NCAA Basketball Quiz: Duke”s Mike Krzyzewski just became
the 5th fastest coach to reach 500 victories, doing it in 660 games.
Name the four ahead of him. [Two are old-timers, the other two
got the bulk of their wins in the ”70s and ”80s.] Answer below.
Johnny Mac”s History of Football
[Note from the editor: I asked my buddy J Mac to supply us all
with some grist for the Thanksgiving table, in anticipation of
some major inter-family battles over the election. Now you are
empowered to change the subject.]
With the baseball season sadly completed, especially if you”re a
Mets fan like the editor and me, it”s time for a little football.
While mulling over some ideas, I was reminded of a quote by
Dan Jenkins regarding sports journalism. “It seems that good
sports writing is in adverse proportion to the size of the
ball.there are great books on golf, some very good books on
baseball, a couple of decent football books and very little on
volleyball.tennis, obviously, is excepted from this rule.” I will
admit to recalling the quote from memory, so I might be
paraphrasing a bit, but you get the idea.
A lot of the wisdom behind that sentiment has to do with the
nature of the games. Golf, obviously, and baseball to a great
extent, are the products of the individual players. The history of
football, though, seems to be the story of franchises and coaches.
Think about it for a minute.the real giants of the game were
Halas and Shula and Landry and Lombardi.the fans recall with
fondness the “Steel Curtain” and the “Doomsday Defense” and
the “No-Name Defense,” the “Hogs” and the “Smurfs” and the
“Killer Bees.” It was teams, and units on those teams, that
captured the imagination.
In college it”s even more pronounced. That has something to do
with the turnover in personnel but that”s not the entire reason.
Coaches are the story and always have been. Rockne, Leahy,
Paterno, Bryant, Robinson (Eddie), Osborne, Wilkinson.the list
is deep. Check out the current crop…it”s all about systems. Too
many stories about how you could plug anybody into Spurrier”s
or Bowden”s or Holtz”s system and they would perform. This
prevailing sentiment tends to trivialize the individual for the
glory of the team.
It is not without merit though. Football is at its core a true team
sport. The analogies to war and armies are not that farfetched.
The one overriding credo in the military is the subjugation of the
individual for the good of the unit. The same sentiment directly
applies to football. Most coaches would admit a fondness for a
running back who gave him exactly 5 yards on every carry rather
than one who could break off 50-60-yarders occasionally while
being prone to getting caught behind the line. Perhaps the best
example might be Barry Sanders. A player of immense talent, he
is often referred to by other players as a “freak” (meant as a
compliment). The trouble is the Lions offense relied so heavily
on his ad-libbing that they never developed a cohesive plan. Just
give the ball to Barry and see what he can do. While entertaining
and sporadically successful, it never resulted in any
championship seasons (or anything close to that). I don”t think it
coincidental that the Lions seem more competitive since his
retirement.
Football by its very nature discourages individual flair. The
powers that be worship conformity and strive mightily for parity.
It is the only sport that has prescribed penalties for “excessive
celebration.” It is the only major sport that has a weighted
schedule, meaning the better your record the tougher your next
year”s slate of opponents will be (and vice versa). Byzantine
salary cap rules and a carefully structured “amateur” draft further
foster the idea of parity. All of this, in some way, contributes to
the off-field problems that have plagued the sport. Please don”t
think I”m some bleeding heart looking to absolve these players of
personal responsibility, because I”m not. But the controlled
violence and high level of testosterone implicit in the participants
make it more likely for them to misbehave in their day-to-day
lives, especially if alcohol or drugs involved. Again, the military
analogy is apropos…or do you think it”s a good idea to dis” the
marines in a bar full of beered-up leathernecks?
Exceptions prove the rule, and football has had its share of
interesting characters, from Joe Don Looney (geez, is that a great
name or what?) to Joe Namath. Like most human endeavors, it
attracts a wide array of individuals, from those of massive
intellect (Paul Robeson, Mike Reid), massive courage (Nile
Kinnick), or massive cowardice (Rae Carruth). We will visit
some of these people in the coming weeks, but first I would like
to give some background on the NFL.
Pro football has existed on some level since 1892. Most credit
one William “Pudge” Heffelfinger, who was paid the princely
(for the time) sum of $500.00 to play in a game for the
Allegheny Athletic Association. Mr. Heffelfinger, a former star
at Yale, thus became the first paid “pro.” Pro ball bounced
around the small towns of western Pennsylvania and the Midwest
for the better part of three decades before any organization
developed. In 1920, a meeting was held in Canton, Ohio (home
of the present-day Hall of Fame). The owner of the hometown
Bulldogs, Ralph Hay, hosted the meeting in his Hupmobile
showroom (all of you with a Hupmobile in the garage, raise your
hands). Also present was George “Papa Bear” Halas, among
others. In all, eleven franchises were represented…Canton
Bulldogs, Decatur Staleys, Chicago Cardinals, Akron Pros,
Cleveland Indians, Dayton Triangles (isosceles, I think),
Massillon Tigers, Hammond Pros, Muncie Flyers, Rock Island
Independents (the swing vote, I presume) and the Rochester
Jeffersons (“Weezy, we”re selling the dry cleaners and buying a
football team!)
Massillon folded before ever playing a game and some additional
franchises were added…Buffalo All-Americans, Chicago Tigers,
Columbus Panhandles, and the Detroit Heralds. I told you it was
a small town sport, didn”t I? All but two of these original teams
are defunct today…the Staleys moved to Chicago and were
renamed Da Bears, and the Chicago/St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals
are all that survived. Growing pains were prevalent during the
1920s. Teams came and went. The league tried to add
credibility in 1922 by naming the great Jim Thorpe as president.
Thorpe, perhaps the greatest all-around athlete of the century,
was many things, but a competent league president wasn”t one of
them. The office was really ceremonial in nature, and Thorpe
still had a little left in him athletically. In keeping with the
politically incorrect times, Thorpe signed on with perhaps the
strangest professional team of all time.the Oorang Indians.
The team was organized by Walter Lingo, owner of the Oorang
Dog Kennel in tiny Larue, Ohio. The expressed purpose of the
team was to market Mr. Lingo”s prized breed…his Airedales.
He stocked the team with Native Americans with such colorful
monikers as Long Time Sleep, Joe Little Twig, Big Bear and
War Eagle. Since selling dogs was the impetus, they played all
road games save one. Football was secondary to spectacle…
shooting exhibitions with dogs retrieving the targets, Indian
dances, tomahawk throwing. Long Time Sleep even wrestled a
bear on occasion (this was before PETA, remember). The
novelty act wore off quickly and they folded their tepees after the
1923 season. Luckily, we live in a more enlightened age, don”t
we (if you forget the Indians, Redskins, Braves, and Florida State
Seminoles)? Yup, today we soothe our collective conscience
with casino licenses. But I digress.
Long forgotten franchises like the Kenosha Maroons and the
Racine Legion dotted the landscape. The league started to
consolidate near the end of the decade. Many of the present-day
teams were now in place. In fact, the last team not currently in
the NFL to win a championship was the 1928 Providence Steam
Roller. Providence was an interesting bunch, playing its home
games in the Cyclodome, a bicycle-racing stadium. The field
was tucked down, surrounded by a wooden track with steeply
banked turns. The end zones were only 5 yards deep and the
stands were so close players routinely ended up 3 rows deep after
tackles. Economic necessity (natch) provided us with another
piece of history regarding the Steam Roller…the first night
game. In 1929, a scheduled game against the Cardinals was
cancelled due to rain rendering the field unplayable. Unwilling
to give up a payday, the game was rescheduled; to be played a
few nights later under hastily installed floodlights. The ball was
painted white for the game, giving the impression of a large egg
(at least I think it was painted…maybe they found an albino pig).
The game was deemed a success (6,000 attended) and the lights
were installed permanently. Given the lack of a players union at
the time, the owner of the Providence club routinely deducted
money from the player”s paychecks for night games, citing his
need to recoup the cost of the lights. Go ahead; try that today.
Hard to believe that the current powerhouse NFL was spawned
from such humble and comical beginnings. Tim Mara”s $500
investment in the NY Giants in 1925 is worth upwards of half a
billion today. The only viable buyers for available franchises
seem to be large conglomerates or dot-com billionaires (and they
are getting rarer by the day). TV and merchandising money is
abundant. The colleges continue to provide an endless stream of
talent, free of charge (for the training, anyway). Incidental
annoyances, like murder (both committed by and committed
upon players) have not affected popularity. While baseball still
struggles to erase the stench of the ”94 strike and basketball looks
to an uncertain Jordanless future, it looks like a sure thing. The
only caveat…a wise man once told me that the only sure thing in
life is that there is no such thing as a sure thing.
We”ll have some biographies over the coming weeks.
The Queen and the Pheasant
With the news being dominated by the election debacle, some of
you may have missed a little episode involving Queen Elizabeth
II.
During a royal shooting session, QE II shot a bird whereupon her
hunting dog, Lord Pointer, retrieved it and handed it to said
Queen. So Elizabeth, seeing that the bird was just wounded did
the only thing one could, given the circumstances, and that was
to wring the pheasant”s neck with her bare hands…snap!
Of course, this was all caught on film. Dohh!
“It was clearly the most effective and humane way of dispatching
the injured bird,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement after
the neck-wringing photo appeared in several British newspapers.
Animal rights activists were none too pleased. Actually, in
hindsight Prince Charles is pretty lucky, eh?!
Car Costs
Matthew Futterman of the Star-Ledger newspaper had a story the
other day on the viability of bringing NASCAR racing to the
Meadowlands, which the sport sees as a must if it is to broaden
its appeal. Futterman had an interesting table on the costs
involved in maintaining a NASCAR team. Following are the
expenses for car owner Felix Sabates who, I believe, is the owner
for Sterling Marlin and Joe Nemechuk.
Per Car Costs:
Driver Salary $2.5 million
Mechanics and staff salaries $6 million
Parts, fuel & oil $2.4 million
Tires $1.5 million
Travel $2.5 million
[A car goes through 3,500 sets of tires in a season, as well as 500
gallons of oil, and 3 dozen radiators at $1,200 each.]
Sabates has over 100 employees on the team.
On the revenue side, a major sponsorship can bring in $15
million, with minor sponsorships adding another $5-$10 million.
Prize winnings roughly average $8 million.
Final NASCAR / Winston Cup standings for 2000:
#1 Bobby Labonte #2 Dale Earnhardt #3 Jeff Burton #4 Dale
Jarrett #5 Ricky Rudd… Jeff Gordon was #9.
Top 3 songs for the week of 11/25/67: #1 “Incense And
Peppermints” (Strawberry Alarm Clock) #2 “To Sir With Love”
(Lulu) #3 “The Rain, The Park & Other Things” (The Cowsils)
*Now there is a Top 3!
NCAA Quiz Answer: The others to reach 500 victories quicker
than Duke”s Coach K. Adolph Rupp, 583; Jerry Tarkanian, 614;
Dean Smith, 653; and Hank Iba (Oklahoma State), 654.
Bar Chat will return on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving! And
don”t forget the Shiner Bock…Blatz if you”ve had a tough
stretch in the markets.
