Monday, April 26, 2010

The Heat Is On



Several years ago, I was watching ESPN, and a World Series highlights show came on.

The subject of the program was the 1985 World Series, which matched two cross–state rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals, in what came to be known as the I–70 Series (an homage to the interstate that connects to the two cities).

I remember that World Series quite well. My best friend has always been a Cardinals fan, and I was working at the time with a woman who went to college at the University of Missouri, which is about halfway between those two cities along I–70. As long as I could remember, there had been a rivalry between St. Louis and Kansas City, but this was the first time it had spilled over into sports.

Appropriately, the song that was used as the theme for the show was "The Heat Is On," Glenn Frey's huge hit that was featured in the soundtrack for "Beverly Hills Cop," one of the most popular films of 1984.

Anyway, that tune popped into my mind when I was thinking about the St. Louis Rams' first pick in last week's NFL draft.

If you're a football fan, you probably already know that the Rams took Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford (who won the Heisman Trophy as a redshirt sophomore in 2008) as the first overall pick. Bradford didn't play much last year. He had a shoulder injury that kept him on the sidelines for most of the season.

Consequently, the Rams had to act on the assumption that the numbers Bradford posted in his Heisman–winning season were the true indicators of his talent, which (presumably) remain valid.

No doubt the Rams need someone who can revive the offense that was once known as the Greatest Show on Turf. An NFL team that averages only 10.9 points per game, as the Rams did last season, can hardly be said to be living up to that kind of billing.

The Sporting News thinks the Rams were one of half a dozen teams that improved themselves in the draft, but writer Dennis Dillon acknowledges that, while "Bradford could develop into a franchise quarterback ... he probably won't step in as the starter immediately."

I suppose that's true. A decade ago, when Kurt Warner and the Rams were putting up 500–plus points a year, St. Louis seemed to have embraced football in a way that the city never really did when the Cardinals played there.

If the enthusiasm level had remained where it was then, Bradford would be in for a lot of pressure right away. But the Rams have won only six games in the last three seasons, and St. Louis' sports fans seem to have revived their passions for baseball and hockey. It's hard to imagine anyone except hard–core football fans expecting much from him.

It might be different for Bradford if he had gone to a franchise in his neck of the woods, like Dallas or Houston or the world champion New Orleans Saints. Football fans are devoted everywhere, but there is a special intensity to that devotion in Southern cities, which undoubtedly brings quite a bit of pressure.

Dillon may be right when he says Bradford isn't likely to face the pressure of being a starter for the Rams right away, but you've got to pity whoever gets that assignment this fall. Last year's starting quarterback Marc Bulger, 33, was released by the Rams a few weeks ago; statistically, that would have made 28–year–old Kyle Boller his logical replacement, but Boller signed with Oakland in mid–April.

That leaves only 24–year–old Keith Null with any playing experience for the Rams, and his performance last season was a mixed bag at best. He did complete more than 60% of his passes, but he was intercepted three times as often as he completed passes for touchdowns, and, although he was the third–string signal caller, he had nearly 30% of the team's 44 sacks.

The other candidates for the starting job are 32–year–old journeyman A.J. Feeley, who signed a contract with the Rams in March, and two guys who, like Bradford, haven't taken their first snaps as pros.

In all honesty, I think Bradford may have lucked into the perfect situation for him, but, even though it looks like that right now, it's unpredictable. Bradford and his coaches need to be sensitive to signals that the Rams' fan base is growing restless.

The Rams are 6–42 in the last three seasons. How long will it be before St. Louis' eternally patient sports fans (they've been loyally pulling for their hockey team since it was founded in 1967 with no Stanley Cup to show for it) start demanding to get some bang for the bucks that will be committed to Bradford?

My guess is, not long.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Telling It Like It Was



I don't know whether Howard Cosell listened to and enjoyed the music of Frank Sinatra — in hindsight, it seems odd not to know that because we knew Cosell's opinions on just about everything else.

But when considering Cosell's life, matching him with anyone else seems inappropriate.

They were contemporaries, quite close, in fact, to the same age (Sinatra was a little more than two years older). And, while Sinatra sang about "doin' it my way," that was how Cosell lived his life.

If someone ever does a film about the life of Howard Cosell, I think Sinatra's music should be the soundtrack.

Cosell certainly did things his way. Or, to paraphrase his own catchphrase, he told it like it was.

We knew that Cosell liked his ten–dollar words, which tended to make him come off as elitist, aloof. He couldn't resist the temptation. Maybe it was his legal training. Maybe he just always had a fondness for big words. But he just couldn't restrain himself, even on the most somber of occasions.

Like Dec. 8, 1980, when I and millions of people who were watching Monday Night Football learned from Cosell that John Lennon had been killed.
"Remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all of The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival."

"Unspeakable" struck some people as a bit much, but that was just Cosell expressing himself. Besides, to those of us who were Beatles fans, the murder of John Lennon really was unspeakable.

No other word was adequate.

Cosell definitely had his own style, and he was really famous, I suppose, for two things — his longtime affiliation with Muhammad Ali and his years with Monday Night Football. The stories of each could be books in themselves.

Ali and Cosell had something of a symbiotic relationship. Cosell did the ringside duty for most of Ali's early fights, then he made a name for himself as part of the Monday Night Football broadcasting crew.

But Cosell often seemed to be on top of the American sports scene — long before ESPN.

His astonished call during the Frazier–Foreman fight — "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!" — has become part of sports lexicon. He also covered the Bobby Riggs–Billie Jean King "Battle of the Sexes" and Olympics competition for ABC, including the murders of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Games.

When the subject was Cosell, you seldom found fence sitters. People either really liked him or really hated him, but it was a funny kind of hatred. People didn't hate him to the extent that they wouldn't watch Monday Night Football. Instead, they tuned in in huge numbers, hoping to witness the rare moments when he was caught unprepared. The meticulous Cosell brought the kind of in–depth reporting to sports that once was the hallmark of hard news coverage, and he was rarely unprepared. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, some enterprising bar owners sponsored contests, with winners getting the chance to throw a brick or something else that was big and heavy at Cosell's image on an old TV.

It's hard to believe it was 15 years ago today that Cosell died. In all honesty, I think his death was overshadowed by the Oklahoma City bombing four days earlier and the memorial service for the victims that was held only hours after Cosell's death.

Cosell's death may not have received the attention it deserved, but his absence has been felt.

He was one of a kind.

And he definitely did things his way.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Butler Didn't Do It

After last night's NCAA Tournament finale — in which Duke defeated Butler, 61–59 — the pastor of my church posted a brief comment on Facebook: "The murder mystery fan in me was really looking forward to saying, 'Butler did it.' "

In the literary world, I suppose there are few phrases that have become as cliched as "the butler did it" — even though, as I understand it, the writer who is most often credited with originating that phrase, Mary Roberts Rinehart, never actually used it in one of her books.

And, as someone who spent many years on sports copy desks, I'm sure that more than one copy editor in this great land of ours fantasized about writing a headline that said "Butler Did It" — or something equally clever — for this morning's newspaper.

It reminds me of an occasion when, as a sports copy editor for the now–defunct Arkansas Gazette, I was assigned to write the headline for the football game story in which the Arkansas Razorbacks — who had been praised in the preseason as a potential national champion — hosted the Miami Hurricanes in a game played in Little Rock. The 'Canes routed the Razorbacks that day, effectively ending all talk of a national title, even though it was only September.

As I sat in front of my computer screen, I happened to think of an old line, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," and I used that as the basis for my headline, which was "An ill wind blows through Little Rock." I was — and still am — proud of that headline, the inspiration for which, I believe, originated hundreds of years ago. But I often wondered just how many people got the allusion. I'm sure there would be even fewer today.

Butler didn't do it, of course, and so copy editors were deprived of the storybook ending that many craved. Of course, with the abundance of David vs. Goliath comparisons, the game was practically drowning in allusion as it was.

Nevertheless, it is an opportunity to point out the risk that accompanies using allusions in headlines.

Don't get me wrong. Using allusions in headlines is one of the few ways that copy editors can flex their intellectual muscles, but my years on newspaper copy desks taught me that these things can backfire if you aren't certain that all of your readers will pick up on your reference.

One of my favorite bloggers, John McIntyre, a former editor for the Baltimore Sun, has written at his You Don't Say blog (and elsewhere) about an incident that occurred in the Baltimore area in 1996 that inspired such a headline that others didn't get.
"On July 4, 1996, when President Bill Clinton visited Maryland's Eastern Shore, a bald eagle named Freedom, which had been nursed back to health after an injury, was released into the sky to commemorate the occasion.

"Unfortunately, Freedom was attacked by a couple of ospreys and ended up back in the bird hospital. When The Baltimore Sun put the story on its front page, the task of writing a headline fell to Paul Clark, one of the ablest copy editors I have ever worked with. He came up with 'Freedom's just another bird/ with nothing left to lose.'

"That headline was applauded in the newsroom and praised in the in–house newsletter. But when I offer it up as an example of the craft to my copy editing students at Loyola College, I get a roomful of blank looks. Janis Joplin singing 'Me and Bobby McGhee' is presumably the kind of music that only older people listen to."


John McIntyre

Allusion, as Mr. McIntyre points out, "should enrich the reader's experience by providing an additional layer of meaning. But if it gets in the way of grasping the principal meaning, it is intrusive and counterproductive."

That doesn't just apply to headlines, though. When my brother and I were small, my mother was fond of making points with references to the radio programs from her childhood — i.e., "the Shadow knows" or Amos 'n' Andy or Jack Armstrong the All–American Boy — or observing, when we played games like Monopoly, that someone's stash of Monopoly cash gave the appearance that that person had been "taking a walk in Jack Benny's vault."

By the time my brother and I came along, radio was mostly music and sports, and we didn't have a frame of reference that enabled us to understand what Mom was talking about. We didn't know about the Shadow. We hadn't heard the jokes about Jack Benny's penny–pinching ways.

For most allusions to work, they must be fresh, and that requires a certain amount of judgment on the part of the writer or the speaker. Such judgment must be rendered on a case–by–case basis.

There was a time, for example, when "Where's the beef?" was a popular commercial catch–phrase that was frequently used as an allusion. In 2010, however, the reference is probably unfamiliar to nearly anyone under the age of 30.

In 1963, when Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, he began by saying "Five score years ago ..." and most listeners immediately understood the allusion to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address a century earlier.

When I was in junior high, my civics teacher required everyone in the class to memorize and recite the Gettysburg Address — consequently, my classmates and I would have understood King's allusion. But I don't know if teachers require their students to memorize that speech these days. Beyond a cursory study of the Gettysburg Address in their history books, most, if not all, modern young people might not get it.

Likewise, since the Watergate scandal, just about every scandal that has come along has been given the suffix "–gate." I guess most people still get that reference. Watergate remains the most notorious scandal in recent memory, having brought down a president. But I can remember, in the days when the Watergate scandal was just becoming known to the American public, that it was referred to as "another Teapot Dome," which was an allusion to a political scandal from half a century earlier. I wonder if anyone — other than history majors — would get that today.

Allusion, as Mr. McIntyre wrote, can enhance the reader's experience — but it won't work if the reader doesn't know what you're talking about.

Well, congratulations to Duke. I guess no allusion could enhance the experience of seeing last night's game — even if the ending wasn't as dramatic as the one in "Hoosiers."

Butler didn't do it, but the Bulldogs weren't losers. They did everything but win the game.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

A Final Like No Other ... Well, Almost



When Butler and Duke take the court for college basketball's championship game tomorrow night, it will be unique in the annals of the NCAA.

But it won't be entirely unique. Milan High School, a small school in Indiana, took on a powerful big school from a big city and defeated it in the state championship game back in the 1950s — inspiring the film "Hoosiers" three decades later and inviting comparisons to Butler University this year.

Butler, after all, is from Indiana. It plays its games in the same fieldhouse where Milan won its title — and where "Hoosiers" was filmed.

That, however, is where the apparent similarities end.

Butler is not tiny — at least not in the same way that Milan was. In fact, while it is smaller than Duke, Butler's enrollment is not dwarfed by Duke's the way it was by Michigan State's, its semifinal foe yesterday.

To be sure, though, Butler — making only its first–ever Final Four appearance — is far smaller in terms of its basketball achievements. Duke has won three national titles and has been in more than a dozen Final Fours.

When looked at from that perspective, this is obviously a David vs. Goliath kind of match. And Goliath got things going by being installed as a 6½–point favorite.

My guess is that it will attract TV ratings that far exceed those for previous championship games. After all, it's got all the drama of the movie — with the added benefit of being the real thing, not an imitation. Right?

Well, not exactly, says Joe Posnanski for SI.com. "The one thing that is important to get straight, right off the top: Butler is not that great a story," Posnanski writes. "That's not a knock — it's the opposite of a knock. Butler is a very good basketball team. They're not some perplexing phenomenon."

Indeed. The Bulldogs did not come out of nowhere. They were ranked when the season began. But they don't play in a major conference, so they don't get anything close to the TV time that tomorrow night's opponent does.

They inhabit different galaxies, these two teams. They've established themselves as masters of their domains. And tomorrow night, one of them will rule the college basketball universe.

With Tiger Woods making his much–anticipated return to competitive golf in this week's Masters Tournament, it could be a blockbuster week for CBS.