days are gone. Al Davis seems to have lost his way. His famous utterance: "Just win, baby," seems more like a prayerful plea than the unconditional demand it used to be.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
By Bob Markus
Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria made his millions as an art dealer. I'm sure he can tell a Monet from a Manet and a Pollock from a Picasso. But as a baseball owner he apparently has no clue. Loria's the man who fired Joe Girardi as manager after only one season, a season in which Girardi was named National League Manager of the Year. Now come reports that Loria is considering firing Fredi Gonzalez and replacing him with Bobby Valentine. Gonzales was LAST year's N.L. Manager of the Year and this season led the Marlins to an 87-75 record and had them in playoff contention until the last week. All of this despite having the smallest payroll in major league baseball. I don't know Gonzalez, never met him, but I know his players play hard for him and in many cases overachieve.
Girardi's firing was personal. There are two versions of the reason and you can chose the one you like best. Either Girardi told Loria to shut up after the owner, seated in his box yelled at an umpire over a call or Loria chastized Girardi for not arguing the call, sparking an ongoing feud between employer and employee. If Gonzalez is fired it will be for an even dumber reason. Loria thought the Marlins should have made the playoffs. That's as unrealistic as expecting to buy Van Gogh's Starry Night for a hundred bucks. I know, I know. Early in the season, caught up in the hysteria of the Marlins' 11-1 start, I wrote that the Marlins were contenders. But that was not the prevailing opinion. Of course, they didn't make the playoffs, but the few fans who bothered to come out to support them got their money's worth. They got National league batting titlist Hanley Ramirez. They got rookie Chris Coghlan, who arrived late, but simply tore up National league pitching in the second half of the season. If Coghlan isn't N.L. Rookie of the Year it will be the biggest crime since Willie Sutton pawned his safe cracking tools. They got pitcher Josh Johnson, whose rebuilt arm provided a 15-5 record. But most of all they got a team that would not quit.
Loria appears to be one of the breed of owners who takes a hands on approach. Instead of hiring a baseball man and letting him make the decisions, they take matters into their own hands. That's not necessarily bad. Charley Finley did it and put together one of the all-time best teams in Oakland, although I never could understand how an insurance salesman could do it. George Steinbrenner did it even better, building the Yankeees' second dynasty (after the Ruth-Gehrig-DiMaggio-Mantle era winked off). In his early years, Steinbrenner changed managers as often as he changed his socks, but he knew talent when he saw it and was willing to pay for it. And when he finally found the right man, Joe Torre, he let Torre manage the team. Steinbrenner spent more money on Alex Rodriguez's contract than Loria did on the entire team he handed to Girardi. The Yankees had a general manager, but I can't remember who it was.
Baseball's not the only sport with mettlesome owners. All of them had the right to mettle, but only a few had the background. George Halas was player, coach and owner of the Chicago Bears from their inception in 1919 and remained coach for most of the period until his retirement in 1968. Even then he continued to be the puppetmaster until finally acknowledging that the game was passing him by. He had intended to pass the reins to his son Mugs, but when Mugsy died the leadership passed to Jim Finks, an established football man. The Halas family, through daughter Virginia McCaskey, still owns the Bears, but football men run the team.
Paul Brown not only was coach and part owner of the Cleveland Browns, but the team was named for him. When Brown, who built a post World War II powerhouse on the shores of Lake Erie, was fired as coach by majority owner Art Modell, he simply moved to the southern part of the state and started over with the Cincinnati Bengals.
Halas and Brown came close to overstaying their welcomes. Some men have the grace to know when it's time to go. Some men don't. Connie Mack was one such, although it hurts me to say it. Mack, after all, was baseball's Grand Old Man, managing the Philadelphia Athletics for 50 years before retiring at the age of 87. Mack holds the records for most managerial wins--3,731--and losses--3,948--and nobody else is even close. Although he was a player himself, once he went to the bench he dressed in civilian clothes. I remember as a teen-ager going to Comiskey Park by myself just to see Mack. And there he was, immaculate in suit and tie, waving his scorecard to position his players. But by that time the A's, who had won nine pennants and five world series under Mack, were a pathetic team. As Wayne Huizenga was to do with the Marlins many years later, Mack sold off many of his star players after his last World Series win in 1931. Starting in 1934, after selling off the contracts of the last of his super stars, slugger Jimmie Foxx and pitcher Lefty Grove, Mack watched his beloved A's finish in the American league's second division 14 years in a row and 16 of his final 17 seasons as manager. There is one big difference between Mack and Huizenga. Mack sold his stars because he needed money. Huizenga traded his because he wanted more money.
The Marlins have gone through two owners who have dismantled World Series winning teams for the want of money and if Loria wants to know why the Marlins were last in the majors in attendance he need only look in the mirror. Fans are afraid to commit to the Marlins because they fear the Marlins won't commit to them. And they're right. Even after getting the domed stadium they had been seeking for years, the Marlins have given no indication they are about to open the purse strings. There is even speculation that Johnson will be traded before arbitration can rear its budget-busting head. If that happens, the Marlins will lose even more of its fan base. Which is a shame, because the Marlins, under Fredi Gonzalez, really are fun to watch.
My advice to Loria: Keep Gonzalez. And in the words of Joe Girardi:"Shut up."
Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria made his millions as an art dealer. I'm sure he can tell a Monet from a Manet and a Pollock from a Picasso. But as a baseball owner he apparently has no clue. Loria's the man who fired Joe Girardi as manager after only one season, a season in which Girardi was named National League Manager of the Year. Now come reports that Loria is considering firing Fredi Gonzalez and replacing him with Bobby Valentine. Gonzales was LAST year's N.L. Manager of the Year and this season led the Marlins to an 87-75 record and had them in playoff contention until the last week. All of this despite having the smallest payroll in major league baseball. I don't know Gonzalez, never met him, but I know his players play hard for him and in many cases overachieve.
Girardi's firing was personal. There are two versions of the reason and you can chose the one you like best. Either Girardi told Loria to shut up after the owner, seated in his box yelled at an umpire over a call or Loria chastized Girardi for not arguing the call, sparking an ongoing feud between employer and employee. If Gonzalez is fired it will be for an even dumber reason. Loria thought the Marlins should have made the playoffs. That's as unrealistic as expecting to buy Van Gogh's Starry Night for a hundred bucks. I know, I know. Early in the season, caught up in the hysteria of the Marlins' 11-1 start, I wrote that the Marlins were contenders. But that was not the prevailing opinion. Of course, they didn't make the playoffs, but the few fans who bothered to come out to support them got their money's worth. They got National league batting titlist Hanley Ramirez. They got rookie Chris Coghlan, who arrived late, but simply tore up National league pitching in the second half of the season. If Coghlan isn't N.L. Rookie of the Year it will be the biggest crime since Willie Sutton pawned his safe cracking tools. They got pitcher Josh Johnson, whose rebuilt arm provided a 15-5 record. But most of all they got a team that would not quit.
Loria appears to be one of the breed of owners who takes a hands on approach. Instead of hiring a baseball man and letting him make the decisions, they take matters into their own hands. That's not necessarily bad. Charley Finley did it and put together one of the all-time best teams in Oakland, although I never could understand how an insurance salesman could do it. George Steinbrenner did it even better, building the Yankeees' second dynasty (after the Ruth-Gehrig-DiMaggio-Mantle era winked off). In his early years, Steinbrenner changed managers as often as he changed his socks, but he knew talent when he saw it and was willing to pay for it. And when he finally found the right man, Joe Torre, he let Torre manage the team. Steinbrenner spent more money on Alex Rodriguez's contract than Loria did on the entire team he handed to Girardi. The Yankees had a general manager, but I can't remember who it was.
Baseball's not the only sport with mettlesome owners. All of them had the right to mettle, but only a few had the background. George Halas was player, coach and owner of the Chicago Bears from their inception in 1919 and remained coach for most of the period until his retirement in 1968. Even then he continued to be the puppetmaster until finally acknowledging that the game was passing him by. He had intended to pass the reins to his son Mugs, but when Mugsy died the leadership passed to Jim Finks, an established football man. The Halas family, through daughter Virginia McCaskey, still owns the Bears, but football men run the team.
Paul Brown not only was coach and part owner of the Cleveland Browns, but the team was named for him. When Brown, who built a post World War II powerhouse on the shores of Lake Erie, was fired as coach by majority owner Art Modell, he simply moved to the southern part of the state and started over with the Cincinnati Bengals.
Halas and Brown came close to overstaying their welcomes. Some men have the grace to know when it's time to go. Some men don't. Connie Mack was one such, although it hurts me to say it. Mack, after all, was baseball's Grand Old Man, managing the Philadelphia Athletics for 50 years before retiring at the age of 87. Mack holds the records for most managerial wins--3,731--and losses--3,948--and nobody else is even close. Although he was a player himself, once he went to the bench he dressed in civilian clothes. I remember as a teen-ager going to Comiskey Park by myself just to see Mack. And there he was, immaculate in suit and tie, waving his scorecard to position his players. But by that time the A's, who had won nine pennants and five world series under Mack, were a pathetic team. As Wayne Huizenga was to do with the Marlins many years later, Mack sold off many of his star players after his last World Series win in 1931. Starting in 1934, after selling off the contracts of the last of his super stars, slugger Jimmie Foxx and pitcher Lefty Grove, Mack watched his beloved A's finish in the American league's second division 14 years in a row and 16 of his final 17 seasons as manager. There is one big difference between Mack and Huizenga. Mack sold his stars because he needed money. Huizenga traded his because he wanted more money.
The Marlins have gone through two owners who have dismantled World Series winning teams for the want of money and if Loria wants to know why the Marlins were last in the majors in attendance he need only look in the mirror. Fans are afraid to commit to the Marlins because they fear the Marlins won't commit to them. And they're right. Even after getting the domed stadium they had been seeking for years, the Marlins have given no indication they are about to open the purse strings. There is even speculation that Johnson will be traded before arbitration can rear its budget-busting head. If that happens, the Marlins will lose even more of its fan base. Which is a shame, because the Marlins, under Fredi Gonzalez, really are fun to watch.
My advice to Loria: Keep Gonzalez. And in the words of Joe Girardi:"Shut up."
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
By Bob Markus
You've got to play with the small hurts. That is the athletes' mantra. Mine, too. I've always played with the small hurts. Sometimes with the big ones, too. In 36 years of writing sports for the Chicago Tribune I missed one day of work. I was in the hospital that day, undergoing what they told me was "minor surgery." Eight days later I left the hospital, having learned this important lesson. There is no minor surgery.
At the time, I was writing a column five days a week. The only column I missed was that one on the day of surgery. The next day I sat up in bed and watched the Cubs-Phillies game. Mike Schmidt hit four homers and that took care of that day's column. A few days later, Cale Yarborough, at the time the hottest driver in NASCAR's Winston Cup series, visited me in my hospital room. My roommate, who was there for a face lift, was mightily impressed. Actually, I was, too. The rest of the week I just sort of winged it, writing whatever popped into my head. Kind of like today's effort. I finally went home on Saturday and about an hour later Bill Bradley popped in. He was still playing for the New York Knicks at the time and was on the road promoting his book; "Life on the Run," I believe was the title.
When his advance publicist called to ask if I wanted to interview the basketball legend, I said, sure, but I've got a problem. No problem, said the agent, Mr. Bradley will be glad to come to your house. Bradley sat on our sofa while I occupied a matching chair and, although my politics were pretty far to the right of Bradley's, I later found myself wishing he'd become President so I could tell visitors "President Bradley once sat on that sofa."
Several years later, I was covering the White Sox in spring training in Sarasota, Fl., their winter home at the time. They played their games in a park with a rather rickety grandstand that featured a press box reachable only by a set of wooden stairs. The date was April 1, 1981, and I can tell you the date precisely because it was two days after President Ronald Reagan was shot--and Greg Luzinski was traded to the White Sox. On the day of the Luzinski trade, the White Sox were playing an exhibition game in Tampa against the Cincinnati Reds. Two of my three children were staying with me and I figured as long as we were going to be in Tampa, I might as well take the kids to Busch Gardens in the morning and then take them with me to the ball park. Everybody had a great time at the amusement park and my daughter actually wheedled me into joining her on a roller coaster ride, an adventure I would come to regret. When it was time to go, the kids suggested I leave them there and pick them up after the ball game. I actually considered it. For about three seconds. Then common sense finally took charge. In about the fifth inning there was an announcement in the press box that the Sox had just acquired Luzinski, the Chicago-born slugger, from the Phillies and "The Bull" would be available for interview within the hour--in Clearwater.
I hustled the kids into the car and drove to Clearwater, where the Bull babbled like a baby, tears streaming down his face as he recalled his glory years with the Phils. Sitting in the front row taking it all in, were Trish and Mike Markus, 13 and 10 respectively. It was while I was writing the trade story that news flashed on the TV screen in front of me that there had been an assassination attempt on The President. As I pulled in front of our rented condo in Sarasota I took a moment to reflect on what would have happened had I left the kids at Busch Gardens.
Two days later, after my usual morning run, I was sitting on the edge of a sofa taking off my running shoes when, just like that, my back went out and sent me writhing to the floor where I remained until the spasm relented long enough to allow me to get back on my feet.
Damn that roller coaster, I muttered. But you have to play with the small hurts, so I went out to the ballpark and endured a day of hell. It was a day in which the White Sox made three different trades and each time I had to struggle down those devilish stairs to the press room for an interview and back up again to write the story.
Another time I was in Laramie, Wyo., doing a feature story on the Cowboys basketball team when, again after a run, my left knee suddenly felt as if it had been hit by a bazooka. I couldn't stand on it, let alone walk, but luckily, the Wyoming trainer was able to give me some relief and I went about my business. The knee got worse and worse and I recall getting a cortizone shot on the morning of a flight to Paris. Our trip lasted three weeks and so did the shot, which lost its zip as soon as we landed back at O'Hare. Eventually it required arthroscopic surgery, but I never missed a day at work.
I could go on and tell you about the time I was covering the Blackhawks in a game in Dallas and as I walked down towards the ice during ther morning skate I got my first gout attack and hobbled around for the rest of the road trip. But I won't. I'll simply tell you that I went to my dentist a while back and he told me, essentially, "Your teeth are okay, but those gums will have to come out." I had my gum surgery this morning and I'm supposed to be resting for th4e balance of the day. But this is my day to write my blog and you have to play with the small hurts. It's now three hours after the surgery and the novocain, or whatever it was they gave me, is finally starting to wear off. I can hardly wait to find out what's going to happen next.
You've got to play with the small hurts. That is the athletes' mantra. Mine, too. I've always played with the small hurts. Sometimes with the big ones, too. In 36 years of writing sports for the Chicago Tribune I missed one day of work. I was in the hospital that day, undergoing what they told me was "minor surgery." Eight days later I left the hospital, having learned this important lesson. There is no minor surgery.
At the time, I was writing a column five days a week. The only column I missed was that one on the day of surgery. The next day I sat up in bed and watched the Cubs-Phillies game. Mike Schmidt hit four homers and that took care of that day's column. A few days later, Cale Yarborough, at the time the hottest driver in NASCAR's Winston Cup series, visited me in my hospital room. My roommate, who was there for a face lift, was mightily impressed. Actually, I was, too. The rest of the week I just sort of winged it, writing whatever popped into my head. Kind of like today's effort. I finally went home on Saturday and about an hour later Bill Bradley popped in. He was still playing for the New York Knicks at the time and was on the road promoting his book; "Life on the Run," I believe was the title.
When his advance publicist called to ask if I wanted to interview the basketball legend, I said, sure, but I've got a problem. No problem, said the agent, Mr. Bradley will be glad to come to your house. Bradley sat on our sofa while I occupied a matching chair and, although my politics were pretty far to the right of Bradley's, I later found myself wishing he'd become President so I could tell visitors "President Bradley once sat on that sofa."
Several years later, I was covering the White Sox in spring training in Sarasota, Fl., their winter home at the time. They played their games in a park with a rather rickety grandstand that featured a press box reachable only by a set of wooden stairs. The date was April 1, 1981, and I can tell you the date precisely because it was two days after President Ronald Reagan was shot--and Greg Luzinski was traded to the White Sox. On the day of the Luzinski trade, the White Sox were playing an exhibition game in Tampa against the Cincinnati Reds. Two of my three children were staying with me and I figured as long as we were going to be in Tampa, I might as well take the kids to Busch Gardens in the morning and then take them with me to the ball park. Everybody had a great time at the amusement park and my daughter actually wheedled me into joining her on a roller coaster ride, an adventure I would come to regret. When it was time to go, the kids suggested I leave them there and pick them up after the ball game. I actually considered it. For about three seconds. Then common sense finally took charge. In about the fifth inning there was an announcement in the press box that the Sox had just acquired Luzinski, the Chicago-born slugger, from the Phillies and "The Bull" would be available for interview within the hour--in Clearwater.
I hustled the kids into the car and drove to Clearwater, where the Bull babbled like a baby, tears streaming down his face as he recalled his glory years with the Phils. Sitting in the front row taking it all in, were Trish and Mike Markus, 13 and 10 respectively. It was while I was writing the trade story that news flashed on the TV screen in front of me that there had been an assassination attempt on The President. As I pulled in front of our rented condo in Sarasota I took a moment to reflect on what would have happened had I left the kids at Busch Gardens.
Two days later, after my usual morning run, I was sitting on the edge of a sofa taking off my running shoes when, just like that, my back went out and sent me writhing to the floor where I remained until the spasm relented long enough to allow me to get back on my feet.
Damn that roller coaster, I muttered. But you have to play with the small hurts, so I went out to the ballpark and endured a day of hell. It was a day in which the White Sox made three different trades and each time I had to struggle down those devilish stairs to the press room for an interview and back up again to write the story.
Another time I was in Laramie, Wyo., doing a feature story on the Cowboys basketball team when, again after a run, my left knee suddenly felt as if it had been hit by a bazooka. I couldn't stand on it, let alone walk, but luckily, the Wyoming trainer was able to give me some relief and I went about my business. The knee got worse and worse and I recall getting a cortizone shot on the morning of a flight to Paris. Our trip lasted three weeks and so did the shot, which lost its zip as soon as we landed back at O'Hare. Eventually it required arthroscopic surgery, but I never missed a day at work.
I could go on and tell you about the time I was covering the Blackhawks in a game in Dallas and as I walked down towards the ice during ther morning skate I got my first gout attack and hobbled around for the rest of the road trip. But I won't. I'll simply tell you that I went to my dentist a while back and he told me, essentially, "Your teeth are okay, but those gums will have to come out." I had my gum surgery this morning and I'm supposed to be resting for th4e balance of the day. But this is my day to write my blog and you have to play with the small hurts. It's now three hours after the surgery and the novocain, or whatever it was they gave me, is finally starting to wear off. I can hardly wait to find out what's going to happen next.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
By Bob Markus
The sweet bird of youth has revisited Mark Martin's nest and it appears to be ready to stay a spell. At the so-called golden age of 50 Martin is leading after the first of 10 races that will decide NASCAR's Sprint Cup championship. His victory Sunday in Loudon, N.H., was the 40th in his career, but he has never won either a series championship or a Daytona 500. Every geezer, including this one, has to be rooting for Martin, who came out of semi-retirement to race for Rick Hendrick on a fulltime basis this season. Already signed through 2010, Martin recently added a third year to his contract, meaning he should still be racing at 52.
The longtime lead driver for Jack Rousch racing, Martin announced his retirement after the 2005 season. But when Rousch couldn't find a suitable replacement, Martin agreed to race the full series in 2006. He ran parttime the last two seasons before joining the powerful Hendrick team, which already included Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, with seven Cup titles between them, and the popular but apparently over-rated Dale Earnhardt Jr. My most abiding memory of Martin came not at a race track, although I did once have a one-on-one with him in his trailer, but at a theater in New York.
Martin was in the Big Apple to get his slice of the Winston Cup (as it was called then) pie. It was NASCAR's version of the Oscars, although everyone already knew who the winners were. The top ten drivers and their crews were invited to New York to honor the champion and receive their own accolades. Being No. 10 in most sports is synonymous with "loser," but in NASCAR it's a big deal. And Martin, although never the top banana, was one of the bunch on a regular basis. At that time the event was held each December in the Waldorf-Astoria and as the auto racing writer for The Chicago Tribune I went to several of them. On this occasion my wife was with me and Chip Williams, then the p.r. director for Winston Cup, asked me if we would like to go to dinner and the theater with Mark Martin. I don't remember much about the dinner or the show we saw, but I do remember looking at Mark halfway through the production and seeing that he was fast asleep. It didn't surprise me too much, because the play was "The Secret Garden," a musical based on the once popular, but long forgotten children's novel, and I had trouble staying awake myself. It was Mark's first Broadway show and I'd be very surprised if it wasn't his last. Martin is a down home type of guy from Arkansas and he's all business. Long before most drivers were into physical fitness, Martin was an avid workout proponent, which could account for his long career.
Martin is just one of four drivers to win a Cup race after reaching age 50. The other three are Bobby Allison, Morgan Shepherd, and Harry Gant, who did it eight times. Four of those came in succession in September of 1991 and although he was not the champion, Gant was the most sought after interviewee at that year's banquet. Gant was the ultimate late bloomer. He not only was the oldest driver ever to win a Cup race for the first time (he was 42 when he won at Martinsville), but the oldest ever to win a Cup race, period,when he won for the last time at Michigan as a 52-year-old.
Shepherd , who was 41 before he won his first Cup race, was mostly a back marker during a long career that reached its peak when he ran for the legendry Wood Brothers from 1992 to 1995. It was sometime during that period that I talked to him and found out that, among other interesting tidbits, he was closely related to the infamous Tom Dooley of story and song--and that he was illiterate, couldn't read or write. Shepherd's Winston Cup career died a lingering death, but he's still racing at age 67. He ran his own truck racing team for awhile, but was so strapped for money that he actually was his own pit crew at times, climbing out of the truck to change tires and refuel before climbing back in and soldiering on. As long as he pitted under the yellow that wasn't too damaging--at least he didn't lose a lap, but green flag stops were another story. More recently he's run a one-car team in the Nationwide series, NASCAR's version of Triple A baseball. But once again money problems have loomed and he may not be able to finish out the season.
Bobbby Allison was a few months past his 50th birthday in 1988 when he won the Daytona 500 for the third time. His son Davey finished second and it was a spectacular day for the Allison family. It was Bobby's last victory. Later that year he was almost killed in a savage crash at Pocono and never raced again. I remember getting a phone call from Davey Allison's p.r. man several months later. He told me that Bobby for the first time was able and willing to talk about the crash and his recovery and that he could also get me hooked up with Davey. Was I interested? You bet. Davey told me of his feelings when he drove past the accident scene and saw how horrific it was, but Bobby couldn't remember much of anything about the wreck. I asked him how he now felt about the sport and he told me, "Racing's given me everything I have. Racing's good." A few years later his son Clifford was killed in a crash during practice at Michigan and a year after that Davey died in a helicopter crash en route to Talladega Speedway. It was on a Monday and I can tell you that with some assurance because I was just sitting down to dinner at the annual charity golf tournament with which I was involved when I got a phone call from the office. No dinner for me, that night.
In Formula One racing you're an old man at 30, but in other forms of racing it's not so rare to see a 50-year-old still driving competitively. A.J. Foyt ws 57 when he called it a career and Mario Andretti was 53 when he won for the last time in an Indy car. Paul Newman was still driving competitively well into his 70s. But for the ultimate in senior moments I think you have to look at Hershel McGriff, a legendary west coast driver who competed mostly in the Winston Cup West series. McGriff started racing when he was 17. That was 64 years ago. Now 81, McGriff this year entered the race at Portland, the same track on which he'd made his debut--and finished 13th. Mark Martin has some catching up to do.
The sweet bird of youth has revisited Mark Martin's nest and it appears to be ready to stay a spell. At the so-called golden age of 50 Martin is leading after the first of 10 races that will decide NASCAR's Sprint Cup championship. His victory Sunday in Loudon, N.H., was the 40th in his career, but he has never won either a series championship or a Daytona 500. Every geezer, including this one, has to be rooting for Martin, who came out of semi-retirement to race for Rick Hendrick on a fulltime basis this season. Already signed through 2010, Martin recently added a third year to his contract, meaning he should still be racing at 52.
The longtime lead driver for Jack Rousch racing, Martin announced his retirement after the 2005 season. But when Rousch couldn't find a suitable replacement, Martin agreed to race the full series in 2006. He ran parttime the last two seasons before joining the powerful Hendrick team, which already included Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, with seven Cup titles between them, and the popular but apparently over-rated Dale Earnhardt Jr. My most abiding memory of Martin came not at a race track, although I did once have a one-on-one with him in his trailer, but at a theater in New York.
Martin was in the Big Apple to get his slice of the Winston Cup (as it was called then) pie. It was NASCAR's version of the Oscars, although everyone already knew who the winners were. The top ten drivers and their crews were invited to New York to honor the champion and receive their own accolades. Being No. 10 in most sports is synonymous with "loser," but in NASCAR it's a big deal. And Martin, although never the top banana, was one of the bunch on a regular basis. At that time the event was held each December in the Waldorf-Astoria and as the auto racing writer for The Chicago Tribune I went to several of them. On this occasion my wife was with me and Chip Williams, then the p.r. director for Winston Cup, asked me if we would like to go to dinner and the theater with Mark Martin. I don't remember much about the dinner or the show we saw, but I do remember looking at Mark halfway through the production and seeing that he was fast asleep. It didn't surprise me too much, because the play was "The Secret Garden," a musical based on the once popular, but long forgotten children's novel, and I had trouble staying awake myself. It was Mark's first Broadway show and I'd be very surprised if it wasn't his last. Martin is a down home type of guy from Arkansas and he's all business. Long before most drivers were into physical fitness, Martin was an avid workout proponent, which could account for his long career.
Martin is just one of four drivers to win a Cup race after reaching age 50. The other three are Bobby Allison, Morgan Shepherd, and Harry Gant, who did it eight times. Four of those came in succession in September of 1991 and although he was not the champion, Gant was the most sought after interviewee at that year's banquet. Gant was the ultimate late bloomer. He not only was the oldest driver ever to win a Cup race for the first time (he was 42 when he won at Martinsville), but the oldest ever to win a Cup race, period,when he won for the last time at Michigan as a 52-year-old.
Shepherd , who was 41 before he won his first Cup race, was mostly a back marker during a long career that reached its peak when he ran for the legendry Wood Brothers from 1992 to 1995. It was sometime during that period that I talked to him and found out that, among other interesting tidbits, he was closely related to the infamous Tom Dooley of story and song--and that he was illiterate, couldn't read or write. Shepherd's Winston Cup career died a lingering death, but he's still racing at age 67. He ran his own truck racing team for awhile, but was so strapped for money that he actually was his own pit crew at times, climbing out of the truck to change tires and refuel before climbing back in and soldiering on. As long as he pitted under the yellow that wasn't too damaging--at least he didn't lose a lap, but green flag stops were another story. More recently he's run a one-car team in the Nationwide series, NASCAR's version of Triple A baseball. But once again money problems have loomed and he may not be able to finish out the season.
Bobbby Allison was a few months past his 50th birthday in 1988 when he won the Daytona 500 for the third time. His son Davey finished second and it was a spectacular day for the Allison family. It was Bobby's last victory. Later that year he was almost killed in a savage crash at Pocono and never raced again. I remember getting a phone call from Davey Allison's p.r. man several months later. He told me that Bobby for the first time was able and willing to talk about the crash and his recovery and that he could also get me hooked up with Davey. Was I interested? You bet. Davey told me of his feelings when he drove past the accident scene and saw how horrific it was, but Bobby couldn't remember much of anything about the wreck. I asked him how he now felt about the sport and he told me, "Racing's given me everything I have. Racing's good." A few years later his son Clifford was killed in a crash during practice at Michigan and a year after that Davey died in a helicopter crash en route to Talladega Speedway. It was on a Monday and I can tell you that with some assurance because I was just sitting down to dinner at the annual charity golf tournament with which I was involved when I got a phone call from the office. No dinner for me, that night.
In Formula One racing you're an old man at 30, but in other forms of racing it's not so rare to see a 50-year-old still driving competitively. A.J. Foyt ws 57 when he called it a career and Mario Andretti was 53 when he won for the last time in an Indy car. Paul Newman was still driving competitively well into his 70s. But for the ultimate in senior moments I think you have to look at Hershel McGriff, a legendary west coast driver who competed mostly in the Winston Cup West series. McGriff started racing when he was 17. That was 64 years ago. Now 81, McGriff this year entered the race at Portland, the same track on which he'd made his debut--and finished 13th. Mark Martin has some catching up to do.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
By Bob Markus
Through the years, the Chicago Bears have been primarily known for two things--Hall of Fame linebackers and Hall-of-Shame quarterbacks. Oh, you can throw in an occasional Gale Sayers or Walter Payton, but by and large the Bears have been defined by the stellar play of, especially, their middle linebackers and the cellar play of the myriad of mopes who have taken center snaps. This was the year that would change all that, or at least half of that. Brian Urlacher would continue on as the latest in the long orange and blue line of dynamic middle linebackers, a line that stretches all the way back to Bulldog Turner, who strictly speaking was not a middle linebacker--the position had yet to be invented--but a center and middle guard. Turner handed the mantle to Bill George, who DID invent the position of middle linebacker and from there it passed through the brutish hands of Dick Butkus to the fierce-eyed Mike Singletary to Urlacher, who seems almost certain to join his predecessors in the Hall of Fame.
But, no longer would Bears fans have to watch in despair as their rag-armed quarterbacks threw more passes into the dirt or, worse, into the arms of opposing defensive backs than they did to their own receivers. Riding to the rescue like El Cid, to right all of history's wrongs was Jay Cutler, who bore the impressive label "franchise quarterback." Unfortunately, what we got was not El Cid, but Sancho Panza. He even looks a bit like the popular conception of Don Quixote's sidekick, moonfaced with a slightly rounded body.
I don't know what I expected from Cutler's debut as a Bears quarterback, but certainly not this. Not four interceptions, two of which contributed directly to the Green Bay Packers' 21-15 opening night victory. Most of the picks were about as close to the intended receiver as Rush Limbaugh is to Barack Obama. If you could even figure out just who was the intended receiver. There was less communication between Cutler and his wideouts than there was between King Kong and Fay Wray.
But Cutler's performance was not the worst thing that happened to the Bears Monday night. Perhaps it was an anomaly and Cutler would come back next week to carve up the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wait a minute. Did I just say the Pittsburgh Steelers? Aren't they the Super bowl champions? Doesn't matter. Even if Cutler were the second coming of Sid Luckman the Bears aren't going anywhere without Urlacher. And Urlacher isn't going anywhere near a football field for the rest of this season after surgery for a dislocated wrist. Speaking of Luckman, Sid was one of only three quarterbacks who have led the Bears to a championship in the modern era, which he himself inaugurated in 1940 as the NFL's first T-formation quarterback. Luckman won four titles with the Bears, Bill Wade and Jim McMahon one apiece. Wade, like Cutler, went to Vanderbilt, so perhaps there is an omen there. But if Cutler can't cut it, perhaps the Bears could draft BYU's Max Hall next year. After all, McMahon is a BYU product. I doubt there will be any help forthcoming from Columbia, Luckman's alma mater.
There has been an endless string of Bears quarterbacks between Luckman and Cutler, most of them easily forgettable. But not all. There were the three B's--Ed Brown, George Blanda and Zeke Bratkowski. Brown led the Bears into the 1956 title game, Blanda became one of the game's alltime leading kickers and, in his football dotage, the starting quarterback for an Oakland Raiders team that nearly got to the Super Bowl. There were the three L's--Luckman, Bobby Layne, and Johnny Lujack. Luckman you already know about, although you might not know he was one of the nicest men who ever lived. I once asked him for an interview for a free lance piece I was working on. He invited me to his downtown Chicago apartment for breakfast, gave me a great interview and then thanked me for coming. Unaware of what he had in Layne, George Halas traded him and watched the eccentric Texan become a Hall of Famer for the Detroit Lions. Lujack, a two-way player, gave the Bears three decent years and then retired.
Later there were the likes of Jack Concannon, Bobby Douglass, Virgil Carter, and Bob Avellini. The first three were key figures in the most bizarre locker room scene I have ever witnessed. The Bears were nearing the end of their most disastrous season ever, a season in which they would go 1-13 and Brian Piccolo would be diagnosed with cancer. Carter, a record-setting passer at Brigham Young had been given his first start of the season, but at halftime, with the Bears down 3-0 to the Packers, Coach Jim Dooley replaced Carter with Douglass, then a rookie. I don't remember the score, but the Packers won easily enough and the Bears locker room was like a three-ringed circus. In one corner sat Douglass, telling anyone who would listen that he was the quarterback of the future. In another corner sat Concannon, who had not played, laughing and goading Carter, who was standing in the center of the room in a white hot rage and insisting he had played his last game as a Bear and would play out his option. "What if Halas won't let you do that?" I asked him. "I hope he won't be chickenshit enough to do that," Virgil responded in what became infamous as "the chicken bleep speech." Halas fined him a substantial amount and when I asked why, the owner-coach responded, "because he called me chickenshit." I pointed out that what Carter had said was he hoped Halas wouldn't be chickenshit, but the fine stood. Carter went on to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the playoffs the next season and later returned to Chicago as the quarterback of the short-lived Chicago Fire.. My wife and I were socially acquainted with Virgil and his wife, Judy. We always thought they were the perfect couple, he the star quarterback, she a cheerleader at BYU. So we were stunned a few years later when we heard that the two were divorced. I lost track of him after that, but finally decided to find out what had become of him. I called Lavell Edwards, his coach at BYU, and Lavell said that the last he'd heard, Virgil had become part of a motorcycle gang. He gave me a phone number where Carter could sometimes be reached, but I never tried to call him.
Douglass was totally miscast as a quarterback. He had an arm like a bazooka and was a powerful runner. He could have become another Paul Horning had he been switched to tailback, but it never happened. After his football career ended, Douglass tried to become a baseball pitcher and was given a tryout by the White Sox's Iowa farm team. I went to Des Moines to cover the event. All I remember about it was that Bobby was wild and I had a nice conversation with the Iowa manager, a guy named Tony LaRussa.
The quarterbacks came and went. Mike Phipps, Vince Evans, Avellini, then, finally, McMahon. But the euphoria that McMahon helped bring to Chicago didn't last long, and the qbs kept coming. Doug Flutie and Mike Tomczak and Jim Harbaugh and Erik Kramer, and Steve Walsh and Shane Matthews and Cade McCown and on and on and on. Finally there was Rex Grossman, who got credit for getting the Bears to the Super Bowl a few years back, although it was the defense and Devin Hester who really were responsible.
Jay Cutler may be a cut above many of the signal callers who passed through Chcicago over the past 50 years, but he sure didn't show it in the opener. Now, with Urlacher down, the very heart of the Bears' defense ripped out, it might take more than the second coming of Sid Luckman to save the Bears' season. It would take the second coming of you know who to do that.
Through the years, the Chicago Bears have been primarily known for two things--Hall of Fame linebackers and Hall-of-Shame quarterbacks. Oh, you can throw in an occasional Gale Sayers or Walter Payton, but by and large the Bears have been defined by the stellar play of, especially, their middle linebackers and the cellar play of the myriad of mopes who have taken center snaps. This was the year that would change all that, or at least half of that. Brian Urlacher would continue on as the latest in the long orange and blue line of dynamic middle linebackers, a line that stretches all the way back to Bulldog Turner, who strictly speaking was not a middle linebacker--the position had yet to be invented--but a center and middle guard. Turner handed the mantle to Bill George, who DID invent the position of middle linebacker and from there it passed through the brutish hands of Dick Butkus to the fierce-eyed Mike Singletary to Urlacher, who seems almost certain to join his predecessors in the Hall of Fame.
But, no longer would Bears fans have to watch in despair as their rag-armed quarterbacks threw more passes into the dirt or, worse, into the arms of opposing defensive backs than they did to their own receivers. Riding to the rescue like El Cid, to right all of history's wrongs was Jay Cutler, who bore the impressive label "franchise quarterback." Unfortunately, what we got was not El Cid, but Sancho Panza. He even looks a bit like the popular conception of Don Quixote's sidekick, moonfaced with a slightly rounded body.
I don't know what I expected from Cutler's debut as a Bears quarterback, but certainly not this. Not four interceptions, two of which contributed directly to the Green Bay Packers' 21-15 opening night victory. Most of the picks were about as close to the intended receiver as Rush Limbaugh is to Barack Obama. If you could even figure out just who was the intended receiver. There was less communication between Cutler and his wideouts than there was between King Kong and Fay Wray.
But Cutler's performance was not the worst thing that happened to the Bears Monday night. Perhaps it was an anomaly and Cutler would come back next week to carve up the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wait a minute. Did I just say the Pittsburgh Steelers? Aren't they the Super bowl champions? Doesn't matter. Even if Cutler were the second coming of Sid Luckman the Bears aren't going anywhere without Urlacher. And Urlacher isn't going anywhere near a football field for the rest of this season after surgery for a dislocated wrist. Speaking of Luckman, Sid was one of only three quarterbacks who have led the Bears to a championship in the modern era, which he himself inaugurated in 1940 as the NFL's first T-formation quarterback. Luckman won four titles with the Bears, Bill Wade and Jim McMahon one apiece. Wade, like Cutler, went to Vanderbilt, so perhaps there is an omen there. But if Cutler can't cut it, perhaps the Bears could draft BYU's Max Hall next year. After all, McMahon is a BYU product. I doubt there will be any help forthcoming from Columbia, Luckman's alma mater.
There has been an endless string of Bears quarterbacks between Luckman and Cutler, most of them easily forgettable. But not all. There were the three B's--Ed Brown, George Blanda and Zeke Bratkowski. Brown led the Bears into the 1956 title game, Blanda became one of the game's alltime leading kickers and, in his football dotage, the starting quarterback for an Oakland Raiders team that nearly got to the Super Bowl. There were the three L's--Luckman, Bobby Layne, and Johnny Lujack. Luckman you already know about, although you might not know he was one of the nicest men who ever lived. I once asked him for an interview for a free lance piece I was working on. He invited me to his downtown Chicago apartment for breakfast, gave me a great interview and then thanked me for coming. Unaware of what he had in Layne, George Halas traded him and watched the eccentric Texan become a Hall of Famer for the Detroit Lions. Lujack, a two-way player, gave the Bears three decent years and then retired.
Later there were the likes of Jack Concannon, Bobby Douglass, Virgil Carter, and Bob Avellini. The first three were key figures in the most bizarre locker room scene I have ever witnessed. The Bears were nearing the end of their most disastrous season ever, a season in which they would go 1-13 and Brian Piccolo would be diagnosed with cancer. Carter, a record-setting passer at Brigham Young had been given his first start of the season, but at halftime, with the Bears down 3-0 to the Packers, Coach Jim Dooley replaced Carter with Douglass, then a rookie. I don't remember the score, but the Packers won easily enough and the Bears locker room was like a three-ringed circus. In one corner sat Douglass, telling anyone who would listen that he was the quarterback of the future. In another corner sat Concannon, who had not played, laughing and goading Carter, who was standing in the center of the room in a white hot rage and insisting he had played his last game as a Bear and would play out his option. "What if Halas won't let you do that?" I asked him. "I hope he won't be chickenshit enough to do that," Virgil responded in what became infamous as "the chicken bleep speech." Halas fined him a substantial amount and when I asked why, the owner-coach responded, "because he called me chickenshit." I pointed out that what Carter had said was he hoped Halas wouldn't be chickenshit, but the fine stood. Carter went on to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the playoffs the next season and later returned to Chicago as the quarterback of the short-lived Chicago Fire.. My wife and I were socially acquainted with Virgil and his wife, Judy. We always thought they were the perfect couple, he the star quarterback, she a cheerleader at BYU. So we were stunned a few years later when we heard that the two were divorced. I lost track of him after that, but finally decided to find out what had become of him. I called Lavell Edwards, his coach at BYU, and Lavell said that the last he'd heard, Virgil had become part of a motorcycle gang. He gave me a phone number where Carter could sometimes be reached, but I never tried to call him.
Douglass was totally miscast as a quarterback. He had an arm like a bazooka and was a powerful runner. He could have become another Paul Horning had he been switched to tailback, but it never happened. After his football career ended, Douglass tried to become a baseball pitcher and was given a tryout by the White Sox's Iowa farm team. I went to Des Moines to cover the event. All I remember about it was that Bobby was wild and I had a nice conversation with the Iowa manager, a guy named Tony LaRussa.
The quarterbacks came and went. Mike Phipps, Vince Evans, Avellini, then, finally, McMahon. But the euphoria that McMahon helped bring to Chicago didn't last long, and the qbs kept coming. Doug Flutie and Mike Tomczak and Jim Harbaugh and Erik Kramer, and Steve Walsh and Shane Matthews and Cade McCown and on and on and on. Finally there was Rex Grossman, who got credit for getting the Bears to the Super Bowl a few years back, although it was the defense and Devin Hester who really were responsible.
Jay Cutler may be a cut above many of the signal callers who passed through Chcicago over the past 50 years, but he sure didn't show it in the opener. Now, with Urlacher down, the very heart of the Bears' defense ripped out, it might take more than the second coming of Sid Luckman to save the Bears' season. It would take the second coming of you know who to do that.
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