Johnny Football and the Case of the Missing Paycheck

First appeared on September 13, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

So Johnny Football put his Johnny Hancock on a few footballs and a stray mini-helmet or two and the world loses its mind. Meanwhile Syria continues to eat itself from the top down and Senator Dianne Feinstein goes on television to talk about intervention vowing to vote against her constituents because “quite simply, they don’t know what I know”. What a wonderful world indeed.

Though the same can’t be said for Senators, it used to be Heisman Trophy winners conducted themselves with class. They’d score their parents a luxury apartment on a “friend of the programs” dime and arrive at award shows via limousine, or in other cases flush a Hollywood career down the toilet after being accused of killing their ex-wife.

So Johnny Football sells some autographs, gets booted from a summer camp and does the same thing 97% of college students do with regularity anyway and suddenly he’s public enemy number two behind Bashar al-Assad. If History’s any guide, we should cut the kid some slack. After all, those who’ve come before haven’t exactly been ripped from a Rockwell painting.

For many years the argument for paying college athletes has welled up like a great reservoir of greed, equality, compassion, righteousness and justice (the last two we recognize as distant possibilities) behind a dam that is the NCAA. And here comes Johnny Football, full head of steam, shoulder lowered, charging towards an already much assaulted, aging and crumbling dam.
And what should be a dislocated shoulder becomes instead an earth-shaking moment as, with the power of ESPN and the rest of the college football media behind him, young Johnny hits the dam with all the force of a Ram Pick Up.

So as the torrents rage from behind the dam, we pause on our long journey down the road towards equality to take a long look in the mirror. Is this about making things right with college athletes or making things right with ourselves? We know full well college athletics are dirty and there’s obviously little the NCAA can do about it. This means, in order for us to keep cheering our favorite teams on in good conscience, we’re suddenly fine with athletes being paid.

When everything’s “over the table” we somehow feel as if we still hold some control over the six headed monster we refuse to believe busted its chains and left the reservation a long time ago. Putting everything “over the table” supposedly eliminates “friends of the program “and those greedy ambulance chasers lurking in the shadows. It levels the playing field and makes the SEC an actual entity of the NCAA instead of Minor League Football.

Putting everything “over the table” makes college athletics the Frankenstein to our Gene Wilder. And we stand alongside beaming with pride at how we’ve tamed this gruesome beast using a crude brain transplant machine, a hunchbacked assistant and a fortuitous bolt of lightning. The audience claps and cheers with happy amazement until the stage lights begin exploding and Dr. Frank-un-schteen loses complete control of his great experiment.

As with most things in the real world there are no simple answers. Simple answers exist only on The Brady Bunch or in Third Grade. The NCAA will react in the way we’ve become so accustomed to seeing the NCAA react as the problem continues to grow uglier and faster than a malignant tumor. One thing’s for sure, we don’t have to worry about Washington mucking this deal up anytime soon. It appears they’re far too busy tossing the old political football around out on the Mall to worry about little Johnny Football.

© 2013 Eric Walker Williams

Andrew Luck: This is Your Life

First appeared on August 30th, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

Dear Annoying Person whose life is so important you don’t have time to push your shopping cart to the corral and choose instead to abandon it in the empty parking spot one good stiff breeze away from my previously unscratched door, you annoy me. You remain the only effective argument for tougher gun laws and something tells me if your life was really so important that you couldn’t spare thirty seconds to push your cart an extra twenty feet, you probably wouldn’t have been in the Kroger parking lot to begin with.

If I had to guess, the brain trust at ESPN is comprised of highly decorated scholars in well pressed suits who can quote to the line the current value of their stock options. Men who rake in obscene amounts of money and wear crooked smirks that squeal “We control half the media world”. Still as polished and accomplished as these men are, at the end of the day, they remain the same ones who leave their cart unattended next to your car in the Kroger parking lot.

ESPN thinks if they beat you over the head with something long enough (A ROD, Brett Favre, Johnny Football) you will eventually come around to caring about it. They cater to the sensationalized and stories relevant to major television markets. For years the Colts dominated the NFL regular season and yet were rarely the lead story on SportsCenter.

Peyton Manning shredded defenses and shattered records as the little franchise that could went on to win double figure games in 12 out of 14 years. Meanwhile the talking heads in Bristol yawned. Manning tosses nine touchdowns (including one to himself) in a 35 point come from behind win and SportsCenter grants it token coverage before inundating us with updates about Tom Brady’s hangnail or the bad plate of sushi he had in New York.

I suppose this milk has long since spoiled and the proper thing to do is tell Andrew Luck that no matter what he does, as long as Robert Griffin the III is upright and able to strap a helmet on, the backseat is a place young Andrew should learn his way around.
Welcome to your life Andrew Luck. You take a 2 win team to the playoffs, throw for more touchdowns and a thousand more yards than the NFL Rookie of the Year and ESPN responds by spending millions on the production of “RG3: The Will to Win” and promotes it relentlessly. It didn’t matter the Colts won more games despite a strength of schedule that ranked them ten places higher than Washington last year, ESPN’s response is to say the Colts are overrated and will take a major step backward this season.

Don’t let ESPN’s fear of covering Midwestern teams scare you young Andrew, there are plenty of hayseeds left out here in the sticks willing to climb down off our horses long enough to pat you on the back and tell you what a great job you’re doing. Take your big city money and go buy yourself a nice log cabin near Lucas Oil Stadium (I’ve got a cousin willing to clear the land if you need it).

The first lesson of playing professional sports in the Midwest is understanding the spotlight of the big media will only reach you when every team east of the Appalachians has closed its doors or global warming has become a reality and flooded the eastern seaboard. Meanwhile get to know the people who leave their carts unattended for one day they shall inherit the Earth from the ESPN brass.

© 2013 Eric Walker Williams

ESPN is Wrecking College Basketball

First appeared on February 6th, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

What is it about ESPN that makes them so loathsome yet completely irresistible simultaneously? From steroids in baseball to Favre and Tebow, ESPN truly is the only great, relatively inexpensive and 100% absolutely legal, mind-altering drug of our generation.

I’ll be the first to admit I once had a problem. My life revolved around SportsCenter. Days weren’t complete without it. When my cable was out for a week I became irritable and lashed out at others, going so far as to dress my dog in a Sanchez jersey screaming “You’re no Tebow!” at him. But I’ve since moved on, after discovering a whole new world outside watching sports highlights on television exists and also after it became clear ESPN panders to a demographic that sees me as old and creepy.

And so it’s only now, with the clairvoyant perspective one can only have from looking in from the outside, that things are clear. ESPN brings College Game Day to Bloomington and the masses turn out to holler and carry on as if ours is some great dark corner of the world where nothing of note happens and nobody matters. And in these moments, with the white hot spotlight upon them, the talking heads are contractually obligated to fill air time and generate tweet-worthy commentary.

It should be enough to say Victor Oladipo is a really good college basketball player. One who’s built himself from an unknown recruit to one of the best in college. Instead they’re compelled to predict all that could go wrong, as if a nine dollar snowglobe from the ESPN.com gift shop were a functioning crystal ball.
Different players wearing the same tired labels. He’s too short, he’s not the prototypical NBA guard, he doesn’t have the range you need on the next level and he’s too nice so there’s no way he’ll ever shoot up a night club or openly complain about having to practice.

Cody Zeller’s draft stock rises and falls on a near hourly basis as if being driven by the gravity of the moon. Yes Zeller was the single largest reason Indiana, and Tom Crean, turned things around. In fact, in going from 6 wins to the top ranked team in the country, we haven’t seen a resurrection like this since Betty White turned up at halftime of the Super Bowl. But he’s not going to be the next Tim Duncan and if you think this perhaps you should take all the money you have and bury it in the backyard right now.

It should be enough for Zeller that he helped Indiana return to glory. Mr. Basketball, High School State Champion, Trester Award winner. What else do we need him to do? Find a cure for cancer on his way to the basket? Leave the kid alone. Let him be a college sophomore. Celebrate him for who he is and not who he may or may not be someday.

It’s become simply exhausting, and hokey. Forsaking innovative programming, ESPN has instead become list happy, ranking everything from pregame meals to anti-inflammatory creams. Could it be that every player or coach they cover is the best at something? “He has to be the most talented left handed sixth man not born in the United States playing in college basketball today”.

Rank what they may and label what they will, ESPN and their millions still can’t fabricate moments like Christian Watford’s shot over Kentucky. The allure of these lies in the reaction, not the tease. So let your cameras roll ESPN for we want to witness all the nouns we wouldn’t normally. In the meantime live by the mantra “produce more, pontificate less”.

© 2013 Eric Walker Williams

Pacers must find a way to turn down the Heat

First appeared on May 15th, 2012
in The Lebanon Reporter

OK so Sunday didn’t turn out to be the bloodbath so many had predicted. And though the Heat are one step closer to proving Jon Barry’s theory of a sure-fire Miami sweep correct, what remains to be seen is not the outcome of the series but rather how the Pacers will respond. Compounding matters for fans of the Blue and Gold, it would seem Miami took Indiana’s best punch in the first half Sunday and rallied to win with a dominating Fourth Quarter.

Of course the experts love for the Heat is nothing new. I’m sure had ESPN covered the Germans during World War II or filmed a 30 for 30 on Napoleon, they would have given the Russian’s no shot as well. The trouble of course is the magic of the upset lies in the fact nobody sees it coming. Who knew Stalingrad would become a Hornets nest capable of crippling Hitler’s Eastern advance? Or that Napoleon would taste defeat for the first time at the hands of an army perhaps made most famous by their propensity for retreat?

And really, who can fault those in the full-time-not-pretend media? The truth is the predictability of the NBA is tiresome. Of course the quintessentially obstinate American in all of us would say this is simply all the more reason for Indiana to take Miami down.

Let us not forget the Heat are the epitome of everything that is wrong with professional basketball. In a league completely driven by Superstars and propped up by those who gaze at them in captivated wonderment, Miami has three of them. Three talented men who should be filling seats on their own in smaller markets. Three men who came together and used the magic powers of artificial smoke and strobe lights to morph into the “Big Three”; a trio of superheroes joining forces to do something they clearly felt incapable of doing alone.

Meanwhile with no true Superstar, Indiana is the Yin to Miami’s Yang. They have no cult following. They are not paparazzi worthy. Heck, the only time Banker’s Life ever saw a smoke machine was when House of Hair came to town. On paper the match-up doesn’t have the magnetism of Ali-Frazier, but the fact remains there are no guarantees in life (see Lugar, Richard).

So while David Stern busies himself ensuring that those elves in his workshop busy engraving the Larry O’Brien Trophy realize the ‘b’ in LeBron is in fact capitalized, the Pacers need to set their jaw, clench their fists and get ready to take their best shot at Miami; again. Only this time hit harder, hit smarter and don’t let them get up when you have them down.

And after a 95-86 loss Sunday, Indiana remains at a crossroads. In a Pacer blue convertible the dapper Frank Vogel is slumped at the wheel while in the passenger seat alongside Larry gnaws at a thumbnail with Boomer’s overinflated head looking on from the backseat he’s sharing with that one guy with the hardhat, flip signs and pink flamingo.

They can forge ahead, take their medicine and lay down as Miami rolls on to the Eastern Conference Finals, or they can put their turn signal on and take the NBA for an unexpected ride. Tuesday night the basketball world will wait breathlessly to see if Indiana fights back, if Vogel follows his league-issued Garmin, or will we hear the presumptuous voice of David Stern choking out “RECALCULATING!!” as the Pacers try to derail the only sure thing the NBA has had since the Zenmaster traded his clipboard for a fly rod.

© 2012 Eric Walker Williams

What does Football on Hardwood, Al Gore, old Chevy Impala's and the Cold War have in common?

First appeared on December 1st, 2009
in The Lebanon Reporter

Well it’s that time of the year again; the proverbial “Most wonderful time of the year”. For Big Ten fans however, the ACC/Big Ten challenge has not been a wonderful time for anything. For far too long, or since its inception whichever you please, the Challenge has ended with the Big Ten finding itself in a familiar spot; safely strapped to the ACC’s whipping post.
There is a saying in Slavic cultures about whipping posts which goes “Nothin’ seems to change, bad times stay the same”, or maybe that was the Allman Brothers, either way for 11 years the numbers don’t lie. The ACC has been dominant winning all 10 challenges with an overall advantage of 62-35.
In years past one got the feeling the Big Ten had about as much chance of winning the Challenge as that of an Aztec prisoner escaping a ritual sacrifice. And for those of you who didn’t major in World History, that chance would be zero. The only thing more amazing than the ACC’s dominance in the Challenge is the fact that ESPN continues to pay for the rights to broadcast it.
The Big Ten’s inability to win the Challenge has been a harbinger of their performance on the national stage as well. For the last 20 years, rare has been the number one seed or Final Four. In fact since 1989 the Big Ten has notched only 2 National Champions while the ACC has seen 7 teams cut the nets down.
But this year is different. This year there is something in the air. Al Gore would tell you it is too much hair spray or the exhaust of a ’78 Chevrolet Impala, but I believe it to be the winds of change. This year the Big Ten seems to once again resemble the power basketball conference it once was.
To be clear, this is the year the Big Ten will finally win the challenge for the first time. Write it down, fold it up and send it in, there is no way the Big Ten loses for an eleventh time (at least not this year).
Currently the Big Ten boasts 5 ranked teams with 2 in the Top 10. Conversely the ACC has 3 ranked with only 1 being a Top 10 squad. While a few of the match ups may appear to be one-sided (see Maryland vs. Indiana), Sparty (the only Big Ten team with a winning record in the Challenge) facing UNC on the road and Illinois going to Clemson’s Littlejohn Coliseum are just two games that should prove extremely interesting.
Purdue’s “football on the hardwood” should be enough to manhandle Wake Forest while both Penn State and Northwestern have opportunities to open some eyes with tough road wins.
In a week where we should be discussing which undefeated college football team will wind up where, the BCS has once again reminded us that hers is a system born of that rare combination of indecision and incompetence. With this in mind, the Big Ten/ACC challenge moves to the forefront of our attention. So roll the balls out and let’s go.
For three days Purdue fans root for IU and Buckeyes cheer for the Maize and Gold. For three days the Big Ten is the United States and the ACC is the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. It’s corn-fed beef and combines versus shellfish and sailboats, the black and blue bang’em up style of the Big Ten versus the wide open play of the ACC. On second thought, maybe this is the most wonderful time of the year.