Merry Christmas from the Sports World

First appeared on December 18, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

For you Christmas lost its meaning in third grade when the Santa outside 3D got mad at you for crushing the pack of cigarettes he’d stashed in his front pocket. And as his profane string of insults throttled your virgin ears, they arrived riding the strangest of smells.

A toxic potpourri that would remain undiscovered until many years later, where at a gathering of so called friends in a dark college apartment, full of crushed cigarettes and hormone-powered profanities, you found yourself bitten by the Wild Turkey for the first time.

Today the sermons sound simple and ring true. Speeches about caring for others and giving to the less fortunate, but for you Christmastime remains frozen in time. It’s the season to wish for the things you don’t have. Things that seem within reach but for a variety of reasons remain at arm’s length. And so you still compose lists in your head, your own personal get back for that rag tag Santa who shattered the world as you once knew it.

Those in the sports world profess to be selfless human beings, but we know deep inside the depths of their souls, in a place no probing journalist has ever found, lurks an ugly Grinch-like desire to lie, steal and cheat their way to the top of Mount Crumpit. Facts are facts, you don’t get to the top without a little of the green guy in you.

With this in mind, coaches and teams are not above wishing for things that could make them better. Tom Crean’s list begins, “Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is someone taller than 6’8 who can play.” Meanwhile, eighty miles to the north, Matt Painter is up late baking gingerbread cookies to leave out with his short note, the one asking for a chance to play North Florida again.

John Calipari’s list is a bit longer. He wants an undefeated season for his Kentucky Wildcats capped by a National Championship, and he’d like it to arrive as soon as possible, that way he has enough time to enjoy it before the NCAA strips it away. Indiana fans want a chance to play the Wildcats again, while Kentucky’s faithful have written the North Pole hoping for things like some new socks, a professional sports franchise other than UK’s basketball team and more front porch space.

Frank Vogel wants his team to play hard, fight every night and scrap their way into the Playoffs. Apparently his list includes an opening round bloodbath at the hands of the Cleveland Cavaliers as well. Meanwhile, every Pacer fan on earth wants them to lose every game by 50 and stink their way into the lottery where they might luck out and pick up one of Kentucky’s bench players.

The Colts are asking Santa to bring Andrew Luck a pair of glasses so that he might see the opposing team’s secondary while Reggie Wayne is hoping to find a new pair of knees under the tree on Christmas morning.

For Cubs fans Christmas came early with the signing of free agent Jon Lester and for Lester’s kids, well there’s really no reason for them to make out a Christmas list now is there? But Cubs fans have been down this road before, they know it’s too soon to talk World Championship. This means they’ll just bide their time and wait for the wheels, or Lester’s arm, to fall off before their season crashes and burns up in a fiery, catastrophic and somewhat all too familiar, death.

Merry Christmas to you and yours and may God bless us everyone (even the Kentucky fans).

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams

BEWARE: Bad Basketball Ahead

First appeared on December 11, 2014 in
The Lebanon Reporter

So David stood lock kneed and jaw set, stones in hand. Goliath loomed over him as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the Philistines, menacing scowl, bloodthirsty eyes and a frame large enough for ten men. And surely, at some point, David was thinking, “There’s no way this is going to work out.”

From the stands fish and loaves vendors wandered a sea of beige tunics as spectators stopped complaining about seven dollar hot dogs long enough to snort, “A rock? Really? Who brings a rock to fight Goliath?”

If you know the mascot of the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Eastern Washington or North Florida then you should be pretending to be a sports columnist instead of me. And don’t worry, I’ve set the bar incredibly low so things should work out for you just fine. Of course what the NJIT Highlanders, North Florida Ospreys and Eastern Washington Eagles all have in common, other than the widespread publicity this column offers, is relative obscurity, entry level Division One status and the fact they’ve all beaten a Big Ten team this year.

The question isn’t how these schools can slay larger Division One programs, rather its why larger Division One programs continue playing these schools. Half of Indiana’s first ten opponents are so obscure and unknown their school names alone would challenge the most knowledgeable of U.S. geography buffs.

This in the name of 20 wins. And what does it really mean to win 20 games when half of them come against teams whose entire fan base could share the same Sprint Family Plan? Directional schools with names that appear to have been chosen by blindly dumping a Scrabble bag out and picking up the first four tiles to hit the table.

If college athletics is about television money, then someone needs to explain these tremendously weak out of conference schedules. Schedules that give us excruciating match ups that, excusing the random upset, generally spiral into glorified intra-squad scrimmages replete with terrible defense and a lifetimes worth of incomplete alley-oop passes. For their part the announcers do their best to spur viewer interest, digging up nuggets like the third cousin of the school’s first president was the man who sold John Wilkes Booth his fabled Philadelphia Deringer. Or they gush over the winning mentality the coach has instilled in his little program that could, this moments before the control room flashes his 143-287 record across the screen.

And don't rely on the coaches for they will only explain away their ridiculous schedules. They’re about exposure for former assistants or getting a player closer to home where they can play in front of friends and family. This comes as little consolation to fans. You know, the ones subjected to some really ugly games and truly bad basketball.

Justifying this scheduling is a fruitless endeavor. Some things are best left to discover on one’s own. For we adults this includes our faith and political persuasions, for three year olds it’s coming to the realization a toilet is in fact a germ magnet and not a giant empty bowl of Spaghettios or magic portal capable of producing Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny with each flush.

So NJIT stood toe to toe with mighty Michigan, just as David did so long ago. And while David’s victory would propel him to the throne, NJIT will most likely be forgotten before March arrives. What can’t be forgotten is the fact we as fans deserve more. We deserve a constitution of college basketball. One that guarantees equality amongst all schools and conferences, quality play and challenging match ups, or at the very least opponents we can find on a map.

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams

The Magic of Single A Football

First appeared on December 2, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

Like a caravan crossing the desert, they come. They come in droves from the far-flung regions of Indiana. Emerging from the dark corners where signs of a once prosperous past, empty dime store windows and faded billboards, are left shivering in the breeze. They come from the small towns, where long ago an affordable automobile left walls to crumble and businesses to fail.

They come from the plains where the winter winds sweep hard across fallow fields. They come from the hinterlands, where islands of grain bins rise above an ocean of brown and beige. They come with Carhartts and cowbells, arriving wide-eyed and ready for their chance to embrace history.

They are corn pickers and cow milkers and hog growers, the lifeblood of a state. And while their crops are in, the harvest of a lifetime awaits inside the walls of Lucas Oil Stadium. Their chance for history. Their chance to take a Single A Title back home.

The purpose and effects of class basketball will forever be hotly contested and roundly debated. Football is another story. Football, with its machismo, violent collisions and trench warfare commands regulation. Such is necessary to prevent injury and ensure a level playing field exists. One magical byproduct of this regulation is Single A football.

A state championship game in Single A is a hearty stew chocked full of dreams and memories. It's the exhilaration of reaching the end of the tournament mixed with everything Mark Zuckerberg set out to capture with Facebook. Its two hours of striking a balance between cheering on your team and catching up with old friends and family. It’s learning the worst kid in your class has since fathered a stud linebacker or the quietest girl is mother hen to a trash talking tackle.

And so they sit, two sides facing each other across the cavernous house that Peyton built. Like tiny grains of sugar, they cling to the rim of a mostly empty cereal bowl while young men cut and block and hammer away at each other for four quarters. Kids who’ve fought and bled for years to reach this point. A short lifetime spent dreaming of this one moment. And there it is. The blue turf, the horseshoe, their school’s name on the jumbotron. Their coaches howl and point from the sidelines, the crowd surges as a sweep develops before their eyes.

In the end someone must win and someone must lose. Champions are revered for their exclusivity. It’s a life lesson, taught on the biggest stage most involved will ever see. And as the clock expires and the teams are left forming a line to shake hands, the Single A families pick up their belongings and move on. Back to the hinterlands. Back to the empty storefronts.

They go knowing full well this is most likely the only chance they’ll ever have. For once, the stars fell into perfect alignment. And from this course of events came their one shining moment. A moment to be relived over and over again between church pews and along the counter at the Whistle Stop.

A moment created by a group of young men who in time will share it with young sons of their own; wild-eyed boys who throw themselves fearlessly at life, buoyed by their newfound hopes and dreams. Dreams of a far away moment arriving and with it a chance to carry the hopes of an entire community upon their shoulders.

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams