FCS FOOTBALL TOURNAMENT - I watched the second half of the Friday night Villanova home game versus William and Mary, won by the Cats. What caught my attention was the number of empty seats in the stadium. Entire sections were empty in a place that holds half as many as Delaware. The cliché is “we play for each other,” but when it comes to the collision and combat of playoff football, I want to hear some noise! The Montana State game versus Appalachian State won by Montana State with snow whipping through the mouth of Hells Gate Canyon was way more entertaining than the stodgy Army-Navy game. I always want to like the Army-Navy game but I never do. Remember the game at Veterans Stadium when a railing gave out and a bunch of cadets fell onto the field? Thankfully, the fall was from the bottom level, which was still 8 feet.
PARTY ALL THE TIME - Win a state championship with your high school home town crew, and the party never ends and the memories are always vivid and in color. Last Friday night, I looked around the new Cape gym while introducing the girls state championship team from 1973, and I wondered how many had an appreciation of community continuity. The number one fan of that team was the late Big Mike Hill, and the women wanted to make sure I mentioned his name.
WANT TO BE LEARNING DISABLED? - I was the head football coach in the early 1970s at a private school on the Philadelphia Main Line that was a combination college prep and special school with those students designated “special” for emotional disturbance. The school received $1,800 for each emotionally disturbed student, and I’m not touching that joke. Anyway it turns out you can make a case that any and all of us are emotionally disturbed and socially maladjusted, and if it were a tax deduction, we’d all check the box and then let the IRS prove otherwise. The tip of the iceberg lettuce of the latest college sports scandal is the number of blue chip athletes who are given special academic accommodations because they are learning disabled. There are so many exceptionalities that to claim one and have it proved false is not only impossible but seems cruel, like “Shut up, no way you’re dyslexic.” Money-making college sports programs like football and men’s basketball have sailed so far off course that the biggest game of the year is played in the admissions office.
TRANSPARENCY - There was an old joke: What do you call a white man on a bus with 50 black men? Coach! I watched the reaction of the Cincinnati football players – a diversified group – to the news their head coach Brian Kelly was leaving immediately for Notre Dame. Spin that any way you wish, but the players see it for what it is – selfish and conceited – an all-about-me move. The African-American players seemed especially angered. Kelly went so far as to thank his Bearcat players at the Notre Dame press conference for giving him the opportunity to live out his dream. If I were a Notre Dame player, I’d have walked out of the locker room. A coach sells loyalty, team and family to his players, then sells them out, and that is a hard life lesson learned. Transparency currently means everything out in the open, but it used to mean a person so phony you can see right through them. That’s how I see Brian Kelly.
SNIPPETS - Two young coaches brought two Lake Forest swim teams to McDonald’s last Thursday. Fortunately I was at the front of a line ordering for my fit granddaughters a special treat because if I ate a double cheeseburger it would sit in my stomach like a ball of Crisco. I have done my share of stopping at McDonald’s with sports teams, and back in the glory days of Cape sports, I was able to hand each kid $4 for a meal allowance. I’d go in, walk to the register and some teenage girl would ask, “Are you the bus driver?”
“Why I gotta be the bus driver?” I would counter.
“Bus drivers eat for free.”
“Well then, call me Double-clutch, and hook me up!”
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Sports Editor Emeritus
Email Fredman at fredman@capegazette.com
