Frank Broyles Is Dead

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"The game of life is a lot like football. You have to tackle your problems, block your fears and score your points when you get the opportunity."

Frank Broyles

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I've been writing my blogs for close to 10 years now, and anyone who has read them for any length of time should know that I grew up in Arkansas.

And if you grew up in Arkansas in the latter half of the 20th century, Frank Broyles was an ever–constant presence. He was the coach of the University of Arkansas Razorbacks football team from 1958 to 1976 and the school's athletic director from 1974 to 2007.

He died of Alzheimer's disease today at the age of 92.

People outside Arkansas were probably more likely to know of my home state's politicians — John McClellan, Bill Fulbright, Wilbur Mills, Orval Faubus — than Broyles. But the opposite was probably true of the people who lived in the state.

Oh, sure, most Arkansans probably knew who their governor was or who their senators were. All three were in office so long it would be hard not to know who they were.

But Broyles was different. Frank Litsky wrote in The New York Times that Broyles put Arkansas on the map. A lot of people probably think Bill Clinton did that when he became president — or maybe that Faubus did it during the Central High integration crisis in the late '50s — but it really was Broyles.

Arkansas had been playing football for more than half a century when Broyles took over as head coach but had appeared in only four bowls. In less than 20 years at the helm, Broyles took the Razorbacks to 10 bowl games and won four.

Broyles even won a national championship at Arkansas. It wasn't undisputed. He had to share it with Bear Bryant and Alabama back in the days when the polls determined the national champion, but it still counts as a national championship, and all my friends in Arkansas still speak of it as if Arkansas had been the undisputed champ.

As athletic director, Broyles knew how to hire championship–caliber coaches. He hired Lou Holtz as his successor. Holtz led the Hogs to a #3 national finish in his first season at Arkansas and went on to win a national championship at Notre Dame.

And Broyles hired Nolan Richardson to coach the basketball team. Richardson did win a national championship at Arkansas and took the Razorbacks back to the championship game the following year.

In Northwest Arkansas — around Eureka Springs, to be precise — atop a place called Magnetic Mountain there is a 65–foot statue called Christ of the Ozarks. It depicts a Christlike figure with his arms outstretched on each side. It was supposed to be part of a religious theme park — a dream that never really came to fruition — but a large amphitheater was built on the property, and it hosts performances of "The Great Passion Play" every year.

One of the truly great editorial cartoonists, George Fisher of the Arkansas Gazette, drew a cartoon with Broyles' face superimposed on a drawing of that statue. The concept of "Frank of the Ozarks" really was spot on. If ever there was a messianic figure in Arkansas, it was Frank Broyles.

Broyles is part of many fond memories for me, most involving football games (some of which ended well, some of which did not), but perhaps my fondest memory is from my days as a journalism student at the University of Arkansas. I was writing for the student newspaper, the Arkansas Traveler, and I called the athletic department one day to follow up on stories we had been hearing of the Razorbacks possibly scheduling one of their games overseas.

It turned out that there was far more rumor than fact to that story, but I soon found myself on the phone with none other than Frank Broyles himself. He was busy that day, but he took the time to speak to a campus reporter, and he did so with grace and patience.

The interview didn't last long — no more than five or 10 minutes, I guess — but what a thrill it was for me to be talking to someone I had grown up watching on TV. It was a Sunday afternoon ritual for me during football season to watch Frank Broyles going over footage from the game the day before on his coach's show (in those days, that was the only way to see most of the games so I never missed an opportunity to watch the Broyles show).

I could tell from our conversation that the Frank Broyles I had seen on TV was the genuine article. It wasn't an act.

With Frank Broyles, what you saw truly was what you got.

After graduation, I went on to work at the Arkansas Gazette and I got to meet some famous people when they came to town — but I never felt the same thrill I felt when I interviewed Frank Broyles.

Can Nyquist Go Undefeated?

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I love to watch horse racing.

Going to the races at Oaklawn in Hot Springs was one of my favorite off–day activities when I worked on the sports desk at the Arkansas Gazette. I was off Mondays and Tuesdays in those days; while there was much about that schedule that I disliked the rest of the time, I really preferred it during racing season. If the weather was nice, a Monday or a Tuesday at Oaklawn Park was impossible to beat. The crowds were small so I didn't have to stand in line to do anything like place a bet, buy a beer, get a sandwich or use the restroom. The horses were the dregs of their stables, but that just made the races more interesting.

I like to watch the Triple Crown races, too, but I have always watched them on TV. I have never been to any of the Triple Crown races, but it is always fun for me simply to watch the TV coverage. The fact that I haven't seen one in person hasn't bothered me.

I don't have a bucket list — but if I did, going to Churchill Downs on Derby Day would be on it. I wouldn't even have to go inside and watch the race. I'd rather watch the people. That was probably my favorite thing to do at Oaklawn, and, judging from what I typically see in the pre–race TV coverage on Derby Day, the people at Churchill Downs are always 10 times — nay, 100 times — more interesting than the folks at Oaklawn ever were.

Sometimes the races are pretty good, too.

Like the one that was run yesterday.

It was an exciting race, ultimately won by the 3–to–1 favorite, an undefeated horse named Nyquist. If Nyquist wins the Triple Crown, he will be the second Triple Crown winner to have an unblemished record. The first was Seattle Slew.

Conventional wisdom says Nyquist probably will win the second jewel of the Triple Crown, the Preakness, which will be run a week from this Saturday (May 21). The distances of the Derby and the Preakness are the same, and the races tend to attract the same fields. There are variables, of course. Sometimes jockeys change, sometimes horses drop out and new ones are inserted, and sometimes the conditions are different (one race may be on a fast track, the other may be on a sloppy track).

But generally speaking the Derby winner is the favorite and usually prevails.

If that holds true this time, then it will be the Belmont, which will be held on June 11, that will make or break Nyquist. It is often called the "Test of Champions" because it is considerably longer than the first two Triple Crown races. Indeed, it is probably the longest race any of the horses that compete in it will ever run.

Thus, while the first two races of the Triple Crown favor speed horses, the final race favors endurance horses. Most horses fall in one category or the other. It is rare to find a combination of speed and endurance within the same horse — but those horses that do combine them usually win the Triple Crown.

With yesterday's victory, Nyquist has established himself as a speed horse on a big–time stage. I expect him to duplicate his achievement in Maryland in two weeks.

Then the question will be whether he is one of those rare horses that combine speed and endurance. The answer will come on the track at the Belmont.

Doug Flutie's Impossible Dream of a Play

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I will always remember this day in 1984, the day that Doug Flutie threw a desperation prayer into the sky, and it was caught for a game–winning touchdown.

I was working on the Arkansas Gazette sports copy desk. It was the day after Thanksgiving. We didn't have a TV in the newsroom in those days, but one of the staffers brought in a portable TV so we could follow the football games that are always televised during that four–day holiday. One of the games being shown 30 years ago today was between Boston College and Miami (Florida) in the Orange Bowl stadium.

I didn't get to see the dramatic finish. I was busy working on the next morning's paper, but I could hear what the announcers were saying, and I could hear what my colleagues in the newsroom were saying as the teams lined up to run the play. And, when the final play happened, and the unimaginable had occurred, I could tell that something remarkable had happened simply from the sounds I heard from the TV and the folks who had gathered around the TV to watch.

That doesn't mean, of course, that I wouldn't have liked to see it. Fact is, I have seen it — several times. I just didn't see it when it happened.

Now, the game would have been exciting enough even without the last–second heroics. Miami was the defending national champion, having beaten Nebraska in the Orange Bowl the previous January. Miami's quarterback, Bernie Kosar, set a school record for passing yardage. His teammate, Mel Bratton, ran for four touchdowns.

For his part, Flutie finished the day with 472 yards passing and four touchdown passes, making him the first quarterback to pass for 10,000 yards in his collegiate career. Ever.

But all that had gone before was forgotten after the final play of the game.

Boston College trailed, 45–41, with six seconds remaining, and BC had possession of the ball at Miami's 48. It seemed like an impossible task, and it became even more impossible as the final play unfolded. Flutie, who, at 5'9" was short by NFL standards, needed a touchdown. He scrambled to his right, managing to avoid a sack, but he had been driven back about 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage.

Now, this undersized quarterback who had already thrown 45 passes that day had to fling one more pass at least 63 yards into 30 mph winds and hope that someone would catch it.

I suppose, if Flutie had had the luxury of time to stop and contemplate the enormity of the task before him, he would have been sorely tempted to just give up. It was a thoroughly improbable, impossible dream of a play.

The Miami defenders obviously didn't think he could do it because they virtually ignored wide receiver Gerard Phelan, who raced toward the end zone. Flutie's pass to Phelan threaded the needle between two Miami defenders and was complete for the game–winning strike. There was no margin for error. Everything had to go just right.

Shortly thereafter, Flutie won the Heisman Trophy. I don't remember hearing his name mentioned in connection with the Heisman before "The Pass," as Flutie's "Hail Mary" came to be known.

But I heard it a lot after that.

His professional career never really lived up to his collegiate achievement 30 years ago today. He started out in the short–lived USFL, then bounced around from NFL team to NFL team, gravitating to the Canadian Football League for several years before ending his career in the NFL.

He never played in a Super Bowl, but he did win a couple of the CFL's Grey Cups.

In America, I suppose, he will always be remembered for "The Pass."

The Bear Centennial

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"If we had been more vigilant, September 11 would still be known as Bear Bryant's birthday."

Actor Fred Thompson

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If Bear Bryant still lived, today would be his 100th birthday.

But, as I observed in January, he's been dead for 30 years.

In Alabama, they've been working on plans for the centennial birthday celebration for more than a year. It hasn't been an easy task. The director of the Paul W. Bryant Museum lamented last year that the problem was deciding what could be omitted.

Bryant's life story really was like that. Every moment seems to be so significant that to leave out anything is to somehow diminish the life.

Frankly, it reminds me of the disclaimer at the start of the movie "Gandhi" — "No man's life can be encompassed in one telling."

And so it is with the Bear Bryant story.

(Last night, on the eve of Bryant's 100th birthday, I saw a post from the Huntsville (Ala.) Times about Bryant's last letter. "Bryant would frequently reply to fan mail," writes Melissa Brown, "even in January 1983, the month he passed away."

(Apparently, many of those fans believe they received the last letter Bryant wrote.)

It was just as hard, I suppose, to decide what the most appropriate salute should be.

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About the only thing that would be truly appropriate on this occasion would be if Alabama or Texas A&M, the schools where Bryant left his mark as a coach, could play a game today. But this is Wednesday, and college football teams rarely play games in the middle of the week.

However, college football teams do play on Saturdays, and Alabama and Texas A&M will be playing each other in College Station this Saturday.

That is so perfect that it almost certainly was planned. Considering the stature Bryant has in this game, it might well have been planned even if the two schools were not competing in the same conference.

Let me say right now that I have seen no evidence that it was planned — but Alabama and Texas A&M are conference rivals now (they weren't in the Bear's day), and the modern Southeastern Conference is so big now that it has two divisions. Members of a division always play each other — they alternate their games against teams in the other division, but they always play the teams in their own division.

Alabama and Texas A&M are in the same division. Last year, they played in Alabama, and A&M handed Alabama its only loss of the year (en route to its second consecutive national title). The Aggies' quarterback also became the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy.

There's enough intrigue surrounding that game to entice even the Bear — and that would have taken some doing in his lifetime. He must have faced off against just about every major football coach in the country at one time or another.

I know for a fact he faced Joe Paterno at least once because I was there. My family and I went to New Orleans to see the Sugar Bowl one year, and Alabama was playing Penn State.

In a quarter of a century as the head coach at Alabama, Bryant faced and defeated Bob Devaney, Ara Parseghian, Bud Wilkinson, John McKay, Lou Holtz, Woody Hayes, Tom Osborne, Barry Switzer. He never faced Bo Schembechler, and he never managed to beat Darrell Royal in four tries.

And Bryant once faced Frank Broyles, the longtime head coach at my alma mater, the University of Arkansas. Bryant won, and I've always been struck by an irony. After the 1941 season, during which Bryant was an assistant coach at Vanderbilt, he was offered the head coaching job at Arkansas.

I guess a little historical background is needed here. Fred Thomsen had been Arkansas' coach since 1929, and he had done some good things for the Razorbacks. He won the Hogs' first Southwest Conference title in 1933 — when Bryant was playing end for Alabama — but the title was forfeited when it turned out he had used an ineligible athlete.

Thomsen also popularized the forward pass at Arkansas. He even had different quarterbacks, depending on conditions — one for wet weather and another for dry weather. He had good years and bad years through 1937, and if he had left after that season, his name probably would be revered today on the Arkansas campus and, indeed, throughout the state.

But the Hogs went 13–25–2 from 1938–41, and there were rumblings among the fans (according to a book on the Razorbacks that was co–written by one of my former Arkansas Gazette colleagues) that the program needed a "name" coach to revive it.

Thomsen had enlisted in the service after Pearl Harbor, and it came as a surprise to his wife that the Board of Trustees, authorized by the state legislature, arranged to cut him a check — and, in the process, cut the school's ties with him — while he was serving his country abroad.

At the same time, apparently, the school was pursuing Bryant (who was born in Arkansas) to lead the team, but Bryant had enlisted in the Navy. So Arkansas endured some misfires at the head coaching position before finally getting a long–termer in Broyles in 1958, the same year Bryant went to Alabama.

Arkansas fans can only wonder what might have been if the war had not interfered. Broyles had some great years at Arkansas — he even shared a national title with Bryant once — but his career was not even close to Bryant's. In all honesty, no one's was.

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When Bryant died 30 years ago, the people of Alabama lined the highway overpasses in respectful silence to watch the funeral procession go by.

I can think of no other figure from Alabama who commanded that kind of respect — not firebrand politicians, not Supreme Court justices, no one.

The Bear was one of a kind.

It Was Over Before It Began

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Whenever I think of the Mike Tyson–Michael Spinks fight that took place in Atlantic City, N.J., 25 years ago tonight, I always think of my friend Steve in Little Rock. Never fails.

Neither of us saw the Tyson–Spinks fight when it was happening, but, about a week after it was over, sometime around the Fourth of July, a cable channel (I think it was HBO) aired a delayed recording of the fight, which I recorded on videotape.

Steve and I watched that tape together in my living room. Several times. We had a lot of fun with it, too.

The fight was scheduled for 12 rounds, as I recall. But it didn't even last one.

In fact, it lasted about 90 seconds. Didn't take long to watch — or analyze.

Before the fight, Tyson had something of a reputation for finishing bouts quickly, frequently in the first round. But that reputation had been achieved largely against clearly inferior foes — which made it all the more puzzling when he continued to pad his record after winning the heavyweight title from Trevor Berbick in 1986.

In the next 19 months, Tyson defended his title half a dozen times. Most of them ended the same way. Tyson would hammer away at some poor slob for a round or two, then his opponent would be knocked out or declared the loser by TKO.

I worked on the sports desk at the Arkansas Gazette in those days, and I used to keep a cooler in my car to save money on soft drinks. Periodically during my shifts, I would go out to my car to retrieve a can of Coke or Dr Pepper or whatever had been on sale the last time I went to the grocery store.

I vividly recall one night when, on such an excursion to my car, I heard two men talking as they walked from a nearby theater where a Tyson fight had been featured on closed circuit. Tyson won that fight in the first or second round, and the men were complaining about how little action there had been. I remember being pleased by the news. It meant the wire accounts we would run in the next morning's paper would be ready far in advance of our deadline.

As far as I was concerned, that was the good thing (maybe the only good thing) about having Tyson as the heavyweight champ in those days. His fights usually didn't last too long, and those of us who were responsible for editing the wire copy and sizing the photographs and writing the headline for the next day's paper — all that stuff we used to do by hand but now is done on a computer screen — had the rare luxury of time to do it.

(Unless, of course, Tyson was fighting in Vegas. If he was, the fight probably wouldn't begin until around 9 or 10 Arkansas time. But the fight with Spinks was on the East Coast.)

For others, like Bernard Fernandez of The Sweet Science, thoughts of boxing events in those days are linked to bittersweet memories of a time and a place that are gone. Fernandez writes that the annual meeting of the Atlantic City All Stars Boxing Gala is "like a gathering of ... the Flat Earth Society."

And he is right. When one speaks of the Tyson era today, it has a tendency to sound like a discussion among members of a Good Old Days club about the Jurassic period — with Tyson being the T rex in the analogy.

Perhaps Tyson's most noteworthy foe since winning the title had been a past–his–prime Larry Holmes, who was lured out of a nearly two–year retirement by the promise of a multimillion–dollar payday.

Holmes hung around until the fourth round before Tyson finished him off. As pitiful as that may sound, though, it was true grit compared to the speed with which Michael Spinks went down 25 years ago tonight.

Now, lots of fighters went down in the first couple of rounds against Tyson, but those guys were tomato cans. People expected more from Michael Spinks. They probably didn't expect him to win — it was a given in those days that Tyson would win his fights — but I guess they expected him to last longer than Holmes did.

Spinks had been, at one time, the holder of a portion of the heavyweight crown, but he was stripped of it by the International Boxing Federation (IBF) in 1987 when he refused to fight the IBF's mandatory challenger. Spinks' bout with Tyson 25 years ago tonight was his opportunity to recapture the now–unified (under Tyson) heavyweight title.

I will always remember how Steve and I slowed down the playback of the tape, freezing it a few seconds before that first — and only — round began.

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"He still has a chance," one of us would say. Then we would start the tape again and let it run a few seconds until the bell sounded to begin the fight.

As Spinks strode to the center of the ring, we would pause the tape again, and the other one would say, "It's over now" even though no blows had yet been exchanged, which sounds funny, but it really was over. Watch the video that is attached to this post, and you'll see what I mean. Spinks was toast when the round began.

Before you can string together three or four grammatically correct sentences — or blink a couple of times — Spinks will be on his back.

Every time we saw it happen, Steve and I simply dissolved into helpless giggles. Eventually, the laughter would die down, and then one of us would look at the other, and the laughter would begin all over again. Embarrassing, really. Two grown men laughing like children watching a road runner cartoon. It's probably a good thing none of our mutual friends ever watched that tape with us.

About a month after that Tyson–Spinks fight, I left Arkansas and moved to Texas where I began working toward my master's degree. I'm not sure if Steve and I ever watched that tape together again after I moved away. I came back to Little Rock for visits, but I don't remember bringing that tape with me.

Steve visited me in Texas a couple of times. We may have watched that tape on one of those occasions. I don't remember.

I wish I could watch a tape of that fight with Steve again. It wouldn't take long, and it would be so much fun to remember those times together.

I'll never be able to do that, though. Steve died in March.

I wish I could get Steve's perspective on boxing since that night. He was pretty knowledgeable about a number of topics, and we had some good conversations about boxing. Perhaps he would assess things differently.

In hindsight, I am inclined to think it represented the pinnacle for Tyson, who went on to lose his title to Buster Douglas less than two years later in what was viewed at the time as an astonishing upset.

For Spinks, it was his first professional defeat, but it was more than that. It was not just the end of his championship hopes. It was the end of his boxing career.

Perhaps that is a bit harsh. After all, I can't say that I actually know if that half–round knockout was the reason for it, but I can say this:

Whether it was a result of what happened 25 years ago tonight or not, the fact is that Michael Spinks never fought professionally again.

Running for the Roses

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I don't really have what folks have taken to calling a "bucket list."

Maybe I've always had a more realistic set of expectations than most people. I don't know. But it seems to me that most of the things I hoped to do when I was younger I have done.

I always liked writing and wanted to make a living doing it. So I majored in journalism, worked as a general assignment reporter, worked as a copy editor and have taught writing to university and community college students. I'm still doing the latter — as an adjunct.

I loved Theodore H. White's books on the making of the president, and I wanted to cover politics. I had no sooner finished work on my bachelor's degree than I found myself covering a gubernatorial runoff that featured a future president (Bill Clinton).

I grew up reading the Arkansas Gazette, and I dreamed that I would one day work for the Gazette. And I did, for more than 4½ years.

I grew up with a passion for team sports, especially football. I worked in the Gazette's sports department — editing stories written by journalists I had been reading for years.

If, as the old rhyme says, I should die before I wake ... I think I can honestly say that I achieved most of the goals I set for myself.

Except for one. I have never been to a Kentucky Derby. And that is something I would like to do once in my life.

(I just want to clarify one thing before I go on. When I speak of goals, of course, I'm overlooking the goals everyone has — i.e., acquiring wealth and/or power — and almost no one achieves.)

When I lived in Arkansas, I used to go to the horse track in Hot Springs on my days off in the spring. It was a grand form of entertainment. I planned on spending a certain amount of money and never expected to win my fortune. Mostly, I enjoyed watching the horses run — and watching the people who came to watch the horses run.

People watching seems to be at its peak at Churchill Downs. It always is — and I'm sure it will be when the horses run for the roses there later today.

And I'll be watching, as I always do. I don't know much about the field. I never do. Orb seems to be generating a lot of favorable coverage as the general favorite. But I wouldn't call him a solid favorite

I don't really have a dog in this hunt — except to say that I hope whichever horse wins goes on to win the Preakness and the Belmont, too. Horse racing hasn't had a Triple Crown winner in 35 years.

And, with the economy the way it is, I figure there's more than a nugget or two of truth in Mike Downey's column for CNN.com that looked back on Secretariat's Triple Crown 40 years ago this year.

"Desperately seeking Secretariat," writes Downey. "We could use a new you. A superhorse to make our hearts pound the way your hooves did. A four–legged stud to give us a break from cheating golfers, dog–torturing football quarterbacks and doped–up bike racers and baseball sluggers."

America could use a shot in the arm. That certainly was something that Secretariat provided 40 years ago.

But times weren't as bad in 1973 as they are in 2013. The burden of expectations is likely to be much heavier on the winner of today's Run for the Roses than it was for Secretariat — who, nevertheless, carried the weight of a 25–year Triple Crown drought on his back and still capped his Triple Crown run with an astonishing 30–length victory in the Belmont.

Secretariat, though, was a truly once–in–a–lifetime horse. None of his descendants has come close to duplicating his achievement.

But that is the magic of the first Saturday in May, isn't it? The possibility that the winner of the Kentucky Derby will go on to win the Preakness and the Belmont as well.

We shall see.

The Longest Night

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Twenty–five years ago today was the last Super Bowl Sunday that I had to work — although, at the time, I probably thought I would never be able to sit and watch another Super Bowl like anyone else.

I was working on the sports staff of the now defunct Arkansas Gazette. Before the year was over, I moved to Texas to begin working on my master's degree, but, on this day in 1988, I was working on the copy desk of the Gazette.

When I first started working there, we had no TV in the newsroom, but on special occasions, like the Super Bowl, someone usually brought in a portable TV, and we could at least keep up with what was happening (remember, this was before the internet).

One of the things I learned in my years of working on a newspaper's sports staff on Super Sunday is that there are a few sporting events scheduled in the afternoon of that day — but after the game kicks off, there is nothing else happening in American sports. No games of any kind.

I don't know if it is still that way or not. Frankly, I haven't really paid close attention, but I can't recall any sports events that tried to compete directly with the Super Bowl.

And, with the NHL having recently resolved a somewhat messy strike and trying to work in a certain number of games in a comparatively short period of time, there might be some hockey games planned on Sunday. I don't tend to follow hockey so I don't really know.

I do know that, 25 years ago today, the football game started around 5:30 Central time, and, under normal circumstances, those of us on the sports staff figured a football game would be over in roughly 3½ hours. Our final deadline was around midnight, but we knew it would be an hour, maybe an hour and a half after the game ended before our writers could complete their postgame interviews, write their stories and transmit them over what I suppose was a state–of–the–art system (but would now be regarded as quaint, even primitive).

The sports editor had complete confidence in the system, though, and his faith turned out to be well founded. We had no transmission issues that night.

Other than that, there were really two things to be worried about.

One was that the game would go into overtime. As far as those of us on the copy desk were concerned, that would only prolong things. The Gazette had been purchased by the Gannett Company a year or so earlier, and the decision had been made to send our own staffers to the game in San Diego rather than rely on wire accounts, even though we had no link to anyone on either team as far as I can recall.

The Gazette was in a newspaper war with its crosstown rival, the Arkansas Democrat. It was a war the Gazette eventually would lose, but, on this night in 1988, the war was raging.

We had some excellent writers on the Gazette sports staff, and I knew they would give us great copy to work with — vivid stories that would be the embodiment of what legendary sportswriter Red Smith meant when he said that "people go to spectator sports to have fun and then they grab the paper to read about it and have fun again."

I had no doubt that our writers would enable our readers to have fun the day after watching the game. I just hoped the initial experience would be fun. And overtime would be fun for the viewers. Not so much fun for the folks who were working the sports copy desks that night.

Those of us back in Little Rock knew we would have to go through a stretch that evening when there would be very little for us to do. If the game went into overtime, we wouldn't get the copy until close to our deadline, and no one wanted to miss deadline.

The game didn't go into overtime. That wasn't the problem.

The other thing to worry about was a lopsided score. That was likely to mean that the team on the short end of the score would be throwing the ball a lot, which probably would mean a lot of incomplete passes. That, too, would prolong things.

It turned out that was a problem.

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You never would have expected what happened in the second quarter after watching the first quarter.

Denver QB John Elway was competing in his second Super Bowl. He had played in his first Super Bowl the year before when the New York Giants won, thanks to a nearly perfect performance from Phil Simms. Now, in his second consecutive Super Bowl, the (supposedly) more mature Elway seemed ready to claim an NFL championship.

The oddsmakers made Denver a three–point favorite.

The Redskin offense was led by Doug Williams, a backup when the season began but elevated to starter midway through the season and was, on this day, the first black quarterback to start in the Super Bowl. He was facing plenty of pressure.

In the first quarter, the Broncos seemed to be living up to pregame expectations, taking a 10–0 lead.

But then The Quarter happened. Washington struck — and struck and struck and struck and struck. The Redskins scored five unanswered touchdowns, big play after big play, in the second quarter. Four of the five touchdowns were passes from Williams, who finished the day with 18 completions out of 29 attempts for 340 yards.

The Redskins went to the locker room with a 25–point lead. To this day, no other team has scored as many points in a single quarter as the Redskins did 25 years ago. A few teams have scored more points in a single Super Bowl than Washington did in 1988, but none has scored five touchdowns in a single quarter.

I don't remember how long that game went on, but I know it went on longer than expected. Denver coach Dan Reeves clearly didn't want to give up at halftime. Elway wound up throwing nearly 40 passes in an ill–fated attempt to erase the deficit; the Broncos got no touchdowns, but Elway was sacked five times.

The Redskins did their part to speed things along by running the ball on virtually every down when their offense was on the field. Rookie Timmy Smith, who hardly touched the ball during the regular season, ran for a Super Bowl record 204 yards and scored two touchdowns.

But the MVP went to Williams (whose NFL career was finished a few years later), and he certainly deserved it.

After the game was over, those of us in the sports department waited for what seemed like hours before the photos and copy began coming in, and the sports section finally began to take shape.

Everyone sprang into action with less than an hour to go before the scheduled deadline — and, once again, we accomplished what we had come to call the "nightly miracle." Somehow we got it all done on time that night. I honestly don't know how we did it. Until we actually did it, I wasn't sure that we would!

I can't speak for anyone else who worked that night, but when I got home that night, I collapsed in my bed exhausted. Most of the nights I worked at the Gazette, I needed a little deceleration time after work before I could go to sleep.

But not that night.

Scream 2

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As I have mentioned here before, I used to work on the sports copy desk of the old Arkansas Gazette.

I made many friends during my time there. "Some are dead and some are living," in the words of John Lennon, and one of the living ones, with whom I have reconnected via Facebook, is, as I have told him, the foremost authority on tennis that I know.

I thought of him today when I was watching Maria Sharapova battle Victoria Azarenka in the women's final of the Australian Open.

It was a rematch of a tournament showdown I watched last spring, and the outcome was nearly the same. The 22–year–old Azarenka completely dominated Sharapova and appears to be well on her way to the top ranking in the world.

I wanted to get some feedback from my friend so I e–mailed him after the match, and this is what he had to say.

Of Azarenka, whose victory this morning was her first Grand Slam title, he said, "[S]he's mentally strong enough to win some slam tournaments. She plays big points well."

That was my impression as well. She continues to impress me every time I see her play — and in unexpected ways.

And, perhaps, nothing I saw in today's match made a greater impression on me than what I saw at the end — a triumphant Azarenka dropped to her knees and appeared to be stunned that she had actually won a Grand Slam event.

Never mind that she had completely dominated Sharapova, who has been regarded as a formidable force in women's tennis since winning Wimbledon nearly eight years ago.

Shortly, though, Azarenka's bewilderment turned to pure unadulterated joy as she ripped the sweatband from her brow and threw it into the cheering crowd, then threw tennis ball after tennis ball to the fans.

Her domination of Sharapova had been so complete, in fact, that none other than Chris Evert observed, at one point, that, in her day (and, I would presume, the practice predated her career), it was said that if one player won five consecutive sets (or more) against someone else, the first player owned the second.

And, based on that, Evert continued, it could fairly be said that Azarenka owns Sharapova.

Certainly, based on my observations, that is true. Azarenka beat Sharapova in straight sets in the match I watched last spring — and I thought at the time that it was their first encounter, but, as I understand it, they actually met for the first time a few years earlier. Azarenka won on that occasion, too, which means she has won at least five straight sets against Sharapova.

Of Sharapova, my friend said, "I love watching Sharapova but I don't think she's that interested in winning on the court. She can make more money posing."

Regretfully, that seems to be true.

She's still making noises about wanting to win Grand Slam tournaments, but I have to wonder, especially as Azarenka's star is ascending, if she isn't being drawn to a more lucrative modeling career.

And, frankly, who could blame her?

She is an attractive young woman, and there is always a lot of money for young women who are willing to parlay their physical attributes into bank accounts.

And, if she chooses to dedicate herself to the pursuit of easy paydays, that's fine. It might even be the wisest choice she could make.

Because Azarenka, it seems, is dedicating herself to the pursuit of Grand Slam titles. And, as Geoff MacDonald writes in the New York Times, "she is an attacking, all–court player capable of success on any surface. With her new–found equilibrium on the court, and her fearless competitive spirit, Azarenka will contend for all four Grand Slam titles."

Might be hard for Sharapova to compete.

Longest Field Goal Still on Record Books

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If you follow football, you know that field goals can be very important.

But, unless somebody kicks a game–winner in the last seconds, field goals don't get the same attention as touchdown runs and passes. That's understandable. They aren't worth as much — although there have been proposals that would add to the value for especially long field goals in recognition of their increased difficulty.

That's something I can support — kind of like the three–point shot in basketball. Reward kickers for doing something special. I guess I have a little recent personal motivation to say that. The kicker for my alma mater, the University of Arkansas, nailed a 51–yard field goal on Saturday.

That's the longest field goal that has been kicked at Arkansas in nearly 20 years. But it wasn't the game–winner. It came in the middle of a game that turned into something of a rout for the Razorbacks so it didn't get a lot of attention.

That, in turn, reminded me of when I worked on the sports desk at the Arkansas Gazette.

The Gazette is no longer in business, but, when I was there, we took a lot of high school football game accounts over the phone from stringers and such on Friday nights.

The newspaper served the whole state, and we didn't have enough reporters on the entire staff — let alone the sports side — to physically attend every high school game.

And we sure didn't have enough space for extensive articles on every game. Most of the time, we had to settle for a couple of paragraphs that mentioned the score, a couple of the outstanding players or the game–winning play and the teams' records.

That was about it.

I guess it goes without saying that the phone calls we took on those very busy Friday nights didn't last too long.

Anyway, one of the fellows on the staff used to love to come up with nicknames for players in game accounts he took over the phone — and sometimes he would try to sneak one into print. Typically, the nicknames he thought of were ones that were given, originally, to the gridiron legends of the 1940s and 1950s.

Those of us on the copy desk learned to be particularly alert for these nicknames, and we caught a lot of them. We didn't catch them all, but we tried. It helped if you were familiar with football history.

You know the kind of stuff I mean. If a kid kicked a game–winning field goal on the last play of the game, this guy wanted to nickname him "The Toe." If a guy ran for a lot of yards, he wanted to nickname him "Crazy Legs."

If I think about it, I can see him in my mind's eye, chuckling as he read the first paragraph in such a blurb he had written when he saw it on a page proof: "Joe (The Toe) Smith kicked a 31–yard field goal as time ran out to lift Little Rock Catholic to a victory over Little Rock Central ..."

The nickname was his inside joke. If it was a somewhat obscure nickname, he knew he had a good chance of getting away with it because the copy desk might not know that the nickname wasn't legitimate, that a coach or a teacher or whoever called in the score hadn't said it was the player's real nickname, that it was actually an homage.

Kim, you rascal.

He particularly loved that nickname "The Toe." I worked on the Gazette sports staff for four football seasons, and I think that is the nickname he mentioned more often than any other.

If you're a fan of football, you may know that the original "The Toe" was Lou Groza, an NFL kicker in the 1950s and 1960s who also played offensive tackle. He spent his whole professional career with the Cleveland Browns, and a writer for the Cleveland Press gave him that nickname.

Groza was a prolific kicker. He kicked game–winning field goals in pressure situations. He led the NFL in field goals five times. But today is the anniversary of something that even he, as successful as he was, never achieved.

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Forty years ago today, Tom Dempsey kicked a 63–yard field goal for the New Orleans Saints against the Detroit Lions, setting an NFL record that has not been exceeded, only matched.

There were a few things about this field goal that made it unique.

For one thing, the right–footed Dempsey was born without any toes on his right foot. He wore a special shoe that was believed by some to give him an unfair advantage.

(Some might argue that going through life with half the toes one is supposed to have qualifies as a disadvantage.)

The shoe Dempsey wore on that day, incidentally, can be seen at the New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame.

For another, the Saints and the Lions were nothing like their modern incarnations. The Saints of 1970 were a young, struggling expansion squad while the Lions were on their way to the playoffs as the NFC's first wild–card team.

It was to be — at least, when compared to the next four decades — a rare postseason appearance for Detroit. At the time, though, the Lions were considered a competitive franchise that was usually included in any conversation about Super Bowl contenders.

Nevertheless, Dempsey's kick handed the win to New Orleans.

Ironically, Dempsey's record–setting field goal came eight days before the first anniversary of another team field goal record he set. On Nov. 16, 1969, against the New York Giants, Dempsey kicked six field goals in a single game, more than any other kicker in New Orleans history, as the Saints won by a single point.

In these days of political correctness, some people seem to believe that the way to handle an unpleasant truth is to change the language used to describe that truth — or ignore it completely.

I won't dispute the importance of language, but I think what is really needed is more role models who have overcome the barriers they faced — physical disabilities, prejudices of any kind, etc. — and achieved great things.

We need more people who will inspire us with their accomplishments.

More Tom (The Toe) Dempseys.

The Notorious Blown Call

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I will always remember the night of Saturday, Oct. 26, 1985.

I was working on the sports copy desk of the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock. Football season was two months old, and I had been working there long enough to know that Fridays and Saturdays in the fall meant everyone on the sports staff had to be in the office to handle the workload.

Football season was — and is — serious business in Arkansas. High school. College. The pros. All of it.

The University of Arkansas' Razorbacks, of course, were — as they are today — at the center of attention, but every high school in the state had its rabid followers for whom every Friday night in the fall was a life–and–death situation. And the pros — mostly the Cowboys when I was growing up — had plenty of devotees.

The Gazette's longtime sports editor, Orville Henry, was widely credited with saving the paper in the late 1950s when readers were leaving it over its series of Pulitzer Prize–winning editorials supporting the integration of Little Rock Central High School.

How did he do that? By promising that, during football season, the Gazette would have, in the Saturday morning papers, the scores from every football game involving every high school in the state that fielded a football team.

The Gazette, you see, served the entire state, and most of its sports readers, whether they lived in Little Rock or its neighboring counties or any of the 75 counties within Arkansas' borders, cared about high school football. But the paper had multiple deadlines each night, and the edition that went out to the far corners of the state went to press long before any night games had ended. Those readers — in places like Fayetteville and Blytheville and Texarkana and points in between — didn't expect to get the football scores in their Saturday morning papers.

But the edition that went out to the neighboring counties in central Arkansas went to press around 11 at night, and the city edition went to press around 12:30, so there were plenty of readers who did expect to see those scores in the paper that was delivered to their doorsteps on Saturday mornings.

And everyone on the sports staff had to stay in the office until we had scores for every game. As the hours went by, staffers were calling anyone they could think of from areas where we hadn't heard a score — a principal, a teacher, the county sheriff.

Many times, we published scores based on something as iffy as "Well, I think the score was ..." I'm sure we got it wrong sometimes. But, in all the years I worked there, we always had a score, whether it was right or wrong, for every game when the city edition went to bed on Friday nights.

There were — and, I presume, still are, although there was considerable consternation over the possibility of school consolidation at the time I left — many tiny, rural high schools all across the state. And it could be quite challenging at times to get their scores.

I was there for four football seasons, and I remember nights when we were in the office until nearly 3 in the morning trying to track down the score from a single football game.

I guess it goes without saying that, on many Saturdays, the sports staff was dragging.

I don't remember if Friday, Oct. 25, 1985, was such a night. It may well have been one of those (comparably rare) football Friday nights when everything went smoothly and we managed to put the paper to bed at what was a normal time for us. But, for those of us in the sports department, it was a time of year when things were complicated by the World Series.

And the sixth game of the World Series was to be played that Saturday night. The teams that were playing were the Kansas City Royals and the St. Louis Cardinals in what was known as the "I–70 Series" — in honor of the highway that directly connects the two cities.

With both of the teams coming from cities in the state the bordered Arkansas to the north, it should be obvious that there was a distinctly regional flavor to that year's World Series.

When I was growing up, central Arkansas was Cardinal country, and that tradition was alive and well in the Gazette newsroom in 1985. Lots of people, whether they worked on the sports side or not, were openly pulling for the Cardinals.

But there was no TV in the newsroom in those days — so many folks who had to work at night (usually that was almost exclusively the copy desk, but there were some reporters who wrote at night) had to listen to the radio at their desks if they wanted to know the score in that pre–internet world.

The Cardinals led the Royals, three games to two, when the Series returned to Kansas City, and St. Louis was on the brink of winning its second world title in four years. One of the guys on the sports copy desk brought a TV to the newsroom that night so we could watch the game while we worked.

And it was about the most dramatic World Series game I have ever seen.

It started as a pitchers' duel. Neither team scored until the Cardinals managed to score a run in the top of the eighth, and it looked like they were on their way. But, in the bottom of the ninth, trailing by a run, the Royals scored two runs, thanks to a blown call at first base by umpire Don Denkinger.

I guess it is possible that the Royals might have scored two runs in their half of the ninth even if Denkinger had made the right call. But it would have been a lot more difficult to achieve.

Replays from every angle clearly confirmed that Denkinger had made the wrong call, but he stubbornly refused to reverse himself and there was no mechanism in place for overturning an umpire's call through the use of instant replay. The call stood; the Royals rallied for an improbable victory and forced the decisive Game 7 the next night.

Except for football, major team sports championships are decided in a best–of–seven playoff series. When they happen, Game 7s are often dramatic events, reflecting the even split of the previous six games.

But there was nothing terribly dramatic about Game 7 of the 1985 World Series.

Maybe the Cardinals were shell–shocked, having come so tantalizingly close to winning the World Series only to have it snatched away from them by something that was beyond their control.

Whatever it was, the Cardinals, who had looked unbeatable on the eve of their series with their meek sister from western Missouri, couldn't scratch out a single run in the finale. Their manager, Whitey Herzog, and their pitcher, Joaquin Andujar, were ejected from the game, and Kansas City won a blowout, 11–0.

Compared to the previous night, it was anticlimactic.