Category Archives: Editorial

Smokin’

If you open the list of current World Champions on Wikipedia, you’ll find about 50 names, spread across 17 divisions, recognized by 4 major organizations and one magazine that’s the most honest in a liar’s game. There’s another half dozen minor organizations recognizing a variety of wanderers and unknowns. A person who truly follows boxing might recognize half – the rest of us are lucky to get 3.

The “alphabet soup” championship scene is one of the biggest cliches in sportswriting. It isn’t going away – legally, these organizations have the right to strip a champion for not facing their chosen challenger. And they will never agree on a duplicate Top Ten, creating an unmanageable scenario for unification.

It is more accurate to recognize that in the modern history of one on one combat sports there has never been a truly undisputed champion. Even when they hold the undisputed championship, there is a man who claims they are most deserving. If they are more entertaining than the man with the belt, a belt will be created. You would think one on one fighting would be the ultimate no controversy no excuses scenario, but anyone with a passing interest in the fight game knows this is laughably far from the truth of the situation.

There are times when the athletes transcend the nature of the game though. Today, we have nearly every fighter of note under contract to Dana White and UFC – creating nearly unanimously recognized champions in most divisions.

In the 1970s- a time those of us who enjoy boxing feel intense nostalgia for despite not breathing one breath in the decade – you had the heavyweights.

******

In another world, Joe Frazier might be the most famous man in boxing. He was a true underdog story – hitting frozen cows before Rocky, building his own equipment, raising himself from the segregated south to Philadelphia, travelling to the Olympics, receiving a shot at the medal by virtue of an injury to the man he was there to spar with, winning the gold and moving on to take the World Heavyweight Championship. He was dominant. He was memorable.

Today, in our world, not an obituary was, can, or should be written without spending almost as much time talking about Muhammad Ali.

Ali has surpassed Ruth as the sporting icon of America. Ruth was a fat man who ate hot dogs and drank and hit home runs in black and white films in a white league. Ali, clearly, represents something different. He deserves his spot in the American pantheon.

Yet – does Muhammad Ali, icon, exist without Joe Frazier?

Probably.

If we’ve learned one thing from a weekend of disillusionment in the sporting world, it’s that individuals are not perfect and stories do not end the way they should have been written. I would like to say that Joe Frazier made Ali, and that without him, Ali is just another fighter. The truth is that Frazier is inextricably linked to Ali because Ali made Frazier into something more than a famous boxer – he made him into a true legend of sport. If a rising tide raises all boats, Ali was a tsunami who brought Foreman, Norton, Quarry, and – perhaps most of all – Frazier into the halls of mainstream celebrity.

I would also like to say that Frazier and Ali reconciled after he was unfairly maligned by The Greatest – but there seems to be precious little indication that actually happened. There’s anecdotes that Frazier was now “ok” with it, but nothing hard, nothing official, no tangible proof. I don’t know if he went to the grave bitter about how he was treated. I’d be hard pressed to blame him if he did.

I obviously did not know Joe Frazier and I am not a scholar of his life by any means. I am a fan of boxing, and MMA, and wrestling, and I do feel a sense of loss today.

Frazier was a less complicated man than Ali. He was not a genius, he was not ignorant, and he was not the fireball of personality Ali was. From all accounts, he was a hard working man that rode his above-average gifts to greatness through extreme dedication and focus.

He did the best he could outside boxing – from movie cameos to officiating the main event of Starrcade 1984 to beating up Barney Gumble.

He was a Philly fighter that inspired Rocky and received almost no credit – while Stallone got a statue.

He stood up for Ali when he was banned – and he was called an Uncle Tom.

He did not light an Olympic torch.

A Love Letter to Detroit

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Hi Detroit,

People ask me how I can be a hardcore fan of a pro sports team. They can’t process the devotion of a professional sports fan, because we’re just cheering for laundry, right? Not some tradition-steeped money-printing golden pyramid of virtuousness like a big time university. It’s hard to explain to them, but I can tell you.

See, I love you Detroit, and you’re right, I’ve never even lived there. I did grow up in your shadow – that far-ranging auto industry shadow – that fed my family and my friends families and everything in our town to a large extent. We didn’t soar as high as you did and our fall was faster, sooner, harder.

We traveled to you, but we weren’t exactly tourists. We were students. Our families took us to the Corner and we drove down deserted downtown streets, and we asked where the people were at. We didn’t understand why it wasn’t like trips to Chicago, with families crowding the avenues and bright, shining storefronts. The elders talked about how it used to be and we wondered what happened and over the years we learned. Your boarded up businesses taught us about the real race issues in America, the ones they gloss over in middle school history. We researched riots and politics and you planted the seed that drives our politics today – whichever way you lean.

And at the heart of those trips was the Corner. It smelled, looked and felt like the harness raceway back home. Instead of half-person jockeys in carts there were beer vendors and peanuts, panhandlers and Travis Fryman. It was the time you got to stay up til 1 AM with no consequences and see a city a night.

What I like about you, Detroit, is that you’re honest in your lies. When you have the worst professional football roster in history, you lose every god damned game. If you can’t hit a ball inside but can’t bring yourself to lay off, you swing at three straight pitches in the dirt. When the taxes can’t pay for the promises, you let the buildings rot in full view. If you need money, you ask. It isn’t always honorable and it’s rarely pretty but it’s not hidden. It’s there for the world.

What I love about you, though, is that when you’re good you don’t hide it. You break 9 tackles in one run, catch touchdown passes in triple coverage, win basketball championships scoring less than football teams, inflict grave bodily harm on quarterbacks, throw 101 in the 8th, crack jokes at first, play hunches and tinker with the lineup, build monster cars that make grown men weep 40 years later, manufacture an army to save Europe, and build a giant statue of a fist – because – Fuck You, that’s why.

They are going to spend a lot of time this weekend talking about your troubles and how these freak athletes are going to save you and people will bat around their theories of revitalization. But you don’t need a savior. You don’t need a superhero or a light rail or a new bridge. None of that is going to “save” anything. You need people that believe, wherever they are, and you need smart, talented people that work. Your teams aren’t you – they are now the ideal you strive for. Talented machines built by patient architects. The equals of anyone they meet on the field.

You aren’t the American underdog, or the realization of the American dream, or the American Paris, or the symbol of the broken American promises – you are America, every triumph and failure. And you’ll always be more than just laundry to me.

Hoopsters: A Guest Post From Stu And Zack

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Today’s special guest post is by two writers familiar to all Michigan fans, Stu Douglass and Zack Novak. Much to their dismay.

Yesterday news broke that Michigan received a commitment from Derrick Walton, a top 100 recruit for the class of 2013. This came just 24 hours after John Beilein and company had gotten a pledge from Zak Irvin, a small forward from Indiana, and another top 100 recruit. And it seems a safe bet that the two 2012 kids are going to be top 100 as well.

That’s top 100 in the country. We weren’t even top 100 in Indiana.

So we’re here today to say it’s been a good run. But it’s over.

Michigan Basketball has gotten too mainstream.

Back when we were in high school, Zack was a one-star recruit according to Scout, and we were both rated a 40 out of 100 by ESPN. That’s called authenticity. And so to keep it real we both agreed to go practice our craft in the basement of the Big Ten. Michigan had a new coach, John Beilein, and we were told that a ceiling had been installed which would ensure we’d never get too big.

We preferred playing in a darkened, empty Crisler Arena. We played for ourselves, because we loved it, not to pander to any crowd. Those days are gone. Now the place is too brightly lit and word from the Ticket Office is that sales are skyrocketing. Whatever, man. That’s, like, literally being a sellout.

And dude, the atmosphere at Crisler is insufferable and borderline offensive. Not only do you have all the bandwagoners now, you got our corporate AD giving away FREE PIZZA. How about giving away some organic or local stuff? Gotta keep the fatties happy, we guess. We miss the old AD, the guy who rocked the boat shoes. That guy was rad.

This year we’re going to play in the prestigious Maui Invitational. We liked it better when we went to Orlando for the Old Spice Classic. We want to play Creighton, not Kansas. That’s like going from Brooklyn Bowl to Lollapalooza.

Speaking of tournaments, we used to want to play in the NCAA tourney, we admit. But now that we’ve done it twice, we’re not so keen. Turns out that the further you advance, the more corporate it gets. It’s pretty disenchanting, to be honest. We’ll stick to the NIT from now on, even though we’re pretty wary of playing Madison Square Garden. Did you see that Mad Men about how they tore down the original Penn Station to build that monstrosity? Still not cool.

LLP rockin the throwbacks... so underrated

What else? Oh yeah, don’t get us started on Darius Morris. When he first got to Ann Arbor, he was pretty chill. Then he starts beating up on Michigan State, which, like, cool, and most people don’t realize when he said, ‘GET THE FUCK OFF MY COURT!’ he wasn’t just talking to Sparty, he was talking to everyone. So then we really start digging the kid, and what does he do? He goes to the NBA—the fuck, dude?—and not just any NBA team, but the Los Angeles Lakers. You sign up with Jerry Buss, you sign away your soul. Good luck with that, bro. Someday you’re gonna wake up and wish you’d kept it real and played in Belgium instead.

Then there’s Coach Bacari. No one knew about this guy a year ago. And he had some serious cred, being a former U of D Titan and all. And the whole HALOL was funny at first, but not anymore. Now everyone is HALOLing. 2010 called, they want their twitter meme back.

The program has just changed so much. Beilein used to have a cool staff. Jerry Dunn was the head coach at Penn State for eight years—doesn’t get more underground than that. Now it’s like, with Bacari and Lavall Jordan, players are getting better and everyone wants to come here. And they’ve built a new practice facility. We liked it better when we practiced where we played. Now it just feels too rehearsed.

Then there’s the polls. Looks like we’re going to be preseason top 25. Man, we don’t do this for the charts. We do it for love. If we had it our way, we would withdraw from this rankings bullshit. The last thing we need are ESPN camera crews hanging around our games. Once that happens, you’ve lost all creative control. The guys from Comcast Local were much cooler.

We’re gonna stick around for one more year, but don’t expect us to enjoy it. Graduation can’t come soon enough—in May we’re moving to Williamsburg to design shoes. For Nike, not Adidas. You know, the brand Michigan used before they got big.

Witness to the Fall

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Over the last a week or so the Michigan blogosphere has exploded with angst; first over the rumored design of the throwback jerseys for next season and then the actual design of the jerseys (which was the same as

Could this jersey be more destructive to Michigans program than Pryor was to OSU's? Many suspect so.

rumored making AD BranDUM the biggest liar since Jim Tressel) and then was briefly mollified when it seemed that maybe the jerseys weren’t as terrible and awful and horrible as originally thought. Finally, we learned that irregardless (HALOL) of the design, any throwback jersey is probably likely to destroy all that is good and holy about our beloved University of Michigan.

I do not say this to mock*. I realize that I stand alone in my indifference to the stitching on the outfits. One gets the impression that Brain Cook could publish a different picture of the jerseys every day and comments of sickened readers would still run into the hundreds. However, during all this furor, many missed an even more hypothetical rumor and that was yet so pernicious as to warrant an even greater over reaction.
As is often the case, the rumor started with a tweet from Paul Finebaum (readers of this blog are already well acquainted with the evils of both twitter and Finebaum.)

@finebaum Finebaum Network
Sheridan,’I look for OSU to get hit with severe penalties similar to USC. I was told OSU might be facing tv ban.’

In recent years, only this man has been a dependable source for mockery and schadenfreude for Michigan fans.

A TV ban. I’ve been ‘told’ that the NCAA strongly considered a TV ban for USC** and that Texas A&M was given a TV ban in 1994. Tell me again how that is a punishment? If OSU is going to go through a down season or two and lose a game or five, their fans should be required to watch on TV. Let them taste the bitter dregs of the cup of misery that we have so recently imbibed in full. The nation should be allowed to watch on TV just as they did when Notre Dame and Michigan went through their Weis and RichRod phases.

Some have argued that punishing OSU now just punishes the innocent players, coaches, and fans. Tell me again which are the innocent ones? The coaches, such as Dick Tressel, who created this culture and all remain? The players littering the roster still driving cars the compliance department has no knowledge of to play Xbox at the tattoo parlor run by a felon? The fans? If they are penitent, chagrined, or even seriously acknowledge that anyone but the Devil Terrelle Pryor did anything wrong, I haven’t seen it for all the deification of Jim Tressel (literal deification!) For serious, any population that names a little girl Tressel can’t be innocent of much. I say make them watch.

Think of the children. Do it for the children. Release them from the tyranny of Tressel.

A TV ban would mean no youtube videos of humiliation. No real reckoning with the mediocrity. If RichRod had been lucky enough to have a TV ban, he probably would still have a job. Looking at a boxscore just doesn’t bring the stomach churning pain the way actually watching Matt McGloin slice your defense apart like vintage Joe Montana does.

You want innocent victims? Don’t look to Ohio. Move your gaze a little further north. Michigan fans would be the innocent victims of any OSU TV ban. Nothing can make going 1-9 against Tressel right but watching OSU struggle on a Saturday afternoon or seven and maybe even lose a couple times (and not in a BCS bowl) would still be pretty nice. I say, we deserve that. We deserve to watch Joe Bauserman ‘run’ for his life as the makeshift offensive line crumbles and blitzers rain down.

The Bauserman Era will be televised. I'm pretty sure he is #14.

Friends, I haven’t even mentioned the real horror of an OSU TV ban. So great is the injustice that just writing the words makes me tremble with righteous indignation. Let’s just say, maybe OSU is not very good and maybe Michigan get’s totally lucky and everything goes their way and… Just bear with my hypothetical here, Michigan beats OSU. It could happen. I’m told this has happened in the past. Brace yourself. If there was an OSU TV ban, this miraculous event would not be viewed by anyone outside the stadium. Wolverine Historian would be unable to upload one of his glorious highlight videos for future generations to watch. You would even have a hard time getting that loud mouthed asshole at work who doesn’t even really pay attention to admit it even happened.

This cannot come to pass. This must not happen. The NCAA cannot be this capricious and cruel as to punish Michigan fans this way, can they?

*Well, maybe just a little mockery.
**This is what we call anecdotal evidence—two words which I would say, in my professional life, with that practiced disdain I learned so well at Michigan, but is the coin of the realm on the internet!

Re-Thinking A Pryor Conviction

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There are a number of definitions for the word “journalism” in the dictionary, some more satisfactory than others. These days, the most applicable is most likely the first:

the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media

In other words, say any god-damn thing you want, call it “news”, and if it appears in “media” – bang! Journalism. Journalists, however, often have some responsibility to report without bias or agenda, making this definition, further down the page, a bit more satisfactory:

writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation

This line, obviously, can be blurred when one bounces between reporting and opinion as Thayer Evans, formerly of the New York Times, currently of Foxsports.com does. However, Evans gives a master-class in how the same facts, comments, and events can be twisted given the agenda of the writer.

Described by MGoBlog’s Brian Cook as “dropping a bomb” on Pryor, Evans’ piece on Foxsports.com makes his thesis clear from the jump:

Sex, money and power.

Well, that’s certainly a grabber.

That’s what Terrelle Pryor was concerned about when I first met him in January 2008 at the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, an annual national all-star game for high school seniors held in San Antonio.

Well, come on. Lets be honest about what he’s saying: Pryor, an 18-year old in 2008, was interested in hot women and nice cars, a character observation redundant with merely noting that “he’s 18″. Evans backs up his accusation of craving sex with an anecdote of watching Pryor ask a Buckeye female fan for a picture of herself via text. His accusation of craving power relies on him saying that Pryor “boasted about the influence he had over coaches recruiting him, like then-Ohio State coach Jim Tressel” because Tressel “had promised him the Buckeyes would implement a spread offense to fit the abilities of the anointed next Vince Young” (no quote is attributed, we need to take his word). His accusation of craving money is supported by noting that Pryor complained about people selling his autograph (again, no attributed quote).

This got the mind turning – if this was so clear to Thayer Evans in 2008, during that first meeting, in San Antonio, I’m sure he wrote an article about it. Well, he did!

In this article, in the New York Times, Evans recounts the same text-message story as above – a Buckeye fan asked Pryor for a picture, he asked her for one in return. However, Thayer couches this in the same paragraph as the following:

Yet for now, Pryor remains a high school senior who plays PlayStation 3, listens only to the rapper Lil Wayne and attends parties with friends.

So in 2008, this episode struck Evans as typical high-school kid behavior (because it is), and the implication is that Evans gives it a “boys will be boys” shoulder shrug. Only now, three years later, does Evans see this as a burgeoning sexual obsession.

Pryor’s boast of influencing his coaches, and Tressel’s adaptation of the spread as a result?

He said he got along well with Ohio State’s recruits here this week, but he worried whether the Buckeyes would implement a spread offense, as Tressel had promised.

“I believe him because he said he would, but I really don’t know,” said Pryor.

Well, shit – does this sound like a boast, or a kid sounding skeptical as to whether a coach was actually going to do what he said? Where, exactly, does Pryor’s comment imply the power lies? It’s certainly not with him. In 2008, Evans saw Pryor’s comments as evidence that he wasn’t sure what he could expect at OSU. In 2011, Evans sees it as Pryor crowing about his power over Tressel.

His obsession with money? Well, Pryor could have certainly said something, but Evans never mentions it. Instead he merely communicates the fact that “a football with his signature already sells for $99.99 on eBay” as a way of contextualizing the fame of a high-school football player.

These two articles, simply, are impossible to reconcile. Is it possible that Evans’ current version of his meeting with Pryor is accurate? Obviously. But that begs the question – where was Evans’ article three fucking years ago? If Pryor was a clearly despicable kid, clearly looking for his own hedonistic pursuit, why not write that? One is breaking news, the other is claiming you knew the cow would escape two hours after someone left the barn door is open – that is to say, it’s completely useless. Congratulations, nobody cares if you knew something if you kept your mouth shut.

The answer, of course, assuming that a word Evans wrote today is true (which is dubious, given that it would mean he with-held information to paint a more favorable picture three years ago), is that Evans didn’t want to burn his bridge with a future NCAA star – that is to say, Evans was willing to conceal the faults of Pryor when it suited him. Now, as Pryor departs Evans’ sport of focus, Evans has no reason to step on egg-shells anymore.

In other words – either what Evans wrote today is an outright lie, or what he wrote three years was intentionally misleading in an attempt to create a relationship with Pryor. Both, frankly, are fairly discrediting accusations.

The job of a journalist is to communicate information to the public – not selectively communicate the information that paints the picture that best serves their own agenda at the time. Thayer Evans, a writer who seems to have a history of this, needs to learn this lesson.