Who Dat fever: Riding the bandwagon with no remorse

February 5, 2010

Edited ver­sion: I missed an “I.” It’s XLIV instead of XLV. And 44 instead of 45. But what’s a year or two among good Romans? And, if there hap­pens to be any Indi­anapo­lis  fans out there, here is a lit­tle tune to get stuck in your head while the Saints are winning.

This year, unlike many years before, I am pumped up about the Super Bowl.

What is this, the 42nd National Foot­ball League cham­pi­onship, or XLIVif you like the NFL’s Roman numeral ver­sion? I am sure there is some rea­son why the NFL has used Roman numer­als all these years, but I don’t know why and don’t care. I just know that I prob­a­bly haven’t really looked for­ward to watch­ing the Super Bowl — for foot­ball and not the com­mer­cials — since prob­a­bly No. XX. That was when Mike Ditka’s wacky bunch of Chicago bears, includ­ing Jim McMa­hon and William “Refrig­er­a­tor” Perry as well as superb run­ning back Wal­ter “Sweet­ness” Pay­ton played and beat New England.

There is some irony in that par­tic­u­lar game as it relates to XLIV. That game was played in the Louisiana Super­dome, home of NFC champs the Saints. Also, the Bears’ defen­sive coach, who said that the team had wasted its draft pick ear­lier that year on “The Fridge” Perry, was none other than Buddy Ryan, whose son, Rex, was head coach of AFC cham­pi­onship loser New York Jets. Buddy Ryan is a whole ‘nother story in itself. All the ties are like play­ing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only its not.

Won­der if the ref­er­ees stopped at Best Buy in Beau­mont on the way to Miami?

But yeah, I plan to be in front of the TV start­ing about 1 p.m. Sun­day to catch all the hype lead­ing up to the game. That is because of the New Orleans Saints. I sup­pose I have been root­ing for the Saints since they returned to play in the Super­dome after the dev­as­tat­ing Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina. I know that isn’t being a fan for very long in their 40-something year his­tory, but after all, they really sucked for so many years.

That sounds rude, I know. But I am not the only one on the Saints’ band­wagon who is rid­ing along and doesn’t, frankly my dear, give a damn what any­one says.

I saw the evac­uees from Kat­rina pour­ing across the Texas line into my area of South­east Texas. Then, they had to evac­u­ate once more as Hur­ri­cane Rita pounded just about the east­ern­most fourth of Texas. Even though I was 80 miles away from the Gulf dur­ing Rita, it was “hur­ri­can­ing” out­side. Then came Hur­ri­cane Hum­berto in 2007, which I slept through. Next was Hur­ri­cane Ike the fol­low­ing year which I watched for most of the night as it whipped through Beaumont.

For­tu­nately, I didn’t suf­fer much from any of those storms except for the lack of elec­tric­ity for a num­ber of days. But my neigh­bors in South­east Texas  and South­west Louisiana did, some greatly. So you might say my cheer­ing on the long-suffering Saints was a mat­ter of “hurricane-related empathy.”

It is going to be a more dif­fi­cult task to root for the Saints too, because they are play­ing the Indi­anapo­lis Colts. I like them as well. Or rather, I like Pey­ton Man­ning, who many think IS the Colts. But I will not have near the dif­fi­culty in loy­alty that Manning’s fam­ily will. Dad Archie, of course, was the Saints quar­ter­back in the bad old days. Thus, Giants quar­ter­back and Peyton’s brother Eli, and non-pro foot­ball brother Cooper, all have ties to the Saints. So did Petyon. Rick Reilly, the ESPN Mag­a­zine scribe who is with­out a doubt one of the best sports­writ­ers around these days, wrote a piece on ESPN.com the other day about the Man­ning family’s dilemma. It sounds damn near excru­ti­at­ing, not only because of their fam­ily ties to New Orleans and the Saints, but because of what it means for the Saints to be play­ing in the Super Bowl after years of fail­ure and then Katrina.

“In sum­mary,” wrote Reilly, “you must either have had your heart removed by corn tongs or be in the Man­ning fam­ily if you’re not pulling for the Saints.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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Will the games of Cowboys past haunt Vikings?

January 15, 2010

Around these parts — mean­ing just about all of Texas except maybe El Paso — when some­one talks about “the game” they mean the Dallas-Minnesota matchup come high noon (Cen­tral time) Sun­day. I say most of Texas except El Paso because I know it is home to many San Diego fans since El Paso is almost as close in dis­tance to San Diego as it is Dal­las and may well be much more near culturally.

I sus­pect the “the game” ref­er­ence prob­a­bly holds true in the Twin Cities  where the folks have more rea­son than most cities to hold a grudge against Texas. There was a lit­tle play that became known as the “Hail Mary Pass” in 1975 in which Cow­boys quar­ter­back Roger Staubach hit wide receiver Drew Pear­son on a 50-yard des­per­a­tion pass. Pear­son caught it and backed into the end zone for the game-winning touch­down. Vikings play­ers and fans protested then and now that Pear­son was guilty of offen­sive pass inter­fer­ence on cor­ner­back Nate Wright who fell to the ground dur­ing the recep­tion. The TD knocked the Vikings out of the playoffs.

As an aside, some nas­ti­ness ensued after the play includ­ing a ref get­ting struck on the head by a whiskey bot­tle thrown from the stands. The assault knocked the zebra out with his wound requir­ing 11 stitches.

Gerry Fra­ley of The Dal­las Morn­ing News points out a laun­dry list of other rea­sons why Texas is the source of some under­stand­able ani­mus in the Twin Cities. This includes Dal­las steal­ing the NHL team, the lop­sided trade to Dal­las for Her­schel Walker and for­mer Vikings owner and Texan Red McCombs threat­en­ing to move the team unless he got a new sta­dium. All in all it sounds more like a plot to an old “Mav­er­ick” episode than sports.

Despite the ani­mos­ity and the fact its the Cow­boys the Vikings that are up against each other in the NFL Wild Card match, the game has some inter­est­ing pieces involved. This includes the aged Brett Favre who still can throw a foot­ball pretty far and the Cow­boys QB Tony Romo whom I heard a sports com­men­ta­tor on the radio today describe as a “cute puppy with  his hat on backwards.”

Seri­ously, Dal­las has come a long way. I might even root for them. I am not one of those Cow­boys band­wagon fans. I once long ago was a fan then I got turned off by that whole “America’s Team” thing. Since then I pretty much hated the Cow­boys until that loud­mouth Ter­rell Owens left. I would like to see coach Wade Phillips do good. As  I have men­tioned before he is from my area — hav­ing grad­u­ated in the same Texas county in which I reside (Jef­fer­son) at Port Neches-Groves High School. Plus, he is the son of prob­a­bly my favorite all-time coach, Bum Phillips, who helped the Oil­ers pro­vide some excite­ment in their games.

At the very least I plan to watch the game. As for the oth­ers, well New Orleans is my favorite NFL team left right now since the Tex­ans didn’t make the play­offs. In the AFC, since the Tex­ans didn’t have the cards in their favor I guess either Indi­anapo­lis or San Diego would do as my pref­er­ence. I would like to see a New Orleans and Indi­anapo­lis Super Bowl or a Saints-Chargers Super Bowl. So many times though, I don’t get what I wish for so …

Have a fine foot­ball weekend.

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Houston VA: MEDVAMC H1N1 AFT; Plus: Time for ‘Horns HC Muschamp?

January 8, 2010

A mem­o­ran­dum dated Jan. 4  from Adam C. Wal­mus, direc­tor of the Michael E. DeBakey Vet­er­ans Affairs Med­ical Cen­ter (MEDVAMC)  in Hous­ton, and e-mailed Jan. 8 by MEDVAMC spokes­woman  Bobbi Gruner announces vac­ci­na­tions are now avail­able for the 2009 H1N1 flu virus.

All I can say to this is reflected in one of the acronyms used in the head­line above, AFT. The acronym, pro­nounced in the pho­netic alpha­bet we used in the mil­i­tary, is pro­nounced “Alfa Fox­trot Tango.” I don’t know if that is a widely-used acronym but it’s one I chose to use of the ilk pop­u­lar­ized in the Stephen Coonts book and later movie “Flight of the Intruder.” That acronym was “Alfa Mike Fox­trot,” for “adios mother f***er.” I use the acronym “AFT” to mean “Alfa Fox­trot Tango,” to stand for “about f***ing time.”

I am sure there is an expla­na­tion why just now, in Jan­u­ary 2010, the H1N1 shots are now finally avail­able. The VA has known about the so-called “Swine Flu” for quite some time. A Hous­ton VA press release from Octo­ber noted:

“The H1N1 Flu is of con­cern to experts in the med­ical com­mu­nity because it is so new that very few peo­ple have any pro­tec­tion or “immu­nity” which means the virus may eas­ily find vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple to infect. As a result, it may spread rapidly to large num­bers of peo­ple. There­fore, health care facil­i­ties may find it dif­fi­cult to care for large num­bers of patients with severe illness.”

The Octo­ber release went on to say the hos­pi­tal had received 300 doses of the vac­cine and listed the pri­or­ity of those who should get the vac­cine. What they didn’t say was did the patients in those pri­or­ity groups actu­ally receive the shots? What do you want to bet that if I asked the Hous­ton VA who, in fact, received the 300 ini­tial doses I would be told that infor­ma­tion can­not be released due to pri­vacy laws?

I said there was prob­a­bly an expla­na­tion why it’s taken so long to get the H1N1 shots to the gen­eral patient pop­u­la­tion within the MEDVAMC king­dom which includes out­pa­tient clin­ics in Beau­mont, Lufkin, Con­roe and Galve­ston. I didn’t say it was a good explanation.

For­tu­nately, no large out­breaks of the Swine Flu have occured among vet­er­ans in this por­tion of Texas, at least no large out­breaks that come to mind. But the H1N1 is still a pan­demic so it’s for­tu­nate there aren’t more dead, espe­cially older or our youngest, veterans.

When the pan­demic is over, I hope the VA as a whole will do a thor­ough after-action review of their reac­tion to the out­breaks. I’m sure they will, but hope­fully it will be hon­est and not just the same old glazed over horse s**t one seems to see com­ing from one VA report after another. The whole VA phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sys­tem needs a care­ful going-over as well.  I can’t help but think — with such vast dif­fer­ences in med­ica­tion given from one VA hos­pi­tal sys­tem to another — that the acqui­si­tion of med­ica­tions might be ripe for some kind of cor­rup­tion. I’m not say­ing that’s the case, but it’s a suspicion.

Nev­er­the­less, it’s AFT that the Swine Flu shots are avail­able and unless I get the flu first or the VA runs out, I plan to get my vac­cine dur­ing my next reg­u­lar appoint­ment in two weeks.

Something’s rot­ten in Austin

Only a few thoughts to fol­low up on last night’s “Pasadena Mas­sacre.” I am talk­ing about the Citi BCS National Cham­pi­onship in which Texas QB Colt McCoy was knocked out of the game the first rat­tle out of the box. I think The Regents should just pay Mack Brown all those mil­lions and move defen­sive coor­di­na­tor and heir-apparent Will Muschamp up to head coach.

Man, the game just turned to Bevo poo after fresh­man Gar­rett Gilbert was sent in to replace McCoy. I don’t fault Gilbert. I think he showed some flashes of not-badness. It just seemed the game had been chore­o­graphed like a Broad­way pro­duc­tion star­ring McCoy and the stand-in hadn’t been prop­erly trained to know where the other cast mem­bers were sup­posed to stand.

Gilbert made a few bad passes. He was sup­posed to, he is a fresh­man. He also threw some passes that should have been caught. It was if the hearts and souls of the remain­ing offen­sive play­ers flew off to the locker room when McCoy departed with his injured shoulder.

Although the score, 37–21 Alabama, doesn’t really reflect it, the Texas defense looked pretty awe­some. Alabama QB Greg McEl­roy was sacked a season-high five times. That is why I think the loss falls mainly on Mack Brown. It was like he never thought of the pos­si­bil­ity his star quar­ter­back and field mar­shal would get hurt. And since the defense was the bright  spot for Texas and that Brown has made defen­sive guru Muschamp his replace­ment, Brown should have him­self replaced, at head coach at least. They could keep Brown in recruit­ing and PR. He seems to really excel there.

After watch­ing the game, I believe that Texas could have won if McCoy had not been knocked out of the game. But that’s not a given. Run­ning back Mark Ingram brought back visions of “The Earl of Texas,” that being Earl Camp­bell. Both were backs which reminded me of Hur­ri­cane Rita blast­ing her way through the Piney­woods. There wasn’t any­one able to stop her. The same goes for Earl and the Tide’s Ingram. As I heard one caller to a sports talk show say this after­noon, the game was one “played by boys against men.” In a way, the caller was right.

Still, you have to won­der what would have been had McCoy not been injured. And you won­der what round McCoy will go in the NFL draft who picks him. Also, I heard it said that Alabama’s McEl­roy had never lost a foot­ball  game since the eighth grade. How do  you think he will feel when he gets to the NFL and finally loses that first game?

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‘Bama and Horns take to the field. Stay seated.

January 7, 2010

Per­haps I could write about the upcom­ing talk Prez Obama will be giv­ing shortly about the sus­pected ter­ror­ist now dubbed “The Under­wear Bomber” and how things fell through cracks in our intel­li­gence and secu­rity sys­tems. But why bother? I’m sure it’s impor­tant and prob­a­bly well-intentioned and even insight­ful. How­ever, it’s only going to lead to more scream­ing and lying, yes lying, by Repub­li­cans law­mak­ers whose jobs are pre­dom­i­nantly leg­is­la­tors, but these days we find them mostly in the obstruc­tion and pre­var­i­ca­tion fields.

So I go with some­thing not impor­tant to mil­lions world­wide, but nonethe­less impor­tant here in the United States — the National Championship.

I say only the national cham­pi­onship because prob­a­bly more peo­ple know what I am talk­ing about with those two words than do not. That is, the four or five peo­ple who actu­ally read this blog. The game tonight is for­mally titled the Citi BCS National Cham­pi­onship. The first two words make me cringe when I say that: “Citi,” as in bank whose tele-support peo­ple can give me major pains in the ass, and “BCS” for Bowl Cham­pi­onship Series a.k.a. Big Crappy Sys­tem. I have a credit card for my job, a require­ment of my job actu­ally, through Citi. And, like many oth­ers, I think the BCS stinks as a way to pick cham­pi­ons. The sim­ple way to improve pick­ing cham­pi­ons involves play­offs. Thus more games. Thus more TV rev­enue, one would think. Thus per­haps not as many fans with their noses out of their col­lec­tive joints over their teams either not mak­ing the cut or los­ing the games.

One also would not have to lose any bowls in such a sys­tem although I don’t think it would hurt to cut a few here or there since there are 34 bowls. I think that’s a bit much.

Texas is the under­dog in the game, which is good in a way. I like under­dogs, mostly. But I am root­ing for the Long­horns. I know some of my more rabid Texas A & M friends and fam­ily might not like that. Some are so rabid they want to see A & M lose any game, period. That’s kind of how I used to feel about the Dal­las Cow­boys. I still am not much of a Cow­boys fan but under cer­tain sit­u­a­tions I like to see them win.

I’m not going to ana­lyze the upcom­ing game because I only know a lit­tle about each team hav­ing seen them play a few times and I speak of, mostly, Texas. All I can say is I hope it’s a good, clean con­test and per­haps with­out the insan­ity some such games, includ­ing ones Alabama played, have pro­duced. The 1954 Cot­ton Bowl comes to mind dur­ing which the Crim­son Tide’s full­back Tommy Lewis jumped from the bench as he saw Rice half­back Dick Moe­gle head­ing up the side­lines toward a score. Lewis then tack­led Moe­gle — keep in mind he had been sit­ting on the bench  — prompt­ing the zebras to give Rice a touch­down and Moe­gle a 95-yard run. Rice won, maybe for the last time or so it seems, 28–6.

There is a les­son there. Maybe more than one but prob­a­bly the biggest being don’t go on the field when your butt is sup­posed to be planted to the bench. See there, it’s pretty sim­ple. Go ‘Horns!

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My teams sink into the mud yet the World continues to turn

December 7, 2009

 A  fast-moving snow came through our nor­mally snow-deprived area Fri­day and left about a 1/4 inch. Unfor­tu­nately, there was lit­tle left for a pho­to­graph as what was left on the ground was in the dark and by the time I got out of bed the next day the snow was long gone. Such are Gulf Coast snows. At least we got to share our snow with my friends up in the North­east. My friend Sally, in West­ern Mass­a­chu­setts told me she enjoyed the first snow of the year which was thanks to the same potent weather system.

 Oth­er­wise the week­end was one of mostly watch­ing all my foot­ball teams go down in flames save one. The Long­horns squeaked by Nebraska and thus will play in the National Cham­pi­onship against the Crim­son Tide. I have to be almost apolo­getic in say­ing that I root for Texas because, as most of my friends are Repub­li­cans while I am a proud Demo­c­rat, most of my friends and rel­a­tives are also Aggies. Many are such Texas A & M fans that they will root for any team but “TU” or what they call The Uni­ver­sity of Texas (at Austin). That I don’t under­stand. It seems like we are all Tex­ans and we would sup­port a fel­low Texas team fight­ing for the national title. But not so many Aggies.

 My high school fell in quar­ter­fi­nals. I wasn’t sur­prised because New­ton played No. 1 Dainger­field. My col­lege alma mater, Stephen F. Austin was destroyed in the Foot­ball Cham­pi­onship Sub­di­vi­sion play­offs — for­merly NCAA Div. I-A — by No. 1 Mon­tana. Uni­ver­sity of Hous­ton was beaten by East­ern Car­olina for the Con­fer­ence USA cham­pi­onships. Last but cer­tainly least in the NFL, my Tex­ans got whipped by Jack­sonville and slipped to 5–7.

 So yes that one-second nail-biter between the Corn­huskers and the Long­horns was my lit­tle bright light. Well, the Saints won in over­time but I didn’t get to see that because Fox cut com­pletely the Saints’ excit­ing OT fin­ish off for the Cow­boys mis­er­able loss to the Giants. I mean, I like Wade Phillips and all but give me a break.

 Need­less to say it was a dis­ap­point­ing week­end. Not much snow. My favorite teams were mostly left tram­pled in the mud. My feet con­tinue to hurt includ­ing my non-broken toe that feels now like a bro­ken foot. Yet, the world con­tin­ues to turn. One can­not watch cable TV news with­out every­thing being laid down in the con­text of pol­i­tics. With every breath that Obama takes a new poll is released. Will his exhales excite the inde­pen­dent white Chris­t­ian women or will his inhal­ing raise his num­bers with the black male Mus­lim upper class cross dressers? Stay tuned. I’m sure we will find out eventually.

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Afghanistan and the eye of the Tiger, oh my

December 2, 2009

 Today I have a few words — fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing — on sub­jects of which I could dis­cuss with thou­sands of words. How­ever, I don’t want that and if you read this blog, you surely don’t want that.

 First off, Afghanistan and the upshot of Pres­i­dent Obama order­ing 30,000 addi­tional troops into what­ever it is we are fight­ing over there.

 Flip a coin. Heads, you approve of the addi­tional troops. Tails, you dis­ap­prove. That is how I look at the announce­ment of addi­tional forces. I ini­tially thought we should have gone into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. Today, I’m not so sure. The only thing I am sure of is that we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq. That war is what one might call unjust, not to men­tion ille­gal. I haven’t heard it called “Bush’s Folly” or “Shrub’s Folly,” but it should go down in his­tory that way.

 If the search and destroy mis­sion for Osama bin Laden and gang should  not have been a fed­eral crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion — with help from the mil­i­tary and CIA — many of the troops and mate­r­ial poured into Iraq (not to men­tion the bil­lions of dol­lars) could have went to Afghanistan.

 I guess the Amer­i­can in me believes that we should find some kind of vic­tory both in Iraq and Afghanistan and leave. We need to fig­ure out what it is we are there to do because I am not sure what our goals are now in those countries.

 As for Obama send­ing more trooops to aug­ment the more than 70,000 already there — and the allies send­ing 5,000 more to help the almost 40,000 NATO and other for­eign forces in Afghanistan — I say: “Let’s see if it works out.” He has offered a timetable, albeit a seem­ingly short one.  So if the sit­u­a­tion doesn’t improve by when­ever it is Obama wants a with­drawal to begin, then we get mad and jump up and down and say: “Bad Obama. Bad, bad Obama.” This seems as good as any­thing else I can imagine.

********************************************************

 Next sub­ject. Le Tigre. El Tigre.  Ang Tigre. The Tiger.

 Tiger, Tiger, Tiger.

 Why is the main­stream media doing sto­ries on what was, initially, a rather odd car crash involv­ing Tiger Woods?  Do view­ers and read­ers of the media have such unin­ter­est­ing lives that they MUST know the details of all the indis­cre­tions of this sports (sports?) star? I have the most unin­ter­est­ing life  imag­in­able, at least at the moment, and I don’t care about Tiger Woods” inti­mate moments. Let me be a bit more spe­cific. I DON’T GIVE A RAT’S RECTUM ABOUT THE TIGER WOODS SCANDAL.

 Tiger Woods has not been elected to great­est golfer in the world or highest-paid sports star in the world. We do not own Tiger Woods. He has no oblig­a­tion to tell the pub­lic zip. Sure, every star of every kind blames the media when things start to go South. But if any­one has a case against the media, this time it is Tiger Woods.

 It makes me both angry and sad to see great news­pa­per and broad­cast­ing out­lets report the lat­est on this scan­dal. Why don’t they report some­thing really earth-shaking, like this?

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Free meals for vets; Pick your fave Texans goat.

November 9, 2009

 Some national cor­po­ra­tion are thank­ing vet­er­ans this year by putting their money where the vet­er­ans’ mouths are.

 But show­ing appre­ci­a­tion for those who are serv­ing or who have served this year will not be lim­ited to free din­ners from Golden Cor­ral on Mon­day,  Novem­ber 16, and Applebee’s on Wednes­day evening (Vet­er­ans Day).

 Lowe’s is offer­ing a 10 per­cent dis­count on in-store mer­chan­dise up to pur­chases of $5,000 from Nov. 6 through Vet­er­ans Day. This is accord­ing to media reports I have seen. I saw noth­ing on their Web site about it. I would call first and ask if inter­ested. Home Depot is like­wise offer­ing a 10 per­cent dis­count through Vet­er­ans Day. Check the Web site arti­cle for lists of limitations.

 I am unsure how long any of these cor­po­ra­tions have shown their appre­ci­a­tion for vet­er­ans other than Golden Cor­ral. The buf­fet and grill restau­rant has held the Vet­er­ans feast for the past eight years. Their Web site notes they have served more than 2.1 mil­lion meals to active duty mil­i­tary and vet­er­ans dur­ing these occasions.

 Applebee’s requires some kind of proof of ser­vice such as a pic­ture of the vet­eran in uni­form, mil­i­tary or retired mil­i­tary ID card, DD-214 or vet­er­ans orga­ni­za­tion card. Their list doesn’t include a VA patient ID card, so I wouldn’t count on that get­ting you a free din­ner. Applebee’s is also offer­ing a lim­ited num­ber of items on their menu for the gratis meal — six to be exact — but they all look pretty good.

 Golden Cor­ral does not require proof of ID. I still would take some though. You never know if your waiter under­stands the rules and hav­ing your papers in order might avoid hav­ing to get a man­ager and mak­ing a scene. I have been only once for Golden Corral’s meal, a cou­ple of years ago, and I wasn’t asked for an ID.

 A num­ber of other restau­rants and busi­nesses are giv­ing free or dis­counted meals or mer­chan­dise across the coun­try includ­ing, or did so over the week­end. Some of these also honor those uni­formed folks serv­ing in pub­lic safety such as police, fire and EMS. You just need to check around and see, I sup­pose, because I don’t have a full list. I wish I did.

WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT

  Dis­ap­point­ing would be an appro­pri­ate word to describe yesterday’s Houston-Indianapolis game.

  The Tex­ans came in with a respectable 5–3 record for the first time in their his­tory against the unde­feated Colts. Still, there was no way the Tex­ans could beat Indi­anapo­lis, right? Well, even though they weren’t throw­ing hand grenades or play­ing horse­shoes, they almost pulled off an upset. Even more, the Tex­ans should have won this one.

  A big exam­i­na­tion was tak­ing place on Beaumont-Houston’s ESPN Radio, the Ticket, this after­noon, as to the blame for the Tex­ans 20–17 loss to the Colts. It was a con­tro­ver­sial fum­ble at the Colt’s one-yard line by Hous­ton run­ning back Ryan Moats, said some. It was flat out turnovers and stu­pid penal­ties, said oth­ers. It was kicker Kris Brown, still oth­ers said while you could almost see heads nod­ding through the many radio receivers through­out the Houston-Beaumont area.

 Brown could eas­ily be seen as the goat that ate the chance to knock off the Big Dog Colts. The Colts saw their lead cut to a nar­row mar­gin at the end of the first half when the Tex­ans’ kicker per­fectly nailed a 56-yard field goal. Brown, com­ing into the game, had a per­fect extra point record and he left with that intact at 25-for-25 upon leav­ing Indy. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Auto­matic with 9-for-13 com­ing into the game but nei­ther was he Mr. Aro­matic. That path to Mr. Smelly quickly changed in the esti­ma­tion of some Tex­ans fans when Brown had a chance to send the game into overtime. 

 But just as plane crashes hardly ever have one cause, nei­ther do lost foot­ball games. Some­how the clock quickly ticked off until it was stopped at one sec­ond — amaz­ing in itself that Hous­ton didn’t lose because of poor time man­age­ment. Brown seemed like a sure shot for a 42-yarder to tie after kick­ing one a very respectable 56 yards. How­ever, the ball went up and up and just freak­ing missed the goal with a veer to the left.

  Well, Coach Dan Kubiak thought his team did okay con­sid­er­ing they were play­ing Pey­ton Manning’s Colts. I have to say I feel the same way although, as I men­tioned before, I am very disappointed.

 As for one goat. It wasn’t Kris Brown. It wasn’t one play. It wasn’t the refs. It wasn’t Moats’ fum­ble. It was all of those wrapped up with penal­ties that were just dumb, though as I have noted  here before I sure as hell couldn’t have done better.

 The Tex­ans now are nei­ther down nor are they out. They have to play the Colts again at the end of this month and beat them. They have to beat the Titans again the week after next week’s bye. That the­o­ret­i­cally should be easy against a now 2–6 team that only picked up its sec­ond win just yes­ter­day by beat­ing the equally lack­lus­ter 49ers. But the­o­ries are like a**holes, everybody’s got one and every once in awhile some­thing goes wrong with them. Then you got your Rams, Sea­hawks, Jaguars and Dol­phins in no par­tic­u­lar order fol­lowed at the end by the Patri­ots. The Patri­ots. Yes.  Uh-huh.

 So the Tex­ans can still make the play­offs. Hell, they could go to the Super Bowl. I mean any­thing can hap­pen and does hap­pen in foot­ball, just look at Ter­rell Owens or John “Sandy Baby” Rig­gins — remem­ber the latter’s drunken encounter with Supreme Court Jus­tice San­dra Day O’Connor? Per­haps those aren’t the best examples.

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Friends don’t let friends play hurt

October 30, 2009

Talk about side­lined! Even if the turf on Rebel Field in Evadale, Texas, dries suf­fi­ciently this evening after pound­ing rain­fall, the sta­dium will remain silent from the bus­tle of the grid­iron. That is because the sched­uled bat­tle between the Evadale Rebels and the Chester Yel­low­jack­ets has been can­celed. In fact, the Yel­low­jack­ets’ remain­ing sea­son has been canceled.

Foot­ball ended for Chester on Oct. 23 after what turned out to be their final game, which was against High Island. In that game, seven Yel­low­jacket play­ers suf­fered season-ending injuries, accord­ing to the Beau­mont Enter­prise. With a stu­dent body of 58 attend­ing Chester High School — located in a town of only 256 about 90 miles north­east of Hous­ton — the foot­ball team is com­prised of 20 of the 26 boys who attend classes there. Another stu­dent broke his foot the week before. You do the math.

Yes, the Yel­low­jack­ets could still field a team pro­vided no one got hurt in the last two games. A team with a total squad of 12 also would not pro­vide any rest for the weary. I can’t speak for the six Chester stu­dents who don’t play. Kids have all kinds of rea­sons why they don’t get into orga­nized sports. The clos­est I got was as a var­sity foot­ball and bas­ket­ball equip­ment man­ager. Nev­er­the­less, the coach decided it best to end the sea­son while the school still had some able bod­ies for bas­ket­ball sea­son. That’s a joke, although I real­ize a bad one. The result was that the Yel­low­jack­ets for­feited its final two games.

The abrupt end­ing to the sea­son may have left some kids and fans heart­bro­ken but the coach’s deci­sion was both with­out recourse and smart.

Can­cel­ing was smart because had more play­ers suf­fered inca­pac­i­tat­ing injuries a whole raft of wrath might have been heaped upon the coach and administration’s head like play­ers scram­bling for a goal-line fum­ble. Soci­ety has become less tol­er­ant with the idea of “play­ing hurt.” And with recent hear­ings about foot­ball brain injuries suf­fered by NFL play­ers — the pros also being shown to influ­ence youth foot­ball safety lev­els – the idea of “shak­ing off” an injury seems des­tined for such dis­cred­ited med­ical prac­tices as “bleed­ing” some­one for var­i­ous illnesses.

One must rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ence between trau­matic brain injury as well as other poten­tially deadly and dis­abled syn­dromes related to con­cus­sions, and the nor­mal bro­ken bones and  dis­lo­ca­tions which are com­mon in high school foot­ball. Even con­cus­sions, or get­ting one’s “bell rung,” are not unusual. Two Chester play­ers report­edly suf­fered con­cus­sions while the rest of the injuries along with a host of bro­ken  bones and dis­lo­ca­tions, accord­ing to Beau­mont TV sta­tion KFDM. The Chester coach called the num­ber of injuries incurred freak accidents.

But even ortho­pe­dic injuries these day in foot­ball at the high school level have been under scrutiny along with head injuries, all wrapped up under the cat­e­gory of sports safety.

A num­ber of fac­tors bring safety to the fore­front of sports in gen­eral such as the size and ath­leti­cism of youth who work­out on weights and some of whom take illicit steroids. Pro­tec­tive sports gear has also improved as has emer­gency med­ical care. Some notable cases, how­ever,  exhibit tragic holes in pro­tec­tion from injuries.

The case of Will Ben­son is a par­tic­u­lar exam­ple of gaps in safety.

Ben­son was a 17-year-old quar­ter­back for St. Stephen’s Epis­co­pal School in Austin who died after suf­fer­ing cere­bral hem­or­rhage dur­ing a game in 2002. Ben­son col­lapsed and was looked at by the team’s trainer and doc­tor but no ambu­lance or emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians were sta­tioned on the scene. Prob­lems with the ambu­lance find­ing and access­ing the patient were rea­sons almost a half-hour elapsed between the time Ben­son col­lapsed and was rolled into emer­gency surgery.

It wasn’t until 2007 that Benson’s dad was able to con­vince Texas leg­is­la­tors that sports safety needed improve­ment and “Will’s Law” was passed among which pro­vi­sions include a require­ment of safety train­ing for coaches and trainers.

I have to admit that I read about Will Benson’s tragic case for the first time today. I sup­pose I have become some­what numb fol­low­ing news of kids dying from sports injuries. What shocks me most is that in 45 years of watch­ing high school foot­ball I can’t remem­ber see­ing  a game that did not have an ambu­lance stand­ing by. This was even the case back in the day when EMTs — which I was cer­ti­fied as for 10 years — was just another unknown acronym and funeral homes usu­ally oper­ated the ambu­lances. This is even in the small­est of East Texas towns in which I grew up.

The machismo of the still over­whelm­ingly male sport of foot­ball has long dic­tated tough­ness as a rite of pas­sage. One must decide whether such con­cepts are all they’re made out to be. But as was empha­sized in the macho pro­fes­sion of fire­fight­ing in which I was involved some five years one can’t help some­one in need if you are unable to show up. Trans­la­tion: Don’t drive like a bat out of hell and all crazy en route to an emergency.

If the log­i­cal exten­sion is taken for foot­ball, you can’t play if you’re hurt really bad. That can be taken for what it’s worth if logic can be applied amongst the emo­tional world of football.

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Did someone call a prognosticator?

October 6, 2009
PICKING AND GRINNING
SE TEXAS HS
New­ton vs. Woodville Newton
Port Neches-Groves vs. Liv­ingston Port Neches-Groves
Sils­bee vs. West Orange-Stark West Orange-Stark
Diboll vs. Jasper Jasper
Hamshire-Fannett vs. Orange­field Orangefield
Kir­byville vs. Shel­byville Kirbyville
COLLEGE GAMES
Okla­homa State vs. Texas A & M Texas A & M
Hous­ton vs. Mis­sis­sippi State Houston
Bay­lor vs. Okla­homa Oklahoma
Navy vs. Rice Navy
TCU vs. Air Force TCU
Texas vs. Col­orado Texas
Auburn vs. LSU LSU
Stephen F. Austin vs. McNeese Stephen F. Austin
NFL MATCHUPS
Min­nesota vs. St. Louis Minnesota
Dal­las vs. Kansas City Dallas
Hous­ton Tex­ans vs. Ari­zona Houston
Indi­anapo­lis vs. Ten­nessee Indianapolis

Never have I thought myself to be a great sports fan. But as it goes with enjoy­ing other aspects of life of which I claim no exper­tise — art, fine wine, etc. — I know what I like.

I am not the kind of per­son that camps out all week­end long before the tel­lyvi­sion watch­ing first col­lege games all day Sat­ur­day then pro games on Sun­day. If a game inter­ests me or a team, such as the Hous­ton Tex­ans, I will watch a game if I have no other press­ing matters.

That’s always the way it has been for me, pretty much. So quite sur­prised, and extremely lucky, was I some 12 or so years ago when I worked for a small daily news­pa­per as a reporter and found myself among the weekly faces prog­nos­ti­cat­ing foot­ball games on the sports page. I was a reg­u­lar foot­ball for­tune teller dur­ing the sea­son along with the two sports guys, a pho­tog­ra­pher, a copy edi­tor, a local radio sta­tion owner and maybe a few other assorted folks. I say I sup­posed myself to be lucky because I had the best per­cent­age among all the other reg­u­lars who picked the games.

Now I will admit to read­ing the sports pages quite a bit more than usual dur­ing those times, but it’s not like I was some foot­ball genius despite the fact that I knew who “The Big Tuna” was.

So I thought for old time’s sake I would pick a selected num­ber of this week’s games and see what hap­pens. I will admit to fol­low­ing some of these teams though not oth­ers. I won’t say which ones of either. If I just remem­ber to report back the results this all might work. The pos­si­ble com­pli­ca­tion in this is that I am sched­uled to be out of town and out of state all next week. But I will do my best and report my find­ings with hon­esty, if at all. There­fore, I give you my picks.

PICKING AND GRINNING TIME

SE TEXAS HS

  • New­ton (34) vs. Woodville (13)

Both these teams are named the Eagles so if you aren’t watch­ing the game you can get con­fused but there should be no con­fus­ing which Eagles should win, that would be the New­ton variety.

  • Port Neches-Groves (14) vs. Liv­ingston (34)

I’m just guess­ing here but I think PN-G will win. They have the snazz­ier uniforms.

  • Sils­bee (43) vs. West Orange-Stark (33)

Given the two teams’ records and who they have played, WO-S should beat the Tigers like a rented mule.

  • Diboll (0) vs. Jasper (14)

I see no rea­son why Jasper shouldn’t win hand­ily over Diboll unless the H1N1 pan­demic rears its ugly head or a nuclear strike hits East Texas on Fri­day night.

  • Hamshire-Fannett (9) vs. Orange­field (54)

Orange­field will win. I guar­an­tee it. Of course, my guar­an­tees in foot­ball mean about as much as David Letterman’s vows of  celibacy.

  • Kir­byville (38) vs. Shel­byville (0)

The Kir­byville Wild­cats will beat Shel­byville like the  media beats a dead horse.

COLLEGE GAMES

  • Okla­homa State (36) vs. Texas A & M (31)

Texas A & M shouldn’t win this one, but let’s say they do.

  • Hous­ton (31) vs. Mis­sis­sippi State (24)

Hous­ton saw national rank­ings come and go with their loss to UTEP, so that means that the Cougars will prob­a­bly beat Miss State.

  • Bay­lor (7) vs. Okla­homa (33)

The only game I saw Bay­lor play when I lived in Waco was against Okla­homa. It was G0d awful unless you were a Soon­ers fan. I pre­dict a sim­i­lar Bear drub­bing though  prob­a­bly not in the 60-some-odd to 10-some-odd fash­ion as with the game I saw.

  • Navy (63) vs. Rice (14)

I have always admired Rice because it’s a brainiac school. But brains alone won’t get you a win, espe­cially since the Owls haven’t seen a win since Hec­tor was a pup. Say what? Say Navy wins this one.

  • TCU (20) vs. Air Force (17)

The Horned  Frogs of TCU have this one unless they don’t.

  • Texas (38) vs. Col­orado (14)

Unless the Long­horns do some­thing incred­i­bly stu­pid as they are known to do on occa­sion, they should whip Col­orado until they yelp like chihuahuas.

  • Florida (13) vs. LSU (3)

Three let­ters, L-S-U.

  • Stephen F. Austin (16) vs. McNeese (13)

I’m sure the experts would go for McNeese but I am no expert and I am a Lum­ber­jack and I’m okay. So SFA Lum­ber­jacks get my nod.

NFL MATCHUPS

  • Min­nesota (38) vs. St. Louis (10)

Led by 143-year-old quar­ter­back Brett Favre, the Min­nesota Vikings defeated the Rams despite the path from the hud­dle to the Vikings’ side­line being lit­tered with Ger­i­tol bottles.

  • Dal­las (26) vs. Kansas City (10)

Unless some young star­let grabs Tony Romo’s atten­tion, the Cow­boys should beat  Kansas City with lit­tle trouble.

  • Hous­ton Tex­ans (21) vs. Ari­zona (28)

The Tex­ans should mostly be recov­ered from the Swine Flu so they stand a good enough chance to beat Ari­zona that I will go with the Texans.

Indi­anapo­lis (21) vs. Ten­nessee (9)

Let’s see. Indanapo­lis good. Titans stink. The Colts win, I think.

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