The Last Word, Revisited

For those of us experiencing what the Carolina Panthers are doing, it is really hard to articulate just how amazing it is. As a point of reference, here is my last post about the Panthers in what felt like the final weeks of Ron Rivera's tenure as Coach.

Folks, that was less than one month to the date.

Dang.

That post was about using real, authentic, raw words to motivate a locker room to forget the past and look to the future. 

The future is here and Monday night at home against the Pats - well, the future has never been brighter.

So, Coach Riverboat, from the botttom of my heart...here's my words for you and the Cats:

Go Get 'Em.

J E T S...Jets? Jets! Jets.

As of 11:34 on Monday, October 7, 2013 Rex Ryan and the New York Jets are the best example I could offer as to the triumph of hope over experience.

That is all.

Good Night.

Katrina, The Saints, Lou Gehrig's Disease and Fatherhood

I married a New Orleans gal.  In the process of falling in love with her, I fell in love with her city.  I watched in horror as Hurricane Katrina robbed her family of a home and turned her city into a broken place.  A slab and the ghost of yesterday now stand where my New Orleans gal's childhood home once did.

I am also someone who grew up with an adoptive father who lovingly raised me.  Later, I experienced the gift of reconnecting in a very meaningul way with my biological father who I had not seen in over 20 years.

Both of these facts resurfaced for me in an emotional way this weekend while watching ESPN's NFL Countdown coverage.

Hurricane Katrina was a nightmare.  From panicked phone conversations with my wife's grandfather who was trapped in his attic as the flood waters rose, to ten days of not knowing if my in-laws made it to safety or were lost, to telephone conversations with my wife's best friend while she was trying to make sense of her duty as a National Guard Reservist serving in the Superdome during and immediately after the storm.  And, there was the complete and utterly devastating loss of every material possesion imaginable for so many of my friends and family in NOLA.

Here's what that looked like through our lenses

If you watched these events from afar, you have no idea how badly these people needed release...and how that need for release created one of the most electifying moments in American sports history.

That release came in a special team play on a Monday night during the Saints return to the Superdome when Steve Gleason blocked a Falcons punt.  

Seven points later demons were exorcised.

And the earth shook.  

And, the long arm of Katrina couldn't hurt anyone for a few beautiful minutes. 

In that moment Who Dat Nation was reborn.  In that moment, Steve Gleason was the center of the universe.

Then the moment passed.  The unhealed wounds of Katrina reminded us that there was still a long row to hoe.  But still, Gleason allowed us to hope we'd get there in the end.

Life is not fair. While NOLA healed, Steve got sick. 

Steve Gleason's gridiron battles have given way to a new fight.  One that will one day claim his life. 

He is battling ALS, which is better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.  There is no cure.  ALS will be his final battle.

I know that there is an army of sports fans who consistently look for opportunities to bash ESPN's monopoly on the sports entertainment industry.  The wordwide leader might be deserving of that in some areas, but as it pertains to the incredibly inspirational story that Gleason's fight with ALS has become, they are above reproach.

This all hit home for me on a Sunday in my garage while I geared up for another NFL weekend.  While I worked on honey-do's and peaked in on pre-game coverage, I was stopped in my tracks by the latest installment of the Gleason story. 

As Gleason spoke openly and vulnerably, as only a man who knows he is on borrowed time can, with Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder about fatherhood...

Tears ensued.  Tears that know the desperate need for a father's love.  My tears.

I subscribe to the notion that the human experience is defined by our inate and inextricable ability to perceive how we relate to everything and everyone around us.  Indeed, I think our ability to discern right and wrong relationship is the essence of what we are. That our interactions based on that ability to relate are what life is all about.  

This is the measure of a man.

As someone who has spent a lifetime exploring the father-child relationship, I have come to the conclusion that we are programmed to desire, more than just about anything, to experience the gift of right relationship with a loving father.  To know that our Dad loves us and is proud of who we are.  Popular culture goes out of it's way to prove my theory, albeit unwittingly.

More on that here.

Certainly, intellegent minds can and will argue the simplicity of my supposition, but I would invite all who would disagree with my thesis to try....as hard as you can...to watch the father that Steve Gleason is trying to be in the face of certain death, and hear Eddie Vedder's wish to know that the father he never met loved him. 

Then try...as hard as you can...to not want to call your Dad...

...after your tears subside.

The Progress Problem

Iconoclast: (noun) a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition.


There was a time in my youth when I prided myself on my iconoclastic identity. 

Later, there came a time when I took that young iconoclast out behind the shed...

He hasn't been heard from since.

Time has taught me that, despite my desire to change the tenants of time-tested institution, truth is truth.  That is not to say that truth should not be challenged.  It most certainly must be.  But, truth being truth, passes the test of time...every time it is tested.

How's that for dizzying logic?  And, what in the Sam Hill does any of this have to do with sports?

Two words: Chip Kelly.

The former Duck turned Igle Head Coach is an iconoclast. 

And, last night, former Igle now Chief Head Coach, Andy Reid, was The Truth.

I had held out hope that Kelly's up-tempo, high energy and extremely entertaining offensive philosophy would at the very least find some fundamental gap in NFL game planning as we know it.  Alas, I am convinced that is not the case.

This is not to say that Kelly will go the way of Spurior or Saban.  I think that, if his ego is pliable enough to concede the fact that truth is truth for a reason, he can learn to be a good (if not great) NFL head coach.

OK Mr. Smarty Pants - what the heck is this truth you speak of.

Here it is:  Statistics can not change the outcome of an NFL game.

Chip Kelly, based on his success at the collegiate level, believes that they can.  He believes that if he runs his offense fast enough, enough times,  eventually (statistically speaking) he can find something in opponents' defenses that he can exploit.

He cannot.

One of my professors in college, put it like this.  Mathematically, I can convince you that if I shoot a bullet at your car, it will never make contact.  He pointed out that in the abstract analysis of the way the bullet might travel, it can be argued that there must always be a "halfway point".  When you fire the gun, a point A and point B are created and there is a halfway point between the two.  Once the bullet reaches that halfway point, there is a new point A and point B and therefore a new halfway point.  And, so the logic goes, that there must always be a new halfway point....

Until I have a bullet hole in my car and want to punch him and myself for even entertaining the idea that there wouldn't be. 

Experience tells me that if you shoot a gun, the bullet will eventually make contact with something and typically to devastating effect.  Experience also tells me that you can't change the NFL through statistical analysis.  Not since the invention of the forward pass anyway.

Push back will come from sports fans that point to Billy Beane, and this is a valid point.  Even though he has not won a ring with his philosophy, I believe that Mr. Beane, aided by an army of underground stat geeks, have fundamentally changed how we evaluate baseball success, thusly changing the beautiful game forever.

Wait, didn't you say earlier that truth is truth?  Yes, I also said it must be tested in order to prove it to indeed be truth.  Moneyball demonstrates that the methodology inherent in the grand old system of measuring baseball success could very well be flawed.

Could. I hearken back to Beane's ringless finger..

Bottom line:  Baseball is a statistical game.  Bill Miller and company taught Billy Beane that baseball's "better mousetrap" was all in the numbers. 

Chip Kelly's problem is that football is not a game of statistics.  Each season for each NFL team is a military-esque campaign divided into 16 battles.  Each battle's outcome effects the next battle.  These battles and the eventual campaign are won with tactical strategy, logistics, good training and the ability to survive inevitable attrition.

These battles are fought in the trenches where men attempt to bend the will of their opponent with brute force.  You can't do that with a calculator.

Could this be false and upon me proved? 

Time will tell.  In the meantime, let me repeat:

Chip Kelly is an Iconoclast.

Andy Reid is the Truth.

The Last Word

There are power in words. 

Whether spoken or left unsaid, written or carved in stone, words can bring the blessings and richness of joyful life or the bone-crushing destruction of a cursed opportunity.

I live in a sports town that has adopted the latter. 

My Carolina Panthers lost another close NFL contest this week.  This time it was on the road to the seemingly listless Buffalo Bills and the final score was 24 to 23.  If you follow the Panthers, you'll notice that I left out several words in the reporting of that defeat.

Here's how most are reporting it in the Carolinas on this overcast Monday morning.

The Panthers found a way to lose another close one in the last seconds in a game that they should have won.  Talented third year Quarterback Cam Newton can't close the deal in the forth quarter and Head Coach Ron Rivera is snake bitten when it comes to games decided by a touchdown or less.  At this point, unless we have a 3 score lead with under 10 minutes to play in the game, we are going to find a way to lose.

I left out the four-letter words that most are utilizing to drive home their argument when discussing the Panthers around the water cooler...but you get the point.  Every fan base has been here.   That moment when you realize that your team has become this year's Bad News Bears...only these guys get paid a lot of money and actually try to win games.  No one will argue against that last point.  These guys actually try REALLY hard to succeed, and short of some O-line depth and bona-fide defensive secondary players, they are talented enough to win.  Certainly, they have enough pieces in place to beat the Fighting EJ Manuel's.

But there we were again.  Staring down the barrel of a last second loss again.  Knowing that there was no way it could happen again.  Expecting the inevitable numbness of watching the other team celebrate their ability to turn the improbable into certainty...again.

So what should Carolina do?  More specifically, what should Ron Rivera do?  Most people that I have spoken with in the twenty hours since the final whistle believe his best strategy would be to start packing his bags.  Maybe they are right.  Certainly, his ability to stick around for much longer feels improbable.  Good team, bad results, new GM, preseason owner ultimatum, 10 blown 4th quarter leads in 3 years.  Sounds rather damning to me. 

If you choose to focus on those words. 

My namesake is Casey Stengel.  I grew up in a minor league locker room with Grady Little as a mentor.  I am a coach at heart, and I can tell you that there are times where you look around and think, "It's over".  Whenever, I feel that way I am reminded of the power of words.

I am not talking about platitudes.  Platitudes are for self help gurus.  I'm talking about words.  Sincere, simple, raw, unwavering words.  There are countless examples from the locker rooms of days gone by.  One only has to look back to a few words delivered last year by Chuck Pagano in the Colts locker room. Or, go a few years deeper in the word vault and pull out Coach V or Knute Rockne.  I grew up in Durham, NC and during my time there from 1983-1993 there was an up and coming coach for a private college for brainiacs who had a way of using words to dictate to his players that they could move mountains.  Big mountains.  I think a couple of his teams actually could have redrawn the Appalachian trail map had they so desired.

Some will point out that the current Coach of the Panthers has said "all the right things" so far.  And, that by all accounts he has his team's buy-in.  And, that's lovely...if you want to run for public office.  Not if you want to get off of the proverbial "hot seat" as a NFL coach.

Coach Rivera has one more shot.  If he makes that shot, he'll have one more after that...and so on.  He knows it.  His players know it.

Not that he would want to hear my advice, but if I could have Coach's ear for a few minutes before the Panthers take the field against the equally down-and-out NY Giants next Sunday, my advice would be this:

Sit everyone down.  Get eye level.  Speak to the mountain.  Everyone knows that this is it.  This is that "last chance".  Put it out there.  Use simple, real, raw words.  I don't know Ron Rivera, but if all accounts are true, he would do this in a humble, gracious and indelibly endearing tone.

I would imagine he already plans to use these words at some point this week. 

My last bit of advice, would be to steal a chapter from the aforementioned up-and-coming turned legendary coach at that brainiac college in Durham. 

Stand up, smile, and remind the players why they play this game.  Guys, at it's worst, this game is still supposed to be fun.  Forget hot seats, and records and the feeling that this can't keep happening.  We know what the problem is and we will not, despite our circumstances, choose to dwell on that.  Instead, go out and have fun.  Play like you did when you laced up your first pair of real football cleats. 

Play like tomorrow doesn't matter.  Play like it's the last time you'll ever see a football field.

Win or lose.  Choose to have a blast between the lines. 

I'll take my chances with a team who wants to do that.

That would be my last word...

Here's hoping it isn't Coach Rivera's.

Good TImes

So, a majorless Tiger gets to tee off at the Barclay's as the number one seed heading into the Fedex Cup dash for cash.

If he wins the cup, this will be one of the best worst seasons in the history of major American sports figures.  If he loses it, this will still be one of the best worst seasons in the history of major American sports figures.

Either way, I really hope that two things happen as the rest of the season plays out:

#1 - The PGA, R&A and every other governing body of golf outlaws the practice of shouting anything just after a player makes contact with the golf ball, and that every tournament follows suit with a strict zero tolerance policy.  Literally, throw the bums out.

#2 - Before this ban takes effect, please, for the love of all that is sacred, let a microphone out on the course catch somebody yelling DYNOMITE just after Jimmy Walker tees off.

Oh, and I really hope Tiger takes home the trophy. 

Unstoppable

I am a Carolina Panthers fan by birthright.  My Panthers got smoked in preseason game two last night by the Eagles.  Michael Vick looked unstoppable.

I live in Charlotte, NC.  I was born here, so technically I am a Charlottean, but not by much more than birthright.

Before the Queen City, I lived in Scotland for two years which for the purposes of this story shouldn’t count.  Before Scotland, I lived in Atlanta for 3 years.  Before Atlanta, I was attending college in Louisiana and couldn’t have cared less about professional football. 

OK, so where am I going with this?  Atlanta was my first exposure to a big NFL town, and it just so happens that I moved there in 1999.  That was an important year for my (then) NFL team and (then) city, although we didn’t know it at the time.  While Atlanta was busy hosting the Super Bowl as a city and sucking out loud as a team, our future was winning the Big East Rookie of the Year award and sending the college football world into a certifiable tizzy. That future had a name and number.  

Michael Dwayne Vick, 7.

I grew up an SEC football fan.  To me, that was what real football looked like.  Outside of Randall Cunningham and the 85 Bears, I was never really that into Sundays.  I watched.  My folks made the Super Bowl a big deal at our house.  But that all paled in comparison to a Saturday in Knoxville or Baton Rouge.  Mr. Vick and my new hometown team changed all of that. 

Unless you live under a rock, you know the story.  Number one overall pick in 2001. Electrifying speed and arm strength.  Houdiniesque plays where you would swear that he literally vanished in order to avoid contact. 

The Michael Vick Experience was one heck of a ride from opening day 2002 until April of 2007 when that experience came to a grinding and disturbing halt. 

You know that story too.

If you are paying attention to my timeline you’ll notice no mention of the 2001 season.  That’s because in the narrative that has become the real-time biography of Vick, no one talks about that year.  For me that was the year to remember.  Forget the pro bowls, playoffs and comebacks.  2001 was the most important year of Michael Vick’s career. 

In 2001 Michael Vick held a clipboard.

Technically, he saw action that season, but for the most part, 2001 was his year to grow.  He came into the league with perhaps as much hoopla as any QB in the history of the game.  But, under coach Dan Reeves’ regime, he was forced to take a step back.  And, most importantly, fall in line. Chris Chandler started in front of Vick.  I remember radio interviews where Vick spoke very humbly about his place on the team and in the world.  He drove a Ford.  He had not yet become that Michael Vick.

I find it fascinating that nobody in the national media talks about that year.  It was the end of an era where teams took some time to groom franchise quarterbacks.  And, I firmly believe that it gave Vick the chance to build a foundation that he would desperately need to lean into later.

That later happened in April of 2007.  A series of very bad decisions took him from The Michael Vick Experience to 21 months in a federal prison, Chapter 11, and a reputation that would crush a lesser mortal.

Again, you know that story.

Flash forward to last night.  There he was commanding a new offense in Philadelphia.  By all NFL measurements, he is a long-in-the-tooth player.  But, there he was…the master of the open field scramble…throwing elite caliber out-route laser beams…making my Panthers look silly.  He looked unstoppable.

Tony Dungy gets a lot of credit for mentoring Vick through his dark days.  He should. 

Vick’s year holding the clip board gets no mention as the place where Vick learned what it was to allow a mentor to shape his life.  It should.

Ironically, Vick is battling with a young gun for the starting QB position in Philly. At the moment Vick is the on-the-field front runner.

He is without a doubt the locker room leader for that team.  When controversy stirs (and man has it ever this preseason), he’s the one who unites the team.  If new coach Chip Kelly wants his shiny new up tempo offense to work in the NFL, he’ll need Vick’s talent on the field and his leadership off of it.

Coach Kelly would be wise to remember 2001, and hand the young gun a clipboard.

My new favorite QB, Cam Newton’s path to the NFL is strikingly similar to that of Vick’s.  He was the second African American QB to be selected overall number one in the NFL draft.

Three guesses as to who was the first.

Electrifying athletic ability; The Cam Newton experience is in full display. 

By statistical measures, he is the most successful QB in history through his first two seasons, but critics always point to a lack of…something.  They can’t articulate succinctly what that something is exactly, but a lot of them agree that it’s missing.

Cam never got to hold a clipboard.  If he did, he’d be unstoppable by now.

 

 

She's Got Legs

With all deference to Florence and her Machine, the dog days are most certainly not over. 

Indeed, we are in that sub-season where both the humidity and pigskin anticipation are dense and getting denser.  I’m a runner and a baseball nut, and even I can’t escape the palpability of that “just over the horizon” vista that is opening day of the college and professional football seasons.  My fantasy football war room research is nearly completed, my Carolina Panthers broke camp injury free, my Tennessee Volunteers are…well I know that they are still playing home games on Rocky Top…not really sure what else to expect this year.  My Braves are on a roll to end all rolls.  Hope is springing eternal as we round the bend and head into a very promising sports autumn.  With the exception of that magical few weeks in spring when baseball diamonds in Florida and Arizona come to life, the madness begins marching and traditions unlike any other stir the echoes, this is my favorite time of the year.

With all of that having been said, these are the days that try men’s sports entertainment souls.  Sport is supposed to be where men go to get our reality TV fix.  Personally, I prefer for that reality to unfold on the fields of play.  Alas, this is the time of year when we get the proverbial peek behind the curtain.  I grew up in a minor league baseball locker room.  I don’t want any more said peeks.  I know what I’ll see.  It’s dank and smelly and full of men who are as broken as I am.  I get to hide from the world while I work on fixing my broken pieces.  This time of year is when our sports heroes get to bring their broken pieces to the world’s largest show and tell.

I don’t have to name names (Johnny So-and-So) or venues (Hardly worth the Knock).  Everywhere you look these days, there is a sports figure feeding the frenzy of America’s two freshly minted pastimes: Falling from grace and trying to find redemption.  I prefer to focus on the latter over the former.  Call me a sucker for a happy ending.

This brings me to last night’s sports viewing options.  Yes, there was the Braves beating the Phillies (again).  And, yes I am baseball nut who should have been watching the Braves beat the Phillies (again).  Only I didn’t.  I got caught up in ESPN’s 30 for 30 (9 for 9) “The Runner”, and not’ for nothin’, but it was really good.  I was nine (ironically) when Mary Decker had what was quite possibly the year to beat all years in middle distance competitive running.  That was 1985.  In 1984 she had what was quite definitely the year every young competitor wants to forget.  The one where you lose when you weren’t supposed to and don’t handle it well, and everyone stops to watch the man (or in this case woman) dangle on the cliff’s edge, and then loves it when she falls. 

Man did she fall. 

Like I said, I am a runner.  I’m not good enough to win any race I enter, but I’m not a plodder.  I train to get faster and run longer, and I don’t jog in place at intersections.  I stand there with my hands on my hips, looking really pissed off.  Like I said, runner.  So, I have some vague fantastical idea of what it might be like to have the year that Decker had in 85, immediately following her immortal reaction to her fall from grace at the 84 LA Olympics.       

If you missed the 30 for 30 (9 for 9) then you are probably unaware of what I am talking about.  Here’s a recap of the races in which Decker competed in 1985.  She won.  All of them.  By a lot.

And unless you are one of THOSE Oregon running people…you did not know that.  You only remember the fall, you have no clue about the redemption.  I didn’t.  For shame?  Maybe.

The honest answer is that not many of us pay attention to the “Olympic Sports” in non-olympic years and so 1985, for better or worse, didn’t matter to most. Decker’s year to remember became the proverbial tree falling in the woods.  And, here is where the story goes from good to great for me.  Decker got one more crack at Olympic gold in Seoul, Korea in 1988. She took the block in the women’s 3000 meter and we all held our breath.  The starting gun went off, the race was run.  Decker finished 8^th.  Her best finish at any Olympic games. 

How’s that good?  Good question.  My answer: it gave her story legs. 

I don’t know what it’s like to shoot for the moon and get there.  I’ve never finished first at anything.  But, I’ve worked my brains out and tried to do what is right, any time I am given the chance.  I’ve failed in spectacular fashion. I've failed in ways that only I know about.  I know what it’ like to fall down in front of everyone when the wind was at my back and I knew I was the best on the field.  I know what it’s like to succeed and have no one notice.  I know what it’s like to look back and see that one thing that you tried your hardest to achieve and was always just out of reach.  My guess is that if you spent more than a few years on this bouncing ball…you know what it’s like to be Decker too.  If you’ve got it like Phelps, then good on ya.  Seriously, go get it and don’t let go.  But, if you know what it is to fall, and then choose not to let that fall be the end of your story, then you know why Mary Decker’s story’s legs could be so much more important to the world than her once storied legs.

But, I digress.  Football anyone?