RUGator

Whenever I see this figure attached to anything, I think, “but it’s the .1 that concerns me.”

Nebraska football vs. Nebraska basketball

Duke basketball vs. Duke football

Penn State football vs. Penn State basketball

1. “On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting. ‘Twas only that when he was off was he acting.” Oliver Goldsmith

2. “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.” Mark Twain

3. “My parents only had one argument in forty-five years. It lasted forty-three years.” Cathy Ladman

4. “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” Groucho Marx

5. “The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.” Ambrose Bierce

-We had to pay the State of NJ $15.00 to file a form indicating that my mother-in-law owed no estate tax.

-Is the College World Series ever going to end?

-Heard the story of a caddy who lived in a Banyan tree on the golf course where he worked. He’d put his garbage in a plastic bag which he’d hang from a branch every morning for the grounds crew to dispose of.

-Had a golfer I was caddying for (while he rode in a cart and I carried his bag) tell me that, as a teacher, I had a “racket.”

While I was scrounging around for another quarter to buy a Diet Coke, this was what he was doing.

He wasn’t alone either.

http://www.nysportsday.com/2009/03/24/another-a-bomb-from-a-rod/

And I’m sick and tired of hearing that sports fans are willing accomplices to this type of behavior.

Tired of it.

Can’t take it anymore.

Why can’t I be a fan and enjoy sports and the role it’s played in my life without having to apologize for this crap?

Hey A-Rod (and whoever else), I’m sick and tired of you. This isn’t good enough for me. As a fan, I’m not going away. I’m not bailing out on the sports and teams I love.

But I am bailing on you.

“Government oversight”: kickback

“No Child Left Behind”: 1984

“Public servant”: self-servant

“The Honorable…”: gall

“A brilliant player”: on steroids

“Only 19.99″: sweatshop

“Mainstream media”: Fear Factor

“stomach flu”: explosive diarrhea

“only”: not

“bipartisan”: bribery

“tantric”: fiction

“artistic”: sacrilegious

“player”: cheater

“just friends”: rebuffed

“transparent”: hidden

“apologetic”: caught

“ED”: preoccupied

“VIP”: mobster

I don’t know what made me do it.

Never thought I had much in the cajones department. But I picked up the phone. A few times.

Goodman Stadium the home field of the Lehigh University Mountain Hawks (nee “Engineers”) and I’m reminded of a past life I had as a self-invented sports reporter. I thought I’d talk a little about this as a way to inspire some of you out there who want to do this sort of thing for a living.

For some time (a long time ago), I wrote and published my own college football newsletter. Because I couldn’t get anyone to actually pay for a subscription, I sent it out to anyone I could think of who I thought was even remotely interested in college football. Many of these folks were sports information directors at various universities and colleges. I was hoping to “get discovered.”

Well I was never actually “discovered,” but it did lead to some interesting and important relationships. Two of the individuals I “met” were the SIDs at both Lehigh and Lafayette College, located in Bethlehem, PA and Easton, PA respectively. These two gentlemen gave me the idea of requesting “press credentials” so I could attend games. I was dumbfounded. These guys were taking me seriously. I was legit in their eyes!

And so I did ask and I got them. Now what did this mean? What does it mean to have “press credentials?”

Guess I sort of had an old story on my mind. Goes like this: a baseball broadcaster calls the last out on his team’s unsuccessful season and breaks down crying. A colleague tries to comfort him. “It’s o.k. There’s always next year.” To which he replies, “Yeah, but what am I gonna do now? I  have to go home to my wife?”

“Hello, may I please speak to Bruce Johnson?” I asked the receptionist. For years I had listened to his calls of Rutgers football and basketball. RU had taken me in after I left my heart in Gainesville years earlier. He connected me.

An interview was set up. I was writing a college football newsletter and I wanted to learn about his game day preparation. “This was too easy.”
Speaking to him in his office that day reminded me that people are behind what we see on television and hear on the radio.

I’ll always remember him telling me, “Well it’s not brain surgery, but I won’t go antiquing with my wife on the day of a game.” “The best way to describe what it’s like in the booth is that you have to experience it first hand. Would you like to watch me do a game?”

You had to pinch me.

So there I was, in the pressbox for Rutgers against Virginia Tech on a rainy Saturday years before Rutgers became Greg Schiano’s Rutgers. In a dreadful downpour I watched and listened over Bruce’s shoulder as he broadcast that game. I learned that a “spotter” was a guy standing behind him pointing to the name’s of players making tackles and running plays so he could readily bring that information so smoothly to the listening fans. It gave me some ideas.

Press credentials are basically tickets to games which allow the recipient access to the “press box,” the sidelines (in the case of football), and the post-game press conferences. So once approved, the press credentials would arrive via mail along with a parking pass. This was house money, dawg!

Upon arrival at the game, I would make my way “into” the press box. THE press box. Talk about primo seats. There’d be a seat for me along with a name tag, boxed lunch, and whatever materials I needed to “cover” the game. I was in flipping sports nirvana! People get “paid” to do this?

These were experiences I’ll obviously never forget. But more importantly, they helped me build self-confidence (always a struggle for me), legitimized my writing ability (and perhaps myself?), and allowed me to develop a professional portfolio which I used as part of my teaching/writing resume.

I was introduced to Jethro Tull in 1978.

Don’t ask me why I remember.

I just do.

Sitting on a chair waiting to see the principal, I was the new kid in town.

Mr. Allen wanted to meet me. “Wanna lay my eyes on a goddamn Yankee,” I heard him tell his secretary. What a warm, genuine man he was. A great kidder and totally laid back, he ran the school like a grandfather.

Ponte Vedra/Palm Valley School it was called. In Florida. The “land” side of A1A.

And on the chair next to me was another ninth grader. He too was waiting to see Mr. Allen. For different reasons. One look at him convinced me.

We made eye contact, me and this 15 year old Greg Allman, and I said “Hi.”

He sorted of grunted something I couldn’t quite make out. Holding up the little toy army soldier in his hand to show me, he repeated, “aqua-lung (said more like, ‘ag-wa-LUUUUUUUUNG’).” And then again, “aqualung…. look at my mother- $#&*@$# aqualung!”

And that was it.

I never saw him again.

But I did think of him today.

Thirty years later.

When asked by Sporting News (February 16, 2009) “How is the economy affecting you?” NASCAR racer Denny Hamlin answered, “I went on vacation and flew commercial.”

I’ve always admired NASCAR for their uncanny ability to relate to fans.