Father Christmas has been good to Hoosiers

First appeared on December 12, 2012
in The Lebanon Reporter

It’s that time again. Time to brave the crowds, embrace our hunter gatherer roots and fight the animal tendency in all of us to hammer our fellow man in the face, all in the name of making the Christmas dreams of our bright eyed children come true.

And knowing full well you won’t be the father of a four year old who can’t find Indiana on a map, you settle on the Melissa and Doug Wooden Puzzle of the United States. A must-have of every toy closet, stately cornstalks of gold mark Nebraska and there’s Florida with its proverbial giant round orange while a lone Saguaro cactus stands guard over Arizona.

Yes a marvel of modern Elf ingenuity indeed. But what’s this? Indiana has no race car or basketball? In their stead, crouched over the crossroads of America, is some strange creature that appears half whistle pig, half beaver.

This is what the national impression of Indiana has come to? An overgrown rat? Hoosiers have a better chance of seeing Sasquatch roaming their backyards than this Capybara-like creature. Melissa and Doug’s official statement is they chose a beaver for Indiana “due to all the parks.” Really? It’s insulting; to Indiana and beavers.
One can only hope that, in the last two months alone, Sports Illustrated has done more to remake Indiana’s image than anything Melissa and Doug could ever do to trash it. In that time the editors of SI have chosen the images of Indiana’s Cody Zeller, Notre Dame’s Football Team and the Colts’ Andrew Luck to move their magazine. This alone proves sports historians would be hard pressed to find a better time to be a Hoosier.

So what more do we have to do? Indiana hammers North Carolina and clearly has Kentucky’s John Calipari on the run (BTW John, you’re not fooling anyone, it’s not about capacity of arenas as much as it is your precious undefeated record at Rupp which you clearly understand Indiana will soil forever). Notre Dame runs the table and it still isn’t enough for national pundits to accept that maybe they’re just the best team in College Football. Meanwhile Andrew Luck has done nothing but prove his worth as the number one overall pick by making good decisions, throwing lasers and extending plays with his feet; all this while helping the surprising Colts sprint out to 9 wins.

Still in the national consciousness we remain sod-busting corn pickers who spend weekends ogling our cousins through the flickering television light. In one fell swoop Melissa and Doug has taken nearly 200 years of proud Hoosier tradition and reduced it to what appears to be a Grizzly Bear that’s had the gross misfortune of crossing paths with a Martian shrink ray.

So you bypass the puzzle and tuck a Tonka Truck tuck under your arm, sprinting towards the check-out line like OJ in a Hertz Commercial, leaping shopping carts and shoving pregnant mothers out of the way. And you do so because it’s the most wonderful time of the year and you’re a Hoosier; a gift you can never return. Hoosiers are proud of our deep fried Twinkies and lone Toll Road; even though it’s owned by a foreign country most can’t find on a map.

It will take more than a child’s puzzle and the worst artists’ rendering of a beaver since Grog first took to cave walls to ruin our holidays. For Hoosiers everywhere it’s time to celebrate who we are; and we do so knowing we have Indiana, Notre Dame and the Colts to speak for us. And speak they will.

© 2012 Eric Walker Williams

Weis or Rodriguez? Is the lesser of two evils really any better?

First appeared on September 16th, 2009
in The Lebanon Reporter

Willing and able football coach in his prime seeks BCS school looking for impressive resume. Must be willing to overlook mixed results. Qualifications include 14 years of coaching experience at the NFL level with four Super Bowl rings. References include two Hall of Fame coaches. Call the Notre Dame Athletic office and leave a message for Jose.
With his team’s loss to Michigan, Notre Dame Head Coach Charlie Weis (Tuna Jr.) may have sealed his fate; again. Saturday was more than a game. It was a moment in which the beleaguered coach sought to snatch his career from the jowls of termination. And just when it appeared his talented receivers and silky smooth quarterback with the west coast hair would pull through, there was Michigan’s Rich Rodriguez (Rich-Rod) bungling things in the same awkward and familiar way only Rich-Rod can.
Two once proud men. Both with hooks firmly in their mouths as their fan base and boosters reel them in. Both fighting for their coaching lives and reputations as 100,000 strong in the Brick House Saturday tried their best to do the loyal fan gig, but all along failing in masking their confusion. Most were surely unsure of what they wanted more- their own coach to fail so the fire-him-now drama would continue, or Weis to have another nail driven into his coffin.
I mean seriously, when your own players are complaining they’re working too hard, it goes a long way in saying Rich-Rod has problems of his own. And still, despite this, he somehow found a way to wriggle away from the hungry jaws of Tuna Jr. It’s no surprise really, we’ve seen Rich-Rod wriggle his way out of tight places before. It might actually do more to explain just how bad things have gotten for Weis. In the end it was Rich Rod who was able to snap his line and live to fight another week while Tuna Jr. appears to be one game closer to finding himself on the stringer.
Since Charlie Weis came to South Bend the phrase “the once proud program” has passed over the tongues of commentators and fans alike far more than “Luck of the Irish” or anything else the Golden Domers of old cling to. Whether you point to the most losses in a single season in Notre Dame history (9 in 2007), the billboard funded by former players heckling Weis or the two passes called late in the game against Michigan, slowly but surely the boosters and the University are beginning to find more and more line on their reels.
Who knows why these things happen. With only a handful of games each season and a postseason system so illogical it appears to have been organized by three chickens and a Black Headed Spider Monkey, college football can be brutal on coaches. Somewhere along the way Weis failed at endearing himself to the media (or winning enough games whichever works). He doesn’t say the right things and he doesn’t use the same tired catch phrases the press expects to hear regularly.
Weis doesn’t even attempt the painted smile; you know the same painted on smile every coach musters whether he’s won, lost or just had a house burn down. Most likely this is a byproduct of spending so much time with two of his mentors, Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells (the Tuna). For this, Weis may be one step closer to paying the ultimate price. The point is Weis is out of favor, he’s out of excuses and he’s one week closer to being out of both time and chances.