ROOTS

 

               I always knew I’d go to college because my parents (who hadn’t gone) made it clear I would, but like many in my era (I recall) never gave much thought to where. When looming high school graduation (class of ’55) made a choice necessary I sent out two applications—to Northwestern University and the University of Illinois. Northwestern didn’t accept me and Illinois did, so off to Champaign I went. The rest, as they say, is history.

               I can’t say that NU’s rejection was unexpected-- my high-school record wasn’t sterling. Nor can I claim it bothered me much. But being a normal, petty person it didn’t endear me to the leafy campus on Lake Michigan just north of Chicago, and for many years I got even by rooting against the school’s athletic teams.

That posture became a bit harder to maintain beginning in 1975, when an adult I and my family moved into a big old house on Pioneer Road in Evanston, Illinois, an easy, six-block walk from Northwestern’s Dyche Stadium football home. The Mildcats (er, Wildcats) were not a big draw then so tickets were cheap and on many an autumn Saturday afternoon I’d take my kids to a game. I’d watch the action and they’d frolic in the south-end-zone bleachers, which always were nearly empty. Walking home amid the smell of burning leaves is a fond memory of that time.

Some of wife Susie and my friends during our tenure in Evanston were NU faculty people. They included Bruce Corrie, the school’s athletics director for a time, and his lovely wife Jane. We’re still in touch even though we’ve moved apart geographically. By osmosis, my enmity toward NU athletics changed to benevolent neutrality, and so it remains.

That lengthy intro is meant to explain what is to follow, a “good news” take on a subject I’m rarely not down on. That would be big-time college sports and the swamp that surrounds it. A few weeks ago Northwestern announced that it had signed a 10-year contract extension with football head coach Pat Fitzgerald. Such pacts usually elicit shrugs because successful college coaches rarely let a few pieces of paper keep them from bounding upward, but based on Fitzgerald’s biography I’m betting on this one to stick. 

Fitzgerald got to be NU’s headman in 2006 by accident—the sudden death in July of that year of his predecessor, Randy Walker. The appointment surprised many people, probably including him; he was the team’s linebackers coach at the time and, at age 31, five years younger than any other top-division collegiate head football coach.

 Before he took the job the Wildcats mostly had been joke-level bad, with just five winning seasons in the previous 40. From 1976 through 1981 their win-loss-tie record was 3-62-1. A high-toned private institution with just 8,000 or so undergrads in a conference of state-school behemoths, their Big Ten status often was questioned, the mid-major Mid-American Conference seemingly a more-appropriate roost.

Fitzgerald, though, knew what he was getting into. Chicago born and raised, and an ex-NU linebacker and grad, he’d been a three-year assistant coach at the school and its recruiting chief. After an obligatory first-year losing record he’s been plus-.500 nine times, is 106-81 overall and has taken teams to 10 bowl games. That wouldn’t cut it at Ohio State but it’s dreamy good at NU.

About here sportswriters usually opine that Northwestern’s high academic standards mean it can’t recruit with the big fellas, but I won’t say that. Stanford and Duke have standards at least as high and regularly field first-rate football or basketball teams. The collegiate big-timers all recruit from the same talent pool and it was my observation that the biggest difference between the Stanfords and the Ohio States is that the gap between the jocks and the rest of the student body is wider at the formers than at the latters.  Still, people who grade such things say Fitzgerald’s teams outperform their recruiting rankings, so the guy must be a good judge of talent and know his X’s and O’s.

What is unquestioned is his loyalty to his school and the example it creates.  He’s called his position his “dream job” and one can only believe him. He’s reportedly turned down offers from other colleges and the pros, and while his annual salary of $3.3 million ain’t hay it’s less than he could get elsewhere. His roots to Sweet Home Evanston are thick and deep.

Northwestern’s example well might be followed by the U. of Illinois, my school. It has floundered in football’s slough of despond throughout this still-young century and now is on its sixth head coach in that span. Each of that number had good credentials but none had much connection to the institution going in. No matter what they may have said, for them the UI job was a gig, another step in a typically winding career.

In college football them that has gets, so breaking into the title-contending group of any “Power Five” conference requires extraordinary oomph.  Roots seem to be one engine for that. Wisconsin has escaped the mire via a coaching tree started by Barry Alvarez (1990-05). At Iowa the key has been Kirk Ferentz, a nine-year assistant at the school before he got the top job in 1999. Indiana had one of the Big Ten’s saddest football histories before Tom Allen turned things around in 2019. He’s an Indiana native, former state high-school coach and an ex-assistant at the school.

Tom Lasorda, the longtime L.A. Dodgers’ coach, manager and executive, used to talk about “bleeding Dodger blue.” Blood also comes in collegiate colors. 

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               I turn 83 tomorrow but still have more questions than answers. Here are some of them:

--How did it figure that Cox told me my bill would go up if I dropped one of my two telephone “land lines”?  It was something about “bundling” but I didn’t stick around for the whole explanation.

               --When the traffic light turns green and the guy in front of you doesn’t move, isn’t there about a 90% chance he’s texting?

               --What’s the chance there will be a computer snafu when you try to order something online, and that it won’t be correctable? 20%? 30%? 50%?

               --Shouldn’t the college-basketball cliché “one-and-done” be changed to “none and done”? Most jocks who use it drop out during second semester and don’t complete a year of schooling.

               --Why does unplugging and replugging your computer eliminate bugs?  Other appliances don’t respond to that.

               --Were “smart phones” designed to make users (some, anyway) feel dumb?

               --COVID-19 thought: Parkinson’s Law has it that work expands to fill the time allotted to it, but doesn’t that also apply to idleness?

               -- Why was it that, for the same home-repair job, we got bids of $8,600, $22,400 and $27,000?

               -- Why was I not surprised that the same politicians who rolled back anti­-pollution laws were the quickest to advocate reopening businesses in the face of the virus? Human sacrifice didn’t end with the Aztecs.

               --Is there any modern plague more difficult to shake than identity theft (besides the virus, of course)? Once the scammers have even a little bit of your data they never let go.               

               --Doesn’t it give you a warm feeling when a company calls its employees “team members” or “associates”?

               --How do our appliances know to wait until 5 p.m. on a Friday before breaking down?

               --Doesn’t high-definition television highlight how many people have really bad skin?

               --Aren’t all social movements demanding “justice” doomed to failure? Human disputes rarely work out to the complete satisfaction of anyone.

               --Does anything taste better after dinner than a Frango mint?

               --Why are backyard seed receptacles called “bird feeders” instead of “squirrel feeders”?

               --Did you know you can take a comfortably warm shower around Phoenix in the summer without turning on the hot water?

               --Is there a bigger bargain than the $29 I paid for a year’s online subscription to the Washington Post? Or was it $39? Either way.

               --Why do people bother to wear face masks if they walk around with their noses sticking out?

               --Is there anything tastier than Dungeness crab? Besides stone crab, I mean.

               --What have things come to when a husband (me) can tell his wife (Susie) “cute mask”?

               --I know you hate to admit it, but aren’t some of those Progressive Insurance ads clever?

               --Isn’t one of the (few) good things about the covid siege that people usually are at home when you phone them?

               --Won’t a return to “normal” depend as much on finding effective treatments for severe virus-caused illnesses as on the vaccines?  Continuing mutations will make immunity illusory, just like with the “regular” flu.

 --Is there a recorded-phone-message menu that doesn’t announce it recently has changed?

               --When did “reticent” become a synonym for “reluctant”?

               --Doesn’t accenting the first syllable instead of the second in the word “insurance” constitute a setback for the language?

               -- How can anyone believe there was guiding intelligence behind the mob that vandalized the Capitol? Most of those bozos weren’t smart enough to cover their faces.

               --Has there ever been a better made-for-TV miniseries than “Lonesome Dove,” which first was aired 31 years ago?

               --Why is it that I talk to my kids more than ever these days but still miss them more?

               Just askin’.

PASS THE SPINACH

 

               As any parent knows, give a child a choice between spinach and ice cream and he or she will pick the ice cream. That choice isn’t restricted to kids, of course, nor is it limited to young children, and in the older group it usually doesn’t stem from any lack of information. Just about everybody’s mom makes the point that spinach is the wiser option long run or short, and she has a popular cartoon figure to back her up. Still, in the long run we’re all dead and, meantime, we might as well have as much fun as we can.

               The purpose of that little observation is the change that’s about to happen to big-time college sports. After years of defensiveness and internal hand wringing the NCAA is about to relent and allow college athletes to be paid for the commercial use of their names, images or likenesses. Although action on the matter was delayed this week, it should happen this year and maybe by this fall, in time for the new football season.

               The move will be widely cheered, especially by the “just pay ‘em” crowd that believes that putting a few more dollars in the pockets of some (not all) college athletes will cure most of what ails college sports. That would register on the ice-cream side of the proposition above, an easy fix that won’t change much of anything. At the same time, it won’t include and possibly could set back more worthwhile changes that would register in the spinach category. These relate to putting more college into the college-sports mix and protect the bodies as well as the futures of the young men and women who make up the particularly American institution.

               This is not to say that the change is a bad one. College sports may have begun as healthful outlets for students’ energies but on the big-time level they’ve morphed into a multi-billion-dollar behemoth that has twisted out of shape their sponsoring institutions. The notion that this beast is supported by a work force that has few of the protections of the lowliest civilian employee has, finally, become more than the courts or general public would swallow.  Allowing some athletes to cash in on their fame amounts to simple justice by any measure, when all around them have been doing that for decades.

               To call college jocks unpaid isn’t true, however. Their scholarships have value, both in immediate and long-range terms.  The dollar value of a “free ride” of tuition, books and room and board is substantial, ranging from about $30,000 a year for in-state students at state schools like Ohio State University and the University of Alabama to more than $75,000 a year at private schools such as Duke and Northwestern. Furthermore, since 2015 scholarship athletes have been given cash “cost of attendance” stipends of between $2,000 and $6,000 a year to cover such things as travel from home, local transportation and school supplies their awards don’t provide. Added up, it’s a tidy haul for what amounts to semi-skilled labor.

               Long term, the rewards of a degree from a four-year institution are much greater, by various estimates amounting to something approaching $2 million over a 40-year work life compared with people with only high-school diplomas. And that’s in addition to the broader cultural horizons higher education permits.

               The rub is that participation in a top-level college football or basketball program makes it difficult to get the education the scholarships promise. Counting games, travel, practices and conditioning, it amounts to a full-time job, made all the tougher because many scholarship athletes are marginal students who gained admission on the basis of jock cred. Once on campus, they’re steered to low-content courses by “academic advisors,” and assigned “tutors” who carry them through academe. The kids often contribute to their own exploitation by going along with the program, but their youth is a defense. At age 18 or 19 (or higher), I would have picked shooting baskets (ice cream) over reading some boring textbook (spinach). Wouldn’t you have?

To the above duties the new rules would add commercial responsibilities but, in fact, relatively few would have them. Athletes’ endorsement income is widely overestimated at the pro level and figures to be spread more thinly at the collegiate; young superstars such as Zion Williamson or Trevor Lawrence might have been able to earn serious money as undergrads, but a backup offensive lineman at, say, Purdue wouldn’t cash in similarly. I’d guess that most endorsement money would come from the likes of a booster who might book a few players for an autograph session at his car dealership. The NCAA’s proposed rules would prohibit extra-income offers as recruiting lures, but that is to laugh.

The rules would ban endorsements of products that would conflict with school contracts (read that shoes and apparel) and prohibit kids from using school logos or emblems in their ads or appearances. They could hire agents but only to handle outside-income opportunities. The changes would cost member schools nothing.

It’s not a given that the schools will get their way on all of that. A half-dozen states, including California and Florida¸ have passed laws opening outside-income doors to college jocks, and such bills are pending in a couple-dozen more. The NCAA used to regard with horror Federal legislation touching on its affairs but now it’s pleading for it, if only to keep from having to cope with lots of different state laws.  

Maybe it should watch what it wishes for. A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate by several Democrats including Cory Booker, who played football at Stanford, touches on not only outside income but many other matters. Among other things it would guarantee athletic scholarships to graduation, extend athlete medical insurance past attendance, require independent team trainers and doctors, remove academic advisors and tutors from athletics-department control and set up a commission (not the NCAA) to oversee it all.

 Chances are it won’t pass—it makes too much sense—but it’s good to get such ideas into circulation. Maybe some day.

              

              

              

                

              

                

ON DECK

 

               In sports sometimes the important thing isn’t what you do but when you do it. A case in point is the sportswriters’ election for the Baseball Hall of Fame’s class of 2021 now in progress, with the results to be announced later this month.

               Eleven new names are on the ballot and none of them appears likely to come near the 75% approval that brings a plaque in the Cooperstown, New York, shrine. That will increase the chances of success of the 14 holdovers from previous rounds. All those gentlemen have been retired from the game for six years or more, meaning that the objective reasons for their so-far exclusion (their stats) haven’t changed, and never will.  But it’s a beauty contest in which candidates are judged in relation to one another as much as to any set standards, so a fella who wasn’t pretty enough one year might be quite appealing the next.

               This year’s roll stands in sharp contrast to those of the previous seven years, in each of which a first-ballot candidate was elected. Indeed, in 2015 three players made it in that manner (Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz) and in 2014 three also did (Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas). Electors can include up to 10 names on their ballots, so each one selected takes a place another might occupy.

               Of the 2021 newcomers (listed below) only two would merit my approval were I voting. One is the left-handed pitcher Mark Buehrle who in 16 seasons, mostly with the Chicago White Sox, compiled a 216-160 won lost record, pitched a perfect game and another no-hitter and earned a World Series ring (in 2005). He was a canny guy who got along on guile and was personal favorite of mine because of his catch-the-ball, throw-the-ball approach to pitching. When he took the mound a two-hour game was in prospect.

 The other is Torii Hunter, a swift outfielder who hit safely 2,452 times and accumulated nine Golden Gloves in a 19-season career with several American League teams. He also won the 2009 Branch Rickey Award for outstanding community service, something that might not count with some but should. Neither he nor Buehrle, though, dominated the game in the manner of, say, Randy Johnson or last year’s honoree Derek Jeter, and both will fall well short of election this time.

The primary beneficiary of the weak ballot-newcomer list should be the pitcher Curt Schilling. He had a 216-146 won-lost mark over 20 seasons, similar to Buehrle’s, but his 3,116 regular-season strikeouts were more impressive, ranking 15^th all-time. Further, he was a playoffs ace extraordinaire, posting a 11-2 record postseason and earning two World Series rings, with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001 and the Boston Red Sox in 2004.

Schilling’s main problem in his eight seasons of Hall eligibility has been that he’s anything but curt in his off-field utterances, which have made him a regular on right-wing talk radio.  One particularly off-putting remark—an assertion that transsexual individuals lurk in public rest rooms to molest women and children—costs him a job as a baseball analyst on ESPN.

Schilling has bad-mouthed his Hall chances, saying “the writers hate my politics,” but that didn’t keep him from polling a 70% vote last year, and no one who has come that close with time remaining hasn’t gotten over the hump the next time. I don’t agree with his politics but I voted for him three times when I could, in 2013, ’14 and ’15. His Cooperstown acceptance speech should boost the ceremony’s TV ratings.

More interesting should be the votes for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, towering figures in the sport who have been deeply tainted by suspicions of steroid use during their careers, a sin against the game. All-time home-run leader Bonds and 354-win-pitcher Clemens, also in their ninth years of eligibility, have run as a sort of entry in Hall elections since they joined the sportswriters’ ballot in 2013, a year in which Bonds got 36.2% of the vote and Clemens 37.6%. Not much more than 1% has separated them since as they climbed to 60.7% last year (Bonds) and 61% (Clemens).

It’s still quite a leap from those totals to the magic 75%, and both men have but two more years to go before they’re dropped from the writers’ ballot. After that their cases will be in the hands of one of the old-timers’ committees that offer a side door to the Hall. Their acceptance or lack thereof is an annual referendum on how steroid use is regarded by the press-box denizens. Not this year is my guess. Not next year either, I hope.

The next-highest vote getter last year, at 52.6%, was Omar Vizquel, the web-magician shortstop. He figured to get a good bump up this time but recent domestic-violence allegations by his estranged wife probably nixed that.

Virus permitting, there will be an induction celebration in July even if no one is named when the votes are announced later this month. Last year’s class (Jeter, Larry Walker, Ted Simmons and the late players’ union head Marvin Miller) has one coming because their honors were postponed.  Come to think of it, we have one coming, too.

First-year eligibiles this year besides Buehrle and Hunter are Tim Hudson, Dan Haren, Barry Zito, Aramis Ramirez, Shane Victorino, H. J. Burnett, Nick Swisher, LaTroy Hawkins and Michael Cuddyer.

 

UNBEARABLE

 

               Once upon a time, in 1948, the Chicago Bears, my team, had quarterbacks named Luckman, Lujack and Layne. The most accomplished was the estimable Sid Luckman, who’d led the team to four National Football League championships in the decade, but Papa Bear, George Halas, knew that Luckman’s footballing days were numbered, so he looked to rookies Johnny Lujack and Bobby Layne to succeed him.

Lujack was a Heisman Trophy winner who’d gone to Notre Dame, which had (has) a big Windy City following. He was a handsome young man who threw a tight spiral. Layne threw wobbly passes and liked to stay out late partying. At the season’s end, Lujack got the nod and Layne was traded away.

At first the judgement seemed correct. Lujack took over as the team’s starter in 1949 and had the job all to himself after Luckman retired in 1950, playing well that year and the next. Then he quit to coach and, soon afterward, join his father-in-law’s Chevy dealership in Davenport, Iowa. Layne liked football just fine, winning three titles with the Detroit Lions and having a 16-season, Hall of Fame career.

That little recitation came to mind last week when the online Chicago Tribune ran a photo-gallery display of the Bears’ quarterbacks since 1950. Sixty six men were pictured along with a paragraph naming 15 more whose photos weren’t available.  It was a sad display because the team hasn’t had an outstanding quarterback—or a truly first-rate passing game-- since Ol’ Sid’s day. That’s 70 years if you’re scoring, a period in which the erstwhile Monsters of the Midway have won exactly two NFL titles, in 1963 and ‘85. If it weren’t for Chicago’s baseball reps, the Cubs and White Sox, it’s a record of ineptitude that would attract more notoriety than it has.

               Making the wound more painful is that the Bears’ QB failings stand in sharp contrast to the record of their archrival, the Green Bay Packers. There three stellar quarterbacks-- Bart Starr, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers—shined at the position while the Bears’ revolving door whirled, bringing glory to the self-but-appropriately-named Titletown.  Rodgers still is going strong at age 37, twice a year reminding Chicagoans what they miss. Life is cruel.

               I fancy myself an attentive fan but some of the names in the Tribune’s QB list were unfamiliar to me. Does anyone recall Rusty Lisch, Mike Hohensee, Steve Stenstrom, Henry Burris or Will Furrer? I don’t, and it’s probably just as well.

               The lineup revealed some interesting but little-known Bear facts. Probably the best-named quarterback ever, Willie Thrower, was a 1953 Bear. He played in just one game but still is counted as a black pioneer at the position. The team’s 1987 roster included two QBS who would go on to become notable coaches—Jim Harbaugh and Sean Payton. It had a McNown at the position, Cade in 1999, and a McCown, Josh, in 2011-13. Cade was a first-round bust out of UCLA, Josh is a career backup who is still at it at age 41.

               Some of the QBs, while falling well short of H of F status, had things to recommend them. Foremost, I guess, was Jay Cutler (2009-16). He broke most of Luckman’s team passing records, but mostly because of changes in the game; Cutler threw 3,271 passes in his eight seasons in Chicago while Luckman threw 1,744 in his 12 (1939-50). Cutler was talented but maddeningly erratic, capable of threading the needle on one play while missing the whole sewing box the next.  His exit was mourned by few.

               Jim McMahon (1982-88) capably quarterbacked the 1985 Bears Super Bowl victors, as did Billy Wade (1961-66) for the 1963 champs, but both teams were distinguished mainly by their defenses. Both were dogged by injuries before and after their big years. McMahon never started a full, 16-game slate in Chicago. George Blanda (1949-58) had a Hall of Fame career as a passer and placekicker but had his best years with the Houston Oilers and Oakland Raiders, not the Bears.

               Erik Kramer, Rudy Bukich and Ed Brown all had a good season or two during their briefish tenures. Bobby Douglass (1969-75), a Lil’ Abner type, was a better runner than passer; his 968 yards rushing in 1972 stood as an NFL quarterback record until Michael Vick broke it in 2006.

               Except for those guys the picture is dark. Rex Grossman quarterbacked the Bears’ 2005 Super Bowl team but that group succeeded in spite of rather than because of him and was soundly beaten in the big game despite scoring a touchdown on an opening kickoff runback. His signature play was the fumbled center snap.

 Jack Concannon (1967-71) lives on because of, maybe, the all-time goofiest NFL play. Under center in a 1969 game against the St. Louis Cardinals Concannon turned to the referee and called for a timeout but his center made the snap on first sound, as instructed. The ball bounced off Concannon’s hip into the air from where Cardinal linebacker Larry Stallings grabbed it and ran 62 yards for a TD. I saw it on TV and still don’t believe it.

   Perhaps the saddest story of all concerns the present incumbent, Mitch Trubisky. Big and strongarmed, but with only one season as a college starter (at North Carolina), Trubisky so transfixed Bear decision markers that they traded their No. 3 draft pick, two third-rounders and a fourth-rounder to move up a single spot in the 2017 draft and make him the second player picked that year, ahead of Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, for heaven’s sake. Trubisky is not without ability but in his fourth season still looks like a rookie, throwing into crowds, not seeing open receivers and requiring trimmed-back game plans.

 The Bears sought an alternative to Trubisky in the off-season by signing the veteran Nick Foles. As a backup he’d led the Philadelphia Eagles to the 2017 title, but lifting the mediocre Bears seems beyond him, so future travail looms.  Maybe after all these years the Bears could get lucky with a high-round draft choice like Tom Brady, or minor-league refugee like Kurt Warner.

  It could happen, couldn’t it?

 Probably not.

              

              

HORSE SENSE

 

               Two entities that rank at or near the bottom of their classes in just about every measure of public approval—the U.S. Congress (politics) and thoroughbred horse racing (sports)--  are getting together to do something that ought to improve the odors of both. Any day now Congress is expected to approve the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, aimed at curing many of the governing defects that have plagued the sport.

               The act would create national standards for such things as track safety and maintenance, injury-data collection and disciplinary processes and sanctions, and put them under the control of an authority overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. More importantly, it would place drug testing and administration in the hands of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), an independent body utilized by many sports.

               The action would replace in large part the hodgepodge of state agencies that govern (or misgovern) thoroughbred racing in the states that permit it. There are 38 of those bodies and they vary widely in competence and honesty. What is banned in one state might be permitted in another, making a shambles of rule enforcement. They’ve been sustained by raw politics—states have been loathe to give up any part of the patronage, perks and power the current system provides.

 The state boards and commissions won’t go away; they’ll still oversee many daily racetrack operations. And they’ll still run things for a while because for some reason the act won’t take effect until 2022. But after that issues that cut across state lines will be decided by a nine-member national authority, five of whose members must be free of ties to the sport.

In a show of nonpartisanship rare in Washington these days, the measure passed the U.S. House by voice vote in September and was sent along to the Senate. There it has quite a few named sponsors including the Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from the racing mecca of Kentucky, without whose support nothing moves in that body. Approval is expected to come before the January change of administrations. President Trump’s signature is said to be about as sure as anything is with him.

Behind the act are years of malfeasance that have made the sport a synonym for corruption just about everywhere it operates, sustained because of the jobs it provides (about one million nationally) and the state tax money it produces.  If anything, its stink has only increased in recent years, fueled by doping scandals that seem to grow ever larger and more complex.

Last March 27 horse trainers, veterinarians, pharmacists and other track employees were indicted after a wide-ranging FBI investigation into performance-enhancing drug use-allegedly affecting dozens of horses that ran on the New Jersey race tracks. Among the group was the well-known trainer Jason Servis, whose colt Maximum Security won the 2019 Kentucky Derby before being disqualified for cutting off other horses in the race’s homestretch run. He and the other defendants have pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set.

Doping suspicions have trailed other leading trainers, including Bob Baffert, long the sport’s shining star. He has saddled six Kentucky Derby winners and two winners of the elusive Triple Crown for three-year-olds, American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018.  Twenty nine of his horses have failed drug tests over the past 40 years including four in the last six months. One of those animals was Gamine, the winner of a million-dollar Breeders Cup race three weeks ago.

Reporting by the excellent Joe Drape of the New York Times, one of the few newspapers that cover the sport beyond small-print lists of entries and results, revealed that Justify failed a drugs test after winning the 2018 Santa Anita Derby. This might have made the colt ineligible for the later Triple Crown races, but the California Racing Board, whose chairman had ties to Baffert, stretched its inquiry into the matter over four months, long enough to allow the animal to compete in the series and win. In a closed-door ruling the board eventually attributed the test failure to “environmental contamination,” letting Baffert off the hook. The trainer’s previous infractions have been dealt with similarly, with fines or brief suspensions being the harshest penalties. Most other trainers so apprehended also have received such treatment. 

Really¸ though, the hay bale that broke the holdouts’ backs was the death of 30 horses from training or racing mishaps during the Santa Anita winter meeting of 2018-19. That roused not only the sport’s usual animal-rights critics but also the public at large.  Along with its bureaucratic name, the act now pending in Washington ought to include an “in memoriam” reference to the Santa Anita fallen.

Congress’s willingness to protect equine lives stands in contrast to its unwillingness to do the same for some human athletes, namely boxers. It did pass the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 2000, which set national guidelines for medical matters in the sport, fighter-manager contracts and divisional ratings systems, but left enforcement in the hands of the state commissions, some of  whose bumbling helped create the need for such legislation. Boxing’s lack of proper governance mirrors that of horse racing and calls for the same remedy.

 Sen. John McCain led the push for the Ali Act and his death in 2018 left a boxing-advocacy void in Washington. Someone should step up to fill it, and the sooner the better.

 

HUT HUT-- PARADIGM SHIFT--HUT HUT...

 

               One of the terms favored by people who want to impress is “paradigm shift.”  It’s a fancy way of saying that something has changed fundamentally, at least for a while. One such has been underway in the National Football League for a few years now and has reached full bloom this season. It concerns quarterback, the game’s most important position.

               For just about all of this century and a few years before the beau ideal for the post was Peyton Manning, a tall, rugged, strong-armed sort who knew his place on the gridiron, which was in the “pocket” formed by his protecting linemen. If he carried the ball it was by necessity, when his pocket broke down and no alternative presented itself.  It was as though his career length was measured by the number of times he was tackled, and running served only to increase that risk.

No example is perfect and there were running quarterbacks during Manning’s tenure (1998-2015), Michael Vick being the most prominent. In 2006 he ran for 1,039 yards, breaking the 34-year record for the position held by Bobby Douglass, the lumberjack type who played for the 1970s’ Chicago Bears. Vick was an outlier, though, fit for inclusion in a Malcolm Gladwell book.

But Russell Wilson came along in 2012 and, with the help of the “slide rule” that protects ball carriers who give themselves up feet first, showed that dual threating could be an asset for an NFL signal-caller. In 2018 that rule was extended to include head-first surrenders, increasing the protection option.

 It took a 2014 Super Bowl title for Wilson’s Seattle Seahawks and few more seasons for him to prove his durability, but nine-year-vet Wilson’s role as an exemplar now is firmly established. A cadre of swift, versatile young quarterbacks currently ply their trade in the league and it’s no stretch to say they’re the new models for the post. Listed in no particular order they’re Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens, Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs, Deshaun Watson of the Houston Texans and Kyler Murray of the Arizona Cardinals. Jackson and Murray are 23 years old, Mahomes and Watson are 25, meaning that, with luck, each has many years ahead of him.

That can’t be said for the pocket passers who ruled the league before them and still might not be through. Tom Brady, newly of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is 43 years old, the New Orleans Saints’ Drew Brees is 41, the Pittsburgh Steelers Ben Roethlisberger is 38 and the Green Bay Packers’ Aaron Rodgers is 37. They are in various stages of decrepitude, Brady showing the most wear this season, but can’t be expected to stick around much longer under best-case scenarios. Sculptors no doubt already at work fashioning their Hall of Fame busts won’t have to wait long for the unveilings.

               The league’s growing acceptance of dual-threat QBs is reflected in their draft status. Pioneer Wilson wasn’t drafted until the third round of the 2012 draft after a bifurcated college career at North Carolina State and the U. of Wisconsin and I think it’s correct to say the Seahawks weren’t sure what they were getting. Jackson lasted until the 32rd pick in 2018 and Mahomes and Watson were chosen 10^th and 12^th respectively in their years. By contrast, Murray went No. 1 in 2019 after the Cardinals renounced their top pick of the year before, pocket-passer Josh Rosen, to clear the decks for him.  Such an admission of error is rare in the draft-proud NFL.

               Among the above-mentioned new stars the best ball carrier by far is Jackson. He tucks it in (176 times last season) about twice as often as do Mahomes, Watson or Murray, and averages about six yards a try when he does. He has the mentality of a runner, sometimes lowering his shoulder when contact looms, which generally isn’t a good idea for a quarterback. He’s both speedy and elusive, his better runs making up a riveting highlights reel.  

               By me Mahomes is the best all-around QB of the four, elusive on the ground and able to get off accurate passes on the run and from unpromising positions. He’s the best in the league at those latter skills along with Green Bay’s Rodgers, who continues to wow ‘em at his advanced age.

Mahomes has the additional advantage of size, at a listed 6-foot-3 and 230 pounds being officially bigger than Jackson, Watson or Murray, or Rodgers, for that matter. Caveat here, though:  My distrust of program weights and measures is heightened by the fact that Rodgers looks like the bigger man when he and Mahomes are pictured together in those State Farm commercials.

Watson’s skills seem to be a match for those of either Jackson or Mahomes, but he’s played on worse teams so comparisons are difficult. Suffice it to say that I wish my Chicago Bears had picked him (or Mahomes) instead of Mitch Trubisky in the 2017 draft. Watson’s teams haven’t gone far but he is well represented in the NFL record book, among other things being the fastest player to both pass for at least 6,500 yards and run for 500.

Murray is a case apart, at 5-feet-10 a little man in a big man’s game. While Jackson strides with the ball Murray tiptoes, pitter patting prettily around tacklers and along sidelines. I’d love to see a footrace between the two. Because he played only two collegiate seasons as a starter, one at Texas A&M and one at Oklahoma, Murray is still very much a work in progress, especially in the passing department. He’s a thrill to watch, though, and by himself is worth the price of admission.

A specter hangs over the young quarterbacks in the person of Robert Griffin III. He ran opponents crazy in his 2012 rookie year with the Washington Whatchacallits but was laid low by a late-season knee injury and never has been the same thereafter. Football’s a dangerous game in all cases but especially so for running QBs. Be careful guys, it’s a jungle out there.