Boomer Sooner?

I've spent more of my life in Oklahoma than anywhere else.  I like the weather here, given my passion for severe thunderstorms.  I like the physical geography of the state, with its large contrasts from east to west.  I was rather satisfied with the education I received here at the University of Oklahoma (OU) and had some great mentors who were OU faculty and staff.  However, recent postings on social media have raised a point of concern with regard to the University's "mascot" - the Sooners.  The school's fight song is "Boomer Sooner", composed by Fred Waring (!). 

 Many people are unaware of the origin of the term Sooners - it's tied to the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.  The "Boomers" were settlers who tried to grab parcels of land blatantly in the so-called "unassigned lands" (that was home to Native Americans) before the official starting date of 22 April 1989.  The US Army removed as many of them as they could.  The "Sooners" were people who sneaked into the unassigned lands early but kept a low profile, hoping to make a legal claim after the official starting date.  Both Boomers and Sooners were, effectively, cheaters seeking to grab the land of the Native Americans before they were allowed to do so.  These are not exactly the sort of folks that one would choose as a role model and certainly should be somewhat embarrassing to the University.  But I have my doubts many associated with OU ever give it any thought.

We already have seen a growing chorus of discontent by indigenous people with using Native American-associated terms for sporting team and Universities.  Recently, the 'mascot' of the University of North Dakota was changed from "The Fighting Sioux" to "The Fighting Hawks" in response to many protests by the Sioux tribe.  The controversy there was long and bitter.  There also has been concern about the Kansas City Chiefs, the Florida State Seminoles, the Washington Redskins (!), the Cleveland Indians, the Chicago Blackhawks, and many others.  Not surprisingly, there's been considerable pushback from those who rationalize such uses of these nicknames and logos.  I'm not about to enter the morass of that debate, but I do generally believe that our use of such cultural icons for our own purposes is disrespectful to Native Americans and their cultures.  Obviously, there are those who disagree.

Here at OU, the mascot is even worse than the preceding examples, because it honors those who participated in the plundering of Native American lands by white settlers.  The Boomers and Sooners grabbed their parcels of land by illegal means.  The Native Americans were the ultimate losers, sadly.  The whole of the lower 48 states represents the home of Native Americans who were here long before any white European settlers arrived to claim all those lands (except for reservations of generally worthless land assigned to those Native Americans who were not killed).  The indigenous people of the Americas were subjected to various forms of genocide and destruction of the original environment on which they depended.

Our treatment of indigenous people is shameful and it continues right up to this very day!  Anyone with a conscience should be deeply ashamed of this aspect of our national history.  As usual, the rationale for this history has been based on viewing them as primitive savages who were not even qualified as human beings with unalienable rights.  I have little expectation that OU will be changing their mascot any time soon.  White privilege is alive and thriving here in Oklahoma, and that isn't likely to change in the foreseeable future.  But I don't have to like that situation, and I don't have to support robbing Native Americans of their cultural heritage.

The Richard Sherman Brouhaha

If you follow NFL football at all, by now you surely know about the interview with Richard Sherman, Seahawks cornerback, after the game.  I think Mr. Sherman's response could legitimately be called an "outburst" - in subsequent interviews, he called 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree a "mediocre" receiver.  In short, he advanced the notion that he was the best defensive back in the league, whereas his opponent was not very good.  Since then, there has been a enormous amount of talk about the interview, with some apologists saying he was simply still caught up in the on-field emotions, some haters saying he showed himself to be a "thug", and a whole lot of other opinions running a broad gamut.

Of course, the play in question - the game-winning play - resulted in the ball being tipped away from Mr. Crabtree by Mr. Sherman, into the hands of another Seahawk player (linebacker Malcom Smith), ending a drive that might have resulted in a game victory by the 49ers.  As a result of the play, a Seahawk victory was sealed.  It was indeed a great defensive play, with the significance of it magnified by the harsh reality of playoff football:  the winning team goes on to the Super Bowl and the losing team goes home!  But it was just one play, and many other players played a part in the game outcome.  After all, football is a team sport, right?

My first reaction to the interview was that it showed Mr. Sherman to be rather immature - simultaneously bragging about his skills and denigrating the skills of his opponent.  It's been my observation that people who promote themselves, and especially those who do so also by diminishing others, are really expressing an emotional insecurity.  Such attitudes are not universal in the NFL, and most interviews with NFL players are characterized by statements of mutual respect between opponents, as well as gratitude for the contributions by other players on the team.  Playing and surviving in the NFL is tough, and I'm sure many players, even some of the greats, have their moments of insecurity.  There are diverse ways to cope with that, including (but not limited to) the sort of boasting and chest-beating of Mr. Sherman.  And a lot of chippy talk goes on amongst the players on the field during the game that isn't repeated in typical post-game interviews.

Of course, the media are bored with statements of mutual respect and the other cliches that dominate interviews with players:  we're going to play just one game at a time, the winning team played better than we did, the opponent we beat is a great football team, we're going to treat this game like any other game, etc.  Compared to such scripted banality, Mr. Sherman's outburst was a dream come true for the media!  At last!  A player whose responses weren't limited to the team script.  One by-product of Mr. Sherman's outburst is that he became the media's darling, and the rest of the Seahawks team was correspondingly pushed out of the limelight.   I wonder how much Mr. Sherman thought about that consequence before he spoke.

Sadly, another consequence of Mr. Sherman's outburst was a lot of venomous commentary directed at him by viewers of the interview.  Completely unwarranted statements, including the seemingly obligatory racist remarks, were made about Mr. Sherman by people whose knowledge of the player as a human being was virtually nil apart from the few seconds of the interview.  If someone pushes him/herself into the limelight, the result is always like this - opinions are like assholes, of course, and uninformed opinions often come from assholes.  Surely he realized what the response to his remarks could become.  The full range of blowback often includes opinions voiced by racists, and other morons of all sorts and descriptions.  The less said about such, the better.

Had Mr. Sherman chosen to respond with the standard cliches, there would be little notice given to his remarks - only a few folks complaining about how stupid and boring athlete interviews have become.  Instead, the whole run-up to the Super Bowl will be dominated by the fallout from this brief postgame interview.  The interview is larger than the game, at least in the media, for the moment.  If Mr. Sherman is torched by Peyton Manning and his receivers, or if Mr. Sherman pulls off some more great defensive plays, you can imagine the nature of the post-game "analysis" by the media!

Mr. Sherman is a Stanford graduate and evidently is both intelligent and articulate.  One might think that these traits would have prevented him from indulging in the outburst.  Perhaps he was still caught up in the emotions of the moment - I have no way to know that.  But the immaturity and implied insecurity remain, regardless of any "back story" or exculpatory explanations for the outburst.  It's difficult for me to respect self-promoters who publicly denigrate their opponents, no matter how well they perform on the field.

Perhaps later in his NFL career, Mr. Sherman will look back and regret the intemperate remarks he made.  Or perhaps he'll look back and see this moment as the key to a career filled with accolades.  Certainly there are historical precedents for the latter - Mohammed Ali (the self-proclaimed "greatest") comes readily to mind, or Deion "prime time" Sanders.  They weren't all braggadocio - it ain't bragging if you can do it!  His performance on the field over the coming years likely will settle that issue one way or another and if he performs well enough to achieve really high honors (e.g., the NFL HoF) then this flap triggered by his outburst is simply irrelevant and is perhaps only a footnote in his professional career.

Now can we let the dust settle and focus on the game?  Probably not ...

What would a "Fair" college football playoff be?

Here we are, at the end of another college football (CFB, for short) FBS (formerly NCAA Division 1A) season.  Alabama routed Notre Dame to win the BCS National Championship (NC) for the 3rd time in 4 years.  All that settles the issue for this year of 2012, right?  Weeeeelllll ... no, not completely.  There's still a lot of debating going on about whether the teams participating in the NC game were the best teams.  Texas A&M beat Alabama head-to-head in Tuscaloosa (but lost to Florida and Louisiana State).  Notre Dame was undefeated but looked really overmatched in losing to Alabama.  Might another team have been a better matchup against Alabama?  And so on ... and on ... and on ...

All this brings up the topic of a BCS CFB playoff again.  The BCS will go to a 4-team playoff format in 2014 - but it still won't settle all the debates.  Presumably, the still-imperfect ranking system used by the BCS will decide which four teams are included in the 2-round tournament, thereby inevitably leaving deserving teams on the outside looking in, which happens every year, even without a playoff.  If they go to a 16-team playoff, or pattern the FBS playoff on the FCS playoff algorithm or the NFL system, or any other structure whatsoever, you still will have potentially deserving teams left out.

The goal many seem to have is that the "best" team win the championship (especially if it's their team!).  But how is the determination of the "best" team to be done?  Yes, subjective ranking systems, or pseudo-objective computerized systems (that use subjectively developed algorithms) are far less satisfactory than "settling" the issue on the playing field.  One team wins, the other loses.  How difficult can it be?

Well, game outcomes are the result of nonlinear processes that ultimately are unpredictable.  Seemingly minor things like a gust of wind that makes the winning field goal attempt good (or bad), a ball tipped in the secondary just happens to be intercepted (or not), a ball touches a receiving team player on a kickoff and is recovered by the kicking team (or not), and so on.  Football involves "matchups" of players on offense against players on defense.  In some cases, a good player at a position either plays poorly or plays extraordinarily well against the particular player he faces, and that turns out to be a key to the outcome.  And there are many more things that can happen in CFB.  The ball bounces to favor one team over the other, a bad referee call somehow is upheld even after review, the weather conditions favor one team over another, and injuries to key players.  All these things and more play a role in game outcomes between evenly-matched teams.

There's an often-heard argument after a close game goes against a particular team - "Well, if they played the game 10 times, my team would win 6 of them (or whatever number)!"  This is an interesting hypothetical - but does it make any sense at all?  In science, we try to do experiments on large samples of data in order to have some confidence in the numbers we generate.  Let's make it 100 games to be played between each team, instead of just 10.  That would give us considerably more confidence in the winning/losing percentage numbers.  In 2012, there were 120 FBS teams.  They each play 12 games, for a total of 12x120 = 1440 games per season (not counting bowl games).  If each team played every other team in the FBS 100 times, that would make 120x119x100 = 1,428,000 games!  Now that would be a decent sample size - roughly a thousand times more games than we now have in a regular season!  Every true CFB fan would love it, right?

Realistically, it's impossible to play that many games even if the season went on continuously all year!  Note that if two teams play 100 games, there still would be some team pairings that could come out tied, 50 games each, so perhaps we should make that 101 games (for a total of 1,442,289 games).  Even if somehow all those games could be played in a single season, there are more problems.  With each team playing 11,900 games, the chance for injuries to key players becomes a near-certainty.  To be entirely fair, an injury resulting in any player being unable to continue at 100% would mean that game would have to replayed, after giving the injured player(s) time to heal up to 100% fitness again (basically impossible, of course).  Any bad call (including those upheld after replay) would mean the game had to be replayed.  Any "bounce" favoring one team over another - replay the game!  Any departure from fair weather - replay the game!  All games, naturally, would have to be played at completely neutral sites with equal numbers of fans on the stadium for each team in the venue.

By this point, we're talking about taking many years to finish even a single season, and since age affects different people differently, it's likely that unfair advantages would develop from the aging process (including injury healing times).  Of course, with this many games, players would develop more experience in one season than they now get in an entire CFB career.  Different players gain differently from experience, so more unfair advantages would crop up.  By the way, with this many games, the playing fields would suffer tremendously, so time for the recovery of the playing surfaces would have to be allowed - the playing surface might give one team an unfair advantage, after all.  All venues would have to be equal in terms of swirling winds, playing surface, fan seating, etc.

I think it's likely reasonable to conclude that any absolutely fair, objective effort to determine the "best" team, even on the playing field, is not possible.  The whole notion of the "best" team is only an abstract speculation that can't be tested in any completely fair and objective way, on the field or off.  As shown on a regular basis in the NFL, the "best" team (however difficult that might be to define) doesn't always win the Super Bowl, unless you define "best" only by the outcomes of the playoff games.  If the FBS goes to a playoff system, the same will be true for them.  In fact, there will little difference between CFB and the NFL at that point, except for player salaries.  Not everyone will be happy with this choice of direction for CFB, despite the crowning of an unambiguous champion at the end of every CFB season.

UPDATE:  The choosing of the "Final Four" for this season (2014/15) absolutely confirms my prediction that even a playoff system can never satisfy everyone.  The BCS formula was flawed, but so will be any playoff system.  Teams left out always will be howling in protest.  And the winner of a playoff will not always be the hypothetical "best" team in many minds.

On the Tebow phenomenon

I thought I'd add my two cents to the widespread discussion about Tim Tebow's football success and his personality.  Not that I have any particularly deep insight into his character - I can only react to the public persona he puts on display.

It's pretty evident that Tebow is passionate about his football and he understands two important aspects of football:  (1) it's a team game, and (2) the quarterback position demands leadership.  Tebow's public statements indicate that he wants to deflect the attention from himself to his teammates, which I have to believe plays well in the locker room, as well as on the air.  I can't possibly know the extent to which he actually believes that he doesn't rate the attention being showered upon him - but I hope his comments reflect accurately what he thinks.  Surely at least a few people in sports (and elsewhere) exist who are not all about calling attention to themselves and ignoring the necessary support from their team.  Many players, including what seems to be an inordinate percentage among wide receivers in the NFL, seem to need the attention desperately, rather than being satisfied with being successful in their team roles and helping the team win games.  It's very refreshing to hear Tebow giving praise to his teammates and not playing to the hype about him.

It's also very clear that Tebow has assumed the role of team leader, as any good quarterback should.  He isn't the best at the position the league has ever seen, at least in terms of raw quarterbacking skills, but he's proven he can carry the team to win.  In team sports, that's all that really counts.  Quarterbacks win when they can elevate the play of those around themselves - Super Bowl champion quarterbacks include some of the great quarterbacks of all time, but their ranks also include some rather midde-of-the-road quarterback talent.  Some great quarterbacks have never won a champtionship.  It remains to be seen what Tebow's future will be in that regard, of course.

It's amusing to see how the notion of a quarterback who is a threat to run the ball seems to be a new phenomenon in the NFL.  Tebow joins a long tradition of quarterbacks who can make plays by running, as well as dropping back in the pocket to throw.  It always has created problems for the defense to have to account for the quarterback as a ball carrier.  Why is this aspect of Tebow's game such a big deal in the media?  Frankly, I don't understand why it's being hyped as a new sort of quarterback play.  His size and power add a particular intensity to his running, but this is hardly the dawning of a new style of play.

If there's anything about Tebow I don't like (other than leading his Florida Gators to a win over my Oklahoma Sooners in the BCS National Championship game a few years back), it's when he pushes his religious beliefs while he's got media attention as a football player.  I have no problem with him believing whatever he wants, and pushing his religion on people in his private life, but ... he should keep his faith out of his football.  When he says he wants to thank his lord and savior jesus christ for all his success, this seems to be another aspect of his modesty.  However, it also suggests that a supernatural deity has picked sides and is helping Tebow beat other teams.  Would a supernatural deity do such a thing?  Is the almighty creator of the universe a Broncos football fan?  Frankly, the idea that Tebow's success follows from the intervention of an all-powerful deity on his behalf strikes me as arrogant, not modest.  Why should the creator of the universe want Tebow to succeed, thereby causing the failure of other players and their teams?  Doesn't that seem to suggest Tebow believes himself to be one of the omnipotent and omniscient creator's favorites?

When football players thank their deity for their success, and Tebow is only the most visible among many athletes who do this, it overlooks their mistakes and screw-ups.  Do they point to the sky on bended knee when they throw interceptions or fumble the ball?  "That one's on you, lord - my screw-up was your fault!"??

Why do I have such a problem with Tebow's open declarations of his faith?  I have no issue with him doing so in his private life to whatever extent he wishes.  But when he's granted an opportunity to gain media access to the public because of his football, then his remarks should be confined to football.  I don't turn on football games in order to hear religious proselytizing!  

To understand how utterly inappropriate this behavior is, imagine that I'm attending an international scientific conference to present a scientific paper on which I collaborated with several colleagues.  After offering acknowledgments to my colleagues, I then declare, "The same sort of rational analysis of objective evidence I've presented here, when applied to religious beliefs, provides a substantial argument against the existence of any mythical supernatural deity, often given by believers the name of god, jesus christ, or allah!"  Such a clearly irrelevant and discordant note would be an inappropriate intrusion of my personal spiritual perspective while on the stage in my role as a scientist.  I'd be pushing my opinions on people who, after all, didn't gather there to learn about my atheism.  By the same token, I find it disturbing that Tebow feels he can preach his religious beliefs from his platform as a football star.

I respect Tim Tebow as a football player, but I have no need to hear constantly about his religion.  Nor does anyone else.  He should keep that confined to his private life.

Thoughts on NCAA BCS football - part 2

Continuing where I left off ...

So I'm a fan of NCAA BCS football, for whatever reason, with the Oklahoma Sooners at the top of my short list of favorite teams.  With all the brouhaha about the post-season and the mythical national champion of BCS football being chosen primarily by polls that rank the teams subjectively and/or objectively via various arbitrary formulae, I've been forced to consider the possibility of an eventual playoff format.  I have mixed feelings about that, now.

All the other divisions of NCAA football already run playoffs to determine a national champion on the field of play, rather than being based primarily on polls.  There's no plausible logical reason why the former Division 1A couldn't or shouldn't have a playoff, other than the greed of the universities because of the money generated by post-season bowl games.  Presumably the bowl games have an inherent need to survive in any future post-season scenario involving playoffs.  This is, of course, all about the money.

And the same goes for the frantic re-alignment of the BCS conferences, with some teams now leaving one conference to join another.  Yet another case of it all being about the money.  The money drives the programs and the programs generate the money, in a nice case of the snake swallowing its own tail ...

At some point in the past, I had the naive notion that athletic competition in colleges was about sports and, for lower-level sports (referred to as "non revenue-generating" sports) like wrestling or gymnastics, or even college baseball, that's mostly what it's still about.  The student-athlete is not a myth in collegiate sports, but it is truly a vanishing species in NCAA BCS football.  The football players on NCAA BCS teams are recruited first and foremost as football athletes, not as students.  We don't care about your SAT scores, so long as they meet the minimum requirement.

In thinking about things going on with BCS football of late, I was forced to recollect my past experiences.  Thinking back, what I truly enjoyed were the traditional rivalries between teams that had long histories, going back in some cases a loooooooong ways:  OU-Texas, Michigan-Ohio State, Notre Dame-Southern California, Auburn-Alabama, and so on.  There were also lesser rivalries among teams that historically have had few aspirations to be national champions:  Minnesota-Wisconsin for the Paul Bunyan Trophy, Purdue-Indiana for the Old Oaken Bucket, Oregon-Oregon State in the "Civil War", and so on. With the ongoing demolition of conference team lineups, some old rivalries have been ended with no apparent concern for the loss of tradition.  College football with its regional rivalries had an aura of fun and friendly competition, that only marginally were related to pulling in tubs of cash.  This is being destroyed in the NCAA BCS.

In college, individual teams of the past didn't copy relentlessly the strategies used by winning teams.  College teams had personalities of various sorts and part of the fun was when teams with vastly different strategies clashed on the field.  College football had diversity in the style of play.  This is changing as the need to train NFL rookies seems to be a primary goal.  And it seems everyone must copy the style of football played in the SEC to have a chance to win a national championship.

The bowl games used to be mostly a reward for a successful season and a chance for some teams to play each other that ordinarily would not meet very often during the regular season because they were in different regions.  When the bowl games became a process increasingly focused on deciding the mythical national championship and the final rankings for the year, this fun-focused perspective on bowl games changed into something dark and filled with emotional meanings:  vindication and joy for the winners, but also humiliation and sorrow for the losers.  And the BCS formula has given us a rematch this year of a game between teams that have already met.

If NCAA BCS football eventually goes to playoff with 4 or more teams, which seems inevitable, then a champion of sorts will be determined on the field, but something else will have died.  College football will have become nearly indistinguishable from NFL football, except for the salaries paid to the players and the overall average talent level.  Most collegiate football players don't go on to play in the NFL - some play for "minor league" professional teams like arena league football, or american-style football in Europe or Canada.  But for most collegiate athletes, even at the BCS level, the end of their college playing days is the end of competitive football for them.  Interestingly, the NFL continues to draw many players from schools in the "lesser" divisions;  NFL-quality athletes are not found exclusively in the BCS.

For those not destined to become professional football players, these athletes remain mostly students and are football players only secondarily.  If their football careers are terminated prematurely by an injury, no big payoff is lost - they just get to focus their attention on academic issues, not athletic performance.

In some ways, I'd like to see a playoff for the NCAA Division 1A national championship - to see the issue settled on the playing field rather than some arbitrary process other than athletic competition.  But in other ways, I'll probably lose interest in the process.  The NCAA football game will be entirely about the money, and  the rich will likely get richer at the expense of the poor.  Another microcosm of our society, I suppose.

Thoughts on NCAA BCS football - part 1

I don't resemble an athlete in any way, and never have.  My athletic prowess is minimal and I've never had much involvement with sports on a competitive basis at any level.  I played at various sports as a boy and realized I had no talent for it.  But over the years, I became something of a sports fan - not a true fanatic, but definitely a willing spectator.  My two favorite sports are NCAA football and NCAA wrestling.  These are two very different athletic competitions:  football is one of the ultimate team sports, whereas wrestling is one of the ultimate individual sports.

Anyway, we're now in the process of winding down the NCAA football season for another year.  My favorite team, the Oklahoma Sooners, finished the year 10-3, having won the Insight Bowl game.  But it was a year that began with high expectations for a BCS national championship.  The team played really poorly in the three games they lost, including a thorough beatdown in Stillwater.  I'm among the many fans disappointed at how this year's team performed.  But a friend recently drew my attention to the long period of consistent football mediocrity at the University of Minnesota, and I regained my perspective on the Sooners.  Oklahoma football has had an incredibly long run of football success, with occasional short spans of relatively poor performance on the field.  We Sooner fans are terribly spoiled, like those of other "top tier" NCAA football teams:  Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Notre Dame, Nebraska, Texas, Southern California, and so on.  To not be competing for the national championship is to fail.

It's obvious that the main result of being consistently competitive at that level is a huge fan base that essentially pays for the program's success with their ticket purchases, game concessions, purchases of team memorabilia from the university-sanctioned franchises, and huge donations from rich alumni.  The fans want their teams to be competitive at the highest possible level and are willing to pay the price to make that happen.  In fact, some fans go beyond the legal limits on what they should be doing in order to help their favorite team become successful.  This corruption is but one of the downsides to the transformation of NCAA top-tier football into a business, rather than a mere sporting event. [This transformation mirrors the transformation of universities from being educational institutions into businesses!]  As with any business, success breed more success - just as failure breeds more failure.  Big-time NCAA football schools tend to remain successful for long periods and the next tier can only hope for occasional flashes of moderate success that aren't sustained.

The BCS system emerged from the legacy of the old Division 1A within the NCAA.  But the BCS has become a huge cash cow for the universities that manage to make it to the top levels in the sport.  The bowls that form the post-season for good teams mostly are big money-makers for the sponsors.  The fans spend their money on travel as well as tickets, concessions, parking, and memorabilia.  Successful coaches command enormous salaries before they even win a game at the institution that's buying their services.  Some of the players themselves are corrupted by the vast amount of money flowing into the university coffers, wanting to get a piece of the action in exchange for their services to the success of the program.  After all, they get little or nothing in return for their contribution - except a free education, and room and board  [for which non-scholarship students (or their parents) pay many tens of thousands of dollars], which isn't valued very highly by some of these athletes who believe, with some reason, that they aren't ordinary students.  Sports agents hover around the top athletes, hoping to convince the players to buy their services and command the largest possible salaries as NFL rookies.  To many of the athletes, the university is mostly a path to the big NFL payoff to come, not an education.  In turn, the university regards their athletes as expendable assets.

I enjoyed NCAA football most at OU because the four years I spent following football at the University of Wisconsin were characterized by declining football success on their way to an extended period of mediocrity.  Of late, things have changed for Wisconsin and, although I still root for them as an alumnus, I don't have the same emotional involvement with them as I now have with OU.  Why is that?  My very first year at OU, the fall of 1967, the Sooners had a 10-1 season, winning the Orange Bowl.  Being at the games in Owen field was tremendously exciting and I was hooked as a Sooner fan.  Everyone likes a winner, of course.  When the team is winning, it's "we" are winning - when losing, it's "they" who are losing!  Clearly, I loved being associated with a winning team, like any fan, after the blah feelings I experienced in Camp Randall.

More to come in Part 2

Just what does the Heisman trophy mean?

Robert Griffin III (known as "RG3") is the most recent Heisman trophy winner, and he certainly had quite a year for a 9-3 Baylor team that achieved far more than most Baylor teams of late.  This quarterback clearly was a valuable player on his team and has been for virtually the whole time he's played for Baylor.  How many times has Baylor beaten both OU and the shorthorns of UTx in the same year?  Besides, anyone with III as a suffix to their name has to get my respect!

That said, however, I've struggled of late trying to grasp just what the Heisman trophy means.  Wikipedia says the Heisman trophy is awarded annually to:  the player deemed the most outstanding player in collegiate football.  The entry goes on to discuss some of the controversy regarding the Heisman, including regional biases and so forth.

What I find so puzzling is the clear dominance of quarterbacks and running backs in the history of the award.  Just how is "the most outstanding player" to be defined?  What criteria are used?  How does one compare performance at different positions?  Although players at positions other than quarterback and running back have on very rare occasions been selected, who's to say the most outstanding player in college football that year wasn't a tight end, or a blocking fullback, or (horrors!) a lineman?  Defensive players are not generally given much consideration, either.  Neither are the players limited to special teams.

This very clear bias for quarterback or running back raises the question:  which position is the most valuable?  Evidently, the belief in football is widespread that quarterback and running back are the most important/valuable.  But football is a team game and this bias in awarding a trophy to the putative year's "best" player is simply inexplicable and unjustifiable.  There's no plausible reason to restrict potential Heisman winners to two positions on a team with 22 positions to fill (to say nothing of special teams).  As good as RG3 has been, his team has been mired in mediocrity most of its history.  Why?  Almost surely because the players around even good Baylor quarterbacks (like RG3) haven't been the kind of supporting cast that would permit Baylor to be a dominant team. 

It's also clear that a Heisman winner must come from a school with a winning season that year.  Apparently, the "best" college football player of the year must play with one of the top-ranked teams.  Presumably, this is because if the "best" player is on that team, he elevates it to the top tier that season.  But who's to say the "best" player of the season isn't on a losing team?  Why not some lineman struggling to achieve and doing so on a team otherwise loaded with mediocre players?  From where I sit, however, winning (as well as losing) doesn't depend on just one player!  One reason I enjoy being a fan of college football is that it's the ultimate team sport - every player must perform consistently at a high level for the duration of the game if the team is to perform at a high level.

Landry Jones, this year's OU quarterback, was mentioned in the Heisman discussion for a good part of the season, but the team failed to perform in three dismal losses and Landry Jones had bad "numbers" for the last three games of the season, with zero TD passes and a number of turnovers.  Can we lay the responsibility for that entirely on Landry Jones?  He certainly fell out of consideration for the Heisman trophy after the second loss of the season.  Apparently, the team's losses were entirely his fault, at least insofar as the Heisman debate was concerned.  By the way, OU finished 9-3, just as Baylor did.

In my book, the Heisman trophy is both without a clear and justifiable definition of the terms used to judge its winner and based on a concept that is antithetical to the very game involved.  It's a type of popularity contest that's unjustifiably limited to a few offensive team positions on a winning team.  No player could ever win the Heisman without the consistently good performance of his teammates!  I decline to attach much significance to the Heisman trophy, and it certainly is not a good predictor for football performance in the NFL.  It's a trophy with no meaning.

Trust and credibility: Hard-won, easily lost

Just days after a public outpouring of praise and honor for Joe Paterno's 409th victory as an FBS coach, we've seen a public spectacle of contempt and dishonor for Joe Paterno's moral failures as an FBS coach.  All of the salutes for Joe's old-fashioned virtues and the squeaky-clean football program at Penn State have died away as accusations of sexual predation by an honored assistant coach have come to light.

In today's world of the Internet, social media, blogs, paparazzi, tabloid journalism and so on, the past 20 years have been drenched with instances in which highly respected people have committed gaffes of varying severity and in consequence been vilified, fired, and disgraced.  The speed of ascent to fame and honor is often exceeded by the even more rapid pace of disgrace and downfall in today's world.  An old saying has become a routine part of the way public figures must behave:  With great opportunity comes great responsibility.  Much is expected from those to whom much has been given.  We now seem to delight in throwing our heroes down from the pedestals on which we placed them.

As someone who was molested as a young person, I can say without any qualification, that I believe sexual predators need to be prevented from having the opportunity to molest more victims, and no one should ever hesitate to call the police and report any allegations of sexual misconduct, no matter who is the alleged perpetrator.  Jerry Sandusky has yet to be convicted of any crime, however.   Joe Paterno may not be guilty of a crime, but by his own admissions, he's guilty of a moral error that would allow a sexual predator to remain free and unpunished.  It's only recently that I find myself able to admit that I was molested and raped - the shame of this remained bottled up within me and, like many victims, the shame was too great for me to speak out.  Many years can elapse between the deeds and their revelation.  Fortunately for me, I managed to overcome what was done to me and my life has turned out quite well despite this incident when I was too young to know what to do about it.  But my experience makes my emotional response to hearing about such predators pretty strong.  Make no mistake, I have nothing but the deepest possible contempt for sexual predators - these are despicable acts of violence that have nothing to do with sex, per se.  I feel no inclination toward mercy for those who commit these unspeakably abhorrent acts!

But the current spectacle of the sharks circling the Penn State campus, waiting for the inevitable firing of Joe Paterno, doesn't fill me with pride regarding our culture.  Many media people are pontificating about what they would have done, without ever having been in that situation, and without knowing precisely what was said and done in the Penn State cases.  None of us know what we would do until we're actually confronted with such a situation.  It's clear that in the court of public opinion, no "due process" is necessary.  Yes, it's easy to go along with the contempt stampede, and Joe Paterno's successes as a football coach are indeed quite irrelevant to this situation.  What Joe Paterno failed to do with the information he had about the alleged sexual predation is indeed a mistake.  It's indeed wrong to have failed to report what he knew to the police and some might even consider it criminal negligence.  But can all of the people calling for his head honestly say they've never done something morally wrong?  It isn't Joe Paterno who's accused of sexual predation, after all. 

Joe Paterno has been on a pedestal for many decades, not just because of winning (although that certainly is a big factor), but perhaps even primarily because of the apparent integrity of the Penn State football program.  No recruiting scandals, no coaches abusing the players, no payoffs by local boosters, high graduation rates, and so on.  Whether that was his goal or not, Joe Paterno was being held up as the epitome of coaching integrity just days before this scandal broke.  So when we find out that our hero was flawed by being unwilling to report the allegations of misconduct by a colleague and friend, all of those decades of integrity are instantly swept aside.  Honor and praise are instantly replaced with contempt.  It's as if all that came before had never happened, and the mighty fall with a great crash. 

I've learned that decades of trustworthy behavior mean nothing when a single act (of commission or omission) can result in the loss of trust forever.  A single mistake is obviously one too many for a legendary figure.  Our heroes are held to what might actually be an unrealistic standard, since our heroes are human beings, never truly gods.  Joe Paterno's coaching legacy is forever stained, no matter what plays out in the courts:  the real judicial courts or the court of public opinion.  Is that fair?  Absolutely not.  But fairness is a concept that has little to do with the real world, as most children learn eventually.  Much of life is not fair.  Trust and credibility must be upheld every day, without fail.  If you wish to keep trust and credibility, there can be no failure.  This is just as true for nobodies as it is for legends, but it's the downfall of legends that we seem to find so fascinating.  Fascinating enough for a blog entry, at least.

This spectacle of the fall from grace of a formerly revered public figure saddens me, not just because of the cost to the alleged victims of Jerry Sandusky, but because it exemplifies the unrealistic expectations that we place on other, fallible human beings.  I know I've made mistakes - many mistakes, in fact.  And not all of them in the ignorance of my youth.

What is it about sports? Part 4 - Which team is best?

Having just seen the St. Louis Cardinals squeak into the postseason and then win it all, it reminds me of some thoughts I've had regarding postseason playoffs, especially with regards to college football.  There's probably a majority of fans who want to ditch the BCS one-game "playoff" and go to some sort of a playoff for FBS teams to determine a "true" national champion.

Given that virtually all other NCAA championships are determined by some sort of postseason tournament, there seems to be no reason not to make big-time college football the same as other collegiate sports competitions.  But I'm of two minds about this.  Yes, it would be nice to wind up with what would become an undisputable national champion, supposedly settled by performance on the playing field rather than something so heavily influenced by opinion polls and computerized ranking schemes.  Then FBS college football would become indistinguishable from pro football (except for the salaries!).  And that's the rub for me.

As we witness the degrading spectacle of FBS teams engaging in an orgy of "realignment," it becomes quite obvious, even for anyone who has been operating in a vacuum for the past 25 years, that FBS football has become all about the money that football generates.  Traditional rivalries?  Who cares, when big money is at stake?  After all, universities are businesses now - they long ago ceased to be primarily about education, anyway.  NCAA football is simply the low-paid minor leagues for pro football now, and all of the fun and tradition of amateur athletics is disposable in pursuit of the almighty dollar!  For the best athletes that universities can buy (and offer them a showcase for their talent in pursuit of a roster spot on a pro team), they rake in millions in revenue - which allows them to attract even more top athletes.  No one cares much about the majority of college athletes who don't go on to a career in the pros, anyway.  They're only along for fun and to support the play of the real playmakers - big-time collegiate sports is about revenue, not fun!

And just what does a playoff produce?  It inevitably produces a champion at the end, of course.  But the arguments go on about just which team is the "best"!  [My definition of "best" is to be offered below.] In the minds of some fans - the fans of the championship team - their team was best because they won the playoff.  Period.  End of story.

But as we have seen in the World Series of 2011, the outcome of games can be highly dependent on things that may have relatively little to do with onfield performance:  injuries, random bounces of the ball (or whatever), just missing or just making a play, the weather, coaching decisions, bad calls by the referees, the playing field conditions etc.  Athletic contests are a fine example of nonlinear dynamics and it becomes quite possible for the hypothetical best team to lose a game during the playoffs owing to one or more of these non-performance factors.  In fact, the larger the field of teams in the playoff, the more likely it becomes that the hypothetical best team will be beaten.  Although playoffs always yield a final, surviving champion, the determination of which team was best that year remains undone.  Arguments can continue indefinitely.  And that seems rather like the way things are now, using the BCS system:  a champion is determined but the arguments go on.

So here's my modest proposal for determining which FBS football team is truly the best.  Each team will meet every other team multiple times, under a variety of playing conditions, weather, roster status for all the team's top players, home/away/neutral field, and so on.  Just for the sake of a number, let's say each team will play every other team 100 times, and each game will involve different conditions.  Since there currently are 120 FBS teams, this will amount to a rather large number of games for each team [(119 x 100) = 11, 900 games, so the entire regular season of FBS football will involve 11, 900 x 120 = 1, 428, 000 FBS games].  I guess this means the end of Saturday afternoon college football - they'll have to play multiple games every day of the week to fit in the required games (see below).  But of course, college football has already spread to other days of the week!  After all, prime time TV revenue is important.

At the end of this expanded "season" (from 12 games to nearly 12,000 for each team), the 16 teams with the highest winning percentage (ties will be broken by some sort of tiebreaker rules) would then enter the championship playoff.  Each team would again play every other team in the playoff 100 times under a variety of conditions [for a total of 16 x 15 x 100 = 24, 000 games], and the team with the highest winning percentage would be declared the national champion (again with a set of tiebreaker rules).  Think of the revenue this scheme would generate!!  And the old argument that "If X played Y 100 times, they'd win PP percent of the time!" would actually be played out!

This "ensemble" approach to determining a national champion is a logical way to determine which team is actually the best, because the random, non-performance factors that seem to be so important to the outcome of a single game against an opponent would tend to even out over 11, 900 games.  I admit, there are some practical issues that would need to be worked out, such as the degradation of the playing fields from playing multiple games every day, or the fact that it would require each team to play 10 games, 7 days per week, for 170 weeks (3.3 years) to just to complete the regular season, or wear and tear on the players.  But these are just minor details.  What counts is the enormous revenues this would generate and the chance finally to know which team is best!  Once every few years ...

Growing up as a fan of Chicago sports teams

I've often described, to anyone foolish enough to listen, the reasons for why I hate certain sports franchises.  Having grown up in Chicago, I especially learned to hate the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Yankees.  Chicago sports fans have never gotten spoiled by the success of their teams.  It seems that the owners of said franchises have a history of devastatingly stupid moves, guaranteeing years of mediocrity or outright incompetence for their teams in most years.  It's no mistake that the Cubs have gone the longest without winning a World Series - despite having had many great stars on their teams over looooooong time since their last World Series win (1909).

Chicago authors, like Jean Shepherd, tell the tale of how much we Chicago fans hate the Yankees.  Being permanently the "Second City" isn't bad enough.  The Yankees fans, with their proud heritage and swagger about all their World Series championships, epitomize everything we Chicago fans wanted to be, and apparently couldn't have.  In all the time I've been a Chicago sports fan, only the Bulls with Michael Jordan came close to being a seriously successful team - and were dismantled when Jordan retired for good.  The Bears have mostly wallowed in mediocrity, but they managed to win the NFL championship in 1963, beating the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned New York Giants in the process!  Oh happy day!!  To be followed by 22 years of mediocrity and failure, despite such stars as Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus.  The 1985 Bears seemed destined for a dynasty, which ... never happened.

The Blackhawks unexpectedly won the Stanley Cup in 1961, while I was in high school, with such stars as Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Pierre Pilote.  To be followed by decades of near misses and mediocrity until the miracle of the 2009-10 season.  And of course, the next season, the Hawks were outsted from the playoffs in the first round (after a valiant effort that ... surprise! ... fell short.

Basically, if every New York sports franchise were to lose every game infinitely far into the future (a consummation devoutly to be wished!), it would take many, many years for our Chicago franchises ever to catch up.  To be a Chicago sports fan is to know disappointment and classic chokes, punctuated with just enough success to keep the franchises packed with the faithful fans.  Try to buy a Cubs or Sox or Bears ticket and you'll discover our fan loyalty.  It's our fate ...

It helps somehow to have the Blues Brothers roaring down Lower Wacker Drive with the cops in tight pursuit.  It helps when Man vs. Food features a show about Chicago's Italian beef sandwiches.  It helps when we discover so many fellow Chicago sports fans to be here and there - the faithful scattered like autumn leaves around the nation.  But the beat goes on for Chicago sports, and I guess I'll never get out of my mostly unrequited love affair with those teams.

What is it about sports? Part 3

A sad story is unfolding as I write this. Former Louisiana State University star quarterback JaMarcus Russell has been busted in Alabama for possession of codeine. This is but the latest blow to the career of this young man, whose talents displayed at LSU appeared to have the potential for him to become a star NFL quarterback. It has turned out very poorly for him, however, and with this arrest, his chances for fame and fortune as an NFL star appear now to have been lost forever. He has money from his contracts, but that may wind up being consumed in legal defense. And his fame is rapidly changing to infamy ...

His history at LSU was checkered - he was the MVP of the 2007 Sugar Bowl, but had been subjected to various disciplinary actions. After his junior year, he opted for early entry into the NFL draft. Since then, JaMarcus has been a stellar underperformer in the NFL and been involved in more off-the-field behavior problems, culminating in this recent arrest.

Like all human beings, this young man has both positive and negative character aspects, and because of his talents and positive performances as a collegiate player, the negative things he's done have been played out on a public stage. Unlike the rest of us, however, athletes playing at the professional level are being paid a fortune to play a kid's game. This means that their transgressions are not private - in exchange for the millions they're paid, athletes typically will lose their privacy. This is especially so when their negative character aspects manifest themselves in actions leading to them being revealed in the media - Tiger Woods, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and others come to mind.

When we mere mortals commit such transgressions, they may be embarrassing to the point of humiliation and might make the local newspaper/TV, but the big-time media don't pick up such stories. We're not being pilloried in the tabloids, no paparazzi are stalking us, self-styled national pundits are not offering their opinions about us.

The reason for so much media attention is that professional athletes (and movie stars and famous musicians) are being very well-paid. They become public figures when they become rich and famous. There's a lesson here, if anyone bothers to look past all the media hype. Be careful what you wish for! Achieving fame and becoming wealthy in the process carries with it a price, that can be magnified enormously if your negative character traits are revealed.

One of my favorite quotes is from the movie Krull. When being asked to participate in a quest that involves considerable danger, one of the characters is encouraged to do so because he'd become famous in the process. His response:

Fame! It's an empty purse. Spend it ... and go broke. Eat it ... and go hungry. Seek it ... and go mad.

Many young people are motivated to seek fame (and fortune) via athletics. Only a tiny percentage ever become professional athletes, and only a fraction of them ever become rich and famous. In some cases, unfortunately, that very fame and fortune leads to utter disaster. I'm saddened by such stories, even as I admire the determination and effort that allows someone to achieve greatness in athletics. There are life lessons to be learned in sport, but some participants simply don't learn those lessons. They become stars who can't cope with the fame and squander their fortune on things like drugs, gambling, etc. To whom much is given, much is expected.

What is it about sports? Part 2

In an earlier blog, I talked about the "life lessons" associated with sports. To illustrate that, I want to use the amazing story of the National Championship wrestling match between Dan Gable (wrestling for Iowa State) and Larry Owings (wrestling for the University of Washington). Some information about it can be found here.

Achieving a national championship in any competition (athletic or otherwise) is a truly outstanding achievement. National championships aren't the result of an accident - they come from many, many hours of unseen hard work and the development of the mental toughness to work through pain and the boredom of practice, the discipline to do what it takes, and so on. Participation in sports is mostly for young persons, and most young people simply don't have the commitment and mental toughness to perform at the national championship level. But there are a few elite athletes who form a pool of those at or near the very pinnacle of their sport.

Dan Gable came into the NCAA final match in 1970 as an undefeated senior in college at 181-0. He already had won two NCAA championships - in his sophomore and junior years (he didn't wrestle on the varsity as a freshman) and was considered unbeatable going into the tournament. He wrestled in the 142 pound class. Potential opponents of comparable weight either went up or down a weight to avoid him in the tournament, he was such a heavy favorite.

But Larry Owings cut weight specifically to wrestle Gable and beat him! Clearly, Larry Owings was a reasonably good collegiate wrestler, but his record gave little hint of what he was about to accomplish in this legendary match. Rather than trying to avoid the "unbeatable" Dan Gable, Larry Owings had confidence that he could beat him and set out specifically to do so. It turned out in such a way that the two met in the 1969-70 NCAA finals. Gable was the heavy favorite, of course. This was to be the last match of Dan Gable's storied collegiate wrestling career, so he could be expected to give it his best effort. As it turned out, however, Larry Owings did beat Gable in that match to become that year's national champion, in what has to be the biggest upset in collegiate wrestling history.

So it demonstrates that if you set your mind on an achievement and work to accomplish your goal, seemingly impossible objectives can, in fact, be achieved. Larry Owings had achieved what virtually no one else expected he could do.

But the story doesn't end there. Essentially, that match was the final achievement of Larry Owings as a wrestler. But Dan Gable went on to win a World freestyle wrestling championship in 1971 and became an Olympic freestyle wrestling champion in 1972. It should be noted that the history of American wrestlers in the World and Olympic freestyle wrestling tournaments has never been one of dominance - generally, the best freestyle wrestlers in the world are not Americans.

Rather than continuing to dwell on a very bitter defeat at the end of his collegiate competition, Dan Gable re-dedicated himself to his sport, achieving at the highest possible level (the world) before retiring from participation as a wrestler. Then, he went on to coach the Iowa wrestling team to several national championships and national dominance. Thus, he didn't allow what had to be a devastating setback prevent him from going on to even greater accomplishments. He didn't give up on his dreams beyond college, just because he was upset in that famous match.

If you can't find useful life lessons in this (abbreviated) story, then I give up!

A vulgar display of American horsepower

I recently (25-27 September 2009) attended the O'Reilly/Castrol Fall Nationals drag races at Ennis, TX with my friend, Al Moller. It had been quite some time since either of us had been to a professional-caliber drag racing event - we both came away wondering why we stayed away for so long. It was a fantastic experience, despite the heat and the burning sun we had to endure in the grandstands. We had terrific seats on the north side of the track, very close to the starting line, so we could see the launches right out of the hole. And we wandered about in the pits during breaks in the action, as well, seeing some of the racers up close and in person.

Drag racing is a truly American extreme sport. You can read about it at the National Hod Rod Association site. Its origins lie with the love affair Americans have with their cars and the natural competitive nature of Americans: who has the quickest car? Since street racing is dangerous, as well as illegal, and not recommended, the NHRA (in particular, its founder, the late Wally Parks) came up with an idea - to take the "hot rods" to a track where the racing could be done under safe conditions without danger to non-participants, to see who could cross the finish line first in a straight line race (rather than a roundy-round thing that goes on for an extended time). In a quarter mile, you could settle the issue in a few seconds, once and for all.

With time and typical American mechanical innovation and creativity, the sport evolved from heads-up, "run what ya brung" hot rods all mixed together into various classes of cars, with the ultimate classes being the top fuel dragsters and fuel "funny cars". These are the most extreme cars in motorsports, with large, purpose-built engines running on a mixture of nitromethane and methanol. Their sole purpose is to accelerate as fast as possible and in their current incarnation use 8000 horsepower engines in the lightest allowable car (there are rules that govern the details of what is a legal car to run, mostly seeking to provide some measure of safety). The engines are always on the ragged edge of blowing up under the strain.

Top fuel dragsters begin from a standing start and reach speeds approaching 300 mph in about 4 seconds flat (or less) over a distance of 1000 ft - the distance in the top fuel categories was reduced from 1320 to 1000 ft for safety purposes. When dragsters were first developed, they used engines originally built for street vehicles, but were modified by the racers in various ways to provide more horspower. The cars gradually became lighter and lighter as the technology of dragsters evolved, even as the engines increased in power - the result? More and more speed, shorter and shorter elapsed times (ETs) to get down the track. In today's world, the specially-built drag racing engines have their origins in Mopar hemispherical head designs dating from the 1950s, but the real top fuel engines today are engineered and built from the start to be racing engines. They're no longer modified regular car engines. They're a V-8 design, producing around 1000 horsepower per cylinder! For comparison purposes, the typical passenger car engine produces about 125 horsepower from 4 or 6 cylinders.

Some simple calculations show that going from 0 to 300 mph in 4 seconds represents an average acceleration over that 1000 ft distance of around 3.5 x the force of gravity (g). At the start, the cars accelerate at around 6 x g - the acceleration decreases with time down the track because of the increasing air drag on the vehicle (which goes up as vehicle's speed increases). When a top fuel dragster launches from the starting line (the "hole"), the engine is producing a deafening bellow at a sound level of about 120 decibels - enough to damage your ears. Therefore, the racers and most spectators either cover their ears or wear earplugs. But the sound isn't limited to what you can hear - the sound can be felt in your whole body as the car goes by. When it passes, you can smell the nitromethane ("nitro") fumes in the air - a sweet, acrid smell that's unmistakable for anything else. I love the smell of nitro in the morning - it smells like ... victory! (my apologies to Robert Duvall and Apocalypse Now)

This sport is as uniquely American as jazz, the blues, apple pie, chili, tobacco, potatoes, musicals, and tomatoes. It's caught on in England and Australia to some extent, but it's not popular in continental Europe or Asia, which are homes to sophisticated motorsports fans. Unlike Formula-1 or sports car racing, drag racing is brutally simple: put the most horsepower you can into the lightest possible car allowed by the rules, race it down a straight line for a quarter mile (1320 ft or about 2 city blocks) - or 1000 ft - and see who crosses the finish line first. The race is decided in a few seconds. You can see the entire race - start to finish - from your seat in the stands. And one race follows the other in rapid succession, as hundreds of hopefuls try to qualify for and survive the eliminations to win a championship in their class.

What you see on TV is but a pale imitation of the sights, sounds, and smells of the actual experience. If you ever go see a real NHRA drag race, you'll likely either love it or hate it. A friend we met for the first time at this year's races took his father to the Fall Nationals last year. His father's reaction? "It's a vulgar display of American horsepower." Al and I agreed with our new friend - yes, that's true, and the more vulgar, the better!

For myself, I think my love affair with drag racing likely is connected to my love affair with supercells and tornadoes (the most extreme storms on the planet!). The beginning of my interest in drag racing was due to my cousins in Illinois, who were older than I and into hot rodding and drag racing. Since my cousins were my role models of the time, I followed their interests and got hooked on drag racing myself. I saw my first big-time, professional drag racing event at the World Series of Drag Racing at Cordova, Illinois, sometime in the early 1960s (I think, when I was in high school). And my best friend from high school, Tom Schifler, and I became regulars at Cordova for a while - we even went to the US Nationals in Indianapolis a couple of times in the late 1960s.

My first interest began earlier though, in the late 1950s, when "Big Daddy" Don Garlits was bursting onto the drag racing scene. Don Garlits became a favorite of mine (like John Force is today). I looked forward to seeing him race and if Garlits showed up, I was really pleased. I liked the brute force of drag racing and the technical side, as well. I liked the creativity and ingenuity of the racers in all the classes, especially in the "sportsman" and "stock" classes.

I learned a lot about automotive engines without ever becoming a mechanic. My interest in the sport has suffered from other, higher priorities at times, but has never been forgotten. This year's event may get me back to attending more regularly. Al and I are already planning to be back in Ennis for next year's event! Maybe we'll see you there?

What is it about sports?

On the day of the Super Bowl - arguably the biggest sporting event in the USA every year - I'm reflecting on why I even care about this or any other sport. My athleticism borders on the non-existent. The only sport I ever was decent at was tennis, and then only marginally so.

My participation is mostly limited to being a spectator. My favorites are: college football, college wrestling, baseball (not via TV, though), and drag racing. Pro football is mildly interesting but to me it pales in comparison to college football - that might be the topic for another blog someday.

I'm not certain I understand what I get from watching sport, but I think I can articulate some aspects of it that I enjoy, so here goes.

Fun

Ever since my first year at OU as a grad student, I found that being at the game - as opposed to watching via TV - created an atmosphere of fun. It was enjoyable to go crazy along with tens of thousands of other people. There's a sort of psychological relief tied to "letting go" and being in the moment. Other parts of life are put aside as you forget about "self" and your problems for a time. The disappointments are a price to paid for the high times, of course. Each event is another chance for excitement and tension followed by release - sometimes the bitter taste of defeat, and other times the overwhelming joy of victory. Intoxicating. My analytical side suggests this is just chemicals in the body. But who cares? It's just plain fun. I assume that being a participant is also fun, perhaps markedly more so, despite my quite limited experience.

Analysis

Speaking of my analytical side, every sport involves analysis. There are numbers to be collected and subjected to analysis and interpretation. Rules to be known. Insights to be gained from careful consideration of past events. Knowing the sport requires reading and developing an understanding about the subtleties. Being aware of the subtleties appeals to me. Anyone can see the obvious, but I enjoy digging deeper and finding that "common knowledge" includes misconceptions and myths that aren't consistent with a careful analysis. After all, I am a scientist.

Not being a participant means my knowledge is always limited. There certainly are many parts of sport that can only be known to those actually doing it. The closest I ever came to being a serious participant was as a manager for my high school wrestling team (long story!). No doubt that experience made me a collegiate wrestling fan for life. I'm confident there's a lot I don't understand about the sports I follow. It would be a disappointment to come to know it all, I suppose ...

Life Lessons

Before you groan over this one, hear me out. I see much of sport as containing allegories with the real game of life. Work ethics. Subordination of the self for the benefit of all. Accepting responsibility for your own actions. Moving past frustration and failures. The will to succeed coming from within yourself. I could devote many paragraphs to providing examples, but the point is that sports can contain life lessons, if that aspect of sport is pointed out to the participants. Clearly, sports aren't life and death events and it's certainly possible to take them far too seriously, but they also represent an opportunity to teach people about life. Good coaches always focus on more than just the game - they teach their players about how to live their lives outside of sports, as well.

The Dark Side of Sports

When fans and players take sport too seriously, a line has been crossed. One of the things I like about most participants in a sport is their sportsmanship. After the event, people who were bitter rivals during the game can still be friends. They can be happy when their friends succeed, even when it's at their own expense. The fans of the sport cross the line when they hate their rivals, and the fans of their rivals. Hating is the where the line resides. OU has a long-term rivalry with UTx and each side desperately wants to win the game between them. But some of my friends are UTx fans. Should I choose to repudiate our friendship over this? Sorry, but that's where I draw the line. I respect my friends and their choice of a rival team has the same origins as my choice for OU. Remember the golden rule, folks! Have fun with it - don't give in to the dark side ...

The taste of bitter defeat

Not a happy feeling, tonight. My OU Sooners lost the BCS National Championship game 14-24 to the University of Florida Gators. Would it have been better if OU hadn't even made it to this game, but settled for a lesser bowl? I don't think so, but getting this close and seeing it go away in the 3rd and 4th quarters is hard to take. At least it wasn't another blowout loss, but a hard-fought game that ended badly for my team.

Does this college football stuff really matter? In the overall scheme of things, clearly the answer is a resounding "No!" A championship win or loss doesn't mean squat in the game of life. I know that, and I'll get over it in time ... but tonight, it sucks, big time. The worst part is the crowing by the obnoxious Gator fans (and their partners, the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned University of Texas fans who took pleasure in OU's loss). But, it's inevitable in sports - the calendar moves on and a new season begins next fall. Hope springs eternal. At least I can clear out all the crap I'd accumulated in anticipation of an 8th National Championship for OU. It can go onto the heap of stuff to go out for recycling this week. Maybe next year.

No excuses - Florida won the game and was the better team on the field. My congratulations to the few Gator fans who're able to show some class. The rest of them can go straight to hell, along with Mr. Saint F__-ing Tebow. Maybe the worst part of it was his sanctimonious pointing skyward at the end of the game. Did he think his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was responsible for his victory? What about his two interceptions? Did he lay the blame on Jesus for those, too? Or were those the Devil's doing?

The Fox announcers of the game were falling all over themselves in praise of Saint F___-ing Tebow for the whole game. It made me want to puke. I hope he goes pro instead of coming back, so some crazed NFL linebacker can knock the "John 3:16" stickers off his cheeks! I guess I'm not feeling very generous toward this sanctimonious bastard tonight. My bad. I'll probably get over it. Probably. Well ... maybe.