Telling It Like It Is

---

---

I really admire Dale Hansen, weeknight sports anchor and sports director at WFAA — the ABC affiliate here in Dallas.

He has the courage to tell it like it is, which shouldn't come as a surprise, really. Nearly 30 years ago, he exposed NCAA violations at Southern Methodist University that ultimately led to the imposition of the NCAA's "death penalty" on SMU's football program. His work earned some awards for distinguished journalism — and several death threats, as I recall.

Football is virtually a religion in Texas. It's that way across the South, but it seems especially true of Texas.

And I love to watch football as much as anyone. I grew up in Arkansas, and we love our Razorbacks. It's the only thing that nearly everyone in Arkansas agrees on.

We love to like win, like just about everyone, I guess, but I honestly do believe that we also have standards in Arkansas. I think that was proven when the head coach was found to be carrying on an intimate relationship with a young female assistant. He is now coaching elsewhere, and the football program was subjected to some excruciating growing pains after he left, but the ship seems to be going in the right direction now — and it appears to be doing so with a group of young men who seem to know the meaning of the word honor.

That is part of what makes it so difficult to live here in the Metroplex and see how Jerry Jones has mismanaged the Cowboys for more than a quarter of a century now. I've lived here for all but four of those years — I even covered Jimmy Johnson's first press conference as Jones' new head coach hire — but I might as well have grown up here, given that most of the people in central Arkansas in those days were Cowboys fans.

Then, as now, there was no professional football team in Arkansas — and only a few professional teams within driving distance. The Cowboys were televised there every week. It was only natural, I suppose, for football fans there to gravitate to the Cowboys. Those who are still living — and many of their children and grandchildren — have carried on the tradition.

The Cowboys of those days played aggressive football — for which they were either admired or loathed, but, either way, no one could deny they carried themselves with dignity and honor. Tom Landry and Tex Schramm wouldn't have it any other way. Their players played hard on the field, and the Cowboys had something like 20 consecutive winning seasons, which I am sure put them under a great deal of pressure — including all the talk locally that they couldn't win "the big one" — but they didn't beat their wives, their girlfriends or their children when they were off the field.

Recently, though, Jones signed defensive lineman Greg Hardy. In case you aren't familiar with Hardy's background, you can get a pretty good idea of his personal history by reading this by Judy Battista of NFL.com.

You could get a really good idea of his background by listening to Hansen for three minutes earlier this week.

And, while it is tempting to summarize for you what Hansen said, it is far more effective if you see it and hear it for yourself.

So I urge you to watch the attached video.

Dale, I agree with you 100%

Intriguing Stories at Kentucky Derby

---

---

The 2014 edition of the Kentucky Derby will be run in a few hours, and there are some interesting story lines to follow. Of course, part of that is due to the pressure on sportswriters to produce compelling copy in the days before the big race (when the only newsworthy developments are likely to be bad).

Somewhere out there someone must have written a piece that lays out all the reasons why the longest longshot on the board (and, currently, that is 48–to–1 pick Vinceremos) is the smart pick.

That doesn't mean the stories aren't good — but take it from an ex–sports copy editor. Take each with as many grains of salt as you need.

Joe Drape of the New York Times reports that the Kentucky Derby is an opportunity for two sons to do something their fathers weren't able to do.

Allen Jerkens is a Hall of Fame trainer. He trained horses that beat Secretariat and Kelso (who did not win the Triple Crown because his 3–year–old season began after the Triple Crown had been decided) — but his horses never won the Kentucky Derby. His son Jimmy is the trainer of Wicked Strong, a 7–to–1 shot as of 2 p.m. Central time today — second only to prerace favorite California Chrome (2–1 after opening at 5–to–2).

Similarly, Don Little Jr., the owner of Wicked Strong, comes from old thoroughbred racing stock. In the 1980s, his father (now deceased) founded Centennial Farms, which has produced some pretty good horses (including a Belmont Stakes winner), but none of them has ever won the Run for the Roses.

Today may be their best chance, but Danza, a 9–to–1 shot after opening at 10–1, could have something to say about it. Named for actor Tony Danza (who once played a part–time boxer on TV's Taxi), the Arkansas Derby winner seems to be a legitimate contender. His jockey, Joe Bravo, is the latest branch in a family tree full of jockeys and has won quite a few major races, but he has yet to win a Kentucky Derby.

Still, California Chrome appears to be everyone's pick.

(Jay Privman of the Daily Racing Form writes that California Chrome is a working–class–hero in the sport of kings. He definitely has been working more than the other horses. He has started more races than any of his rivals.)

Cindy Boren claims in the Washington Post to provide everything you need to know about betting on the race — and she does ... except for how to pick the winner.

That, my friends, is why they call it gambling.

At the moment, 19 horses are in the race. Twenty–one were entered originally, but two have been scratched. The Derby field is always like that; the field is less crowded for the other two races in the Triple Crown. But at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May, every contender and pretender is on the track.

(Sometimes, it seems to me, a bet in the Kentucky Derby would be just as likely to produce a winner if the pick was made by throwing a dart at a dartboard in which the horses' names replaced numbers.)

Handicapper Liam Durbin writes in the Chicago Tribune that he can save you all the trouble of wading through each horse's track record.

California Chrome is probably the logical choice, he writes, but the best value might be — and here we introduce a fourth horse to watch — Dance With Fate.

Dance With Fate is something of a sleeper, currently 14–1 after opening at 20–1. Corey Nakatani will be riding Dance With Fate, and he, too, is looking for his first Kentucky Derby victory.

Teresa Genaro of Forbes has tips for gamblers as well.

And she actually does pick the winner — Ride On Curlin, a 15–to–1 pick.

USA Today reports that the experts' picks are all over the place.

So who will win? You can see the race for yourself on NBC in less than two hours — at 5:32 p.m. (Central).

A Heart-Stopping Finish

---

---

I seldom watch the NBA — until the playoffs begin. And, even then, I don't usually watch until it has been narrowed down to two teams.

But, yesterday, I sat down and watched most (not all) of Game 3 of the Dallas Mavericks–San Antonio Spurs series.

The Spurs are the top seed in the west; the Mavericks are the eighth seed. It is safe to say most regular NBA observers probably expected the Spurs to win the series fairly easily, especially after winning the first game at home.

But the Mavericks surprised them by winning the second game, and the series moved to Dallas.

You don't have to be an NBA fan to know that these two teams have a pretty intense in–state rivalry going on. I guess it helps to be a resident of Texas — but even that probably isn't necessary.

Anyway, I decided to watch most of yesterday's game.

At first, it appeared the Spurs would seize the series lead. They grabbed a seven–point advantage at the end of the first quarter, but the Mavericks pounded them in the second and led by five points at intermission.

I had my TV on throughout the first half, but I was busy doing things around the apartment so I didn't sit and watch — until the second half began.

That second half was incredible. The Spurs picked up a couple of points on the Mavericks in the third quarter and battled to a two–point lead with 1.7 seconds remaining. It appeared the Mavericks would lose.

But then they inbounded the ball to Vince Carter, who hit a jumper from the corner. Two questions had to be answered: Did he shoot before time expired? If so, did he shoot from three–point range?

There was no question about whether he made the shot. The question was whether he fired it before time ran out. If he did, then the question was whether it was worth two points (which would mean an overtime period) or three (which would mean the Mavericks won).

The referees, after consulting instant replay, confirmed that the ball left Carter's hands before time expired, then they ruled that he shot from three–point range.

Game over.

Tim Cowlishaw of the Dallas Morning News never seems to be at a loss for words, even if he has to make them up (as William Shakespeare did). That can be a hit–or–miss kind of thing for a journalist, but, as a veteran of sports desks, I know that sports may be the best place for someone who has a way with words to be.

It is part of the joy of sports, which was best described, I think, by Red Smith who, as I have observed on this blog before, wrote that he believed people watched sports events to have fun — and then they picked up the next day's paper to read about the event they had watched and have fun all over again.

Sportswriters (and I include headline writers in this) get into the spirit of whichever sport is in season, and they contribute a great deal to the mood.

---

---

When people read accounts of yesterday's game, the memory that most will have is of the bedlam that followed the referees' ruling, and I have to concede that the word Cowlishaw used to describe the pandemonium — "Vinsanity" — was pretty good.

Actually, though, that isn't Cowlishaw's creation. Carter isn't a rookie. He is 37 years old. "Vinsanity" may go back to his college days, for all I know.

Judging from Gil LeBreton's column in the Fort Worth Star–Telegram, it is old enough to be Vinsanity 2.0.

"Or maybe," he wrote, "considering the many NBA lives of 37–year–old Vince Carter, it was Vinsanity 4, 5 or 6.0 that erupted as the final horn sounded."

Well, it still summarized the finish pretty well — although whoever wrote the headline for Cowlishaw may have been more on track with the reference to "Monta Madness."

Monta is Monta Ellis, who led all scorers with 29 points.

Game 4 will be here in Dallas tomorrow night at 8:30 (Central), and Game 5 will be played in San Antonio Wednesday. I'll be watching.

The Punch Heard 'Round the Football World

---

---

"Evidently nobody in authority realized that a full–grown man who attached such importance to a game was, at best, immature, not to say a case of arrested development. The saddest part of the whole affair is that nobody at Ohio State saw the denouement approaching and protected Hayes from himself."

Red Smith (1905–1982)

---

Red Smith is one of my favorite journalists. I guess it is appropriate to call him a sports journalist, and he probably accepted that during his lifetime, but he wrote that he always "wanted to be a newspaperman and came to realize I didn't really care which side of the newspaper I worked on."

Frankly, I felt the same way. Smith had a philosophy about sports journalism that I tried to keep in mind when I worked on the sports side of newspapers.

"[P]eople go to spectator sports to have fun and then they grab the paper to read about it and have fun all over again," he wrote. "I've always tried to remember ... that sports isn't Armageddon. These are just little games that little boys can play, and it really isn't important to the future of civilization whether the Athletics or the Browns win."

Thirty–five years ago, Woody Hayes would have been smart to heed those words, especially the part about how sports isn't Armageddon. If he had, Hayes' 28–year coaching career at Ohio State might not have come to an end when it did.

Hayes had a reputation for being a disciplinarian, a man who would take young men and mold them into leaders. He was a military historian who often applied principles from military history to his coaching.

It was known that Hayes had a temper that he couldn't always control. He once tried to punch a sportswriter following a loss, but he missed and hit the brother of the sports editor of another paper instead. A few years later, he almost got into a fight with the athletic director of another school during a meeting of Big Ten Conference athletic directors and coaches.

Late in his career, he seemed to have a particular animosity for photographers. He shoved a camera in the face of a photographer before a Rose Bowl game, leading to a three–game suspension, and about a year before the 1978 Gator Bowl, he took a swing at a TV cameraman late in a loss to Michigan.

In spite of his history, no one suspected, when Dec. 29, 1978 dawned, that the Gator Bowl between #20 Ohio State and #7 Clemson in Jacksonville, Fla., that night would be Hayes' last game as a college football coach.

But when Clemson's Charlie Bauman intercepted a pass late in the game to seal a 17–15 victory, Hayes punched him in front of God and the TV cameras — and, at that moment, I knew Hayes was finished.

I'll never forget that night. I was in my grandmother's home. My family had been visiting her for Christmas, but we were frantically preparing to leave Dallas ahead of an ice storm that was expected within a few days. That night, for whatever reason, my father and I decided to stop packing and watch the football game. We both watched in utter disbelief as Hayes struck the opposing player.

An era was ending in college football. It had been kind of a comforting, reassuring era when the giants from the ranks of college coaches were always there on the sidelines of the truly big games. One by one, though, they were stepping aside, and the next generation was taking over.

It was an inevitable transition. It happens in all walks of life with the passage of time, but we all know that people still get sentimental about endings. It is true of coaches, too; people are always wistful when longtime coaches leave. The coaches themselves are often wistful. It is a bittersweet time.

In many ways, the sports world is the same as it was when Hayes walked the sideline. But in other ways it has changed dramatically. One has to wonder, in hindsight, if Hayes could have remained the Ohio State football coach for much longer.

In the years after the legends of the 20th century roamed the sidelines, that drill sergeant mentality gradually fell out of favor with college athletic directors. There may be a few of them out there, but, for the most part, they have vanished.

---

"... Charlie Bauman intercepted a pass and went out of bounds right where the Ohio State coach stood. That architect of young manhood laid hold of Bauman and fetched him a roundhouse right to the chops. Fists flailing, he tried to charge onto the field, but his own scholar athletes, already bruised and bleeding from their pursuit of culture, overpowered him."

Red Smith

---

Hayes, it was said more and more frequently, physically assaulted his players during practice, and that did bother some people at the time, but most folks were willing to ignore it as long as he didn't do that kind of thing in public. After all, this was football, a man's game, and men are tough.

Today, a college coach who struck an athlete, whether in view of only his peers or a national TV audience, would most likely get the boot regardless of who he was. Politics — and political correctness — won't tolerate that sort of thing.

Three decades ago, schools were more protective of their star coaches, firing them only when they had no choice. And, on this day in 1978, Ohio State was left with no choice.

There really wasn't anything special about the 1978 Gator Bowl. It was the first time — and, until Clemson and Ohio State meet in Friday night's Orange Bowl, the only time — the schools faced off in football.

But the game set no records for scoring or anything else, as I recall. It is remembered only for Hayes' punch.

It Was Over Before It Began

---

---

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.

---

---

"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

---

---

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

---

---

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.

---

---

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.

The Disturbing Death of Junior Seau

---

---

When I became a sports copy editor, I thought it was the best job I could possibly have in journalism.

I had worked as a general assignment reporter prior to that time, and I covered many depressing stories. I figured sports was all fun and games, and I welcomed it. Red Smith wrote that people go to sports events to have fun, and then they pick up the newspaper the next day to read about it and have fun all over again. That was pretty much how I viewed it.

Sure, I knew it wasn't fun for the teams that lost big games, and it wasn't fun for their fans.

But it wasn't the end of the world, either. It wasn't life and death. The sun (as Annie observed in the musical that was named for her) will come up tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar.

I quickly learned, though, that sports isn't all fun and games all the time. It is deadly serious business for some folks. It is a huge, often insatiably ravenous beast, and there are those who become consumed by it.

Wait 'til next year. That has long been the defiant rallying cry of the runners–up. Except for those who were retiring, there would be another opportunity.

And when athletes finally hang it up, there frequently seems to be a second career for them. It is true that some athletes retire to live out their lives in relative obscurity, but others become coaches or commentators. Some become successful businessmen. A few go into politics.

Usually, as I say, there is that encore for the ex–athlete that can partially provide whatever he has lost because of his retirement.

I guess what is needed varies from one individual to another. Some need that adoration of the crowd. Others need the money. For some, it is the camaraderie of their teammates.

And most athletes find some kind of substitute in their post–playing career lives. Most of the time, that substitute probably doesn't come close to making up for what has been lost. Professional sports is a big stage with a bright spotlight and a huge, adoring fan base.

For an athlete like Junior Seau, who played in at least part of 20 pro football seasons and was named All–Pro a dozen times, the financial rewards of an athletic career are like winning the lottery every day, the cheers are loud and unending, and the closeness one feels with one's teammates probably can't be matched in any other occupation, perhaps not even military service.

I gather, from what I have read, that he missed it all. Maybe it had been a part of his life for too long. Maybe he did not know how to function without it.

After all, one does not become a professional athlete without spending many years on the other levels — college, high school, even junior high and middle school.

I don't know how many years Seau played football, but he was only 43 when he apparently shot himself in the chest yesterday. His professional playing career and his college career would have accounted for more than half his life by themselves — and it is reasonable to assume, I think, that Seau must have played the game for at least half a dozen years before that.

He may well have played football for three–quarters of his life.

From what I have been hearing in the last 24 hours, Seau struggled to find his niche in life after football. Apparently, he never found it. In the absence of any other explanations — like issues with drugs or alcohol or overwhelming debts — one must conclude that there was nothing that could meet his needs the way football did.

He may also have suffered from the kind of brain injuries that we hear mentioned so often in connection with football players.

And brain injuries are deceptive because there is still so much about the brain that people do not understand. Outward appearances are often unaffected by brain injuries, and, to a casual observer, Seau looked the same as always — a little older each time we saw him, but that happens to everyone.

My grandmother had a series of what were called at that time mini strokes. She didn't look any different to me, but she often spoke about these things that were in her head.

Perhaps Junior Seau had a similar sensation. He played linebacker, and linebackers are subjected to all kinds of violent hits on the field. It is reasonable to wonder if he, like so many other former athletes, suffered from chronic repetitive brain injury.

In most, if not all, of the 50 states, a suicide is also considered something of a homicide so, by law, an autopsy must be performed on the victim, and an autopsy on Seau can go a long way toward answering the unanswered questions.

Because he shot himself in the chest, Seau's brain can be examined, and perhaps some things can be learned from this tragic chapter in American sports history.

Perhaps something good can come from something so unspeakably bad.

Bert Sugar Dies

---

---

Unless you follow boxing, you may not know who Bert Sugar was.

Bert Sugar was a sports journalist. I prefer that term to sports writer because sports writer sounds like the writer in question could have written about anything but settled for sports — or was forced to do so by circumstances.

Sugar may have chosen to write about sports, but he didn't settle, and he wasn't forced into it. I always felt he was born to write about sports, particularly boxing. It was his passion, the way it is some sports journalists' passion to write about horse racing.

How ironic it was that he should die a couple of days after the 50th anniversary of the fight that, reportedly, led to boxing's first televised fatality.

I'm tempted to compare him to Red Smith, but Smith was a true sports journalist, writing about every sport with equal enthusiasm — whereas Sugar really was more of a specialist.

Sugar wrote more than 80 books, but most of them dealt with boxing. He was a boxing historian. Some of his books were about baseball — one was even about early 20th century escape artist Harry Houdini — but most were about boxing — the great fights, the great fighters — filled with nuggets that most casual observers would never know otherwise.

I read some of his books. I saw him on TV more frequently, commenting on the sport, offering insights no one else could. He was always easy to spot with his tradmark fedora hat. He was kind of an amiable, informal version of Tom Landry, I suppose.

He was afflicted with lung cancer — no doubt an outcome of his long cigar habit — and that, apparently, was what finally took his life.

He will be missed, especially whenever a significant fight comes along.

Scream 2

---

---

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.

When Reality Intrudes

---

---

I've heard this said in other ways — more eloquent ways — so please forgive my feeble and wholly inadequate paraphrase:

People watch sports in part to escape from reality.

They may wish to get away from any one of several kinds of realities, and sports events are diversions. They're almost like fiction, like a movie or a TV show, a drama that people watch for a few hours before returning to their lives and whatever it was they wished to escape.

Sports events are the way we wish our lives could be. Someone wins and someone loses. No one wins all the time. But athletes learn from their failures, and they know that tomorrow is another day — a new day. No mistake, no miscalculation is final. Redemption is always possible.

Sure, sometimes there are tears in the losing locker room after a particularly hard fought athletic contest. But deep down, most athletes know — even if they have just lost a championship — that they will have another opportunity. The sun will come up tomorrow. The slate will be wiped clean.

Perhaps one of my favorite journalists of all time, sportswriter Red Smith, once wrote that people go to athletic events to have fun — and then they pick up the newspaper the next day to read about it and have fun all over again.

And, nearly every time that people have gathered for sports events in human history, it has been fun.

But what happened last night at a Texas Rangers baseball game in Arlington, Texas, definitely was not fun, particularly for the folks sitting in an upper section of the Ballpark. A man was reaching over a railing, trying to catch a ball, and he fell head first to his death after he apparently lost his balance.

The Dallas Morning News quotes a witness as saying that "[i]t looked awful because you knew there was no way he was going to land on his feet."

The man's young son was with him and, presumably, saw the whole thing.

Since I heard about this tragic story, I've been thinking about the (admittedly few) times that I have gone to professional baseball games.

Most of the time, I've attended minor league games in small, intimate ballparks where virtually all the seats were on the ground level — so such a tragedy was not really possible.

But there have been times when I have attended major league games in their palatial stadiums, and I have sat in upper decks — although never on the front row behind a railing.

Nevertheless, from time to time, it did cross my mind, as I ascended each level, that the farther up we went, the greater the chance of something bad happening.

But something bad never did happen. It was just my imagination running away with me. The fantasy was safe.

That fantasy has been shattered now for a young boy — and countless others, too, although his loss is clearly the greatest.

I presume that his father, like most of the men who live in Texas, was a sports fan who would have wanted to pass on his love of sports to his son.

But, after watching his father die, I can only wonder if such a thing is possible for that young boy now.

Will he ever be able to watch a baseball game — or any sports event — without seeing his father tumbling over the railing in Rangers Ballpark?

Will he ever be able to erase the memory of seeing his father on the pavement below, his head apparently bleeding profusely?

I have loved sports since I was small. It was a passion my father passed along to me. Dad was never much for "having a catch," as Kevin Costner put it in "Field of Dreams," but he has always loved the drama of athletic competition and admired the skill it takes to excel.

And, if I outlive my father, one of the ways I will honor his memory is by watching and savoring athletic contests.

I hope that young boy will be able to do the same.

Sportswriting ... Like Nothing Human

In these difficult economic times, it shouldn't surprise anyone that employers are looking for ways to save money.

These days, most employers show little or no interest in training people to do a job that needs to be done. They want someone with hands–on experience. If the new hire is a little rough around the edges, well, they figure they can soften those edges — and, in the long run, they'll be better off because they hired someone who could step in and be productive from the first day. They didn't have to devote time and money to training.

In this quest for economic efficiency, advanced technology seems to have renewed a desire in business managers to make one–time investments in machines (or software) that can do jobs people have been doing for a long time.

From a purely business, dollars–and–cents perspective, I suppose that is logical. Machines (or software) don't need to be paid. They don't have bills to pay and families to support. They don't mind working overtime or on weekends.

That can work pretty well in some endeavors — but not in others. And my conclusion, based on years of working in the newspaper business, is that it's the kind of solution that tends to appeal to bottom–liners.

For a long time, the way that publications responded to recessions was to cut back on copy editors. Reporters could do their own fact checking, they reasoned. They could check their own spelling and grammar. Well, they could do those things — but most of the time they don't.

And, the reasoning continued, they could perform multiple tasks when on assignment — like taking pictures or shooting videos. They might not have much experience at those things, but just give 'em a camera. Anyone can aim and click, right?

Heck, for that matter, anyone can write. All it amounts to is stringing some words together in sentences — and making sure those annoying little things like spelling words correctly and checking facts are done.

I presume that is the reasoning behind some new software from Narrative Science. Justin Bachman of BusinessWeek reports that Narrative Science's software can take the box score from a game and produce an article that is every bit as good as anything that was written by humans.

To prove the point, Bachman takes articles provided by the sports information departments of two schools that played each other in baseball on April 24 and compares them to an article that was "composed" by the software — and asks the readers which one was generated by a machine.

Then Bachman triumphantly identifies the article that was produced by the software and quotes the software company's CEO: "There's no human author and no human editing. But the stories sound really good."

Now, granted, taking the Joe Friday — "Just the facts, ma'am" — approach works sometimes — and, to the eyes and ears of someone who never studied journalism or worked for a newspaper or a magazine or any other kind of newsgathering organization, the stories may seem adequate. They may even "sound really good" — although Narrative Science acknowledges it is always looking for ways to make the software system "a less bad writer."

"The 1,000th story of a subject is materially better than the first," the company's CEO says. (Perhaps the software's writers should take News Reporting I.)

And, according to the Big Ten's director of new media, it's "less expensive" than hiring beat reporters. So it meets the goal of saving some money.

Nevertheless, in spite of all these benefits, I don't think machines will take the place of general assignment reporters.

Oh, sure, it has its place. I used to work on the sports copy desk of a community newspaper. Space was limited, but the paper had made a commitment, long before I started working there, to print brief articles on Little League and T–ball games. This was something that was mostly done for the parents, who would presumably boost circulation a bit on the days after games were played.

On weekends, there might be a couple of dozen such games, and someone had to go through the statistics of each game and highlight the most crucial ones in a paragraph or two — which also had to include the teams' records and when they were scheduled to play again.

If we had had such software in those days, I suppose we could have fed the information from the games to the computer. It would follow its fill–in–the–blanks article–writing procedure and generate stories on all the games in a fraction of the time a flesh–and–blood person would require.

But what would have been just fine for children's sports would not have been sufficient for the rest of the newspaper's sports coverage.

There was a large university in town, and a staff writer was assigned to cover the sports teams there. When the football team or the basketball team went on the road, the writer went along. Sometimes we had to wait for the writer to finish his story and call the office to dictate it (this was in the days before a writer could transmit a story electronically from a remote location).

But, compared to the "data–intensive" articles that Narrative Science is capable of providing, the articles that were generated by the human tended to be superior. I wouldn't say our writers were even close to perfect, but they could interview players and coaches. They could explore angles that computer software could never come up with on its own.

And their writing skills usually were good enough to give each story a unique flavor — whereas, I suspect, Narrative Science's articles tend to seem formulaic rather quickly.

Bachman concludes that Narrative Science "can make some writing by humans obsolete."

That's probably true of routine writing assignments.

But if you want quotes (and surveys show that most readers do) about big plays or upcoming opponents — or if you want articles that call for dogged reporting on things that coaches and athletic departments may be reluctant to discuss in much detail — the severity of a player's injury, for example, or whether a star athlete is going to face criminal charges for something — computer software won't get the job done for you.

"After tackling sports," Bachman writes, Narrative Science "will move on to medical, financial, and survey data."

Good luck getting that software to explain complex medical and financial subjects in reader–friendly terms.

What the Newspaper Crisis Means for Sports Coverage

I am both a sports fan and a trained journalist. I worked in the business as a reporter and a copy editor for more than 10 years. I spent much of that time working on sports desks for the old Arkansas Gazette and the still breathing Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle.

If you've been following the news in recent months, you've no doubt heard of the problems many daily newspapers are facing these days. If they were patients in a hospital, the condition for most of them would be critical.

The Rocky Mountain News already has shut down completely, and more appear likely to follow. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has stopped publishing a daily paper and is now an online-only publication, perhaps foreshadowing a trend.

Still others have reduced their staffs and cut the pay of those who remain on the payroll or they've cut the number of days they publish or both — anything to tighten the belt without entirely cutting off (pardon the pun) circulation.

And when a newspaper goes out of business or cuts the number of days it publishes or even cuts its staff, sports fans suffer.

Jim Caple writes about this for ESPN.

He talks about the human toll, also, acknowledging that "the only difference between these employees and the millions of others thrown out of work in the past year is that the newspaper pink slips strike much closer to home for me."

But he makes a good point when he and others ask, "Who will report the news?"

"That's the key," writes Caple. "I'm not comparing newspapers to blogs. I'm comparing the information fans receive from newspapers plus the blogs and Web sites to the information they would receive strictly from the Internet without any newspapers."

And what does Caple say would be sacrificed?

• Game stories with analysis and quotes.


• Statistics.


• News.

Now, before you protest that the internet can give you all these things, read what Caple has to say. There definitely will be things that will be lost when local coverage disappears. And, as Caple observes, there is no revenue model in existence that online-only organizations can follow to pay someone to travel with teams and spend the kind of time around the players and coaches and organization that is necessary to learn about things like clubhouse issues or injuries or coaching changes. Is such a thing possible in the future? Absolutely. But it doesn't exist right now.

Baseball — a sport that will be played daily from the beginning of April to the end of September — will be the first to experience the change, and it is the focus of Caple's article. Clearly, as Caple writes, it is expensive to pay the salary of a writer along with his travel, lodging and meal expenses for 81 games a year.

But, even though football and basketball teams play fewer games, this change will affect fans of all sports.

Do you follow football? Or basketball? If you're a college sports fan, where will you get reliable news about your favorite school if the newspaper that covers it goes out of business? Some schools have athletic reputations and will always get attention from whatever media exist, but what if your school, be it large or small, isn't an Oklahoma or a Notre Dame or a North Carolina?

The same is true of professional sports. It's true that every professional sports team has a presence on the internet, but do you really believe the information you will find there is free of bias? Who will honestly report about coaching changes and player acquisitions?

For a few years, I worked with undergraduate journalism students. The internet was really just emerging in my last year of teaching, and one of my students asked me what now seems, in hindsight, to be a prescient question. The student asked me what would become of newspapers in the digital age. I replied that I believed the internet and newspapers would find a way to coexist.

In an odd way, I still believe that. But I think it may take the deaths of many of the traditional newspapers to bring about the re–birth of the medium.

It may take that for people to realize what they've lost.