Fare Thee well Yogi

First appeared on March 29, 2016
in The Lebanon Reporter

This is the time of the year when people turn to sportswriters, be they real or pretend, to explain the madness surrounding them. By law, sportswriters possess an aura of all-knowingness. One granted by beings beyond this world, which only serves to make the power all the more dangerous, all the more mystical and pretty much unavailable on HSN.

It is a power that enables sportswriters to not only make sense of the madness, but also refuse to acknowledge when they’re clearly wrong. The good news is, supernatural powers like these come in real handy when Carol from accounting asks why the sportswriters bracket finished last in the office pool.

If you’re like me, you took the hard earned money your children were counting on, whether for immediate sustenance or future college tuition, and let it ride on your ability to see into the future. The madness arrived and suddenly it became wholly unclear why you made the choices you did. You’re left a confused mess, boomeranging to the day your second grade teacher failed at explaining why we have a seven-tee and a six-tee, but for whatever reason there is no five-tee.

These belong to the unexplained. Dark strands of mystery woven together by careful hands, forming the imperfect fabric of life. Things like why North Carolina doubled their three-pointers made against Indiana, why a large coke at Steak and Shake is the same size as a medium at McDonald's or why your father chose to walk around the house in his underwear after eleven o'clock.

And so you stand in the midst of destruction. Your flaming bracket, your cackling co-workers, your wife bellyaching your five-dollar investment in the office pool belies a potential gambling problem. And, of course, your children, who herd around the foot of your recliner like piglets at an empty trough, staring at you, their innocent eyes watering, impatient tummies grumbling.

March is when the great ones separate themselves. And while a fifteen-point loss in the Sweet Sixteen may not be the way Yogi Ferrell wanted to close his career as an Indiana Hoosier, such is the madness of March. Ferrell came in a highly touted freshman. Four years later, he leaves a truly rare species. He was both diminutive and powerful, a jitterbug with range. He wanted to rock u to sleep, he wanted to rip your heart out with the step back or orchestrate another thundering flush. He wanted to prove little guys still belonged, but above all else he wanted to win.
Ferrell finishes as one of only five Hoosiers to score over 1,000 career points, grab 300 rebounds and dish out at least 400 assists. He is the school’s all time leader in assists and stands sixth in scoring. But what makes Yogi so rare is not his rabid productivity, rather it’s the fact he was this productive and still chose to stay four years.

The one-and-done culture in which we exist is the reason for the death of really good college basketball. It's also the reason Calbert Cheaney’s record as the Big Ten’s all time leading scorer has stood unchallenged for almost 25 years. Decisions like Ferrell’s are one factor in the only equation complex enough to explain March Madness; I’d walk you through it here, but math is a lot like witchcraft and witchcraft creeps me out.
In the end, all we can say is thank you. Thank you, Yogi. Thanks for staying another year. Thanks for a lifetime of memories. Thanks for playing your guts out every single minute and, above all, thanks for being a Hoosier.

© 2016 Eric Walker Williams