The NFL, protests, and getting what we tolerate

"We the People."

That is one of the most sacred lines in our country's history; the famous three words that begin the preamble to the Constitution.

"We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union ..."

The hope was that the government of the United States would always be subject to the "will" of the people, who ultimately would decide who their leaders would be (as opposed to those leaders coming to power by right of birth, wealth, or military might, the three means which had historically been the basis for leadership throughout much of the world's history).

We were never meant to be a true democracy, for that would be unwieldy. Can you imagine having national referendums on every law suggested, on every bill that was introduced? Plus, a pure democracy opens up the tyranny of the majority; a mere 50 percent plus one could decide to implement a host of laws and rulings that are abusive to the minority of people. Therefore we have representative government, whereby we elect people to represent us in government. However, in theory at least, we still have the ability to recall the people who we feel no longer represent us the way we want to be represented, who enough of us feel may be taking us in a direction we don't like.

But "we the people" is not only an idea in government.

"We the people" also describes the free market, capitalism. While the United States is no longer the shining example of free market economy it once was (the USA ranks 12th in economic freedom, according to the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal), we're still to a large extent a market driven economy.

If people don't like where they live, they move.

If people don't like a product, they don't buy it.

If people don't like what they see, they don't watch.

(Let's be clear - you can't always move from an area you don't like; sometimes you're forced to buy a product you don't like because it's the only one offered or best available; sometimes you watch things you'd rather not watch because the choices are so limited. I get all that, but generally speaking ...)

This weekend, in response to statements made by the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, a majority of NFL players across the league joined what had been a relatively few of their peers and decided to not stand for the National Anthem. One team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, under the direction of their head coach Mike Tomlin, did not go out on the field for the national anthem in direct violation of league rules - although one player, West Point grad and decorated Army veteran Alejandro Villanueva, went out on his own to stand at attention just outside the tunnel leading to and from the field.

I may not like when players, or anyone else, doesn't stand for the National Anthem, but it's their right to do so. Years ago, in a series of rulings in the 1940s-1950s, the Supreme Court ruled that Jehovah's Witnesses did not have to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in class rooms, since the church felt pledging allegiance to a flag violated Biblical teaching. Since the Supreme Court said one group can't be compelled to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, then why shouldn't another group not be compelled to stand for the national anthem? We say we believe in freedom of expression, the right to protest, and all that. Not standing is a pretty peaceful protest, very much in line with the peaceful approach of a Dr. Martin Luther King as opposed to what we've seen happen in St. Louis recently, for one example.

However, at the same time, if you don't like paying out big bucks to watch a sporting event only to see the people you have paid to watch and cheer for conduct themselves in ways you find offensive, then you - the people - have the right to stop buying tickets, stop watching the games on TV, stop participating in promoting the game - in this case, the NFL.

You've heard the expression, "We get what we deserve?" Maybe it's better to say "We get what we are willing to tolerate."

In this case, the NFL is a business. If the stadiums are empty and no one is watching, the NFL will take notice (just as any business would). Forbes Magazine reported that:

"During the past month the overall stock market is up more than 2% but shares of companies that broadcast NFL games–Comcast,
Walt Disney, Fox, CBS–are all down between 1% to 8%.
The NFL is now a hotbed of protests–a carry over from last year that began when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick
began protesting during the National Anthem, to protests this year by those who feel Kaepernick, who is without a team, is being
unfairly treated by the league, to a stronger push by some players for an increase in NFL social activism.
Towards the end of last season some felt the NFL’s ratings dip would be temporary and therefore would not ultimately hurt the
networks by forcing them to reimburse advertisers. Instead, the opposite has happened.
Ratings for the NFL have been worse this season and attendance for some games has also been disappointing. The networks will
pay over $5 billion this season to televise the NFL and were already facing unflattering margins on advertising profits. An article
in Variety reckons the drop in NFL ratings could trim the broadcaster’s earnings by $200 million. Disney’s ESPN, meanwhile, also
continues to get hammered ..."


A lot of people booed at stadiums Sunday during the protest. I have read where some people are suggesting the "booing'' was really just fans booing the other team, but I don't think so. I think a lot - if not a majority - of NFL fans did not come to see a political statement, but to see the team they follow and have financially invested in (through buying tickets, programs, merchandise, etc) compete and, hopefully, win.

I'm a fan of the Atlanta Falcons. I plan my Sunday's around watching the Falcons, if at all possible. And like many fans of any sports team, I can be a little hypocritical. I can turn off the Washington Redskins-Oakland Raiders game because I'm bothered by the protest, but I didn't turn off the Falcons' game. I'm a fan. I weigh what bothers me by what entertains me, and only when what bothers me outweighs what entertains me will I be inclined to really follow through.

When that happens - and, as the above article from Forbes points out, it is happening - the NFL will get the message.

Don't get me wrong. I support every person's right to protest. I also believe, however, that you have to be willing to suffer the consequences of your protest. I referenced Dr. King above; he and his movement was a perfect example of people willing to suffer the consequences of their protest and ultimately the public became so horrified at those consequences that the protesters won. That's in direct consequence to today's protestors, who seem to want to be able to protest but be protected from the consequences. Maybe that's why so many people are not moved by those protests. But that's another topic for another blog.

But it goes beyond just the NFL. The same is true of cars, of concerts, of clothes, of anything I spend my money on. I don't buy gas from Citgo because I know Citgo is owned by the government of Venezuela, and I can't support the dictatorship in place in that country. I have a few other companies I have, so far, refused to support - although so many companies are so diverse that I have no way of knowing what all the parent company owns.

The principle also goes into politics. "We the People" determine our leadership. We have the opportunity to get involved in elections and vote. Oh, I hear how "big money" and Russia and fake news and the Koch Brothers or Unions are the real power behind elections, but if you are smart enough to recognize those influences, why do you think other people aren't? (Oh, I know we get fooled, but that, too, is the responsibility of a democracy). One of the ironies of this last presidential election was that we kept hearing Democrats tell us we need to take "big money" out of the process, and yet the Trump campaign won while spending something like a third of what the Clinton campaign spent; we also heard how we wanted an "outsider" in Washington, and we got about as ultimate of an outsider as there could be in a man who had never run for any political office in his life or held any position in government.

So it's pretty simple. If enough of "we the people" get tired of what is going on, "we the people" can still force change. "We" decide what we'll watch, what we'll pay for, who will represent us in government.

Unfortunately, too many of us now feel as though we're powerless.

I think the Founders would be appalled.

Players ... and the ones for whom sports builds character

If a life spent around sports has taught me anything, it's that there are two kids of people on every team:

The ones who can play.

And the ones for whom sports builds character.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely believe that participating in sports can indeed build character. You learn discipline. You learn how not to give up. You learn how to get up when you get beat or knocked down. You learn to trust teammates and/or coaches, and to rely on them. You learn to respect authority (even if sometimes that authority is wrong). You learn that life is not fair, that some people are just more talented than you are for no reason other than genetics or God-given talent; just like you will also find out that you are better than some people for the same reason. You can also learn that you can take what talent you have and squeeze every bit possible out of that limited supply, and add to it by using your head, relying on teammates, understanding the rhythm of the game you are playing, simply work hard to be ready to take advantage of every break, recognize luck when it occurs, and accomplish more than you or anyone else ever thought you could.

But then there are those who play the game at such a level that they can get away with anything. Or so it seems. Grades? If it means being eligible to play, someone will make sure they get the help they need to be eligible. Rules? They don't need no stinkin' rules! The rules don't apply for the incredibly talented, because their talent knows no boundaries, which means the rules are treated more as "suggested guidelines." Practice? I refer to Alan Iverson, who was hardly alone among superstar athletes in his contempt for practice. I can't begin to tell you how many great athletes I have witnessed over the years in a career in sports who were allowed to exempt themselves from practice (usually under the guise of a pulled hamstring that miraculously healed itself by game time).

I don't mean for that to sound mean or bitter or angry. But it's true. On any team, there are the people that create value by giving their team the best chance to win, and so someone has always been there to make sure they are on the field/court/arena/whatever. It's just the way it is.

That's not just in sports, of course. Music, art, business, law, religion, you name it - very often, the very best understand their talent and ability puts them above everyone else and excuses are made for their lack of "character."

But the thing about it is, they rarely even realize they suffer from a lack of character, because this is just how it's always been for them.


Meanwhile, the 'average' ones, the ones who are good enough to play but maybe not so good that excuses are made for them when they screw up, learn discipline, and self-control, and determination, and loyalty and patience and even humility and how to win and lose with, well, "character."

Which reminds me of a time, in my early days, attending a high school sports banquet in a small community. The guest speaker was a local AM radio sports guy (not me, although I have been a local AM radio sports guy now that I think about it), and he was waxing poetic about the virtue of sports. He said something like, "we need sports, because sports builds character, and without sports young men would be out there experimenting with alcohol and drugs,'' to which the kid sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, "he's never been to one of our team parties!"

Here's another thing, however: sports is a great equalizer. In the vast majority of cases, eventually even the best become average.

The best kid on that middle school team? How often does he get to high school and find out he's "average." The best kid on the high school team? He might realize that, compared to other kids in the league/city, he's just "average." Certainly if he goes on to college - remember almost every kid on a college team was the best, or one of the best,on their high school teams. College to pros, same thing. Pros? Most are just hanging on year to year, knowing the team is always looking to find someone better (or someone just as good who is cheaper). If the best of the pros stick around long enough, they often end up role players (two former Boston Celtics come to mind: the great Pete Maravich - maybe the best ball-handler and shooter in basketball history - coming off the bench for the Boston Celtics in 1980; the great Bill Walton as the Celtics' "sixth man" in 1987).

Of course, that progression doesn't always mean those athletes learn "character" (however you define that). Sometimes the lessons ingrained in them as "stars," the special treatment they received and came to expect because that was all they ever knew, overrides the lessons that should be theirs in learning how to be a role player.

But to be honest, I ask myself: would I rather have been a superstar, or learned character?

I have to admit, I wonder what it would be like to be dominant in a particular field. I wonder if I wouldn't have been a bit arrogant about it. I think about a story I heard about Heisman Trophy winner and hall of fame football coach Steve Spurrier who, even as a head football coach later in his career, was known to see quarterbacks half and sometimes a third of his age struggling with a particular throw and saying, "Maybe that's just too tough of a throw. Let me try it." At which point he'd rifle the pass exactly where he wanted it to go with zip on the ball and say, "No, it's not the throw. I guess you're just not good enough." It's kind of cruel, but I have no doubt it was true. And I also have to admit, wouldn't it be fun to be able to do that?

I'm not saying Spurrier didn't/doesn't have character. I'm just saying he was arrogant. Of course, he could usually back it up, too. As the saying goes, it ain't bragging if it's a fact. And I have to admit sometimes I wish I could be so successfully arrogant.

There are the superstars who are great teammates, who display character. And as I just pointed out, there are those athletes who should be learning character but the old, early habits are too ingrained.

Years ago I read a story about a bunch of top American CEO's who recalled getting cut from their sports teams. Maybe it was high school, maybe college, but they recalled with great clarity the moment when they realized they were not going to make the team, that they were not good enough. And despite all the success they had in business, all the money they made, the good they did in their communities, they all remembered clearly that moment when they were told they weren't good enough. And it drove them to succeed in other areas.

Another side note - I did a story on world class decathlete Trey Hardee, a world champion in his sport who, unfortunately, hit his peak between Olympic years (although he did win Silver in 2012). His motivation was being cut from his high school basketball team as a junior (which he still feels was unjustified!), driving him to track and field.

That leads me to two of my favorite Michael Jordan quotes. Jordan, of course, may well have been the greatest basketball player ever.

Jordan said two things that I think apply here:

“I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

and

“I can accept failure; everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.”

Those are pretty good summaries.

But lest we get carried away with Michael Jordan, remember he's also the guy who, when told "there is no 'I' in team," responded with "Yes, but there is in 'win.'"

Naming rights: thoughts on the Ed O'Bannon NCAA case

I have been reading about the Ed O'Bannon vs. NCAA lawsuit with great interest, because the topic of compensation for college athletes often prompted long, heated debates among my sportswriting/coaching/administrative friends in college sports.

The agreement between school and athlete should be simple: one plays ball (or whatever the sport is) for the school, and in exchange that school promises to do everything it can to enable the athlete to achieve a legitimate college degree.

But of course, there is nothing simple about the NCAA and college athletics. In fact, I suspect the reality is that such a basic agreement never existed in college athletics at any time. The very premise seems flawed to me to begin with, in that schools are there to develop the best and brightest minds of our young people, so what does being the physically fastest and strongest have to do with that? But that's another (pointless) debate.

From the beginning, schools recognized that a successful sports team wearing the name of Enormous State U. across the front of the jersey brought a level of recognition that an academic institution could never achieve on its own. And that recognition produced more interest from potential students as well as more faithful (financial) support from graduates and 'fans.' So right from the start, schools were known to compete for top athletes regardless of their academic accomplishment or potential.

Go back to 1932 and the Marx Brothers' movie "Horse Feathers'' and you'll hear Groucho's character berate his college faculty, saying: “This college is a failure. The trouble is we’re neglecting football for education." My father, born in 1919, used to tell me about seeing guys who played for one school one year and then the next year would be competing for another school, selling their athletic ability to the highest bidder. Academic progress was never a consideration.

There is no question the monitoring of college athletics is far better than it has ever been. "Student-athletes" (to use the colloquialism of the NCAA member institutions) are actually now required to achieve a certain minimum standard to be eligible to compete at a four-year school, a standard that has risen periodically and that - despite outcries to the contrary - the athletes generally are able to raise their academic performance to meet.

And once in school, there are actual "academic progress'' rules intended to help athletes along toward that graduation (although I always did like the old coaches' response to the question "How many of your athletes graduate?" "Everyone that wants to.")

However, how far does an athlete sell himself in that play-for-education agreement?

That's the crux of several of the lawsuits the NCAA has found itself involved in recently.

The NCAA argues that it has absolute rights to all money-making associated with the athlete while that athlete is in college - including that athlete's ability to sign an autograph, offer pictures of himself, his ability being used as a component of a video game. If the athlete is successful, the school jersey bearing that athletes' number goes up in value; as does his teams' value to appearing on TV and radio.

In the old days, the greed of the fans and lack of academic oversight by schools forced the NCAA to step in and create so many rules. Otherwise, fans would be providing athletes with enormous benefits (money, cars, clothes, trips, girls) to both lure those athletes to the fans' favorite school as well as enable the fan to be seen associating with the young jock. The NCAA couldn't allow an open, free market on athletes, because only the biggest schools with the wealthiest fan bases would win.

Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how it is anyway. Why? Because those same fans, in their passion, can't bestow their gratitude upon individual players (legally), so they give to the school. They buy game tickets, season tickets, sky boxes, parking passes, and even make ever-larger donations in order to have the privilege of buying those things. The demand for the college game and benefits of a successful college team bring more "revenue streams" to college athletic departments. About the only individual who can truly benefit from this is the head coach, which is why college head coaches make professional-grade money - and are worth every cent, when you look at the revenue stream their programs produce for the school's athletic department and, by extension, university at large.

Quite frankly, I don't see how it can be legal for a school to tell an individual he can't profit from his name, his likeness, his ability, his marketability, and yet turn around and itself profit from those attributes of the individual. If there is anything each of us would seem to have exclusive rights to, it is our identity - not that we can't sell our identity away, but shouldn't that be our own, individual choice?

So, then, what do you do? If you let athletes profit from their identity, then the smart athletes will look to see what school provides the best opportunity to generate the most profit. Let's be honest: opportunities vary from school to school. The signature of a star athlete at, say, Lehigh is not going to be worth that of the signature of a mediocre athlete at the University of Texas, for a number of reasons.

In a free market system, athletes would be able to choose which offer from which school they feel is best for them, and then be free to profit from their own accomplishments (outside of ticket sales and broadcast revenue, which is negotiated not on the value of an individual but of the collective reputation built by scores of successful athletes and coaches). I have no problem with schools/conferences negotiation huge TV deals and selling season tickets for enormous sums of money and collecting outrageous contributions from fans without a dime of that money going to an individual athlete.

What I do have a problem with is the athlete not being able to capitalize on what he or she does do that is unique to them, meaning their individual ability, which in turn creates a value in their name and reputation and likeness.

Do all athletes deserve to be compensated? No. Track and field, tennis, swimming, rowing, lacrosse, rifle, equestrian, bass fishing, rodeo, rugby ... a host of sports sponsored by schools big and small do not generate the revenue stream of football and men's basketball (not even men's baseball or women's basketball, despite a growing popularity, comes close).

Yet schools are government entities, and operate by law under this idea of equality that says you can't discriminate based on gender or sport. In fact, most schools are forced to offer more scholarships for women's teams than men's teams despite women's sports not being nearly as profitable. Title IX and other laws attempt to force a certain equality that isn't really there.(Title IX became law in 1972, long before anyone imagined a time of multi-million dollar coaching contracts, broadcast agreements, rights fees, merchandising and naming rights). In fact, you can take that further and even say that a star football player at the aforementioned Lehigh is not worth the same as the star at Texas, at least not economically speaking.

So NCAA member institutions are caught in this no man's land, playing socialist institution on one side and free market capitalist on the other. To borrow a line from one of my favorite sports movies, "North Dallas Forty" (about a pro team, but the point is the same), when one side calls it a sport, the other side says it's a business; but when the first side then says OK it's a business, the other side calls it a sport.

The problem with saying a basketball player deserves more than they already get (and make no mistake, they are well taken care of between education, books, housing, meals, shoes, clothes when needed, expense money and, when warranted, spending money from the full amount of a Pell Grant) is that if you say you'll give basketball players more, then you will also be required to give more to the guy on a lacrosse scholarship, which isn't sustainable unless you devalue the basketball player in order to create value for rugby.

The NCAA has tried to legislate parity, just as professional sports leagues do. Unfortunately, while in professional leagues the value of each individual franchise can be pretty close (in a given year), colleges have a huge disparity in value -- which means if the NCAA allows the schools who can afford to offer greater benefits (which could be anything from spending money to long term health benefits), then it has to accept that some schools - perhaps the majority of NCAA schools - will be at a competitive disadvantage and many schools - and their fans - would just have to accept that.

But then, that's the real world. Established businesses can offer far better benefits than a start-up company. A Fortunate 100 company can attract a higher quality employee than the mom and pop shop on Main Street. Every start-up and mom and pop shop typically hopes one day to compete at the level of an Exxon or Apple, but until then, Exxon and Apple simply enjoys benefits they've earned by either being first in the field, or perhaps just simply better at "playing the game" than the competition.

The easy way is for schools to simply stop selling merchandise identified with individual players (which a handful of schools have done), stop marketing anything that highlights the individual athlete (isn't that the essence of "there is no 'I' in team'?")

But, as Michael Jordan once famously said, "there is an 'I' in "win."

The NCAA hopes no one remembers that.

Nick Saban, Mercedes, and car stories from the road

I saw a story out of Birmingham where Alabama head coach Nick Saban has agreed to be a partner in a Birmingham-area Mercedes dealership.

The article repeated the oft-told Saban story of how he wanted to own a car dealership when he first graduated from Kent State, that he was set to go to some kind of General Motors management school to prepare him to be a dealer General Manager, but because his now-wife Terry had one more year of school left, he stuck around as a graduate assistant on then-Kent State coach Don James' football staff and the rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

The relationship between athletic departments and car dealerships is legendary. Almost every college athletic department of note has an agreement with a local dealer - or often several, in the case of big-time D-1 schools - to provide athletic personnel with free cars in exchange for benefits that range from tickets to games, access to staff and players, promotions, etc. As more than one coach has said, it's like every car dealer wants to be a coach; and every coach wants a new car.

I'm reminded of a former Alabama coach who was notorious for being hard on his dealer-provided cars, demanding frequent changes and often at strange times. One of the strangest, however, was a matter of convenience for the coach and inconvenience for the dealership. This coach was driving up I-59/20 from Tuscaloosa on his way to Birmingham when his car broke down; I don't know if the engine actually stopped running or he had a flat tire or simply ran out of gas. But this coach was notoriously impatient (as most coaches are), and he was in a hurry, so he called the dealership and said, "I want a new car." Of course they said OK, and when would he like it? "Right now,'' the coach said. "Get someone to bring it to me." Of course, they said; are you at the athletic complex, or at your home? "Have your guy meet me on I-59 at" whatever exit or milemarker he was at. This wasn't normal, but then very few of the demands of high-powered football coaches are normal, so the dealer sent a guy out in a new car to meet the coach. Of course, when he got there, this coach took the new car, threw the guy the keys to the car that wasn't running, said "Thanks,'' and drove off.

NASCAR drivers have some of the funniest stories on rental cars. Back in the day when the drivers would fly commercial to the next race, they'd rent cars from the airport (this was before so many of them had their own private planes). On this day, a pretty famous driver, a crew member, and a couple media guys were all riding together back to the airport to catch a flight out of town, and they were running very late, to the point that they were close to missing their flight. "No problem,'' said the NASCAR driver. "I've got the collision/damage waiver." He drove to the front of the terminal at the ticketing level, got out and popped the hood of the car, pulled a wire, and then called the rental car company. "Hey, your car broke down and I need someone to pick it up,'' he said. The rental car company said, "Sure. Where is the car located?" He told them, "It's in front of the terminal,'' and he hung up and, needless to say, everyone made their flight.

It was a trip to Puerto Rico to cover the San Juan Shoot-Out basketball tournament where I learned what became a truism I've used over the years. The roads in Puerto Rico where terrible (and might still be, I just haven't been back in a long time), plus the traffic patterns seem more like figure-eight demolition derby than the, by comparison, organized traffic patterns most of us in the U.S. are accustomed to. The rental company told us we needed to get the collision damage waiver, which we did. A bunch of us were riding together, trying to find the practice facility of one of the teams we were covering, which was out in some fringe area. The guy driving missed a turn, and when we realized it he simply did a U-turn across a median, curbs, trash, over pot-holes - and we came up with the saying, "the only true all-terrain vehicle is a rental car with a collision damage waiver."

Words to live - and travel - by.

Saban apparently is a fan of Mercedes. His partner in the deal is an old friend of his from Louisiana, a Mercedes dealer from that state who was looking to expand into Alabama in partnership with Saban. The partner said that Saban has long been a Mercedes enthusiast and years ago expressed an interest in opening a dealership; that Saban told him, "I don't have a minute to run it, but I love the brand."

I can see why. Years ago, when I was at my first newspaper, I received an invitation to go to a SAAB ride-and-drive at Road Atlanta, a road course race track in our newspaper coverage area. SAAB brought in SAAB dealers from all over Georgia to test drive the new SAAB, compare it to other cars, and meet the company president who would be addressing the crowd to spur enthusiasm for the new line of automobiles. I was the only media guy there, and I'm sure they hoped I'd write a glowing report on the wonderful qualities of the SAAB.

Unfortunately, they made the mistake of putting a Mercedes convertable, a 560 Class or maybe 280, in as one of the test cars we could drive around the track. I say unfortunately because everyone wanted to drive the Mercedes, myself included. The line for driving the Mercedes around the Road Atlanta track was longer than any other car. SAAB dealers were jumping line when they could to get in the Mercedes and see what it would do on the track.

Eventually, the Mercedes just disappeared. The SAAB factory reps realized they were losing that battle, and took it out of driving rotation, forcing us to drive the SAAB and Volvo and Cadillac or whatever other brands they'd put up to compare to their new car.

I know I was supposed to write about SAAB, and how good of a car it was (and it was, it really was). But it was the first time I'd ever driven a Mercedes, and it was everything I thought it would be. How do you not fall in love driving a convertible Mercedes, top-down, around the picturesque Road Atlanta course, seeing how smooth it rides, how well it handles, how much just pure pleasure a driving experience could be?

So I wrote instead of starting my love-affair with this foreign-born beauty who, alas, was so far out of my economic class that I feared I would never be able to afford her.

Needless to say, I was never invited back to a SAAB ride-n-drive.

But I did eventually get a Mercedes.

Having forgotten how tough it can be to be a fan

Weekends like this may be why I enjoyed being a sportswriter more than being a fan.

As a sportswriter, I loved going to the games and looking for the good story - why a game was won or lost, that decision or action that might have played a major role in the outcome that perhaps wasn't obvious to someone just watching the game, the importance of a play or a decision not just in that game but perhaps on the season or program overall.
Every game has subplots - key match-ups between individual players, the chess match between offensive and defensive coordinators. One of my favorite stories remains from the first Southeastern Conference Championship game, between Alabama and Florida at Legion Field in 1992. The first half, Florida was having great success with this little inside shovel pass until - according to then-Alabama defensive coordinator Bill Oliver - Tide defensive back Sam Shade actually blew his assignment but wound up quite by accident in the right place to stop the play. Florida's Steve Spurrier didn't go back to that play because, Oliver thought, Spurrier was convinced Oliver had adjusted when in fact Shade's play was an accident.
 On such moments and sometimes accidents are championships often won or lost. That was what I tried to bring to sports writing - things that you couldn't get just by watching the game.

But I'm out of the business now. I'm re-learning how to be a fan, to care about the outcome of the game more than how the outcome came about.
So yes, I have managed to care again about how Georgia does in football. I am, after all, a Georgia graduate (even though I've now lived more of my life in the state of Alabama). Not that I ever thought this year's Bulldog team was up to the level of an Alabama - certainly defensively - but I believed the offense was good enough to score on anybody.
And then came Saturday against South Carolina.
It was a game that reminded me of one of the classic Lewis Grizzard columns of all time, a column that showed just how much influence and popularity Grizzard had in Georgia and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Grizzard loved Georgia football, and after one particularly galling loss to Georgia Tech, Grizzard's column was one sentence: "I don't want to talk about it." And the rest of the left hand side of the page, which Grizzard's column was supposed to fill with prose, was left blank. In the business, we'd call this "creative use of white space."
That's how I feel about the Georgia-South Carolina game this weekend.

It's also how I feel about the Atlanta Braves' one-game playoff with the Cardinals. My best friend in high school was Mitch, and we loved baseball. We used to go down and sit in the cheap seats in the outfield, and even though the Braves were terrible back in those days (the days when all Atlanta sports teams were so bad the city was nicknamed "Loserville"), year after year we had hope.
It was a hope that was finally driven out of me. Even in the decade of the 90s when Atlanta had one of the best regular-season teams in baseball, I refused to get back on the Braves' bandwagon.
Well, not entirely. Come playoff time I'd find myself daring to hope and, other than one year when the Braves managed to win the World Series, year after year I'd be disappointed.
Somehow I thought this year might be different. Maybe it's because it was Chipper Jones' last year. Maybe because .... I don't know, maybe because I'm just a sucker who hasn't shaken my childhood allegiances as much as I'd like to think I have.
It didn't help that Mitch kept texting me during the game. I wasn't watching; I was at a company-sponsored function. I kept trying to text Mitch back to quit texting me, but he kept texting me (it's OK). But do you know how frustrating it is to get cryptic text messages and have no idea what's going on, other than it's not good for your team?
I finally saw the "infield fly'' controversy, but I still haven't seen Chipper's throwing error, and have refused to watch his last at-bat.
The only good thing is that so much of my family lives in St. Louis and we're Cardinals' fans, so there is that.
However, later that night I turn on to watch the Rangers - who I cheer for because my buddy Shayne is on the coaching staff - lose 5-1. Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two outs, and the season ends on a pop up to the outfield. Two straight years going to the World Series (Shayne wasn't on the staff the last two years), and I was sure my buddy would get to enjoy a deep run into the playoffs this year.

These are the kind of emotional letdowns that I didn't suffer as a sportswriter. I covered games and certainly for the sake of the story I was writing there were times I wanted the team I was covering to win (it's always more fun to write a "team wins championship'' story than a "team blows championship'' story). The standing joke among beat writers is that during the NCAA Tournament, all sportswriters become fans of the team they are covering because we all wanted to go as far into the tournament as we could.
People accused me of being 'for' one team - like Alabama, the team I was assigned as the beat writer for 15 years - but the truth is, while I became close to individuals who played or coaches and worked at Alabama, I was never a fan of "Alabama."
As Jerry Seinfeld so aptly put it, fans are really fans of laundry. Tide fans, for example, love the uniform and, truthfully, whoever is wearing the uniform matters to them only because they are wearing the right laundry. Players and coaches come and go, but the laundry remains. ("Tide fans love laundry" - I had to laugh at that one).
The essence of being a fan means you come to support laundry. If you don't like that, you can say fans support the team, the school, the program, and that's appropriate. You are a fan of the team that represents your city or state or country (in the case of the Olympics or World Cup or international competition). Or maybe, as a kid, you just 'decide' you like a team for whatever reason. When I was a kid, I loved the Green Bay Packers, a fandom that started before Atlanta got the Falcons; I have a brother-in-law who did not grow up in Minnesota and as far as I know has never even been to Minnesota, but long ago he decided he was a Vikings fan.
But really, we're cheering for laundry, or colors, or an idea. Not people.

As a sportswriter, I found myself pulling for people, and that loyalty transferred as players and coaches and administrators moved on. It's one reason I like Clemson now - I've known and liked Dabo Swinney since he was a walk-on at Alabama way back in the day. It's a reason I hope Akron does well, because I've always enjoyed being around the Bowden family and I'm happy to see Terry Bowden back at the Division I level.

But now that I'm not in the business anymore, I find myself going back to being a fan - Georgia, the Braves, the Falcons, and, yes, Alabama because a lot of my personal history is tied up in that school (although I like Auburn, too, for the same reason; people forget I was an Auburn beat writer before I moved to cover that school in Tuscaloosa, and still enjoy a good relationship with Pat Dye and Terry Bowden and even Tommy Tuberville. When MG and I were dating, I was covering Auburn and she went with me to so many games, sitting in the stands while I sat in the press box. Auburn fans in those sections were incredibly nice and 'adopted' her, looking out for her while I worked. So Auburn remains special to me).

And being a fan is tough. I'd forgotten how tough until this weekend.

But ... How 'bout them Falcons?

Trolling while bowling ... a few more traveling stories

Outside my hotel window I can see the Superdome, where inside at this very moment Michigan and Virginia Tech are playing in the Sugar Bowl.
I'm back in the newly-reopened and remodeled (the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina) Hyatt Regency, a place where I spent many weeks after Christmas waiting to cover Sugar Bowls and/or National Championship Games.
I'm not inside the game tonight, having turned down a ticket to the game. It is, after all, Michigan and Virginia Tech; it's not like its real football (and if you're from the South you know what I mean by that).
But it does bring back memories.
Particularly the Hyatt. I can't think of the Hyatt without thinking of that trip in 1992. From the moment we arrived, we kept hearing from off to the west of the Superdome (where the Hornet's arena is now) what we thought were fireworks going off, almost non-stop. Since it was approaching New Year's Eve, we didn't think anything of it.
However, later we found out what it was. My good friend and noted sportswriter Tommy Hicks was sitting in his room somewhere around the 16th floor of the Hyatt when he felt something sting his leg. He looked down and saw a bullet. He then looked at the outside wall of his room and saw a small hole. Yes - a bullet had come through the outside wall (not the window, the actual wall) and hit him in the leg.
Fortunately, it didn't hit hard enough to puncture the skin. But he was rattled. It's a long, very funny story - particularly when the hotel management asked Tommy not to tell his story to the media (this was the media hotel and it was full), to which Tommy replied, "You don't understand. I am the media; all my friends are in the media. They already know."
As I've said before, I've spent a lot of my life at bowl games, and there are some crazy stories.
Beatwriters - the guys assigned by their newspapers to the daily coverage of a team - used to arrive in the host city before the team so as to write about the team's arrival. That often meant spending a week in the bowl city location.
I've been to games in New Orleans, Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami, Shreveport, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, El Paso, Fort Lauderdale - and so on. Most of those I've been to more than once.
The first Music City Bowl in Nashville was between Alabama and Virginia Tech and was played in Vanderbilt University's stadium (this was before the Titans' stadium was finished). It was the coldest I've ever been, so cold the ink in my pen froze, which was OK because it was too cold to write notes anyway. The interview room after the game was way too small, and the temperature change so great that cameramen had the lenses on their cameras fog up so bad they couldn't shoot decent post-game video. Shoot, there were guys' who wore glasses whose glasses fogged up so bad they couldn't see. And you could wipe them all you wanted and it didn't matter; everything just kept fogging up again.
We were in Tampa one year, and the team stayed in a hotel directly across the street from a strip club. Now in those days (and maybe it's still true), the strip clubs in Tampa were 'dry,' meaning they weren't allowed to serve alcohol. While this rule was designed to discourage attendance, I was told it also meant they could allow a younger age group into the club. And while they couldn't sell alcohol, patrons could bring their own alcohol in.
That's only relevant because I was standing in the parking lot of the team hotel with a former assistant coach when a certainly Alabama lineman came walking across the parking lot toward the strip club, carrying two cases of beer on his left shoulder. The coach stepped out from where we were talking to confront the player.
"Where you going?" he asked.
"Uh, out for a walk,'' said the player, who knew he'd been caught but was undoubtedly praying that this coach - who happened to be his position coach - was either stupid or incredibly merciful.
"What are you carrying there?" the coach asked.
"Uh, pizza, Coach,'' said the player. "Two boxes of pizzas."
Unfortunately the coach wasn't that stupid, and the player was sent home the next day.
Perhaps not surprisingly, that very same player was sent home from the next year's bowl game in a completely different city for a similar violation of rules. The guy was a starter, but I don't think he ever played in a bowl game in his career. I guess there was something about being out of town that he just couldn't handle.
Another oddity was talking to players from other conferences, particularly schools from the North. I remember Alabama was playing Michigan in the 1980s and I was doing a story on a Michigan player. He kept referring to the head coach as "Lloyd,"as in Lloyd Carr. I was surprised by this reference, but it turns out all the players referred to the head coach by his first name.
Later I found out it wasn't just Michigan. Notre Dame, Penn State - at almost every northern school I covered, the players referred to their head coach by his first name.
This was - and is - unheard of in the South. You'd never hear an Auburn player refer to Gene Chizik as "Gene'' or an Alabama player refer to Nick Saban as "Nick." I guess it's a cultural thing.
My favorite bowl trips were to El Paso and the Sun Bowl. It was a horrible/terrific trip; the joke was that El Paso wasn't the end of the world, but the end of the world was right across the border. Consider that if you flew from Birmingham to El Paso you usually had to change planes in Dallas, and it was disconcerting to know that when you arrived in Dallas you were still not halfway to El Paso.
But once in El Paso, the people there went out of their way to make sure you had a good time. No bowl committee came close to taking care of media the way the Sun Bowl people did. They had a hospitality room (food, drink, and sometimes even a live band) that was open 24/7. If you wanted to go somewhere, they had someone not just willing to take you, but insisting on taking you.
It was in El Paso that I bought my first pair of cowboy boots. The bowl took the two participating teams to the Tony Lama factory and the players and coaches all got boots. I was standing in the hospitality room with Donnie Webb, who worked for Anniston then but is now in Syracuse, and casually mentioned I'd like to get some boots. Donnie said he'd go with me if I wanted to go, and suddenly this hostess said, "Come on, I"m driving. We'll go to the Tony Lama factory outlet is, where they sell 'seconds'." And just like that we were gone (and both of us bought a pair of boots; in my case, the first of many).
You could say almost anything - "I'd like to go to a Chinese laundry" - and some member of the hospitality committee was there saying, "I know where one is. Let's go, I've got a car."
The other thing about El Paso is the weather could change faster than any place I've seen. One year, we arrived at the game that morning and it was warm and sunny. I think I had a light jacket. But by halftime, it was snowing - and the field was getting covered. It was the fastest drop in temperature I've ever seen. I remember we all left the press box to go to the souvenir stands and buy Sun Bowl sweat shirts. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced.
We were in Tampa once for a bowl game when the Alabama basketball team happened to be playing in the Red Lobster Classic up the road in Orlando. So we all trucked up to Orlando for two days and one night in the middle of the week for basketball.
Orlando was also famous for a row of strip clubs with names like "Thee Doll House." This was in the days when the company would give you 'advance money,' meaning all the money you'd need for the week - for hotels, meals, travel, etc. - in cash rather than you charging everything on your own credit card and then having to wait to be reimbursed. Often guys would go on the road with several thousand dollars in their pocket.
So that night, I'm sitting on press row at tip-off of the Alabama game and we're all wondering where this one sportswriter was. He showed up right before the end of the game, looking like he hadn't slept or eaten anything in 24 hours. But he did look like he'd had plenty to drink.
Turns out, he'd spent the night at what we used to call the "redneck ballet,'' where he'd met this one particular "ballerina."
"She was really a nice girl,'' he told us. "She started giving me two dances for the price of one. She was sweet."
She also got all of his money. All of it. His week's worth of advance money.
Fortunately he'd paid his hotel in advance, but he had no money for meals, for gas, for anything extra for the rest of the week.
Of course we pitched in and loaned him money. Even if we never got it back, we got so much mileage out of that story (and many others like it) that it was worth it.
And he wasn't the only sportswriter who had been known to spend all his expense money the first night in a new town.
This has gone on way too long, but two quick stories.
Another guy I know wore cowboy boots, too, and he often drank a bit too much. One night he passed out in the hospitality room, and we filled one of his boots with beer. He woke up, and we told someone had urinated in his boot!
He was disgusted. Even when we told him later we were kidding, that it was 'just' beer, he wouldn't believe it.
It was snowing the next day as he walked out of the hotel in his socks to the nearest shoe store, which happened to be just about a block away. He walked in and delivered one of the greatest opening lines ever: "Sir, you're about to make the easiest sale you've ever made in your life!"
The second story?
Another hungover sportswriter who showed up just as the game he was assigned to cover was ending. He was desperate, and somehow managed to convince a guy from another part of the state to let him copy his story (this was in the days before the internet, so it wasn't likely anyone would see both stories).
As the hangover raged and the sportswriter typed off the other guys' work, he looked at me with the saddest eyes and said, "To think that this late in my career I've been reduced to copying crap like this."

Speaking of good lines - one more story (and any sportswriter has a million of them). We're at a dinner the night before a big game. A buddy of mine was a heavy drinker, to say the least. We'd travel together sometimes, and I remember he'd get in the passenger seat, pull out a bottle of Jack Daniels, unscrew the top, and throw it out the window with the farewell, "We won't be needing this anymore!"
Anyway, we're at this bowl-sponsored dinner the night before the big game. This guy is already drunk when they serve the steak. He decides he can't eat the steak, but doesn't want to give it up, so he slips it into the side pocket of his sport coat.
The next day he's at the stadium, wearing the only sport coat he brought with him. Completely serious, he asks, "What's this big stain around my side pocket?"
We tell him the story - which he doesn't remember - and he looks inside the pocket and, sure enough, there's a steak in there.
His reaction?
"Thank God they weren't serving soup!"

Ah, if only all of us Southern sportswriters could write as well as we could talk.

Roll ... er, Geaux Tigers!

Watching the LSU-Alabama game Saturday night reminded me of a story.
This was back in the 1980s, when Ray Perkins was head coach at Alabama.
Perkins' had an assistant coach named George Henshaw, a really good offensive line coach and offensive coordinator. There were some injuries on the offensive line, and Alabama had one of those non-conference creampuffs the Tide used to always schedule before playing someone really good like Tennessee or LSU. So Henshaw had used that game to rest an injured starter and give a start to a young player from Huntsville.
The Tide won the game, and afterward we asked Henshaw how the new guy had played. Henshaw was complimentary, which led the sportswriter from the players' home town to ask, "So, will he start again this week?"
Henshaw drew back, like he'd been shocked.
"Oh, no,'' Henshaw said. "This week, we're playing real men!"
For all the games that have been played this college football season, clearly Saturday's 9-6 game won in overtime by LSU over Alabama was a game played between "real men."
Which leads us to the question: what now?
Clearly it was a game that lived up to everything that makes the SEC the premier conference in college football: great defense, played by men whose only reason for being in college is to prepare them for the NFL.
The two offenses aren't bad either. Neither would get confused for, say Oklahoma State. But then, Oklahoma State's offense wouldn't even look like Oklahoma State if the Cowboys had to go against an SEC defense - which, if the season unfolds as it should, will be what happens in the BCS Championship Game in January.
Here's my personal delimma. I agree, right now, that LSU and Alabama appear to be the best two teams in college football. And when you look at the current BCS standings and see that the Tide only fell from second to third after the loss, it would appear the computers and voters agree.
But I also have always believed that if you can't win your own conference, you shouldn't be playing for the national championship.
What if LSU stumbles against Arkansas?
That brings up an interesting scenario: what if LSU loses to Arkansas? Then there will be three teams with one loss, all in the same division. The tie-breaker in the SEC will go way down to the list of criteria to the one that says the team that represents the Division will be the one ranked highest in the BCS standings - unless one of the other teams is within five spots of the highest ranked team and that lower-ranked team beat the higher-ranked team.
In other words, if LSU loses to Arkansas but remains ranked ahead of the Hogs but only by, say, three spots, then Arkansas goes.
And I'll let you go on to work out all the other possibilities (which seem endless).
Anyway, as much as this Alabama ex-patriot hates to say it, I'm for LSU from here on out.
See, I grew up on the loyalty of concentric circles. That is to say, I was always for anyone in my family first; my neighborhood second; my home town third; my region fourth; followed by my state, my part of the country, my country, my hemisphere .... and so on.
So I'm not one of those people who feels like its bad for my rival to lose. I'm proud of the fact that the last two BCS Championships and the last two Heisman Trophies belong to the state of Alabama.
Just as I'm proud of the fact that the last five BCS championships belong to the SEC, and I want that to continue.
By the same token, as much as I might think a rematch would be only right, it wouldn't be.
Besides, it's so much fun to watch the SEC beat up on the best the rest of college football has to offer.

That does lead to an interesting question, however.
What if Oklahoma State loses to Oklahoma, which could happen; and Stanford loses to Oregon, which could happen. Then there are a bunch of one-loss teams - including Alabama (remember, I don't count Boise or Houston; happy that they'll have undefeated seasons, but neither belongs in the BCS Championship game).
What if Oregon somehow moves back into the No. 2 spot? We've already seen LSU destroy Oregon, so no one wants to see that game again.
Actually, in that case, I'd like to see Boise get into the championship game and get destroyed by LSU, just to shut them up once and for all.

By the way, Boise State in the Big East? A Big East that is losing West Virginia (to the Big 12), Pittsburgh and Syracuse (to the ACC)?
I give Boise credit for trying to move up. I laugh the Big East that is so desperate to try to stay relevant it is willing to take a team from Idaho. Still, let's see what Boise does in the Little Big East.

Meanwhile - as much as it pains me to say it ...
Geaux Tigers.

Some folks like Jack Daniels; I like Charley - Game Day and Charley Daniels

There's a line in one of my favorite old Charley Daniel's songs that goes:
"You just go lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steeler fan and I think you're gonna finally understand. ..."
It's a patriotic song about how we Americans love to fight among ourselves, but like battlin' brothers, when an outsider tries to jump in, we put our differences aside.
I hope that continues to be true.
But the point is that nothing captures the spirit of America like Game Day.
Not necessarily the ESPN Saturday morning pre-game show, but actual Game Day.
While there are still class distinctions inside a stadium - after all, there is no denying the difference between sitting on the last row overlooking the corner of an end zone from the upper deck and the luxury box overlooking the 50-yard line - the unifying factor is fandom.
As Daniels' also sang: "'Cause we'll all stick together, and you can take that to the bank. That's the cowboys and the hippies, and the rebels and the yanks!"
You see CEOs high-fiving line workers; Republicans agreeing with Democrats; the 1 percent (whoever they are) tailgating with the 99 percent; the 'haves' mixing equally with the 'have nots.'
And it crosses all boundaries.
I have a friend who was invited on a trip to South Korea where he was treated like royalty (he was there to give golf tips to one of the most successful executives in that golf-crazy country). He returned bearing far more gifts that he would ever have imagined, and wondered if he'd have a problem getting all these gifts through customs. Landing in Hawaii, he was wearing his Alabama baseball cap with the letter "A" on it. As he and his wife got to the customs' official, the official smiled, gave my friend and his wife a cursory check, and let them through. His final words? "Roll Tide."
Another friend was on a mission trip to visit mountain villages in the Andes, in Peru. He was up there among some native Peruvians, and got into a conversation with one of the natives who'd lived for generations in relative isolation way up in the mountains. The Peruvian found out my friend was from Georgia and got excited.
"Georgia?" the Peruvian said. "How 'bout them Dawgs!"
My friend was shocked and quite honestly didn't know what to say. The Peruvian was clearly disappointed and said, "Did I saw something wrong? What does "How 'bout them Dawgs mean?"
Turns out that years before, another missionary had been to this village and told this man that if he ever met someone from Georgia to greet him with, "How 'bout them Dawgs!" And this was the first chance this man had ever had to use it.
I don't know about the salvation of this Peruvian, but certainly he understood the Gospel of Southern Football.
Everyone has their story.
The Princess Bear is studying abroad. Now, she's very much a Southern Girl (as her blog "When in Brussels: European Adventure of a Girl Raised in the South suggests) and a huge Alabama fan. She has classes over there with kids from all over America and Europe, but not always from her school (she goes to Furman). Anyway, on one of her first days there she meets a girl from Tennessee. Now back here at home, they'd obviously not get along - the Alabama-Tennessee rival is legendary. But way over in Europe? Their common ground was SEC football, and it gave them both a sense of home.
You no doubt have your story of making a connection with someone, some where, over sports.
Oh, there are Americans who don't get it, who look down their noses at sports and sports fans, who somehow feel they are above such petty diversions.
I feel sorry for them.
On no day are Americans so divided as Game Day.
On no day are Americans as unified as Game Day.
And that's America.

Now, let's watch a little classic Charley Daniels:

Why I still love the BCS

Every year - and remember, I was a Harris Interactive Poll voter from its inception until I left the business two football seasons ago, a Heisman Trophy voter and an AP voter before that - about midway through the college football season there will be something like 10 undefeated teams, and some sportswriter (or sportswriters) go into a panic.
"There's going to be 10 undefeated teams this year!" they'll write. "This is why we need a college football playoff!"
Now, we're down to eight. Of those eight, Alabama and LSU will play each other in two weeks; Oklahoma State and Kansas State play each other that same weekend. That will eliminate two of the eight.
Of those six, Houston doesn't matter. Hate to say it, Cougars - I love ya, I really do. But the league doesn't carry any cache, and neither does the program. So good luck to you, hope you go undefeated, and we'll see you in the Sugar or Orange or Fiesta, but not the BSC Championship Game.
Of those five, Boise State shouldn't matter. The only difference between Houston and Boise State is that Boise State plays an even worse schedule that Houston, but Boise State has built up personal cache because they beat Oklahoma in a major bowl game that only mattered to Boise.
Stanford still has to play Oregon. Clemson seems to have a very good chance of going undefeated (personally, I hope the Tigers do) but still has South Carolina at the end of the year.
All I'm saying is that, as usually happens, by the end of the year we'll probably be down to only two undefeated teams that matter, and those teams will play for the BCS title.
And once again, the BCS will work.
Even as I write that, understand I'd like to see a four team playoff. We've already got the format, with the BCS championship game played a week after the "big four" of the Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, and Rose bowls.
Here is what I like about college football: every game counts.
Every game in the regular season is like a playoff game. You lose just once, and you know you're in trouble. Lose twice, and except for the rare occasion, and you're pretty much out of it.
I know playoffs are exciting. And I know that professional sports realize it makes good business to expand playoffs. As a fan, I love the 'second chance' of wild card teams as much as anybody.
But let's be honest - no matter what you say, it does make the regular season less important.
If you know you can lose, if you know you can finish in second or even third place, and still get into a playoff, then winning a division or league title doesn't matter nearly as much.
I point to the NCAA mens' basketball tournament. Coaches who are honest will tell you that winning the conference title doesn't matter nearly as much as playing your way into being one of the 65 - or more - teams in the NCAA Tournament. Heck, the truth is, virtually every conference has a post-season tournament, with the automatic bid going to the winner.
So coaches know everything that happens between November and March is only to get ready for post-season play. Shoot, you could go 0-25 (or however many regular season games your team plays) but if you get hot at the right time you could then win, say, four games in the conference tournament and six in the NCAA Tournament - 10 straight games - and be crowned national champion.
That's why I love college football the way it is. I love that every game matters.
And its hard to look back over the last 19 years of college football actually trying to manufacture a "real" championship game (Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance, Bowl Championship Series), and say it hasn't worked. Oh, there have been teams that got left out of the championship game that probably belonged (Auburn, 2004), but it's pretty hard to argue with the teams that have wound up winning the crystal trophy.
I don't care that Boise State and Houston get left out. We all know year in and year out, the best teams play in the best conferences. If anything, I wish they'd just create that often-discussed but never acted on "Division 4," made up of the top programs that actually make money.

By the way- this idea proposed by NCAA President Mark Emmert, about conferences being allowed to vote to give scholarship athletes an extra $2,000 on top of their scholarship for spending money?
Who do you think can afford that? Only the top conferences, the SECs and Big Tens and so forth.
So where will the best athletes go? Same place they always have - where the money is.
The same place the National Championship Trophy always winds up.

The lesson from Stephen Garcia's father

Today's Father of the Day has to be Gary Garcia, father of now-former South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia.

The younger Garcia, who was a fifth-year starting quarterback for the Gamecocks, was kicked off the team this week. He'd had a very volatile relationship with both Gamecocks' fans and the South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier, a man who has always been notoriously hard on quarterbacks (possibly because none of his ever seemed to be as good as he was and he couldn't figure out why).

Garcia had a troubled career at South Carolina, both on the field (where he could be brilliant one game and abysmal the next, never quite able to settle into either role) and off (where he'd been suspended for a variety of issues, including allegedly failing drug tests).

Garcia was finally benched after yet another horrible performance in an SEC game (completing just nine of 23 passes with two interceptions in a come-from-ahead loss to Auburn). The story is that, after being benched for Connor Shaw, he apparently failed a drug test.

However, Garcia texted a reporter who follows the team to say he was "shocked and completely flabbergasted to be honest” by his ouster.

Most people would have said they expected it, that he'd been given more than enough chances as it was, and were ready to turn their backs on Garcia - although, let's be honest: fans turned on Garcia more for his frustrating interceptions and inconsistent play than anything he may or may not have done off the field.

Garcia's father?

First, what would you do in this case if it were your son? What would your public response be?

I've seen Little League dads blow up when their son was pulled from a game, much less the father of a starting quarterback in the SEC.

Yet Gary Garcia said of his son: “He kind of made his own bed, and this is the culmination of some of those earlier mistakes.  ... This has got to be the worst two weeks of his life, but it’s not going to be the worst two weeks in his life going forward, I can tell you that.  You deal with trials and tribulations, and you learn from it.  Hopefully, he continues to learn and grow.  We’ll let the dust settle for a couple of weeks and then look at what his options are.”

Here, to me, is the key phrase: "it's not going to be the worst two weeks of his life going forward, I can tell you that."

For most of us, losing the position of starting quarterback on the college team would seem like the worst thing that could happen.

And yet the father recognized this was only a game, that his son had a long life ahead of him, and the father hoped the son would recognize the consequences for his action and learn from them.

As much as some of us think college football is the be-all, end-all of life, the truth is, there has to be more for these kids. Having spent half my life around college football, I do know kids who made their years as a college football player the high point of their lives, and everything after was either looking back, or trying to keep those days alive by capitalizing on whatever fame they'd been able to cling to from that experience.

Garcia's father knew - and certainly hoped - that Stephen's life would go on and Stephen would have a chance to accomplish so much more. And he, Gary Garcia, hoped that Stephen wouldn't become one of those people whose reaction to stress or disappointment was to hurry off to find a bottle of Jack or a dime bag of pot to dull the pain.

Lord knows there are enough "adults'' out there who do.

It won't be easy for Stephen. Chances are very good that he will never be the center of attention that he has been for the last few years, that nothing he ever does again will garner the kind of public adoration - and truthfully, even the scorn simply reflected the adoration - he has had.

Once you've had that, it's easy to feel like you're not measuring up when later successes are done in the relative obscurity within which most of us live.

The lesson I pray my kids learn is that they do not measure their own worth or measure their success by the attention they receive or the reaction of the people around them.

I pray they learn it, because Lord knows their old man struggles - and he wasn't even a starting quarterback in the SEC.

For what it's worth ... a few sports-related opinions

Call it a Sports Roundtable:
- The University of Tennessee is hiring Dave Hart as its new Director of Athletics. Hart comes to Knoxville from the University of Alabama, where he was essentially running the day-to-day operations of the Crimson Tide athletic department for the last few years as Athletic Director Mal Moore's right-hand man.
I've known Dave Hart for years. An Alabama grad, he was the athletic director at East Carolina for 12 years before becoming the athletic director at Florida State for 12 years. Forced out at FSU during an internal power struggle, Hart landed back in Tuscaloosa where he was considered 'heir apparent' to Moore.
Obviously, at 62 years old, Hart isn't going to Knoxville to bide his time waiting on Moore to retire.
It's a great hire for Tennessee. Hart is well-respected within NCAA circles, a very good administrator, and a professional.
It is that last word that is most important here. Because there are those vocal, whacked-out Tennessee fans who are already complaining about Tennessee hiring an "Alabama man'' as its athletic director. They see it as one more piece of the grand conspiracy to bring down the Vols, started by the hire of Jimmy Cheek from the University of Florida to be the new school president.
According to a certain mindset among college fans, you can't trust anybody that didn't come from your school, and certainly not anyone who comes from a rival school.
The belief - and I certainly faced it in Alabama - is that where you went to school determined your loyalty and agenda for the rest of your life.
I know it's a minority. But it's a loud minority, and quite frankly such thinking has become incredibly tiresome - and probably some of the reason you see so many 'fans' getting their beloved schools being put on probation.
Good news is, Dave Hart knows what he's getting into. The culture he steps into is not that different from the one he steps out of, or the one he left at Florida State before that.
Great hire by Tennessee, and good luck to Dave.
-- Remember the movie "Any Given Sunday?" Remember how whacked out those uniforms looked, particularly the Dallas Knights?

Given what we're seeing in college football this season - particularly Georgia Saturday and Maryland on Monday night, I'm thinking the Dallas Knights' unis are not looking so futuristic anymore.
I'm not a traditionalist (when it comes to uniforms). I admit I love the fact that Alabama and Auburn and Penn State and Michigan - among others - have classic looks that the schools don't mess with (although all have made minor changes over the years).
But if you can come up with a better looking uniform, do it.
Operative words: "Better looking."
-- If I were still a Harris voter (and I was from its inception until I left sports), I'd have to vote LSU No. 1 this week. In a clash between the two highest-rated teams on the first weekend, LSU - with its back-up quarterback - dominated.
LSU might not be the best team in college football over the long haul, but for this week, they deserve that designation.
-- Despite Ole Miss' loss to BYU, it was kind of cool to see Zach Stoudt play and play well (except that fumble at the end that turned into the winning points for BYU).
Zach's dad is Cliff Stoudt, former Pittsburgh Steelers, Birmingham Stallions, and St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals quarterback, and friend from my early days in Birmingham. He was never anything but a class act to me, and I always considered him a friend.
Who replaced Terry Bradshaw as the Steeler's quarterback? Stoudt. He was never forgiven for that by some Steeler fans, even though he guided Pittsburgh to the playoffs.
Happy for him that Zach has been named starter for Ole Miss. Zach throws the deep ball like his Daddy did - and that's a compliment.
-- It appears it's all but done that Texas A&M will join the SEC. As the old saying goes, nobody leaves without some place to go.
I'm surprised, because the SEC understood that the point was to split the greatest amount of money the fewest possible ways, which is what the SEC was doing with a 12-team conference. Clearly, if the SEC is adding A&M, they have to add a 14th team. I have no insight (that's not my job anymore).
But if they're going to get anybody from the ACC, it should be FSU. If Florida has to play FSU every year anyway, why not make it count? Plus, Miami is now an embarrassment to the ACC (as well as college football). FSU could use that as an excuse to distance itself from that program.
I'm sorry, I just don't think Virginia Tech brings enough to the table. FSU gives you great baseball tradition as well, plus an emerging basketball program.
And as Roy Kramer would tell you, geography is what has kept the SEC so profitable, filling stadiums every Saturday. Fans can drive from school to school. FSU fits that.
 A&M is a stretch, but it allows LSU to renew a old, long-standing rivalry (the two used to play every year), and gives Arkansas another team closer to its history as well.
--- Now that Boise State beat Georgia, the Boise in Blue will be favored in every game from here on out; should win every game from here on out; and will be the one that causes all the controversy when the final BCS championship match-up is ready to be determined.
But Boise doesn't deserve it. I know - the point of college football these days is to be undefeated at the end. But how you go undefeated should matter. And Boise doesn't play anybody.
You can say it's not their fault, but they also shouldn't be rewarded for being in the situation they're in. Would Boise be this good playing in a big-time conference?
We don't know. But I don't think so.

Understanding 'rogue boosters'

In defense of "rogue boosters" ...
Yeah, I know. This is crazy, right? Me? Defending "rogue boosters?"
But not the way you think.
For those who might read this who aren't up on their college sports, "rogue boosters' is the name the NCAA gave to fans of a particular school who - by NCAA standards - cross the line by getting too close to college players.
But this is how college sports - particularly college football - works if you're a fan: you want season tickets? you have to pay for the privilege. You have to make a "donation'' of a prescribed amount (or higher) to have a chance at buying tickets (that's right, the donation doesn't get you the tickets, it only gets you the right to buy the tickets). The more you donate, the better your chances of getting better tickets.
Or you can "rent'' a skybox for, oh, $40,000 - but then, you still have to buy season tickets, even though you have exclusive access to a skybox inside the home team's stadium.
Then, the more you donate, the more money you give, the higher your level of support, the more access you get to the program: acess to the press box (not really nearly as much of a thrill as you'd imagine), maybe access to the athletic director's private box, access to the university president's box; access to the AD's office, maybe dinner with the head coach, certainly you can buy dinner with the university president, AD and coach at something like the National Football Foundation's annual awards dinner in New York City. ...
You get the idea? The more you invest, the more access you have, the more you are made to feel like you're part of the 'team.'
Only you're not.
We'll get to that in a minute.
What you don't get is anything tangible in return for your investment. At least, not according to NCAA rules. But quite frankly, if I was donating that much money to my favorite college team, I'd expect some of the top players to come by my place of business and pose for pictures; I'd expect to be able to invite those players to go on deep-sea fishing trips with me, and if they wanted a few souviners, so what?
But the NCAA has such a one-sided relationship with its fans that it's ridiculous.
Fans: give money to the school; are expected to buy only officially licensed products of that school; can't  create any merchandise that might demonstrate their affection for that school without paying a licensing fee so the school's athletic department gets a piece of the business; buy tickets to sporting events that you may not even want to go to (some schools have a program where you can earn 'points' toward better season tickets by buying season tickets to non-revenue sports that have a hard time selling any tickets, much less season tickets).
School: take the money and loyalty all the benefit, but if the NCAA accuses a fan of being too close to the player, the university president, athletic director, coach, even the players disavow any knowledge or relationship with those fans.
So much for being part of the 'team.'
I've said it before and I"ll say it again: the problem is not with the NCAA. The NCAA doesn't make a rule that the majority of schools haven't voted on and agreed to, because somebody somewhere gained an unfair advantage by doing whatever this ridiculous rule is designed to address.
And quite honestly, I don't think most coaches or ADs are overtly involved in breaking rules any more (other than so-called 'secondary' rules that usually have to do with simple contact with a prospect).
Most of the major violations these days are because of fans. And fans violate those rules because they think they should get more for their money than they do.
And the athletic departments feed this by every year demanding more and more from its fan base.
When fans have so much invested financially in a team - and we're measuring that investment by percentage of fan income, not always in thousand or millions of dollars - well, as the verse says, "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Am I in heaven, or am I in Miami? (Say it fast)

This is not going to go over well with college sports fans and some of my best friends who are either sportswriters/broadcasters or coaches, but I don't believe the NCAA is the problem.
College football and mens' basketball is corrupt. No question. When I read of the newest allegations (should we even call them 'allegations' when box after box of proof is presented?) at the University of Miami, I wasn't surprised. If you were, you don't know college sports.
A fan crossed the line between being a fan and trying to be part of the program.
It's such an old story I'm shocked if anyone is even shocked anymore.
In this case, a wiseguy named Nevin Shapiro, who is now serving 20 years in federal prison for his role in a $930 million Ponzi scheme, said he provided Miami players with cash, prostitutes, cars and other gifts over the past decade. He provided box after box of receipts and other evidence. He loved the Miami football program so much he had to buy his way in with money (which equals influence in college athletics), and then became such a common figure around the program there are multiple pictures of him with university administrators, including president Donna Shalala.
All across the land these days, schools are getting into trouble because of "rogue boosters,'' a term popularized by the NCAA in its investigation of the University of Alabama and its description of the late Logan  Young.
It's always the same. USC to Miami - accusations fly of improper benefits, from cash to clothes to cars to houses to prostitutes to whatever, and the school responds with "we can't be held responsible for the actions of our fans!"
And it's true.
But they don't have to encourage the behavior either - which is exactly what schools do by demanding huge contributions for the best seats in the house, for access to players and coaches, for recognition.
It's also because fans have to pay so dang much just for the 'privilege' of buying season tickets. It's extortion by athletic departments, demanding larger and larger contributions in exchange for a fan improving his seat selection at home games.
Schools tightly control souvenir sales, making fans buy only officially licensed products, limiting competition to those who can pay the extortion fee required to have a "license."
No wonder fans feel so invested in the program. They are.
School presidents claim they can't keep up with all these "rogue boosters." But inevitably, they knows the people who are the biggest "rogues." They are the ones who contribute the most.
Shapiro was a regular in the Miami press box, and at functions attended by university officials.
I sat in a press conference listening to former University of Alabama president Andrew Sorenson sound to sanctimonious as he said, "We can't be responsible for the actions of thousands of our fans!"
I said to him, "But you're not being asked to be held responsible for thousands. In this case,  it's three - two of whom had free access to the athletic department, one of whom you had dinner with on more than one occasion."
Sorenson quickly left the press conference without an answer.
I pick on Alabama only because I was there and know that program. But you can go up and down the college ranks and every school has at least one "booster'' who gives money in exchange for access and influence. Even the legendary John Wooden, who is so highly regarded as a man of high character and principle, had Sam Gilbert - credited with keeping all those incredible basketball players that played for Wooden 'happy' for all those years.
You know why I don't blame the organization of the NCAA for all this?
The rules are not the NCAA's fault. Everyone loves to talk about the overly-complicated NCAA rule book, but every rule in there is because some coach or booster somewhere first did something that gave him or his program an unfair advantage. College coaches live to find loopholes in rules. The examples are legendary.
But blaming the NCAA as an organization because its members can't keep the rules is like blaming immigration laws for the thousands of illegal immigrants in this country.
Oh, wait - people do.
Apparently what "fans'' and experts would prefer is that athletic departments just admit they are money-making machines and start paying players, thinking that somehow that would keep players from being enticed to break the rules.
Come on. Do you really think that would do it? That's like saying raising the speed limit would stop speeding, or making drugs legal would stop illegal drugs, or making gambling legal will stop illegal gambling, or educating young people about sex will stop unwanted pregnancy and abortions.
Pro athletes make as much money and get as much free stuff as anybody in society. It doesn't stop some of them - and I repeat, "some" of them - from wanting more, and going to illegal measures to get it.
Sorry. I just don't buy into the idea that because everyone does it, you just give up and say it's OK for everyone to do it.
Whatever 'it' is.
Now let me seem to contradict myself for a minute. I do believe football players and men's college basketball players deserve far more than the scholarship provides for. Coaches are making millions of their skills. Athletic departments are making millions off their skills. Everyone up and down the line is making millions off the players. Why shouldn't the players expect a piece of the pie?
First of all, athletes should be allowed to try to turn pro whenever they want to. Right out of high school, after their freshman year, whenever. Once they feel ready, let them go. That begins to eliminate a number of the kids who don't have any business being in college anyway, who really wouldn't be there except its the best way to get to the pros.
Let every player have one shot at entering the draft without penalty. If he doesn't get drafted, or doesn't like where he was drafted, let him come back to college. Some of them will realize they just might need something besides athletics to become successful.
No more extortion by the athletic departments. Athletic departments are tax-exempt entities of tax-exempt institutions of higher learning. Then make tickets affordable to all, and available on a first-come, first-serve basis. The millionaire has the same chance of getting a 50-yard line seat as the pauper, as long as the pauper can afford the price of the ticket.
Presidents and AD's say they want tougher penalties, so here goes: if a program cheats, shut it down for a year. Nobody gets paid. And penalties go with coaches so they can't leave and coach at some other college. If they want to coach, they go pro or high school or down to the local "Y." Cheat again, double the penalty.
Sure, such penalties hurt other schools, too, particularly the schools in the conference. But nobody ever said life was fair. The bigger you are, the harder the fall.
The 'death penalty' has to be real - but not just for the school, but for the coaches, the administrators, the fans.
There's more, but what's the point?
Do I sound angry? I am. I love college sports. It was my life. I know so many good, decent, honest administrators, coaches, players, and - yes- fans who don't deserve this.
None of these "get tough'' ideas will help keep a "fan'' from wanting to feel so connected to a football program that he or she tries to buy relationships with players by providing benefits - from simple things like baking cakes to big things like cars and prostitutes; none of that will help the problem of "fans'' who feel their money gives them the right to scream at school administrators in public areas, or those that do even stupid things like try to kill symbolic plants on a college campus.
The really sad part is there are so many good fans, who just enjoy the games, and do want nothing more than to let the players know they truly appreciate  them without feeling the need to 'buy' those players' favor.
But as is always the case, the majority wind up paying for the sins of the minority.
And no change in the NCAA rules book will ever change that.

Beating up on poor little disadvantaged kids

Got to tread lightly here. Any time you start criticizing kids - especially minority kids - you run a risk.
But I was at this fund-raiser last night for a group that is really a great organization. In fact, I used to go one of these clubs when I was a boy and was fortunate enough to be part of their boxing program. They were connected to the Golden Gloves.
I probably belonged more in the Copper Gloves, or Tin - and slightly tarnished at that.
Anyway, this was a really nice fund-raiser, a dinner with a silent auction at a really nice venue. And there was a lot of money raised for this worthy organization.
But the organization of the organization for this dinner was awful. And unfortunately some of the performances by the kids was, well, minimal at best.
That's not the kids fault. I blame the adults. And while I don't really know for sure, I can't help but feel the problem is that the adults in this organization simply didn't have high enough expectations for the kids they work with.
And even though I watched and applauded with everyone else when the kids did their thing, down deep I felt like we were simply applauding the kids for showing up.
Kind of like handing out participation trophies.
I honestly believe these kids could have done everything they did better.
When did we set our expectations for kids so low? Particularly kids from "tough" circumstances, whatever those tough circumstances - one parent, lower economic situation, "bad" neighborhood - might be.
This is a bit of a ramble, but hopefully you'll see the point in here somewhere.
I can't help but remember back in the 1980s, when the world finally realized what many of us knew all along: that too many of our highest level of college athletes were uneducated, if not in some cases actually illiterate. There are documented cases of this, and many more that I knew first-hand but out of respect for the athletes themselves I never reported.
So embarrassed college officials decided to raise academic standards on athletes with minimum test scores and grade point averages.
Who do you think complained? Black coaches, administrators, pastors, etc. They all said that raising these academic standards would punish black kids who came from disadvantaged environments. Oh, they screamed racism.
But you know what happened? These poor disadvantage kids - not all black, by the way - met the minimum standard!
Now, it's easy to be cynical and say that the teachers started fixing grades and other people were taking tests, and undoubtedly there was some of that. But I talked to these athletes almost every day over the course of 25 years, mostly kids in the Southeastern Conference, which recruited the best athletes in the country, many of them minorities, and many from what we'd consider disadvantaged situations.
And the truth is, every year they showed up articulate, better educated, more confident - simply smarter.
It wasn't the last time academic minimum standards were raised, either. And every time the standards  - the expectations - went up, the kids that were supposedly going to be discriminated against improved and met the standard. At least, a lot of them did.
Now, it's a whole 'nother discussion about whether these kids even belonged in college in the first place. That's something I'll blog about on another day.
But every time the NCAA raised minimum academic requirements - over the loud objections of coaches and well-meaning interested parties - the kids invariably met the standard.
RABBIT TRAIL: Survey after survey lists education as a top priority of citizens of this country, and yet those same surveys say those citizens don't want taxes raised to contribute to education. I saw one today. And while it seems like an inconsistency, I  wonder if the citizenry may not be smart enough to realize throwing more money at a problematic education process is not the answer - at least, not until schools make better use of the resources they have now. And I'm convinced that if the citizenry saw better results coming out of the public school system, they'd be more in favor of improving funding. Of course, they may also discover that public schools don't really need more funding at all, just better accounting.
Anyway, do you see my point? Somehow, too many of us feel like kids want to be appreciated for simply being kids. So we give trophies for just being on the team, we give trophies for finishing in last place, we put kids up on stages and call them "choirs'' when all they're doing is singing in unison (and off-key) to a tape, or we dress them up in nice costumes and let them "dance'' and we all applaud and cheer because, well, "they tried - and we don't want them to get discouraged and quit."
Guess what? Discouragement is part of life. And the sooner we teach our kids that, the sooner they learn how to deal with it and learn to overcome it.
And I'm convinced they will. I read a study about gangs - tough gangs, in inner cities, the kind that makes outsiders terrified to go downtown. The "expert" was talking about something called "Maslow's hierarchy of needs," where this guy Maslow said humans have a descending order of fundamental needs: physical fulfillment (food, warmth, etc); safety (love, belonging); and self-esteem.
The idea was that whoever provides those three will command love and loyalty, and a lot of well-meaning organizations provide the first two. What they don't do a good job of is building true self-esteem.
Gangs do that, by making the kids do hard things to prove themselves. And there are consequences for those kids that fail to do the hard things. Yet the kids gravitate to the gangs.
But here's the final thing, as I try to wrap up and get myself out of this mess: you don't give a kid self-esteem by handing out trophies or telling them they are great for simply showing up. Kids aren't that dumb. They will accept that, because all human beings want that sense of love or belonging.
But down deep, they know they didn't deserve anything. They don't feel any better about themselves simply because they go home with a trophy. Chances are, they wind up with so many trophies that the trophies themselves become meaningless.
Gangs do that for kids. They accept them, but they make them earn respect. They're often unforgiving and judgmental, but the kids flood to the gangs because the atmosphere provides them with their basic needs - including a sense of pride in carrying out assigned difficult (often illegal) tasks that give the kids a sense of self-esteem.
The best thing we can do for kids is challenge them. That's how they learn self-esteem.
And it's up to us - the adults - to be willing to do it.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.