The Modest Sportsman
The Game Is Afoot
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Quarterback U?
College Football, Sports history, Uncategorized
Here's the thing. My very astute son, a sports fan whose grasp of sports facts is encyclopedic, was not able to respond to what I thought was a simple question. "Since Ohio State football has been among the four or five most dominant programs over the course of the last fifty years, which of the many Buckeye quarerbacks have gone on to find significant success in the NFL?"
A quick romp through the rosters reveals the sad truth that Buckeyes might clog the top ten draft choices and the Hall of Fame, but not at quarterback. Here goes, ranked by fans as the OSU Bluebloods, the ten best of all time:
Troy Smith, Duane Haskins, Braxton Miller, J.T. Barret, Justin Fields, Rex Kern, Craig Krenzel, Joe Germaine, Art Schlicter, Cardale Jones.
I know, there must be stars the fans have overlooked, and there are some names to conjure with: Kirk Herbstreit (#16), Tom Tupa (QB AND punter), and Tom Matte. Matte's career in the NFL should put him on the top of the list. Primarily a running back, Matte led the NFL in total rushing yards in 1969, was named to the Pro Bowl twice, and in 1965 stepped in as quarterback for the Baltimore Colts when Johnny Unitas was injured at the end of a season that took the Colts to a playoff game against the Green Bay Packers. Matte still holds the record for the highest per-carry rushing average in a Super Bowl game (10.5), and ended his career with 4,464 yards and 45 touchdowns.
Still … in the pantheon of quarterbacks, OSU not really in the mix.
The NFL's top 50 quarterbacks of all time spring from a plethora of college programs, only a few of which can claim superiority as a breeding ground of superior QBs.
Brady (Michigan), Brees (Purdue), Manning (Tennessee), Marino (Pittsburgh), Montana (Notre Dame), Young (Brigham Young), Rodgers (Cal), Favre (Southern Mississippi), Graham (Northwestern), Roethlisberger (Miami University), Wilson (North Carolina State), Rivers (North Carolina State), Starr (Alabama), Unitas (Louisville), Elway (Stanford), Tarkenton (Georgia), Baugh (Texas Christian), Warner (Northern Iowa), Staubach (Annapolis), Jurgensen (Duke), Moon (Washington), Kelly (Miami), Bradshaw (Louisiana Tech), Luckman (Columbia), Aikman (UCLA), Fouts (Oregon), Tittle (LSU), Van Brocklin (Oregon), Blanda (Kentucky), Dawson (Purdue), Griese (Purdue), Layne (Texas), Stabler (Alabama), Waterfield (UCLA).
QB Central? Purdue (Brees, Dawson, Grese), North Carolina State (Wilson, Rivers), Alabama (Starr, Stabler), UCLA (Aikman, Waterfield), and Oregon (Fouts, Van Brockin). Yeah, but … QB conference? Pac 12 (Cal, Stanford, Washington, UCLA x 2, Oregon x2). Highest SATs? Columbia.
The NFL is all about quarterbacks. A franchise without a franchise quarterback has very little chance of climbing to the top; college football looks very different. Champions since 2000 include Oklahoma, Miami, Ohio State, LSU, USC, Texas, Florida, LSU, Florida, Alabama, Auburn, Alabama, Alabama, Florida State, Ohio State, Alabama, Clemson, Alabama, Clemson. No Purdue there. No North Carolina State. No UCLA. No Oregon.
Changing offenses in the NFL seem to favor quarterbacks arriving from systems that develop skills necessary to operating in a pass-happy league. It's still a big-boy league in which the average defensive tackle is 6'5 and weighs 309 pounds. Daunting enough, but that tackle also runs the 40 in about 5.2 seconds. There are some speedy and shifty quarterbacks, of course, virtually all of whom end up on injured reserve by the end of their second year in the league.
Oklahoma has provided two first draft pick quarterbacks in the last two years. The hope, clearly, is that their skill sets will animate a high speed offense. They come from the offense-loaded Big 12. The ideal prospect, however, may be more likely to come from a team that has faced a speedy and enormous defensive line and speedy and athletic safeties. Even the best scout can't measure immeasurable abilities – judgment, poise, resilience – but accuracy under pressure, quickness of release, recovery from broken pays, number of interceptions can be measured.
The bottom line is that Hall of Fame quarterbacks reveal themselves somewhere in their second or third season; they have to survive the physical beating that comes in their first starting season with original skills intact and with the capacity to read a defense.
Quarterback U? The NFL.
October 20, 2019 October 20, 2019 parango Tagged football, NFL Drafts, nfl quarterbacks, Ohio State, Quarterback U, quarterbacks, sports	Leave a comment
For a brief moment, before my wife snapped me back to reality, I thought it might be a great advantage to name our newly born son "Senator" or "General", figuring most people don't pay close attention to much beyond the name, so what the heck, why not start at the top? As I have said with regret on numerous occasions, "seemed like a good idea", and yet, so not.
As my first thought is almost always entirely off base, cheerfully acknowledging my questionable judgement, I surrendered. Not one to let a challenge slip away, however, I have been keeping track of equally presumptuous names over the course of the last thirty years or so and now offer my observation that in the sports world, some names are strikingly more predictive than others.
The world of sports is wide and filled with wonderfully evocative names. Let's cut to the chase (we'll return to that name before we're done) and begin by assuming that some of the most striking names were received rather than given. Did Mother Berra look at a squalling child and say, "That's my little Yogi?" Probably not. Similarly, we can be assured that Rabbit Maranvill, Dizzy Dean, and Hacksaw Reynolds did not spring from the womb with the names by which they came to be known. More contrived nicknames such as Darrell "Dr. Dunkenstein" Griffith and Charlie "Piano Legs" Hickman arrive on a yearly basis, but my interest is in the actual given names that seem to predict a particular sort of career in sport, in football to be precise, and as quarterback to be particular.
Let us return to Chase, shall we, a name that demands superior athletic ability; pity the sluggard named Chase. What hope has he if not at the deep end of the athletic pool. Yes, a banker named Chase could probably skim by, but your attorney? Your masseur? Your psychic? No, Chase is an athlete's name, and widely applicable across several sports. Baseball has a few Chases (Utley, Headley, Whitley and, in a stunning departure from the "ley" tag, Anderson and Wright), football (Daniel, Blackburn, Coffman); boxing and wrestling (Stevens, Beebe, Tatum) and auto racing (Elliott, Austin) have their share. Chase is fairly evenly distributed across several sports and, in an odd crossover, seems to be ok for Country musicians as well. Not neutral; the stakes are still high for anyone walking around as "Chase", but there is some range of opportunity. Less obviously annointed athletes, such as the McCaffreys, Christian and Dylan, could be running backs, point guards, folk singers, or corporate executives.
You name a kid "Colt", however, or "Troy", or "Peyton", or "Brett", or "Cam", or "Ty", or "Kellen", or "Carson", or "Landry", or "Kirk", or "Gage", or "Cole", or "Shea", or "Bryce", or "Brock", and the world will expect that kid to be calling a snap count in his sleep before the first day of school. These are not interior linemen; these are quarterbacks. Of course there are quarterbacks of some quality who have climbed to the top with ordinary, more pedestrian names. "Tom" has done well. "Aaron" and "Matt", "Russell", "Philip", "Patrick", all earn a hefty paycheck, but they could as easily have ended up as running backs, wide receivers, or even grunts digging their paws into the turf at the line of scrimmage.
"Shea" is not a hard-nosed brawling tackle with a penchant for grabbing runners by their nether bits. "Colt" isn't spitting teeth while jamming his knuckles into kidneys and ribs.
Another obvious difference between quarterbacks and the rest of the universe, I am shallow enough to admit, is that quarterbacks with a few notable exceptions, are handsome. Other positions have a claim on good looks as well; J.J. Watt is a god, Clay Matthews does Thor, Reggie Bush looks great on the field and off, but … most of the shakiest of Division I or II quarterbacks and almost any NFL quarterback is poster child material.
Let's just do the not-Tom Brady – not Aaron Rogers – not Russell Wilson quarterback sweep and see what turns up.
Mat Leinart? Come on! Jesse Palmer? Whoah! Case Keenum? Teddy Bridgewater? Nick Mullens? Ryan Tannehill? Drew Lock? Brett Hundley? Matt Barkley? Chase Daniel? A.J. McCarron? Blake Bortels?
I was on a roll there, and then … alright, there are some goofy looking quarterbacks as well. I have to admit that after watching this season's Hard Knocks, Mike Glennon's improbably long neck remains an uncomfortable memory. Similarly, Ryan Fitzgerald's beard is off-putting; just too much. Josh Rosen deserves a better deal that he's had with the Dolphins, but, ok, maybe not a poster. There's something about Trevor Siemian's eyes. Too close together? Moving in opposite directions? On the Trevor track, Trevor Lawrence? Am I the only one to see an Afghan hound?
Look, I'm a balding short guy with no chiselled features and a decidedly uninspiring midsection; I have no room to cavil. At least, and perhaps this is the weakest of defences, I am not matriculating down the field as a Chip, Chase, or Colt.
That would be a lot to live up to, and I suspect my wife's excellent instinct has saved our children considerable grief. Good thing I can't name my grandkids.
October 13, 2019 October 20, 2019 parango Leave a comment
Ohio State Tries To Trademark The Word "THE"… Michigan Counters By Licensing "OF"
Bitter Buckeyes are reeling.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied Ohio State University's petition to trademark the word "The" as in, "The Ohio State University" (pronounced Thee Ohio State University) , contending that the word" the" is critical to much of the university's merchandising all sorts of athletic gear and commemorative souvenirs. Unwary shoppers, the Patent Office was told, could mistake a sweatshirt from Ohio University or Miami University of Ohio for the genuine and more celebrated Ohio State brand, which does cast some shade on Buckeye Nation as one might assume that a fan knows the difference between teams even if their names contain many similar letters. Michigan/Michigan State, Colorado/Colorado State … not a lot of their fans out there proudly flying the wrong flag.
There are some interesting questions raised by the university's claim to ownership, however, and those conversations may bring us to a higher plane of linguistic sensitivity. And, it should be noted, there may be opportunities to suggest that although there may be method in Ohio State's application, yet there is madness in't. So, let's press on.
We'll get terribly confused in trying to speak about the not-yet-trademarked word and the word we have been tossing around for centuries, primarily because t-h-e means different things to differing people. Henceforth, in order to avoid confusion, the word as used by the university will be emboldened (THE) to identify its distance from its more commonly used, and apparently, commonly owned cousin, the functional word.
The is a good word, a darned good word. We use it all the time, hardly noticing its graceful utility, just tossing it around as if we owned it. Maybe we've taken it for granted, assumed it would always be there when we needed it. Without it, we seem impetuous, imperious, reductive. Declaration of Independence. Gettysburg Address.
The (see?) evolution of Ohio State's fixation on the word, its determination to achieve exclusive ownership of the word THE, begins with its position in the state's birth order. Ohio University in Athens was founded in 1804. The two landmark liberal arts colleges in the State of Ohio, Kenyon and Oberlin, were founded in 1824 and 1833 respectively. THE Ohio State University was founded in 1870 as Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, taking the name The Ohio State University in 1870 when then Governor Rutheford B. Hayes, a graduate of Kenyon, authorized the development of a comprehensive university.
THE University of Michigan, founded in 1817, THE University of Virginia, founded in 1819, and THE University of Pennsylvania, founded in 1740, might have jumped into the fray, were the fray not an exercise in absurdity. Virginia is secure enough to hang around without assuring its celebrants that it is the University of Virginia even though THE College of William and Mary, equally funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia is conspicuously older, founded in 1693. In tribute to THE Ohio State University's initiative, THE University of Michigan has offered to trademark the word OF.
Lest a wary Buckeye dither over other attributes claimed by the university, be assured that applications for trademark protection of the names URBAN MEYER and WOODY HAYES are also under consideration. The resources of a gigantic enterprise such as THE Ohio State University demands specialized sets of skill, so it should come as no surprise that the Urban Meyer registration was handled by Ohio State's Director of Trademark and Licensing Services, Rick Van Brimmer. Van Brimmer is not simply keeping an eye on names and articles; he's currently working on trademarking The Oval, The Shoe, and OSU. Already trademarked are Brutus Buckeye, Script Ohio, Gold Pants, and Block O, the Buckeye Stripe, the helmet leaf, and their home and away uniforms,
The OSU issue is a bit tricky in that Oklahoma State University and Oregon State University suggest that their claim on the initials is as legitimate as Ohio State's. At the moment, the trademark is licensed on a state by state, i.e. regional, basis. The greater complication, an innocent observer might note, is that by registering THE, Ohio's state university should actually be represented as TOSU. Please call Van Brimmer at home to raise that point.
Trademarking and licensing belong in the nether reaches of marketing and finance, areas not commonly discussed in polite society. TOSU is not alone in having grasped the importance of keeping a stranglehold on an asset that might become commercially viable. Verizon holds a trademark on the scent they pump into their retail stores. "Flowery Musk Scent" sets the Verizon experience apart from others and must be protected. Tiffany Blue is a protected color, as is T-Mobile Magenta, Barbie Pink, and Wiffleball Bat Yellow.
As Kurt Vonnegut, a Midwesterner with an eye for the absurd might have said in encountering the trademark that UPS holds on its shade of brown, "So it goes."
September 22, 2019 October 20, 2019 parango Tagged humor, Madness at Ohio State, Ohio State, THE Ohio State University, THE Trademark, Trademarking THE	Leave a comment
And the Prize for Inconceivable Arrogance goes to ….
Ah, Autumn! Leaves are falling, footballs are sailing, and the mascots no longer smell like mothballs. Bright college years with pleasures rife, the shortest, gladdest years of life – what better Saturday afternoon than sitting in the stands amid the pomp and pageantry of Division I football? The band is pumping out the fight songs; the cheerfolk are tumbling and screaming. A rumble as the first players burst from the tunnel, then a roar as they stampede, more than a hundred superbly conditioned young men, moving as one, a blur of helmeted color.
Sweet, Jesus. All's right with the world!
Except that this is Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It's 92 degrees in the shade at 3 PM as the Aggies of New Mexico State scurry to the sideline, rushing like a man pulled from a brothel into church, aware at a cellular level that they don't belong and will soon face the wrath of an unforgiving God. Their mascot, Pistol Pete, twirls a pair of unloaded six guns in front of the four or five New Mexico Tech rooters.
Pistol Pete is one of the few mascots drawn from the pages of history. Frank Boardman "PIstol Pete" Eaton, born in Hartford, Connecticut, was a scout, indian fighter, and cowboy, famous for his skill as a gunman and for his relentless pursuit of the men who killed his father. Eaton's ability to kill people was much admired, and over the course of several decades, his mustached likeness was trotted out as the embodiment of all things admired in the Old West. Think of a young(er) Tom Selleck. In any case, students at what was then known as Oklahoma A and M, now Oklahoma State, petitioned the administration for a change of mascot, aware that their claim to be the Princeton of the Prairie hardly entitled them to joint custody of the tiger as a mascot. As the former New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in Las Cruces, New Mexico took its place in Division I football, it too had need of an inspirational figurehead, adopting Pistol Pete as their own.
Except that he wasn't. At the outset, in the 1950's, NMSU paid Oklahoma State a royalty of ten dollars a year for the logo and mascot. Times changed, conversation between the two institutions of higher learning grew testy, and in 2005, New Mexico State folded, changing the mascot's name to "Lasso Larry", arming him with a coiled rope. Outraged students asked, "Who brings a lasso to a gunfight?", a not unreasonable question if athletic competition is seen as war, and Pistol Pete returned to the sidelines, prompting OSU to sue NMSU.
That suit settled (NMSU can only sell 3000 articles featuring the cowboy and the royalty is to be paid in perpetuity), It's September 7th in Tuscaloosa, the temperature is rising, and Alabama's Crimson Tide sweeps onto the field accompanied by their mascot, Big Al, a rumpled but enthusiastic grey elephant. ''Bama's team numbers something above one hundred and five players, eighty five of whom are on scholarship. Of that number, twenty seven of the newest players, recent recruits, arrived as four or five star recruits, giving Big Al something to cheer about and placing Alabama at the top of the 2019 recruiting classes. NMSU's class is made of two and three star recruits, placing them at spot number one hundred and twenty in the recruiting sweepstakes.
Alabama's Bryant-Denny Stadium is named after a former president of the university, Denny, and a former coach, Paul "Bear" Bryant. The stadium is the seventh largest stadium in the world, welcoming almost one hundred and two thousand loyal 'Bama Boosters to its seats. Naturally, the scramble for seats is ongoing, and students line up for their season passes, plunking down one hundred and thirty five dollars for the season, a bargain to be sure. Individual game prices vary. The NMSU student ticket price is twenty dollars if purchased separately; tickets to the LSU game go for one hundred and twenty. A season pass now looks like a heck of a bargain. Good times in Tuscaloosa!
Except that the temperature is rising, humidity is woolen, classes don't begin for another two weeks,and the Tide has pasted sixty two points on New Mexico State, the designated early season punching bag, Apparently believing they have some agency in their lives, students stick with it through the first half and retreat to cooler options in the second half, leaving a bare patch in the stadium's flanks.
Sensible, you say. Understandable.
In an age of outsized egos, however, such defection is taken personally, and no ego puffs with more satisfaction than that belonging to Alabama's exceptionally talented and successful football coach. Nick Saban makes seven point nine million dollars a year with a four hundred dollar escalator clause. He is an exceptionally good coach in a state that venerates college football. His wish is the State's command. He has complained about Alabama's students with clear contempt.
"Everybody wants to be a part of the team," he said. "Everybody wants to be No. 1, but everybody don't want to do what the beast does. Everybody wants to be the beast but they don't want to do what the beast do.
"So everybody's got to make a sacrifice. You want to be the lion? Everybody got to do something. Everybody wants to be No. 1. If I asked that whole student section, do you want to be No. 1? Nobody would hold their hand up and say I want to be No. 4. They would all say No. 1. But are they willing to do everything to be No. 1? That's another question. You can ask them that. I don't know the answer."
Alabama's answer is to create a "Loyalty Program" which offers students advantaged access to the highly prized post-season games. Go to a game, pick up one hundred points. Stay through the fourth quarter? Two hundred and fifty more points. And how are the ticket czars able to keep track of who is where doing what? Simple. 'Bama's tracking students' cell phones. The app was developed by FanMaker and is used at forty other colleges in order to reward fans by giving them t shirts and other team gear. They go to a game, they get a reward. Alabama's Grand Poobah is not satisfied with attendance; he wants LOYALTY.
The introduction of Big Brother creepiness to Alabama football is not entirely surprising given that some pundits refer to the university as "Sabanistan"; Nick Saban has become he who must be obeyed in a state delighted by his casual arrogance. Without making the obvious comparison with other monstrous egos demanding loyalty, it is worth remembering that the entire conversation takes place within the walls of a university. President Denny was lucky to hold his office before Bear Bryant became the face and voice of the university; it's unlikely that Alabama's current president, Stuart R. Bell, will find his name emblazoned on a stadium's gate. Lucky and loyal ticket holders do line up in front of a nine foot statue of Nick Saban.
Roll Tide!
September 15, 2019 September 16, 2019 parango Leave a comment
For Worse
The latest in ESN's remarkable documentary series, 30 for 30, "Dennis Rodman: For Better of Worse", presents a not-unfamiliar profile of an elite athlete looking back at a chaotic life with a mixture of regret and confusion. Rodman's story is similar in some ways to those told by others who arrived at great celebrity from circumstances that were more than daunting. An absent father, a critical mother, successful older siblings – painful but not uncommon. In many circumstances, we can also anticipate the sorts of difficulties the highly prized athlete would face: adulation, a free pass during school and college years, protection from consequence, betrayal by those who profited from his success.
What sets Rodman's story apart is his invention of himself at about the midpoint in his career, an artifice of significant oddity, seemingly emerging at the end of Rodman's glory years with the Detroit Pistons.
As presented in the documentary, until the age of twenty-one, Rodman was noteworthy only for being a nonentity. In this case the word actually means what it is intended to mean; Rodman moved through his small world as though he did not exist. His sisters had successful athletic careers; his mother raised a family and held expectations of her children. He appears an afterthought in photographs, a 5'8 skinny kid who would steal watches from an airport in order to buy friendship. Even his incarceration was pallid; he spent time in an airport lockup. Then, in less than a year, he grew to 6'8 and picked up basketball. With virtually no experience in the sport, he displayed a genius for rebounding, attracting the attention of NAIA Southeast Oklahoma where he became an All American drafted with the 27th pick by the Detroit Pistons.
During those years, Rodman befriended Byrne Rich, a twelve year old boy who had killed a friend in a shooting accident. The traumatized boy was sent to basketball camp in the hope that he might begin to recover in the company of boys his own age. Instead, he bonded with Rodman, a gigantic man-child, as tentative and damaged as he was. Rodman moved in with the Oklahoma family, and was treated with great kindness, sleeping in the same room as his friend. Pat Rich cooked his favorite meals, did his laundry, and held him to the standards of behavior she set for her two sons. Rodman was absorbed into the Rich family. The elements of this part of the story are complicated. Rodman is a huge black man living with a white family in southeastern Oklahoma, sharing a room with a twelve-year-old boy. Complicated enough, but with what will become a persistent theme, Rodman travels into the next chapter without attachment to or memory of his time with the Riches. He expresses gratitude to the Riches in his ghost-written autobiography, Bad As I Want To Be, but has had no contact with or concern for them in the decades that followed.
Rodman still had a conspicuous shift in personality ahead, but an immediate point of comparison at this point is with Wilt Chamberlain, an equally gigantic African American who spent several summers as a bellboy at Kutsher's Country Club, a Jewish resort in the Catskills. An earlier 30 for 30, "Wilt Chamberlain: Borscht Belt Bellhop" includes remarkable footage of high school junior Chamberlain toting suitcases in his bellhops uniform. His presence in the Catskills is enough to fuel a documentarian's imagination but the more compelling part of the story has to do with the friendship formed between Chamberlain and Milton and Helen Kutsher
"We thought of Wilt as an extended member of our family," Helen Kutsher tells Cherry in the book. "I used to kid him, 'You're like my fourth child. He always stayed in touch, and we'd talk during the year. He never really left us."
Chamberlain and the Kutshers sustained this unlikely friendship throughout their lives. Rodman walked away from the Rushes and never looked back.
The athlete who left Southeastern Oklahoma is described as an innocent. In Detroit he enjoys arcade games, frolics with his new teammates, appears stunningly immature; he bonds with Chuck Daley, Piston coach and surrogate father, and weeps with embarrassment when praised as Defensive Player of the Year.
Childlike. An untutored rebounding savant.
In later years, as drugs, alcohol, non-stop hedonistic excesses take their toll, Rodman seems frantic, exhausted, `and oddly vulnerable. He's credited with bringing flamboyance to the NBA, and his costumes, piercings, tattoos, and hair styles were certainly outside the conventions of professional basketball in his era, but, the trappings are merely trappings. Rodman isn't there; he's in disguise. He takes space and makes noise, but he remains determinedly absent from his own life.
There are a few moments of tentative authenticity when the contemporary Rodman is interviewed, some tears, expression of some regrets, particularly in recognizing his absence from his children's lives, in which the sixty-eight year old alcoholic and addict appears to approach something like a sense of self, but those moments are fleeting. It's not that Rodman is hiding; in the end we understand that there is no Dennis Rodman behind the curtain.
September 14, 2019 September 14, 2019 parango Tagged 30 for30, basketball, Dennis Rodman, ESPN, For Better or For Worse, NBA, Pistons, sports	Leave a comment