Polls
Login
RSS Feed: Local News
RSS Feed: Sports
RSS Feed: Voice
| Chewing on the leftovers |
|
|
| Written by Chris Roberts / Tracy Press / | |
| Thursday, 29 November 2007 | |
|
Chris reflects while the rest of the office schmoozes. Right now, at this very minute — and by that I mean at around 3 p.m. Thursday — I’m sitting here in an empty newsroom, thinking about the freshman basketball tournaments and youth football games I have to cover and the parents who hate me because I don’t devote whole issues to their kids. I didn’t know I was in the scrapbooking business. Everyone else — and I mean everyone else who works in this office, right down to the high school intern — is in the meeting room having a pow wow with a Congressman. I have a weird job. As the turkey and stuffing from last week start to gather dust — and hairs, or whatever it is bird-based bacteria does to old food — here are some other leftovers from the fall sports season that for whatever reason didn’t make it onto these pages. Football withdrawals: The last couple of Friday nights felt really weird, like I had an important appointment I was missing, I was cheating on a girlfriend or I was the only one in town not at the big parade. I never thought I’d live to say this, but I really miss high school football right about now. I guess that goes to show you how spoiled we are in Tank-town. I wager there are plenty of folks in Lodi who’d trade their basketball season for just one night under the playoff lights. Missing out of action: Back in August, back before football season started, I was looking forward to seeing what a select group of kids could do. These were kids who absolutely dominated on the gridiron as freshmen and sophomores, and now that they were up with the big boys, it was their time to shine. Or disappear completely. In November, a quick glance at the roster revealed: nothing. They simply aren’t there anymore. What happened? Some dropped out of school. One was expelled. Another was sent to the job corps by his mother. The rest? Grades, jobs, whatever — hey, life happens. So does attrition. But 20 percent of the roster? Seriously? Yes, seriously. And yet the team still made the playoffs. Next chance you get, go thank a coach. Now imagine what might have been with some continuity. Hopefully he didn’t get any up-downs: During a high school game made thoroughly meaningless by the one-sided score, a coach pulled a player aside for a good verbal chewing-out over some sort of horrible mistake he made on a third-down play. That lasted about 30 seconds — until the poor kid got another talking-down from his special teams coach. Turns out the team had 10 men out on the field during the punt return — because the player in question was too busy getting an earful to get out onto the field. Sometimes you really just can’t win. In the “I’m not a role model” department: Two of the three local youth football teams received visits from not one, but two former NFL players this week. It was supposed to be three, but Bill Romanowski — yes, that Bill Romanowski — had to miss out at the last minute, which is probably a good thing. The kids can wait a little longer for the finer points on BALCO involvement, saliva-projection (I wonder if J.J. Stokes was busy), and helmet-on-jaw hits in the preseason. Can Goodell play detective as well as he plays daddy? Not that anyone’s listening, but I’ll go ahead and say today the same thing I said back in January: it’s time for the National Football League to prove its lifeblood — its players — matter more than its image. NFL players don’t have it easy. They have no-guarantee contracts, are one mistimed hit away from career-ending injury and losing out on that money forever, and are now subjected to an off-field conduct policy that would make a Catholic boarding school blush. Commish Roger Goodell cares what people think about his league, handing out tough punishments to the likes of Mike Vick, Pacman Jones and Chris Henry for their brushes with the wrong side of the law. But as I write and you read, two of Goodell’s wares — first Darrent Williams, and now Sean Taylor — are dead, victims of murder, and both of their killers are still on the loose. The league was slow to comment and slower to react to Williams’ killing in January, but Goodell did pledge the league would be “involved” in the Taylor investigation. Time for Rog to prove he cares as much about dead dogs as he does about dead players. We’re waiting. To reach Sports Editor Chris Roberts about this column, which runs every so often, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Hits: 469 Trackback(0)
Comments
(0)
This content has been locked. You can no longer post any comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.
|
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
|
|